by Julia Ross
Ryder stroked his hand up her thigh. “You saw that?”
She slipped her fingers along his spine and pulled him closer. “Yes,” she said. “Ah! And there’s another!”
His arousal nudged her hip. His hands moved to capture her jaw. His tongue teased hers in deep, star-drugged kisses, while larger gems began to flash across the sky, burning colored streaks across the heavens.
His eyes were black pools of intensity, his breath as shattered as hers, as he entered her. She responded with quivers of sensitivity so acute that her vision almost slipped away. Yet her mind filled with the explosion of shooting stars, as Perseus flung his meteors across the sky and into the ocean. Perseus who slew the Medusa and married Andromeda, so that he and his wife might take their place forever in the heavens.
Her ears filled with her own quick breath. Her nostrils filled with the scent of roses and man. Her fingers dug into Ryder’s shoulders. Miracle opened her eyes again on that immense sphere of stars and the smiling face of her lover, his dark hair tumbled over the sheened skin of his forehead.
She smiled back at him as a single white star, full of brilliance, scorched across the sky, leaving a long trail of splendor.
Ryder threw his head back in rapturous concentration. She pulled up her legs, drawing him deeper, ever deeper, inside. Her voice mingled with his as every atom in her body thrilled in response—until, as she felt the spill of his seed, she thought she also heard the faraway sizzle of that one last great shooting star plunging headlong into the ocean.
“MY lord,” the footman said, holding out a silver tray. “Lord Braughton’s man awaits a reply.”
Ryder tore open the letter and scanned it. Miracle glanced up from her breakfast. She had returned from Ambrose’s Folly ravenous, and had been as hungry as a tiger for the three days since then.
He read the missive in silence, then looked up with a slight frown, before he smiled at her.
She smiled back. She had been filled with deep content ever since the meteor shower, as if her entire body was aware of some profound change that her mind could not yet quite grasp. She knew only that her heart felt open and free, completely secure in his love—though she was hungry.
“Alas, our idyll is interrupted,” he said in answer to her unspoken question. “Beauty’s been found. The ruffians who stole her will stand trial next week. Lord Braughton wants to see them hanged. He would like me to give evidence.”
“Hanged?” She shivered. “You must go back to Derbyshire?”
“There are other witnesses. A letter from me would probably suffice.”
“To take away three men’s lives? You don’t even have to be there?”
He stood up, walked around the table, and kissed her. “No, but I’m going, all the same. If I want to make certain that their sentence is commuted, I’d better go myself. They didn’t take our lives when they had the chance. Why should we take theirs? I’ll be gone for only a few days. Will you be all right?”
“Within the strong walls of Wyldshay? Of course!”
“I hate to leave you, but I don’t think it wise to take you away from here just yet. Not until the duke and duchess get back.”
“Then go! Your mother has no doubt already cowed Lord Hanley. Since he knows now that we have no idea of his secret, I’m no threat to him. Of course I’ll be safe. And you owe it to Beauty to bring her back yourself.”
“I knew you’d understand,” he said. “Can you also understand how very much I love you?”
She gazed up into his eyes and grinned. “Oh, I think so! After all, it’s almost as much as I love you.”
RYDER sent Beauty home with a groom. He made a quick visit to Dillard to make sure that Mr. Davis had his brother-in-law’s business well in hand. Then he was forced to stay on at Wrendale, pacing with impatience, when the trial took far longer than he had hoped. But in the end he saved Bruiser and his friends from the hangman, though he doubted that they were grateful to get seven years’ transportation, instead.
Though he burned with impatience to get home, when his carriage rolled back south at last—carrying him back to Miracle—Ryder leaned back against the squabs and smiled wryly to himself.
Messengers had brought word from Wyldshay every day. Back in London from her rounds of various country houses, the duchess was launching a whirlwind of preparation for their new wedding. His mother’s influence in society was immense. It might just be enough. Perhaps fortune favored the brave, after all!
