Regency 05 - Intrigue (12 page)

Malvina was not prepared for the horse’s reaction. The animal reared up and as she came back down, her rider did not.

Well, not immediately anyway.

Showing how very alert he actually was, Gideon threw himself from his own horse and managed to catch Malvina before she struck the ground. She struck
him
hard enough, however, to send them both tumbling into the grass.

Gideon, of course, received the brunt of the impact. He grunted as his back connected with ground that appeared softer than it actually was. Malvina sprawled on top of him, an inelegant heap of woman who struggled to breathe. Whoever would have thought landing on a man could feel as though one smacked a stone?

Face and tone clouded with concern, the man beneath her asked, “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, more emphatically than necessary, causing an extra bit of dizziness. Pausing, she assured him she was unhurt.

Gideon’s eyes roved over her delicate features, searching for signs of injury. He shoved his hands through her red curls, searching her head for bumps, effectively ruining her coiffure and knocking her hat to the ground. Malvina couldn’t help but smile at the visible relief on his face when he realized she was quite well.

Her smile disappeared. Lord Holt was suddenly staring into her eyes, his expression deadly serious. Becoming aware of her position—Dear heavens, she was lying on him like a wanton!—Malvina gasped.

Seeking to brace herself, Lady Brackney placed her hands on the earl’s shoulders. Her eyes widened. No wonder it felt as though she’d struck rock! The muscles of his upper body were solid stone. Malvina struggled to free herself, embarrassed that she felt breathless all over again for a very different reason.

Gideon pinned her to his chest with one arm while the other hand entangled in her soft hair. He proceeded to kiss her senseless.

Malvina’s bones turned to liquid, her body melting into his as he plundered her mouth. She no longer cared that they lay in an open meadow, their mounts chomping grass a few feet away. All she cared about, in that moment, was the man beneath her, threatening to send her entire being up in flames.

It was his horse who recalled them to their surroundings. He impatiently nudged his master in the shoulder, nibbled on Gideon’s hat, then pawed the ground right near the man’s head. When that was ineffective, the horse nudged Malvina hard enough to knock her to the ground.

“Oooo!”

Unfortunately, Gideon’s hand was still tangled in her hair.

“A moment, my dear,” he murmured, trying to gently disengage himself without hurting her further. He smiled at her when he managed the task, his lips twitching suspiciously as he sat up.

Shoving the horse’s nose away from his face, he offered Malvina his hand, helping her sit up as well. Her dark red locks fell all around her face, obscuring her expression. He suspected she was a trifle embarrassed.

When her shoulders started to shake, he was alarmed for her. Was she hurt, after all?

He pulled her hands away from her face. “What is it?” Smoothing the hair from her eyes, he searched for signs of injury again, thinking perhaps he had missed something earlier. Indeed, perhaps she had been hurt by Black. At the thought, he was a little alarmed at the feeling of rage he felt for his horse.

Malvina laughed. “I am quite all right, Gideon, truly. It is merely…it is all so funny!”

He sat back. “Funny, is it?”

“Yes.” She spread her arms, encompassing everything around them, from the grass beneath them to the complacent horse standing nearby. “This. Everything. I did everything I was ever instructed to do. From the time I was born, I was ever the dutiful daughter, the faithful wife, the loving mother. I never varied. I never changed. I did what was expected, what was ordered, and what was necessary.” She shook her head. “All for naught. No matter what I do, it is not the right thing.”

Gideon listened carefully, hearing far more in her diatribe than she intended to reveal. He understood her a little better and was disgusted with what she’d been through, and the fact that he’d put her through a little more.

It was not much different for other women of their station and those raised to enter their station. Women were not taught to think for themselves. Heaven forbid one of them tell her husband or father that she was not pleased with his tyranny!

“You really ought to read Wollstonecraft, my love.”

Her wide green eyes reflected her total shock at his words. The works of Mary Wollstonecraft had been forbidden in her father’s and her husband’s homes. Both men had thought the woman was a meddler, troublemaker, and no better than she should be.

Malvina’s mother had done little to counter such beliefs, feeling it was easier to just do as one was told instead of thinking too much about it. One wouldn’t want to injure the weak female brain, after all.

Malvina had heard bits and pieces about Mary Wollstonecraft over the years, knew she had had a relationship with a man to whom she was not married. This fact disgusted Malvina enough to avoid anything the woman had ever written.

Gideon’s comments on her own seeming innocence although widowed were not far off. She’d only ever known her husband intimately and she firmly believed those intimacies were reserved for marriage.

Until she’d met Gideon, she was sure she’d never stray from that belief. Yet a few moments with his lips against hers was enough to send her good intentions into permanent hiding. What had come over her?

