Luc frowned, wondering what the wily old fellow was getting at now. “Not for any length of time. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. Coulda sworn I knew a man who had the look of you.” Tinker’s keen dark eyes probed Luc’s face. “Lived in Berkeley Square, so he did.”
Luc stiffened. Damn it, the man knew. He knew.
The knowledge went in sharp and cold just below his ribs. He fought to sound casual. “No relatives in London that I know of. Must have been a case of bad eyesight. Either that or some relative of mine left a by-blow behind.”
Tinker finished wrapping the gauze, then sat back to stare at Luc. “Oh, I reckon it was no mistake. You see, I knew the man well. Worked for him for several months, so I did, when William St. Clair and I had a falling out. He insisted on firing me when he couldn’t pay me any more wages. Went down to London and a friend found me a place in Berkeley Square.” Tinker’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I’d hardly forget my employer’s face, though I wasn’t in London very long. And the Duke of Devonham has a face that few would forget,” Tinker said softly, administering the coup de grace. “As few would forget his eldest son’s.”
“Damned coincidence,” Luc muttered, sitting forward stiffly and shoving his sleeve down into place. “Nothing more.”
Tinker went on as if Luc hadn’t spoken. “Aye, worked for the duke for three months, I did. A fair man with a heap of friends and a ready laugh. Right up to the day he shut himself up in his study, that is. I reckon it happened when his eldest son strolled out for an evening’s gaming and disappeared from the face of the earth. Fair to broke the old man’s heart, so it did.”
Luc’s hands froze, still and taut on the white cuff. “A touching tale, indeed. And now if you don’t mind, I’d better be—”
Rough hands caught his shoulder, holding him still. “Do you think I wouldn’t recognize a Delamere when I saw one?” Tinker said harshly. “Do you think I don’t know your father’s jaw and mouth when I set eyes on them? Lord, boy, you’re the very image of old Andrew!”
Luc’s head rose. He met Tinker’s look with hard eyes. “A mistake, my friend,” he said darkly. “A dangerous mistake best forgotten.”
Tinker looked down at the sleeping woman whose auburn hair spilled across Luc’s chest. “And what about her? What about the innocent heart you’re bound to break when you leave? What about her pain when she tries to tell herself it’s all for the best, that your worlds are too far apart to hope for anything more?”
Something raw and savage came and went in Luc’s face. He tried to tear his eyes from the silky curls, from the gently parted lips, from the streak of white at Silver’s brow.
And found he couldn’t.
The old man was right. Dear God, what about her? What would happen when he left, as he knew he must? Because if he stayed, it would be only a matter of time before his will broke and he came to her, desperate and reckless, with all the heat and fire that a man ever felt for a woman.
But Luc couldn’t let that happen. She was not for such as he, not for a man who had seen and done the things he had. Oh, he might permit himself the forbidden pleasure of a kiss or two, even a stolen touch, but nothing more. Once she was safe and Lavender Close was secure, then Luc would fade back into the night and out of her life like the heartless brigand that everyone said he was.
He had no other choice.
But somehow Luc had to convince this sharp-eyed, unbearably decent old man of that fact.
He angled his head back against the wall and studied the night sky. “The sky is different east of Gibraltar, did you know that? I grew to know that eastern sky well. For months it was my only companion. Beneath that sky I saw things I don’t care to remember — things I try daily to forget, but I must not. They are part of me now, and because of that there can never be anything between this woman and me. For that same reason the Duke of Devonham can never know that his eldest child did not die that night after being seized by four ruffians on a secluded street corner. Do you hear me?” The Marquess of Dunwood and Hartingdale, heir to the one of the oldest titles in England, stared at Tinker, his hands closed to fists.
“I’m surprised it didn’t take more than four of them to hold you,” the old man said softly. “Afterward your father sent men the length and breadth of England looking for you. Day after day he sent off letters, offering rewards to anyone could produce any sort of clue. And your mother, the duchess—”
“Stop it! I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to know, damn you! It’s all over. They may as well be dead to me!”
