As he slowly negotiated the cluttered floor, shadows played over the walls, sending agonizing memories winging through his mind, making him relive the terror that still haunted his dreams.
Calling on the control he’d so mercilessly taught himself, Hawk banished the images as he carefully picked his way through the ruins. When he reached the end of the corridor, a gaping hole in the floor prevented him from going farther.
This was where the nursery had been.
A great, raw pain surged through Hawk. He’d thought he was mostly over his grief, but he was wrong; it was merely bottled up inside him. Just now it felt as if all his limbs had been severed from his body and his chest had caved in.
Putting his back to the wall, Hawk sank down till he met the charred floor. Memories flooded him with relentless force: The flames, the suffocating smoke. Half-blinded, he’d staggered through the burning rooms like a madman, shouting hoarsely for Elizabeth, for Lucas, smashing windowpanes as he went, letting the drenching rain pour in. Yet he was too late.
He had been crawling on his hands and knees when he spied their bodies huddled in a far corner of the nurse’s bedchamber.
They’d been overcome by smoke, not burned, his sole reason to be thankful. He could imagine their screams, though. How terrified they must have been in their final moments …
Hawk raised the brandy bottle to his lips and drank deeply, futilely trying to numb the pain.
Lady Skye found him there some time later—how long he wasn’t certain.
“Why’re you here?” he demanded, slurring his words. “To shatisfy your morbid curios’ty?”
“I … it has nothing to do with curiosity.…” She spoke hesitantly, in a low voice, fumbling her words. “I did not want … you to be alone at a time like this.”
But he wanted to be alone. He deserved to be alone. He deserved to have perished with his family.
She sank down beside him, not touching but close enough for him to feel her warmth. He didn’t want her warmth, either, damn her.
She was silent long enough that he lost patience with her quiet patience.
“Do you wanna know how I losht my wife and child?”
“Only if you wish to tell me.”
Hawk dragged a ragged hand over his face. There were streaks of wetness on his cheeks, tears he was hardly aware of crying. “ ’Twas my fault.”
She turned to gaze solemnly at him. “That is not what I was told. I heard that you tried desperately to save them.”
“I should’ve been here.” He drank again, relishing the burn in his aching throat.
“What happened, my lord?” she asked in a soft voice.
He drew an unsteady breath. “The fire shtarted in the nurs’ry. My son’s nursh dropped a bloody candle an’ the drap’ries caught fire. Sh-she fled, leaving Lucas in his crib. ’Lizabeth went in to rescue him.”
“I am so terribly sorry,” Skye said after a moment.
“I dragged out their bodies, did ju know?”
“Yes … I know.”
“They acshually looked peaceful when I found ’em. Carried ’em both out of the flames. Shomeone took ’em from me just before the sheeling fell in.…”
“So I heard,” she whispered, as if holding back her own tears. “When the ceiling collapsed, you lost consciousness and the servants pulled you from the burning wreckage.”
Hawk nodded and brought the bottle to his lips again, annoyed to discover it was almost empty. “When I woke ev’r’thing I cared ’bout was gone.” His sharp, humorless laugh was laced with bitterness. “Y’ want t’ hear the real irony? There was a damned storm that night! It shlowed my carr’age enough so I was delayed reeshing home. Too late for my family. If only I’d been a half hour earl’er …”
“Lord Hawkhurst … you cannot blame yourself.”
“I bloody well can! It wash-sh my fault. I should’ve been there. I should’ve died with ’em.”
For years the guilt had swamped him. That and fury that he’d been powerless to prevent the deaths of his beloved Elizabeth and his innocent young son. Hawk let loose a foul oath and threw his bottle against the far wall. The glass shattered, spraying brandy over the floor.
At the sudden crash, Lady Skye jumped, but remained sitting where she was. “I hope,” she said softly, “that someday you can forgive yourself.”
A savage anger raked him anew at her ridiculous notion. “Forgive myshelf? Go the hell away.”
She didn’t move. “I cannot leave you here like this. As foxed as you are, you might come to harm.”
