Susan Carroll (2 page)

She was thrusting him into the coffinlike
narrowness of the cupboard. A sob tore from Mandell's throat.

Hush! Hush, my little one. You must be very
quiet.”

“Maman!”

He tried to clutch at her, but the door was
already closing, locking him into the suffocating darkness, leaving
him prey to the terrors of the distant sounds. Wood splintering,
tromping boots, harsh voices, his mother's scream.

The dream shifted and he was a full-grown
man, a man burning with pain and frustrated rage. His hand gripped
the hilt of his sword and he swung it wildly, hacking at the wood,
breaking his way out of the cupboard.

But instead of the bedchamber, he emerged
into the murky half-light of a street, crowded with faceless
phantoms, the stench of their tattered, filthy clothes as rank as
the scent of blood.

You murdering bastards! he screamed.

He charged at them, raising his sword, but
they scattered like brittle leaves before a powerful wind, the
street echoing with their mocking laughter.

And Mandell realized that it was not a weapon
of steel he wielded at all, but wood. A child's toy.

Someone threw something at his feet. He
glanced down at the object, all golden and bright, sticky red. His
mother's head.

“No!” Mandell sat up in bed with a jerk, his
heart thundering. It took a moment for the haze to clear from his
eyes, to realize where he was. Breathing hard, he stared wildly
about him until the room came into focus.

Not Paris, but London, the familiar feminine
surroundings of Sara Palmer's bedchamber. With a shuddering sigh,
Mandell sagged back onto his elbows.

He had only been dreaming, and more
humiliating still, crying out like a child in his sleep.

“Mandell?” Sara's voice came from beside him,
soft, questioning.

Mandell nearly cursed aloud to find he had
awakened her with his thrashings. She sat bolt upright, regarding
him with wide green eyes, her long, dusky hair falling over the
lush swell of her breasts.

“What is it, Mandell? What is wrong?” She
risked a tentative touch to his shoulder.

He realized that his flesh was bathed in a
sheen of cold sweat. It glistened over the muscles of his chest,
the matting of dark hair. He flung himself away from Sara, swinging
his legs over the side of the bed.

“Was it a nightmare?” she persisted.

He didn't answer, locating the breeches he
had discarded earlier. He rammed his legs into the close-fitting
garment, then stood easing the fabric up over his hips. As he
fumbled with the buttons on the flap, he walked to the window.

The night sky beyond seemed vast, cool, and
soothing. He stood staring into its emptiness until he was certain
he had recovered his composure, and relegated the dream to the dark
corner of his mind where it belonged. He said at last, “It was only
a nightmare, nothing of any consequence. I am sorry I disturbed
you.”

“That is quite all right, my lord,” Sara
replied. “I am sure I do not blame you. I have not slept easy
myself since the report of that killing the other night. Every time
I close my eyes, I see some murderous fiend with a hook coming
after me.”

“I doubt you would have anything to fear,
madam.” A reluctant smile creased Mandell's lips. He felt restored
enough to face her again. The dark-haired beauty sat propped up
against the pillows, clutching the coverlet over her breasts. She
looked almost helpless, swallowed up in the vastness of that great
bed, but only a fool would have mistaken Sara Palmer for other than
what she was; a most formidable woman.

“Besides,” he continued, “there is nothing
even to connect this Hook to the crime except for the babblings of
a hysterical old watchman. Bert Glossop was the kind of fool to
inspire any number of people with a desire to kill him.”

“Yes, he was—” Sara started to agree
wholeheartedly, but she brought herself up short, assuming a prim
expression. “Of course, one must not speak ill of the dead.”

“Why not? Glossop was a perfect ass. I cannot
imagine that death did anything to improve him.” Mandell arched one
brow in mocking fashion. “You had best take care, my Sara. You are
starting to sound as hypocritical as any of my set. And heretofore,
I have always found you so wonderfully refreshing.”

“I still am,” she murmured, flinging back the
covers from his side of the bed, patting the mattress. There was a
sparkle in her eyes, her lips parting in invitation.

