THREE HEROES

by Jo Beverley

  “Well, then—”

  His kiss silenced her, a hot, enthralling kiss that sent fire into every part of her, though she couldn’t help thinking of the watching servants.

  With glee.

  He’d certainly have to marry her after this.

  “Hawk! Clarissa! Stop that!”

  Clarissa emerged from a daze to find Maria hitting Hawk’s back with a piece of wood. Fortunately it was rotted, and was flying into pieces with each blow.

  Hawk turned to her laughing, hands raised, and she threw the remaining fragments away in disgust. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. Then she stared at Clarissa. “Or more to the point, what have you done?”

  “I ravished her in the wilderness, of course.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t be a goose, Maria. That wilderness of yours, by the way, is too damn wild. But most of the damage to our appearance was done by our gallant rescue of two children from the river.”

  “Rescue?” Maria collected herself. “That doesn’t explain such a shocking kiss in front of the servants.”

  “A certain madness comes upon us all after battle.”

  “Battle?”

  Clarissa was threatened by incapacitating giggles, for a hundred reasons. She simply leaned against the wall and enjoyed the show.

  “Clarissa just routed Slade by telling him we are engaged to be married. I thought I had better compromise her thoroughly before she changed her mind.”

  She’d won! She didn’t know how, but she’d won. She lovingly brushed some fragments of rotted wood off her future husband’s shoulders.

  He turned, and the look in his eyes turned her delight to cold stone. The laughter had gone, and was replaced by something dark and almost lost. A movement beyond him caught her eye, and she saw Lord Vandeimen emerge from one of the stable buildings, suddenly deadly.

  Why on earth would she think that?

  As if alerted, Hawk swung around. “Nothing happened.”

  “Nothing!” exclaimed Lady Vandeimen, but then she seemed silenced by the crackling tension.

  “Nothing of any great significance,” Hawk said with precision.

  Clarissa wanted to protest that, but she too was frozen by something ready to burst out of this ordinary place into the world of claw and fang.

  Lord Vandeimen said, “A word with you, Hawk.” His head indicated the stable behind him.

  Clarissa put her hand on Hawk’s arm as if to hold him back, but Maria pulled her away. “Come into the inn and tidy up, Clarissa.”

  “But—”

  “You can’t possibly return to Brighton looking like that.” She ruthlessly steered Clarissa into the building, chattering.

  “Lord Vandeimen is not my guardian!” Clarissa broke in, forcing a halt. “What’s going on out there?”

  Maria looked at her. “More to the point, what went on during your walk?”

  “Nothing,” said Clarissa, “of any great significance.” Then the whole tumultuous half hour burst out of her in tears, and Maria gathered her into her arms, hurrying her along to a private room.

  “Hush, dear. Hush. Whatever went on, we’ll arrange matters. I know Hawk loves you.”

  Clarissa looked at her and blew into her handkerchief. “You do?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then why doesn’t he want to marry me?”

  Maria’s smile was close to a laugh. “Of course he does!”

  Clarissa shook her head. “Men are very hard to understand, aren’t they?”

  Maria hugged her again. “There you have a universal truth, my dear.”

  Hawk followed Van into the pleasantly pungent stable thinking that the day couldn’t get much worse, but knowing that in fact it could.

  Van turned and merely waited.

  “That kiss probably did go beyond the line,” Hawk said. “But nothing worse happened.” Then he remembered the wilderness. “More or less. That bloody wilderness of yours is a disgrace.”

  He saw Van fight it, then laugh. “It’s almost worth it to see you in this state, Hawk. What the devil are you up to?”

  “I’m trying to save Hawkinville.”

  “I assume you have decided to woo Miss Greystone. Is it necessary to be so crude about it?”

  “She told Slade we were engaged to marry.”

  Van visibly relaxed. “Why the devil didn’t you say so? Congratulations!”

  “I’m not going to marry her, Van.”

  Van leaned back against a wooden post, frowning in perplexity. “Would you care to start at the beginning? Or at some point that makes sense?”

