Authors: Julia Ross
Juliet leaned her head back. "Of course, no
woman can ever refuse you - which in this case was fortunate for me. But even
Mistress Welland? I'm amazed!"
"She was quite attractive once she let her
hair down," he said dryly. "We also drank wine together, a little
stronger and in greater quantities than Nell was quite used to." Juliet
thought he smiled, but perhaps it was a grimace that made his teeth glimmer
whitely in the darkness. "I didn't have to go quite as far as I feared,
but further, alas, than I'd hoped."
"Ι don't care," Juliet said,
amazed that it was true. "Should Ι care? Ι am just so glad to be
out of that place! How did you discover Blackthorn Manor?"
"Not from Lord Edward."
She closed her eyes against the night, trying to
find a safer darkness within her own mind. "I didn't imagine he would tell
you!"
"I searched his whole damn house for a clue.
He hadn't cared enough to write it down. Your husband's servants found out for
me in the end. Thanks to your little trick in the woods, the coachman
remembered you. I had to practice my wiles on Emmy, with additional small
attentions to Cook. I have paid court to a great many women looking for you,
but I did them no harm."
"How can you be sure? Your very presence is
dangerous to women. "
"Dangerous? I made Emmy's heart beat faster.
I tempted her a little. I taught her how to kiss. The beneficiary of those
lessons is likely to be a stalwart young fellow named Harry Oldacre. Emmy is no
worse for the experience."
Was it arrogance or just a simple statement of
truth? Should a man like this pretend he didn't know what he could give women?
"Lud!" she said. "If your business
is temptation, you know how to offer every woman her heart's desire, don't
you?"
"I hope so. It is all I have practiced for
years. But it was done only for you, to bring you your heart's desire."
"I’d have left with Lucifer-" Her voice
caught. She had to take a deep breath and start again, hating herself for being
such a coward. "But in the morning they will find out. They will come
looking for me. Lord Edward is controlling George, and my husband has legal
charge of my destiny. Next time they will hide me better-"
"No, they won't. Mr. Upbridge will be
looking for an actress named Polly Brown, not for Lady Elizabeth Juliet
Amberleigh."
How could his voice sound so confident, so
certain? "Yes, I know they said I was called Polly. They also said I was a
harlot. Why does it matter?"
"All the lunacy orders are in Polly Brown's
name. Lord Edward claimed she was an actress, his mistress. He did it that way
so that no one could find you, so that you could be buried in the madhouse
forever, but you do see what it means?"
Her little glimmer of hope was almost painful.
"That no one knows what really happened to me?"
"Exactly. Your husband has no proof that his
wife was ever found insane. If Lady Elizabeth Juliet Amberleigh, daughter of
the Earl of Felton, emerges triumphantly in public and is obviously not
lunatic, Lord Edward and your husband cannot do this to you again."
His solid shape was warmly reassuring in the dark
carriage. Perhaps she could even make out the shadow of a wry smile tilting the
corners of his mouth?
"So the butterfly must emerge from its
bondage in the chrysalis? How can I spread new wings in society?" It was
hardly necessary to speak the obvious answer aloud, but she did so anyway,
even though - after Bill - there was no question of their living together.
"As your acknowledged mistress?"
"It's one solution, certainly. Any lady who
did so would be seen as wicked, but
never
as lunatic. I am very tempted
to tell you that there's no other choice, but there is, of course."
The lightness in his voice was absurdly welcome.
She tried hard to match it. "I await with bated breath! You need a
housekeeper, a chambermaid? Your best friend's brother is looking for a mistress?
Your favorite brothel-?"
"Faith, Juliet! You would prefer
that
to
my company? No, the answer is treasure."
"Treasure?"
"The Felton Hoard."
"The ancestral treasure of the Feltons has
been lost since the Black Death. It's a myth, a story for children."
"No, Juliet. It is real. Lord Edward came
across letters attesting to its rediscovery in the reign of Richard the Third
and its final reburial during the Civil War. He has been assiduously collecting
relevant documents ever since. I have read them."
"Lord Edward?"
"Did you think he wanted only your
destruction? He also wants the fabled wealth of the Felton Hoard, which is why
he wanted your locket. He believes that the key to the treasure's location is
hidden inside."
She stared at his shadowy face for a moment, then
she laughed. "Surely you see what an absurdity this is! If I had been
carrying about the key to a fortune, why would I have lived as I did in Manston
Mingate?"
He leaned back and crossed his arms. "I have
wondered the same thing."
Juliet waved both hands. "The hoard was
supposed to consist of jewelry, necklaces, gold bracelets, adornments for a
woman. The story is they were a gift to an ancestor of mine from Harald
Fairhair, when she married one of his Viking lords. She was an only child who
brought extensive lands as a dowry, so her father demanded the treasure be
settled exclusively upon her and her daughters to be passed down in the female
line. How lovely if it existed! Sadly, it does not. Kit and I looked for
it."
"But if it does, all that ancient gold would
be yours, not your father's, not your husband's. I have read the documents. I
believe your claim would hold up in court. Lord Edward intends to steal
it."
"And finding this treasure is your sole
answer for my future security?"
"Not at all. I was about to propose that
while we wait for the duke's son to show his hand, you move in as my mother's
companion. "
"At the Dower House?" She hoped it
didn't sound as squeaky to him as it did to her.
"Why not? For an earl's daughter to leave
her merchant husband to live respectably with a dowager viscountess will be
seen as eminently sane in all the right quarters."
"Your mother would agree?"
