Tonight she would take the risk and search through the house again, no matter what the danger. She would find the doll and run back to the safety of her solitary life in the shop.
Away from Lucy. Away from Ian Blackheath. She'd hurry back to her tiny shop and stitch ribbons and laces, and argue with portly dames about what color plumes to affix to their bonnets.
She would forget Ian Blackheath and the rebellious little girl working so industriously over her buttons.
She would find a way to stop feeling the pain, the confusion, the aching sense of coming to life that Blackheath had awakened in her blood...
"Lady?"
Emily started at the sound of Lucy's voice from some distance away, indignant, almost tearful.
She hurried down the path toward the girl, her unsteady fingers fumbling with her bonnet. She pulled it up to shield her face, hoping it would conceal her distress from this little girl who was far too old and jaded for her years.
"What is it, Lucy?" she asked as she caught sight of the little girl. Lucy stood a few steps away from the stone bench, clutching at one elbow beneath the edge of her muslin ruffle.
"It hurt me. A bee," the child said, displaying a reddening sting. "But I hurt him back." Tears trembled on her lashes, but she was trying valiantly to be brave. "I swatted him away, and when he fell on the path I smashed him flat."
"You must've looked so sweet sitting there that the bee thought you were a flower," Emily said.
"Then it must've been a very stupid bee." Lucy's lips pressed in a thin line. "I am not sweet at all."
There was something vulnerable in that small, belligerent face. And as Emily busied herself removing the tiny stinger from Lucy's rosy elbow, she was astonished to hear her own voice continuing gently.
"I had a little girl once," she said, "years ago. I would have loved it if she had been just like you."
"You had a girl? What did you do with her? Give her away because she was noisy and cried and wanted to be hugged when you were all dressed up for company?"
"Of course I didn't give her away!" Emily gasped, horrified at what she saw in the child's face.
"Then what did you do with her?"
"I... She got sick one day when I was... was gone. She died."
Lucy tilted her head to one side, just a little subdued. "She must not have liked it that you were gone," the child said after a moment. "Did your lover take you to Paris, or were you on a trip to see fashions?"
"No." Emily struggled to block out the vivid memory of Jenny's arms clinging to her, Jenny's shrieks deafening her. She looked away from the child before her and said quietly, "It's very hard to explain."
"My mama was gone... oh, all the time. I would have been very angry if she left me and I died. I would have come back and haunted her. I would have rattled chains and..." Lucy stopped, seemed to consider. "My mama doesn't haunt me. I think she is very glad to be far away in heaven. I think when I get dead, she will lock up the door and not let me in."
Emily was sickened by the child's words and the rejection they revealed.
"But then," Lucy said with a shrug, "everyone is quite certain that I will go straight down to hell, anyhow."
"No, Lucy. You most certainly will not."
The child gave a wave of her hand, as if flitting off to a far more interesting subject. "Lady?" the child asked, tilting her head questioningly. "Does your little girl haunt you?"
"Yes. Yes, she does. And I'm glad. I miss her very much." Emily felt tears stinging the corners of her eyes.
"You miss her?" Lucy stared, fascinated, as Emily nodded. Her little finger stole out to catch one of the crystal droplets trickling down Emily's cheek. "Your face is getting all red. It is not at all pretty. My mama always looked pretty when she cried so that people gave her everything she wanted."
Emily couldn't stop from taking Lucy's hand, squeezing it.
"Lady, what did you do when your little girl got mistaken for a flower?" Lucy asked.
Emily stared at the child, confused for a moment. Then she glimpsed the reddening sting on the little girl's arm.
“I kissed it and made it better," Emily said softly.
"Kissed it? I thought only mistresses and their lovers did kissing things."
Emily's lips tingled at the memory of how thoroughly Ian Blackheath had done the "kissing thing" to her minutes ago in the hidden nook of the garden. But she shoved the disturbing thought away. "A kiss can just be a way of showing that you care about someone. Of making you feel good inside."
"Show me." The child ordered, her face as hard and demanding as that of a general sending his troops to battle. She thrust her elbow out, her muscles stiff as if she expected to be dealt more pain.
