THREE HEROES

by Jo Beverley

  “It is possible.”

  “How else is she to find a grand husband?”

  “Perhaps she doesn’t want one.”

  “She does, Hawk. If she doesn’t find something better, she’ll have to go home and marry a stuffy widower with children nearly as old as she is.”

  He couldn’t help but smile. “You are charmingly ardent in her cause. And kind.”

  “It’s not kindness. It’s friendship. You understand that, surely. I hear that you and Lord Vandeimen are old friends.”

  Yes, he understood that. “From the cradle.”

  “Althea and I have been friends for less than a year, but true friendships can happen quickly.”

  It was said with meaning, as a challenge to him. She was right. Over and above any emotions, they had discovered friendship. Friendship in marriage. It had been his ideal once.

  Ah, well. Ideals often drowned in war.

  She turned to study her friend. “You think she is not finding what she wants?”

  “I don’t think she seems happy,” he said honestly, “but as you say, somewhere in Brighton the perfect man must exist.”

  They moved in, and Miss Trist clearly was relieved to be rescued.

  “Are you not happy here, Thea?” Clarissa asked quietly, studying Althea.

  “Of course I am.” But she added, “I do miss the country a little, though.”

  It was said quietly, but Lady Vandeimen heard. “We could drive out to visit Hawk in the Vale.”

  “Why?” Hawk asked.

  To Clarissa, that sounded rather sharp, and Lady Vandeimen was looking at him with surprise. “Why not? Trips to the nearby country are all the rage, and I would enjoy a chance to check on the work at Steynings. If we set off early tomorrow, we can enjoy a whole day.”

  “It will probably rain.”

  “Hawk, if we stayed at home for fear of rain, none of us would do anything this summer!”

  Clarissa watched this exchange, wondering why the project displeased him. She longed to see his home. The home she hoped would be hers. Did he think it wouldn’t appeal?

  She wished she could reassure him. It could be a hovel and she wouldn’t care. After all, with her money they could build a better place, and it was Hawk she wanted.

  Hawk.

  Perhaps on a trip to the country, to his home, there’d be more opportunity to progress. Queen Cleopatra had given her very strange messages, but her advice to Miriam had been promising. Get the man apart, take off her gloves, and touch.

  Perhaps, in the country, she could do that.

  And now, with Hawk’s attention drawn to Blanche, she must succeed. She must bind him to their cause.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As they strolled back, Van said to Hawk, “Wasn’t that the White Dove you were talking to? Not done to introduce her to a proper young lady, you know.”

  “What proper young lady? Clarissa introduced her to me.”

  Van laughed, but didn’t look as if he entirely believed it.

  “The White Dove?” Maria said. “Oh, the actress. We saw her play Titania, Van. Do you remember? She’s very good. In fact, she’s playing Lady Macbeth here.”

  “A violent change of roles,” Hawk said. “And it’s hard to see her as the bloodstained power behind the rotten throne.”

  Maria gave him a look. “Are you saying that a beautiful woman cannot also be dangerous?”

  He blew her a kiss. “No man of sense would.”

  “Especially armed with a pistol,” Van said, which seemed to be a private joke.

  Hawk, on the other hand, was thinking that classical beauty had little to do with it either.

  It would be so damn easy to take the beckoning path. Marry. No, elope. He suspected he could get her to do it.

  Roses. Hades.

  Think of the three-day journey to the border, surrounded by her glowing enthusiasm, knowing he was leading her to the slaughter. Imagine a wedding night. Her innocent, trusting surrender.

  God, no, don’t. Don’t even think of that.

  Better by far that she simply hate him and be free.

  Carpe diem, whispered the devil in his mind.

  He could probably steal one more day before the morrow.

  And he might as well be Hawkishly practical. He still didn’t know quite enough about her and the Ardens. If he played his cards right, he might learn the details he needed.

  Tomorrow.

  In Hawk in the Vale.

  The next day, Clarissa looked excitedly out of the Vandeimen coach windows as it rolled over the humpbacked bridge into the village of Hawk in the Vale. She was full of curiosity, but also primed to take any opportunity to pursue her cause. If Hawk didn’t propose, she vowed she would do it before they left.

