To Catch a Flame

by Kimberly Cates

  Charles scooted out of the chair, feigning bravado, but his sheet slithered to pool upon the floor, setting up a cloud of powder. "I—I... How would I know what your addle-witted friend is babbling about? I've done nothing."

  "Nothing more than cast your inheritance into the Thames. I'll not stand by and watch you fritter away so much as another farthing on gaming, Charles. Mark me. One more penny and you'll spend the next three years barred in a sponging house—"

  "I've not been gaming for over a year now," Charles cried, "not since—"

  "Since you broke your father's heart?" The words were too cruel, and Griffin knew it the minute they were spoken. The boy's face turned ashen.

  It was as if in that instant time had spun backward, turning the gangly youth into the child Griffin had loved. The child Griffin had wanted to comfort, to soothe after suffering Judith Stone's harsh words, after William's iron dictates.

  Griffin turned, raking his fingers through his hair, as the last of his fire-hot temper drained away.

  "Charles. Boy, listen to me," Griffin said, self-loathing making his stomach churn. "I didn't—didn't mean that. What I said about your father. You were the most important thing in the world to him. He would have laid down his life for you."

  Charles's face contorted, and a horrible, sick sound came from his throat. "What do you know about my father? About me? You charged back in here as if you were master of Darkling Moor—raging at the servants and at Grandmama, and at me! You lock yourself up in Papa's study, hatching your plots with Howell standing over you like some accursed guard dog! You pretend to care about Darkling Moor and my father. Pretend to care about me. But the truth is, you don't belong here any more than that street urchin you dragged in with you."

  "Charles," Griffin struggled to find the right words. The boy needed calming, soothing.

  "I loved my father! Loved him! Perhaps I wasn't the most dutiful son. Perhaps I—I did break his heart. But at least I was here to do it! At least I wasn't an ocean away, letting him believe I still hated him even after ten long years had passed!"

  Griffin paled. For a moment they stood silent, the words they had wielded blanketing the room in raw anguish.

  When he could speak Griffin kept his voice low and quiet. "Whatever you think of me, Charles, even if you should choose to hate me, this conversation is not over yet. I need to know what happened here between you and William. I need to know what caused him to drain the dukedom's treasury dry. I didn't come to gloat over my brother's bones, Charles. I came to help."

  "You're too late to help now. Too late. My father is dead, and I..." Charles stopped, slamming his fist against the wall. "Why don't you just sail back to that barbarian plantation of yours and leave me to go to the devil? It is what I deserve! What I—"

  With an oath Charles stalked over and snatched up one of the frock coats lying on the dressing room floor. "I have nothing more to say to you, Uncle Griffin. Now or ever. If anyone comes looking for me, you may tell them I am staying with the marquess of Valmont."

  "Valmont?" Griffin echoed. He tried to think of something, anything, to bring some sense to this madness. "Is he responsible for what has happened? Even before I left England he had led more than one man down the path to ruin. Talk to me, boy, for God's sake!"

  Charles roughly put on his coat. His face held loathing and disillusionment and despair, and he seemed at once young and agonizingly old. "You may be in control of my fortune for the time being," Charles said, his chin jutting up, "but I'll be damned if you can forbid me whatever company I choose to keep! I choose my own friends, I do, and—"

  "Dammit, boy"—Griffin gave a vicious kick to a pile of garish waistcoats—"it looks to me as if you choose your friends with about as much taste as you use in selecting your wardrobe."

  "And you? What about your companions?" Charles flung out. "What about that girl you dragged here who was tricked out in breeches?"

  "You have all you can manage handling your own affairs without concerning yourself with mine. Now talk to me, boy! At once!" Griff took a menacing step toward him.

  Instinctively Charles drew back, stuffing his fists in his voluminous coat pockets. "Why should I waste my breath?" Charles cried. "I can see they've already turned you against me!"

  "They?"