He made no move to rejoin her. He had
banished the nightmare, but the painful emotions it had aroused
left him feeling wearied and not in the least amorous.

“I beg your pardon, my dear,” he said, “but I
fear I must leave you. It is nearly midnight, and if I am going to
put in any appearance at the Countess Sumner's ball, I must go back
to my house and change.”

She took his rejection in good part, with
only a tiny pout. He had half expected her to make more of an
effort to change his mind, which led him to suppose Sara was not
really in the mood, either. As he reached for his shirt, she rose
languidly from the bed, stretching her arms over her head, making
no attempt to shield her nakedness. She had no modesty, but then,
Mandell thought, there was no reason why she should. The full
curves of her body could have served as a model for a sculptor
depicting Venus.

Sara enveloped herself in one of those filmy
wrappers she favored, the pink tint of her flesh shimmering through
the sheer white silk. While Mandell shrugged into his shirt, she
lounged against the wall, watching him through the thickness of her
lashes.

“I don't suppose,” she said, “that you would
consider taking me with you tonight?”

“To Lily Rosemoor's ball? I doubt you would
find it very interesting.”

“Why don't you give me chance to find
out?”

“We have been through this before, Sara,” he
said, shooting her an impatient glance. “There are certain times
and places that a man does not flaunt his mistress.”

“But I have heard that the countess is very
open-minded, not so particular as some about whom she admits into
her house.”

“The decision in this instance is mine, not
Lily's, my dear,”

A flicker of annoyance crossed Sara's
features. “You express such contempt for your society, yet you are
so careful to follow the niceties of its code. Sometimes I think it
is you who is the hypocrite, my lord.”

“I never pretended to be otherwise,” he
drawled, but with a slightly bitter set of his lips. He stepped in
front of the oval mirror that hung over her dressing table, in
order to achieve what he could with a neckcloth that had become
rumpled during their earlier loveplay.

Sara was one of the few women he had ever
known who did not load her dressing table down with bottles, jars
of scent, and other useless paraphernalia. The cherrywood surface
was bare except for a silver-handled brush and the vial of laudanum
Sara took for her headaches.

As he leaned closer to the mirror, folding
the cravat, he attempted to mollify his refusal to take her to the
ball. “I only mean to stay at Lily's an hour or more. I could
return then, if you like.”

“I fear I won't be here. Not tonight. Nor
tomorrow. Nor any other night.”

The words were pronounced without rancor, in
a tone that was merely matter-of-fact Mandell glanced up to see her
arms folded across her breasts, her face steeled with
determination.

Her announcement was not entirely unexpected
to Mandell. After the briefest pause, he went on tying his
cravat.

“So I am to understand the arrangements I
have made for you are no longer satisfactory?'

“Oh, as to that, Mandell, you have been
generous with your money. And with other things.” She touched him,
her fingertips running up his arm, the caress light,
suggestive.

Then she sighed, dropping her hand back to
her side. “But I have realized for some time now that the thing I
want most you are never going to give me.”

“And that is?”

“Your name.”

“I believe I made that clear from the
outset—”

“You did,” she interrupted. “Abundantly
clear. You could never marry a woman of such dubious social
background. Although my father was a gentleman, a sea captain, and
my late husband a man of good family and property in
Yorkshire.”

Mandell said nothing. He had never believed
in the existence of the sea captain or the dead husband. He had no
idea where Sara had really come from and he had never cared. She
was entitled to her secrets. The devil knew, he had plenty of his
own.

“There is no way of making you understand,
Sara,” he said “I possess few scruples, but I do have some sense of
what I owe to my grandfather, the honor of his house. I would have
to be madly in love with you to forget all that.”

“Which you never will be. You and I, my dear
Mandell, are practical people. We are not the kind to fall madly in
love with anyone.”

“That is precisely why we are so well suited
to one another.”

