THREE HEROES

by Jo Beverley

  He turned, not changed in any drastic way. A quick glance, however, showed that he was still Mounted to Magnificence. She knew her face had to be bright red.

  “So,” he said, “the raw recruit has scaled the walls but is defeated by the sight of fire within.”

  “Not defeated. Just not willing to be burned.”

  “Even if duty calls?”

  “Duty, I think, calls in another direction entirely.” She set off briskly for the carriages.

  He soon caught up. “I’m not planning a rape.”

  “Good. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “How disappointing.”

  She fired a mock glare at him. “No, you are not going to challenge me into it.” But she was loving, loving, loving this. To be able to talk this way with a man!

  He laughed. “Another time, then.”

  But then Hawk sickeningly remembered that there were not going to be other times. Now that he was certain his Falcon had been involved with Deveril’s death, he had hard choices to make—and he could see none that would lead to a happy ending.

  For him or for her.

  When they arrived back at the carriages, Van gave him a rather steely look. Since Maria was the chaperone for this excursion, Van would feel responsible, and he wasn’t liking what he saw. Hawk wondered exactly what he saw.

  The short version of their story satisfied Maria, but Hawk thought Van was still watchful. Not surprising. Despite long periods of separation, they knew each other very well.

  “But what are we to do with the cat?” Maria asked, clearly not taken with the creature.

  Hawk looked at the sleepy animal, which was filthy, scrawny, and missing part of an ear. “I’ll keep it.”

  “Your father’s dogs will eat it,” Van predicted.

  “I shall have to stand protector.” Hawk climbed into the carriage, cat still bundled in his coat, feeling a maudlin need to protect something.

  Clarissa needed advice, and Althea did not seem likely to help with this. Instead, once she’d changed from her soiled dress, she sought out her chaperone. Miss Hurstman, as usual, was in the front parlor reading what looked like a very scholarly book.

  “Miss Hurstman, may I talk to you? About Major Hawkinville.”

  The woman’s brows rose, but she put her book aside. “What has he done?”

  “Nothing!” Clarissa roamed the small room. “Well, he’s wooing me. He’s a fortune hunter, I’m sure, even though he says he will inherit his father’s estate. He admitted that it isn’t very large, and he’s as good as admitted that he does want to marry me. For my money—” She stopped for a breath.

  Miss Hurstman studied her. “I assume there is no need for this panic?”

  Clarissa, suddenly bereft of words, shook her head.

  “Then what has caused it?”

  The woman’s calm was infectious. Clarissa sat down. “I didn’t plan to marry. I saw no need to. But now, it is beginning to be appealing. You did warn me. I don’t know if this all shows a flexible mind, or a weak one.”

  Miss Hurstman’s lips twitched. “Clever girl. The difference between the two can be hard to judge. The main question—the only question, really—is, Will he make you a good husband for the next twenty, forty, sixty years?”

  Clarissa could feel her eyes widen at the idea. “I don’t know.”

  “Precisely. He is a handsome man, and I assume he knows how to please and interest a woman. His father certainly did.”

  “His father?”

  “I knew him when I was young. A dashing military man with an eye to bettering himself.”

  A fortune hunter. Like father, like son? And yet the father had clearly settled for his modest estate.

  Miss Hurstman was looking at her as if she could read every thought. “You cannot know enough about Major Hawkinville yet to make a rational decision, Clarissa. Time will solve that. Take your time.”

  “I know, but…” Clarissa looked at the older woman. “You speak of when you were young. Don’t you remember? Just now, reason has nothing to do with it!”

  Miss Hurstman’s eyes twinkled. “That, my dear, is why young women have chaperones. Did Lady Vandeimen not play her part?”

  Clarissa bit her lip, then said, “We were separated for a little while by a squall of bad weather.”

  “For a sufficiently little while, I hope?”

  “Oh, yes. Nothing… nothing truly happened.”

  Miss Hurstman gave one of her snorts, whether of disapproval or amusement was hard to tell. “I do enjoy an enterprising scoundrel.” Amusement, then. “Panic over?” she asked.