  The ladies were in the coach, and the gentlemen— Hawk, Lord Vandeimen, and Lord Trevor—rode alongside. Althea had muttered that she did not need a partner, but Clarissa thought she was relieved it was Lord Trevor, who was excellent company without showing any sign of wanting to be a suitor.

  Miss Hurstman was not with them, since today was her weekly meeting of the Ladies’ Scholarly Society, which she declared to be “an oasis of sanity in Bedlam.” She did not seem particularly different in her manner, and there had been no sign of Mr. Delaney. Clarissa was relieved, however, to be out of Brighton and safe.

  The gentlemen were all superb riders, but Clarissa couldn’t help but smile at the cat riding proudly erect in front of Hawk. Jetta had refused to ride in the carriage, clearly thinking the company of other females inferior.

  Hawk stroked her occasionally, and her eyes slitted with pleasure. Clarissa could rather imagine reveling in his touch in just the same way. She wondered if men ever stroked women the way they stroked cats.

  During the journey, Lady Vandeimen had insisted that they all be on first-name terms. Clarissa had happily agreed, thinking that soon they would be true friends. The lady shared what she knew of Hawk in the Vale, and Clarissa savored every morsel, especially as it felt as if she was being welcomed into the community.

  She now knew that Hawk’s family was the most ancient, and in many ways the most important, in the area, though there was no title except squire, which went with the manor house. If someone else were to buy the manor, he would become squire.

  The other principal families were the Vandeimens and the Somerfords, headed by Lord Amleigh. Both families had estates outside of the village, but Hawkinville Manor was in Hawk in the Vale in the old style.

  Maria had shared some interesting gossip along the way. “Lord Amleigh recently inherited the title of Earl of Wyvern. The seat is in Devonshire. However, it appears that the late earl might have had a legitimate son who has a prior claim. Quite a strange story. The earl and the woman—a member of a good local family—married in secret. They were both so displeased with each other, however, that they kept the matter secret, and she took up with a local tavern keeper, who is reputed to also be a smuggler!”

  “And now the secret heir emerges?” Clarissa inquired. “It’s like a play. Or a Gothic novel.”

  “Except that in this case the ‘wicked earl’ is Lord Amleigh, and he doesn’t want the inheritance at all.”

  “That’s an interesting idea, however,” Clarissa said. “A trial marriage. I imagine any number of disasters could be averted.”

  “Clarissa!” Althea objected, but she was laughing.

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “Indeed,” said Maria, and seemed to mean it.

  It made Clarissa wonder about her first marriage, for there could surely be no disillusion with her second. “However, there is the matter of offspring,” Maria continued. “What if the trial has consequences?”

  What, wondered Clarissa, if the trial was discovered?

  Could she compromise Hawk?

  “I have sent a message inviting the Amleighs to take lunch with us at Steynings,” Maria said. “If, that is, the dining room plasterwork is finally finished.”

&nb
sp; Clarissa then learned more than she really cared to know about the trials of repairing a decade’s neglect of a house that had not been well built in the first place.

  Hawk’s home was older. Was it in even worse repair? She, like Maria, had the money to repair it.

  He’d ridden ahead to make sure all was ready for them. Already she was longing to see him.

  The coach was lurching along a rough road around the central village green, past a row of ancient stone cottages that looked in need of as much care as the road.

  Perhaps this was why Hawk was hunting a fortune.

  A swarm of piglets suddenly dashed out between two cottages, chased by three barefoot children. It was fortunate that it was after the coach had passed, not before. Clarissa watched with amusement as the urchins tried to herd the piglets back home.

  Maria directed her attention to the church. “Anglo-Saxon, of course.”

  Yes, it looked it, complete to the square stone tower. Age made the village picturesque, but it was something more subtle that made it feel… right. Clarissa had never visited a place where the varied bits and pieces fit together so well, like the assorted flowers in a country garden.

