by Laura London
“Don’t,” she snapped. “I can walk.”
“As you wish,” he answered impassively, not taking his hand from her elbow. Her strained eyes focused on his unreceptive features and then turned wildly over her shoulder toward the street alive with the chime of bridle and harness as elegant town coaches passed upon its great breadth. Buildings of immense proportion lined the even pavement, their Corinthian pilasters and dazzling Venetian windows dwarfing a frontage of darkened shrubs.
“Where am I?” she whispered.
“In London. Portland Place,” he said, taking her valise in one hand and escorting her through an openwork iron gate toward a portico that housed the fan-vaulted door of a tall Palladian mansion.
Disoriented by fatigue, she said, “This isn’t a prison?”
“I suppose that would depend on one’s philosophical bent,” he said, but then seeing she was much too tired to make anything of that remark, he added, “No, it’s not generally considered to be a prison. Frightened out of your wits, are you?”
Letting her anger show, she ground out, “Would that please you?”
“It might. Everyone likes to be taken seriously. To which I add the homily—”
“People must lie in the beds of their own making,” she finished. A weary tear tickled down her nose, and she removed it quickly with the hunch of one shoulder.
“Precisely. How nearly in concert are our minds.”
Her back, which she had been able to keep straight in front of him for most of the day, began to slump. “I’m too worn out to be particular. Show me any bed, and I’ll sleep in it.”
He laughed. It was the first time she had heard him laugh naturally in weeks, and she had forgotten how appealing and tender his face could become, the corners of his eyes relaxing into an engaging crinkle of smile lines, the ashen-blond hair purling in the night air.
“All in good time,” he said. “There’s someone I have to talk to first.”
Her bound hands lifted, palms upward, toward the doorframe, and she said wonderingly, “You know someone who lives here?”
“Yes. Come along, Merry pet.”
Exhaustion and terror clenching at her throat, she watched Devon raise his hand to the paneled mahogany door and beat an imperative summons on the heavy brass knocker.
The door was opened almost immediately by an imposing personage with spaniel jaws who was unmistakably a butler. His chilly “How may I serve you?” dissolved into astonishment as he stepped back, staring at Devon, his sparse gray eyebrows mounting his forehead.
“Your Grace!” he exclaimed.
“Good evening, Harris,” Devon said in a tranquil voice, drawing Merry ruthlessly into a deep entrance hall. He glanced toward the graceful upward curl of a marble staircase. “Is Cathcart in?”
The butler seemed to have recovered himself, like an old but sturdy chair taken to the upholsterer’s. “Indeed he is, Your Grace. His lordship has just this minute arrived home and repaired to his dressing chamber.” Walking to a doorway with a handsomely carved architrave, he continued, “Permit me to offer Your Grace the use of the library. There’s a fire made up within, and I think you will find it quite comfortable. And if I may be so bold, Your Grace, as to say how happy an occasion your safe return is and will be to your family and acquaintances—a happy occasion indeed. Lord Cathcart will want to be informed of your arrival without delay.”
“Thank you.” Devon’s hand on her arm forced forward Merry’s balking footsteps.
