Corey McFadden (23 page)

He would let her go! The bastard didn’t give a damn where she was! He was probably already planning to cut her out of the operation.

“I wonder if you realize, Hawton,” she said, sipping daintily at her brandy, “that if I go, so goes all our plans. I spoke with Lord Beeson about it before he left this afternoon, and he was much provoked. Said he’d have to move his operation elsewhere if I weren’t going to be here to oversee matters.” She was bluffing. Lord Beeson had long since departed by the time Eleanor had made herself presentable enough to appear before her guests. And she doubted seriously whether he’d care who was here to run things as long it was someone he could rely on. He was quite anxious, in fact, to use this stretch of coastline because of its very isolation. It was working. She could see the confusion crossing Hawton’s face. Oh, he’d been planning to double-cross her all right.

“What would you propose we do about it, my lady?” Hawton asked, absently giving her title. Indeed, he was nonplussed. He’d begun to count on this extra avenue of income. The risks, objectively assessed, seemed slight in relation to the money that could be made. He was making plans. He would not be able to bear being thwarted now, not when it was so close.

“It’s perfectly simple,” she answered with a mean smile. He’d swallowed it. Now for the hard part. “We’ll have to stop Giles from doing this to me, Hawton.”

“What on earth is simple about that?” he asked peevishly. He poured himself a brandy, not waiting to be asked, and sat down next to Eleanor on the divan. She twined her legs around his hips and began rubbing against him with her bare feet. He wanted to tell her to bugger off, but sensed this was not the time to burn his bridges.

“I’ve lived like a poor relation since my mother married into this blighted family, Hawton,” she began, sipping at her drink. “I am tired of being at the mercy of fate and Giles Chapman. I had thought we could seize a little for ourselves with Lord Beeson’s proposal, and I’m not about to be cheated of it now.” She paused. He was nodding. Good, because she needed him to feel it the way she did now. Hungry. Desperate.

“As long as I am financially dependent on Giles, I am at his mercy. For that matter, so are you. Do you want to be a steward all your life? Working on salary. Skimming little bits of leavings from other men’s good fortune. Being a nobody. A ‘yes, sir, no, sir’ sort of life. Aren’t you tired of that, Hawton? Wouldn’t you rather be rich, really rich?” Her feet were rubbing him where it counted. She could feel him growing hard, and it was an angry hardness. Good. “Buy a house just for yourself,” she went on, almost crooning, her feet pressing harder against him, rubbing....“A big house, bigger than this one. A manor house. Have a fleet of servants who say ‘yes
,
sir’ to you. Never have to spend your day again slaving for your betters. Wouldn’t you like that, Hawton?” She sat up suddenly and put her arms around his neck. “Lots of money,” she whispered, biting the lobe of his ear hard.

With a moan he sank over her, grinding his crotch against hers. He fumbled at her neckline, seizing a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, rolling it, pinching it hard.

“Don’t you want it, Hawton?” she whispered, insistent.

“Yes!” he gasped, pulling her skirts up beneath him.

“Will you help me get it for you?” she prodded as his hands found her wet and ready.

“Yes, yes!” he moaned, slipping his fingers in and out.

She reached for the fastenings of his breeches, expertly freeing the buttons. His shaft leaped out and she seized it in her hand, rubbing it hard, pushing against her wetness, slipping him inside. With a cry, he arched into her, pumping hard, gasping in his need.

“It won’t be easy, Hawton,” she went on, now breathless herself with the feel of him pounding inside her. “You’ll need to be hard and strong, my love. Hard,” she gasped. “Can you do that for me? For us?”

“What do you want me to do?” He could barely talk as his hands squeezed her breasts, almost hurting.

“We have to kill him,” she whispered in his ear, as he shuddered on top of her, emptying himself into her waiting wetness. Then she herself cried out as the waves overtook her, and she could not remember when she had had such a climax.

Chapter Eleven

“There, you see, your fears of the carriage ride were all in your mind, my darling,” whispered Giles, nuzzling against Joanna’s neck. “We’ve been traveling over two hours, and we’re almost half way to Carlisle, and you haven’t felt at all ill, have you?”

