A Much Compromised Lady
Page 17
Yes, she was delighted he had left. She had made the wise choice. She was not made for the likes of him, or for the life that he would lead her into, where she passed from his hands to those of another man. And then yet another. And another. She knew that. She would not sell herself, and she would not become a hard woman who saw only gain in ever man’s arms.
And he did not really want her—he simply wanted to prove he could have her.
Almost he had.
She rested her cheek on one knee.
But why, if this was the right choice, did it leave her aching and empty, with the longing to go to him and give him her heart, body, and soul?
* * *
St. Albans threw off his dressing gown, considered ringing for his valet, and discarded that option. He did not want company. Striding to his wardrobe, he threw open the doors and stared at the neatly hung coats, the tidy row of boot and the drawers with folded shirts and underclothes tucked away. With a snarl, he slammed it closed. He paced to the window and stood with his arms folded for a moment. But nothing outside in the dark caught his interest. Turning, he went to the wing chair beside the fireplace and dropped into its soft leather.
Propping his elbows on his knees, he lowered his face into his hands. He dragged his fingers through his hair and stared at the carpet.
He was mad.
That had to be the explanation.
Either that or his Gypsy had bewitched him, but he did not believe in such nonsense.
No, he must be going mad.
Why else had he let her go? Why? Oh, why, oh why?
God, but he wanted to break something.
He forced himself to lean back in his chair. He was a rational, sensible being. He would control himself, and he would stop acting like a lovesick...
Frowning, he stopped that thought. Distasteful as it was, he also turned his thoughts inward to carve apart his feelings.
Could he actually be...No, it was not possible. These feelings—the frustration, the desire, the irritation, the need, the anger, the longing—they were nothing like the sentiments he had once felt for Alaine. So, what in blazes was this?
There was lust, oh, yes. But something else lay within. Something remarkably close to caring.
Was he starting to like his Gypsy?
He claimed one person as friend. Dozens claimed him, of course, hoping to benefit from his title and wealth, as was the way of Society. And he had acquaintances by the cartload. But few had ever dared look beyond his title—and his reputation. Only Terrance had, in fact, when they had argued their different paths through Eton and then into Cambridge. They still argued philosophy, politics, and life. Two opposites who had found a commonality of respect.
And now there seem to be his Gypsy to add to that short list one other friend.
His Glynis.
But was she really such a thing to him?
Frowning, St. Albans steepled his fingers. He studied them as he flexed and straightened them.
Blazes, no wonder everything had become far too complex. One did not seduce a friend, did one? And his liking—his caring—did nothing to lessen his desire to have her in his bed.
But what use did he have for her as a friend?
With a muffled curse, he rose. He could not think straight. He needed a gallop to shake the fidgets out of his body and ease its demands so that he actually might use his mind again.
Striding back to his wardrobe, he changed rapidly into breeches and boots. He threw a greatcoat over his open-necked shirt, didn’t bother with so much as a scarf around his neck. He left his room, striding down the hall and stairs and out the back of the house.
At the edge of the stables, muffled shouts and the scuffle of boots on cobblestones checked his stride. Muscles tensed, senses alert, he stepped into the stable yard.
Three burly grooms—nightshirts dangling over sagging breeches—grappled with a dark-clad, struggling figure. A third groom stood back, lantern aloft in one hand and a horseshoe raised in the other, wavering as he waited for a chance to strike a blow.
St. Albans glanced at them and said, his voice loud enough to arrest the action, “You have woken my horses.”
The struggle stopped. The groom with the lantern spun around, his nightcap sliding over one eye. And the dark-clad figure jerked his arms free and straightened.
“Leave him,” St. Albans commanded as the grooms started to reach for the figure again. He stepped forward into the pooling lantern light.
The grooms fell back and St. Albans gestured for the lantern to be held higher. Light spilled across Christopher’s face.
St. Albans glanced at his servants. A swelling eye and torn nightshirt told its own story of the conflict. At least the Gypsy had kept his knife out of the affair.
Turning back to the Gypsy, St. Albans let his stare slide up and down over the fellow. “I knew you would be an inconvenience. Allow me a guess—you were seeking the use of a horse.”
Christopher smoothed his disheveled jacket. “Just taking the one back to London that brought me here.”
“And that would be...Cinder? Well, you cannot. Take another. One trip such as that in a night is enough for any mount.”
The Gypsy’s eyes narrowed. “Take a horse is it now? So you can then hang me later as a horse thief?”
With a small shake of his head, St. Albans resigned himself to a longer conversation with this inconvenient fellow. He glanced at the grooms, and waved their dismissal. “Thank you, and good night. Come along, Gypsy, my staff needs their rest, as do my horses.”
Turning away, he started back to the house, half hoping the Gypsy would simply vanish into the night.
He did not.
They fell into step and the darkness swallowed them. The moon had set, and the night sky glittered with stars. Scents of new mown grass and roses drifted on the night breeze, along with the distant bark of a dog.
St. Albans led the way into his study. Throwing off his greatcoat, he strode to the decanter and poured them both burgundy.
