“Rosalind,” he said, clasping her hand in both of his, “I’ll need to go to London soon, if only to determine that matters are running smoothly at Knighton Trading. And I want you to go with me.”
“But Griff, that would be highly improper—you know that! It’s one thing for us to secretly…well, you know…but we can’t let the whole world think—”
“You can take one of your sisters as chaperone on the short journey—surely Helena will do.”
“What about Papa? And the estate?”
“Juliet can stay and care for your father as she already does. The estate will be fine for a few days.” He caressed her fingers. “Once we’re in London, you’ll have my mother for a chaperone, and that should satisfy anyone’s notions of propriety.”
Briefly she looked stunned, then her face cleared. “Oh, yes, I forgot you have a mother. I’m so accustomed to thinking of you as the orphaned Mr. Brennan…” She trailed off with the slightest hint of accusation. “I’m afraid it’ll take me a while to sort out your character.”
Her words stabbed his conscience. Determinedly, he tugged her into his arms, kissed her with a thoroughness bordering on indecency, then drew back just enough to stare down at her. “That’s all you need to know of my character, darling.”
A shaky breath wafted from her, and she looked dazed. Thank God for his sweet Athena’s natural passion, his best weapon for keeping her on his side. He must use it often to secure her.
A smile touched his lips. That would certainly be no trial.
His satisfaction deepened when she didn’t resist
his embrace. “When do you want us to leave?” she whispered as he began stroking her beautiful, wild hair.
“Day after tomorrow, if possible. I’ll need to settle matters with your father concerning the marriage, of course, and you and Helena will need to pack. But I see no reason to delay. There’s much to do in London, and I want you to see Knighton Trading.” He added mischievously, “The place from which all wickedness stems.”
She snorted. “I suspect it’s not the place, but the owner who is producing all that wickedness.”
“Yes, and shall continue producing wickedness once he’s married.” He cupped her breast and bent to whisper, “All manner of wickedness.”
She shoved his hand away. “No more of that now, Griff. If we’re caught out here like this, I’ll never recover from the embarrassment. I must go in before someone comes looking for me.”
“Very well.” Catching her hand up in his, he kissed it. “Good night, my darling. I’ll see you at breakfast. Go on to your bath now, and dream of me while you wash your sweet little—”
“That’s enough, Griff!” But though she shot him a chastening look as she scurried off through the door, he could hear her low laugh after it closed behind her.
He sighed. How in hell would he last until the wedding? No doubt he’d become an aficionado of cold baths before he got the chance to bed her again, for tomorrow they had much to attend to. With Helena as chaperone on the way to London and his mother as chaperone once they arrived, there’d be little opportunity after they left here.
Well, abstinence would only make the wedding night that much sweeter. A grin crept across his face. He intended to press for the shortest engage
ment in history. And knowing Rosalind, she wouldn’t argue.
When he entered the house, the butler informed him that everyone was at dinner. Time to face the wrath of the other Swanlea spinsters. Not that he really cared what they thought; the only one he cared about was Rosalind, and she’d already agreed to marry him.
He entered the dining room and took a seat. “Good evening, all. Has Daniel been telling you about our little subterfuge?”
“Daniel?” Lady Helena asked.
“Subterfuge?” Lady Juliet echoed.
He sighed, then began explaining. Daniel said nothing, but merely ate his dinner, and Griff soon realized why. The damned Irishman wanted to watch Griff squirm.
Squirming was all Griff did for the next hour. He gave Lady Helena and Lady Juliet the same reason for the masquerade he’d given Rosalind, ignoring Daniel’s questioning glance. By the end of dinner, after answering a hundred questions with considerable evasion, he found himself being roundly condemned by the two sisters.
“So you lied to us?” Lady Juliet said for what must have been the fifteenth time. “You’ve been pretending all along?”
“Yes, yes,” Griff said impatiently. Rosalind had been more understanding, damn it. If she could forgive him, why the hell couldn’t the rest of them? “Nothing has really changed, except that I’ll be the one marrying your sister and not Daniel—”
“Who
also
lied to us,” Lady Helena broke in, shooting Griff’s man of affairs an angry glance. “No doubt you’ve been enjoying yourself at our expense, laughing at us for our stupidity and—”
“Now see here,” Daniel retorted, “it wasn’t like
that. This was all Griff’s idea. I disapproved from the beginning, but I work for him, so I did what I was told. Trust me, I didn’t like deceiving all of you.”
