What did that mean? What had she done, for surely
some blame must rest on her shoulders? Did he regret the passion that he had lavished on her in their bed? The marriage? Did he regret everything? Harriette found, to her shame, that she had to battle against a threat of tears.
‘Go and fetch what you need for the journey,’ Luke repeated.
The distance that had so startlingly opened up between them seemed to yawn. Harriette turned to do as she was bid because she could think of nothing else to say. Was this the man who had held her in his arms, kissed her, possessed her? Was this cold formidable man the one who had introduced her with such skill to all the delights possible between a man and a woman, who had woken her again with hands and lips at first light to renew his amazing assault? Was it wrong for her to expect some degree of warmth from him now, even though he might not love her?
Harriette’s world was suddenly turned on its head. What had occurred to cause this separation? She would wager it was not her smuggling activities. When they had worked to save the cargo, had there not been some overpowering, overwhelming link stretching between them? Had there not been a living connection, bright as cold steel, hot as fire? It had pulsed through their blood, driving them into each other’s arms. Surely she had not misread that glittering bond?
Was this the man who had acted out of honour to repair her reputation, when no blame could be attached to him, when he could have turned his back and abandoned her to whatever filth society chose to cast on her shoulders?
Then perhaps her judgement was all wrong, all built on a fatal inexperience of fashionable behaviour. Perhaps that was the way of polite society, that tenderness in bed was just a lie, to be transmuted into bleak tolerance in the light of day. She must remember this lesson for it would be a
dire mistake if she ever forgot it. She could think of nothing worse than allowing Luke to discover that her feelings for him were more than that same cool tolerance. How humiliating, how demeaning it would be. So Harriette marched back to the house with a determination to preserve the same unemotional façade as her husband had so expertly shown to her.
I will be as politely cold as he if that is what is demanded of me.
When the tears pricked behind her lids again she blotted them with her sleeve. She would not weep. She would not! It was her own fault. She would bear the consequences, allowing no one to see the scars such a betrayal left on her heart.
Harriette was given no time to dwell on her misery. Her cousin was waiting to waylay her in the hall, as if there were nothing amiss.
‘Before you go, Harry—will you let me make use of the Pride in your absence?’
She struggled to focus on his words, when her thoughts were scattered spindrift in a gale and her heart seemed to be in pieces within her breast. ‘The Pride?’
‘Yes.’ He grasped her forearm, shook her a little. ‘Let me use the house.’
Did she want that? Lydyard’s Pride was hers. She might choose to make use of it when danger threatened, but did she want the smuggling fraternity making free of it in her absence, even under Alexander’s control?
‘I’d rather you didn’t, Zan,’ she said, unhappy and distraught but determined. ‘I don’t want it known as a haunt of smuggling with Rodmell and his men descending on the house every time we draw breath. Use the Tower Room, of course, by all means. Wiggins will light the lamp for you.’
‘I want to use the cellars here…’ Alexander’s grip tightened to keep her attention.
‘No. I don’t want that except in a dire emergency. Use the church if you have to. Reverend Dance will let you in. You’ve done it before.’
Alexander drew a breath, as if he would argue his case, then lifted his hands with a deprecating smile. ‘I don’t agree, but it’s your decision.’ She sensed his displeasure, but he kissed her cheek, already making for the door. ‘Enjoy your new life, little cousin.’
Leaving Harriette to make her way back to her bedchamber, the scene of such happiness, now empty and desolate. All she could do was simply stand and look at the disordered linen on the bed and wondered if she had imagined it all.
‘What’s happened?’ Meggie demanded, from whom she apparently could not hide her hurt.
‘Nothing.’ She smiled bravely. ‘We are about to leave.’ She tied the strings of her plain straw bonnet with no thought to their neatness.
‘Never mind that. Has he hurt you? He has, hasn’t he!’
‘No, Meggie. I can have no complaints. How should I? Did I not enter into this marriage with my eyes open?’
I will make sure that he doesn’t hurt me again
, she vowed silently. But of course he already had.
Despite his denial, Luke could not get Ellerdine’s words out of his mind. A ship lured on to the rocks, all crew lost, the cargo commandeered. And Harriette at the very centre of it.
