A Dangerous Courtship (To Woo an Heiress, Book 3)

by Randall, Lindsay

"They came in search of you?"

  "I don't think so, though I can't prove that. Gad, Garn, but the night was hectic. Fountains, believe it or not, was as busy as any turnpike this night."

  "Go on," said Garn. "I'm listenin'."

  Julian winced at the sting of the salve, then, cussing beneath his breath, slopped another healthy dose of it to his swelling and tender eye. "It all began with a woman. She came looking for a package—one that was to be placed somewhere in the abbey at the height of Midsummer's Eve. Those damnable dogs reached her before I did, but I managed to get her hand in mine and pull her up from their jaws. Then the two of us went tumbling over a ledge. I struck my head during the fall, Garn. Saw stars and the whole lot, then opened my eyes and found I could hear again."

  Garn nodded at that part of the story. "Thank God for women, eh?" he said—and grinned, a sad sort of grin.

  Julian thought of Garn's young bride then. An image of her, of what he supposed she must have looked like, must have been to Garn, flitted through his brain.

  "Aye, my friend," he agreed softly.

  But the image of the bride long dead was soon swallowed by the memory of Veronica thundering into his brain. Just the thought of her, of holding her, kissing her, half aroused Julian. "At least, I think so," he added in a mutter.

  Julian didn't need to have his loins grow tight at mere thoughts of the reckless, headstrong Veronica, he decided violently. So thinking, he delved deeper into the jar of salve and plastered another dollop to his bruised face. The stuff smarted like hell and he told himself he was glad for the burning pain of it.

  Garn raised one blond brow, clearly sensing some inner turmoil within his master—one caused by the lady, no doubt—but of course, the brawny man said nothing.

  Julian scowled, suddenly not liking that he was such an open book for his friend. He endeavored to continue his story.

  "Her coachman and some guide came following after her. Had a devil of a time skirting around them, but we managed it, long enough for her to tell me about the package she was after. Then a short time later what should I see but a lad—an urchin, actually, by the looks of him—coming into the abbey and placing a package in the crumbled stones of a pillar. I intended to question him, but he ran off. Two thugs showed themselves the minute I got the bundle in my hands. They thought to make mincemeat of me, but I rallied back and learned they'd been hired not to get the package, but to mangle the person who reached for it. It seems that whoever hired them did so through a tangled network of lowly miscreants."

  Garn digested this information, acting no more alarmed than if he'd just been informed of the price of chickens on the day's market.

  After a moment of contemplation, he asked, "And the package?"

  Julian settled back in the chair, done with the salve. "It wasn't really a package, but rather a bit of sheepskin with the fleece on it—of the variety your Meg raises—and tied tight with twine."

  Garn's brows lifted at that news, but he said nothing.

  "And here," Julian continued, "is where the tale turns truly ugly, Garn. I pulled back the sheepskin to find a familiar chess piece—from the very set I'd brought home to the earl. One of the horseman, to be exact. Fashioned of that beautiful black ivory and fitted with a gold base. Do you recall how long I took in deciding what type of base should fit to each piece, Garn?"

  "Aye. Too bloody long, m'lord," said Garn. He'd have smiled at the memory if not for the gravity and cruel, hideous reality of what had been that night's end. A dark light flitted through his gaze. "But I thought that chess set was... was lost among the ruins of your father's home, m'lord."

  Julian nodded. "It was. Or should have been," he said. "I remember clearly placing it atop the sideboard that first night home, alongside all of my father's other presents. Everyone else was in the front parlour. I remember because my mother... she—she had just redecorated the room and wished to have me make a toast to my father there. So I left the chess set on the board, boxed and wrapped and tied with that monstrous, ridiculous bow. Do you remember that bow, Garn?"

  "Aye, m'lord, I be rememberin' it You chose it because the earl would laugh at its gaudiness. And you, above all, wanted to see your father laugh that night because you'd been gone so long and missed him so terribly."

