By Love Unveiled

by Deborah Martin

  “This way, sweetling,” he said urgently, lacing his fingers through hers and leading her to the thick fur rug that lay by the hearth in the midst of the spacious library. In a state of dazed need, she let him guide her.

  He knelt and pulled her down beside him, then began with great impatience to undo the ties of his shirt. She watched spellbound as inch after inch of dark, hairy chest revealed itself. Good Lord, but he was thickly muscled. She wanted to touch him, to run her fingers over every part.

  His hands had just moved to his breeches, eliciting a shocked gasp from her, when a knock at the door sounded. He stilled his movements. She blushed and he frowned. Neither said a word. At their continued silence, the knock sounded again.

  His frown deepened. “I’ll be with you presently,” he barked out and reached once again for Marianne.

  “My lord, it won’t wait,” urged a voice Marianne recognized as William’s.

  “If you value your life, it will,” Garett growled, his fingers moving swiftly to the ties of Marianne’s skirt.

  But for Marianne, that knock was a sign from God, reminding her that this wasn’t right. “No,” she whispered, pushing Garett’s hands away.

  “My lord, I really must speak with you,” William urged beyond the door, though Marianne could tell he spoke with great trepidation.

  With an oath, Garett stood. “Don’t move,” he commanded her in a low voice, then strode for the door.

  She fumbled with her gown, desperately trying to cover herself before Garett reached the door. But as he neared it she heard another voice that made her increase her efforts with something akin to panic. Her aunt’s.

  “I told you to wait downstairs,” William snapped.

  “I wanted to see him now, not a century from now,” Aunt Tamara retorted.

  Before Garett could even reach for the door handle, the door burst open and Aunt Tamara marched into the room.

  “Milord, I’ve come to protest that—” She stopped short at the sight of Marianne kneeling in the midst of the rug, her scarf lost who knew where, her gown loose about her waist and barely covering her, and one hand held guiltily to her throat.

  Shame washed hotly over Marianne. She glanced at Garett to see if he, too, felt embarrassed beyond all countenance, but his face was expressionless, though a muscle worked in his jaw.

  “What’s she doing here, Will?” Garett’s gaze coldly assessed Aunt Tamara. The calm in his voice and his unashamed manner told Marianne volumes. He was a nobleman for whom dalliances with maidens of lower class weren’t unusual. For him, their encounter had been a mere trifle, nothing to destroy his self-assurance.

  But damn it, she wasn’t a tavern wench whom he could tumble at will! A lump of anger formed in her throat as she rose from the rug.

  Aunt Tamara remained shocked into silence until she recognized the hurt in Marianne’s expression. Then Aunt Tamara turned on the earl, her entire body quivering with rage.

  “Will told me some barbarous story about your suspicions. You claim my niece is a spy for this Tearle creature, is that it? You say that’s why you must keep her here.” She flashed a disparaging glance William’s way. “A pox on that! I see your true intentions. That foolish tale was but a ruse to keep me from her while you took your pleasure!”

  Aunt Tamara glared at Garett, daring him to deny her accusations.

  Swiftly, William stepped forward, placing his hand on her arm. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Tamara. I didn’t dream—”

  She pushed his hand away. “I told you this would come of it. I told you he’d ruin her.”

  It was Marianne’s turn to be alarmed. Not for a moment did she wish her aunt to believe she’d given herself completely to Garett. “Nothing happened,” Marianne asserted, moving a few steps toward her aunt. “He didn’t… I mean…”

  “What your niece is so eloquently trying to say,” Garett bit out, “is that you interfered before I could ‘ravish’ her.”

  “But something did happen,” Aunt Tamara said, gesturing to the rug.

  “Perhaps,” Garett conceded. “Your niece is old enough to choose a lover if she wishes.”

  Marianne glared at him. How dare he imply that she would take him for a lover! If he hadn’t been so… so… seductive she would never have so much as let him touch her.

