The Courtship (31 page)

“Sir John was the one who informed me of Gerard's death. I hadn't had any contact with him since that time. He never cared for me. Since I believed him to be an old curmudgeon, it didn't bother me. My father, as you can imagine, was bewildered that someone didn't like his beloved daughter. In any case, if Gerard did somehow survive, if he is alive, then I am still married. I can't marry you or anyone else.”

He had managed to figure that out all by himself. It was quite a blow to the jaw. He sat there, holding her, tapping his fingertips on her right thigh, wondering how life, which had seemed so very simple and straightforward but moments before when he was caressing her with his mouth, had now flown yet again out of his control.

He cursed again. It made him feel a bit better, for at least a short time.

She collapsed against him then, her face against his neck. He closed his arms around her.

“If he is dead, as he is supposed to be, would you marry me, Helen?”

She said against his neck, her voice warm and sweet, “The thought of awaking on a random morning with my wrists tied above my head and you over me, it is nearly too much for my brain to deal with. But you would have to promise not to ‘not quite ecstasy' me again.”

He laughed—there was nothing else to do. “No, I won't ever punish you like that again.” He kissed her forehead and fell silent. “Well, perhaps for a little while, before I continued.”

He fell silent then, looking beyond her to the white wall beside the fireplace.

“What are you thinking?”

“I am wondering how to flush the fellow out,” he said. “You see, it makes no sense for him to send you a letter and then do nothing at all for six months. Something strange is going on here.” He was silent again. Helen was stroking her palm over his chest. It was distracting. He grabbed her hand and pushed it down onto his thigh. That proved even more distracting. He released her and sighed, closing his eyes. “I know what we will do.”

“How can you possibly come up with a plan within five minutes of me telling you about it? I have had six months to devise a plan and there isn't one.”

“I see. If you didn't think of a plan, then one can't possibly exist. That is rather arrogant of you, dearest, don't you think? Perhaps a Level Six to punish you for this character flaw?”

She leaned close and bit his neck. Then she licked where she had bitten, and then a small, light kiss. He loved that. “I think you would enjoy a Level Six, my lord, more than I would.”

He nearly swallowed his tongue. He cleared his throat. “The reason you didn't think of anything is because I wasn't here to stimulate you.”

“What is your plan?”

He eased her up until she was sitting on his lap, her eyes level with his. He tweaked her nose. He lightly kissed her mouth. Her lips were soft from the cream. “You and I, Helen, are going to announce our engagement in every newspaper in London and all the environs. We will even send an announcement to all the newspapers in Paris. Society is above war, don't you know. We will give our wedding date as a month from today. We will hold parties and a big ball. We will enlist the aid of the Sherbrookes, also Gray and Jack. Everyone will be speaking of our nuptials. If Gerard Yorke is still alive, then he will come to you. He will have no choice.”

She blinked at him. “That is a brilliant idea. Actually, now that I think about it, it wouldn't have been possible for me to come up with that plan because there was no one about for me to marry.”

She beamed at him, and he laughed and pulled her tightly against him. “You will marry me, Helen?”

She stilled, and he knew she was worrying and assessing and worrying some more.

“If he comes to London?”

“Then we will do what we have to do,” Lord Beecham said, and wondered silently exactly what that would be.

“I don't want to be married to him, Spenser. Perhaps it is just better to go along as we have, not to put our hands in the hornet's nest. Perhaps I won't ever hear from him again.”

“We will marry, Helen. We will not be lovers.”

“If he is alive, then we can never marry, unless I divorce him. I cannot do that, Spenser. It would be a horrible scandal.”

“We will speak of that again when and if the fellow shows up. If he is alive, he will come. If he isn't, then we will marry. If he comes later, then we will deal with it when and if it happens. If there is nothing else, then you will divorce him. If the scandal proves too great, then we will move to Italy, a lovely place. To Tuscany, I believe, our own snug little villa. You will buy a local inn and run it. I speak Italian and will teach you all the curse words. What do you think?”

“I think you are wonderful, but that isn't to the point. There is something you're ignoring here, and you simply can't.”

“What is that, pray?”

“You are Lord Beecham. You must have an heir. I am barren.”

“I have already given that all the thought it deserves. My nominal heir is a cousin, a sailing captain in the Americas. He's a good fellow, as are his sons. Don't worry about it. I want you more than I want anything else in this entire benighted world. Believe it.”

“It isn't right.” He said nothing more, just looked at her. She nodded, finally, then nearly leapt off his lap. “Oh, goodness, I forgot about the lamp. How could I possibly forget about the lamp?”

“I'm here with you and my hands are stroking up and down your beautiful back. How could you think about much of anything other?”

“I see. Thank you for that explanation.” She turned to kiss him, but he held her off.

“No, Helen, I'm not going to make love with you again until we are wed. I am committing myself to you for the rest of my life. I have no intention of—”

He looked down at her breasts and swallowed. “You must help me with this. I am set upon a noble course, but I need help.”

“If Gerard doesn't come by the time our wedding is to happen?”

“Then we will wed, just as I told you. Perhaps the letter was a forgery, for some reason that we will discover, particularly after we announce our engagement. Everything will work out, Helen. Trust me.”