  "Yes... yes, that's right," whispered Julian, now vividly caught up in replaying that night in his brain for what must surely be the millionth time, if not more. "Gad, Garn, but that chess set should have burned, melted, disintegrated, like everything else in that house... like everyone else."

  Pain ripped a path through Julian's soul, as it always did when he thought of that grim August night.

  Garn suddenly leaned forward. "Are you saying, m'lord, that whoever laid those explosives did so to get at the chess set?"

  Julian got a grip on his emotions, took a deep breath, then said, "After tonight's revelations, Garn, it seems a likely possibility I shouldn't be ignoring. The diamond tucked inside one of those pieces was—is—worth a bloody fortune. Even more than the vast holdings of the Eve estates."

  "The unholy bastard," Garn snarled, shifting his powerful arms atop the table and leaning forward even more. Darkly he whispered, "I swear to you, m'lord, if I ever find the person who did this, I'll gut him like the swine he is."

  Julian believed him.

  "There's more, Garn," he said. "The horseman in the packet... its base had been worked off, and a note was tucked inside, one demanding the Eve Diamond be revealed before the end of the Summer Season. There was no signature. No note of where to leave any information. 'Tis clear the person who took the set is now minus the diamond... and they must have reason to believe that whoever came for that package at Fountains knows where the diamond is."

  "The woman?"

  "No... I don't think so. I trailed her back to her rented rooms in Ripon and questioned her. She seemed truly clueless as to what the package held, but she did say she was retrieving it for a friend, some 'well-heeled lord' in London. That's why I'm here now, Garn. I'm going to go with her, back to Town, under the guise of her guard. She knows me only as Julian. Thinks I'm some kind of specter turned riverkeep, or some such rot. Whatever coil she's enmeshed herself in via this friend is, as we both know, a dangerous one."

  Garn skewered him with a tight look. "Do you trust her, m'lord?"

  The man's question took Julian by surprise. Did he trust Veronica?

  "She could be leading you into a trap," Garn continued.

  Ah, yes, Julian thought, a perfect trap.

  But it wasn't the type of trap Garn was thinking—it was of a more physical kind. One of desire and need, one the lady could doubtless weave about him with her sheer beauty, innocent charm, and that reckless, ardent abandon she'd displayed beneath the onslaught of his kisses.

  The very notion unsettled Julian more than he cared to admit. He yanked himself away from thinking of Veronica's many enchantments.

  "What I am certain of, Garn, is that she came to Fountains on an errand for another. And the packet she sought contained a piece of the gift I'd last given to my father. It's my belief that whoever sent her to Yorkshire most likely knows something about the blast that killed my family. I intend to trail her to London and enter into her circles. And intend to do all of this not as the seventh Earl of Eve, but as her hired guard."

  Garn didn't even bat an eye at his lordship's wild plan. He simply nodded that understanding nod of his, and then asked, "How can I help, m'lord?"

  Julian had known his manservant would react in such a way. He could forever and always count on Garn. There was no finer friend who walked the earth, Julian knew.

  "I need you to go to London as well. I'll need a runner of information."

  "Aye. I'll be that man, m'lord. Just tell me where and how."

  "Go to my flat in St. James Place. My solicitor, Crandall, has a key. Tell Crandall I've returned to Town, get the funds you need from him. Tell him I'll contact him when I get to London. You wait for me at the flat. I wil
l arrive there as soon as I can."

  "Aye. Consider it done."

  Julian nodded, realizing that he had no more time to spend in the cottage. He had a twenty-minute ride back to the village. And Veronica was waiting—or at least she'd better be.

  "M'lord?" said Garn, as Julian made ready to leave. "You haven't told me the woman's name, or even where she resides."

  "Her name is Veronica. Lady Veronica. That's all I know." He thought a minute, remembering how she had shuddered and turned away when he'd first touched her. Then he added, "No, there's one other thing I know about her. She's been abused, Garn. In some way, she's been hurt by someone."

  Garn's blue eyes met Julian's black ones. So the woman was a lady, no less, and had been hurt by some fiend. The look in Garn's face registered those facts. He'd known a like lady at one time... had even married her, in fact, and laid her down in her grave, to boot.

