Blackhaven Brides (Books 5–8)

by Lancaster, Mary

  Dawn approached reluctantly, counting the rapid beats of her heart. She didn’t sit in the chair but sank onto the rug in front of the fire and drew off her outer wrappings.

  “Your father didn’t abandon you, you know,” he said gently. “I think whatever else he is, he is an excellent judge of character. He knew I would not harm you.”

  She shrugged. There was no way Ezra could have known such a thing. Guessed, perhaps but not known.

  “No one will be unkind to you under this roof,” he promised.

  “Why not?” she countered. “Because even though I’m a gypsy, they’ll all believe I’m your doxy?”

  If she had hoped to embarrass the fine-speaking young lord with such crude language, she was doomed to disappointment. He only smiled at her and took a swig directly from the decanter. “I imagine they might admire my restraint and put it down to your virtue.”

  “I’m a gypsy. What do you know about my virtue?”

  “Nothing,” he admitted. “In fact, although your father told me you had no husband, I didn’t enquire about a lover. Have I made things difficult for you?”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  “Then there is no suitor?”

  She shrugged impatiently. “Matthew—the fiddler—would like to be, but I don’t wish it. I don’t wish for any of them.”

  “What do you wish for?”

  She stared into the tiny flames of the fire. “I don’t know. I want to belong…and have never found any one or any place to belong to.”

  “Belonging can be overrated,” he said ruefully. “You think all this belongs to me. It doesn’t. I belong to it.”

  She glanced at him curiously. “You resent your magnificent home and your privilege?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I love them. But even I long to escape sometimes. That’s what drew me to your camp.”

  “Then you weren’t looking for me?” The words spilled out unbidden, but having said them, she was suddenly glad.

  The handsome stranger smiled and the breathtaking lust was back in his eyes. “No. But I was glad to find you.”

  “To somehow confound the friend who is your enemy?” She swiveled around and, greatly daring, rested her elbows on his knees. “Or to be with me?”

  Slowly, he set the decanter down on the hearth. Her heart thundered. She wondered why she had ever imagined he was young enough and silly enough to provoke with safety. For as soon as his finger slid beneath her chin, tilting her face to his, she knew he was not inexperienced. He was rich and handsome. He would hardly need to try. More than that, he overwhelmed her just by his gaze.

  He bent and softly took her lips.

  Butterflies soared in her stomach. Desire unfurled like the petals of a flower, sweet and heady… And then it was over.

  “If you knew how much I want you, you would not tempt me,” he said hoarsely. His caressing fingers vanished from her chin and he rose, stepping around her. “I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”

  Completely flummoxed, she watched him cross the room and leave with his candle. She felt suddenly very small and very humiliated. She didn’t even know why she had touched him. She knew what effect it had on her. Flashing visions of his past and future, something that was almost recognition. But teasing him was dangerous. She had only wanted comfort, the assurance that she was loved by someone, just for a few moments, even a stranger so far removed from her world and her life. And yet, there had been an instant when she would have given herself to him not just freely, but eagerly, desperately.

  She drew in a sobbing breath and snatched up her blanket before she lay down on the floor in front of the fire and tried to sleep.

  Chapter Three

  Gervaise woke with a combination of thirst, a thudding headache, and general wooliness. He groaned and realized he had to stop behaving like an idiot before he did something he regretted.

  He sat bolt upright in bed and clutched his head. Gypsies. The beautiful Dawn Boswell holding his hand with her dainty yet hard-worked fingers. The color of her hair. Julius Gardyn and an imaginative scheme for vengeance.

  Oh dear God, I brought the poor girl here.

  And in bringing her to the house, he didn’t know whether he had done worse by the girl or by his sisters whom he’d compelled to rub shoulders with her. If she hadn’t already run off with the silver and any other treasures that weren’t nailed down.

  He groaned again. “Ferris!” he yelled, then wished he hadn’t, for his head pounded viciously.