"She would barely notice you. You would have
a great deal of freedom."
Juliet remembered her one brief encounter with
his mother with a small trickle of trepidation. "This is my best option
for the future?"
"My mother's brother is a marquess, which
makes her almost untouchable in society." He stretched one arm along his
seat back - a lazy movement, full of male confidence. "Besides, she is
very touchy on the subject of lunacy."
"Why?"
Alden laughed. "Because she is quite mad
herself, of course."
Juliet lapsed into silence. Anything was better
than Blackthorn Manor. Yet it meant that her life as an independent woman was
over. Even though Manston Mingate had brought its daily round of hard work, she
had been free there.
Though never free from fear,
added a small voice -
afraid, always, that George would find her.
Yet Alden had broken into Lord Edward's townhouse
and seduced women who obviously hadn't interested him, in order to rescue her.
He was offering her a future with his mother, where her husband couldn't harm
her, even though he knew she would never consent to be his mistress. Why?
"I am not sure why you are doing this for
me," she said after a few moments. "After what was said at our last
meeting."
Moonlight glimmered on his cheek as he ducked his
head to look out of the window. "You said nothing to me that I didn't
deserve."
"I truly hated you."
"It doesn't matter if you still do. I am not
about to proposition you."
"Then why did you rescue me?"
He was silent for a moment. "Shall we just
say that we have a mutual enemy?"
"Lord Edward gives us a shared
interest?"
"I intend to destroy him." It was said
simply, the way a man might say he needed to see the weeds in his driveway
destroyed.
So he had rescued her just for that: to foil the
duke's son. Not because he cared, or because he felt he owed it to her. Perhaps
it was better this way, safer. She still felt numb. What feelings might
surface, if she ever allowed herself to truly feel again?
"By the way," Alden said with a new
touch of mischief in his voice. "Did you really eat flowers?"
It caught her off guard. "Yes," she
said. "When you sent me the pineapple, Ι ate part of the rose-petals
fell into the butter . . ."
His laughter shook the carriage, shouts of pure
glee. "Lud!" he said at last.
"
Ι
am glad!"
"Glad?
Why?"
He did not lean forward. He did not reach for her
hand. Yet she felt as if his spirit reached out and touched her. "Because
it means you were feeling foolish and merry - that Ι did something at
least that brought you a moment of happiness."
Α moment! If she was honest with herself, he
had given her almost a week of happiness: impossibly golden, brilliant days,
and that one night-
The coach rocked, then stopped. Light flooded in
through the windows from several flambeaux outside, glittering on his wig and
dancing over the smooth lines of his face. The face that was ruin to women.
"We are here," he said. "The Black
Horse, a modest but decent hostelry. It's too far to go to Gracechurch tonight,
so Ι hired us rooms earlier. Wrap yourself in this." He picked up a
hooded cloak from the seat and held it out. His smile was blazing, almost defiant.
"A hot bath awaits."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A
LDEN WANTED ONLY TO SMOOTH THE FILTHY, MATTED
HAIR away from her forehead, press kisses on her sad lips and brave eyelids. .
. . He had no right to any of it. He could only buy her a bath and a meal and a
safe bed for the night - and new clothing, of course. The rags she was wearing
must be burned.
But which rooms to reserve? The thought had
burned, but wouldn't she want to be as far away from him as possible? Though
how could he leave her alone, entirely surrounded by strangers? In the end he
had chosen two chambers with a connecting door. She could always lock it
against him.
After a solitary meal and a bath of his own,
Alden paced his chamber, dressed in his nightshirt and dressing gown, thinking
about women. He liked women. He liked their company and their minds. He loved
their bodies. Why did a future inhabited only by a succession of ever-changing
female faces now seem so bleak?
What the devil had Juliet done to him?
He had thought Lord Edward had concocted a
fiendish enough revenge that night at Marion Hall. Nothing had prepared him for
what he had found at Blackthorn Manor. Rage still flared, but a new, terrifying
emotion he couldn't name burned even deeper. She was so damned courageous, his
Juliet. No, not
his,
alas!
Could he resist trying to seduce her again -
trying to cajole, beguile, to possess that lush body? The thought of making
love
to her seared through his blood. Could he make it through the rest of
his life and never know that, sweetness again?
He strode to the door
connecting their rooms and stood there, his forehead pressed into the wood, his
fingers clenched
on
the latch.
She slept, warm, bathed and fed, on the other
side. Without making a sound, he released the latch and turned, leaning his
head back against the wooden panels.
Devil take it!
Juliet!
He wanted to shout
her name at the moon. Α kitten mewed.
Alden stood stock still. He heard the sound
again, a plaintive little wail, filled with terror. The cry formed itself into
words, barely intelligible at first, then jelling into recognizable syllables:
please,
please, please, please
. . .
Juliet was imploring-
Alden spun about, wrenched at the latch and
stepped into her room.
Candlelight streamed through the open doorway
behind him.
Yellow beams traced across the bed to spark amber
and mahogany in the long braid of hair moving on her shoulder. She lay rigid on
her back, her arms immobile at her sides, while her head thrashed from side to
side.
"Please, please, please, please . . ."
He strode immediately to the crumpled bed with
its tossed covers. She was wearing the night rail he had purchased for her,
modest and simple. He had thought it was right, though he wasn't sure why -
only that it would definitely be wrong to buy her something provocative,
something to reflect his own base desires."
"Juliet?"
"I will not say anything, anything,
anything. . . . Ι won't beg, Ι won't beg. . . . Ι won't let
myself say anything . . . please, please, please-"