Briar Rose

by Kimberly Cates

  "A note?"

  "Left it on your desk, she did. But you needn't worry about her any, sir. Sergeant Barton was with her."

  Barton? Redmayne's hands clenched, every muscle in his body wire taut as he remembered how the youth had looked when he told him about the deaths of Sir Thorne Carville and Seamus O'Leary. Barton had seemed desperate, terrified, worn beyond bearing, cornered by forces Redmayne didn't understand. And desperate men did desperate things.

  He rushed to the desk, grabbed up the letter penned in Rhiannon's delicate hand. "Lion" was emblazoned on the front, that name, so intimate, so miraculous, so tender when used by his lady. The name no one else had used since those vague memories of his father.

  He couldn't still the tremor in his hand as he unfolded the sheet of paper. "My love," she had written. "Please forgive me. I'm about to do something that might make you very angry. I received an invitation to dine today at Manion House."

  Dine? And he was supposed to be angry? What the blazes? He read on: "Please try to understand, I want so much to help you, and this might be the first step in healing old wounds. Obviously your grandfather wishes for reconciliation, too, or he would not have invited me."

  Redmayne's eyes blurred, his blood turning to ice. His grandfather—Rhiannon had run off to dine with his grandfather? God in heaven, that was like an angel sharing a meal with Lucifer himself!

  His grandfather had never done anything without some sinister motive—something dark, something deadly, his victim never suspecting a thing until the noose closed about her neck.

  And who had delivered his lady into that bastard's hands? Kenneth Barton. Lion's stomach pitched.

  He grabbed up his pistol, stalked out into the yard.

  "My horse!" he snapped at the groom. The lad stared at him a moment in abject terror at what he saw in Redmayne's eyes, then bolted for the stables.

  It seemed an eternity before he returned, but was only a few moments. Redmayne hurled himself on the horse's back, dug his heels into its barrel.

  Tossing its head, the horse blazed from the garrison at a dead run. Every hoofbeat hammered at madness and memory inside Lion, setting them roiling.

  God in heaven, Rhiannon, his innocent, brave angel—she had wandered into the depths of his own worst nightmare.

  CHAPTER 19

  Manion House loomed out of the gathering dusk like a beast fashioned of nightmare, distant walls seeming to jeer at Lion as he drove his horse toward it at a dead run. Memories, like necromancers from another world, swirled their dark magic about him, taunting him with shades of other scenes within the grounds of another imposing manor house across the sea in England.

  Rawmarsh—another name for hell. His boyhood prison, the place where everything decent and good inside him had been flayed away by the relentless knife strokes of his grandfather's will.

  He'd spent a lifetime trying to forget, but he could still remember it all—his despair, his confusion, then the hopelessness, wanting only to die. Yet in the end he had dragged himself out of the morass of his shattered childhood, determined to beat the old man at his own game.

  It had been so easy, when he hadn't given a damn about anything, including whether he lived or died. Cold, calculating, mentally stimulating, their battle of wills had been all those tilings. But with one glowing smile, one gentle brush of her lips, Rhiannon had changed everything. Life, once shrouded in dull gray, was kissed by his fairy maid's magic spell, a sudden blossoming of every rainbow color imaginable. The most beautiful hue of all that elusive tone known as hope.

  And yet he was soldier enough to know that Rhiannon's precious gift to him might be the very thing that tipped the odds in the old man's favor or caused Lion to make a fatal mistake. It was one thing to cast the die for your own paltry life. But to gamble with something so rare, so precious, as his gypsy angel...

  "Damn it, don't catastrophize," he upbraided himself grimly. "The old man is hardly going to sweep her off to a dungeon or hold a pistol to her head. No, Paxton Redmayne uses far more subtle means against his prey. He's merely probing, to see how best to use her against me."

  And yet the very notion made him sick to his stomach. Rhiannon—so open, so honest, so trusting— would be only too eager to spill out every secret of her tender heart in some misguided effort to close the breach between grandfather and grandson. He could picture the scene all too clearly: the old man baiting Rhiannon with that poisonous charm of his, revoltingly sincere as he stole her most private thoughts, all the time laughing at her, mocking her for her vulnerability.