Answering her look of confusion, he told her, “You have always done what you were commanded, Malvina. Look where it has gotten you. Why have you never questioned your course in life?”

“Am I allowed to, then, my lord? Forgive me if I hesitate. The
gentlemen
in my life have never been very forgiving, you see.”

Gideon stood and held out his hand. “Your life has changed. Embrace the change and decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong.”

Everyone sensed a change in Lady Malvina. Upon her return to Moorview Park, she sequestered herself in her room and refused to see or speak to anyone.

Malvina was thinking. She didn’t like change but knew the futility of railing against it. When her husband had died, she’d changed nothing. It was far more comfortable to go on as before, as if he were still there, demanding how things should be. It occurred to her, finally, that perhaps that was not the best thing for her son.

When
That Man
had contacted her, fear allowed her to do everything he demanded, assisting his band of cutthroats to lure certain gentlemen of fortune and position into his trap. He’d moved his chosen servants to her home, installed his own men in her stables, and made it clear that she could do nothing without his knowledge. Fear had kept her pinned closely to his side, being an unwilling party to more and more heinous crimes. Always, he threatened not her, but her son. And now, because she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—think for herself, the death of an innocent young man hung on her conscience.

Then Gideon swooped in and rescued her. She’d likely have gone on doing everything
That Man
asked, right up until he put a bullet through her own head and taken care of Wolf the same way. She’d done nothing in her life for herself, nothing to determine the way she wanted her life to go. While having a child would, naturally, curb any reckless decisions, that wouldn’t have prevented a change in scenery. Had she decided after Brackney’s death that she would live for herself and her son, she’d have moved the child as far from home as she could afford. She saw now that she should have.

An hour or so after returning from her ride, Malvina heard a knock at her door. She attempted to ignore it but the visitor was persistent. Rising, she flung open the door.

Gideon stood there, his expression deadly serious. He held out a book.

“I apologize for the time it took me to find this.” He glanced down at the book he offered, then back at her. “I believe my mother is a little like you. It is easier to do as one is told rather than learn for oneself how one should go on in life.”

Malvina reluctantly took his offering. She turned the leatherbound volume over in her hand and opened it. It was Mary Wollstonecraft’s
A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
. Glancing back up at her betrothed, she was not as surprised to find him gone as she’d been to find him there at all.

Backing slowly away, Malvina closed the door, amazed. She returned to her seat by the window, set the book on the seat beside her, and stared at it for a long time. Then, she burst into tears.

Gideon left Malvina to her tears and her personal growth. He knew it was easy to tell others to change, but not so easy to tell oneself.

He found his feet taking him to the one room he’d planned to avoid the entirety of his visit; indeed, for the rest of his life. It was empty of human life, an unsurprising circumstance. He moved around the room, drawing back the heavy damask curtains, staring at everything.

The room looked neglected, but not entirely forgotten. Someone cleaned periodically, just enough to keep the worst of the grime at bay without disturbing the contents.

In one corner sat a desk, covered in papers and books, slightly dusty and plainly ignored. No one had bothered to return the books to the library or neatly stack the papers.

Gideon turned, one hand clenched. In the middle of the room was a long table. On it sat bottles and beakers, more papers, quills and ink, and another book, open to a certain page. On one end was a microscope, the most advanced and expensive available nine years ago.

His parents had ordered this room to be left alone. It was to be a shrine to Samantha’s beauty, a constant reminder of Gideon’s wrongs.

It wasn’t the room or even the home where it had happened. But this had been his sanctuary, science his escape. So he understood their actions.

They didn’t seem to realize he was fully capable of punishing himself and with far greater severity than they could have ever devised.

He sighed. Moving to the center table, he stared down at its contents, wondering just what he’d been thinking all those years ago.

He absently fingered a brown bottle, long since empty. The old earl had had some presence of mind, then. He’d seen fit to rid the premises of the chemicals his son had loved so well.

It was for the best, he thought now, gazing around. This room had never produced results and Gideon had been wasting his time playing with such dangerous things.

His hand trembled.

The small bottle he still clutched slipped to the floor, smashing into a million pieces. He stared down at it, unaware of how it had happened.

Samantha was the reason Gideon’s life had turned out other than he had originally planned. After disfiguring her so severely, he lost the
joie de vivre
he’d previously enjoyed. It was all he could do to avoid slipping into a melancholy so deep he couldn’t climb out.

It was why he became insouciant. And offered his services to the Home Office, tracking down traitors and spies. It was a thankless job, dangerous and often nauseating. What better way to redeem oneself than to hunt down those who willingly hurt others? If one happened to die in the process…

Another bottle joined the first. Blue shards mingled with brown in shafts of early afternoon sun.