Impossible!
his instincts insisted.
For what reason would Ellerdine lie?
his mind responded.
You already know full well she’s a smuggler!
There was one source he could tap. Why should he not make every effort to learn the truth? And easy enough to
do, as he ran that source to ground in the kitchen, where he was taking a tankard of ale.
‘Tell me about the
Lion d’Or
.’ Luke took a seat opposite George Gadie, poured his own ale. ‘Was it lured on to the rocks at the headland?’
‘Couldn’t say, y’r honour.’ Gadie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, squinted round the room as if to ensure no one would hear. ‘Wrecked here for sure. Some years ago now.’
Luke leaned across the table, fixed him with a stare. ‘Was my wife involved?’
‘Well, y’r honour…’ Gadie rubbed his nose. ‘Cap’n Harry launched the cutter to rescue the crew—just a young lass she was then. Not that there was anyone left alive to rescue, mind. Them’s vicious rocks at the headland. But we took up the bodies—buried in the churchyard, they are. And we saved what we could. Silk, it was. Mr Alexander dealt with it.’
‘Was the lamp in the Tower lit?’
The sailor’s eyes slid away. ‘Couldn’t say, y’r honour. Too busy to notice. It
shouldn’t
have been—not on a night like that.’
Was the man being honest or was he protecting Harriette? Luke considered, frowning into the ale. He suspected that George Gadie would be loyal to Captain Harry, no matter what the crime. What an appalling picture, of his wife luring unsuspecting sailors to their deaths.
If he chose to believe it, of course. But the sliver of ice in his belly had become a frozen knot.
‘Anything else, y’r honour?’
Luke could think of nothing. For what else might he learn to cause him grief?
Luke helped his new wife into the curricle and turned his horses’ heads towards London, conscious throughout
of the stiff figure seated beside him, who had not smiled once, nor offered any conversation, since she had taken her seat. It struck him that he had been in some manner a naïve fool. He should have made it his business to discover more about Harriette Lydyard and her disreputable ancestors before embarking on this match. Alexander Ellerdine’s casual remarks continued to play through his consciousness. Luke controlled the power of his hands on the reins with less than his habitual skill, and his fingers tightened, causing the horses to jib and toss their heads until he cursed his heavy-handed lack of skill and forced himself to relax his hold.
Harriette a member of the Wreckers? He could tolerate smuggling—just—as long as she gave it up. But Wrecking? There could be no justification for such a despicable operation. Bloody murder, luring ships on to the rocks to rob and plunder, the sailors abandoned to their own fate with no thought to their rescue. There was no profit to be gained from rescuing sailors, plenty from saving the bales and barrels. Luke felt his blood run cold. George Gadie’s confirmation—if that’s what it was—had been no help at all in putting his mind at rest.
Was Harriette capable of such vileness? He slid a glance to the pale, expressionless face of his wife beside him.
What did he know about Ellerdine—apart from a tendency to dislike him on sight? Cousin. Friend. A possible suitor. Harriette clearly held in some affection. Luke grimaced silently at the man’s slick friendliness that, to him, held the taint of malice. The easy offer of information that would wound, tear. Why should he believe a man he did not know and did not respect above Harriette? She had never been anything but honest with him. Well, almost. She had not told him of her French mother until
after the wedding, had she? An unimportant point. Had she hidden other secrets from him, masking them with her feminine charm?
There was only one remedy. He must ask her outright. He needed to know—but what if she admitted it? How could he reconcile himself to such knowledge? But he could not retreat from the truth.
‘Are there many smuggling gangs on the coast?’ he asked Harriette, breaking the silence between them.
‘Yes,’ she replied coolly. ‘Enough to keep the Riding Officers busy.’
‘And Wreckers. Do they exist here also?’
‘Of course. Why?’ He felt her sharp unsmiling glance, but did not turn his head.
‘Do you know of any?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me.’ Now he looked directly at her, searching her face for any sign of guilt, dreading that he might see it there.
‘The smuggling gang in Rottingdean has a reputation,’ she replied, holding his gaze without difficulty. ‘Captain Dunk is their leader, a butcher by day and many would say a butcher by night, too.’
