“If anything were to happen to you,” he spoke at last, his voice shaky, “I don’t know what I would do.” He’d already lost the one ally and advocate that had meant more than anything to him and it had changed him completely and for the worse.
“As long as we act before Lord Shayles is released from prison, the chances of anything happening are slim,” she told him with absolute certainty. “And once Lord Shayles is freed, as long as we stand together, he can’t harm us.”
Mark wanted to believe her. He wanted to let her courage infuse him and make him the man he longed to be for her. He knew too much to accept everything she’d said, knew how cunning and hell-bent on revenge Shayles was, but her hope bolstered him all the same.
He leaned into her, sliding a hand along her waist and tugging her close. With his other hand, he tilted her chin up. He slanted his mouth over hers in a kiss that came directly from his soul. He poured his heart into it—a heart that belonged wholly to her now. She was his knight in shining armor, come to rescue him from the tower of his own nightmare, and yet he wanted to summon up power he was certain he didn’t have so that he could fight for her.
He slid his arms more fully around her, pressing her body flush against his and deepening their kiss. She parted her lips for him, resting her arms over his shoulders and softening for him. He explored her with his tongue and lips and teeth. Her body felt lush against his. It emboldened him to know that if he chose to, he could lay her across her bed, lift her skirts, and ravage her like the most romantic lover. She would submit to whatever whim he had because she cared about him.
The effect that knowledge had was so different than what someone like Shayles would have egged him on to do that it ignited a special sort of fire within him. He broke their kiss, raising a hand to trace the curve of her face, memorizing her hazy-eyed look, then stepped back.
“I’ll tell Baxter to repack my trunk at once,” he said, voice gruff with passion. “You may want to have Lucy sort through your trunk and repack it with fresh clothes and linens. Something sturdy would be appropriate. Dorset can be cold this time of year, and Ravencrest Hall is surrounded by streams and ponds.”
Angelica blinked, her cheeks pink, a smile spreading across her face. “You’re going to let me go?”
He cradled her cheek, brushing his thumb across her lips. “I’m coming with you,” he said. “You would never abandon me, and I will never abandon you.”
Chapter 14
The last time Mark visited Ravencrest Hall, the estate was perfectly groomed, the house was in pristine order, and the grim-faced servants had scuttled about, doing Shayles’s bidding with hunched shoulders and looks of fear in their eyes. As he and Angelica approached the house two days after their confrontation, an itchy feeling of dilapidation hung in the air, the lawns had gone to seed, the paths hadn’t been maintained, and every window had a desperate, hollow look to it.
“This doesn’t look particularly promising,” Angelica said as they walked up the steps of the tiered porches that led to the front door. She held his arm fractionally tighter than he would have expected her to.
“No, it doesn’t,” Mark mumbled.
He rolled his shoulders, then glanced back at the dusty, gravel drive. The carriage they’d hired to take them from the inn across from the train station seemed like a tiny speck at the far end of the drive. Try as Mark did to convince the driver to take them all the way to Ravencrest’s front door, the man had adamantly refused. It had taken an obscene amount of money to find someone willing to drive them to Ravencrest in the first place, and a second small fortune to bribe the man into waiting while Mark and Angelica carried out their business.
Angelica pivoted to see what Mark was looking at. “Do you think he’ll actually wait for us?” she asked.
Mark shrugged, facing her. “I suppose that depends on how long this business takes.”
She sent him a wary look of agreement and faced the door. Mark cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. Every fiber in his body begged him to turn and run, to escape the horrid memories of the time he’d spent under Shayles’s roof. But the past two days had convinced him Angelica was right in her insistence that it was high time he took back what was his.
He took a final breath and stepped forward, tugging on the chain to ring the bell in the front hall. He tugged twice for good measure, then stood back and waited.
Angelica slipped her arm through his once more. If she had been any other woman, Mark would have assumed the gesture was an indication of anxiety and a way to feel safer. Knowing his intrepid wife, she was trying to bolster his courage. That sent a wave of fortitude through him. If he was ever going to deserve Angelica by his side, he would have to muster up his courage and be the man she deserved.
His courage swelled…then pinched and faded when nothing happened. He frowned, clenching his jaw for a moment, then stepped forward to pull the bell cord again. He resumed his position by Angelica’s side, but still the scene remained quiet.
“I’m beginning to think no one is home,” Angelica said with a frown that matched his.
“It would appear as though that is a possibility,” Mark agreed.
He stepped to the side, letting go of Angelica’s arm so that he could lean out over the edge of the stairs in an attempt to peek inside the window closest to the front door. The curtains were mostly drawn, but there was enough of a gap for him to make out the shadowy outlines of a few pieces of furniture in one of the front parlors.
“It’s too dark to see much.” He sighed in disappointment and stepped back to Angelica’s side.
“I thought servants stayed to maintain the estate when their employers were away,” she said, then bit her lip and stared up at the house. “This place feels deeply empty.”