“But they aren’t dead. You can waste all your breath lying to me and to Silver and to everyone else, boy, but it won’t make a whit of difference where it counts — and that’s in your own heart.”
Luc’s mouth locked. A muscle stood sharply defined against his jaw. “You don’t know anything about it! You can’t even begin to know.”
“Why don’t you tell me?” came the soft answer.
Luc’s eyes closed. His fingers moved soft and slow through the warm satin of Silver’s hair.
Heaven. Right here and now.
Feeling her against him like this, soft and still. Hearing her smooth, even breathing. Waiting for her to wake up and blink, then flash that devastatingly beautiful smile at him.
But it was a heaven he could never enter.
Without a word, without opening his eyes, Luc eased his other arm from beneath Silver’s head and pushed back wool sleeve and white cuff.
The skin was stretched taut over rippling muscle. Two scars ran diagonal the whole width of his arm. Between them crouched a rampant figure, part lion and part eagle, worked in precious cinnabar dye. “Tell me what you see,” Luc said harshly.
“A strong arm. An arm with wounds. Some sort of tattoo.” Tinker bent closer. “Never seen the like of it before.”
Luc gave a mirthless laugh. “I don’t expect you have. Not the sort of thing you see in a Norfolk market town.” Luc’s voice hardened. “Yes, that’s a very special mark. A mark used only in the palace at Algiers. Only a member of the Dey’s personal guard may wear such a mark.” His fingers closed to fists. “And you have to kill a man to earn the honor.” He spat out the word honor from between gritted teeth.
“Sweet God above. You was in Algiers? In the Barbary Coast?” Tinker stared. “No wonder no one ever found you.”
“Not many Bow Street runners east of Gibraltar,” Luc said bitterly.
“But how — who—”
Luc sat looking down at Silver, his eyes hooded and unreadable. “You’ll have no more from me tonight, James Tinker,” he said softly. “I must go, for dawn will soon be upon us. No safe time for a highwayman to be abroad, as you well know.” He gave a reckless laugh, his eyes fixed on a strand of auburn hair that curled over his wrist. Then his face hardened. “Where shall I settle her?”
“Might as well take her up to her room.”
A hard look. “You trust me for that.”
“Aye, so I do. Woulda trusted you even before I knew you was a Delamere.”
There was a queer tightening in Luc’s chest. “She’ll not thank me in the morning for the service. Nor you, I think,” Luc said grimly.
Tinker only smiled. “Happen not. But then females is allays known to say one thing and think another altogether different.”
Luc blinked.
He tried to forget what Tinker had said as he carried the sleeping woman upstairs.
~ ~ ~
Her hand lay clasped about his neck when he laid her in her bed in a room soft with moonlight. Even then, she would not let go.
Luc had to uncurl her fingers one by one.
He stood a long time that way, studying her pale face, her hair strewn like gleaming burgundy over her flowing white shirt.
So beautiful. So courageous.
So young.
It would never do. She needed someone innocent. Someone who had never been tested by the harsher side of life. Someone unflaggingly secure and confident i
n his little world of piquet and hunting and a house in Berkeley Square for the Season.
The man Luc had been five years before.
The man Luc would never be again.
When he emerged, his face was expressionless.
Tinker studied him closely, one grizzled brow quirked. “You’ll be careful on the road tonight, highwayman?”
Luc shrugged. Slowly he slid his mask back in place. “Careful is not particularly high on my list. Still, for her, I might try.” He studied the rows of neatly tended flowers. “Before, you said you trusted me. But you’d best beware, James Tinker. I’m not even sure that I trust myself.”
The moon was already gone when he caught up his hat and vanished back into the lavender-rich night.
~ ~ ~
Far away in a magnificent house facing Berkeley Square, India Delamere sat up in bed, looking wistfully out at the night. She had just come home from her first ball and had just received her first offer of marriage from a most unexceptionable earl. She should, in short, have been glowing with happiness and entirely at peace with the world.