Emily cupped Lucy's round little arm in her hand and bent over it, touching the irritated skin softly with her lips. She closed her eyes, a fist seeming to squeeze her heart at the familiar ritual she had performed so many times with her own child, soothing the countless scrapes and cuts of the adventuresome toddler who had been hers for such a brief and precious time.
"That was... funny." Lucy's puzzled voice broke through Emily's thoughts. "It felt a little wet and kind of warm. It shouldn't make my elbow feel any better at all." Those dark brows knitted together over her pugnacious upturned nose. After a moment she added softly. "But it did."
"I'm glad, sweeting." Emily's voice trembled, but she smiled.
"You are a very nice lady when you kiss things better and give me buttons to sew," Lucy said. "I might decide to keep you."
Emily felt a lump rise again in her throat, knowing that this was one battle Lucy would not be able to win by throwing one of her tantrums. No matter how much Emily might want to stay and to get this child to open up and trust people, there would be no room for Lucy Dubbonet's slow blossoming in Ian Blackheath's garden.
There would be no space in his life for a wayward little girl or for the love she would need to flourish.
And what of her own betrayal? The blow that Emily herself would deal the child when she found the doll that Lucy Dubbonet had taken to love?
Oh, God, there had to be something Emily could do, some way to spare the child that crushing loss.
Perhaps she could take the message out of the doll and repair the plaything so that Lucy would never know the difference.
But she could hear Stirling Fraser's warning: Under no circumstances are you ever to tamper with the enclosures. This is for your own protection, my dear Emily, to keep you from becoming a pawn in some rebel scheme. To keep you out of danger.
But that was a danger she was willing to face if it meant that she could spare the child one final shattering betrayal. This was the one gift she could give to this child's battered, lonely heart.
Something to love.
Yet as Emily stared into Lucy's face and felt the need in the child, the loneliness, she knew that she had to move quickly to find the lost fashion doll.
If she did not, Emily d'Autrecourt might face a far more terrifying risk.
A risk greater than any punishment a patriot villain might devise. A risk even greater than the silken seduction in Ian Blackheath's mouth.
A risk so terrifying it made Emily's hands shake and her heart twist in her breast.
If she stayed here much longer she might make the most tragic mistake of all.
She might dare to love Lucy Dubbonet.
Chapter 11
Lantern light spilled across the rough-hewn beams of Pendragon's lair, the sounds of restive horses in the hidden stable beneath the plank floor seeming to deepen the restlessness in Ian's own spirit.
Except for Ian and Anthony Gray, the building hidden deep in the Virginia woods had been deserted by the men who had filled it hours earlier, readying their weapons, saddling their horses, and drawing on masks in preparation for the mission to come.
A mission that was supposed to be simple, so simple. Far less dangerous than their usual sorties.
But it had been no simpler than the d
emons Emily d'Autrecourt had released in Ian. It had been no simpler than the fury that seethed between Ian and the man who was even now sloshing water into a cracked basin.
Tony. He looked as if he hadn't slept since he'd left Blackheath Hall. As if he'd spent the whole time since then pacing like some caged beast, most probably attempting to figure out new and creative ways to wring Ian's neck.
And it was doubtful the events of the past three hours had done anything to calm him.
With barely suppressed savagery, Gray stomped across the room and thunked the basin down on the table, crushing Pendragon's discarded mask.
"Blast it, watch out!" Ian snapped before drinking the dregs from the flask of brandy he'd kept tucked beneath his frock coat. "You're getting my mask all wet!"
"I'm getting your mask wet?" Tony sneered. "Oh, forgive me, mighty and great Pendragon! Please pardon your humble servant! Of course, you got a bloody hole in it yourself, by God's feet! But that doesn't matter a damn! Oh, no. Who the devil cares if—"
"It's an insignificant hole at best, though I do think it was rude of Atwood to deface such a cunning disguise. It's not as if I can run down to the milliner and have her stitch up another." Noting the flash of disapproval on Tony's face as he glared at the liquor, Ian saluted his friend with the flask before he stowed it away. His only regret was that he hadn't brought a keg of the stuff with him tonight.
