A Dangerous Beauty, page 13
He had given her the cut direct.
Just like so many years ago.
Her own father.
The one who had told her he loved her nearly every day. Had told her he loved her more than himself. More than anything on earth. That he would never let a cloud enter her bubble of happiness. Her friends had always been amazed by her father, the earl of Twenlyne, and the way he doted on her.
And then she knew she had the answer she had tried to avoid for so long.
He would never forgive her. He would never allow her back into his arms and into his life. She was dead to him as far as he was concerned. Hadn’t Alfred told her that? She was more alone than she had ever felt in her life.
The tiny spark of hope she had nursed with potent memories from childhood was snuffed out. And surprisingly, instead of anger at her father’s actions as she had always had in the past, she now felt strangely detached and numb. Her arms felt like lead pipes at her sides and she couldn’t move her feet. It was too bad the same could not be said for her eyes.
She noticed many of the people at the bottom of the church stairs looking at her, whispering to each other. Phinn, on the edge of the crowd, was arguing quietly with their three brothers. In the end, one by one, her brothers trooped past the ancient gravestones, the edges of the Celtic crosses worn away, toward the open door of her family’s carriage, where the shadowed profile of her father was silhouetted against the light entering the window from the other side.
“But I don’t care what the vicar said,” came a familiar feminine whisper from the crowd.
Rosamunde refused to search for Augustine Phelps’s face among the throngs of people.
“If her father won’t acknowledge her, why should we?” whispered another voice.
“She’s trying to worm her way into the good graces of the St. Aubyns. Residing at Amberley, indeed,” continued another.
Rosamunde stood as still as the statue of St. Peter in the courtyard.
A man snickered. “Probably trying to warm a St. Aubyn’s bed like the last time, if you were to ask me.” A few masculine guffaws followed.
The air whooshed out of her and she could feel the blood draining from the back of her head where it tingled. She worried she might trip down the stairs if she tried to advance, so she stood there feeling very exposed. But really, what more could they say?
Oh, how she wished to run down the stairs and keep on running past the cemetery, past the fields, past everything she had ever known. It was the same exact feeling she had had when the vicar had refused her entrance here so long ago.
She had given in to her cowardice then.
But now she was older, perhaps not wiser, but she knew heartbreak and humiliation could not kill you. It only taught you how to stand a little straighter, and smile a little wider, and pretend you’re slightly deaf or perfectly unconcerned with what life drags into your dish.
A line of ladies dressed in mourning snaked through the crowd and mounted the stairs, Luc St. Aubyn escorting the countess at the tail end.
Grace Sheffey’s pale, regal splendor radiated from her expression. “Rosamunde, do join us. Her Grace has asked us to perform an impromptu short concert during the breakfast. And since we cannot find your sister, we’ve nominated you as the primary performer.”
They had taken pity on her. But compassion, especially his pity, was worse than the crowd’s loathing. She must pretend she was unaffected by it all. She must turn the moment.
Rosamunde forced her mouth to work and whispered, “For the love of Christ…” She stopped and looked at the duke, trying desperately to form a smile but failing.
His expression held a question.
“Isn’t that what you really wanted to say? Don’t you loathe music?” she asked quietly without a hint of humor.
Elizabeth Ashburton, holding Georgiana Wilde’s arm, burst out laughing.
His mouth twitched. “Why, Mrs. Baird, I actually like music, when it is played well. But you know I never, ever, blaspheme”—he cleared his throat—“without good reason.”
“Luc,” Ata said, “you always blaspheme. Who knows where you learned to take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“It’s not always in vain. I always ask with great hope, actually. Although it is rarely answered the way I like.”
Ata’s cough failed to hide her giggle. “By the by, you’re standing on my gown.”
“No, it’s your gown that has a nasty habit of attaching itself to my boot,” he said, lifting his Hessian, tasseled with black ribbons instead of the usual white ones.
They were good at dissembling, all of them. Rosamunde clenched her fingers so tightly she thought her nails would perforate the tips of her old gloves. She did it to stop herself from melting into tears of gratitude. She was very beholden to each and every one of them.
She bowed her head.
Ata came around behind her and whispered in her ear, “No, no, you mustn’t look down. Look up and stare at them like before. Shame them all. Now then,” she said louder so most of the crowd could hear, “I do declare, there are some people here who I distinctly don’t remember inviting to the wedding breakfast.”
The crowd’s babble of wagging tongues stopped abruptly.
“Luc, dear, you do have a copy of the list, don’t you?”
“No, but I’ve no doubt we’ll be in possession of an interesting version of it by the time we arrive at Amberley,” he rumbled loudly.
“Have I ever told you how much I appreciate how well prepared you always are, dearest?” Ata said, smiling up at her tall, darkly handsome grandson.
“That’s what all the ladies say, Ata.”
“Oh! For the love of…” Ata stopped when the widows began to giggle. “Now see here, it’s perfectly obvious he taught me this oath, not the other way around. Why, it’s scandalous what I must endure at my age,” she harrumphed through her thinly disguised smile.
“And that age would be?” he asked without a hint of a smile.
