Clandestine

by Julia Ross

  “And Mrs. Callaway is so knowledgeable about plants!” Lady Overbridge exclaimed. “So interesting! She’s become quite the rage at Buckleigh, sir. Though it’s our modest little orchid collection that’s really brought you down to Devon, I’m sure.”

  “Not at all,” Guy said. “I look forward to spending time with the company.”

  “Oh, you don’t fool me, sir! We all know that orchids are your secret passion.” Her smile lit up her pretty face. “I certainly intend to show you mine!”

  Lady Whitely twirled a wheaten strand of hair in her fingers and pouted. “All of the ladies have been dedicated to painting watercolors of the gardens. You’ll find our efforts very silly, no doubt, sir, but we’re all quite delighted with Mrs. Callaway.”

  A passionate rage had begun to burn beneath his heart. Guy ignored it and bowed his head.

  “Alas, I have little knowledge of watercolors, ma’am, though I trust I may enjoy fencing with your husband. Your servant, Lady Whitely.”

  He spun away to usher his hostess up the stairs. Lady Whitely flounced off in chintz indignation.

  Glowing with excitement, Lady Overbridge showed him into a guest suite, where Guy’s valet already waited with a hot bath and his luggage. She walked about for a few moments, touching ornaments, checking the towels, as if trying to make sure of his comfort.

  Guy crossed his arms and watched her. The fire might be easier to handle than the frying pan. It was certainly less toxic, so he would try to be a little gentler as he doused it.

  “You’ll forgive Lady Whitely’s indiscretion, I trust, Mr. Devoran?” Annabella Overbridge said with a bright glance from her dark eyes. “She means no harm.”

  “It’s already forgotten, ma’am.”

  She straightened the bed hangings. “We’ve given Mrs. Callaway a little chamber by the nursery. She and our governess may share meals up there and keep each other company. Will that suit, do you think? I’d so hate there to be any awkwardness.”

  “Awkwardness, ma’am?”

  She trailed her fingertips over the pillows. “Oh, I am being silly! The very idea that you might have taken such a plain creature in any particular interest! Why, it’s laughable!”

  Very pretty and very foolish, but perhaps her boredom with her marriage was not entirely her fault. It was not hard to find a little compassion for a young woman who was facing a lifetime of disappointment.

  Lady Overbridge whirled about and walked to the door, but she stopped in the doorway, not hiding her reluctance to leave.

  “Had I truly thought you wished it, sir, I should have placed Mrs. Callaway in a room closer to yours.” Her eyelashes fluttered as she glanced away with ladylike delicacy. “But this wing is our very best.” She gestured in the general direction of the stairs. “Lord Overbridge occupies that suite at the end of the hall, but my own room is right here”—she blushed scarlet as she pointed—“next door to yours. Lord Overbridge always wishes me to accommodate my guests in every way.”

  Guy bit back a sudden urge to laughter. He would not be able to leave his room without passing hers—yet he intended such a desperately celibate stay!

  The thought caught him out. Why? Because Sarah would be sleeping under the same roof?

  He was about to spend the evening with these prettier ladies in their exaggerated dresses. They would surround him like a mass of overblown roses, while Sarah Callaway—the alien, delicate orchid—was relegated to the nursery to have her dinner on a tray.

  “Your husband is most kind, ma’am,” he said.

  “The unmarried ladies and gentlemen are all staying in the opposite wing,” Lady Overbridge added, her words tumbling in a rush, “but Lord and Lady Whitely have those two rooms on the other side of the stairs.”

  “Thank you,” he said dryly. “I shouldn’t wish to stumble into the wrong bedchamber by mistake.”

  His hostess touched one pearl earring and giggled before she walked away down the hallway.

  Guy closed the door behind her, strode to the window, and threw it open.

  He could not reach the stairs without risking a meeting with either Lady Whitely or Lady Overbridge, should either female decide to lay in wait for him. Fortunately, a stone balcony embraced the window opening. He stepped onto it and looked down. The wall was climbable. Thank God for that!

  Breathing in the fresh country air, he surveyed the view for a moment. Glinting like a silver ribbon, a sea inlet led away south to the Channel. The heights of Dartmoor dominated the skyline to the north.