Juliet patted his hand sympathetically. “Of course you didn’t.” Apparently, now that she didn’t have to marry the big lummox or see her sister sacrifice to marry him, she could be easy around the man. “We all know your kind heart, Mr. Knight—I mean, Mr. Brennan.” She leveled a blistering look on Griff. “It’s your employer who has behaved badly, very badly indeed.”
Griff glared at Juliet. “Before you start exonerating Daniel of all blame, you should know that he chose to do this. I didn’t force him. He went along with it because he’s being amply compensated. Two hundred and fifty pounds, to be exact.”
“Two hundred and fifty pounds!” Lady Helena looked stunned by the amount. She turned a contemptuous gaze on Daniel. “I suppose I should expect no better from a man who was a smuggler and God knows what else. How could you resist such a large sum, after all?” Her tone grew wounded. “Then again, it must have taken a large sum for you to agree to endure a visit with us tedious spinsters.”
She threw down her napkin and started to rise, but Daniel caught her arm. “Listen, Lady Helena—”
“Let go of me,” she whispered, her eyes glittering with what looked like tears. “I should have realized you were being paid for all your kindnesses—for the billiards and the courtship of Rosalind and…You were being paid to entertain the spinsters. Well, you certainly earned your money. You fooled us all.”
When Daniel began to remonstrate with her and Lady Juliet jumped in to defend him, Griff shook his head and left. Let the three of them sort it out. He was in no mood to deal with two fractious women
tonight. After all, he still had a fractious earl to deal with, and he feared that would take all his patience.
Though Griff hadn’t yet been in Swanlea’s private quarters, he knew where they were. The study where he’d first encountered Rosalind and battled Daniel was situated in that wing on the same floor. So it took him only a few minutes to locate the earl’s bedchamber.
He’d half expected to find a servant awaiting his lord’s leisure outside it, but there was no one. Perhaps the man was sleeping. Should he come back? No, the sooner he could speak with the earl, the better. Easing the door open, he looked inside. It took a moment for him to adjust to the dim lighting provided by the lone candle on the earl’s bedside table.
But a quick glance showed the man sitting up, though his eyes seemed closed. As Griff walked in and approached the bed, he considered what to do. Was the man merely dozing? Or did he always sleep sitting up with a candle lit?
One thing was certain—he was obviously more ill than Griff had realized. The earl was only fifty-odd years old, yet he looked a score older. An alarming rattle marked his breathing, and the skin of his face hung loose as a shroud. The entire room stank of possets and urine and death, chilling Griff to the bone, for it reminded him painfully of his own father’s sickroom all those years ago.
He’d nearly decided to return early the next morning when the earl opened his eyes and spotted him. Before Griff could say a word, the earl’s sleep-dazed expression stiffened into horror. Clutching his sheet to his chest, he shrank against the pillow. “So you have come for me, have you?” he gasped. “Is that how the judgment begins? I am taken to my grave by the man I most wronged?”
Griff stood frozen in the shadows. What the
devil? None of the daughters had said a word about dementia in their father. Was the wretch dreaming with his eyes open?
“I should have known they would send you.” The earl coughed, never taking his eyes from Griff. “Who else should usher me into hell but you, Leonard?”
Then it hit him. Mother had always said that Griff was the very image of his father, but until now he’d thought she exaggerated. Clearly, she hadn’t.
He started to step into the candlelight by the bed to let the man see him better, then hesitated. Some dark impulse made him say sharply, “And what have you done that I should usher you into hell?”
The earl’s eyes blazed. “Do not torment me, ghost. You know what I have done. But I am trying to make it right. Please…If you will only give me a few more weeks to make it right, I will go willingly to my fate.”
“Make it right?” Griff’s blood pounded in his veins. “How do you intend to make it right?”
“Your son will marry my Rosalind.
That
will make it right.”
It took a second for Griff to remember that the earl thought Rosalind was marrying Daniel. And that Daniel was Mr. Knighton.
