A small hiss emanated from the lamp in her hand. “I see,” she whispered, whatever she’d wanted to say to David now lost in her hurt. “It didn’t take him long, did it?”
Absently, she picked up a piece of bread crust from the floor. And started to turn when a distinct noise coming from somewhere below in the cellar jerked her around. Her hand went to her pocket before she remembered the derringer was no longer in her possession. She no longer had her knife, either.
Holding the lamp above her head, she walked through the kitchen to another room where gleaming pots and pans were stored. Silver moonlight speared the floor through an upper stained-glass fanlight set high in the wall. “Mrs. Gibson?” she called.
She walked to the door leading into the cellar, then edged it open. Zeus shot between her legs, tail in the air as he disappeared around the corner. Biting her lip to stifle a treacherous gasp, Victoria shut the door, twisted the key in the lock, and leaned back against the jamb. A chilly draft seeped beneath the door to wrap around her ankles, and she jumped away, glaring at the door as if icy fingers had just touched her flesh. She didn’t like that Zeus had scared the wits out of her.
She hurried out of the kitchen with the realization that David’s absence weighed on her heart and mind heavy enough that she was beginning to fear the shadows in her own beloved house. Without pausing on the main floor, she hurried up the second set of stairs, until she stopped in front of Nathanial’s room.
Her hand paused on the latch, and just when her mind caught that the door was ajar, it suddenly swung wide.
“Mother Mary and Joseph!” Her breathing labored and rapid, she confronted David. “You scared the wits out of me.”
Still wearing his long coat, he stepped into the hallway, bringing with him the chill clinging to the dark wool. “Why are you shaking?”
Victoria’s wide eyes swept over him. The realization that his presence eased her mind troubled her as much as it relieved her that he was safe. “I thought you were…” She shook her head to clear the cobwebs. “An intruder.”
No sconce lit the hallway, and she could not read his eyes as he closed the door. “I wasn’t expecting to find anyone stirring,” he said. “I didn’t mean to awaken you.”
A stillness settled over them, and, as her alarm subsided, she became aware of the faint essence of expensive French perfume. “What happened between you and Mr. Rockwell?” she forced herself to ask.
“We had a divergence of opinion.” He walked to his room.
She followed him. “If it is about this case, I should know.”
Turning in the doorway at the end of the corridor, he looked at her, then dropped his gaze to her feet. “You aren’t wearing slippers, Meg.”
She glanced at her toes, as if she didn’t already know that fact. She wore heavy woolen stockings beneath her night shift.
“Tell me about Mr. Gibson,” he asked her before she could respond. “The boy Robbie’s father?”
It was an odd question in the middle of the night, and she drew her brows into a frown. “He used to hire the laborers for the fields and oversaw carpenters when we needed repair work done on the outer dwellings.”
“Does he work for Stillings?”
“Not everyone who works for Stillings is bad. Some of the men do so to put food on the table.”
He laughed. “So does hard work.”
“Mr. Gibson doesn’t work for Stillings. He still comes here periodically to ensure the buildings are in good repair.”
“Did he ever do work at the church?”
“Yes, I believe he did so frequently.”
Behind David, firelight shifted the shadows. She had instructed Moira earlier to light a fire in the hearth and see that the bed was turned down. Her line of sight included a glimpse of the four-poster bed and the edge of a tester canopy.
“Dare I assume you prepared my room for me tonight?”
“You may not.” She met his scrutiny. “And if you are asking whether I was worried about your welfare, the answer is also no.”
His mouth crooked a fraction. “That’s not what I was asking, but you answered my question anyway.” He let his eyes roam her face in that worrisome way that warned her he was very adept at reading people. “You’re becoming less skilled at lying.” He entered his bedroom and tossed his coat across a plush armchair. “I believe that is a positive step in the right direction.”