  Surprisingly, it was. Perhaps it was simply being away from Hawk, or perhaps it was Miss Hurstman’s dry practicality, but Clarissa didn’t feel so caught in swirling madness anymore.

  Time. That was the answer to her dilemma over Hawk Hawkinville, and she had no shortage of it other than that created by impatience. She would make herself wait a week or two without commitment. And without being compromised.

  She did not fool herself that it would be easy.

  She wished she could discuss her other problem with Miss Hurstman—the matter of Deveril’s death, the way she kept speaking of it, the disastrous effects she seemed to have on other people’s lives—but her trust did not go so deep as that.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hawk entered the Marine Parade house with his friends, but he went straight up to his room with the cat. He hoped to avoid Van, but wasn’t surprised when he walked in not long after.

  Hawk had taken the cat out of his jacket and was gently checking it for serious injuries.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Van asked.

  They might as well get to the topic at once. “I suspect Miss Greystone will wish me to care for it.”

  “And what Miss Greystone wishes is of importance to you?”

  “Yes.” The damnable thing was that he didn’t want to lie to his friend, not even by implication, but he couldn’t tell the truth. Above all, he needed time to think.

  Surely there had to be some way to save Hawkinville from Slade, and Clarissa from the gallows.

  The cat squawked as he touched a sore spot, but it was a polite complaint without claws attached.

  “Quite the lady, aren’t you?” he murmured.

  Van came over. “Is it? Female, I mean.”

  “Yes, and not in bad shape, considering.” He finished his examination and put the cat down on the carpet. After a body-shaking shudder, it picked its way around the room like a tattered lady bountiful inspecting a lowly cottage.

  “No problem with movement at all,” Hawk said. “In fact, quite a dainty piece. Tolerable quarters for you, your ladyship?”

  The cat gave him an inscrutable look.

  Hawk picked up his jacket and contemplated its sorry state. He hadn’t bothered to hire a valet since returning home, but he needed one now.

  Van took it and went to the door. “Noons!” he shouted, and in moments his valet appeared, complained about the jacket, and went off to put it right.

  The cat had sat to clean itself with dogged persistence.

  “Tidiness above all. That’s the spirit,” Hawk said, scooping it up and carrying it to his washstand. There was a slight chance that if he was busy enough Van would put off the talk to another time.

  “What you are about to get,” he told the cat as he gingerly sat it in the wide china bowl, “is some assistance in the cleaning department. Do not be so rude as to scratch me.”

  He heard Van laugh and wondered if he was going to get away with it.

  The cat had stiffened, but it wasn’t frightened.

  “Bear up like a good soldier,” he said soothingly, and poured a little warm water over the side where blood was thick and sticky. The animal gave a yowl of complaint, but turned its head to lick. “No, no,” he said blocking its head. “Let me. You can clean up the remains later.”

  He gently rubbed the blood till it softened, then washed it away under a
new dribble of water. He was careful of the gash above it, and to soothe the cat, he kept talking.

  “Not all of this blood is yours, is it? You must have done a fair bit of damage. It’s my guess you could take on any rat you wanted. Beneath your dignity, was it, duchess? Risked having your neck broken over it, though, didn’t you?”

  As he started on a patch on one shoulder, Van interrupted his monologue. “What exactly are your plans in regard to Miss Greystone?”

  Hawk hadn’t really expected to get away with it.

  “In loco parentis are you?”

  “After a fashion, yes.”

  Hawk tried a mild deflection. “Marriage is making you damn dull.”

  Watching, Hawk could see Van control his temper. Damn. When they were boys a comment like that would have led either to a fight or to Van slamming out to work his temper off elsewhere. Either would have cut short the discussion.

  They weren’t boys anymore.

  The cat licked his hand. It was probably a command for more water, so he supplied it, working on another spot.

  “Maria thinks she is assisting a courtship,” Van said. “A courtship very much to your advantage. Generous of her, wouldn’t you say?”