  She opened her mouth to retort, but he went on, oblivious to her anger. “I warn you, Tamara. What happens between me and Mina is no longer your affair. Until she—or you—tells me who she is and why my uncle knew her and her parents, I intend to keep her here. She’s made her bed and now she must lie in it. And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.”

  Aunt Tamara gaped at him, but her incredulity and outrage were nothing to Marianne’s.

  With coldness seeping through her bones, Marianne spoke in the most distant, ladylike voice she could muster. “I didn’t choose you for a lover, my lord, so disabuse yourself of that notion. I certainly didn’t choose to be your prisoner, nor to be accosted and mauled simply because I was here. You are the one who’s made my bed, which is why I won’t lie in it.”

  His eyes narrowed on her as she stood there, every limb quivering with anger.

  “Mauled you, did he?” Aunt Tamara broke in. “Well, it won’t happen again. Come, Mina.” She turned to the door. “This time we’re leaving Lydgate, and the sooner the better, I say.”

  Garett stepped forward to place himself between Aunt Tamara and Marianne. “You may leave whenever you wish, Tamara,” he said with quiet authority, “but your niece stays here.”

  Marianne glanced at her aunt, whose fury was palpable.

  “You’re a runagate, milord, despite your great title,” she snapped. “But you shan’t have your way. Not this time, by my faith. I’ll go to the constable first. I’ll tell him what you intend to do. I’ll trumpet your crimes about the town until—”

  “You won’t do any such thing,” Marianne said sharply. The last thing either of them needed was to involve the constable. If pressed, he wouldn’t dare take their side against the earl. He might even decide it was safer to reveal Marianne’s identity than risk Aunt Tamara’s forcing the issue.

  Aunt Tamara looked at her niece in surprise. “Don’t you want him to release you?”

  “Of course. But gypsies aren’t generally loved in Lydgate,” she said pointedly, hoping her aunt would realize how dangerous it was to threaten Garett. Although the townspeople had given Marianne safe harbor, they might not be so eager to champion her if it meant incurring the earl’s wrath.

  When comprehension showed in her aunt’s eyes, Marianne felt a measure of relief. “The constable won’t listen to a gypsy. He might even expel you if he feels you’re a troublemaker. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  “No, love, you wouldn’t,” William interjected, obviously alarmed by the turn the conversation was taking.

  “Let her go to the constable, Will,” Garett remarked. “Let her see how much good it does. Then again, perhaps I should go—”

  “No!” Marianne cried. At Garett’s grim smile, she flashed her aunt a warning glance. “No one’s going to the constable, especially not you, Aunt Tamara.”

  Aunt Tamara’s mouth snapped shut, but her expression showed she didn’t like being made to listen to reason. “I can’t permit him to force himself on you.”

  “He didn’t.” A slow blush suffused Marianne’s face. “You can trust me on that.” She couldn’t let her aunt believe a lie, or Aunt Tamara would challenge the earl until she forced him to act. Marianne didn’t even want to consider what Garett might do then.

  Aunt Tamara, never one to submit graciously to circumstances, muttered, “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I. But if his lordship”—Marianne laced the word with sarcasm as she cast a glance his way—“if his lordship can refrain from his lascivious attentions, I suppose you and I can endure this arrangement until I demonstrate I am no more a lackey of Sir Pitney’s than is William.”

  Garett stoo
d there with his arms folded across his half-bared chest, his eyes boring into Marianne’s. His cold half smile made it clear his anger hadn’t entirely waned. “I’m more than willing to do whatever Mina wishes.” He let his eyes rest for a brief moment on her bodice, which hung shamelessly low.

  Marianne jerked her gaze from his. Curse the man. He was remembering the wanton way she’d returned his “lascivious attentions.”

  “I’d rather you did as I wish and not as my niece wishes,” Aunt Tamara said, showing she, too, lacked confidence that Marianne could resist Garett’s attempts at seduction.

  “Your niece can take care of herself,” Marianne snapped. “Don’t worry. His lordship may think confining me will intimidate me into confessing imaginary crimes, but time will prove my innocence. If he insists on keeping me here, I’m willing to give him that time.”

