Come Near Me (33 page)

“As much as I’d miss a splinter under my
fingernail. Now let me go, Dickie. You don’t frighten me.”

“Tsk, tsk,” he said, shaking his head, even
as he removed his mask, sniffing at her with his perfect white
teeth, with his clear, intense blue eyes. “You never could tell a
decent lie, could you, Sherry? The so innocent, so beautiful, so
incorruptible Charlotte Victor. How did you explain away our kiss,
Sherry, considering that you’d wanted to kiss me? Surely our
dearest Daventry didn’t believe your little fib when you said I had
taken advantage of you? No, of course he didn’t. I counted very
heavily on that, you know. How could Daventry believe you, when
you’d never lied to him before, when you lie so very
badly?”

“You
had
taken advantage of me,”
Sherry protested, even as he released her hand, backing up until
she felt her thighs pressing against the stone balustrade that
ringed the balcony. “I don’t know how you did it, but you did. I
also don’t know
why.
I don’t know why you and Edmund are
doing any of this.”

She shut her eyes for a moment, wishing the
words back. Was she supposed to keep Edmund’s name out of the
conversation? Yes, she probably should have. But she was so upset!
Thinking about seeing Dickie again was one thing. Having him
standing here, right in front of her, was very much another.

He raked his fingers through his thick,
midnight-dark hair. “Ah, yes. Edmund. You liked him, didn’t you? I
chose him especially, you know. Blond to my dark and all of that.
He walked straight into your lives, took over where I had left off,
as it were. But don’t look so pleased to have found me out. You
only know about Edmund because I wanted you to. Otherwise you
wouldn’t.”

“You must have been overjoyed when he
reported to you that Adam and I are—well, that our marriage isn’t
going well. That is what you wanted, isn’t it? To destroy us, to
destroy our marriage? It—it’s the only thing I can think of, even
as I still struggle to understand why you should be so mean.”

How she longed to throw the truth in his
face, tell him that, for all his planning and scheming, she and
Adam still loved each other, probably loved each other more than
before Richard Brimley had entered their lives. That their love was
more real now that it had been tested, stronger. She wanted to see
Dickie unhappy, let him know how it felt to lose.

But Adam had made her promise not to say
anything.

She took a single step forward. “What did I
ever do to you to harm you, Dickie? What did Adam do? Why would you
go to so much trouble, trying to destroy us?”

He smiled, this devil with an angel’s face.
“Did it work? Edmund thinks it did. I think it did. Thank you,
Sherry. I do so love when I’m proved right, not that I’m often
wrong.”

Sherry shook her head, trying to understand.
“Proved right? What are you saying? Are you saying you only did
this to
prove
something? What was it, Dickie, some sort of
bet
you made, betting you could destroy someone else’s
happiness? Did you and Edmund stand at the edge of a dance floor
one night, playing your
game,
watching, selecting people
whose happiness you deemed yourselves fit to destroy? Have you
destroyed my life, Adam’s life, over some horrible wager made
between you and Edmund Burnell? Did it sicken you so much, to see
how happy we were?”

Her hand went to the silly, ornamental dagger
at her waist. She could kill. She would have denied it, would never
have believed it before this moment—but she could kill. Kill
Dickie. Kill the man who had nearly destroyed her life.

“Oh, wonderful!” he exclaimed as her fingers
closed around the hilt of the dagger. “This only gets better and
better, doesn’t it? Anger, thoughts of doing murder—you’ve become a
lovely vessel full of vices, haven’t you, Sherry? All it needed was
the opportunity.”

Her hand dropped from the hilt as she turned
away from Richard, unable to look into his happily smiling face for
another moment. “What do you want?” she asked quietly, for the
third time, the hundredth time, possibly the thousandth time.

She felt his hands on her shoulders, did her
best not to flinch as he turned her around so that she was once
more forced to look at him.

“Not what I want, Sherry,” he all but purred.
“It’s what do
you
want? Just tell me what you want. I’m
offering my help, Sherry.
Ask
me.”

I want you to promise me you won’t accept
anything Burnell or anyone else might offer you tonight.

Why had Adam said that? How had he known
Dickie would offer her his help?

Most especially if anyone offers you help.
Say thank you very much, you’ll think about it, but don’t accept
it.