Hawk sent her a fierce glare. If he wanted to drown his sorrows and risk coming to harm, who was she to stop him?
“Go ’way,” he repeated with the same grim conviction.
Skye returned the earl’s gaze, feeling the pain that radiated from him. Seeing the bleakness in his haunted gray eyes, she wanted desperately to console him, as he’d done for her last night. His was a living nightmare, and her heart broke for him.
He was more than a little drunk, yet she couldn’t condemn his inebriation or begrudge his fit of angry violence. In truth, it might help the tiniest measure if he could let out all that rage and grief.
Still, she couldn’t leave him alone and in torment.
“You cannot remain here in the cold ruins all night. If you are staying, then so am I.”
He grunted. “Y’re a bloody, interferin’ busybody, do y’ know that?”
“Yes, I know, my lord. Will you come with me anyway?”
He refused to answer and instead sat there in brooding silence.
As time stretched out, Skye began to despair at her own helplessness. There was a stillness about him that spoke of a terrible isolation and loneliness, and she yearned to wrap her arms around him and hold him to her breast.
It took perhaps five more minutes, but he finally uttered a terse oath. “Ver’ well, damn you.… I’ll come.”
He rolled onto his knees and struggled to stand. Gratefully, Skye picked up the lamp and rose, then put an arm around his waist, providing a shoulder for him to lean on.
They stumbled forward over blackened wood and damp, rotting carpet. A chill night breeze seeped into the corridor through the gaps in the wooden planks covering the windows. The glass panes were long gone, shattered that fateful evening of the fire by the earl in his futile attempt to let in the rain, Skye had heard.
The going was easier after they negotiated the opening in the boards. Hawkhurst seemed steadier on his feet now, and his words were slightly less slurred when he protested that she had bypassed his study as she guided him toward the stairway. “I need more brandy.…”
“I don’t think that is wise.”
When he started to curse her, she cut him off. “You can growl at me in the morning. For now I am putting you to bed.”
They climbed the stairs slowly and trudged along the corridor to his bedchamber. Ushering him inside, Skye supported the earl across the room and left him standing while she set down the lamp and drew down the bedcovers. When she urged him to sit on the edge of the mattress, he remained swaying unsteadily on his feet, ignoring her invitation even as his eyes closed.
“You need to sleep, my lord. You are exhausted.”
“Can’t … won’t … Don’t wan’ the nightmares.”
She sensed such bleakness in him that the desire to hold him tight intensified. Yet she couldn’t show her pity. Her best approach was to treat him like her brother and cousins, Skye decided.
“If you don’t lie down and go to sleep, I swear I will comb the house until I find every remaining bottle and cask of brandy and pour every drop out the window.”
At her threat, he pried one eye open and tried to focus a glare on her. “You woun’t dare.”
“You are welcome to test me.”
She was only trying to distract him from his grief, but fortunately it succeeded. He sighed wearily and sank down upon the bed, then collapsed onto his side and shut his eyes again.
With
effort, Skye pulled off his close-fitting boots, then worked off his coat. When she swung his legs up onto the bed, he rolled onto his side facing her and buried his face in the pillow.
Moving around to the other side of the bed, Skye stretched out beside Hawkhurst and drew the covers up over them both, giving barely a thought to the impropriety. She had already been completely intimate with him. Compared to that, spending the night in his bedchamber was scarcely an infraction. She couldn’t let him be alone.
For that matter, she didn’t want to be alone, either.
Easing closer, she slid an arm over his waist and pressed her front to his back.
Surprisingly, he was sober and awake enough to notice. “Are y’ sleeping with me tonight?”
“Yes.”
“You planning t’ give me your body again?”
“No.”
Regrettably. The taste of desire he had given her was sinfully hot, and she wanted more. But now was not the time. Now she simply wanted to ease his hurt, to warm him, to help him sleep.
When her warmth started to seep into him, he sighed again. It was not long before his body relaxed and his breathing grew more even.