Joanna giggled as his teeth nipped her ear lightly. “I suppose you are right, Giles, but it may also be that you haven’t given me a chance to think about feeling ill.” She gave a shudder as his warm breath tickled her ear, sending delicious shivers down her spine. She was still amazed at the magic he wrought with his hands when he touched her, the fire and ice, so shocking and yet so right. He had wooed her gently, aware that she had only the barest schoolgirl knowledge of this sort of thing. But she found she was, in this, as in all things academic, an apt pupil.

“That proves it’s all in your mind, as I said. And besides, those public coaches you endured are notoriously foul.” His lips found her neck as his errant hands slipped around her waist and pulled her to him. For a moment there was no sound at all in the comfortable, well-sprung carriage except for their ragged breathing and the clip clop of the horses’ hoofbeats.

At last Giles raised his head and sat back, a lascivious smile curving his face. Joanna was blushing as she tried to control her breathing, but it was all too obvious that she was as out of breath as he was.

“I think if you continue to keep me from your bed for two more weeks until we are married, you will find yourself wed to a gibbering idiot,” he said. His hands had not stopped their errant wandering.

“If you continue to importune me, I will yield, and then you will find yourself wed to a wanton,” Joanna said, laughing and gently disengaging the hand which had crept to her breast. She broke off, startled by the hard look that crossed his face, then cursed herself as she recalled her long-ago conversation with Mrs. Davies about Giles’s first wife, Violet. Joanna had spared little thought for this first marriage, and had asked him nothing about it.

Giles turned away from her, withdrawing his hands and looking out the window. Joanna felt a chill race through her. It was as if he had suddenly built a wall between them.

“What have I said?” she asked softly, not daring to touch him as she so longed to do.

For a moment there was silence, then he turned to face her. Joanna drew in her breath sharply at the pain she saw in his eyes.

“It
is not really anything you said, Joanna,” he said, his voice raw. “I must lay my own demons to rest.” He turned back away from her, his face toward the window.

They said nothing more for a moment. Joanna felt the sadness between them as if it were a tangible thing. What could she say to bring back his laughter? How could she fight off the malicious ghosts of the past? She looked out of her window and tried to fight back the tears welling up in her eyes. She saw nothing of the spectacular purple fells that stretched away in the distance.

She felt a warm hand on her own, and caught her breath in a short sob. She kept her face turned away, embarrassed at her weakness.

“I have made you cry,” she heard him say softly. “I am a fool.” She felt his arms go about her, his chin resting on her shoulder. His hand reached around and, cupping her chin, turned her face gently to his own. He leaned forward and kissed away the tear or two that had slipped down her cheeks, then he gently pressed her to him, ever mindful of her sore ribs.

“Do you know anything at all of my first marriage, Joanna?” he asked softly, his voice in her hair.

“A bit,” she said, hesitating. “You and Violet were not well suited. She was—rather like Eleanor, I understand,” she broke off, unsure how much to say and feeling awkward that it would be obvious she had gleaned her knowledge through household gossip.

“That is a charitable understatement, my darling. Someday I’ll tell you about it, but not now.” His hand stroked her cheek, and once again she felt the comfort of the warmth between them. “But I do promise never to let the dark memories intrude between us again. Never were there two women less alike than you and she, and I bless you for it.”

His lips were nibbling at her throat. Joanna felt her contentment nudged aside by the quickening of her heartbeat. It was amazing what his touch could do to her, scattering all rational thoughts like chickens in a windstorm. She felt his arms tighten about her, and her hands crept up his chest. She loved the hot strength of him under her fingers.

“Joanna?” she heard him whisper at her neck.

“Mmm?” she answered, mesmerized by the feel of his fingers in her hair.

“I promise I won’t think you a wanton if you let me ….”

“Oh, you are such a devil!” she laughed, pulling away from him, but secretly pleased that he seemed to have recovered his sense of humor. “I’m not going to let you ‘anything’, you cad. I don’t trust you at all!”

“You wound me, beloved,” he said, attempting to look hurt and failing miserably. “You can trust me. Besides, we’re in a moving carriage. I haven’t done it in a moving carriage for years. I’m too old to do it in a carriage, for heaven’s sake.”