In which case, perhaps Miracle’s mother had known exactly what she had done, when she had named her new baby.
The carriage rocked as it turned into an inn yard. Ryder climbed down and glanced about. The White Swan, where he had once suffered through a bitter breakfast with Hanley. Ostlers swarmed once again about his carriage.
He laughed and strode inside to order a late dinner. As he entered the parlor, a brown-eyed man in a caped riding coat grabbed him by the elbow. It was Guy. Dread coursed through Ryder’s heart at the look on his cousin’s face.
“Ryder? Thank God I ran into you!” Guy said. “No, nothing’s happened to Miracle. Not as far as I know.”
“Yet you look like a man with too many days’ hard riding behind you. What the devil is it?”
Guy released Ryder’s arm and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve found Philip Willcott.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE BUSTLE OF THE INN FADED TO A BLURRED HUM AS RYDER stared blankly at his cousin. “Willcott?”
“He’s alive.”
Sounds sprang back into focus. Miracle had never admitted to grief or guilt—and for God’s sake, she’d been justified in defending herself—but Ryder suspected that she still saw the incident with Willcott as a stain on her soul. But how the hell could the man be alive? Elation warred with a whirlpool of misgivings.
He guided Guy inside, commandeered a private parlor, and ordered wine and a tray of bread and meat. Real exhaustion lurked in the brown eyes. Without food and drink, Guy might simply drop, and it would anyway take several minutes to change the horses.
Ryder filled two glasses and gave one to his cousin. “You didn’t kill him when you found him?”
“For what he did on the yacht? It’s a little more complicated than that!” Guy flung himself into a chair as Ryder paced the small room. “He outwitted me. I lost him again.”
“Yet Miracle isn’t a murderer. Thank God for that! Though she did stab him?”
“Yes!” Guy gulped down wine. A little color came back to his face. “Everything up to that point happened just as she described. I got that much out of him, at least. Hanley must have found him after Miracle had already fled in the boat. I don’t know if Hanley thought he was dead or not, but he flung him overboard. If Willcott had died then, Hanley—not Miracle—would have killed him. However, Willcott regained consciousness when he hit the water. He began sinking like an anchor, but he didn’t dare shout for help, in case Hanley simply shot him like a dog.”
“He must have thought he was about to meet his Maker,” Ryder said dryly.
“He did.”
Ryder tore a chunk of fresh bread from a loaf. It was as important to maintain his own strength as Guy’s, though his dread was rapidly coalescing into real fear.
“He did what?”
“He did meet his Maker, or thought that he had. Willcott swam until he was exhausted. Then as he sank beneath the waves again God appeared to him in a blaze of white light. He was swept down a bright tunnel, cradled in the lap of Christ. When he was eventually cast—like Jonah—back onto the bosom of the waters, he found himself in a small boat in the company of some freebooters. Assuming from his sorry state that he was a fellow renegade who’d fallen foul of the revenuers, they carried Willcott with them to France.”
“So where the devil did you find him?”
“North of here. God told him to track Hanley down and destroy him. Willcott chased down some more evidence about Hanley in France, then came back to England. When he
learned that the earl had gone to Derbyshire, he followed him.”
Ryder choked down his burning urgency. He must know all the facts before he acted on his growing terror.
“Did he tell you what secret he’d been holding over Hanley?”
“He not only told me, he gave me proof. There were several copies, apparently.”
“Proof of what?”
Guy tugged out a folded document and threw it on the table. “A French marriage. The fourth Earl of Hanley took a wife in France before he committed bigamy by marrying again in England. Evesham Forbes Frobisher was thus born out of legal wedlock. He’s no more the fifth Earl of Hanley than I am.”
Red liquid spilled as Ryder spun about. “Willcott’s gone to find Hanley now?”
Guy gulped wine and nodded. “He discovered that Hanley—Mr. Frobisher, I should say—had already returned to London. I was hot on his heels when I saw your carriage pull in.”
Heart racing, Ryder set down his glass. “I know you need food and rest, Guy, but you can eat and sleep in my carriage. We must get to Wyldshay.”