Sleep was significantly more elusive for Skye. She kept seeing Hawkhurst’s eyes, so lost and bleak. He didn’t deserve such pain, she reflected, not for the first time, and she intended to do everything in her power to diminish it.
Pressing her nose into his hair, Skye breathed in his masculine scent and found her thoughts drifting back to her own dilemma.
Embracing this man felt so natural. She had wondered if he was her life’s mate, and she was becoming more convinced by the day that he was.
She could fall in love with Hawkhurst so easily. In merely a day, her girlish infatuation had forged into something far stronger.
Whether she could make him love her was another question entirely. But even if she couldn’t, she would do her best to set fate right for him. She would make it her mission to save him from a dark future, wedded to a missish young chit he couldn’t possibly love.
And as Skye forced herself to close her own eyes, she made herself another solemn promise: She intended to erase those haunted shadows from his eyes if it was the last thing she ever did.
Hawk was awakened early the next morning by a rapping on his bedchamber door. Groggy, his head pounding, he carefully sat up and glanced around the room to find Skye gone. When the rapping sounded again, he bid entrance in a raspy voice.
Thomas Gilpin stepped inside, carrying a large mug. Silver bearded and small of frame, he resembled a gnome. Gilpin had served on the estate for decades, and after the fire, had asked to stay on at Hawkhurst Castle as caretaker rather than seeing the manor shut up completely. He was a man of little conversation, with a surly disposition, which normally suited Hawk.
“Her ladyship bade me bring ye this, m’lord,” Gilpin said with remarkable good cheer as he crossed to the bedside.
“What is it?” Hawk asked warily.
“Some concoction that will do yer aching head good, she says. ’Tis a secret recipe, so I canna say the ingredients. I’m to stay until ye drink it down.”
Hawk stared at his servant, who unexpectedly grinned, showing several gaping holes where he’d lost teeth.
“When yer feeling more the thing, m’lord, yer to come down to breakfast. M’lady’s orders.”
“Indeed.”
“Aye. She thought to spare me carrying a heavy tray up the stairs with m’ weak wrists. She’s a kind one, that she is.”
It sounded as if Skye had bewitched the old man, but Hawk was determined to resist her enchantment himself.
When he pointed warningly at the door and barked “Out!” in dismissal, Gilpin chuckled and set the mug down on the beside table. “Ver’ well, m’lord, I’ll leave. But her ladyship will not be pleased.”
The servant retreated from the room and shut the door gingerly. Alone once more, Hawk rubbed his whiskered face and took stock of his current state. He felt emotionally drained, yet his outburst last evening had blessedly numbed some of the pain. He had also slept soundly again, in part because Skye had shared his bed. Annoyingly, he missed her warmth this morning.
Regardless of his feelings for his troublesome houseguest, though, it was time he roused himself from his stupor. He’d had enough of self-pity.
Hawk drained the mug, shuddering at the bitter taste, then rose and dressed in riding clothes. He needed a bath and a shave to be presentable, but for now his casual attire would have to do.
He was leaving his bedchamber when he realized the hammering in his head had subsided. More extraordinary, his appetite had returned. Hawk went down to the kitchens, where he found Skye sitting at the servants’ dining table, making lists of what appeared to be tasks for cleaning and refurbishing his house.
Her gaze searched his for a moment before she set down her pen and smiled. “It appears you feel a trifle better.”
“I must thank you for your potion,” Hawk said, tempering his usual grudging tone.
“It is my cousin Jack’s recipe—the hard-won result of much experimentation based on Quinn’s scientific knowledge. They both swear by its efficacy. Your breakfast is being kept warm for you. Why don’t you sit down and I will bring it to you.”
Her lighthearted manner suggested that she was prepared to disregard the events of last evening, for which Hawk was grateful. Rising gracefully, Skye disappeared into the kitchen for a moment and returned with his covered plate.
When she was seated again, Hawk made a surprise announcement. “I have decided to take on your uncle’s case.”
She looked elated. “May I ask why you changed your mind?”