  Hawk winced at that one. “I do not necessarily need assistance.”

  “You are likely to get it anyway, women being women. The question is, Do you deserve it?”

  Hawk lifted the cat from the muddy, bloody water and wrapped it in a towel for a quick dry. Though not scratching, it wasn’t purring either.

  He had to say something. “I’m not sure what you mean by that, Van.”

  Van rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m not either. Damn it all, Hawk, Maria likes Miss Greystone. She’s playing at matchmaking. I don’t want her hurt.”

  Ah, that Hawk could understand.

  He put the cat down, and it stalked to a corner and began furiously cleaning itself.

  “I don’t want anyone hurt, Van. Not even a damn cat. A fine state of affairs for a veteran, isn’t it?”

  “A pretty natural state, I’d say. What’s going on?”

  Hawk realized that it was no good. Van wouldn’t be deflected, or satisfied with a denial, and a good part of it was probably concern for him. The past was a strange beast. It lay dormant, appearing to be harmless, but it had claws and fangs and leaped up to take another bite at unexpected moments.

  A poor analogy. He would embrace the past and the future it promised, if he could.

  He would have to tell Van part of it, at least.

  He emptied the dirty water into the slop bucket and washed his hands in fresh. “My father has mortgaged Hawkinville to Josiah Slade.”

  “That damned ironmonger? Why?” After a moment, Van asked, “How much?”

  Hawk turned to him, drying his hands. “More than you can afford.”

  Van smiled. “Come on. I’m not ashamed to use my wife’s money in a good cause.”

  “How much of it is left? Maria returned the money that her husband cheated your family out of. She’s been doing that elsewhere, too, hasn’t she? She has her dependents to take care of and Steynings to restore.”

  “You think patching the plaster at Steynings is more important than keeping Slade out of Hawkinville? Perdition, he’d be squire too, wouldn’t he? Intolerable! How much?”

  “Twenty thousand.”

  Van stared, struck silent.

  “Even if you could lend me that much, when could I pay it back? Even squeezing the tenants for every penny, it would take decades.”

  “But what option do you have?” Van asked. “You can’t let Slade…” But then he answered himself. “Ah. Miss Greystone.”

  Lying by implication, Hawk said, “Ah, indeed. Miss Greystone.”

  Van was frowning over it. “Do you love her?”

  “How does one know love?”

  “Believe me, Hawk, you know. Do you at least care for her?”

  “Yes, of course. But will she marry me without protestations of love?”

  Will she elope with you, you mean.

  Van grimaced. “Probably not.”

  “With my father’s example before me, I am naturally reluctant to woo an heiress under false pretenses.”

  But wasn’t that exactly what he was doing?

  The cat came to rub against his leg, miaowing. He scooped it up.

  “The ratter told Clarissa the cat was called Fanny Laycock.”

  “I see why you had to thrash him.”

  It was cant for a low whore.

  “But I’d better find another name before she remembers it.” He looked into the cat’s slitted green eyes. “Care to give me a hint? No, I don’t think ‘Your Highness’ acceptable. I will call you Jetta. You are jet black, and you were jeter’d, as the French would say. Getare in Italian, but I’m afraid in Spanish it would merely mean ’snout.‘”

  He looked at Van, who was grinning at this byplay. At least he’d managed to change the subject. “I’d better go down to the kitchen and beg some scraps for her. I never thought to ask if you minded a cat in the house.”

  “No, of course not. But your father’s dogs are going to eat her when you take her home.”

  Hawk looked at the cat again. “Somehow I doubt it.”

  He didn’t escape scot-free. Van left the room with him and said quietly, “I need your word, Hawk, that you won’t go beyond the line with Miss Greystone.”

  Hawk bit back anger. He had no right to it anyway.

  “You have it, of course,” he said and left, wondering if his friendships, too, were going to die in this bloody mess.

  He got milk and bits of chicken for Jetta, then since the cook didn’t seem to mind the intruder, he escaped out through the kitchen door. There was no thinking room there, however, so he went round to the street, to the seafront.