"Ah, but wait! I had forgotten!" Ian infused his voice with teeth-grinding enthusiasm. "I have a seamstress living under my very own roof! And quite a winning little sweetmeat at that—delicate-boned, full-breasted. Tonight when everyone is sleeping I shall steal into her bedchamber and humbly ask her to stitch me another."
"Son of a bitch, Ian! Don't bait me! You won't like the consequences! I'm sick to death of your damned heedlessness!" Gray grabbed up the cloth floating in the water. Curving his hand under Ian's jaw, he jerked it none too gently until Ian's face was held into the light.
Ian saw Gray pale a little as those hazel eyes skimmed the three-inch gash at Ian's left temple, a deadly kiss from the mouth of one of Atwood's pistols.
"You're crazed to keep that Englishwoman in your house," Tony raged on, swabbing at the gash. "Crazed to keep racing blindly into disaster after disaster as if you want to—Damn you, hold still!" Tony snapped the command. The wound burned, and Ian gritted his teeth against the stinging pain.
"Have done, for the love of Satan! The wound is hardly mortal!"
"It's a bloody miracle it isn't! A fraction to the right, and we'd be writing your epitaph. What the hell were you attempting to do out there tonight, Ian?"
"If I remember correctly, we were helping Nate Hardy move his printing press out of the reach of Atwood's soldiers so that Hardy could continue printing up those delightfully seditious pamphlets he is so good at. However, our beloved Captain Atwood took exception to our interference. Perhaps he didn't think the caricature Hardy printed of him last week was flattering enough."
"Blast it, you wanted to engage Atwood!" Tony exploded. "You went out of your way to clash with him when we could easily have avoided it! We've got a horse injured, your head half blown off—"
"I hate it when you pick at minor details."
"Minor!" Tony swore. "We're lucky no one was killed, and that you were the only one wounded! And you wouldn't have gotten hurt, either, if you had followed the rules and stayed with the rest of the band." Tony swiped again at the three-inch gash with far more energy than necessary.
"Damn it, Tony, that hurts! If you're itching for a fight, tell me, and I'll be more than happy to cross swords with you. But I'm not going to sit here unarmed while you grind that accursed cloth of yours into my skull! The raid is over, and it was a roaring success. Hardy's printing press is safe. Atwood has once again been made to look a fool. The brief acquaintance I had with that pistol ball was well worth the entertainment of watching him squirm."
"Was it, Ian?" Tony's face was hard. "I'm not sure the rest of the band considered it so."
Ian stilled, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "I wasn't aware I had asked their opinion."
"Well, maybe you should have," Tony said, meeting his glare. "There are those who think that you go too far."
"Are we back to that again?" Ian shook his head in disgust. "My own men are wary of me? They're whispering of insubordination? If the varlets want to slink back to their firesides and drink hot toddies instead of riding the highroads with Pendragon, then we're well rid of them. We can hardly keep King George's soldiers off-balance by playing pat-a-cake with them. We must seem fearless, invincible!"
"It's rather hard to seem invincible when your mask is covered with blood," Tony said. "And placing your neck in a noose for the thrill in it is not fearlessness, Ian. It's pure stupidity, and you damn well know it."
Ian's muscles tensed with fury, and he hated the truth in Tony's words. "Maybe I should have let Atwood shoot me square between the eyes. It would have saved me the irritation of listening to you."
"Blast it, Ian, if you want to get yourself killed, it's your life. But there are other men who have reasons to live. Men who are willing to shed their blood in the cause of freedom, but who are not willing to spill it for no other reason than to feed into your mad sense of adventure."
"Men like you, Tony? Now that you're besotted with the lovely Nora?" Ian heard the bitterness in his voice but knew that it no longer arose from his scorn for such relationships. Now it was heated with the hot ember of despair that had been planted in his chest when he lost himself in Emily d'Autrecourt's violet eyes. "There is the door, my friend," he bit out harshly. "Feel free to shut it on your way out."