But she wasn’t.
Her eyes stung with tears.
Outside in the night a hackney clattered past with a noisy crack of hooves. A linkboy padded home through the shadows, light dancing from his swaying lantern.
The young woman started when a light tap came at the door. “Come in.”
A regal, white-haired lady frowned at her from the doorway. “What, still awake, gel? Too many beaus to dream of?”
“No, Grandmama. Nothing like that. It — it’s Luc.”
At that name the Duchess of Cranford stiffened. “Luc?” Her back went even straighter. “The boy is gone, India, as I’ve told you countless times before.”
“Then — then there’s no chance of a mistake? No chance that he might come strolling in one day, smiling lazily and dangling his silver cane as he was always used to do?” Her voice was wistful.
“I shouldn’t think it at all likely, my dear. Your brother is dead. It will be better for us all if we accept that fact.”
The red-haired beauty sat forward, her wrists tight to her knees. A tear streaked down her cheek, glistening in the light of the duchess’s single candle. “But I can’t forget him, Grandmama. I’ve tried but — but I could swear I feel him sometimes. At odd moments. It was always that way between us. Even as children at Swallow Hill, I knew when Luc had been thrown from his pony and he knew when I’d fallen from the old elm tree. And now” — her hands moved, gesturing at something real but not quite visible—”now, well, he’s alive. I know it, Grandmama. I can feel it.” Her eyes rose, hazed with tears. “And he is in great danger.”
She caught her grandmother’s hand and bit back a cry of pain. “Where is he? Blast you, Luc, where are you?”
~ ~ ~
Slowly the stars faded.
Above Lavender Close Farm the sky bled to navy and then gray. Finally streaks of crimson brightened the flat, tree-dark east.
Mist crept through the elms and oaks and hawthorns, over the sleeping streams, and through the little green valley.
Dense and white, the fog trailed everywhere. It silenced all, wind and bird and rich, dark earth. Nothing else moved. Nothing else even existed.
And for a few perfect hours the valley became a place of magic. Of joy. Of safety. A place where dreams could take tangible shape, as they did for all those sleeping there.
And all the while a solitary man sat watching on the hill above, hands buried deep in his pockets, eyes filled with a different kind of mist — and with the madness that comes from cruel memories.
~ 20 ~
Sunlight was streaming over the lavender fields when the workroom door flew open with a bang. Silver stood outlined against a haze of purple buds, her hair a wild auburn tangle around her shoulders. “Why didn’t you wake me? It’s nearly noon!”
Tinker looked up from the bottle of rosemary oil he was capping. “Can’t you just say good-morning like anyone else? It’s a veritable hoyden you’ve become, girl, and no mistake.”
“But it’s so late. I should have been down here helping you.”
“Me and the boy are managing just fine,” the old servant said flatly. “No call to think you’ve got to do everything around here yourself. Need another batch of rosemary oil,” Tinker called over his shoulder. “And after that some more dried mint. Then this batch will be ready.”
Bram appeared from the neighboring room, dried lavender dusting his shoulder and a glass decanter hefted against his chest. “Right here, Tinker.” He peered over at his sister. “Oh, are you finally awake, Syl?” Without breaking stride he gave Tinker the decanter, then moved off in search of the other ingredients the old man had requested.
“Aye, managing just fine, we are. And the fragrance for that milliner in Norwich is nearly done too.”
“Oh.” Silver watched Tinker finish his task. “Then … I guess you don’t need me.”
“Not a whit,” Bram called cheerfully from next door. “Got the dried mint right here, Tinker.”
“But — that is, I suppose I should check that new potpourri blend. I’m not sure I liked the ginger we added.”
“All done,” Tinker said.
“All done?” Silver gnawed at her lower lip.
“Did it two hours ago. Bram changed the amounts, added some clove oil, and now they’re just fine. Nothing to it, in fact.”
It had taken her half a day to come up with that blend. “And you changed all of them?”