  Hawk said, “My father is the new Viscount Deveril.”

  Van frowned even more. “You’re the son of Lord Devil? The one Miss Greystone inherited from? And I’ve never heard of it?”

  “The new Lord Deveril. You know my father changed his name as a price of marrying my mother. He was born a Gaspard, and that’s the Deveril name. When Lord Devil died last year, he chased back up and down the family tree and discovered that he’s the heir. It’s taken him the best part of a year to settle it, but it’s just about done.”

  “Congratulations. You’ll outrank me one day.”

  “Bugger that. The name’s fit to be spat upon.”

  “A name’s a name. The first Lord Vandeimen was a spineless lickspittle. Is this where the debt comes from?”

  “More or less. The squire’s been obsessed by the Deveril money. He thinks he should get it along with the title, that the will was a forgery.” Hawk looked around and spotted a room with a door. “Come in here.”

  Van followed, and Hawk shut the door. The room was small and seemed mostly to hold nostrums for treating horses.

  “Unfortunately,” Hawk said, “my father is probably right.” He didn’t want to say it, but he had no choice. “I’ve been dangling after Miss Greystone not to woo her but to entice her to spill something about the will.”

  “You’re a damn fine actor, then.”

  “I’ve learned to be. Van, for God’s sake, there’s no question of marriage! Once Clarissa discovers what I’ve been up to, and that I’m a future Lord Deveril, it’ll all be over.”

  “Hawk, this doesn’t sound like you.”

  “What, underhanded trickery and sneaky investigation? It’s my stock-in-trade. I’ve softened up plenty of villains for the gutting.”

  “But not an innocent young woman.”

  “If she was innocent, there wouldn’t be any gutting to be done.”

  Van frowned. “All right, let’s talk about this. What exactly do you think her guilty of?”

  “Murder, or conspiracy to murder.”

  “Murder?” Van managed to keep it soft. “If I’m any judge, Miss Greystone would run from killing a mouse.”

  “The mouse wouldn’t be forcing vile kisses on her, and threatening worse.”

  “You think she killed Deveril when he tried to rape her? You’d send her to the gallows for that?”

  “No, dammit. But remember, she ended up with the dead man’s money.”

  It was a detail he tended to willfully ignore.

  “All right,” said Van, “do you have any reason other than wishful thinking to believe that Lord Deveril’s will was forged?”

  “When have you ever known me to indulge in wishful thinking?”

  But his thinking about Clarissa came perilously close.

  “It was handwritten,” he said crisply, “witnessed by servants who have conveniently disappeared, and it left everything not entailed to a young woman, to come to her completely and without control at age twenty-one.”

  Van’s expression lost its indulgence. “Hell.”

  “Hell, indeed. I can add, from Clarissa’s own lips, that she was sold to Deveril and hated him, which he must have known. She threw up over him when he tried to kiss her.”

  “It does look damned bad. How did Deveril die?”

  “Knifed. Viciously.”

  But then Van shook his head.
“It still doesn’t fit. I know I don’t have your acute sense for truth and lies, but Clarissa Greystone makes an unlikely thief and an impossible murderer.”

  “Appearances can be deceptive. Did I ever tell you about an innocent-looking, big-eyed child in Lisbon? Never mind. You don’t want to know.”

  Van’s brows rose. “Are you protecting Demon Vandeimen from sordid details, Hawk?”

  Hawk sighed. “I would if I could. We none of us need more darkness in our lives. But I have to save Hawkinville. You must see that, Van.”

  “Yes, of course. Perhaps I’ll simply cut Slade’s scrawny throat.”

  It was a joke. Hawk hoped, but he shook his head. “No more blood if I can help it.”

  “So, let’s sort it out.”

  Hawk put up a hand. “Maria will be waiting. We can talk later if you want.”

  “No, let’s deal with this now. If necessary we can stay the night and get Con in on it. You really think Clarissa Greystone committed a vicious murder and planted a forged will?”

  “No, dammit, but that could be willful delusion.”