"Damn you to hell!" Tony grabbed up the basin and threw it, shattering it against the wall. The alarmed whinnies of the horses rose through the floorboards like echoes of the two men's fury. "The men who ride with you don't deserve your contempt, and neither do I. After what you did last night, riding out alone, robbing the colonel in the middle of an accursed musicale—"
"It was an act of mercy. I ask you, Tony, what would you have done if you'd been riding along and heard that pompous oaf annihilating a piece by Bach on the pianoforte? The doors of the music room were open wide, and he was disturbing not only his unfortunate guests but helpless woodland creatures and passersby as well. I could hardly allow the torment to continue. And considering the way he assaulted my ears, I felt justified in assaulting his purse strings."
"I'm sure it was incredibly amusing, Ian," Tony snarled. "It was also incredibly stupid. If they had captured you—"
"They did not capture me. The ladies swooned over this dashing rogue, the colonel quaked in his boots, and the instrument was silent, thank the saints."
"You made a foolish choice, Ian, a dangerous one, last night, and then again tonight, when we moved Hardy's printing press. Even I am beginning to doubt you can be trusted to make decisions for the rest of us."
Ian's mouth thinned. "Are you saying I'm no longer fit to lead?"
Tony turned away, raking his fingers through his hair. "There is not a man alive I would rather have fighting at my side than you, Ian—when you are whole, when you are not fighting these demons that possess you. Damn it, man, I love you like a brother. But I don't know if I can watch you destroy yourself any longer."
Ian took up the torn mask, his fingers crushing it in an iron-hard fist. "Then do me the courtesy of averting your eyes."
Tony stalked toward the door, but Ian couldn't resist calling to him. "Tony, you'll be relieved to know that you might not have to worry about me leading the raiders much longer anyway. I received a bit of information when we were with the soldiers tonight that was quite... intriguing. A private said that my reign of terror is nearly over. It is rumored that some information is loose that will destroy me. Courtesy of our friend Mr. Lemming Crane."
Tony went white, but he said nothing.
"There is one saving grace, however. It seems the stupid asses have misplaced this damning bit of information. Ca
n you imagine? Of course, at any time, at any moment, they might find it."
"I'm sure it will be a relief to you when they do, Ian." Tony said quietly. "But I don't suppose you've stopped to think how that will affect the people you leave behind."
"What people? Even you will doubtless be glad to be rid of me. I seem to have been destined from birth to be a burden to those foolhardy enough to harbor affection for me. No one will shed more than a few misguided tears over my grave. And I will not regret leaving anyone behind."
He turned his gaze to the table, thinking of Emily d'Autrecourt, the way her gasp of pleasure and surprise had tasted on his lips, the way her hair had glistened in the sunlight as she smiled up at him from beneath the brim of her straw bonnet. An angel, far too good for a devil like him.
"What about that little girl, Ian? Your niece?"
"And here I thought you and Lucy were at daggers drawn. When last we spoke, you were congratulating me for having drowned the poor little waif."
"Listen to me, you arrogant bastard. You are the only person in the world that little girl has to care for her! You may not be much, especially when you're drowning in self-pity, but you are the only relative Lucy has."
Ian stiffened as he thought of the intrepid little girl who had infuriated him, amused him, and somehow... yes, damn it, touched him with her acid tongue and wary eyes.
"Lucy is none of your concern."
"Perhaps not, but she is yours. What do you think will happen to her if you die? Especially if you are judged a traitor? Everything you own will be confiscated by the Crown. She'll be left penniless. But what the hell?" Tony gave a bitter shrug. "You didn't ask for the responsibility. You didn't want her. And you never do a damned thing you don't want to do."
Ian scowled. "I have enough wealth tucked away out of the country to support her like a princess. She'll be taken care of."
"By whom?" Tony demanded. "A jack-a-dumpling like that idiot Clyvedon? Who would know how to reach that money? Whom could you trust not to swindle the child out of it?"
Ian met Tony's gaze squarely. "You."
The Raider’s Bride Page 16