Sherry smiled. It took everything she had,
every ounce of will, of courage, but she smiled. “You’d help me?
After breaking my life into little pieces, you’d help me pick up
those pieces? Is that another part of the game, Dickie?”

“It could be,” he answered, stepping closer,
running the back of his hand lightly down her cheek. “Fascinating.
I can’t quite understand my reaction to you, little Charlotte
Victor. But it was there, almost from the beginning.” He leaned
forward, gently kissed her mouth. “Tell me what you want, Sherry. I
can give you anything. Anything and everything you want.”

She felt it again. This strange attraction to
Richard Brimley. This unexplainable, unreasonable, certainly
unwarranted attraction to the man.

“Tomorrow,” she said, then cleared her
throat, which had nearly closed shut on her. “I’ll meet you
tomorrow, all right?”

He kissed her again, spoke with his lips
still against hers. She could smell him. She could taste him. He
tasted of temptation. “I’ll come to you. At two. We’ll be together
then, little doll.”

“Get your bloody hands off her, you
black-hearted devil!’’

“Chollie,” Sherry whispered, startled back to
who she was, where she was. Why she was here. Dickie stepped away
from her and she could see the gray-bearded Merlin charging toward
them with all the force and rage of Buckfastleigh’s Prize on the
loose. “Chollie, no!”

“And so, good night. Ah, no, I believe that’s
Shakespeare,” Brimley said almost jovially, putting one hand on the
balustrade and then neatly vaulting over it, disappearing into the
gardens below.

“Damn!” Chollie spat, pounding his fist on
the balustrade. “Damn, damn, and blast!” He turned to look at
Sherry. “Are you all right, sweetheart? Good. Go inside and stay
there until Adam comes for you. Tell him I’ve gone hunting, all
right?”

And then, even as Sherry opened her mouth to
protest, he swung his legs over the balustrade and disappeared into
the gardens. She heard the sound of running feet, soon fading away
into the evening, and waited for a good five minutes, hoping to see
Chollie coming back, before giving up and doing as he said and
returning to the ballroom.

She’d not taken more than three steps when
her elbow was grabbed and she was propelled, backwards, onto the
balcony once more.

“Lady Jasper?” she asked, believing she
recognized the woman’s features beneath a small eye mask.

“Yes, yes, aren’t you the smart one, though.
Lady Jasper,” the mishmash of white linen and chicken feathers
grumbled, pushing at the bent halo that tipped drunkenly toward her
left ear. “So? What happened?”

“I beg your pardon?” Sherry’s head was
spinning. She needed to sit down, preferably alone, and collect
herself. She did not need Lady Gytha Jasper. She had to remember to
pretend that Edmund Burnell was their friend, and not Dickie’s
accomplice. She had to remember, and yet she was so terribly
confused. And tired. So afraid she might say the wrong thing if she
said another single word.

“He asked you, didn’t he?” Lady Jasper went
on, almost as if Sherry hadn’t spoken. “Hah! I can see it in your
face. He did ask you. Just like I told that doubting husband of
yours. Well? What did you say? Did you trade your soul away? If you
did, I’m damned, you know. He thinks this sort of thing is funny,”
she said, indicating her costume with a disgusted wave of her hand.
“I can’t spend eternity with a fellow who thinks this sort of thing
is
funny.”
She gave her slipping halo another shove. “Which
means, if you bungled this, dearie, I wouldn’t cavil at tossing you
headfirst off this balcony.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, as I don’t have
the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” Sherry’s head began
to spin, and her stomach didn’t feel all that well, either, now
that she thought about the thing. She had to think of her unborn
child, she had to go somewhere and lie down. She certainly didn’t
need to be standing on this balcony, listening to a dotty old woman
dressed up to look like an angel—or a chicken. “I—I need to sit
down,” she said, starting for the doorway to the ballroom once
more.

For an old woman, Lady Jasper had quite a
strong grip. She used it now, holding Sherry in place even as every
last shred of Sherry’s strength faded away, so that she collapsed
against the edge of the balustrade. “Oh, all right. Ask your
questions, Lady Jasper. I’ll try to answer them.”

The old woman gave a cackling laugh of
triumph—perhaps she was a chicken, perhaps she would lay an egg,
perhaps Sherry would faint, her head was spinning so, her stomach
so queasy, near to turning.