“We would be, were I not so ambitious. I know
that there are plenty of other titled fools out there who would not
be troubled by your scruples.” A spark lit Sara's eyes, like the
green fire of an emerald. “I want to be 'my lady somebody.' I want
to take my place in your world, the society you so scorn. I want to
attend all those routs and balls, receive vouchers to Almack's,
perhaps even make my curtsy to the king.”

“The king is as mad as you are.”

“Well, the Prince Regent then! Go ahead and
sneer if you like, Mandell. But this is what I want.”

“I was not sneering at you, my dear. You may
well achieve your ambition. I don't doubt but what you are clever
enough to do so. But after you have it all, the title, Almack's, a
place in society, I wonder if you are going to want it. You have a
certain freedom now that you don't quite appreciate, unlike myself,
a prisoner to all the trappings of an ancient family name.”

“From where I stand, the gilt bars of your
prison look mighty good.”

He smiled and shook his head, but he made no
effort to sway her decision. In truth, when he had begun the
liaison with Sara, he had known it would end this way. No
recriminations, no repinings, a blazing affair that had burnt
itself out like so many others. To give Sara her due, she was a
little better than the rest, not quite in the common way.

He finished knotting his cravat. It was a
shambles but it would do to see him home. Searching for his boots,
he completed his dressing in silence.

Rubbing her arms and shivering, Sara rustled
over to the hearth. She put another log on the fire, then poked at
the embers to stir up the flames.

When he had eased himself into his frock
coat, Mandell turned to her. He held out his arms and quoted,
“Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part.”

She might have been justified in flinging the
next line of Drayton's sonnet at him, “Nay, I have done, you get no
more of me.”

But Sara never read poetry. Dusting off her
hands, she moved into his embrace, raising her mouth to his. Even
now her lips were generous, her tongue fiery hot against his.
Drawing back, she gazed up at him, her eyes soft.

“You have been my lover all these weeks, and
I suddenly realize I don't even know your Christian name.”

“I don't have one,” Mandell said. A memory
intruded upon him—the lordly figure of his grandfather looming over
him, a shivering child of ten, the old duke of Windermere flinging
the certificate of Mandell's baptism and his French passport into
the fire.

“And so dies the past, boy. You have but one
thing to remember now and that is that you are the marquis of
Mandell, my heir.”

And the flames had leapt up, consuming the
papers in one greedy lick. If only memories could be burnt away as
easily.

Shaking off the troubling reminiscence,
Mandell pulled Sara close for one last kiss, then eased her out of
his arms.

“Farewell, my dear. If the respectable life
is what you want so much, I hope you find it.”

She stroked his cheek, an unusually tender
gesture for Sara. “And you, Mandell. My wish for you is that just
once in your life, you desire something strong enough to risk
everything for it—your life, your soul, even the honor of your
precious family name.”

“Regrettably, madam, I cannot think of
anything I would ever want that badly.” Upturning her hand, he
brushed his lips against her palm.

Releasing her, he moved toward the door with
his usual pantherlike grace. Sara stared at him, taking one last
look at that tautly honed male form she had known so intimately.
One last look at the darkness, the danger to be found in that lean
face whose latent sensuality never failed to arouse her.

She felt a curling of heat, a mad impulse to
call him back to her bed one last time. But if she did so, it would
only be harder to let Mandell go while her dreams drifted further
away.

So she remained where she was until the door
clicked behind him. The she heaved a deep sigh at her own folly.
She must be mad to fling off her protector, possibly the most
magnificent lover she had ever had, and this while she was still
uncertain of what she meant to do next. She had no immediate
prospects, only vague ambitions.

Yet she could not summon the energy to do any
more thinking tonight. Pressing her hand to her brow, she could
already feel the nigglings of one of her infamous headaches. She
wanted to flop back into bed, but the tangled sheets were a
reminder of Mandell, redolent with his musky scent. She would find
no repose there until she called Agnes to change the linens.

But Sara had no need to summon her maid, for
the next moment the woman, in her starched apron and cap, burst
into the room. The tidings Agnes brought drove all thoughts of
Mandell out of Sara's head.