“Well, I’m not too old,” she answered, trying to pout. “Does this mean I cannot look forward to performing my wifely duties in a carriage?”

“Well, I could make an exception this once,” he murmured, slipping his hand under her skirt.

“Oh, no you don’t, laddie,” she said, firmly removing his hand and placing it neatly in his own lap. “Someone around here has to remember the decencies, and I suppose that will be me.” She tried to sit primly, her hands folded in her lap.

Out of the corner of her eye she watched as his hand slowly crept out. She felt it snaking around her waist, then suddenly she was pulled to him.

“Just a taste,” he whispered. “There’s nothing else to do on these long trips.” He seized her lips with his own.

“Mmm,” she murmured as the now familiar heat rushed through her. She thought she would never get enough of his kisses, and somewhere in the back of her mind wondered if, perhaps this time, he wouldn’t make himself stop....

* * * *

“When will it be done, Hawton?” asked Eleanor, pacing on the library carpet. He was about to jump out of his skin watching her.

“Tonight, as I’ve told you,” he said, trying to keep his impatience from sounding in his voice. “I heard Will mention that Sir Giles will be taking Joanna to see
The Winter’s Tale
in the theater in Carlisle. It is arranged that the carriage will be held up on the way home from the theater. It will look like a robbery; indeed, it will be a robbery, since I promised my man he could take Sir Giles’s fat purse.”

“But how will your highwayman know what carriage it is, or what route they will take? Damn it, Hawton! Why didn’t you just arrange a carriage accident on the highway as I suggested?” Her voice was shrewish. He watched as she knocked back yet another brandy. The woman drank more than any man he knew.

“As I have told you, my lady,” he said, “a carriage accident is too uncertain. Will is an excellent coachman, and I had no way of assuring that Sir Giles would actually die. Nothing would be worse than if he came out of it with no more than a bump on the head.” Hawton crossed over to the decanter and poured himself a tot. He needed it to steady his own nerves. These arrangements had been tricky, all the more so as he had had to smuggle messages back and forth over the last few days to Carlisle with Sir Giles underfoot here until yesterday.

“And what about the route, Hawton?” she asked again.

“My man will follow the carriage, my lady. I know Carlisle well. It is not a large city, after all. There are few routes to take from the theater to the inn where they’ll be staying, and the carriage must pass through some dark streets.”

“Where did you come up with this fine fellow, Hawton?” asked Eleanor. “And what makes you think he can be trusted?”

“I have known him for a long time, my lady. He owes me a favor. A large one. I provided him with an alibi once when he was charged with a hanging offense. I can trust him, most certainly.”

He watched as she digested this information. He had tried to keep these details from her, not wanting her interference. He should have known she would gnaw at him till she knew everything.

A slow smile curved her face. “And he will kill only Giles, is that correct, Hawton? I prefer that the little tart have the rest of her impecunious life to mourn what she almost grabbed from me. I may even let her stay on and take care of the children—on my terms, of course.”

“Aye, my lady. Only Sir Giles will be shot.”

There was a silence while she poured herself another snifter full. She turned to the steward. “To tonight then, and freedom,” she said, raising her glass to him. He raised his own glass as well and took a long sip.

She finished her brandy and set the glass down on a small table next to her. “Why don’t you come to my room tonight, Hawton?” she asked, almost purring. “About midnight. We can celebrate.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and left the room, leaving Hawton staring at her retreating back.

He drained his glass, hoping it would quiet his queasy stomach. He hated this business of murder, messy and risky as it was. But Eleanor was right that it was the only permanent solution. And perhaps he could console the delectable Miss Carpenter in her terrible grief....

* * * *

“Oh, Giles, it was so wonderful! I’ve never seen anything like it in my whole life. Why, in Little Haver we were lucky to get an occasional traveling troupe playing on a haywagon in front of a hanging painted canvas.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it, but I still say it’s one of Shakespeare’s stranger plays,” Giles answered, steering her through the small crowd to where Will waited down the street with the carriage. Away from the theater, the street became dark, but he spotted Will only a few yards away.