Again, that wicked grin as he seated himself on the edge of his bed to tug off his boots, and Victoria felt a familiar quickness hasten her heartbeat as he looked up. “It isn’t as important that I convince you that you are wrong, as it is that you try to convince yourself that you are right. I have the advantage of knowing the truth.”
“Now you’re a seer?”
“I passed your maid before coming upstairs. She told me.” Working his collar loose, he walked past her into his dressing room. “Honesty is a potent medicine to swallow, Meg.”
Honesty indeed, she scoffed. He was enjoying needling her for some reason. “What happened between you and Mr. Rockwell?” She stood outside the dressing room.
“He convinced me that I should not give Kinley an excuse to seize you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Kinley is a Sassenach pig. More so than I remember. I’m postponing my trip to London.” David returned to the doorway, his shirt unbuttoned and hanging loose as he worked a cuff on his sleeve in a way that told her something else was bothering him. “Kinley is proficient at mopping up before the game is over,” he said after a moment. “There are some things I’m not ready to relinquish.”
Victoria had never seen David like this. But all she could grab on to was the realization that he wasn’t taking Nathanial away. “Because you are a patient man?”
His eyes smiled into hers. “Patience caught the nimble hare.” He set his silver cuff links on a shelf next to his shoulder.
“To be redheaded is better than to be without a head. I believe that proverb belongs to the Irish.”
“You don’t have red hair, Meg. Anywhere that I can remember.”
Victoria gasped and followed him into the dressing room. “Since we are in a state of grace and candor here, maybe you should tell your son the truth about your title. He thinks his father owns a castle in Scotland, for heaven’s sake.”
David regarded her with an implacable expression. “You told him about us?”
“He asked. I told him the truth. As much as I could.” She scuffed a toe against the leg of a chair. “I believe that he’s happy with the development.”
Reaching across her shoulder, he picked a robe off the brass peg on the wall. “Do try not to let it get your spirits down, Meg.”
“Don’t call me that name.” She would rather die than have her son know her by that name. “Margaret Faraday is not a model of womanhood anyone would find to have attractive attributes.”
For a moment, she thought David hadn’t heard her, not to come back with a rejoinder. “You know nothing of the inclinations of men to be so sure of that opinion, love.”
She opened her mouth to reply, only to find she was experiencing a heart flutter in her chest. Looping the belt across his waist, he padded past her. “Actually only part of the castle remains. A turret, to be exact, among a pile of stones. But to a nine-year-old who dreams of knights and sword fights, those stones were easily castle walls.”
“Oh, please, David.” She followed on his heels. “You’re not going to tell me you are also a baron?”
For a moment, it looked like he would tell her nothing. But David, being nothing less than courageous, turned. “Once upon a time, I was awarded a life peerage for service to my country.”
Folding her arms, she tapped her foot. “Of course you were.”
“It isn’t something people know about me.”
“I see.” Silently condemning him with her eyes, she smiled. “I see that the more I learn about you, the more I realize you are an even bigger liar than I am.”
“Perhaps.” He leaned an arm on the bedpost. “But if you don’t leave my room, I’ll give you an excuse to call me worse.”
“Then we seem to be at an impasse.” Her heart beating a wild tattoo against her ribs, she took a step nearer. “Because you are standing in my way.”
His gaze flashed over her in warning. They both knew she could have walked around him. “Are you suddenly without speech, my lord baron?” Her voice was a whisper.
“Just…” His mouth grinned. “Not restrained, love.”
Every sense leaped as if a flame had been put to her flesh, not just from his heat, but from the look in his eyes, the brush of his robe against hers, every illicit stroke of cloth against cloth, and she burned from what lay beneath the caress of fabric.
Then he stepped to the side, his hands palms out. Chin high, she hesitated, then strode past him in a billowing cloud of ivory and shut the door firmly behind her.
David waited until he heard Meg’s door shut before he allowed himself to breathe again. Guilt had towed his thoughts all these years. But it wasn’t guilt he was feeling now.