“When they marry,” the earl continued in a wheezing voice, “I will give him the marriage certificate, the proof of his legitimacy.”
“Why not give it to him now? Why wait until after a wedding?” Though Griff intended to marry Rosalind either way, he wanted to hear the man attempt to explain himself, attempt to vindicate his despicable actions to a higher power.
“I cannot tell if your son is better about what happened. He seems amiable, but I know he has every right to hate me. If I give him the certificate, he might ruin us.”
Griff clenched his fists at his sides. “But you agree that he has every right to hate you, to wish to ruin you.”
“
Me
, yes. But not my family.”
“So you’d deny him his birthright if he doesn’t marry your daughter.”
“No! Truly, I would not!” He struggled for breath, holding his hand against his sunken chest. “I would give him the papers regardless. I will not go to my death with his undeserved bastardy on my conscience.”
Amazement coursed through Griff. Did he mean it? Would a dying man lie to a ghost? Griff gritted his teeth. Perhaps. A man who wanted to cheat death would say almost anything.
The earl’s voice turned pleading. “Don’t you see, Leonard? I love my daughters as much as you love your son. I had to try the other first, make sure my gels were provided for.” He coughed. “Or what would become of them when I die?”
There was no mistaking the earl’s sincerity. Guilt swamped Griff, staggering him. How could the earl’s motives, which had seemed so reprehensible, now seem almost understandable?
“I think you will like my Rosalind for your son,” the earl went on in a lowered voice. He took a deep breath, coughed a bit, then managed to control it. “She has the devil of a temper, and she is not so pretty as my youngest, but—”
“Rosalind is an angel!” Griff snapped. “She’s a better daughter than you deserve!”
The man blinked at him. “So you know her? Yes, I suppose ghosts know everyone. You should approve—she is much like Georgina was at her age.”
“Georgina?” Griff whispered, reminded of what Daniel had said about the earl knowing his mother.
Sitting up a little straighter, the earl struggled for
breath. When he could speak again, he said, “I no longer hate you for winning her. After I found my Solange, I was content without Georgina. Solange gave me my three gels, after all.”
The words swam in Griff’s brain. What did the scoundrel mean—without Georgina?
A cloud dimmed the old man’s face. “But when you first stole her from me, I could not bear it. Otherwise, I would never have acted so rashly. Surely you can understand my feelings that day—” He dragged in a harsh breath. “When I went to see your babe, the one who ended my future. You would soon have the title and Swan Park. Then your heir would have it. And you had the woman I loved, too.”
The earl had loved Mother? And Griff had never known? Mother had never spoken of it. But perhaps she hadn’t known either. Griff held his breath, afraid to stop the man from talking. And just as afraid to let him go on.
The earl stared beyond Griff as if gazing into the past. “And I? I had nothing. You had Georgina, and I had nothing.”
The words made Griff flinch. He knew what it was like to be left with nothing.
Then he cursed his momentary sympathy. The man who’d left Griff with nothing was the damned earl himself, for the love of God!
“You should never have invited me to visit,” the earl choked out. Griff forcibly reminded himself that the man thought he was speaking to Griff’s father. “It was too tempting, too easy to steal your marriage certificate when you went to fetch the baby.”
“And you must have known about the registry burning down in Gretna Green,” Griff prodded, fascinated to hear his own suspicions confirmed.
Swanlea nodded. “The old earl himself told me.
And I knew no one would ever find any witnesses to the wedding.”
No, Griff thought grimly, not in Gretna Green, where the only witnesses were strangers more often than not.
The earl’s voice was a thready murmur. “What I did was wicked, I know. How many times in the past thirty years have I told myself that?” He wheezed a moment. “But I thought you would
live
, damn you. You were not supposed to die so young. I thought,
Once the old earl dies, Leonard will be earl for his lifetime, but after Leonard dies, any son of mine will be earl. That is fair
.”
Swanlea began nodding as if agreeing with himself and his twisted thoughts. “I told myself,
he stole Georgina from me, so our families should share the title. By the time Leonard dies, his son will be well situated. What will he need with a title?
”
“But he was
not
well situated!” Griff hissed. “He was left with no money, a mound of debts, and a mother to support!”