  "That withered-up old man, Howell. And that sanctimonious Tom Southwood! A regular prig he's turned into. Charles's lips were trembling, his body shaking. "I'll not stand for it, Uncle Griffin, not stand for being slandered and falsely charged with no evidence against me! Even felons are told of their crimes before they are dipped in hot tar!"

  "Three weeks hence Tom will return to England. And then"—Griff paused to pin his nephew with a glare—"then, if you have anything to answer for, you will deal with me."

  Charles tried to keep his hands from shaking as the broad shoulders of his uncle disappeared through the doorway. He leaned down and picked up Griffin's discarded letter, eyeing the inked lines as though, by will alone, he could somehow strip away the mystery and reveal whatever lay beneath Tom Southwood's cautious words.

  Could it be that Southwood knew? Had discovered...?

  Charles swallowed hard. His fear almost strangled him as he thought of Griffin's steely-cold eyes and unyielding features.

  How many times in the past year had Charles wished desperately for the return of the bluff, bold uncle who had been his champion as a child? How many times had Charles dreamed of the notorious Lord Griffin breezing into Darkling Moor to sweep him away from the abyss he'd been teetering upon for so long?

  Charles had even begun letters more than once, trying to ask for help, trying to explain... but how did one explain something so dark, so horrible? Something that would be inconceivable to a man of Lord Griffin Stone's ilk?

  In the end, even when Charles had confided in his father, it had only tightened the noose of horror around William Stone's throat as well, snuffing out his life like the flame of a wind-kissed candle.

  He closed his eyes, trying to drive away the image of vine-shrouded ruins tucked deep in the countryside's woodlands. That pile of gray stones felled by time seemed to thrust its arms skyward as if in supplication.

  Nay, it was too late now for his father, for himself. Too late to do anything besides fling himself deeper into the darkness.

  He could only pray that soon it would consume him.

  Chapter 12

  In her dreams someone was tightening a cage about Beau's waist, driving the breath from her lungs and setting them afire. She tried to wriggle away from the bindings, tried to sink more deeply into the heavenly softness beneath her, but something thin and irritating bit into the soft flesh beneath her armpits, a plate of stiff material mashing her breasts and chafing at their tender curves....

  Blood and thunder, what torture device had she fallen prey to? Beau wondered groggily as she came awake, one hand scraping across the scratchy galon trim and hard, faceted gemstones that pressed into her stomach. Was she bound in an Iron maiden? The scavenger's daughter?

  She rolled over, and lumpy, tangled lacings ground into her back. Beau grimaced wryly. No, it was the most modern form of torture—an accursed woman's gown.

  She struggled to open her eyelids. The sunshine streaked through the windows and warmed her cheeks, but the piercing rays were too hot. She dragged one of the feather pillows across her eyes, blocking out the light.

  It had been the very devil of a night! First the scene in Darkling Moor's dining hall. Then there had been the even more devastating moments with Griffin when his sadness had robbed Beau of her defenses. And then, when she had still been stricken with uncertainty, with emotions she had neither desired nor expected, Jack had come. Jack, his jaunty grin vanished, his eyes black with betrayal.

  Surely a night fraught with so much turmoil must have chiseled a millennium or two off of her sentence with the devil. And yet, when it had seemed that even fate could not summon up another misery, there had been the coup de grace.

 
; She had been unable to undress! The lacings that Griffin had managed to fasten with such ease had been beyond the reach of Beau's own fingers. Her arms had almost been fused to her sides by the bodice's tight sleeves. And as if that were not enough, when she'd attempted to catch the end of one of the lacings, she'd tangled them, so now it would take a knife to free them.

  She had struggled for over an hour, swearing, stomping, and finally kicking the bedpost with her bare foot. Her throbbing toes had forced her to admit that her attempts to get free were futile.

  She had considered sneaking into Griffin's room and enlisting his aid until she had realized that she had no idea where his lordship was staying. Saints knew, she could hardly have wandered about the mansion in the darkness, peeking in each door, searching for him.

  Despite a grinding pain in her left side, Beau chuckled into the pillow. It would have been worth a night's purse just to see Lord Griffin's reaction.