“Wyldshay?”
He seized his cousin by the lapels and dragged him to his feet. “For God’s sake, Guy! Even if Hanley kills Willcott the second the man arrives in town, multiple witnesses—including you—can testify that they recently saw him alive. Miracle’s not a murderer and never was. So Hanley holds nothing over me, after all. Yet if Willcott admits that he gave you these papers, Hanley will know that you’ll share them with me.”
Guy swayed on his feet, but he began to wrap bread and meat into a napkin. “He won’t trust you to keep quiet?”
“Never! Our antipathy runs too deep.”
“In which case,” Guy said, “Willcott’s existence just rather tipped the balance of power, didn’t it?”
“Exactly! As soon as Willcott reaches him, Hanley will know that his worst enemy has evidence that can destroy him. With Miracle proved innocent, he no longer has anything he can use to make me keep quiet about it. So what the hell does he have left now, except revenge?”
MIRACLE gazed at the darkening sky beyond the window in Ryder’s bedroom. It was almost time to go down for her light supper, but she often seemed to feel suddenly tired like this. She may have impressed the duchess with her cool manner, but now that Ryder had left, her appetite had disappeared.
Sheer nerves made it hard even to face breakfast in the mornings. Sometimes she could eat a little dry toast and drink tea. Other days she ate nothing and still felt like retching.
Her one comfort was to retreat to her husband’s rooms off the Whitchurch Gallery. The Whitchurch Wing was separated from the rest of the castle by a series of courtyards. Though a medieval tower rose majestically above it, Ryder’s private domain was elegant, simple, and peaceful, and she loved it.
She lay fully clothed on the bed that they had shared every night since he had first brought her to his home, except for that one magical night on the roof of Ambrose’s Folly, when she had thought that the falling stars had entered her soul.
Gathering darkness played across the room. Miracle wrapped her arms about Ryder’s pillow and buried her face in the clean linen. Every day a messenger brought a little note, filled with humor and wry observations. She missed him with an anguish like a wound. Though the maids had brought fresh sheets the day he had left, her breasts ached at the faint shadow of his scent.
Something touched her shoulder. Miracle opened her eyes. One of the maids stood over her, nervously twisting her fingers in her apron.
“Yes, Jane? What is it?”
“Your supper is ready, m’ lady, and there’s a gentleman to see you. He’s waiting in the Great Hall. The footman told him you were not receiving, but he was most insistent. He said you’d want to see him, that he had news about Lord Ryderbourne.”
She was instantly awake. “Did this gentleman give his name?”
“He said you’d know him, m’ lady. He arrived in a fancy carriage with a crest. He said he’s been here before as a guest of the duchess. He acted like he expected to be invited to stay to supper.”
Miracle crossed to her washstand and splashed water on her face. Since her husband controlled fleets of paid envoys, she doubted that any gentleman was bringing her a message from Ryder, but had her past decided to pay one last visit, after all?
She stared at her face in the mirror for a moment. The face that had been both a blessing and a curse. The face that had saved her from starvation. The face that had given her to Sir Benjamin Trotter, who had loved her.
And to six men who had not.
Guy had been one of them—though he had never quite believed that—and there was Hanley, of course. The names of the others ran through her mind: Richard Avedon, Lord Dartford, Sir Robin Hatchley, Lord Burnham. She had nothing to fear from any of them. Perhaps her mystery visitor was Dartford, sadly foxed, who still thought it more discreet not to tell the servants his name, since her husband was away and he had once been her lover.
She was hardly in the mood for company, yet she allowed Jane to comb out and rearrange her hair, before helping her into a fresh dress.
Miracle took one last look at herself before she left the room. The lady of the night was gone. In her place, Lady Ryderbourne, a future duchess, stalked down through the castle in a stunningly elegant gown of white satin, while every maid and footman stood to attention as she passed.
The Great Hall was empty.