  His valet appeared from his dressing room. “My lord.”

  “Send for coffee. Lots of it. And I need to get dressed. Quickly! What is the time?”

  “Just after ten, my lord.”

  Gervaise nodded and threw off the covers. By their usual routine, the maids would not yet be cleaning the bedchambers, and they would have no other reason to go into the blue one since Cousin Ivor had left. He had time to clear his head a little before confronting the girl.

  In between gulping coffee, washing, dressing, and being shaved, he paced across to the windows, looking for any sign of Dawn or her family. Ferris seemed surprised when he mentioned the gypsies.

  “No, my lord, they’ve come nowhere near the castle. They were a little rowdy last night, according to Mrs. Gaskell, but camped down in the valley there, their noise is muffled.”

  Gervaise nodded curtly and thrust his arms into his coat. He dismissed Ferris as soon as he had eased the garment over his shoulders. A last quick glance in the full-length glass told him he looked respectable enough—a little pale, perhaps, but at least his eyes were not bloodshot.

  Deliberately, he smoothed his frown of self-disgust. Although not a puritanical man by any standards, neither had he ever been a rakehell of, for example, Lord Daxton’s caliber. He had always held himself to the code of a gentleman, and in bringing Dawn Boswell to the castle, he had fallen well below. Besides, he had a vague memory of kissing her and wanting to do a great deal more. He was fairly sure he would remember if he had taken her to bed, but at this moment he could not rely on his own memory or his own senses. Or on his own decency, it seemed.

  With a sense of dread, he left his chamber and made his way toward hers, at least to the one he was fairly sure he’d given her. It would probably be best if she had simply gone. Unless she’d cleared the house of things his mother or his sister were truly fond of, he wouldn’t even report any theft, just consider it the cost of his own foolishness. The girl deserved to be compensated. She deserved, moreover, a better father. What had the man been thinking to let her go off into the night with two bosky young gentlemen? Only of his purse, presumably, which was now rather fuller. The cost of that served Gervaise right, too.

  Alcoholic remorse, he derided himself, nodding curtly at a passing maid who bobbed him a curtsey on her way past. Before he entered the blue bedchamber, he checked both directions to be sure no one saw him and knocked.

  Receiving no response, he knocked again.

  Dear God, what if she’s in the breakfast room with the younger ones? Not that he was ridiculous enough to imagine his younger sisters would be contaminated in some way by any contact with the gypsy girl, whom he had, in fact, rather liked. They were more likely to run off with her to the camp, and God knew what would be the result of that.

  His third knock got no more attention than his previous efforts, so he gave up and walked in.

  Daylight flooded through the open curtains. The bed had not been slept in, or even lain on, judging by its pristine appearance. For a moment, he thought she really had gone, and was unsure whether to be worried or relieved. It would certainly be a problem less for him to deal with, but she had been upset by her father’s behavior—quite understandably—and he didn’t like to think of her travelling alone without the protection of her family.

  And then he saw her, curled up in a ball on the hearth rug, covered only by a gaily colored blanket, presumably the one she had been wrapped in when he first saw her.

  �
�Dawn?” He strode over to her, crouching down and shoving aside the blanket and a clump of hair so that he could see her face. She was breathing, he saw with relief.

  Her eyes opened, looking directly up into his. She smiled, a trustful, almost childish smile that pierced his guilty heart.

  “I thought you were hurt,” he said in relief. “Why didn’t you sleep in the bed?”

  The smile vanished—into unpleasant reality, he could only assume—and she sat abruptly. “It’s too grand. It repelled me,” she said oddly. Then, more anxiously, she added, “Is it very late? I couldn’t sleep during the night, and then when it finally grew light, I must have dropped off. What should I do?”

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about. And we can’t be long. Your reputation will be utterly ruined if I’m discovered here.”

