To Catch a Flame

by Kimberly Cates

  "I love the High Toby," Beau said faintly.

  "One month," he repeated. "If you choose to leave after the time is out, it will be your right to take to the High Toby again with a vengeance. But I trust, I hope, you will want to remain."

  "I—I'll have to check my list of social engagements." Beau tried and failed to brush his words off with a quip. "It is busy upon the road of late, and—"

  "Your word of honor, Isabeau." His voice was so soft it seemed to caress her. No jests, no barbs, only a tender plea.

  Beau pulled her hands free of his grasp, whirling away from him in an effort to hide how much his words had affected her. "Oh, why the hell not?" she said with a toss of her head. "I've nothing better to do at the moment."

  She heard the sound of his boot soles crossing to the door, heard it open partway then stop.

  "Thank you, Beau. For trusting me," he said. "And about—about what almost happened between us. You needn't fear—"

  "I'm not afraid of anything," Beau said with a laugh, but it had a hollow sound to it, for she was afraid. Terrified. And enthralled.

  The bedchamber door clicked shut, and she turned around, wishing she had done so in time to catch one more glimpse of those steely, broad shoulders, his thick, dark hair. The flash of his wondrous, solemn smile.

  But he was gone, leaving behind him only the echoes of his words and the tingling sensations his hands had evoked upon her skin.

  Chapter 10

  Beau stared at the door long minutes, listening to the sound of Griffin's stride as it grew fainter, more distant, until at last it ceased altogether. What had happened between them might have been nothing but a dream except that the gown's bodice still pinched her and its petticoats tangled about her legs.

  It had been real. Blazingly real.

  From the first sorrow-kissed moments to the firing of their mutual passion to the soul-shattering tenderness she had seen in Griffin Stone's face. And he, a grand, high-and-mighty lord, had turned all those wild, raging, emotions on her. Her. Isabeau DeBurgh. Hoyden Beau, who could ride or shoot or swear as expertly as any man born.

  Why? The question raged inside her, tearing at her with an odd mixture of pleasure and pain, self-doubt and tremulous pride.

  She rubbed her arms as if to warm them, turning back to the window. She watched her reflection in the window, following the image of the flushed, coppery-tressed figure as though it were a stranger. What had Griffin seen in her that had brought that hot light to his eyes and spawned in him that hunger and that tenderness?

  Who was she? This slender woman draped in the finest silks, her hair tumbling in wanton abandon down her back. Her lips were kiss-reddened and moist. And she was trembling. Trembling and uncertain as she confronted emotions that were new and unexpected.

  Beau watched the reflected woman then slowly, carefully sank into a curtsy. A tiny smile played about her lips as she watched herself in the glass. But she quashed it, making a face as she fingered the elegant silver tissue of the over- petticoat that had belonged to Griffin's mother. Then she grimaced, glancing at her own rein-toughened hands.

  "His poor mama," Beau said aloud. "She must be writhing in her grave at the notion of someone like me traipsing about in her things."

  Despite herself, Beau's vivid imagination painted pictures of the woman Griffin's mother must have been. Beautiful, blessed with the dazzling features she had given her son. Gentle and so loving that Griffin's face had been filled with loneliness and loss, even after so many years.

  Beau remembered her own anguish at her parents' deaths. Yet she had been lucky, treasured and pampered by Jack Ramsey and the rest of her father's family of renegades. It seemed that no one had showered such affection on Griffin.

  "But his brother must have loved him," Beau said aloud, suddenly hating the echoing silence. "It's clear that Griffin adored his brother."

  But in spite of that love Beau had detected a bittersweet shading of regret, a veil of anger. The legacy, she was certain, of Judith Stone's cruel favoritism. Beau's heart twisted with the certainty that other, more painful emotions must have tarnished the love between the two brothers. Resentment. Jealousy. Self-doubt.

  And now William Stone was dead. And Griffin was left to carry the burning guilt.

  Beau turned to the window, peering at her reflection again. But this time the image of the awed, uncertain woman who had smiled at her shyly moments ago was gone.