The Gypsy glanced disdainfully at the wine, but he took the glass. “What do you want with me, gaujo?”
St. Albans smiled. He sat in a chair, his booted ankles crossed. “The more relevant conversation here is what do you hope to gain by going to London? I expect you have some fanciful notion of forcing a confession from Lord Nevin?”
“That is my business, gaujo.”
“Yes, well, since your hanging for attempted murder, house breaking, or even stealing my horses would upset your sister, it therefore becomes my business.”
“Oh, and you are so kind that you care what my sister feels? You are a bad liar, gaujo!”
St. Albans smiled. “If you insult me again by calling me a liar, sister or no sister, I will take great delight in throttling you. Now, sit down and listen.”
Glowering, the Gypsy stared back, defiance bristling in his eyes and in his stubborn, stiff stance. But St. Albans could sense the measuring going on behind that stare. Wisely, the fellow relented and threw himself into the opposite chair. Tension eased from St. Albans’s shoulders. Well, at least this young idiot had some sense in that thick head of his.
Now, they would see what else he had.
“I have a bargain to offer you. You want to see Nevin and have it out with him. I have my own reasons to wish this question settled and put out of the way—with certain finality. So, I’ll take you to Nevin.”
The Gypsy sipped his wine, his eyes narrowed and hard. “And what do you get from this bargain, for to be such each side must get something?”
“If you are able to get Nevin to cry out his sins, you will have me as a witness, and I shall testify in any court in the land on your behalf. I shall get you your inheritance.”
Christopher sat straighter. “Why would you do that?”
“Because here is the other half of this agreement—if you have no satisfaction from Nevin, you shall emigrate and tell your sister to get on with her own life.”
The Gypsy ga
ve a bark of laughter, and St. Albans glared at the fellow. “What, pray, is so amusing?”
Shaking his head, the Gypsy smiled. “You are, gaujo. You think too much. And you think everything—and everyone—can be bought. You think the world is like you—cold and calculating.” He tossed back his wine and rose. “I make no deals with the devil, gaujo. Keep your bargains.”
Frowning, St. Albans rose as the Gypsy headed for the door. “And how do you expect to get anywhere close to Nevin? You won’t you know.”
Christopher paused, glanced back and gave a shrug, a gesture that reminded St. Albans of the man’s sister.
“What is meant to be will be. And if it is not meant...” He gave another shrug.
Such blind fatalism irritated St. Albans. Blazes, but the fellow was no concern of his. He could go hang. Only then he thought of the look tonight in his Gypsy’s dark eyes—how much worse would it be when she heard of her brother’s execution.
With a sigh, he set down his own glass, rose and went to his desk. “This is useless, you know,” he said. He pulled a sheet of vellum from the desk and flipped open the silver ink well.
“You said that already, gaujo.”
St. Albans dipped a sharpened quill in the ink and scribbled a hurried note. He would leave instructions with the servants as well. Finished, he sanded the ink, folded the note and looked up at his Gypsy’s brother.
“I was wrong about you, you know. You are not only an inconvenience, you are an irritation. And my only hope is that perhaps I may watch Nevin put a bullet in you.”
Christopher began to scowl. “Watch? You are not going with me. You have no reason to even want to go!”
“You may attribute it to my delightful sense of mischief. Now make yourself useful and go to the stables and ask Morely—he’s the fellow who was looking to brain you with that horseshoe—to have the coach ready within the hour. And you had best do so for you have my word that that is the only way you are going to reach London at all.”
* * *
The dreams came that night. Shifting images that brought with them a suffocating sense of loneliness.
Fretful, Glynis turned in her sleep, but still the images came.
From above, she watched a boy sit at the base of a stairway, carved and dark and wide. He had a single tin soldier, its red-painted coat chipped and his sword bent by use. He marched the soldier up one step, and down again, humming to himself.
A maid hurried past, her steps hushed, her eyes downcast. Simon glanced up at her, his eyes wistful, then he looked back down at his soldier. He was not supposed to even notice the servants—they were beneath him, uncle had said. A footman hurried past, taking the silver into the butler for polishing, he knew. Sitting up, he left his solider on the step. He rose, dug his hands into his trousers and went outside where there was no one to play with either, leaving his soldier abandoned and alone.
With a sigh, Glynis shifted in her sleep.
The boy—older now, still thin, his gold hair darkening—stood before a brick building, staring up at the tall clock tower. Eton. Inside, a tremor started. Footsteps echoed on stone, and the boy turned to watch a man cross the yard, his arm around the shoulders of a younger copy of himself. The other boy was saying something to the man, who bent down with a smile to listen. Jealousy, sharp and hateful, sprang loose. But they did not even notice, or seem to see him.
Head up, he turned and started towards the darkened archway under the clock tower. Well, he did not care about them, anyway. They were probably beneath him, too. They did not matter to him, and they never would.
Sweating, twisting, Glynis struggled to wake. But the scene shifted to one she knew, one she loved. She smiled at the image in her dream.
Her house stood before her. A tidy garden. White front, picket gate. Two stories with gleaming windows that welcomed. Roses bloomed, winding over the entrance, spilling white petals.