  Her eye was caught—hooked, more like—by a discordant piece, a monstrous stuccoed house with Corinthian pillars flanking its glossy doorway. There were other new buildings, buildings from every period over hundreds of years, but only that one seemed so appallingly out of place.

  “What is that white house?” Clarissa asked.

  “Ah. That belongs to a newcomer. A wealthy industrialist called Slade.” Maria pulled a face. “It doesn’t fit, does it? But he’s very proud of it.”

  “Couldn’t he be stopped?”

  “Apparently not. He seems to have ingratiated himself with the squire. Hawk’s father.”

  The carriage halted, and the footman leaped down to assist the ladies out. Lord Trevor and Lord Vandeimen dismounted, and a groom trotted out through open gates to take the horses. Through those gates Clarissa could see an ancient building.

  Hawkinville Manor. It must be.

  She was astonished that she hadn’t spotted it more easily, but it did blend in with the row of cottages and other nearby buildings, and was surrounded by a high wall covered by a rampant miscellany of plants. Ivy cloaked the tower, too.

  Wall and tower had doubtless been necessary for defense in the past, but now the double gates stood open, and Clarissa could glimpse a garden courtyard and part of the house—thatched roof and old diamond-pane windows. Roses and other climbing plants ran up the wall, making it seem more a work of landscape than architecture.

  She vaguely heard the carriage crunch on its way to the inn, but she was moving forward, through the gates.

  “How charming,” Althea said in a polite way.

  “Yes,” Clarissa agreed, though the word seemed completely inadequate. Only a poet could do justice to the sheer magic of Hawkinville Manor.

  The courtyard was sensibly graveled, but that was the only modern touch. In the center, an island full of heavy roses held in its very heart an ancient sundial. It was tilted in a way that surely meant that it couldn’t tell the time, but then she doubted that sundials had ever been accurate.

  This place had formed before the counting of minutes or even precise hours had any meaning.

  Both courtyard and house were bathed in sunlight. Warm sunlight, for a miracle, and it gave the illusion that the sun always shone here. Many windows stood open, as did the iron-mounted oak door. The view through the doorway gave a tantalizing glimpse of a tiled hall that seemed to run, uneven as the river surface and worn in the middle by many feet, to another open door and a beckoning garden beyond.

  She took a step forward.

  A dog growled. She blinked, seeing four large hounds sprawled near the threshold in the sun. One was looking at her lazily, but with a warning eye.

  “Daffy.”

  At the word, the dog subsided. Hawk walked past, out of the house, Jetta still in his arms.

  He stroked the purring cat, but his eyes were on Clarissa. “Welcome to Hawkinville.”

  Now why, thought Hawk, did he feel almost shocked to see Clarissa here when she was fully expected? It was as if the air had thinned, or as if he’d been riding and working to the point of wavering exhaustion.

  He pulled himself together and answered questions. Yes, the sundial was very old and had come from the monastery at Hawks Monkton when it had been destroyed in the sixteenth century. Yes, the tower did date back to before the Conquest but had been fixed and improved a number of times.

  Clarissa’s dress was a simple one for this day in the country. It had not seemed special before. Now the color reminded him of the richest cream in the cool dairy and made him want to lick something.

  Yes, he said to Lord Trevor, there was a home farm, and this was it. The manor house also served as a modest farmhouse. There were more buildings beyond the wall to the right.

  That dress was doubtless the simplicity of a very expensive modiste, but the effect was charming and comfortable and fit here like the roses. Her wide straw hat was caught down at either side with golden ribbons.

  Why hadn’t he noticed before that it would prevent kisses?

  She turned to look more closely at the sundial, leaning in but laughingly trying to protect her flimsy skirts from the rose thorns. He stepped forward to help, and she smiled up at him.

  The buzz of insects among the flowers turned into a buzz in his head. Her hat shaded her face from the sun, but cast a golden glow and a hint of mystery. Her smiling lips were pink and parted, and he could almost taste their warmth.

  What was beauty if not this?

