by Julia Ross
“And a terrible dilemma for the high sticklers,” Guy said with a grin. “Disregard an invitation from the duchess, or appear to condone immorality. Do you think that such pettiness bothers me?”
“No, except that you can’t bear to see Miracle slighted.” Shadows raced as Ryder stood up and walked across to the window. “If you or Jack had married so shockingly, society would never have forgiven it, but—”
“—but you are the favored son of Zeus. I truly have no regrets, Ryder, except insofar as I could never have loved Miracle as you do.” Guy dropped his head against the chair back and allowed himself another dry smile. “Though if you ever fail to defend your exquisite wife, I’ll ride like Lancelot straight to her side.”
Daylight gleamed in Ryder’s hair as he turned around. “I’ve never been tempted to knock you down before,” he said mildly, “but if you weren’t already sprawled in that chair, three sheets to the wind, I’d be damned tempted to do so right now. I promise you I’ll never fail her. But enough about Miracle! I came here to talk about your present predicament. Jack thinks—”
Guy bolted upright. “Jack found time to talk to you?”
“A brief alert, that’s all. My brother can never lose the habits of close observation. When a man has survived mountain tribes and desert bandits, he tends to develop a damned shrewd ability to assess human nature. God, I’m tired! I’d better call for some coffee.”
Ryder strode to the bellpull and yanked it.
“So what did Jack observe?”
“You with Sarah Callaway,” Ryder said. “Mrs. Callaway with you.”
Guy laughed. “And it’s Jack’s considered opinion that Mrs. Callaway is the soul of honor, but that she’s hiding dark passions. He therefore believes that she may be far too susceptible to my charms. The result will be broken hearts and ruined reputations. She’ll be forced to retire to a nunnery, while I’ll shoot myself from shame.”
“Not exactly in those words. Though Miracle also said it was as if you two struck sparks from each other.”
“We did,” Guy said. “But much as I love you both, I would suggest that you and Miracle mind your own bloody business when it comes to my ramshackle heart. As for Jack, I’ll stop by Withycombe Court one day to stab him in the back, since no one could kill him if he had even a moment’s warning.”
Ryder laughed. “As I know to my cost. He knocked me down last summer.”
“Because you were foolish enough to take him by surprise. But what the hell’s the cause of all this family concern about Sarah Callaway? Yes, I find her attractive. Yes, I’d like very much to take her to bed. But for what it’s worth, I’m not so dead to honor that I intend to act on any of that.”
“No one questions your honor, Guy. Of all of us, you’re probably the finest drawn. But even if Miracle worries about your heart, that’s not why Jack’s concerned and you know it. You’d be mad to ignore his instinct for danger.”
“I’m taking Jack’s instincts as seriously as you could possibly wish. I’ve just spent the last six hours or so thinking about them. What did he tell you?”
Ryder opened the door to take a tray from a footman. He dismissed the man and set the tray on a side table.
“No details. There wasn’t time. He was desperate to get back to Anne—”
“—and I’d already delayed him far longer than I intended. I’m sorry for that.”
“Jack was more than happy to help, though it put him in rather a hurry, of course. So he simply dropped a few witty comments on his way out and said that you’d tell me the rest. So what’s happening? When you asked me this afternoon to welcome Mrs. Callaway here, her problem didn’t sound so terribly perilous.”
“No, it didn’t—not then. I’d simply agreed to help find her missing cousin.”
“You spend too much of your life solving other people’s problems,” Ryder said. “Why not hire a man from Bow Street?”
“Because this time there’s a personal responsibility, as well. The missing lady’s name is Rachel.”
Ryder’s hands froze on the coffeepot. “Not the same Rachel?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Guy said. “Exactly the same Rachel.”
“I see.” Ryder calmly filled two cups. “The mysterious beauty who helped Jack and Anne escape safely to Wyldshay last year, then became your mistress in February—until she walked out without warning as soon as you left to go home for Easter. Of course, Mrs. Callaway knows none of this. And of course you can’t tell her.”