She was perhaps not able to control her emotions as well as she might have wished in times of duress, but recent bitter experience had trained her to keep thinking. Pulled despite her shallow resistance into a large well-ordered library, she closed her mind to the Chinese rug, the aged monastic manuscript supported in an open position on a library table. Devon stood by the door inquiring genially about the butler’s gout and rejecting an offer to surrender their outer garments. She was just wondering whether that last might be interpreted to mean they would not stay here long when the phrase Your Grace seemed to unclot slowly from the rest. Badly shaken to learn that Devon was on saunter-in-at-midnight terms with an English lord, and shamed by being handled brusquely in front of such an obviously reputable gentleman as Mr. Harris, she had failed to register the title. If Your Lordship was the form of address for a marquis or an earl, then Your Grace must be the proper mode for a—For a what? Who was this man? The soft closing of the door behind her generated a hiss of fear in the nerves that surfaced her skin. She turned to find Devon standing alone by the doorframe, regarding her steadily, the closed expression opening in the marigold firelight to a steely courtesy that encouraged her to voice her thoughts. She heard her own voice whisper, “Hirundo poeciloma. You knew the swallow. And the gull—you trained it to come to you. Because you are the son of a naturalist, aren’t you? And an artist. No one has ever understood my drawings as clearly. And that—that night on the beach I heard you speak almost with sympathy about the American cause.” His expression was lightly interested; as though she was revealing no more than the solution to some childish riddle. A house full; a hole full; you cannot gather a bowlful. What is it? Smoke. His casual fingers had begun to uncatch the buttons of his greatcoat. At sea, in Rand Morgan’s world, this man wielded great power. Her only chance had been that his danger would fade without Morgan’s legions behind him, but she saw now with bitter frustration that instead it would grow, blossoming like herb of grace, into something more omnipotent than she ever had imagined. Staring fully into the intense mosaic gold of his eyes, she said, “Now I understand. You are Devon Crandall. And the Duke of St. Cyr, aren’t you?”
Chapter 24
Brian Farquhar, Lord Cathcart, stared distractedly at the hurried flash of his carefully polished Hessian boots as they descended his black marble stair. Potbellied water drops were scattered like buttons on the bottommost step. Little Lyn must have had another accident with his shaving water; when she was away from under his housekeeper’s firm hand, nothing could induce the girl to use the servant’s stair. “T’other is so much grander-like,” she was wont to pipe, and if Harris noted the spill, Lyn was sure to receive another sharp scold. With an exasperated sigh Cathcart bent to soak it up in his handkerchief.
The library door, he saw, was closed, and behind was Devon, back intact after more than a year of wandering in hell’s own company to places God only knew. America? Canada? The Caribbean? Rumor had placed him in all three, often at the same time. And now he was here, his return as cavalier and careless as his departure. His family didn’t know of his homecoming, that much was certain. Not two hours ago Cathcart had been sitting with Devon’s mother, Aline, helplessly watching her wilt under Countess Lieven’s subtly malicious quizzing about the absent duke. Cathcart remembered how he had cursed Devon silently for the agony of worry he so readily inflicted on his loving family. Perhaps it would be more judicial, Cathcart reflected, to curse instead the circumstances that had made Devon as he was.
Still fresh in his mind were the time-framed pictures of Devon as the beautiful, too perfect child demigod, creating remarkable machines generating electrical current that no one could understand but the boy himself, and running through the silvery beards of a barley field beneath the dark golden-tinged wingbeats of his eagle. Aline used to whiten when the majestic predator landed, deadly talons slashing the air, on her son’s slight forearm, but Devon’s father would only put back his great mane of tawny hair and laugh. Jasper Crandall had been that kind of man.
Jasper’s death was one of those abstruse tragedies that leave one feeling flawed and unrelentingly mortal. A healthy, interested father sitting with his gifted son studying leaf sections under a microscope, Jasper Crandall had lifted his head, set down the small tweezers in his hand, and slumped forward in death, his brain massively hemorrhaged.
Much later that same night, retiring to the black solace of his own bedchamber, Cathcart had heard a light, clear-voiced command coming out of the darkness that had
said, “Put out the candle, Brian.”
Cathcart’s uncomfortably dilating pupils had found Devon sitting dry-lashed on the bed, his bright head flossed in reedy moonlight.
“Why did my father die?” There was a shattered soul in the thoughtful childish voice, and Cathcart, numb from the loss of the man he had respected above all others, had heard himself blundering foolishly through empty phrases about divine will and submission to fate. He had spoken at length, the words coming haltingly. It was not until the clock of French porcelain on the mantel chimed the hour of midnight that he realized Devon had left quietly and he was alone. From that hour on Devon had found his own answers.
Uncrouching from the step, Cathcart glanced with rueful distaste at the water-heavy handkerchief in his hand and dispossessed himself of it underneath the hall porter’s chair.