“Aye.” He laughed and, in a moment of perfect clarity, glared at the ceiling, knowing someone upstairs surely mocked his sanity. “There is a fool born every minute and every one of them Irish.”
Chapter 16
“On your guard, Donally!”
David parried Rockwell’s lunge, testing the other’s weapon, and waiting for an opening to attack. Ian’s riposte drove David back two steps, their clicking foils a driving force in the studio as both men crossed the floor a second time. A leather vest covered David’s white shirt. Beneath his mask, sweat trickled from his brow, and he welcomed the damp breeze as he passed an opened window overlooking the valley below. Outside the temperatures had risen and a steady drizzle of rain wiped away the last evidence of snow.
But the weather mattered little when he intended to find his entertainment inside today. Rockwell proved to be a worthy sparring opponent, which made baiting him all the more enjoyable. “You are bloodthirsty this morning.” David countered the younger man’s attack, his strength extending into the blade as he defeated Rockwell’s efforts to score a single point.
“And you are not?”
Ian Rockwell, for all of his self-perceived expertise, was about to get his bloody clock cleaned. “Control, Rockwell.”
Then as if on cue, both men switched their foils to their left hands and began the exercise all over again. The sound of steel sliding against steel followed. What had begun as a fencing match quickly degenerated into a sword fight. Rockwell ducked beneath David’s blade, his breath harsh behind his mask.
“Not bad, Donally. But you still won’t win.”
David laughed. “I don’t have to win to beat you. I only have to stop you from gaining a point.”
Foils clicking, they went around the room two more times, until Rockwell finally bent over his knees and ended the drill. “I think…we’ve tortured each other enough.” He breathed the words. “I call it a draw.”
David waggled the foil tip in front of his adversary’s nose, giving him no such satisfaction. “In your bloody dreams, Rockwell.”
“Then strike your point,” Ian rasped.
Despite his want to thrust the tip of his blunted foil into Rockwell’s chest, despite having overslept the sunrise by an ample two hours this rainy morning, and leaving that day’s tasks undone, David was feeling relatively sanguine for all that weighed on his mind. He had decided last night he wasn’t playing anyone else’s games. Let Rockwell know what it felt like to be toyed with and baited.
“I know what you’re bloody doing.” Ian swung his foil to knock aside David’s and missed, as David’s reflexes were still faster. “So there is no need for you to waste your time in trying to make me lose my temper. Strike the bloody point or draw.”
David reached a hand to remove his mask, and found himself staring over Rockwell’s shoulder. The sight froze his movement. His pulse thumped in a quicker pace to the vision of his wife and son, standing beside the potted fig tree at the back of the room. Her hands resting on the boy’s shoulders, a halting movement to her chin betrayed her calm and mirrored his racing senses. For an instant, they all seemed caught by the other’s gaze. Whatever irritation he felt toward Rockwell dissipated. The sun could have been shining for all the warmth that suddenly infused him.
“I hope we aren’t intruding,” she said.
A lock of damp hair fell over his brow as he finished removing the mask and tucked it beneath his arm. “You’re not,” he said, his eyes moving to his son’s.
Nathanial, who had never exhibited an ounce of shyness in front of him, turned his attention to the scuffed toe of one shoe.
“Nathanial heard the click of foils,” Meg said. “He wasn’t sure if it was all right to watch.”
“Master Nate—” Rockwell presented them both with a debonair bow. “You have just witnessed the two most excellent swordsmen in all of England spar to a stalemate.”
Inwardly, David groaned and might have commented had his son’s eyes not flickered with interest. A smile tilted Meg’s mouth. “Indeed,” she said. “Who am I to challenge a man’s opinion of himself?”
Rockwell observed her. “You’ve held a foil then, my lady?”
“Mother knows how to handle a blade,” Nathanial interjected. “Last year, she whacked Cousin Nellis’s in half.”
David cocked a brow at the same time Rockwell cleared his throat and said, “That must have been interesting.”