  This time she looked like a juggler’s fool, tricked out like a lady to ape her betters. Beau reached up a hand in an effort to smooth the defiant waves of her hair, but the curls still cascaded in a riotous halo as if daring her to tame them.

  What would William Stone have thought of the stray brigand his brother had brought home? What would he or Griffin's delicate, high-born mother have thought of a red-haired, foul-tempered rogue of the road swaggering about their beloved Darkling Moor?

  And what would they have thought of the way she had flung herself into Griffin's arms, willing, almost aching to devour his hard-muscled body, burning to drive away the torment that lurked beneath his rakehell grin?

  Beau sighed, flopping wearily down upon a crewel-worked footstool, the petticoats that had swept about her so gracefully moments before bunched up like a washerwoman's bundles. How many times had she told Molly that the dead peered down at the earthly world from heaven's gates?

  If it was true that phantoms stalked the living, Griffin Stone's loved ones were most likely swirling around Darkling Moor in an uproar, eager to get their ghostly hands about Beau's throat.

  She glanced out at the black velvet curtain of the night, feeling an unfamiliar prickle at the base of her scalp.

  It was idiocy. She did not believe in phantoms. But in this room, in this gown, it almost seemed as though she could feel the fingers of the past skim over her, entrapping her in some web that they alone could see.

  "Bah! You're worse than Molly!" Beau said aloud. "Next thing, you'll be waiting for some demon or banshee to plunge through the window and carry you off to—what the devil?"

  Beau's heart plunged to her toes, and biting, deep terror engulfed her as a blur of misty gray and swirling black filled the open window. The figure seemed the embodiment of every specter she had ever created. She dived toward the fire iron. A feeble weapon, she feared, against a ghost.

  But as she ran toward the window, her makeshift weapon poised, whatever had lurked upon the stone ledge came whisking through the open casement, devil's wings and horns and ghostly robes shifting into a whirl of cloak, divinely tailored breeches, and a most dashing tricorn with a cherry-red plume.

  At the last possible instant she threw the fire iron away, driving it against the stone ledge instead of Jack Ramsey's face.

  She froze, unable to move, stunned into silence by shock and sick horror at what she had nearly done.

  Jack Ramsey's eyes twinkled, and his lips curved into the careless smile that had made feminine hearts flutter on every highroad in England. An immaculate frock coat of dark grey brocade swept back from a sapphire waistcoat, and the snowy folds of his neckcloth foamed about his square jaw in what could only be described as perfection. Despite his perilous climb up Darkling Moor's walls, he carried a beribboned walking stick tucked beneath one arm.

  With a jaunty grin he leaned it against the armoire and crossed to stand before her.

  "A thousand pardons, milady," he drawled, "but I must be in the wrong chamber. Surely this cannot be... the hoyden Isabeau DeBurgh."

  The delicately mocking insult released the words horror had dammed up inside her. "You bloody jackanapes!" she cried, rushing over to lock the chamber's door. "How—how did you find me? What the devil are you doing here? Leaping through windows, and... and scaring me out of my skin! Don't you know its dangerous climbing walls and lurking about, and—if I'd had my pistols, I'd have shot you myself!"

  "Don't tell me you were frightened, "Jack whispered with infinite satisfaction. "Well, it'll be our secret, Flame. Tho
ugh it's just like you to grouse about the modus operandi of your own rescue."

  "My... rescue."

  "Aye, after the debacle with the infamous Owen. Though I must say you put me to considerable trouble, Impertinence. I was beginning to wonder if saving your skin was worth the bloody snarls I had to uncoil. It was bad enough having to dash off in the middle of the night, expecting to find you dead by the roadside. And then seeing the blood and a sword... Once I saw the sword, I knew full well who got the worst of the encounter."

  "My pistols misfired!" Beau cried, stung.

  "I always told you they would." Ramsey's sage nod nearly gained him his death at her hands. "Dashed unpredictable, pistols are, not to mention noisy and dirty. In my opinion—“

  "I don't give a damn about your opinion."

  "Which is why you were wounded by my lord Stone's blade. It is fortunate he but grazed you in the shoulder."