  But she feared stumbling into the room of that wizened, nasty-tongued harpy. What would her grace have thought were she to see the girl she had treated so callously looming there above her?

  "Maybe the old witch would think I meant to cut out her tongue," Beau mumbled with sudden satisfaction. "She might fall into apoplexy, or her heart might slam to a stop. Just think of the debt of gratitude Griffin would owe me then."

  Beau giggled. If she were to rid him of that plague, he would most likely kiss her feet.

  But the mere thought of Griffin Stone's sensual lips anywhere upon her body brought a rising tide of heat to Beau's flesh, a tingling sort of breathlessness akin to the sensation of tumbling from the stable's ridgepole.

  A tremor worked through her as she remembered the feel of his hard body against her, the scent of him—fine leather, wild winds, mingled with a sharp tang of danger. His touch had been worlds apart from Jack's desperate kiss, worlds different than anything she'd imagined.

  Griffin had fitted her body to him with a swift mastery that had made her feel fused to his long frame, that had made her long to bury herself further still in the wonder of him. And his mouth... there had been none of the awkward groping the women at Blowsy Nell's spoke of, no sickeningly wet bruising of her lips by his. Rather, he had taken her mouth with a hunger and a skill that had left her starved for more.

  More...

  Beau tightened her fingers upon the downy pillow, hating the ache that stirred in her secret places. She had wanted so much more from Griffin Stone. Wanted to hurl herself into the fires he had lit within her.

  She'd never shied away from risk or from dashing headlong into any adventure she might choose. And she'd been ready—nay, eager—to drown herself in what Griffin had offered her with his mouth, his hands. Never had she desired anything more.

  And she had told him so... all but pleaded...

  If we both want to... want this... then why should we not...

  Her words echoed back to haunt her, flooding her with raw embarrassment. He had put her aside as though she had been a spoiled child wanting to make herself sick upon sweetmeats.

  The thought stung, and yet, even through the waves of humiliation, Beau could remember the expression that had been on Griffin's face. He'd looked at her with such need.

  She'd seen a vast loneliness in those storm-blue eyes that had stolen into her heart and made her want to stomp into Judith Stone's bedchamber and break something over the cursed harpy's head.

  She wanted to go to Griffin, hold him, soothe him.

  Beau swallowed hard. She was sure the mighty Lord Stone would see her actions as pity, and she knew full well it would wound his fierce pride. She knew this because in that, at least, they were much alike. Nay, it would be much better to, say, kidnap his grandmother and sell her off to a band of sailors as a gift for some sultan in Turkey. Just think, she could help Griffin and bring an end to the Ottoman Empire all in one fell swoop!

  Beau grinned, pleased with her imaginings, suddenly eager to arise and greet the day. Perhaps she could do little to solve Griffin's problems, but the one gift she could offer—the one thing that he would not reject or see as a blow to his pride—would be laughter.

  From the first they'd shared a quirky sense of the ridiculous. Helping her out of this predicament would cause him no end of amusement.

  With that she flung the pillow off of her, ready to spring to her feet. Yet the instant her eyes flew open they all but popped out of her head. For looming above her like some spectral phantom was the dowager duchess herself.

  Beau's heart plunged to her toes, but she didn't betray her discomfiture. She merely leveled upon her grace a most frigid stare.

  "Blood and thunder! There is more traffic in this cursed bedchamber than there is in Covent Garden at high noon!"

  The dowager duchess's mouth soured, and something in those pale-lashed eyes built a deeper wariness within Beau.

  "You must excuse my intrusion," Judith Stone said, the warmth in her tones failing to reach her eyes, "but I must confess I've spent a most troubled night."

  Despite herself, Beau grimaced. "It must have been something to do with the phases of the moon. It seems the affliction was incredibly widespread."

  The duchess arched one brow, glaring down her nose in obvious displeasure. "I did not come here to be mocked, Mistress DeBurgh. Nor to be subjected to a tart tongue. Granted, we did not start on a favorable footing. Nor shall I insult your intelligence by denying that I do not want you here in my home."