  Her brows twitched. “Won’t your vengeance scheme work better if I’m ruined?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “You chose me because I look like your friend who is your enemy,” she said impatiently. “Wouldn’t he be mortified to think you had ruined a member of his family?”

  He felt blood drain from his face. If he had been pale before, he supposed he must resemble a corpse by now. He sat on the floor, letting his head fall back against the nearby chair.

  “Not as mortified as me. Or you! Dawn, I am so sorry to have dragged you into this. I’ll take you back to your father immediately.”

  “Oh no you won’t,” she said at once. “I’m not going anywhere near him. If you’ve changed your mind, say so, and I’ll be gone.”

  “Of course I’ve changed my mind!” He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Dragging you here was unforgivable and I intend to make it up to you any way I can. I’m afraid I have no idea how your people regard situations such as this, but I hope to God I haven’t ruined you in their eyes.”

  “I don’t care how they regard it,” she muttered. “They were keen enough to push me off.”

  He saw again how wounded she was by her father’s action and was even sorrier for his part in it. It behooved him to mend things between them—a task he was well suited for, having spent a large part of his life negotiating truces and reasonable behavior among his own family, friends, servants, and tenants.

  “But you must want to attend the child’s christening,” he said reasonably.

  She cast him a pitying look. “He is already christened. Many times over. Wherever it’s the custom to give us presents for him, we get him christened again. It won’t matter if I miss one.”

  He grinned. “Clever.”

  She gazed at him curiously. “You’re not even outraged, are you?”

  “No,” he admitted. “You get useful gifts and we feel charitable. Everyone is happy.”

  “That is one way of looking at it.”

  He rose to his feet and stretched down his hand to her. “Come. I need to speak to your father.”

  She stayed where she was. “You don’t need me for that.”

  “I would like you to be there.”

  “So you can push me back to him?” she said bitterly. “Will money change hands again? Don’t bother answering that, for it doesn’t matter. I won’t go back. And as I recall, I have a task to do that will pay me in coin and clothes.”

  “That was the brandy talking,” he confessed.

  “Then it was the brandy making a verbal contract. Do your people—gentlemen—not regard their words as binding?”

  “Of course, they do, but—”

  “Then tell me what you want me to, I’ll do it, and you can pay me and I’ll go.”

  Since she made no effort to rise, Gervaise let his hand fall back to his side and sat down in the same chair he had occupied last night. He remembered that much.

  “It isn’t as simple as that,” he said gently. “In my cups, I saw only a lark, a spot of petty revenge where no one actually gets hurt. There seemed nothing wrong in taking you away from your family in the middle of the night and expecting mine to look after you. The intricacies of propriety and honor—yours and mine!—never entered my head. Let alone the practicalities. If I could bring myself to use you in this way, I’m not even sure I wish to do this to Gardyn. I certainly don’t want to sully the memory of the lost child.”

  She regarded him thoughtfully, as though actually understanding and considering all he said. “Perhaps you had better tell me everything. About the lost child, and about this Gardyn. Is he the child’s father?”

  “No, her cousin, but he inherits the Gardyn fortune and Haven Hall once the child is legally declared dead.” He drew in his breath. “Very well, I’ll tell you, so that you understand the rest of my sober objections to my drunken scheme! Sixteen years ago, the three-year-old daughter of our neighbor, Robert Gardyn of Haven Hall, simply vanished.”

  Dawn’s forehead twitched. “What was her name?”

  “Eleanor,” he said. “She was in the garden with her nurse one sunny morning. The nurse turned her back for a minute and when she looked around again, the child was gone. Of course, they searched. The whole community searched far and wide. The ponds and nearby lakes and rivers were dragged, the shores scoured. Vagrants were questioned, gypsies accused—inevitably—but no trace of her was ever found. A couple of years later, Robert died in a riding accident, deliberately, some said, and within another year, his wife, who had faded to just about nothing, died, too.”

  “How horribly sad,” Dawn whispered.