“It’s disgusting to be obliged to lie to her, even by omission. Yet Sarah Callaway truly believes her cousin to be an innocent. Though I had to disabuse her of some of her illusions, I can hardly reveal all of reality’s rooms—certainly not the secret passages and hidden bedchambers.”
“—which is bound to involve you in some damnable complications. No wonder Miracle’s concerned!”
Guy briefly contemplated the ceiling as he stifled a yawn. “Miracle simply wants to see me with my own babe at my knee. Like all happy newlyweds, she wants everyone she loves to get married.”
“Not a bad idea,” Ryder said, handing him a cup. “I’m only sorry that my wife doesn’t have a sister.”
Guy nodded his thanks, swallowed hot coffee, and welcomed the resulting jolt. In the more than forty hours since the bookshop he had hardly slept. The wineglass had been empty for the last six of them. Nevertheless, he felt drunk with fatigue.
“If she did, the simple fact is that I probably couldn’t hold her affections, any more than I could Miracle’s ten years ago.”
“Only because you’ve not yet met the right lady.”
Another gulp of coffee scalded down Guy’s throat. “With the exception of Miracle, I think we may conclude that my judgment about the fair sex stinks. Rachel lied—not about trivialities, but about fundamentals, and for at least eighteen months—to her closest childhood companion, the cousin who loves her like a sister.”
“Mrs. Callaway didn’t know this?”
“No. None of it. Rachel lied to me, also, of course. I always knew it, but I thought that I loved her anyway. Perhaps I still do. Even though now I learn that she fled my protection simply to hide right here in London—in Goatstall Lane, of all places! Obviously, honor demands that I not abandon a lady I made promises to, even if she failed to deserve them. Yet for the last ten years, that’s rather been my pattern. I’m not sure that I want to face what that says about me.”
“Nothing much, except perhaps that you’re a little too loyal,” Ryder said. “Jack told me before he and Anne went to India last summer that Rachel was as out of place in that inn kitchen as a rose on a dung pile. You’d not be the first man to be fascinated by that kind of beauty.”
“Nor the last, apparently,” Guy said. “But either way, Sarah Callaway is more than safe. Any vague threat that I may pose to her virtue and reputation is barely relevant, compared to the reek of what Jack and I suspect is a far more literal danger.”
Ryder settled back into his chair and sipped at his cup. “So what does Mrs. Callaway know?”
“She’s in no doubt that her cousin is genuinely afraid, but she thinks that Rachel’s being persecuted over a failed love affair.”
“And you’ll continue to allow her to think that?”
“I may have to.” More hot coffee burned down Guy’s throat. “Even though Rachel supposedly fell foul of her tormentor in February and March—”
“When she was in fact living in perfect security with you in Hampstead?”
Guy smiled dryly at his cousin. “Nice, isn’t it?”
“You said Rachel lied to you all along, even when she was your mistress? What about?”
“Almost every detail of her past, her identity, her real feelings. I knew it. I just let it go.”
Ryder frowned into his empty cup. “I hate to have to ask this, Guy, but could she have been seeing someone else at the same time?”
He had analyzed the idea to death, enough that he was able to smile
at his cousin.
“That painful thought obviously occurred to me, so I rode out to Hampstead yesterday to browbeat my staff and pursue some discreet investigations. That’s why I was so late getting back for the ball. While she was living with me, Rachel was receiving and sending letters in secret, just as I’d already surmised from what Sarah Callaway told me. One of the maids helped her.”
“And?”
“The same girl confirmed that Rachel never entertained visitors, and she never left the house without me—until the day she disappeared. All the rest of the servants swore the same thing, and I believe them. However, according to her cousin, Rachel first went to live in Hampstead as soon as Jack paid her for that day on the yacht, long before she and I moved back there together.”
“You know where?”
“Perhaps, though I need to confirm it.”
“So if there’s really any furiously disappointed swain involved, Rachel must have met him either before or after she lived with you.”
“Exactly.” Guy stood and poured two more cups of coffee. “The cause of attempted murder is usually one of only two things: passion or money—”
“Murder?”