He was still staring at her breasts when she said, “He wasn't a very nice man. I thought he was when I first met him, way back in the summer of 1801. I was only eighteen and he was at least thirty—perhaps more, he never told me—and I worshiped him. He enjoyed that, I think. Since he was a hero, naturally he knew everything, and I listened reverently to every word out of his mouth. He swore that he adored me, worshiped me. He didn't care if I was taller than he was, it didn't matter. He was a naval hero, the pride of the Admiralty, a man who had fought against Napoleon in the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Lord Nelson promoted him for his bravery. Yes, of course I saw soon enough that I'd been dazzled by his reputation, by the illusion of a hero. But I really hadn't known him as a real man.

“But now that I have had time to look back on those two years we were together, I don't believe he did love me. He desired me, but he didn't care if I ever felt anything for him.”

“He never gave you a woman's pleasure.”

“You already know that he did not. But he wanted a child, desperately.”

“But you said he was the younger son of Sir John Yorke, not the heir.”

“That's right.”

“Then why the immense drive to produce a boy child? There was no title or estate in the balance.”

“I don't know. There is a lot of wealth in the Yorke family, but no title.”

Lord Beecham sighed. “This is as puzzling as that bloody lamp and where King Edward stashed it six hundred years ago and why he stashed it at all if the damned thing was so powerful. And why didn't Burnell ever write about it being in that iron cask with the leather scroll that was itself ancient six hundred years ago?”

“He obviously never discovered its power. As to the other, goodness, I don't know.”

He sank his chin onto his hands and stared down at the floor, at the way the planks seamed together, a habit of long standing, when he was thinking hard. “If Gerard Yorke is alive, why would he write to you now? So many years have passed with everyone believing him dead. You can't give him his precious child, he already knows that. Why does he care? What does the bounder want?”

“I don't know.”

“Another thing. Why did he select you, Helen? No, don't try to convince me that you were the most beautiful girl available, that you were obviously the pinnacle of young, nubile womanhood, because that didn't really matter—at least I don't think it did.”

“Perhaps he believed because I am so big and sturdy that I would birth boy children right and left, fill England with all my offspring. He really was very keen on children.”

He sighed and kissed the tip of her nose. “I suppose that makes about as much sense as anything else, maybe. How wealthy is your father?”

“Not immensely. He is comfortable, nothing more.”

“It has been eight years since you last saw Gerard Yorke. Is that right?”

“Yes. Right after the Treaty of Amiens was signed in 1803, he left. Some sort of secret mission. I remember him whispering to me of this special mission in the dark of the night, and he sounded very excited about it. But then he was on a ship and it sank. What is so exciting about that?”

“Unless he was just aboard the ship until he left it somewhere to proceed with this secret mission of his. Was he a liar?”

“I don't really know. During our two years before his death, he didn't spend more than five, perhaps six, months with me, total. It wasn't much of a marriage. Surely it couldn't have been to him, either. We didn't know each other, not really. Why did he write me, Spenser? Why, blast his eyes?”

“We will discover that when he tracks us down in London before we have the chance to marry.”

She tucked her head against his neck. “I don't want him to.”

“Sometimes there is just no choice in life, my sweet. You simply have to clean up the mess before you can go on.”

“There is something else we must discover.”

He kissed her lightly on the mouth and said,“What?”

“We must find out who murdered Reverend Mathers.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, his eyes hard, “we must.”

“I dreamed I saw the man who did it, but I only saw his back. He's evil, Spenser.”

“We will find him,” Spenser said and kissed her again, hard this time. And then he kissed her again.

H
E HAD HELD STEADY. HE couldn't believe it. He was immensely proud of his strength of will. He was also so randy he thought he would grind his teeth to dust.

He'd had to button Helen's gown up the back, but still he had managed to hold firm. He leaned forward to kiss her shoulder blade, then bit down on his lip.

“No,” he'd said aloud to the ceiling of the bedchamber. “I will keep to my vow.”

“Who do you think you are, Galahad?”

Helen was irritated with him. Because he wouldn't make frantic love to her, three times in fifteen minutes? He just smiled. “In one month from now, we can stay in bed until we are smiling and witless.”

“I suppose you are right,” she said finally at least two hours later, when they were riding back to Court Hammering in the carriage he had rented. At his arched eyebrow, she added, “We will wait. We will find the lamp. We will discover if indeed Gerard Yorke is alive. We will find out who killed poor Reverend Mathers. In short, we have a lot on our plate. And to accomplish those things, we must have our wits about us.”

“You mean that when I am loving you, you have no wits?”

“Not a one,” she said and poked him in the arm. “And you know it. Indeed, you are proud of it.”

When they arrived at Shugborough Hall, Lord Prith and Flock met them at the front door. Both were beaming at them. Lord Prith continued to beam even as they walked into the entrance hall, saying nothing at all.

Finally Flock said, “His lordship wants to know the result of Lord Beecham's outrageous strategy. Just imagine, kidnapping you, Miss Helen, to bring you around to his way of thinking. You will consider telling us everything now, Miss Helen.”

Helen said to her father, “I received a letter from Gerard Yorke six months ago. Until we find out if he is indeed still alive, we cannot marry. However, we are planning to wed in a month. We will tell the world about our upcoming nuptials. If Gerard is here, on this earth, he will have to do something, and then we will see.”

Lord Prith was impressed with this plan. “Naturally, Teeny showed me the letter, Nell, some three months ago. She thought I should know about it, smart girl. I nearly told Spenser about it the other night when he poured out all his frustrated passion to me, your dearest father. But then I thought, no, let the children deal with it. It is a good plan, my boy.”