‘What about Old Wincomlee? Do your smugglers lure ships on to the rocks?’
‘No. Why do you ask?’
The slightest hesitation. Then brutally. ‘Would you do it, if the opportunity arose?’ He found himself holding his breath.
‘No. I would not.’
Again he turned his attention from his horses and held her eyes with a hard glitter of emerald. Harriette had denied it, and with some heat. Her gaze was clear and direct.
‘Why would you think me guilty of something so reprehensible?’ A little line deepened between her fine brows.
It went a long way to restoring his composure, and Luke attempted to shrug off his discomfort,relaxing his fingers around the leathers. He had no proof, after all, that Harriette was engaged in anything other than the shipment of contraband and the fooling of the Revenue men. He had known about that before he wed her, and accepted it, so why cavil now?
Hell and the devil!
He liked her, admired her, wanted her in the most basic way a man could want a woman. Enjoying the intimacy of her body, the slender elegance of it stretched against his, warm and supple in response to his demands, had been a revelation. The perfume of her hair, the taste of her skin—even now the memory of it could arouse his wayward flesh, he acknowledged in sharp discomfort. She had delighted him. She had stirred some possessive desire within him to rescue her and protect her, apart from the primitive need to bury himself deep within her and claim her for his own. In that one short night he had discovered an exhilarating awareness of her, an overwhelming response to her.
Could he allow it to disintegrate? Would he change his opinion of Harriette Lydyard on the word of a man who it was his instinct to dislike on sight?
Dispassionately Luke viewed the bleak future. The marriage was done and she was his wife, and it would be entirely wrong of him to accuse her of crimes of which he had no proof. The best he could do was to end her attachment to smuggling and make what he could of this illmatched marriage. Moving to London, away from Lydyard’s Pride, was the obvious way to achieve that.
Harriette had never lied to him, had she?
Yet the fate of the
Lion d’Or
continued to fill his head with the discordant clamour of church bells.
Grosvenor Square. Hallaston House, as ostentatious as its address, enough to impress and overawe Harriette with its tiled floor, glittering chandelier and sweeping staircase, and a somber-clad butler, Graves, who ushered Harriette into the library.
There are secrets in this house
, was Harriette’s first impression.
Just as Luke keeps secrets from me. Echoes of grief and loss. They hang in the air like cobwebs. There is no happiness here.
‘The Countess of Venmore.’ The astonishment in Graves’s voice was superbly under control as he announced her. ‘My lady—Lord Adam Hallaston.’
Harriette, exhausted by the strains of the day, stiffened her spine and prepared to meet her new family.
A pair of Hallaston eyes focused on her in a mixture of shock and disbelief. Adam Hallaston, younger than herself in age, rose slowly to his feet from where he had been lounging in a deep, silk-upholstered chair. The resemblance to Luke was striking, although Adam was fairer, and still growing into the tall Hallaston frame. He sketched a hasty bow, momentarily stuck dumb, yet with the presence to take her hand and bow over it. His greeting was startling.
‘So he did it at last!’
Harriette looked enquiringly. ‘What exactly?’
‘Married!’
‘Did you not expect him to do so?’
‘Of course,’ Lord Adam replied matter of factly. ‘Eventually. But there’ve been a shoal of débutantes casting lures, and he didn’t take the bait, not once.’
Amused, Harriette decided to speak the truth. ‘I am not a débutante. I am a smuggler.’
‘Ah…’ He struggled for a reply.
‘Nor did I trap your brother with bait.’
‘No…I did not mean to imply…’ Lord Adam’s face flushed in embarrassed fascination. ‘It’s just that we don’t wed young in the Hallaston family.’ An ingenuous explanation. ‘Marcus wasn’t married, either.’
‘Who is Marcus?’ Harriette enquired.
A silence that could be touched, stark and edgy, settled on the opulent book-lined room. A heavy grief stirred Harriette’s senses. But Adam recovered promptly enough.
‘Marcus was our brother. He died, almost a year ago now.’
‘Forgive me. I didn’t know…’ Harriette found herself at a loss. All the inexplicable tensions of the day to tear at her nerves, and now this. Why had Luke not told her of this?
‘Are you really a smuggler?’