“Possibly. And since I fail to see how this can be about money, Sarah Callaway’s story may indeed hold an element of truth.”
“Why the devil would any gentleman want to kill a woman, merely because she’d refused his advances? That’s too melodramatic to be real.”
“I thought so, too, at first.” He handed one refilled cup to Ryder. “However, while I followed up on some other leads, Jack visited Goatstall Lane disguised as a workman. We exchanged notes later by the orchid fountain. There’s no doubt that Rachel fled London in fear for her life.”
“Justifiably?”
Guy paced restlessly to the window and back. “I don’t know. Perhaps someone wanted only to frighten her. Either way, something damned unpleasant is going on.”
“Sarah Callaway may also be in danger?”
“I’m certainly not taking any chances. That’s why I insisted she come here.” Guy dropped back into his chair. “I couldn’t leave her at Brockton’s, and obviously I can’t take her back to my townhouse.”
“Blackdown House is yours as long as you want it,” Ryder said. “I’ll help in any way that I can.”
Guy shook his head. “Your place is with Miracle and Ambrose. And Jack’s already done far more for me than I had any right to ask. Besides, I fear that Mrs. Callaway may insist on helping me herself.”
Ryder laughed. “Then by all means send her down to Wyldshay. She can teach my little sisters all about the wickedness of plants, and we can give her a position there for as long as you like.”
“Thank you,” Guy said. “I may do that, unless I discover in the next day or two that all of my fears for her are groundless. In which case, I’ll simply send her back to Bath.”
“Will she go quietly?” Ryder asked. “Jack didn’t think her a shrinking violet, and neither do Miracle and I.”
“God, no! She’s an exotic orchid, of course. I already told her that, much to her consternation.”
Ryder laughed again. “Why, for God’s sake?”
“Because of that bloody spark that so interested Miracle and Jack. In order to discover what’s really happening, I must uncover the details of Rachel’s genuine past. If I’m to protect Sarah Callaway from the more uncomfortable parts of that, I’d better drive her away as soon as possible.”
“By complimenting her?”
“She’s not a natural flirt. A little interest from a man like me only makes her uncomfortable, whatever passions she keeps buried.”
“So Sarah Callaway need never know the whole truth about her cousin.”
“Let Rachel tell her the truth, if she likes.”
“Because gentlemen don’t kiss and tell. God, it’s almost day! I don’t question your ability to handle this, Guy, but—”
“I won’t hesitate to call on you, if need be. Meanwhile, there’s no need for Miracle to know all these details, when the truth is anyway nothing but shadows.”
“And is yours to confide or not, as you wish.” Ryder rose to his feet and set his cup on the tray. “Though sometimes I think that we try to protect the fair sex far too much. Ladies aren’t really the frail vessels our society would have us believe.”
Guy folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes. In spite of the coffee, fatigue swam in waves through his blood.
“Then Miracle’s changed your view of women quite a bit in the last eleven months.”
“Not only Miracle. Anne may have seemed unworldly, but she’s as strongly rooted as any mountain. She didn’t hesitate to take off for the Himalayas with Jack last summer.”
His nerves jangled as if exhaustion were jerking them. “And let’s not forget the duchess. So tell your wife what you will, Ryder. I have absolute faith in Miracle’s common sense, her wisdom, and her strength.”
“Thank you,” Ryder said. “Though, as it happens, I see no need to distress her with any of this. Not because she couldn’t handle it, but because it would only make her worry unnecessarily about you.”
“Miracle, Anne, and your mother are each exceptional females,” Guy said, “with the fortitude to marry one of you St. Georges. But unfortunately in the last ten years I’ve known quite a few frail vessels, and Rachel Mansard is one of them.”
“Though it’s Jack’s considered opinion that Sarah Callaway has the backbone of a queen.”
“That remains to be seen,” Guy said. “Though I certainly hope so.”
“So do I, because—for all your good intentions—it seems highly unlikely that you can pursue the truth about Rachel without Sarah Callaway discovering that her cousin was your mistress.”