  Julian bade the man good-bye, then headed out of the cottage to his mount. He angled his body up and on to the saddle, reined the stallion about, and then headed back to Ripon and the coaching inn. Back to Veronica of the violet eyes, bewitching smile, soft curves... and the penchant to get out from under the thumb of her hired man.

  Julian was anxious to be near her again, to smell deeply of her rich, heady scent Too, there was much he wished to learn about Veronica, about the soul inside of her, about why she'd feared he would strike her when they'd first met... and about why a lady such as herself seemed so eager to get away from her coachman.

  Not even a full hour had passed since he'd seen her last Odd, but it felt like a lifetime.

  Julian was glad when his horse moved into an even fester lope.

  * * *

  Garn closed the door of the cottage once he'd seen his master and good friend had gotten safely on his way back to the village.

  When he turned, he found Wil standing at the threshold beside the bedroom opposite Meg's.

  "I heard voices," the young man said.

  Garn sized up the youth, who'd grown tall as a post in what seemed to him an amazing short period of time. His eyes were green. Like Annie's. His mouth was wide and mobile, and this, too, Garn knew to have been bequeathed to him by the mother the boy had never known. His hair—a riot of golden reddish curls—was also reminiscent of the woman Garn had loved so fiercely and lost too soon.

  But the young man's stance, his attitude, his temper, and his mistrust of the world at large, even his strong, finely muscled body, were wholly his father's.

  And that, damn it all, was what Garn hated most—the father he now saw mirrored in the boy he'd tried to love but never quite could.

  "'Tis nothin' to worry yourself over, Wil. Go back to bed."

  "It was the Earl of Eve who was here."

  Garn hooked a look at him. "Aye, and so it was. What of it, boy?"

  Wil defiantly shoved back a splay of curls spilling over his brow. "I thought he'd gone to Fountains to die," he said. "I thought you never expected to see him again."

  Garn never minced words, and he did not do so now. "Aye," he said, nodding once. "I'd expected just that. But he's healed now and has no more need of those ruins."

  "He's going back to London?"

  "I think you know the answer to that, boy. I think, in fact, you heard everything."

  A frown knit the young man's brow. "So you're going, too?"

  "Aye. I'm going."

  "And won't be returning here any time soon." It was a statement, not a question—and an accusatory one at that.

  "I'll be back when I'm back," Garn said. "You're not to be leaving here and running away to London, as you did last August, you hear?"

  "I didn't run away," Wil shot back. "I went there to see the father who has no time for me."

  "The open road is no place for a boy alone, and you could have been killed in that explosion."

  "But I wasn't," Wil snapped. "And if not for me, you'd have never found your way to his lordship in time to carry him out of that burning house. Because of me, he was saved from the flames."

  Garn studied the young man. "Is there anything else you might have saved from those flames, boy?" he asked quietly.

  Wil's green eyes narrowed. "You calling me a thief?"

  "I'm asking you a question."

  "If you had ever bothered to spend time with me, you wouldn't have to ask me anything. You'd know everything there was to know," he said and the animosity in his tone was unmistakable.

  "Go on to bed, Wil. Think long and hard about whether there is something you wish to tell me," he said.

  Garn leaned down to blow out the candle stub atop the table. Suddenly, the room was swallowed in darkness.

  "Lately I've done nothing but think," said Wil, who turned back into his room and closed the door behind him.

  Garn stood in the dark stillness, listening to the sounds of Annie's son moving away from him.

  Chapter 9

  Veronica paced the confines of her rented chamber, her strides taking on a decidedly agitated tempo as she thought again of what Julian had proposed—no, ordered—her to do: accept him as her personal guard, inform her coachman he'd be returning to London with them, and leave a lamp lit for him.

  Listening with irritation to the sounds of her abigail asleep and snoring softly in the connecting room, Veronica began to grow truly furious. Her personal guard indeed! Gad, that's exactly what she did not need. She had enough bother with the many watchdogs her father had overseeing her.