The boy was there as well. Now a man grown. His green eyes glittered with cynical amusement, his smile now rode crooked. His face had grown handsome, and his form tall. Her Simon watched the house, his expression bored, as if this place did not matter to him.
Go in, she urged, desperate for him to step inside.
He turned away, his smile twisting even more.
No, go inside!
But he was going. He would always leave. He would always stay outside where he had learned as a boy to live.
She woke with a startled breath, her cheeks wet and her pulse racing. Putting a hand to her face, she blinked. She rolled over and let out a breath.
Pale dawn crept into the room, pink and soft. She blinked again, trying to will away the feelings that still crowded her from that dream. That horrible sense of isolation remained, however, haunting as any ghost.
Rising, she pulled her wrinkled gown around her—she had slept in it—and she went to the box, still on the floor in pieces. Through the window, birdsong and a soft breeze drifted, gentle and seeming so out of place.
It seemed almost that Christo’s climbing in here had been more of a dream than were those images that still clung to her.
Had that really been St. Albans’s youth that she had dreamed? Had she been given not just dreams but visions of what his life was? Always so lonely? A boy without parents. A lord from birth who knew his place in this world, but a boy all the same without anyone who would treat him as such?
She gathered the pieces of the box, the fur, the lock of hair, the paper and the feather—the treasures from her father. She had always thought lords and ladies must be forever happy with their fine clothes and food and wealth.
Now she wondered what it must be to grow up a lord, an earl from birth, with something always expected, and always barriers raised. What would it be like to have such a high place in this world that no one else could come near?
A soft knock on the door made her turn. She rose and the maid came in with a tray that held rose-patterned china. The maid settled the tray on a table, and bobbed a curtsy.
“His lordship said you was to get this,” she said, holding out a note.
Glynis put down the shattered box and crossed the floor to take the note. She spread open the folded sheet.
Her throat dried as she read the slanted, stark writing, and her fear became far more real than anything from a dream.
Dej had said this gaujo would betray her—and he had. He had taken Christo to London. With the blood cold in her veins, she knew that Christo intended to face the man who had murdered their father. The man who wanted Christo dead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Fear paralyzed Glynis for an instant. Anger followed, blazing hot, and she welcomed that sudden surge of heat in her veins. She threw down the note. Of all the arrogant, stupid, interfering, pig-headed, insufferable... idiocy! Both of them! And they thought to keep her sitting here, doing nothing but waiting! She stoked her fury with curses, and she clung to it to keep herself moving, to keep the anxiety of what might happen at bay.
Well, if St. Albans thought she would sit here like some timid, fainting lady, he did not know her at all. And if her brother intended to take on the risk of confronting their uncle without her, he must be moonstruck!
Ah, but must find a way to reach London before St. Albans could take Christo to see Lord Nevin. She would stop this folly.
She could not find her blue gown, so she pulled a dark green traveling dress from the wardrobe, one St. Albans had bought for her. She dragged on stockings and boots, and pulled her hair into a simple knot. She ran downstairs to find a servant.
She found three in the kitchen.
A maid blinked up at Glynis from her seat at a scared oak table, while the cook, a plump lady whose apron proclaimed her profession, exchanged a look with the butler. Glynis knew from their startled expressions that she should not be here, seeking after them belowstairs. Did not St. Albans always summon someone to come to him? She could not wait for such formalities.
“I must have a carriage,” she said.
“I do not care what he said. I must go to London!”
Impassive stares met her demand, and her face warmed. She saw at once how it would be. They did what St. Albans ordered, and he had said she was to remain here. No one in this house would be of any help to her.
Turning, she left them, striding for the front door, but when she stepped outside, she hesitated.
What now? Walk the hundred miles and more to London? That would take days. She needed someone with fast horses. She needed someone who would aid her, but who would help a Gypsy?
She wanted to growl out her frustration, to steal into the stables and just take what she wanted. But she could not be certain that she could. Ah, she needed kin beside her to do this thing.
And then she remembered the man met in the graveyard.
Ah, but she was mad to think of the plan now forming in her mind—but she was more than that. She was desperate to save her brother’s life.
* * *
Glynis wet her lips. The hall and main staircase had been the worst part—it had looked so like her dream that a chill had swept through her and she had had to step around the spot where she had dreamed that her father’s broken body had lain.
Some dreams are only dreams, she repeated to herself. St. Albans’s words, but she found comfort in them.
Now she sat on a hard, high-backed settee in a small room at the back of Dawes Manor. Books filled floor-to-ceiling cases along two walls, and the fire opposite the windows was unlit, although the room faced north and still held a chill from the cool summer night.
The butler’s frown had made clear his opinion of unescorted females who arrived with their hair disheveled, no bonnet, no gloves, no carriage, and no companion for respectability. The man would have turned her away, but she had given him Bryn Dawes’s card and his expression changed from sour disapproval to cautious uncertainty.
However, the best drawing room was obviously not for the likes of her. He had led her to the library, to this cold room, and told her to wait.