  Closer at hand, beyond a set of stone-flagged terraces, to the right of the orangery, swans glided serenely beneath an ornamental bridge.

  In the room behind him his valet coughed discreetly into a closed fist.

  Guy’s bath was ready. His fresh clothes were laid out for dinner.

  His desire to dive fully clothed into that lake of cold water would have to wait.

  GUY heard her voice as he walked into the orchid house the next morning. It sounded cool and restrained, speaking in a quiet undertone, yet his pulse quickened.

  He had spent the morning with the other men, obliged to take part in various manly pursuits, while the female guests twittered on the sidelines.

  Lord Overbridge, puce with incipient apoplexy, had tried in vain to keep up with the other men in a forced march around the grounds, followed by practice with rapiers.

  Lord Whitely, lean and fit and vivid with intensity, had walked and fenced with the passion of a man whose wife did not hesitate to cheer on his opponent, while—as pretty as an apple tree in full bloom—Lady Whitely had regaled her companions with her sparkling wit.

  Hadn’t Mr. Devoran learned his skills with his cousins at Wyldshay from the best fencing masters in the kingdom? His style was so beautiful, so strong and commanding! His reach was so much longer than her poor husband’s! Lady Whitely would wager anyone that Mr. Devoran would flatten her spouse into dust.

  For the sake of social harmony, Guy had instead allowed the jealous husband to win. Lottie Whitely had sulked and turned her back, but a little ripple had stirred through the unmarried girls like wind through wheat.

  They thought Mr. Devoran’s self-sacrifice—for surely that was what it was—noble.

  None of them knew the dark impatience that burned in Guy’s soul. He wanted only to luxuriate in the presence of Sarah Callaway: sensuous, mysterious, vibrantly colored—and speckled like the petals of a spotted cattleya.

  Yet the power of his craving to see her clashed with a dread that he was poised on the threshold of dishonor, that the magic of her voice alone would seduce him from his principles.

  “You induced it to bloom like this?” she was saying. “I’ve never seen one before, not even at Blackdown House. You must be very skilled indeed, Mr. Pearse.”

  “Well, to be honest, ma’am, it was mostly luck.” The gardener’s voice was solid, with a strong Dartmoor buzz. “But we’re very warm and sheltered here, and Her Ladyship hasn’t stinted with the glass. Perhaps that accounts for it.”

  Guy walked forward, his shoes tapping quietly on the tile floor.

  Sarah was bending over two immense purple blooms, her tightly plaited hair a dull orange beneath the wide brim of a straw hat. Long green bonnet ribbons floated over the sleeves of her plain white dress.

  Not layered with a frippery of petals like a rose. An orchid. Simply the most sensual woman he had ever met.

  She glanced up at the sound of his footsteps, and her color retreated like a tide, making her freckles seem startlingly dark. Yet her eyes shone with light, as if a tiger gazed into the heart of the sun. His entire body quickened.

  “Mr. Devoran!”

  The man standing beside her tugged at his forelock. “Good day, sir!”

  “This is Mr. Pearse,” Sarah said, as if she and Guy were close friends who had been apart for only a few minutes. “Buckleigh’s head gardener.” She pointed triumphantly to the flowers. “Look what he’s managed to do!”

  Guy tor
e his gaze from hers to glance down at the flowers bursting up from their container. The lavender-red blooms had exploded above a single leaf, the petals flung wide in open invitation. Their opulent throats shimmered. Intense golden shadows led deep into each secret heart. Cattleya labiata Lindley.

  “Cattleya labiata,” she said. “Blooming now, in July!”

  “Commonly known as the ruby-lipped cattleya,” Mr. Pearse said proudly, “begging your pardon, sir!”

  His blood knew only his deep visceral reaction to Sarah—just the scent of her, just the simplicity of her presence—yet a buzz began in his brain that threatened to deafen him.

  “Thank you, Mr. Pearse,” Guy said. “Very splendid!”

  The gardener flushed, touched his forehead, and backed out of the room.

  Sarah sat down on a marble bench.

  “Good heavens!” she said. “What was all that about?”