Devon stood by the walnut sideboard, helping himself to brandy. Cathcart was vaguely aware of a girl in a muddy Pilgrim’s cloak standing beside the fire. A young female, Harris had dryly termed her. After asking Harris several times if he was quite certain the young person was indeed a female and receiving Harris’s patient, pitying reassurances that yes, surely it was a girl and not Cathcart’s absent son, Cathcart had lost interest in her beyond his inevitable irritation and awe that Devon had the temerity to bring one of his haphazard trollops to the town residence of his godfather. The lateness of the hour hardly made it any better. But as Devon turned, setting down glass and bottle, Cathcart found himself forgetting everything beyond the brainstorming warmth of Devon’s subtly delighted smile. Devon crossed the room in clean, quick strides to take him in a charmingly exuberant embrace.
Held at arm’s length by his godson’s strong bronzed fingers, conquering his filling throat, Cathcart said awkwardly, “So you’re back.”
Devon separated his hands and shrugged, a continental gesture. “As you see.” The boy looked good—brown and self-possessed and superbly physically conditioned; the rich heavy hair had been eating sunlight. He had grown into the engagingly fashioned looks that had been almost overpowering when he was younger; maturity had revealed outwardly the extent of the inner depth.
“You haven’t been home?” Cathcart asked, knowing the answer, testing the water.
“No. I’m counting on you to advise me where the batteries are placed before I approach the citadel. Are they well—Mother, Grandmother?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. But I don’t have to tell you that you’ve been sorely missed.” The one comment, and no more. Lord Cathcart had learned with Devon it was best not to lecture. “Tonight I was with your mother.”
Devon eyed Cathcart’s knee breeches with an appreciative grin. “Carlton House?”
Cathcart felt his face soften into an answering smile. “Carlton House,” he agreed. A small movement from the silent figure by the hearth drew Cathcart’s attention to her. Reluctant as he was to permit or acknowledge her presence, he said politely, “Have you eaten, either of you?”
“Yes. Recently.” As though he had observed Cathcart’s unwilling interest, Devon looked in the girl’s direction and said, “Come here, Windflower. The good marquis would like to see what you are.”
Her back, encased in cloak and hood, was toward Cathcart. He watched the slim shoulders square. The weightily resettling fabric of her cloak snagged the dark hood at its base, spilling it backward to release a thrilling dance of cherried honey curls. She turned where she stood, her gaze flying defiantly to Devon’s.
Lord Cathcart was not a man who gaped at women. He had spent the better portion of his adult life in a deep if chaste love for Devon’s mother, Aline; for ten years he had enjoyed a more intimate and discreet liaison with a lovely and sophisticated woman whom he supported generously. Nor was he a lad in first flush who felt his body stir to every lure, but wish it or not, Lord Cathcart knew he had begun to stare at this young girl. Half his reaction certainly was admiration, but the other half was pure fascination with her incredible similarity to the Italianate oval-faced ideal. She might have stepped from a sea-flecked shell. Beneath deep, fantastic eyelids, her gentian eyes were bright as a wren’s, their vision outwardly directed and unselfaware. The chin was small and solid, made as though to fit in a man’s hand. Only the nose was not meticulously proportioned to its setting, though the very delicacy of the fragile teardrop nostrils added to rather than detracted from the charm of her features, lessening the classic severity. She carried herself with more dignity than her years warranted, though the face was a study in sensitivity. You wanted to smell the fragrance of her hair. What in the world was this solemn fairy princess doing with a man of Devon’s reputation?
“Good evening, Miss—?” Cathcart tried kindly.
“Her name is Merry,” Devon said, his tone matter-of-fact. “It may not suit your notions of politesse, but you’ll have to call her that; I don’t know her last name.”