  Redmayne pressed his mount harder, rage a thick knot in his chest. It would be a violation of her spirit, what the old man was subjecting her to, every bit as real as a violation of the body. No one understood that better than Lion. He had spent a lifetime attempting to bury the memory of it so deep he'd never again have to feel the sick shame, the devastation of innocence. But it rushed back with the force of a dam bursting, every exquisite shard of pain as fresh and real as it was on the day he first realized what his grandfather had stolen from him.

  Secret thoughts, hopes, fears. The very essence of his soul. He had been pathetically easy prey—a child alone, robbed of his family and of all he'd ever known. Need had been wild inside Lion then. He'd felt a desperate craving to trust someone, an inborn desire to bond with him, to share pain and hope, joy and failure, everything it was to be human.

  He'd never suspected the depths a person could sink to, the ruthlessness, selfishness. The cruelty. But now he knew, God help him. He knew. And he understood the devastation left behind.

  The mere thought of his grandfather prying into Rhiannon's soft heart was enough to drive Redmayne mad. But no, he reassured himself. It had taken Pax-ton Redmayne weeks to excise Lion's vulnerabilities. Rhiannon had been there an hour or two at most. Lion would grab up his lady and get her the devil out of that old demon's clutches before he could do her harm. He had to believe that, or he'd go mad.

  More vital still, he had to get a grip on his own emotions. To charge into Paxton Redmayne's domain in this state—all raw nerves and throbbing fury, the hellish past reflected in his eyes—would be more dangerous than racing afoot into a brigade of enemy calvary without so much as a wooden sword as a weapon.

  With more force of will than he'd ever expended, Lion slowed his horse as they came within sight of those in the house. He straightened his uniform and the wind-tossed waves of his hair. But there was one damned inconvenient thing he was discovering about emotions: when they were this real, this vital, this intense, they were dashed hard to shove back into their boxes.

  He doubted he could have done so for himself, but for Rhiannon... He pictured his lady as she was the night they'd almost made love, her eyes shining with adoration. Not as if he were some perfect Galahad— that was the miracle of it. She looked into the face of all his flaws and loved him in spite of them.

  With grim determination, Lion forced his features into their accustomed austere lines, willed ice into the blue of his eyes. But he couldn't suppress the sick jolt he felt when he glimpsed Rhiannon's bright-painted gypsy cart parked before the entry. He drew rein and fought to steady his hands.

  No, there was no danger of his grandfather firing a bullet into Rhiannon, but if the old man had managed to plant any seed of doubt, of fear, that would haunt her forever, by God, Lion swore he would kill him.

  Dismounting, he handed the reins to a groom and strode up to the door. He didn't bother to knock, merely opened the door and strolled in as if he belonged to a far different kind of family, one that would joyously welcome a wandering grandson home from his travels.

  A footman came bolting toward him, scowling. "You'll be leaving at once, whoever you are, or—" the servant began, then stopped, a cunning gleam suddenly sparking in his eyes. It was there for the merest heartbeat—expectancy and recognition—even though Redmayne had never seen the man before.

  "I regret my tardiness," Redmayne said, "but there was an invitation to din
e waiting when I arrived at my headquarters. Surely it isn't too late to join Grandfather and my betrothed?"

  "Late? No, sir. I'd say you've come chasing after your lady with all haste, you have. Your grandfather will be most pleased at your arrival."

  Lion fought to conceal a wince. Perhaps he was tipping his hand by rushing in here, yet what choice did he have? He could hardly leave Rhiannon to his grandfather merely to keep his own guard firmly in place! The thought pierced him like a well-aimed bullet. Hellfire, until now, hadn't he always been willing to do just that? Hadn't he considered protecting his own borders far more important than guarding anyone else's? How much Rhiannon had changed him in so little time, resurrecting what was decent, tending what was good, polishing it to a sheen that drove back the darkness. Gratitude made his throat tighten, as well as his resolve. He would die before he ever let his own shadows overtake her.