  More to the point, however, was the fact that Julian's mere presence threw Veronica's emotions into a whirlwind. She had always kept her emotions tightly reined and her deepest feelings hidden, but this evening had proved to be the most emotionally charged one of her life—and all because of Julian. It was altogether too amazing to believe they'd actually met only a mere few hours ago. If this was what he could stir to life in her in such a short span of time, she could only imagine the outcome of having him near her day in and day out. The long journey back to London alone would doubtless find her a mass of quivering nerve ends, Veronica suspected.

  For the life of her she could not puzzle out why Julian had so quickly jumped into her troubles concerning the packet. Certainly he'd met with some foul miscreants over the thing and been beaten soundly—but should not that have been incentive enough for him to want nothing further to do with her or the package? Why choose to get more deeply involved when he could simply not bother at all? And why, of all things, take the packet with him when it had been because of the blasted thing that he'd nearly been beaten to death? None of this made sense to Veronica.

  As the minutes dragged past she became more and more agitated until, at last, there came a loud knock on the door.

  Veronica whipped her attention to it like lead shooting from a gun barrel.

  "Yes?" she called, thinking it was Julian, hoping it was Julian, then hoping it wasn't Julian, and all the while wondering whether or not she would open the door.

  "I've made one last check on the cattle, m'lady. All is in ready to leave at dawn."

  Shelton. Not Julian. For some absurd reason Veronica felt her heart sink a bit. Earlier, her coachman had dogged her way up the steps to her rented chambers, ascertaining for himself that she would indeed go straight to her rooms. Veronica had to admit she was glad, at once, for Shelton's shadow, for at that particular hour with all the revelers in the inn, and after having viewed Julian's beaten face, she'd been afraid to head up the stairs without company.

  Thinking of all that, she replied, "Thank you, Shelton."

  "Are settled for the night, m'lady?"

  Veronica knew what her coachman was really inquiring was whether or not he could trust her to stay in her rooms and not go gadding off about the countryside.

  "I am," she called back, wondering if the man would take it into his head to play sentinel at her door the whole night through.

  She hoped not. If he did, he'd doubtless be rubbing elbows with Julian. The thought unsettled her further.
>
  "Very well, m'lady. I'll be turning in for the night myself then."

  He did not bid her a good night, nor she him. She heard the sounds of his heavy footfalls heading away; then she could hear nothing but the merriment from the lane outside and the taproom below.

  And her maid's snores, of course. How the girl could so easily fall asleep, quick as a wink, was beyond Veronica.

  When she'd informed Nettie they'd be leaving for London at dawn, the girl had immediately thrown herself into a frenzy of packing and preparing for the journey. Then she'd laid out her lady's traveling garments, plus night clothes and a light dressing gown. That done, she'd inquired, almost too eagerly, whether or not Veronica would be retiring any time soon.

  "No," Veronica had said, adding that she could see to her own self this night. Then she'd hurried Nettie off to bed in the adjoining chamber, where the maid had promptly fallen asleep the moment her brown-haired head pressed down atop the pillow.

  Veronica had since decided only the truly innocent could sleep so soundly. She, herself, felt as though she were waiting to be taken to the guillotine.

  And by none other than the dangerous stranger she'd unearthed from Fountains.

  Veronica remembered again Julian's order for her to leave a lamp lit for him.

  In a fit of rebelliousness, Veronica doused the lamps of the chamber, casting herself into complete darkness. It appeared that the drapes covering the windows of the chamber were as thick as any tapestry that must have once adorned the inside walls of Fountains.

  There, she thought, that ought to serve him. He won't know which chamber is mine. He will bang about all the night, and with any luck I won't have to see him until morning.

  Feeling somewhat better, though not much, Veronica sat down on the huge bed, telling herself she would go to sleep and simply forget about the man she'd met at the abbey... forget about his kisses, his touch, and—

  "Drat and blast," she said aloud into the thick darkness. Who was she trying to fool?

  The mere memory of Julian's touches, the feel of his mouth on hers, was so firmly etched into her brain that she'd not be forgetting him at all.