“Old enough to cross your name off the list too, you insolent puppy.”
They returned to Amberley in separate carriages and Rosamunde was glad. Sarah Winters, the eldest and wisest widow in the club, held her hand after the door closed.
“You know, Rosamunde, it is said that those who must endure the most early in life will enjoy even more the earthly joys to be found in later years.”
“And has that happened for you?”
The beginning of a few very faint lines edged the paper-thin skin surrounding the widow’s eyes, suggesting she was nearing her fourth decade. “Why, no.” She paused. “But there is still time, I think.”
Rosamunde squeezed her hand. “I am sure of it.” And she believed it, for the goodness of this lady was palpable. If anyone deserved never-ending joy it was Sarah, a lady whose husband had never returned from Wellington’s war with France.
Elizabeth Ashburton and Georgiana Wilde sat opposite them. “Where is your sister?” asked Georgiana. “I thought she was coming with you.”
Rosamunde shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought she had gone with all of you. I”—she looked at her hands—“I had not meant to come.”
Georgiana patted her knee. “You showed great courage. I couldn’t have done it.”
Rosamunde ignored the compliment. Her stomach was still so tightly clenched she felt ill. But she could appear normal for as long as it took. “I hope Sylvia didn’t go out walking to look for me. I told her I wasn’t to go.”
“Well, there is one other person who was disappointed when she didn’t appear,” Elizabeth said, not even trying to hide her grin.
Sarah cast a sharp look at Elizabeth. “Now don’t stir up hopes.”
“Why it’s as plain as the love on the groom’s face that Sir Rawleigh is besotted with Lady Sylvia.”
Rosamunde quickly looked from one lady to the other. “I do hope you’re right. I hope it with all my heart.”
“We all do, my dear, we all do. She’s not the only one I’m kneeling down for every night,” Sarah finished with a wink.
The dip and sway of the carriage signaled the last bridge before the turn into Amberley’s vast drive, lined with stately oaks whose roots were crowned with thick periwinkle. The sight of Amberley never failed to awe Rosamunde. It was simply the most beautiful place she had ever seen. It was as if the architects had had divine inspiration in creating such perfection of symmetry and design.
What she would give to jump from this elegant carriage and run behind the mansion to the kitchen door and beyond to the lovely bedchamber she occupied. Her head ached and her eyes burned from the effort to remain composed. She just wasn’t sure she could keep up this façade of collected behavior much longer. And she was certain she could not face her father again if he chose to honor the duchess’s invitation.
But escape was not in the cards. A horde of guests buzzed about the entrance when they arrived, their carriage being one of the last to do so.
Chastity Clarendon took up her arm and her brother the vicar took up her other. Wedged between the two of them as she was, no one dared utter a word against her. Oh, but it all felt so false. And planned.
The duke had surely designed this tactic during his return in another carriage. As if she could not stand up to the humiliation by herself. Hadn’t she been doing that alone for eight years? He obviously thought her a complete weakling.
But then, wasn’t she? She’d avoided situations like this at every opportunity.
A tide of guests swept forward into the mansion, pulling everyone with it. She was forced to pretend to nibble ham and slivered eggs on toast while she endured inane triviality. Mrs. Simpson simpered about the new inn at Land’s End. Mr. Canberry moaned about rain and haymaking. Agatha Fitzsimmons complained about the price of tea, and then, well, then it happened.
Auggie Phelps’s fiancé, Baron von Olteda, from Hanover, cornered her near the ladies’ withdrawing room. Of course no one was about, and of course he took advantage of the fact, sweeping her into a small morning room with a request for her help. He stood before her, falsely modest in his puffed-out Hussar uniform of latterly overalls and dark blue coat with scarlet facings and yellow lace.
“Mrs. Baird,” his eyes appraised her shrewdly, “I understand you might be searching for protection.”
“Protection?” she whispered in disbelief.
“Uh, or I think the Brits call it ‘a protector.’ Da?”
She could feel the blood drain from her face and moved toward the door. “I have no idea what you are talking about, sir.”
His iron arm appeared in front of her before she reached the door. “But Mrs. Baird, you cannot wish to be here. I can offer you protection”—he winked—“and seclusion.”
“Allow me to pass, sir.” It was not a question, but a demand. She tried to keep the wobble from her voice.
“Don’t you want to hear the terms? I promise to hide you away in great luxury. No one will insult or pity you.”
She had always thought him a great lummox. But she had underestimated him. He knew just what to say to completely demoralize her. She looked down at his hands and noticed they were just like her husband’s—sausagelike fingers with thick hair sprouting on the backs, the nails bitten down to the quick. Revulsion swept through her.
“Mrs. Baird, or may I call you my Rosebud? I will pamper you, and dress you in the finest London can offer and you will…well, you will pamper me.”
His sly innuendo sent a shudder straight down her spine. She thought she really might be ill. She pushed away his arm and continued another step. “No, sir,” she said, more firmly than she felt. She was lost, floating in a sea of panic.