  "Your weapons, sir?" The footman asked stretching out his hands. When Redmayne hesitated, the servant smirked. "Swords and pistols are hardly appropriate dinner wear."

  Lion unbuckled his sword, drew out the pistol at his waist, and handed them to the servant. In Paxton Redmayne's house the social niceties had always been observed, and Lion did not expect to need any weapons. It was merely an excess of caution that had made him conceal a small pistol in his boot. But the knowledge that it was there reassured him.

  "If you would follow me, Captain." The footman smirked. "I will show you to the red drawing room."

  Red. Lion felt a thin sheen of sweat dampen his palms. So the old man had chosen the setting for his encounter with Rhiannon hoping that Lion would come. That could be the only reason for choosing to borrow a house with so many echoes of his distant boyhood prison. Could Paxton possibly know that Lion still saw the blood-colored walls of Rawmarsh when he closed his eyes, too exhausted from beating back the image to fight any longer? Yes. The cruel bastard had wanted to goad Lion, grind the memory into his face—remind him of the chamber he'd been locked in, left to starve. The horrific shattering Lion had felt inside, breaking apart a piece at a time until at last he'd buckled under the strain and bowed to the sadistic son of a bitch's will. Always intricate plots, shrewd, cunning maneuvers. No, there could be little doubt that the old man had orchestrated this with the genius of a master who was determined to make certain Lion remembered every excruciating detail, especially the boyhood feeling that his grandfather was invincible and that Lion's own battles against him were futile.

  But he wasn't a helpless child any longer. That chamber had no power over him anymore when matched against his love for Rhiannon. Love. Yes, damn it. Love. The purest, fiercest passion he'd ever known.

  Jaw tightening, Lion followed the servant down the hallway to the room, the footman taking obvious pleasure in announcing him to whoever waited within.

  "Captain Lionel Redmayne, sir." Unholy pleasure edged the man's voice, setting every nerve in Lion's body stinging with wariness.

  But Lion only strode into the room with the casual gait of a man who had done so a hundred times. Braced as he was, nothing prepared him for his first glimpse of Paxton Redmayne after so many years. Lion suppressed a shudder. The old man looked exactly the same as he had the first moment Lion had seen him. Time and mortality seemed to hold no power over him. Had the wily old demon made a pact with the devil? If so, Lion could almost sympathize with Lucifer. This was one time he would wager Satan could lose his own soul to a mortal's sinister keeping.

  "Grandfather." Lion swept him a bow, the slight edge to his voice transforming that term of endearment into a cutting barb. He straightened, leveling his eyes at the older man, giving no quarter, asking none. Hate burned in Lion's gut, made bile rise in his throat. He forced his most sardonic smile. "You haven't changed at all."

  The old man gave a snide chuckle. "I wish I could say the same for you, my boy. You have changed a great deal. So much that I would scarce have believed it had I not seen the evidence with my own eyes."

  "A hazard of growing up, I would assume."

  "I would rather say the tragic cost of forgetting every lesson I ever taught you."

  "Not every lesson." Lion crossed to where the table was still set, the food untouched, one chair wildly askew, as if flung back in a hurry—but why? Because Rhiannon had been desperate to escape this room and the crafty old spider who played caesar within it? Yet her gypsy cart still stood out front.

  She would hardly have set out across the countryside on foot, would she? No. No matter how threatened she felt, a horde of grandfathers couldn't have made her abandon that pitiful excuse for a horse she loved so much.

  "You always insisted I not be careless," Lion observed. "And yet, forgive me, but it seems you have misplaced my betrothed."

  "Ah, yes, your fiancée. When news of your engagement reached me in Belfast, I couldn't resist seeing her for myself." A smile thin as black ice curled Paxton's lips. "Never fear, Lionel. You cannot believe I would be so careless, once a treasure such as Miss Fitzgerald was delivered into my hands."

  Lion fought back a chill. He had heard that tone in his grandfather's voice before, the quiet whisper, as lethal as a Japanese blade cutting to the bone. "Where is she?"