“Let’s start with what
you
know,
dearie, and go on from there, all right?” Lady Jasper suggested.
“Now, Daventry did tell you that Edmund’s the Devil, didn’t he? You
do at least know that much?”

Sherry pushed herself away from the railing
and sighed, feeling rather sorry for the old woman. “Lady Jasper,
we’ve been through all of this. Your nephew is not the Devil. He
probably only tells you that because it amuses him to upset you.
He’s a mean, mean man, to tease you so, but he is
not
the
Devil. All right? May I please go now?”

“He’s
not
the—” Lady Jasper sat down,
right there on the balcony, her legs splayed out in front of her,
her left wing snapping off against the balustrade. “Damn you,
Daventry. You even took the book. You believed me. Damn you for not
believing me. Now we’re all lost. All of us...”

Sherry turned on her heels and all but ran
back into the ballroom, catching the attention of one of the
footmen and directing him to assist Lady Jasper from the
balcony.

Then she stumbled into the ladies’ retiring
room and lay down on one of the couches, sure her queasy stomach
would revolt if she moved another inch for the next hour, if she so
much as raised her head from the pillow a maid placed there for
her. Her only solace was that she had done what she’d been
instructed to do if the opportunity arose. She’d gotten Dickie to
come to Grosvenor Square tomorrow. Adam would be so proud of
her.

~ ~ ~

Adam put the stopper back into the decanter
after pouring almost half its contents into the base of yet another
potted palm. He sat down once more, pulled a small gold timepiece
from the small pocket cut into his costume, and checked the
time.

Ten minutes. Edmund had been gone for ten
minutes.

He quickly replaced the timepiece as the door
opened and Burnell walked in. Smiling. Shaking his head. “Poor Lady
J,” he said, retaking his seat. “Woman’s begun to molt. It’s not a
pretty sight, I can tell you.” He lifted the decanter, measuring
the level of brandy with his eyes. “Ah, I see you’ve been busy in
my absence, Daventry. That’s not entirely fair, you know. Now have
to drink twice as fast, just to catch up.”

He poured himself a generous drink, then
drank it down in one smooth movement, and with no more care than if
it had been well water. “That’s better. Now, where were we? Oh,
yes. You were being silent, and I was being philosophical. At least
I think I was. Maybe we should just keep drinking until someone
comes by and scrapes us up off the floor. What do you think?”

Adam, slouching in his seat, looked across at
Burnell, his eyelids at half-mast. “I know why I’m drinking,
Burnell. But what’s bothering you?”

“What’s bothering me? I don’t know, Daventry.
Life? Yes, that’s it. Life is bothering me. The whole thing seems
such a waste of creation.”

Adam took another sip of brandy. “A waste,
Edmund? How so?”

Burnell shrugged. “You’re born, you live, you
die. In between, you do everything you can to prove you shouldn’t
have been born at all but, as you were, you might as well muck up
anything and everything you touch along the way, just to prove you
were here. That’s how wars start, Daventry, did you know that? So
that a man can prove he was here. Take Bonaparte, for one. Nobody
will ever forget him, right?”

“They’ll remember he lost,” Adam agreed.

“They’ll remember he was here. That’s all
that counts, in the end. Men are all alike, even those we want to
consider to be the great ones. Perhaps, now that I think on it,
they’re the worst of all. They’re the ones who believe they’re here
for some purpose, some
higher
purpose, instead of why
they’re
really
here, which is no more than a failed
experiment at best. Those are the ones who take everything to
extremes and end by destroying all that they meant to be so
wonderful, so glorious. Dangerous men, Daventry. Stay away from
them. They can be amusing, but in the end, they just make you sick.
All men make me sick. They’re slothful, stupid, vain, proud,
greedy. Destructive. All of them.”

“And what are you?” Adam asked, grinning.

“Me?” Burnell grinned back at him. “I’m
drunk,
Daventry. Couldn’t you tell?”

Adam pushed himself into a more upright
position, reaching for his snifter. “I don’t understand a
word
of what you’re saying,” he said, careful to slur his
words. “But I’ll drink to you nonetheless.” Lowering his eyes, so
that Burnell couldn’t see any expression in them, Adam said, “But
what about the ladies? What do they do?”