He grabbed her at the last moment and pushed her against the wall, his barrel-shaped chest grounding into hers. His hands roughly grabbed at her breasts, and she fought against him, against an unbearably familiar sense of violation and horror. She had thought she would never ever have to feel or see hands like that touching her again. Grabbing her everywhere with complete disregard to her wishes, her words, her pain. She hated the touch of a man’s naked, moist hands. Hated it with a passion. She had wordlessly endured it out of duty, hiding her pain, holding back tears and her wishes for many years. But for the first time she was allowed to fight back.
She bit him. Sunk her teeth into one of his fat fingers as hard as she could and then jerked her knee to his unmentionables.
He howled. “Why you little—”
He was cut off by a hideous bone-crunching sound, and suddenly, his body was lying half sprawled by the door.
The duke, wearing the most murderously angry expression imaginable, stood in the baron’s place, his stance wide and his hands fisted.
He glared at her, then grabbed the baron by his facings and hauled him to his feet. The man appeared barely conscious. “You,” the duke said in ominous low tones, “are an insult to humanity. I shall give you one minute to get the hell out of here and take your deserving bride with you. If I ever see you again, I will stuff that unearned gold braid down your throat to your aching ballocks.”
She couldn’t deny the tiny thrill she felt at his words until he turned to look at her. The glittering anger in his face would scare the soul from the devil.
“Would you like to kick him before I throw him out?” he asked softly.
“No,” she whispered.
“Then I shall do it for you.”
“No, please, no.”
It was as if he couldn’t hear her. With vicious kicks to the stout man’s knees, he brought the man down again. And he would have continued if Rosamunde hadn’t used all her strength to pull him toward the door. He was like a wild animal with a taste of blood. She had no doubt that he was capable of beating the man past the floorboards into an early grave.
As they were about to pass over the threshold, the baron had the bad sense to utter one last parting shot. “Your husband told everyone about you, Rosie. You’ll be sorry you didn’t accept my offer. Others might not be so appealing.”
The duke swore violently and went back to deliver a coup de grâce, rendering the stout man insensible and a whisker away from something altogether closer to his final resting place.
But he couldn’t erase the words the man had dared utter. His words were engraved on her mind, swirling amid the other harsh reality of her father’s refusal to acknowledge her. She could not maintain her charade any longer.
She stared into the floating dust particles in the ray of light from the window and knew that if she moved or said a word she would break down—something she had never, ever dared to do. She might not be able to reverse a descent into madness.
He took two long strides toward her and gently grasped both her arms. “Come. Come with me.”
She couldn’t move or she would turn into dust. And so with one long movement, he swept her up into his arms and carried her from the room.
Chapter 9
Intimacy, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.
—The Devil’s Dictionary, A. Bierce
If there was one thing Luc knew how to do, it was how to accomplish an action in the most direct, precise manner possible without wasted motion or time. Within moments of leaving the disastrous scene, he had her bundled inside a closed carriage with Brownie driving them to the port. He had to get her away from Amberley and all these damn people.
She hadn’t said a word as they crisscrossed through the sandy lanes. She had stared out the window, her eyes dry and unseeing. She hadn’t even seemed curious to know where they were going.
For him, there had been no thought to the matter. Like a homing pigeon, he had ordered the direction to his cutter. A place that would promise protection. A place he could completely control.
He thought he would have to carry her again when she took so long to descend from the carriage. But, suddenly, ignoring his hand, she stepped down. Before he could say a word, she walked past him, past the smaller docked boats, and onto Caro’s Heart without looking back.
He nodded to Brownie, who was arranging for stabling and then boarded the only place that held any balance for him. Perhaps it was because there was no equilibrium here, the scenery and the situation changed each time he set out.
“Cap’n.” His three deckhands greeted him simultaneously.
“Set a course for St. Clement’s Isle. We’ll anchor there till…” he did the timetable quickly in his head, “three o’clock and then return to port. We sail immediately.”
The deckhands didn’t ask questions, and he didn’t have to wonder about supplies or readiness. Their fidelity, proven in bloodshed and in deathly storms, was the reason they worked for him.
He shaded his brow from the sun and watched her on the opposite railing, staring westward. What was he going to do about her? She wasn’t like the other widows Ata had taken into her protection. The others had been easily led to new lives, either remarrying or finding employment, reuniting with family or settling in obscure cottages Brownie arranged. But Rosamunde? He couldn’t envision a happy future for her. She would never remarry, had vehemently said so a dozen times, had no acceptable family, and was an obvious target for men like the baron. And like a sleek falcon, she would be miserable if her wings were clipped. She would wither away as a governess or companion hidden on the edge of nowhere. She was meant for adventure, to soar with excitement.
She was a hopeless case. A first. He shook his head and went to her, wondering what on earth he would say.
“You’ve discovered my weaknesses,” he said quietly just behind her. “Ladies who do not cry when they are supposed to and wounded young midshipmen who do.”
He continued when she didn’t respond. “And then, of course, there’s the matter of my deplorable temper.” He looked down the slope of her delicate neck and shoulders held ramrod straight. “Like father, like son, everyone says. There was a reason my father christened me Lucifer, after the devil himself.”