“Aye, all six dozen.”
Six dozen?
“Going up to the house,” Bram called. “Need a book.”
“Keep your eyes open. Fetch me some orris root while you’re at it.”
Silver stared at Tinker after Bram left. “You don’t think it’s over, do you?”
Tinker’s fingers stopped for a moment and then he shrugged. “He doesn’t. He’s been right about everything else so far. Probably right about this nastiness too.” There was no question who the he was.
Silver felt an odd tightening in her stomach. “Blackwood told you that?”
Tinker nodded. “Wants you to leave too.”
“I won’t. That’s final.” Silver picked up a glass decanter and held it up to the light, swirling the clear golden oil.
For some reason it reminded Silver of Blackwood’s eyes. Of the keen sweetness of his lips. She frowned, shoving aside the vessel. “Did he happen to say, well, anything else?”
“Anything about what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, about what happened here. Just … anything.”
Tinker studied her. “His name’s Luc, by the way. With a c. Thought you might like to know. And, no, I don’t reckon he did.”
“But how — that is, who—” Silver’s cheeks filled with color.
“He told me. Last night. Yes, we had a good bit of conversation last night.”
Silver felt a queer dizziness trail through her stomach. “I was in my own bed when I woke.”
Tinker sniffed and went back to work. “Passing strange, that. I reckon Master Luc must’ve carried you there.”
Silver’s hands tensed. “He did?”
“Aye.”
Silver found it difficult to breathe. “Oh.” And then her chin rose, small and defiant. “Well, I must say, I think it most improper of him. And of you, for letting him, Tinker.”
“Don’t reckon I coulda stopped the man even if I wanted to,” came the terse reply.
An odd burning, half pleasure and half pain, attacked Silver’s chest.
Tinker turned. “Don’t you have some sort of work to do, miss? Boy’s probably lost in one of his books. You may as well go fetch him afore he’s forgotten all about what I sent him up there for.” A slight smile curved his lips. “Unless you plan to stand there mooning through all the rest of the day.”
“Mooning! What makes you think—” Heat flooded Silver’s cheeks. “You insufferable man!” she muttered. “All of you are!”
~ ~ ~
She walked slowly through the fields of lavender and rosemary and honeysuckle, waiting for her flush to fade. Idly she noted which fields needed to be pruned and which to be watered. But all the while her thoughts were on a full, hard mouth crowned by a silver scar. On reckless amber eyes. On an unpredictable man she barely knew.
The man she loved.
With a gasp Silver went dead still in the middle of a lavender furrow, her face ghosting to gray and then sheet-white.
The knowledge had come unbidden, creeping in upon her while her mind was occupied with bud counts and root rot and how to stave off the next wave of intruders. How had this happened? How could she have lost all reason like this?
In love with a highwayman. A hardened, unfathomable felon notorious from Southampton to Peterborough.
No, it was impossible. It was unimaginable.
And yet it was true, Silver realized, chewing on her lip, one white hand to her hot cheek.
“What have I done?”
She sank down in a heap between two lavender bushes and drew in a long, ragged breath. There in the rich black earth she sat frozen, staring up at the wisteria-covered cottage while the sun poured down on her shoulders and the lavender wind combed through her hair.
Luc. Tinker had said that was his name — spelled with a c. A strange sort of name, to be sure. But then it suited him, for her Luc was a very strange sort of man.
Luc. Her Luc.
She was in love. With him. Silver let her breath trickle out, one hand fisted at her breast.
In blasted love with the blasted Lord of Blackwood, like a regiment of other silly females before her.
Damn and blast! How could she?
There was no hope for it, of course. She would just have to run the rascal right out of her mind.
And so she would — if only she could forget how it felt when he held her and made her blood sing with passion. If only she could forget the hunger in his eyes when she’d kissed him in the conservatory.
“Damn and bloody blast!” she muttered. Enough was enough. She had to get the man out of her thoughts and now!
Come the Night (The Dangerous Delameres - Book 1) Page 19