  Van smiled slightly at the implied admission. “I’m not willfully deluded. Let’s consider this. If someone else was the murderer and thief last year, who could it have been? From what I’ve heard, she left school and went to London. She can’t have known many people who would kill and forge for her—” He broke off. “Talk about teaching a grandmother to suck eggs. You must have been through this.”

  Hawk resisted for a moment, but he knew Van wouldn’t let it go. “Arden,” he said.

  “Arden?”

  “The Marquess of Arden was the killer. Last year he married a teacher at Clarissa’s Cheltenham school.”

  Van’s jaw dropped. “The heir to Belcraven? Are you mad?”

  “High rank means honor? You know better than that, Van.”

  “It means hell’s fires if you meddle there and can’t prove it beyond doubt. And what motive could he have?”

  “Maria has that pretty niece, Natalie. What if she were in the power of a man like Deveril? Couldn’t Maria persuade you into doing something illegal to rescue her?”

  “I’d knife him in public if necessary.”

  Hawk knew Van was speaking the literal truth. He himself would do it too. And so would a man like Arden, he was sure.

  “If that was the way it was,” Van said, “give the man a medal.”

  “Then how do I get the money?”

  “How do you get the money this way?”

  Hawk put it into plain words. “I blackmail him for it.”

  Van braced himself against a worktable. “You’d destroy essentially honorable people?”

  “Don’t get too misty-eyed. Disposing of Deveril was a virtuous act, but misappropriating his money was straight-out, deliberate theft.”

  “How in God’s name do you think to go about this? Men like Arden and his father can destroy with a word.”

  “Ah, yes, the Duke of Belcraven. He’s Clarissa’s guardian, by the way.”

  “Zeus! They’re all in it? But why?”

  “Simply protecting her, I assume. Which has my sympathy. But I must save Hawkinville, and I see no reason not to have enough of that money to also rebuild Gaspard Hall and get my father off my back. And do something for the poor Deveril tenants.”

  Van was looking slightly alarmed. It took a lot to alarm Demon Vandeimen. “You’ll have to convince the duke that you would make it public. And,” he added, “watch your back.”

  “I’m good at that. Van, I’m depending upon the fact that these are essentially honorable people. Deveril was thought to be without an heir. Surely they’ll see that it’s wrong to divert all that money.”

  “And Clarissa?”

  “She’ll hardly be left penniless.”

  “She’s an innocent party.”

  “Innocent! She shows no guilty conscience over enjoying the ill-gotten gains.” Then another piece clicked into place. “Devil take it, the fortune is payment. She was present at the murder, so Arden arranged the forgery to pay her off. No wonder she’s as closemouthed as a tomb about it.”

  “Hawk, this is wrong.”

  “No, dammit, forgery is wrong. My father, damn his eyes, is right. The money belongs to Hawkinville, and I won’t see Slade destroy it because I was too squeamish to hurt Clarissa’s feelings!”

  “You can’t do it.”

  Hawk was about to wring Van’s neck when he saw the expression on his friend’s face. As if he’d suddenly seen an unpleasant vision.

  Van straightened. “Arden will call your bluff.”

  “He daren’t risk it.”

  “Why not? If you prove anything, you will destroy Clarissa as well as him.”

  “With any luck, he won’t know that’s a factor.”

  “More to the point,” said Van slowly. “Arden is a Rogue.”

  “What?”

  “One of Con’s Company of Rogues. I can’t believe that slipped by your brain. Roger, Nick, Francis, Hal, Luce…” Van recited. “We heard enough about them. And Luce is Lucien de Vaux, Marquess of Arden.”

  It had slipped by him. Devil in flames. Something about Arden had been niggling him, but Con had always talked about the Rogues by first names—unusual enough. Luce.

  “And Hal Beaumont,” he said. “The man with Mrs. Hardcastle. Clarissa said he was an old friend of Arden’s. But being a Rogue doesn’t give Arden immunity.”