  With frightening clarity he could imagine her here as his wife. He would sweep her laughing into his arms and carry her upstairs to a bed covered with smooth sheets fresh from hanging in the sun. And there he would slowly, perfectly, ravish her.

  He remembered to breathe, and when his hand was steady, he pulled out his penknife. “Let me cut you each a rose, ladies.”

  He cut a pink one for Miss Trist, and carefully stripped the thorns before giving it to her. He cut a white one for Maria. But then he looked for a golden one, a perfect golden rose, just beginning to unfurl from bud, and gave it to Clarissa.

  She remembered. He could tell by the way she blushed within the golden mysteries of her hat and raised the rose to inhale its perfume. He remembered his foolish, thoughtless words about roses…

  And that she wasn’t for him.

  Carpe diem.

  The morrow was not for them.

  He ached to reach out and touch her, simply touch her cheek. He wanted to tell her that this moment, at least, was true. He wanted to lock her in a safe and private place where she would never be in danger again.

  The church clock began to chime, pulling him back to reality.

  By the time it had struck the full ten, he could speak normally and invite his guests into the house. He steered them to the right, into the front parlor, then escaped, his excuse being having to tell his father they were here.

  Clarissa looked around the modest but lovely room. The ceilings were low, and she’d noticed that Hawk had to duck slightly to get through the door, but it all created a coziness that wrapped itself around her. She could imagine sitting here on a stormy winter night, a huge fire burning in the hearth, curtains tightly drawn. A person would always feel safe here.

  Even the Devil’s Heiress.

  She knew without doubt that she would be safe in Hawk’s arms, and in his home.

  She raised the golden rose to her nose. The scent was light, almost elusive, but it was sweet and seemed to carry the charm of sunlight. A golden rose. That had to mean that his fondness was real, and her plan was good. Whatever the reason for his hesitation, it was not from reluctance.

  Perhaps he simply felt it wrong to hurry her. Though it seemed like a lifetime, she had been in Brighton for only a week. Perhaps he’d set himself a restraint—that he not propose insid
e a fortnight, for example.

  She inhaled the rose again, smiling. She was sure that restraint could be broken.

  Maria sat in one of the old wooden chairs with crewel-work cushions. “Do you like the manor, Clarissa?”

  Clarissa pulled her wits together. “It’s lovely.”

  “Perhaps it’s as well you think so. But at the least it needs new carpets.”

  “Maria,” said her husband, “don’t start doing over someone else’s home.”

  They shared a teasing smile, and Maria said, “That will be for Hawk’s wife to do.”

  “Not until his father’s dead,” said Lord Vandeimen, and Clarissa saw a slight reserve touch his face. At thought of wife, or thought of father? Maria Vandeimen was discreet, but there might have been coolness in her mention of Squire Hawkinville during the journey here.

  That was a small cloud on the horizon, she had to admit. She adored this house, but what would it be like sharing it with Hawk’s father, especially if he was an unpleasant man?

  A small price for heaven.

  “So,” said Maria, “what do you think on the subject of carpets, Clarissa?”

  Clarissa looked at the faded and worn Turkish carpet that covered the rippling dark oak floor and felt that any change would disturb something as natural and perfect as the roses in the garden. When she looked carefully, she could see that the cushions on the old chairs sagged and the embroidery was faded and worn with time.

  “I think they suit the house,” she replied with a smile, and Maria laughed.

  “It’s as well we have different tastes, isn’t it?”

  Clarissa glanced at Lord Vandeimen, a fine-looking man and pleasant, who stirred her not at all. “Yes, indeed.”

  Maria chuckled.

  A huge fireplace took up most of one wall, and an old oak settle sat to one side of it. The front wall was a bank of small-paned windows that stood open to the sunny courtyard. Clarissa wandered over. Soft perfume drifted in—rose, lavender, and many other plants she could not even name. Sparrows chirped in the eaves, doves cooed nearby, and all around, birds sang.

  Oh, but she wanted Hawkinville Manor!

  It seemed almost wrong to feel that way. It was Hawk she should want, and she did, desperately, but she was tumbling into mad love with his home as well.