His work there had led him to a man who’d been smuggling secrets for years while Bonaparte roamed the world, seeking to conquer the whole. Clues had pointed to Sir Richard Brackney, baronet. He was not the ringleader, however. There was someone above him, a mystery man who moved his people around like pawns on a chess board.

The man’s identity was no longer a mystery. It was Gideon’s own childhood friend, Lord Delwyn Deverell.

Another bottle smashed, this one several feet from the others.

Since peace with France had been established, Deverell’s past activities must have had everything to do with greed and little to do with loyalty to Bonaparte’s cause. It had to be the reason he was staging holdups. Gideon could only assume Deverell’s ability to use Malvina was blackmail.

With an angry swipe, Gideon cleared the table of the rest of the bottles. He barely heard the crash as they smashed all around the room.

That meant Brackney was guilty. Even after his death, the crown would still want to hold Brackney accountable for his treason. His title and properties would be seized, his family ostracized, hounded from Society.

Gideon’s mother would truly go into a decline if he married Lady Brackney.

Books and papers flew, adding to the worsening destruction of Gideon’s once-precious room.

He leaned against the table, hands fisted tightly, trying to dam up the rage, trying to convince himself that visible emotion was a weakness. It was never productive to allow the feelings release.

There was one glaring incongruity in Deverell’s actions that made Gideon distinctly nervous. Why did the man visit Malvina in person? Was he that confident he would not be caught?

Or was there actually someone pulling his strings as he pulled Malvina’s?

Releasing a cry of frustrated rage, the noble Earl of Holt lifted the heavy table and threw it across the room. The microscope, beakers, and sundry other items flew, smashed, crashed, and banged all around him.

It did not relieve the helpless frustration that consumed him.

“Very mature, Giddy.”

He had not heard the door open. He turned to find Samantha staring at him, her brown eyes filled with concern.

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You should not be here.”

“Nor should you.” She walked toward him, her slippered feet moving silently around the debris. She stopped before him, searching his features for clues as to his behavior. “What has come over you?”

He shrugged, slipping back into his comfortable, insouciant façade.

Lady Samantha struck him on the chest. “Don’t you dare become the lifeless care-for-nothing, Giddy! I hate that.”

She stepped back, looking very much as if she’d like to hit him again. She successfully employed ladylike restraint but stepped back again to avoid the temptation.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“I come here every day.”

Astonishment exploded in his chest. “Why the
devil
would you do that?”

She shrugged. “To remember you.” Gazing around at the destruction he’d so effortlessly wrought, she added, “Today, however, it is not the same.”

He would not cry. How completely stupid to feel hurt, sorrow, or sadness that she would want to constantly remind herself that her only brother had permanently harmed her.

“Is not your mirror sufficient to remind you ?”

She met his gaze, her brow furrowed in confusion. Staring into his ever-revealing eyes, she realized what he implied.

“I do not come here to wallow in misery and hate, Giddy,” she told him gently. “I come here to remember
you
. I miss you. I miss the old you, the one who was up to every rig and row. The one who teased me and laughed at me and told me when I vexed you. The one who pretended I was an irritating younger sister but never failed to include me.”

She squeezed his arm. “I never hated you, Giddy.” She gestured to her face, making him wince at the severity of her scars. “Not for this. I hated you for changing and for leaving. I hated you for treating me as though I was different. I hated you for revealing you were just like everyone else, believing appearances were more important than what was inside. I needed you, Giddy, to make me laugh, when the pain was so bad all I could do was cry.”

She searched his features for he knew not what, the intensity of her gaze sending a twinge of alarm through him. Her next words stunned him unlike any others.

“I needed you to tell me I was to blame.”

Gideon stared helplessly at her, watching the tears well up in her huge eyes and trickle down her cheeks. Her face turned red and splotchy, causing the scars to stand out, grotesquely ugly against the purity of the girl they marked. She clutched at his sleeve, begging him to understand the ways she felt he’d failed her.

A single tear managed to escape before he could stop it. Damming the wellspring, he shook her off. He was not ready to give up any of the blame in the situation.

Samantha pressed her rejected hand to her mouth, trying to hold back the sobs that threatened to tear her in two.

“I am doing quite well, today,” the calm, emotionless Lord Holt murmured. “I have managed to cause grief to the two women I care about most.” He snapped a bow. “Permit me to leave you so I may visit Mother and see what I may do to her.”

Samantha watched him leave. When the door closed, she sank to the floor in an elegant heap, her sobs released from deep within.