  "My shoulder." Beau gaped at Ramsey. "How... how did you know?" A sudden sick memory of the mystical Nell Rooligan and her supposed powers of sight rose in Beau's mind.

  Jack flashed her a blinding grin. "It would be amusing to let you flounder about believing me to have bonds with the supernatural. However, I fear I came by my knowledge in a far more prosaic fashion. After I found the wrecked coach I tracked you to the inn. There I fortuitously happened upon a most loquacious serving wench. She was a country lass, quite fresh and innocent and new to the world away from her mama's knee. And she was fair bursting with the excitement of it all."

  Beau ground her teeth, burning beneath Ramsey's superior aura. "Aye, she'd better pray she's not bursting with something else before nine months fly past." Beau shot a scathing look in the region of Ramsey's skin-tight breeches.

  The highwayman's laugh rumbled low in his chest. "The lass had nothing to fear, though I must admit she was a tempting morsel. And, of course, all dewy-eyed and willing."

  Beau gave an inelegant snort.

  "However," Ramsey continued, ignoring her, "once I gained the information I had sought I bolted from the inn like the hounds of hell were at my heels, determined to pluck you from the grasp of the depraved nobleman who had taken you captive. Of course, once I saw this place I figured you would have the goodness to spare me the trouble of having to mount a rescue. Even that quaking friend of yours, Molly, would be able to slip from this noose."

  "I could have escaped anytime I chose!"

  Something flickered in Jack's eyes. "But you did not choose. Rather, you decided to parade around like a lady of leisure, sweeping about in fine skirts and drinking ratafia. If I hadn't happened to be below when you crossed before the window, I'd still be searching for you." Jack's eyes darkened with reproach.

  "I can bloody well take care of myself, and you know it! I didn't ask you to forsake your latest mistress's bed to chase after me!"

  Jack's eyes twinkled. "As a matter of fact, I was rather pleasingly occupied when Owen came charging in all astir. And yet"—he shrugged, his mouth twisting into its accustomed lazy smile—"despite your lack of proper gratitude, I am uncommonly glad to see you all in one piece."

  The levity in Ramsey's voice was shaded with a very real relief, and his hands, gloved in the finest embroidered leather, reached up to chuck her beneath the chin. "Here the Maguires and I have been positively weak with fear for you, and you are flouncing about hale and hearty and... dare I say it?" His eyes skimmed down to her décolletage, one brow arching. "Looking like a woman. "

  With an oath Beau drove her bare heel down upon Ramsey's instep, but he did not even make a satisfactory yelp. "Blast you, this is no time for jesting!" she railed. "You must leave—"

  "I was hardly planning to stay and take tea." Ramsey's grin faded. "I but await your pleasure. Of course, it would most likely be more expedient to change into your breeches before you attempt to climb down. But if you want to pinch the dress, it is all the same to me."

  "Steal the... of course I don't want to steal the dress!" Beau said with a quick stab of outrage. "It was his mother's! And… and I gave my word of honor, I…” Beau bumbled into silence beneath the questioning light in Jack's gaze.

  "Your word of honor, is it?" Jack said. "I wasn't aware you were over concerned about... er... pretty speeches. Most especially when you were casting them out to swells like those who live in this monstrosity." He cast a scathing glance about the room. His eyes, when they returned to hers, held a hardness she had never seen before.

  "He's not a swell!" Beau defended. "At least not—not like the rest of them. He—" She rubbed her throbbing temple. "It is hard to explain, Jack."

  "I shall endeavor to stretch the meager powers of my intellect."

  "He—he—" Beau raised her fingers to her elegant sleeve, toying with a bit of the gold trim. "There is—is a kindness in him, Jack. A goodness."

  "Which a common rogue like me would not understand?" Tempests now raged in Jack's usually cool eyes, but Beau plunged on.

  "Most noblemen would have left me to die. I would have been beneath their notice at any time, and after having tried to rob them... they would most likely have trampled me beneath their horse's hooves and gloried in it." She spun away, haunted by the memory of Griffin's rough voice as he had railed at her not to die, his strong arms as he had cradled her gently, so gently upon Macbeth's back.