THE carriage rocked dangerously as John Coachman drove the horses south through the night. Wishing only for yet more speed, Ryder told Guy everything that had happened since they had parted at Wrendale.
“So you really think Hanley will try to harm her?” Guy asked. “Yet surely she’ll refuse to see him? Wyldshay is full of servants who’ll sacrifice themselves before letting any harm come to a St. George.”
“Servants? God! However loyal, how the devil can servants be expected to stand up against an earl?”
“Hanley isn’t an earl.”
“No one else knows that as yet, I imagine, except you and me and Willcott.”
Guy turned his head to gaze from the window. His skin still looked pale. “Why the hell do you hate each other?”
Ryder tipped his head back against the squabs. Revulsion and rage mingled hotly in his blood, driving his pulse into thunderous new rhythms as he recalled what had happened at Harrow. He had been barely more than a child in the hands of an older boy. Yet that boy had come into his title, and Lord Hanley had become, to all appearances, a perfect English gentleman.
He had buried all of those memories so deeply he had genuinely almost forgotten them. Until he had rescued a woman with bruises like accusations on her skin, and learned that she’d been Hanley’s mistress.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s all in the past.”
His face ghostly, Guy glanced back at his cousin. “I wish I could believe that.”
“Forget it! Did Willcott explain why he hid a copy of the papers in Izzy’s Bible?”
“He’d come across evidence of the French marriage and he was blackmailing Hanley, as we surmised. Willcott knew that Hanley would ransack his rooms as soon as he had the chance, so he took his proof to Miracle’s house. It wasn’t hard, I imagine, to secrete it in the maid’s room.”
“And as it turned out, that was a perfect hiding place—until Hanley thought it all through and guessed what Willcott had done.”
Guy rubbed a thumb and forefinger over his eyes. “But why the hell create the scene on the yacht?”
“That was probably genuine. Miracle can drive almost any man wild with desire, even when she’d rather not. So when Willcott offered to trade all the damning evidence for Miracle’s favors and—no doubt—a very large sum of money, Hanley must have believed him.”
His cousin looked up. “But you think Hanley intended a double cross?”
Ryder nodded. “How could he trust Willcott to keep quiet forever, however much he paid him? So he’d promise the
money, sacrifice Miracle, learn the location of the papers, then turn Willcott adrift in a boat without oars in a spot where the currents would carry it straight onto the rocks of the next headland.”
“Though Willcott must have already told Hanley that he’d hidden the papers amongst Miracle’s possessions?”
“I imagine he told him on the yacht that night. It was the truth, after a fashion. He probably refused to explain exactly, till after he’d secured the money, but a half truth was necessary to win Hanley’s confidence. However, Miracle put a little damper on everyone’s plans when she put a knife into Willcott’s shoulder. Now, get some sleep, Guy! There’s nothing more we can do now, except pray.”
Guy pulled a rug up over his shoulders and slumped into a corner of the carriage. In a few moments, he was asleep.
Ryder sank his head into both hands and tried to bury his fear. He even tried to pray, for Miracle’s safety, for her love. Yet another thought intruded, as he looked up to see Guy settle into the deep slumber of exhaustion: a generous man, his cousin, to knock himself out for a woman who had already pledged herself to another.
MIRACLE shrugged and gazed about the Great Hall. The room was dominated by images of St. George and the dragon. Perhaps the gentleman had lost his nerve, after all? Which meant that her visitor was almost certainly not Lord Dartford.
She turned to speak to the footman. “A gentleman came here asking for me, Duncan, but he didn’t give his name?”
“That’s right, my lady, but he’s gone now.”
“Gone? You mean his coach already left?”
“Yes, my lady. A few minutes ago.”
“Can you describe the crest on the door?”
The footman shook his head, but he went to question someone from the stables. Miracle waited with a vague sense of unease.
Duncan’s shoes resounded heavily on the floorboards as he came back. “The coach was damaged, my lady, but recently repaired. The head groom says it looked like a bullet had gone through the door panel. He made this little sketch of the crest.”