  And without losing my virtue, she told herself firmly. She would prove Aunt Tamara and Garett wrong about her ability to protect it.

  Next time he attempted to seduce her, he would find it not nearly so easy. After today, she wouldn’t be so gullible and foolish as to let him touch her.

  “Then we’re agreed?” William said tactfully, keeping a cautious eye on both his master and the two women.

  The stony silence in the room was his only answer.

  Chapter Eleven

  Stone walls do not a prison make,

  Nor iron bars a cage;

  Minds innocent and quiet take

  That for an hermitage.

  —Richard Lovelace,

  “To Althea from Prison”

  Two weeks later, Marianne sat shaded by an apple tree in the garden, her slippered feet tucked beneath her and her muslin skirts spread out on the grass. The volume of Love’s Labors Lost lay open in her lap. Idly she glanced at the burly man who stood a few feet away, pretending not to guard her. Garett certainly knew how to choose his lackeys. This one had served with the earl in Spain and was completely loyal to his master. She flashed him a smile, but he ignored her.

  With a sigh, she closed her book. Reading Shakespeare’s play merely depressed her. Why hadn’t she ever noticed its somber notes before? As a character said morosely in the play’s final scene, “Our wooing doth not end like an old play: Jack hath not Gill.”

  That was certainly true. In the time since Garett had taken her prisoner, she’d expected more attempts at seduction, but he’d become nothing but her jailor since that day in the library.

  Meanwhile, the wounded soldier had died despite her attempts to save him. He’d done it without saying another word, which was both a blessing and a curse. Although he hadn’t revealed her identity, he also hadn’t exonerated her of being Sir Pitney’s spy. It made her despair.

  His death seemed to have affected Garett, too, who’d become even more distant. At times he ignored her. At other times, his grim manner and intense scrutiny of her disturbed her deeply.

  She stared forlornly across the garden. These days Garett was utterly single-minded, obsessed with his purpose. When he did speak to her, it was to tell her, oddly enough, about improvements to the estate or to ask her opinion in some matter of housekeeping. He kept the conversation polite and innocuous. But the ever-present Sir Pitney lay between them.

  And every day began with the one question she wouldn’t answer: “Who are you really?” She wanted to retort with the same question, for she truly didn’t know who he was, either. Was he a calculating manipulator who’d betrayed her father and cost him his life? Was he a heartless, debauched Royalist who’d cavorted with the king in France? Or was he the winsome boy of her youthful imagination?

  One thing she knew for certain. He turned her body into a raging inferno of emotion whenever he gave her his dark, penetrating stare. Even now, the memory of his stirring kisses made her tremble all over and an unfamiliar ache start up in her breasts where he’d caressed her. She didn’t understand it. Nothing had prepared her for such a violence of feeling.

  Her mother had once tried to describe the pleasures to be found with a man. But she’d spoken in such vague generalities that Marianne hadn’t been able to relate any of the descriptions to her own experience.

  Thanks to her study of medical books and her experience with healing, Marianne knew, of course, what a man and a woman did together in the privacy of their chambers. But she’d never given the act much thought, for it had sounded messy and shameful and somehow odd.

  She gave it a great deal of thought these days. All the time. Day and night. She often found herself wondering what it would be like to have Garett’s body cover hers, to feel his magical hands touching her private places, to have his demanding lips move lower to…

  “Fie!” she said aloud. She’d vowed not to let him seduce her, yet here she was, doing the seducing for him! How could her mind have such trouble remembering who he was whenever her body started remembering how he’d touched her?

  Not that she didn’t have enough reminders of the role he might have played in her father’s imprisonment. Aunt Tamara reminded her often enough during the daily visits Garett allowed them.

  Yet somehow everything Marianne believed true when she was away from Garett disappeared when she was with him. He could be cold, but she’d never seen him violent or deceptive. To his tenants and servants, he was an authoritative but understanding master. Even to the soldier, he’d shown glimmers of compassion, especially in the man’s dying hours, when Garett had fetched a minister for him.