  “No, but he has to know who you are. I’m sure Con spoke of us to them as much as he spoke of them to us. And there’s only two of us. Unless he has the brain of a sheep and the spine of a rabbit, he’ll have to know that you could not possibly attempt to destroy one of Con’s Rogues. However, perhaps Con can act as go-between.”

  “No!” Hawk’s rejection was instinctive, but reason followed. “That’s an intolerable position to put him in. ‘Admit to murder and forgery of your free will and quietly move half of Clarissa’s fortune to my friend Hawk.’ No,” he repeated, standing among ruins. “I’ll come up with something else.”

  “You don’t have much time. Why not simply tell Clarissa the truth? Perhaps she will be able to forgive your deception and overlook a future as Lady Deveril.”

  “But how will Arden and his father feel about it? She still needs her guardian’s permission.”

  “Damn.”

  “Strange, isn’t it? I have all the cards in my hand, and yet it still seems possible that I might lose.”

  “We have to tell Con. He can’t be left out of this.”

  “Haven’t you thought that he might know? The Rogues don’t keep secrets from each other.”

  “You think he knows that they set up a will that defrauded you?”

  Hawk shook his head. “I haven’t told him anything about the debt or the Deveril title. Someone in the Rogues has to know, though, with my father chasing it through the courts.”

  “I can’t believe Con would do nothing about a situation like that.”

  “He’d be caught in the middle.”

  “No,” Van said. “It’s more likely that they’re protecting him from it. He’s only recently started to recover from Waterloo and Dare.”

  Hawk considered it and knew it might be true. “All the more reason not to tell him yet.” He went toward the door. “I need a little more time, Van. Perhaps if I shuffle the cards again. At the least I need to go down to the manor to get clean clothes.”

  They emerged from the room and separated, but as Hawk walked to the manor, he couldn’t seem to shuffle the cards into anything but disastrous patterns.

  Who should suffer? Himself, for certain, but he was choosing the pain.

  What of Con, or Clarissa?

  What of the Dadswells, the Manktelows, and the Ashbees? Was Granny Muggridge to have the roof torn down around her head?

  But at what point did the price of Hawkinville become too high?

  Cut the loss.

  It was a process he’d done often in the war, even when it mea
nt choosing between one set of soldiers or another. Perhaps if he thought of everyone as troops of soldiers.

  The option with the least loss was to elope with Clarissa. He would have the money, or at least the expectation of it. He knew the will, and the money came to her at her majority, regardless of what she did or whom she married. As her husband, he could easily borrow against it.

  Hawkinville would be safe.

  There would be a fighting chance of happiness for them. There was something deep and true between them, and he would work to gain her forgiveness for the deception.

  Van might never forgive him for breaking his word, but he could hope that time would heal that, especially if he could make Clarissa happy.

  Con. At the moment, Con was an unknown. If he saw this as a betrayal of the Rogues, it could lead to a rift. The Rogues certainly weren’t going to like it. They were going to have to damn well trust him not to expose their criminal acts.

  But it was the only way.

  Gathering the detached purposefulness that had carried him through scenes of carnage, he went swiftly to his room to change, then gathered the money available in the house. He thought about leaving a note for the squire, but then knocked and entered his father’s room.

  The squire was lying on his daybed fondling—there was no other word—some papers. “They have come,” he said, with shining eyes. “The documents. You may now officially call me Lord Deveril!”

  Hawk had to stop himself from seizing the papers and ripping them to shreds. Pointless. Pointless.

  This settled things, however. In moments his father could begin spreading the word. Since Clarissa was in the village, she would hear about it, and that would be the end of that.

  “Congratulations, my lord. You may congratulate me, also. I am about to marry Miss Greystone.”

  His father beamed. “There, you see. All’s well that ends well. And her money will pay to refurbish Gaspard Hall.”

  “Not a penny of her money will go on Gaspard Hall, my lord. We will pay off Slade, but the rest will remain under her control.”

  If he had to do this, it had to be that way.

  “What? Are you mad? Leave a fortune in the grasp of a chit like that? I will not allow it.”

  “You will have no say in it.” He turned toward the door. “I merely came to say that I will be gone a few days.”