  "Griffin's home, for as long as he is guardian to his brother's estate," Beau put in.

  The noblewoman's eyes narrowed further still. "Regardless, my dear, I fear that your loyalties to my grandson are most misplaced. Dangerous, in fact. You think me cruel, heartless. I see it in your face. But what can a child like you know about a man who is as deeply flawed as my grandson? What can you know of the pain I have suffered at his hands?"

  Beau's chin jutted upward, her fingers still holding the counterpane snuggled about her shoulders. "Oh, I assure you, I can see exactly how much you have suffered, your grace." She crinkled her nose in disdain. "You think you're a bloody queen, dealing out commands, trampling on any who dare to defy you. But Griffin didn't lie crushed beneath your heel like the rest of the world. He dared to get up and spit in your eye!"

  "Spit in my... you little hussy!" Judith Stone's porcelain-pale cheeks turned purple with outrage. "How dare you!"

  "I'm renowned for having more daring than is considered healthy, your grace. " Beau flung back the coverlet and stood. "It is one of my innumerable faults."

  But instead of the harsh rejoinder Beau expected, Judith Stone gasped, her eyes locked on the somewhat crinkled folds of the silver-tissue gown.

  "Where—where in God's name did you get that?"

  Though Beau did not know why the woman was so agitated, she gripped the other's weakness with an instinct learned in the London streets.

  "The gown?" Beau said, smoothing the elegant fabric. "It was a gift from my lord Stone. Do you not think it lovely?"

  "L-lovely?"

  "It seems it belonged to his mother," Beau said, flouncing the fall of ruffles in a deliberately careless manner.

  "That is impossible. I burned it... burned everything."

  Her words deepened Beau's confusion, but she charged on. "Well, apparently this gown rose from the ashes," Beau said. "It is a garment befitting a great lady. Do you not agree?"

  "Lady..." The woman was almost strangled with rage. "If you are fool enough to think for a moment that you—you would ever defame this family by... by..."

  "By what, your grace?" Beau asked with poisonous sweetness.

  "My grandson would never stoop to marrying so far beneath him! You are a barbarian of a wench, and lord knows how he was saddled with you! A doxy who would parade about naked as a Fleet Street strumpet!"

  "I was wearing a bed sheet," Beau corrected. "And, in all fairness, it was not my fault. I was summoned to dine, and no one had bothered to give me any clothes."

&
nbsp; "Nay, I would imagine my grandson much prefers you without them." An ugly snarl twisted Judith Stone's features. "And it is obvious you've not the wit to deny him! What has he promised you? Silks? Satins? Jewels? Heaven knows he's lavished a king's ransom upon more women than I can count. And after he has taken his fill of them he has thrown them aside with no more thought than he would give a torn neckcloth."

  "He is going to make me a lady," Beau said, hating the older woman for echoing Jack's dire predictions.

  "A lady?" Judith Stone flashed a scathing glance at Beau's disheveled hair, her crumpled gown, her bare toes, visible beneath its hem. "Look at yourself, girl." The duchess grasped Beau's arm, wheeling her toward a small cheval glass in the corner of the room. "God's own hand couldn't mold you into a lady! And as for this supposed link to the Devereaux family, I promise you that if you attempt to foist yourself upon them, they will hurl you out into the street with the rest of the slops."

  Beau winced. The woman's words dredged up all her hidden doubts, all sense of her weaknesses. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, remembering Jack's trip to Devereaux house and their blatant rejection.

  The magic that had transformed Isabeau into a fairy princess the night before vanished. She was no longer the wide-eyed wraith of last night trembling upon the brink of something akin to beauty, but rather the belligerent, flame-haired termagant from whom every man in Blowsy Nell's had fled in fear.

  Judith Stone's voice dropped into low, sneering tones. "You possess not even enough beauty to entice my grandson for a fortnight, Mistress DeBurgh. I promise you. However," she said, considering, "it is possible for you to emerge from this unfortunate incident, shall we say, most profitably. Aye, more so than you'd ever imagined."