“He was a poor sport about it, too.” Nathanial tugged at his mother’s sleeve. “Wasn’t he? He never sparred with you again.”
“Cousin Nellis was wise,” she said pleasantly.
Softly amused, David met Meg’s gaze. What a far less pleasant meeting I might have had with Nellis had he succeeded in touching you, the unspoken thought touched his eyes. “Wise, indeed,” he said.
On that note, Ian returned his foil to its place on the wall and excused himself, leaving David alone with Meg and Nathanial.
A flush colored her cheeks, and for the briefest flicker he saw she was afraid of him. Not of him, he realized, but of losing her son to him.
But he should have known she wouldn’t flinch from any challenge or duty, including facing him. “Your father is very adept with his sword.” Meg smiled at her son in that brilliant, arresting way that took his breath, but her eyes were filled with something else entirely different when she looked at David. A mother’s protectiveness, yes, but also a compassion for him he didn’t expect to see from her. “I have work to do,” she said, bending down to touch her lips to Nathanial’s hair. “Will you be all right here?”
Nathanial nodded at his feet, and David wasn’t certain if that was a yes, a no, or even a maybe, but at least he wasn’t running out of the room.
“I’ll be in the orangery if you need me,” she said, and David suspected she was speaking to him. “For anything.”
“Mother?” Nathanial ran to stop her at the door. “Don’t you want to stay with us?”
She rippled his dark head, and without looking at David said, “Not unless you want to help me clean the orangery later, Squirrel.” Meg walked out of the room.
His son looked over his shoulder at David—still standing in the middle of the floor, holding his foil and mask beneath his arm. And for a man who had been so sure of himself five minutes ago, he was surprised to feel a flutter in his stomach. They had spent two weeks in each other’s company, but this was the first time they’d ever been alone as father and son.
“I should have been here for you sooner, Nathanial.”
The boy shrugged. “Mother told me it wasn’t your fault. She said you weren’t going to go to London without me.”
“No.” Looking into his boy’s eyes was like looking at Meg. “So you want to duel with this Ethan Birmingham, do you?”
Again, he shrugged. “He goes to school at Winchester and takes fencing lessons from t
he best master in all England.”
“So he says.” David grinned. “Have you learned how to hold a dueling sword?”
Nathanial’s eyes brightened. “Only blunted foils. Mother thinks I’ll cut myself.”
“She’s right. There is a lot more to mastering swordplay than the desire to best Ethan Birmingham. You have to know how to wield a blade and to do so without hurting yourself.”
“Are you a master?”
A slow smile touched his lips. “That I am, son.”
An hour after leaving Nathanial with David, Victoria quit trying to keep herself occupied in the orangery. She cast aside her gloves and returned to the studio, for there was no accounting a mother’s desire to reassure herself all was well with her only child.
She pressed her ear to the door. Listening to the rumble of male voices, she felt a skein of warmth. She heard her son laugh in response to something David said. Then all grew quiet. Edging open the door, she looked inside.
David’s back was to her as he walked his son through what resembled a strange dance—she recognized the kata he had once taught her. A breeze pulled at his dark hair. He wore no shoes. He’d changed out of his clothes into something consisting of a long white-sashed robe with scarlet underneath. Mirroring his father’s movements, minus the sword, Nathanial held what looked like a peg leg, his profile intent, his concentration fierce, his movements precise as David spoke each of the steps aloud.
Neither of them saw her at the door.
The desire to watch, even to take part, brought her up short, and she eased the door closed. They didn’t need her in there. She held a hand to her side. Her wound was not yet healed, but the ache she felt had nothing to do with her ribs.
Victoria grabbed her cloak and asked Mr. Rockwell to take her to the cottage. Sir Henry was asleep when she knocked on his bedroom door an hour later and Esma was upstairs helping Bethany sew her new gown.
Victoria left the cottage, and for the first time in days, lost herself to her work. She didn’t hear the door into the root cellar open.
“They’ve been up at the house for three hours,” Sir Henry said.
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