The young girl’s show of spirit was dying into wan bewilderment as she looked from Devon to Cathcart, and it appeared to the marquis as though the cautious blue eyes were having trouble assessing him. It came to him then that she was tired, very tired. The radiant skin had disguised that at first. Gratefully Cathcart experienced the dissolution of his instinctive male reaction into something reassuringly paternal. She was, after all, hardly more than a child, and from the glances that had passed between her and Devon, it was evident he had used her like a vandal. Admitting wryly to himself that only a moment ago he had been planning not to acknowledge her, Cathcart approached the girl, gentling his expression because she seemed ready to cringe from him. Good Lord, what had Devon been doing to her? He had never seen a woman look upon him with fright before, and it distressed him. At something of a loss and growing increasingly angry with Devon for placing him in this situation, he said, “Welcome to my home, Merry. It must be hot for you in front of the fire in your traveling garments. If you’ll allow me…?” She stared at him in a stunned way, though she made no protest as he loosened the clasp underneath her chin and drew the cloak from her shoulders.
Her hands, small even for a woman of her refined bone structure, were folded neatly into the lap of her skirts. In a second’s horror Cathcart saw that she was bound.
“What the devil!” He took her wrists together and examined the deft bindings. The flesh beneath the rope was scraped and cold. Intense anger strained his words as he rapped out at his extraordinary godson. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” To his annoyance Devon showed no shame; in fact, he appeared to be a little amused.
“I’m sorry. I knew you’d be shocked. But she keeps trying to run away from me.”
“I should think so, if this is a testament to the style of your conduct with her.” It had hardly been Cathcart’s intention to make the young duke laugh, and when Devon did so, the ruthlessly insouciant attitude outraged the older man. “This is abominable! Even for you!” he continued. “How long—” He glanced at the girl, who was beginning to blush. “How long has she been under your protection?”
“Oh, my protection, is it? A vastly ill-suited euphemism.” Devon twirled the brandy in his glass and took a long sip. His eyes went to the girl’s face. “She’s been with me on the Joke.”
“Devon, no! Surely you haven’t allowed those devils of Rand Morgan’s to have access to her?”
“Rand Morgan’s ‘devils’ would eat soot if she fed it to them with her baby fingers. She was ill once, and they spent so much time weeping into their shirtsleeves that there wasn’t a dry bicep in the fo’c’sle. I couldn’t have talked them into forcing her if I’d wanted to. Don’t let your imaginings run into the morbid, Brian. And I don’t know why you profess to be so shocked. I’ve had the distinct impression from certain past lectures that you thought I was capable of anything,” Devon said dryly, coming closer to take the dark woolen cloak from Lord Cathcart’s arm, throwing it over a library chair. “She’s not the pippin she looks. I took her out of Michael Granville’s bed.”
Understanding struck Lord Cat
hcart like a leaded glove. Ominously calm with one eyebrow sharply lifted he asked, “And a man of your breeding would use a woman for revenge?”
For the first time since his arrival Cathcart saw his godson’s eyes gleam with unclouded temper. “Why not? It’s precious little I’ve had of that, thanks to you and Rand. Anyway, I have other reasons for keeping her. She has a certain gift that some irresponsible idiot—Granville, one supposes—encouraged her to put to the wrong use, and now Cochrane would like her disposed of. She’s fortunate that she’s too fetching a little monkey to butcher.” The final words were spoken more gently. “There’s nothing you can do about it, Brian. She’s not your burden.”
But Cathcart faced back toward the lovely haggard girl, taking her hands, strapped together as they were, and holding them sustainingly in his own. Letting his sincerity show fully in his features, he said, “I’m very sorry, and I intend to do what I can to ease your situation. For the moment all I can do is make you comfortable. Please tell me how I can best serve you.”
Rather than comforting her, the sympathy seemed to confuse her, and Cathcart began to wonder if she had become so accustomed to having her wishes unregarded that she’d forgotten it could be otherwise. The gaze she turned on Devon was one of heartrending doubt.
Devon managed to look perfectly composed, even entertained, under her pathetic scrutiny. He said, “If you want to do something for her, Brian, perhaps you could have a cover brought so she could lie on a couch? I’ve brought her in two days from our landing in Cornwall, and she’s half-unconscious for want of rest.”
“For goodness’ sake, then, let me give her to the housekeeper,” Cathcart snapped. “The guest room is prepared. At least let her sleep in a bed.”