  "He took care of me, Jack," she said. "Even when I railed at him and baited him and tried to crush his pride. And after—even after all I had done, he didn't turn me in to Bow Street."

  "Such nobility! It fair humbles me to listen to the recounting of such an unselfish, honorable act!" Accusation, jealousy, and hurt flashed across Jack's features, mingled with a bitter twist of betrayal. "You are a woman, Beau. It shouldn't be so difficult to figure out why this blasted nobleman dragged you off to his lair."

  "And why, pray tell, was that?" Beau tossed her head with false bravado, her fists planted upon her slender hips.

  She flinched as Jack's hands closed hard about her upper arms. "Damn it, Beau, you know why! Don't play the witling with me. Before Lord Stone fled England—banished because of a duel over a woman—he was a notorious rake with legions of mistresses to his credit."

  "Then he must've begun indulging in amours in the cradle, for he was scarce nineteen when he sailed."

  A dull flush mounted in Ramsey's cheeks. "Plague take it, Beau, what has he duped you with? Tales of how he, a poor innocent, was maligned by rumors? Stone and I are almost of an age. From the time I was fifteen I heard of his exploits. Even your mother spoke of them."

  "Curse you, Jack, I don't want to—"

  "You don't want to know? That is most unfortunate, lady mine. For you're going to hear it. All of it." Beau could feel the tremors of anger racing through Jack, anger such as she had never seen. For it was mixed with searing pain. And love. The truth she had been denying for so long lanced through her. Jack loved her.

  But before she could deal with the crushing emotions within her, Jack loosed more venom upon the man he saw as a rival.

  "Griffin Stone was the pampered darling of so many ton harlots I cannot even begin to list them," Jack snarled. "He was a profligate like his father. And he left more than one woman devastated in the wake of his waning attentions. It is rumored that one poor girl even took her own life rather than wed someone else—someone her father had chosen for her."

  "Even if that Banbury tale were true, the wench must have been a poor-spirited drab! It is scarcely Griffin's fault if she had not the courage to defy her father." Beau chafed beneath the memory of the gentle, pained light in Griffin's eyes as he spoke of his parents. "I don't believe Griffin would wound someone that deeply."

  "When will you believe?" Jack blazed. "After Stone has filled your belly with his bastard? After he casts you back into the streets, wearied of his pleasures? You won't be able to ride the High Toby, Isabeau, when you are swollen with child. And after you bear it, will you dare to take the chance of riding and leaving it an orphan?"

  "It
is pointless even to consider it," she said with searing honesty. "For it will never come to pass. I already kissed him. He thrust me away."

  She had meant to demonstrate that Lord Stone held honorable intentions toward her. She had meant to soothe away her mentor's fears, to take some of the anger from Jack's handsome face. But at that instant she realized she had made a fatal mistake. The blood drained from Ramsey's features.

  "You cursed little fool! For once, don't hurl yourself into the flames! Bloody hell, girl, you deserve better than to be some rich nobleman's plaything! You have enough beauty and courage for ten women! It would honor to any man to have you grace his bed—aye, bear his sons." Jack's voice caught, and his lips contorted in anguish. "Damn it, Beau, listen to me for once in your benighted life!" Then suddenly his expression shifted, and he cursed, shaking his head. "Why the hell do I bother? Perhaps the time for words between us is past." His hand shot out, tangling in the fall of her hair.

  Beau knew his intent. Now there was nothing of the elegant cavalier within the bold highwayman's face, none of the gallant knight of the road who had caused even his victims to tumble head over hindmost into love with him.

  Jack's mouth was hard, angry as it closed upon hers, yet instead of the passion she'd felt with Griffin she felt only a kind of regret, and a sadness that dragged her spirit down like weights of lead. She forced herself to go limp in Ramsey's arms, her own feeling of stark betrayal leaving her torn and bruised inside.

  Jack swore, shoving her away from him, his fists knotted, his breath ragged.

  "Jack." She reached out a hand, wanting to ease his pain, yet knowing she could not. "I—"

  "Sweet God, I mauled you like an accursed beast. Hurt you." His hand trembled as he reached out to touch her bruised lower lip. "Isabeau..."