  Guy glanced up from the blossoms, their elegant shape defied by the passionate color of the lips.

  “All what?” he asked.

  “All that thunder! Poor Mr. Pearse must have thought you wanted to run him through with one of his own plant supports. Are you angry that he’s proud of his cattleya?”

  “Angry? God, no! They’re magnificent.”

  “Then, what?” Sarah Callaway stared up at him with her honest heart in her eyes. “This orchid’s not an easy plant to grow.”

  Guy negated his desires as if he crushed crystal into sand, and dropped onto the seat next to hers.

  “It fills me with craving,” he said. “Yet I imagine we’ll have very little time before we’ll be interrupted. I intend to persuade you to leave, after all.”

  “You found out something more in London?”

  “I found out enough to regret having allowed you to come here.”

  She began to weave a green ribbon between her fingers. He caught the ribbon and pulled it from her hand. Sarah Callaway looked up at him.

  “The man Daedalus hired to oversee the attacks on your cousin comes from this part of Devon. Though he was free to travel to London, he also works with his hands. He knows roses, but he more intimately knows orchids. Thus, he’s the head gardener on an estate such as this. No one else can afford them.”

  A pulse beat in her throat. “You think Mr. Pearse could be this man?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But surely Lord Overbridge cannot be Daedalus?”

  “There are only five or six other great houses within reach. Our quarry must own one of them. That’s all I know.”

  “But if he lives in Devon, why did Rachel flee here to escape him?”

  Guy glanced at the other orchids. Cattleya intermedia, showy and expensive, and pure white at the heart. Angraecum sesquipedale, the comet orchid, ghostly, deeply fragrant after dark. Mr. Pearse must possess a touch of genius.

  “I don’t know, but I believe that Rachel told you the truth. She’s safely in hiding, but why so close to her tormentor, I’ve no idea.”

  “Meanwhile, this gardener is the only lead that we have? What else did you discover about him?”

  “Enough.” He looked back at her. “He was calling himself Falcorne, though that’s no doubt a false name. I wish you would go back to Bath, or let me send you to Wyldshay.”

  “You really believe that the danger is more acute than we feared? We’re really dealing with a murderer?”

  A lie would no doubt be more convenient. Instead, desperate to hold as close to honor as he could, Guy told her the truth.

  “No,” he said. “The goal in London was most definitely only to frighten Rachel, not to kill her.”

  “Yet you still think I’ll become hysterical, after all?” Her eyes burned as if she stalked through a jungle. “We’ve been over this already, Mr. Devoran. I shan’t leave. Either we cooperate, or I shall try to find Rachel alone. The choice is yours, sir.”

  Guy sprang to his feet and paced away. Water dripped from the long spur of the comet orchid. He did not believe she was in peril from Daedalus. He wanted her to leave for his sake, not hers.

  “I don’t welcome danger heedlessly,” she added. “But surely I am safe here at Buckleigh?”

  “Yes, of course. No one here has any reason to connect you to your cousin. Yet your situation here can only be uncomfortable.”

  “Nonsense! I believe your situation may be a great deal more uncomfortable than mine, sir.”

  Guy spun back to face her. “Really? In what way?”

  The deep color began then, spreading up her neck and over her cheeks, yet her eyes sparkled.

  “The governess and I were bringing the children in from the garden when you arrived. I’m afraid that we overheard every word.”

  “Ah,” he said, choking down a sudden mad hilarity. “Did you?”

  “It was impossible to avoid, sir. Of course, matchmaking is one of the purposes of a house party such as this.”

  As if a jester had turned the wheel of fate and winked at him, Guy laughed aloud.

  “Yet you didn’t expect the married ladies to set their caps at me quite so openly, before I’d even removed my hat and gloves?”

  The freckles scampered as she grinned. “If I didn’t, I should have, though I’ll admit to a certain discomposure when Lady Whitely dragged my name into the conversation.”

  “It’s absurd to you, I suppose, that anyone could believe that I might indeed be attracted to you?”

  In a flow of white skirts, she stood up. The straw hat framed her face. A few red strands escaped from her plaits to caress her speckled cheeks.

  The roar of his desire almost flattened him.