Why? Because he needed to act, as well as to escape the dark ghosts that pulled at him here. Moreover, he wanted to help Isabella. She’d been a good friend to him over the years, particularly during his darkest days when he first arrived on Cyrene, and she was like family to him now. “I owe it to Bella.”
“I thought you might feel that way. So where do we start?” Skye asked eagerly.
“I need to determine a plan of attack. First I want to read your uncle Cornelius’s letters from his lover—the lady who reportedly feigned her death and fled to Ireland.”
Skye nodded. “Her name was Rachel Pearse before she wed Baron Farnwell, but I expect she changed at least her surname to conceal her identity.”
“That would have been the wise course.”
Skye went upstairs to her bedchamber to fetch the packet of letters and returned in short order. As he finished eating, Hawk read each letter twice, looking for clues.
Skye remained silent until he folded the last one. “Did you find anything of note?”
“Nothing useful for the moment. And Ireland is a large country. To narrow down the location where Lady Farnwell took refuge, I will need to interview the midwife who acted as go-between for the lovers.”
“That should not be difficult. Peggy Nibbs lives in Brackstone in Kent, scarcely two hours from here. We can be there and back in half a day.”
He looked up from the last letter. “ ‘We’?”
“Mrs. Nibbs likely won’t talk to you and reveal the secrets she has kept for many years. You are a perfect stranger to her. Besides, I have already quizzed her at length. She doesn’t remember much.”
“I should be able to get more out of her by asking the right questions.”
Skye’s blue eyes lit with humor. “Ah, yes, I should have expected you Guardians to employ interrogation techniques we normal civilians know nothing about.”
Hawk ignored her provocation. “If you wish to accompany me, you will be ready to leave within the hour.”
“As you wish. I won’t delay you, I promise.”
“And you will do exactly as I say.”
She hesitated a moment to consider his demand. “Very well,” Skye said genially. “You are the spy so I will defer to your wisdom. You likely know how best to proceed. Should we take your carriage and servants rat
her than mine? I intend to pay your full expenses, naturally.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“But it is only fair. You will be going to great expense on my behalf, and I can well afford it. I have my own fortune left to me by my mother. She was a French aristocrat but managed to escape the worst of the Revolution by marrying my father, an English earl.”
Hawk raised a quelling eyebrow. “Are you already arguing with me, Lady Skye?”
“No, not at all, Lord Hawkhurst. I would never dare such a thing.”
Her false meekness brought the hint of a smile to his mouth.
Skye eyed him in approval. “I am glad you have stopped being such an ogre. You are much more pleasant when you are not snapping and growling.”
He chuckled unwillingly. “Don’t expect my good mood to last.”
“You call this a good mood?” she teased.
Curbing his urge to return her banter, Hawk handed her back the packet of letters and gestured toward the door. “You had best leave the kitchens, my lady. I intend to bathe in the storeroom so Gilpin won’t have to carry cans of hot water upstairs.”
“Yes, of course. I will go change into my traveling gown so I can be ready to leave as soon as you command.”
When she dallied, he pulled the tails of his shirt from his breeches in preparation of removing it. To his amusement, Skye quickly gathered her lists and beat a hasty retreat to avoid seeing him undress. But while Hawk thought he might have won this skirmish, he was certain the next ones would not be so easy.
Skye was perfectly willing to let Hawkhurst take the lead in the midwife’s inquisition, but she was also glad for the opportunity to drag the beast from his lair. She didn’t want him dwelling on his pain, and giving him a purpose was the best way to distract him.
As promised, she was ready to depart within the hour and met him in the stable yard, where his carriage and team awaited. If she’d thought him ruggedly attractive with his jaw stubble and country gentleman’s attire, he was breathtakingly handsome with his face clean shaven, his ebony hair washed and shining, and his tanned, chiseled features set off by a sparkling white cravat. His clothes fit his noble station also, his superbly tailored coat molding his broad shoulders to perfection and a caped greatcoat flung over his arm. Skye felt the familiar riotous fluttering in her stomach as he handed her inside and settled next to her.
Secrets of Seduction Page 8