  Still, how could she trust him when she knew the depths of his hatred for Sir Pitney? There was no way of telling how far he might have gone to regain Falkham House and thus thwart his uncle.

  She shook her head. This endless dithering would get her nowhere. She wasn’t going to sit in the sunshine on such a beautiful day and let him control her thoughts. Bad enough that at present he seemed to control her future.

  So she rose, dusted off her skirts, and headed back toward the house with the volume of Shakespeare tucked under her arm.

  Then she heard horse’s hooves approaching. She swung around, expecting to see Garett. Instead, an unfamiliar man on horseback pulled up short in front of her.

  He was clearly a Cavalier, but one of a more outrageous stamp than Garett. He dressed boldly, with lace cuffs, a profusion of looped ribbons, and a flowing silk cravat tied about his neck. His doublet was of a rich, royal blue brocade, and his flowing white shirt of the finest linen. Golden curls grew past his shoulders in unabashedly shining glory.

  Despite his fashionable appearance, however, there was no mistaking he was Garett’s friend, for he had the same arrogant stance.

  “What have we here?” With a sly grin, he doffed his plumed hat, exposing more of his gold mane, then dismounted and handed the reins to the groom who ran from the stables.

  Seeing him up close, she realized he was like Garett in yet another way—he towered over her, his broad shoulders filling out his doublet.

  His gaze traveled brazenly over her. “As usual, Falkham has excellent taste. Tell me, nymph, what forest did he find you in?”

  She groaned. Why did all these Cavaliers have to be so terribly wicked? He was worse than Garett, if that was possible.

  “Probably the same forest where he lost you. ’Tis an odd thing about forests—they’re excellent for slipping away from ill-mannered friends,” she shot back, annoyed at the way he assessed her attributes as if she were a horse for sale.

  He chuckled. “Quick-witted, too, I see.”

  “Yes, and I have all my teeth,” she said tartly.

  “Devil take me, now I’ve insulted you.” Stepping forward, he snatched her hand up to kiss. “I never meant to offend such a divine creature.”

  A low voice answered from behind her, “Be careful, Hampden. This ‘divine creature’ is a gypsy. She might just cast the evil eye on you if you keep annoying her.”

  Garett strode up to stand at her side, startling her. He was frowning, but his easy manner toward the other gentleman told her that
Hampden was a friend.

  Hampden straightened with a look of genuine pleasure. “I can well believe she’s a gypsy.” He winked at Marianne. “She’s already put a spell on me.” When Garett’s expression turned threatening, Hampden grinned. “And on you as well, it appears.”

  Garett’s open displeasure delighted Marianne. She was so pleased to see Hampden elicit some emotion from Garett that she couldn’t resist teasing him herself.

  “Oh, sir,” she protested to Hampden, “surely you know Lord Falkham can’t be bewitched. Not the unflustered, infallible earl. Women have no effect on him at all, particularly women of my sort.”

  “What sort is that?” Hampden asked, eyes twinkling as Garett glowered.

  “The sort who don’t jump at his every command.” She sighed theatrically. “Alas, I’m too strong-minded for his tastes. He prefers a woman he can intimidate, and I’m afraid I don’t suit.”

  A mocking smile touched Garett’s lips. “Mina’s not being quite fair, Hampden. ’Tis not strong-mindedness I dislike but deliberate defiance.”

  When Marianne frowned, Hampden clasped her around the waist and pulled her outrageously close. “Well, I like a little defiance myself. Meek women are tedious. Give me a saucy wench any day.”

  Marianne was just beginning to regret having encouraged Hampden when Garett stepped forward to disengage his friend’s arm from around her waist.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to find your own saucy wench,” he growled as he rested his arm casually across her shoulders. “This one is under my protection.”

  “So that’s the lay of the land, is it?” Hampden said.

  Marianne bristled, tiring of their game and angry that Garett implied she was his mistress. “That’s not the lay of the land, and Lord Falkham knows it. I wouldn’t be here if I had a choice.” With a sniff, she pulled away from Garett and stalked to the house, ignoring them as they followed close behind her.