Mark removed his hat to run a hand through his hair, then fixed his hat back in place. Ravencrest did feel empty. He would have been willing to put money on the fact that the servants had abandoned the place, and yet, if that were the case, surely thieves would have broken in to steal anything of value Shayles still had. Though it was possible there was nothing of value left at all after Lady Shayles had decamped to Italy.
“We need to try to get a better look inside,” Angelica said, reflecting his thoughts.
She took his hand and started back down the imposing patios to the path that wound around the house. Shayles had always held a flare for the dramatic, and the fact that his front door was several feet above the level of the lawn and accessed by what felt like a stage was no accident. The sides and back of the vast house weren’t quite as dramatic, but there was still a feeling of intimidation built into the walls of the place.
“It’s not easy to see through the windows,” Angelica commented, standing on tip-toe in an attempt to peer into a tall window near the corner of the house.
Mark grunted. “Shayles did that on purpose. He didn’t want anyone spying on the activity of the house.”
Angelica lowered from her toes and turned to him with a wry look. “I’m not sure I want to know what activities those were.”
“You don’t,” Mark told her. Shayles’s house parties were notorious for spontaneous orgies in any room of the house, not to mention live, nude “art”, as he called the captive young women he’d kept chained to the furniture or walls for the amusement of his guests.
The memories were as bitter and poisonous as lye, and Mark wiped his mouth in disgust at the taste they left there. He moved on, breathing carefully so that panic didn’t overtake him as they searched for a better way to determine whether the house truly was empty.
“Look.”
Mark’s memories were easier to push aside when Angelica exclaimed, then marched away from him to the back corner of the house. He sped up to stay as close to her side as possible, loath to have her more than arm’s length away.
The object of her fascination was clear as soon as they reached the edge of the flagstone patio that extended from the back of the house. A pile of shattered,
green glass that included the neck of a wine bottle glittered in the sun. Angelica knelt at the edge of the patio to study it.
“It looks like a shattered wine bottle,” she said.
Mark took a look, but didn’t feel the need to play Scotland Yard. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “Shayles and his guests were always notoriously careless. Shattered glass was as common as flowers and shrubs on this patio during balls.” As were peals of ribald laughter and the shrieks of those who weren’t willing participants in the revels.
“No, look,” Angelica said. She picked the bottle neck from the pile of glass and stood to show it to him.
Mark frowned as he looked at it. “What about it?”
“It’s clean,” she said. He shook his head and shrugged slightly, so she went on with, “The glass is clean and the edges are still sharp. What else around here is clean and sharp?”
Slowly, the truth dawned on Mark, sending a chill down his back. “The bottle was broken recently.”
“Which means the house isn’t abandoned,” Angelica said in a low, cautious voice.
She set the broken bottle neck on the low wall that divided the patio from the lawn and stepped up onto the patio.
“We need to be extraordinarily careful,” Mark said in a hushed voice, following her. He narrowed his eyes as he glanced along the entire back of the house. The patio was raised enough to provide an extended area for revelers in the ballroom, which occupied the entire ground floor at that end of the house. An entire row of French doors ran the length of the patio, but their curtains were all tightly drawn.
Mark glanced up to the floors above the ballroom. Whoever had broken the wine bottle could have smashed it from the patio, but they could also have thrown it out a window. He searched his memory, trying to recall what rooms were above Shayles’s ballroom. They were all bedrooms, but some were for guests while others were designed for rendezvous during balls and accessed through secret staircases in the walls. It was as likely as not that the servants knew about those rooms and that they might have been hiding there.
“Oh.”
Angelica’s sudden gasp tore him away from his contemplation and had him searching for her and the source of her sudden alarm. He marched to her side just as a raggedly-dressed man rose from an overgrown shrub at the far end of the patio, where the stairs descended into the garden.
“Who are you?” Mark demanded, positioning himself in front of Angelica so that he could protect her if he needed to. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t mean no harm, my lord,” the man said, coming fully out from behind the bush. He swiped a worn cap from his head and held it submissively in front of him. “I…I was wondering what you were doing here and all.”
Mark narrowed his eyes. Something about the man was familiar. “Are you one of Shayles’s servants?” he asked, trying to place the man in his memory.
The man’s eyes widened in fear at the mention of Shayles’s name, which made his employment almost certain. “I was,” he admitted in a hollow voice. “Before he went away. I was a gardener.”
“The servants have all gone, then?” Mark asked. Part of him wanted to be indignant at servants who would abandon their positions wholesale, but the rest of him was glad for their sakes that they had.
“As soon as Lady Shayles left,” the gardener confirmed. “Not a man nor a woman wanted to stay behind once she was gone.”
“I suppose that’s understandable,” Angelica said, smiling kindly at the man.
A swell of pride filled Mark. Angelica had a way with people. She’d managed to tame him, after all. He was confident they could find out what they needed to thanks to her charm.
“Of course we left,” the gardener rushed on, his face pale. “That there house is haunted.”
Mark’s expression hardened, but he had no desire to set the man straight. Ghosts were a figment of the imagination. But he would admit that the nightmares Ravencrest Hall had seen in its time were haunting enough.
“What makes you say the house is haunted?” Angelica asked, stepping around Mark to approach the man.