  Paxton gave a rumbling laugh. "Why, my dear Lionel, you show a most ungenteel interest in this girl— a mere pauper from what I can tell, of no remarkable beauty or grace."

  He wanted to fling the old man's words back into his face, rise to Rhiannon's defense. Paxton Redmayne would never understand how fine Rhiannon was, how rare, worth a thousand of any other woman who ever breathed. But it was obvious the old man had already guessed too much. Damned if Lion would give him any more weapons for his arsenal.

  He feigned a yawn. "It is considered very bad form to misplace one's fiancée—especially for an officer. Shows an appalling lack of attention to detail. Now if you will be so good as to tell me where I might find her? In the stables visiting a sick horse? Tending a maidservant's toothache?"

  He let his mouth curve into something of a sneer, trying desperately to make the old man believe that the accustomed vein of selfishness still ran deep inside him. He needed the cunning bastard to believe Rhiannon was... what? An ornament to further his military career? A necessary bauble, much like a dress sword—relatively useless, a damned nuisance at times, but inescapable just the same.

  "I should have guessed such a woman would follow such common pursuits as nursing horses and servants. Doubtless she'll have your commanding officers eating boxty bread and boiled potatoes from your table before long." Paxton heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Lionel, Lionel, we have had our differences in the past, but I never expected to find that you had turned into a fool. Someone should rid you of that common Irish wench before you make yourself the laughingstock of the king's army."

  Lion brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve, damned if he'd let his nemesis guess what a tempest of fury and outrage and sick, sinking dread had been unleashed within his chest. "Perhaps I wish to make a fool of myself. How better to make a fool of you? Displaying the degradation of your... what was it you once called me—your masterpiece? Your life's work, Grandfather?" Lionel spread his arms in bitter mockery. "What do you think of your efforts now?"

  For the barest second something flashed in Paxton Redmayne's eyes, something so savage it made Lion's pulse trip in warning. Then it was gone. "You are a rank failure," his grandfather said. "But then, even the most superior of men fail in their efforts from time to time. It is said Michelangelo took a hammer to one of his sculptures, raging at it because it wouldn't speak to him. An understandable reaction when one has been bitterly disappointed."

  "Disappointing you has become my life's work," Lion asserted. "Every man must have a purpose. You taught me that."

  "And you taught me to choose a more worthy candidate to use my talents on. I should have guessed that in the end you would be worthless, tainted by the absurd morality of your father, no matter how hard I tried to excise it from you."

  "Asto
nishing that he had any morals at all, with you as his sire."

  "I? Your father's sire? Let me banish that delusion. I merely claimed that I was so the French authorities would put you under my guardianship."

  Lion was stunned at the numbing wave of relief that swept through him. Had he even realized the subtle horror he'd felt all these years, believing that Paxton Redmayne's blood flowed in his veins? A self-loathing so profound it had shaded every breath he drew. For if he was flesh of his grandfather's flesh, was he not capable of anything? Was he not tainted by evil, poisoned, lost, beyond hope?

  His grandfather's low chuckle startled him from his thoughts. "Ah, you feel that I've absolved you now, of some enigmatic sin. But there are stronger bonds than those of mere blood. We are alike, Lionel. I knew it from the moment I first saw you."

  "I am nothing like you." For the first time, Lion believed it.

  "We are far superior in intellect to the paltry fools who bumble about in our path. Admit it. Has anyone else ever managed to challenge you? Who understands things to the depth you do?"

  Lion remembered Rhiannon, the gentle probing of her eyes, the magnitude of her loving. Was there anyone who understood the human heart more completely? Even the battered, pain-deadened heart of the boy Paxton Redmayne had attempted to destroy?

  "It is possible to know everything yet understand nothing," Lion said.

  Paxton rolled his eyes heavenward. "That sounds like something your fool of a father said to me once. Never did I meet anyone who had squandered such potential. Brilliant he was, but so tangled up in doing good, in caring for the brainless peasants, that he squandered his gifts. He was never more than a paltry country doctor, trading his powders for hen's eggs."

  "Then I wonder you had anything to do with him."