  “It’s obviously absurd that you’d arrange for us both to attend this house party merely to commence an affair,” she said.

  Guy dropped onto another marble bench and leaned back to watch her. She wouldn’t leave. She would stay here to torment him.

  “Lottie Whitely’s real fear is that I came here to pursue Lady Overbridge.”

  Sarah crouched over the ruby-lipped cattleya to brush one fingertip over the deep purple–frilled edge. The soft smudges of snow at the sunshine-stained gullet shivered beneath her touch, as if the orchid surrendered to a pollinating moth.

  Ardor raced hot and strong through his blood, spreading fire as if a naked woman ran through dry grass trailing a burning scarf at her heels.

  “And did you?” she asked.

  Guy stretched out his legs and breathed in a great draft of the scented air, trusting to self-mockery to shred his craving.

  “Annabella Overbridge is certainly very pretty,” he said. “You don’t think that she’s already my mistress?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “She might be, I suppose. Yet she looks more hopeful than satisfied.”

  In spite of his distress, he laughed. “You’re very sure that I would satisfy, Mrs. Callaway!”

  She kept her back to him, leaving him nothing but the green ribbons trailing over the curve of her back.

  “Oh, every lady here is certain of it,” she said. “You must know that they’re all fighting for your notice like dogs for a bone: the married ladies for your favors, the unmarried for your hand.”

  “I’m considered a good catch,” he said. “It’s bloody exhausting!”

  The hat brim threw her face into deep shadow, but he knew that she grinned. “And thus your situation is more uncomfortable than mine. Though I’m sure you can cope, Mr. Devoran.”

  Female voices chirruped from inside the house.

  Guy leaped up to block the view of Sarah from anyone entering the orchid room. He seized her elbow to help her to her feet, though the touch of her soft flesh beneath his palm set fire to his blood.

  “If you insist on staying here,” he said beneath his breath, “we must talk again. It’ll be difficult to do so privately during the day. Can you escape your room unseen after dark?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I believe so. I could use the servants’ stair.”

  “The governess won’t
wake?”

  “Her room is closer to the nursery and farther from the stairs than mine.”

  “Then meet me tomorrow just before dawn in the Deer Hut. You know it?”

  “The little folly made of bark and antlers near the lake? Yes, of course.”

  Guy gazed down into her tiger-bronze eyes and ruthlessly repressed the insistent pulse of desire.

  “Be careful, Mrs. Callaway!”

  “No one will notice anything I do,” she said. “Unlike you, sir, I’m invisible.”

  The chatter of female voices intensified, as if someone herded a flock of pigeons. One voice, shriller and more insistent, dominated the others.

  “God!” he said. “I fear Lottie Whitely comes to fetch me to show me her watercolors.”

  Sarah Callaway glanced away through the glass. The hat brim hid her face. “If she does, sir, I believe she’s bringing all of her competition with her.”

  Guy opened his fingers and released her. Sarah spun about and left the hothouse by the garden door.

  With the unmarried roses fluttering behind them, Lady Overbridge and Lady Whitely walked into the room arm-in-arm. The gentlemen trailed after them.

  A walk to the lake was planned. But they couldn’t go without Mr. Devoran! And where was Mrs. Callaway? She must come to teach the young ladies about the plants in the gardens—and thus give them an opportunity to linger where a young gentleman might get the chance to murmur privately into a shell-like ear.

  Guy ignored the chattering voices and smiled boldly at Lottie Whitely.

  She twirled her parasol and smiled back.

  A chill glow glimmered through the trees as Sarah walked rapidly down to the Deer Hut. She wore her green traveling dress and sensible boots. If anyone discovered her, she would say she had come out to see the sunrise over the gardens.

  But as she had told Mr. Devoran, no one was likely to care.

  Even if Lady Whitely truly believed that Sarah was Guy’s lover, Her Ladyship would dismiss it as the equivalent of a quick tumble with a maid. Real affairs of the heart took place between equals. Guy Devoran was the son of an earl’s daughter, and nephew to a duke.

  Mrs. Sarah Callaway, captain’s relict, was a schoolteacher in Bath. Though her father had been a gentleman, her family had been far from being aristocrats. She was determined not to forget it.