His muscles felt as if he had been swimming for three days without rest. The temptation to let the ocean swallow him was almost overwhelming, but he laughed.
“Devilish, isn’t it?”
Ryder stalked across the room to jerk the cloth from the parrot’s cage. Eight opened his eyes, then closed them again to huddle down into an avian sulk.
“You do realize,” Ryder said, “that if there was ever a formula for disaster, this is it.”
“Quite so,” Guy replied. “I’ve been entertaining that delightful conclusion all night.”
SARAH opened her eyes. A vision of pink orchids, sensual and lush, danced on the bed canopy. She blinked. Not orchids. Just the patterned fabric, dazzling where light poured into her room.
The maids must have folded back the shutters without waking her.
Iron-shod wheels rumbled and clanked somewhere outside, the sound muffled by the walls of Blackdown House. The clock hands formed a neat crook, like the crotch of a tree. Two o’clock! She hadn’t slept past six in the morning for years, and it was already afternoon?
Sarah grinned, lay back again, and closed her eyes. The house thrummed with silent energy.
Orchids: cattleya and angraecum and catasetum.
Mr. Guy Devoran dressed as a pirate with a parrot on his shoulder.
That heady moment of recognition when her blood had sung symphonies of delight.
She had even thought that his eyes burned with the same wicked ardor, as if he would tear her dress from her shoulders to bury his open mouth in the curve of her neck.
Yet the real nature of love was the warm sharing of affection she and Captain Callaway had discovered. The sacrifice, given willingly. The gracious acceptance of one-sided care. The gentle humor maintained even in the face of disaster. Not this mad, uncomfortable shivering deep inside.
These young aristocrats were so sure of their power. More sophisticated ladies no doubt took that for granted. If one’s father or brothers moved through the world with such confidence, surely that would offer some protection against making a fool of oneself?
And Rachel? How could her cousin have lied for so long about so much?
What terrible collapse of love and trust had prevented her fro
m asking her only cousin for help?
Sarah jerked up in the bed as pain spiked cruel fingers into her heart.
CHAPTER FIVE
GUY STRODE BACK INTO BLACKDOWN HOUSE. PAUL HURRIED to take his hat.
“You and Rose are planning to marry very soon?” Guy asked.
The footman flushed. “Yes, sir.”
“Then I wish you both every happiness.” Guy handed him his gloves. “Yet the duchess won’t allow her town staff to marry each other, so you can’t keep on here together. Please know that there’s always a place for you both at Birchbrook. My father keeps country manners and has no objection to married staff.”
“Very kind of you to say so, sir. But Lady Ryderbourne’s already seen to it that we’ll be employed at the Derbyshire house. We’re to have our own cottage.”
Guy smiled. “Then allow me to congratulate you on your good fortune.”
“Thank you, sir, but I’d have worked carrying night soil rather than lose my girl, and Rose would’ve taken in washing, if that’s what it took to be with me. Yet we’re both London born and bred, Mr. Devoran. We don’t know too much about Derbyshire.” He wrinkled his brow. “But love often requires sacrifice, doesn’t it, sir?”
Guy met the man’s honest brown gaze. He saw no reason not to honor Paul with the truth.
“I don’t know. I’m damned if I can claim to know anything about the true nature of love. Is Rose already back from Brockton’s?”
“Yes, sir. Peter Coachman came there this morning, as you required, and Rose carried away all of the lady’s things.”
“You and Rose remained undisturbed through the night?”
Sweat broke in visible beads on the footman’s forehead. “Yes, sir.”
“It’s all right,” Guy said. “I understand that part of love perfectly well.”
So no one had seen anything unusual—including the man Guy had posted to watch outside Brockton’s Hotel. Though one quiet night proved little, perhaps the pale-skinned man he’d seen lingering earlier had been just a coincidence, after all.
“Yes, sir,” the footman said. “I’m sorry, sir. I should mention that Mrs. Callaway is waiting in the Ivory Room. I was that distracted thinking about Rose, I forgot.”