  He was coatless and hatless, but he didn’t care. The rough weather had driven nearly everyone off the seafront anyway, even though it wasn’t raining at this moment. The wind still whipped, carrying damp air and even spray off the churning waves. He saw the packet from France bucking its way in and could imagine the state of the poor passengers.

  It was good weather for hard thinking, though. Rough and clean.

  Did he love Clarissa? He had no experience of love, so how could he know? But Van said he’d know, so it couldn’t be love. Or not that kind of love. His feelings were close to those that he had for Van and Con, and that he’d had for some other friends in the army.

  Friends, then. He and Clarissa were, in a fragile way, friends. He groaned into the wind. That made it worse. Betrayal in love was a theoretical evil. Betrayal of friendship…

  And damn it, now Maria and thus Van—a deep and necessary friend—were tangled up in the affair.

  He reined in his panicked mind. When had his mind last been panicked?

  Fact one. Clarissa had at the least been present at Deveril’s murder. It was the only rational explanation for her reaction to the knife and her knowing the exact date.

  Hypothesis. She might have killed him herself, but it would have been in self-defense, not to get his money.

  Was he besotted to think that? No. He hadn’t known her long, but he knew her well enough to know she couldn’t be a coldhearted, greedy villain. A crime of passion was much more in keeping.

  Fact two. If it came out that she had killed a peer of the realm under any provocation, she might hang for it. Or at least be transported. At best, she would have to await trial in prison among the scum of the world.

  Therefore, her crime could never be made public.

  It settled Hawk to realize that as an absolute certainty.

  He would tear down Hawk in the Vale himself before it came to that.

  Having reached that bleak point, he found he could think properly again.

  What if she had only been witness to the killing? Perhaps someone else had killed Deveril to save her. Did that really fit better, or did he just want it to be so? It was no great improvement. She woul
d still be an accessory to the murder and liable to the same punishment, and he could hardly send a man to trial for defending her.

  However, if he could not prosecute anyone for murder, he was unlikely to break the will.

  He leaned against a wooden railing, cursing softly into the snarling sea.

  Always, always, always was the fact that the will had been forged and planted in Deveril’s house. It shattered any illusion of noble deeds. A cunning rogue was behind that, and Hawk couldn’t believe that he intended to leave Clarissa in peaceful possession of a fortune.

  So, even walking away from Clarissa and leaving her in peace was not an option.

  He circled and circled it, and came down to the heart of the matter. He could persuade her to elope.

  No question of marrying her in the normal way. As soon as he applied to the Duke of Belcraven his family would be investigated. The most casual search would uncover that his father was a Gaspard, and probably that he was within days of being pronounced Viscount Deveril. Even if Belcraven was willing to permit the marriage, he would tell Clarissa, and that would be that. He wasn’t sure she would be able to bear the thought of being Lady Deveril one day, but he knew she wouldn’t forgive the deception.

  Elope, then. He would have to pretend love, but he was at least very fond of her. He would not be like his father. She would not have cause to complain of neglect. With luck she wouldn’t have to be Lady Deveril for a long time, so perhaps it wouldn’t be a terrible blow.

  But what if it was? What if the blow, in particular the deception behind it, was enough to kill all affection? Would he end up in a marriage as bitter as that of his parents‘, with one lost wedding-night child to show for it?

  He could do that to himself for Hawkinville, but not to her. Not to his Falcon, who was in such fledgling flight in search of life.

  And anyway, he thought with a wry laugh, he’d promised Van. He was sure Van would see an elopement as going far beyond the line.

  Which brought him, via a sharp sense of loss, back to the killer. Was there, perhaps, another way… ?

  Clarissa and Althea were promised to a birthday party being given that evening by Lady Babbington for Florence. Clarissa didn’t really want to go, but Florence was an old school friend, and it would do no good to stay home drowning in longing, doubts, and questions. It was to be an event for young ladies only, so at least she wouldn’t have to deal with Hawk again.