The gardener looked warily up at the building. “We’ve all seen things in there,” he said. “Horrible things. When Mr. Urban left, he spent a full week at the Cock and Spurs telling the tales.”
Mark nodded. Urban had been Shayles’s butler, and Mark had no doubt the man knew everything that had gone on in the house, knew every ounce of Shayles’s evil.
“Others said the same things, footmen and maids and the like,” the gardener went on. “I didn’t work in the house, but I saw things too.”
“I’m sure you did,” Mark said, attempting to borrow some of Angelica’s comforting manner.
“And then folks started hearing things,” the gardener continued.
Mark and Angelica exchanged an uncertain look.
“Old Benny and One-Eyed Jake came by one night in July, intent on robbing the place. But they didn’t get through the front door even before they were chased away by a horrible screech.”
The gardener clearly saw that as a sign of ghosts. Mark wondered if it could have been an owl or the wind.
“Others tried the same,” the gardener went on. “Jonas Flint broke his leg trying to get in that window over there.”
He pointed to a partially opened window beyond the patio. Mark was reasonably certain it opened into the breakfast room. “No one thought to shut the window again?” he asked.
“No one’s been brave enough to come back here,” the gardener said. “Except the two of you.”
“But the bottle,” Angelica murmured. “Someone has been here recently.”
“I swear on my mother’s grave, no one has dared to set foot near Ravencrest Hall in months,” the gardener said.
“You’re here,” Mark pointed out.
He shuddered and took a small step forward. “I saw you entering the estate and rushed to warn you. You look like good people. I came to tell you to run, run as fast as you can away from here.”
“You risked coming back onto the property in order to warn us to stay away?” Mark asked, doubting the story.
The gardener darted an anxious look around. “Someone else came up here just yesterday.”
“Who?” Angelica asked.
The gardener shook his head, crunching his cap in his hands so tightly that Mark was certain the thing would never be the same again. He shrugged. “Thieves, most likely. Men foolish enough to tempt the demons that still live here.” He gulped. “A man was seen going in but not coming out. I can’t let what happened to Jonas happen to anyone else. A group of us have petitioned the local magistrate to have the whole place burned to the ground.”
“But it’s private property,” Mark finished the thought for him. He let out a breath and turned back to the house. “And Shayles will be released from prison in a week.”
The gardener gaped at him, turning as white as the ghosts he believed in. “The devil is coming home?” he asked in a strangled voice.
“He is.”
Angelica tried to speak comfortingly to him, but the gardener was beyond comfort. He backpedaled, nearly tripping and falling down the short flight of stairs that led to the garden.
“I have to get out of here,” he said in a panic. “We all have to get out of here. If the devil is coming home, there will be hell to pay.”
“I’m sure Shayles isn’t interested in seeking revenge on his servants,” Mark tried to tell the man—mostly because he knew full well who Shayles would seek revenge on first—but it was too late. The gardener turned and ran as soon as his feet hit the overgrown lawn. Mark could do nothing but stand there and watch him flee.
“I don’t believe the house is haunted,” Angelica said in a surprisingly strong voice when the gardener finally slipped out of sight. She turned to face Mark. “I never did believe in hauntings or magic or voodoo, and I grew up in New Orleans.” Her dauntlessness returned tenfold as she faced the house once more. “We have to find a way to at
least look inside.”
“Shayles deliberately made that difficult to do,” Mark said, following as she marched back across the patio to the curtained ballroom windows. “The best chance we’ll have of seeing inside might be from the servant’s quarters.”
Angelica hummed in consideration, but she didn’t look excited by the prospect. “Shayles wouldn’t hide your painting in the servant’s quarters,” she said, marching off to the side of the patio and following the house’s back wall. “At least, I don’t think he would.”
“No,” Mark admitted. He glanced up at the first and second floors instead. “Chances are he has it far out of anyone’s reach.”
“There has to be a way in,” Angelica huffed. She hurried down the stairs on the far end of the patio, then came to a stop by the window Jonas Flint had partially opened. “If that other man thought he could get in through this window, then I’m certain I can.”
“How do you propose to—”
Mark’s question died on his lips as Angelica answered with her actions. She took a few backwards steps, then rushed at the wall, jumping and throwing herself at it. By some miracle, her hands caught the window ledge and she managed to hold on. She kicked her skirts enough to free her feet so that she could find purchase on the wall, then pulled herself up. Mark watched the whole thing with open-mouthed admiration. He knew his wife was fit. He had intimate experience of the litheness of her body. But every time she demonstrated her skills, it left him in awe.
“Everything inside is dark,” she reported with a grunt. She tried to move one arm so that she could balance herself and pry open the window with her free hand, but even from where he stood, Mark could see it wouldn’t be possible. Angelica grunted in frustration, then pushed back, landing in the grass with a thump.
She straightened, brushing her skirts, her chest heaving with the effort of what she’d just done. “The furniture is all covered by canvas,” she reported. “But that looks like a small dining room.”
“I believe it is,” he said, studying her with admiration.
October Revenge Page 16