  “It is. I was about ten years old when the little girl disappeared, and I remember the pall it cast over everyone.” He shrugged. “But, of course, time moves on. Since there was no body, Eleanor was still the heir to Haven Hall. After a few years, it was leased to a succession of tenants, all of whom neglected it further, and the Gardyns who were left were never interested. Until Julius, her cousin and heir, now, began to take steps to have her declared dead.”

  “Why now?”

  “I think because Colonel Benedict, the latest tenant, has begun to make such improvements that he looked on the house differently. He wants to evict the Benedicts and take over the whole estate to impress his political friends.” Gervaise smiled deprecatingly. “He is a politician, like me, although he sits in the House of Commons as a member for some constituency in the south where I doubt he’s ever set foot.”

  “And you sit in the House of Lords,” she said.

  “Yes. He is older than me by some fifteen years, but we have always known each other because of the Haven Hall connection. When I first took my seat, he was friendly and kind in a patronizing way, but within a couple of months his attitude had become mocking, niggling, obstructive of any suggestion, let alone proposal that came from me. The last straw, I suppose, was my proposal for the reform of poor relief. I had hesitant support from several in both houses, and even in both parties, and then support suddenly fell away. Gardyn had made it his business to deride the paper, make fun of it, even in the press, and then it was quietly buried before it even got near either house.”

  Instead of losing interest, her gaze had fastened on his, and when he finally stopped talking, she said, “Your grudge isn’t entirely personal, is it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t object to political triumph. I have ambitions. But I want to make things better. Otherwise, why bother? Gardyn’s opposition was personal, though. That is what riles me. His petty hatred or jealousy, whatever it is, stands in the way of progress. I cannot forgive that.” He smiled. “And you see my plan of last night was just as petty and in considerably less taste.”

  “Did this Gardyn know the child?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Was he as devastated as the rest of the family?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But now she would stand in his way. Haven Hall would be hers, and he couldn’t flaunt his country estate to his political friends.”

  “You grasp all this very clearly,” he observed, only half-amused.

  “Even my father never called me stupid. Am I
really so like this person?”

  “Lord, no, it’s just the color of your hair. Are you like your mother?”

  “I suppose I must be,” she said. “I don’t remember her. So your plan was to introduce me as Eleanor Gardyn, miraculously returned to her family? To cause this Julius some anxiety?”

  “Something like that,” Gervaise said ruefully. “Doesn’t make much sense in the light of day, does it? Sober day!”

  She thought about it. “I don’t see why not. If it makes you feel better to worry him.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind worrying him,” Gervaise said with a curl of his lip. “However, I do draw the line at treading on his grief and the child’s memory.”

  “Is he the only member of the family left?” Dawn asked.

  “Yes. Well, the only Gardyn by blood. Julius’s mother is still alive. She must also have been fond of her niece.”

  “Maybe,” Dawn allowed. She rose without aid, walking across the chamber to the window. “Goodness, you can see the sea from here!” she exclaimed in delight.

  “You can see it from most of the castle.”

  She gazed in silence for a few moments, before she turned back to him. “It seems to me,” she pronounced, “that you need not concern yourself with his grief if he had something to do with the child’s disappearance.”

  Gervaise’s eyes widened in startlement. “Something to do with it?” he repeated. “What on earth makes you say that?”

  “Who gains from it?” she asked matter-of-factly.

  “I suppose Julius does, eventually. But sixteen years later? That would make him an extremely patient villain.”

  “I would like to meet him,” Dawn said dreamily. “And tell his fortune. Then, we would know.”

  Gervaise regarded her with unease until her gaze refocused on him and she smiled.

  “You didn’t believe a word of your fortune last night, did you?” she guessed.

  “No.”

  “Then you wouldn’t believe anything I learned of his past or his future.”

  “Not by those means,” he said frankly. “Look, I appreciate your entering into my problems, but I never set out to hang Gardyn. He’s a selfish, over-ambitious bounder, but he would not steal a child.”