Clandestine (22 page)

“Nevertheless,” Sarah insisted, “Her Ladyship ordered little Lord Berrisham deprived of his supper simply because he'd fallen and dirtied his dress. He's barely more than a baby, and she's his
mother
.”

The lion's blind eyes were crumbling beneath the etching lichen. Guy Devoran's black gaze was sharp, focused, and apparently indifferent.

“So? I don't imagine she's ever held him or fed him. Moorefield would have handed him to a wet nurse as soon as he was born. A baby's crying is ruin to any delicate lady's sensibilities. She'd have had a constant headache.”

“A baby's suffering is hardly a subject for levity,” Sarah snapped.

“You want me to be surprised that a countess feels so little natural affection for her own child?”

His tone seemed almost dismissive, as if he refused to acknowledge her outrage.

“No, of course not,” she said. “I imagine that such indifference is common enough among the peerage, where babies are farmed out to the servants like cattle.”

He gazed away at the sky. “Not always.”

Sarah wanted to strike him. “Though the child was only frightened, Lord Moorefield ordered him whipped if he cried.”

He glanced back at her, his eyes dark. “And was the child whipped?”

“No, thank God! The baby's nurse, Betsy Davy, loves him like a mother, and she managed to prevent his crying—”

“And the supper?”

“Betsy promised to smuggle him some of her own food, so he wouldn't go to bed hungry.”

“Which the countess must have known, unless she's very disengaged from the housekeeping.”

“How can you defend her?” Sarah said. “A mother who won't defend her own baby?”

“I don't defend her, but the situation is more nuanced than that. The countess may be sour and unpleasant these days, but there was a time when she might have become someone different. The heart, surely, can find room for compassion?”

“Only for the child!” Sarah insisted.

“Listen!” He spun around to face her. “Moorefield is a cruel and vindictive man. Ten years ago he married a spoiled young girl for her money. When his frail new countess didn't produce an heir right away, it was commonly suspected that he beat her, though the earl made sure to hit her only where it wouldn't show. Even angels might fear to intervene.”

“So you think I took a horrendous risk, for which the baby may well suffer later?” she asked. “Perhaps I did!”

“I didn't say that.”

“But you imply it. You imply that I was wrong—”

“You!”
He seized her by both arms. His passion buffeted her like a strong wind. “Don't misunderstand me, Sarah! I do not approve of the whipping of babies. I don't defend Lady Moorefield's behavior. Any decent mother would take a whipping herself rather than see her baby terrorized—if that were the choice. Yet it's not that simple. Life is never that bloody simple, and the law allows essentially no interference in the way a peer handles his wife or his son. So what the devil do you want me to do?”

“Do?”

As if torn apart by lightning, he opened his hands and released her. Sarah sagged back against the plinth.

“At the thought of his ordering his little boy beaten, I've been fighting for the self-control not to take a horsewhip from the stables to give Moorefield a taste of his own medicine. Yet his wife and child would only suffer the consequences if I did.”

Sarah bit her lip. “Yet Lady Moorefield is a duke's daughter. She has some influence, surely?”

“Yes, because everything changed when she eventually gave birth to a son. Moorefield crowed about it like a cock on a dung heap, ecstatic to be able to poke a stick in his brother's eye. They've been estranged for years, and at last his brother was no longer his heir. Yet his wife still lives on a tightrope. Does she care very deeply for the child? Probably not. Was she being deliberately cruel to her baby by suggesting he go without his supper, or was she trying to deflect the earl's worse impulses by suggesting a milder punishment first? I don't know. But Lady Moorefield chose this Betsy Davy, and if Moorefield ever discovered that the nursemaid had disobeyed a direct order, she'd be dismissed. Then the baby would have no one.”

Sarah gazed up into his eyes, her heart pounding, and knew that she had been deliberately trying to force herself to misunderstand a fundamentally good man.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “You're right. Lady Moorefield would probably have successfully softened her husband's wrath, if I hadn't interrupted.”

“No,” he said. “You were right to do what you could. Yet there's absolutely nothing more I can do about any of it, unless I discover that Moorefield is indeed Daedalus and that knowledge gives me a hold over him for some reason. Unfortunately, it's unfathomable that the earl would have tried to force your cousin to become his mistress
after
his wife finally fulfilled his dearest wish.”

“So you think the earl cannot be Daedalus?”

He struck one fist against the lion's belly. “On the contrary, ever since I knew that we'd be looking for our villain in this part of Devon, I've thought that he's our best candidate. I just can't fathom a motive, that's all.”

Sarah wrapped both arms about herself as if she could ward off disaster, and tipped her head back, half-closing her eyes.

“A man like Lord Moorefield wouldn't need a motive,” she said. “I can't imagine how Rachel could have met him, but if she did and was even a little more impolite than I was, then he might have persecuted her simply for that.”

“No!” Guy Devoran dug out a divot of turf with one heel, then rammed the grass back into place. “It's nonsensical that Moorefield would harass your cousin, unless he had a damned good reason.”

Clouds were moving over the sun, casting brilliant halos of light about each gray center.

“That's what we came here to find out,” she said.

“You shouldn't have come to Devon.” Something of bitterness soured his voice. “There's nothing you can do here that I can't achieve better alone.”

Angry fingers clenched in her gut. “You forget, sir! Rachel is my cousin.”

“God, I don't forget that! I can never forget it for a moment.”

Sarah spun about to stare up at his face. Intensity filled the fathomless brown gaze, but it was tinged with more than regret, more than rage.

Her heart began to beat faster, drumming out her anger and replacing it with another emotion altogether, until she stood as if paralyzed beside the cold bulk of the lion, gazing up at Guy Devoran, nephew to the most powerful peer in the kingdom.

Something in his eyes touched her with chill fingers of guilt and longing, yet heated her blood at the core as if she heard the ardent plunge and clash of a far-distant battle.

“What is it?” she asked. “What can't you tell me?”

He moved to pin her up against the granite plinth, then touched her cheek. His fingertips stroked once over her ear to brush against her upswept hair. A sweet, smoldering tremble followed his touch, dissolving all resistance. She wanted to faint or escape. She wanted to remain rooted here forever, encompassed only by the scorch of his black fire.

His fingertips twisted one long wisp of red hair, escaped from its pins when she had impulsively torn off her bonnet. He wove the strand around his fingers, entrapping her as if he would weave her pulse into his. His lips twisted in a small bittersweet smile as his gaze settled on her mouth.

Unless she prevented it, he was going to kiss her.

A bright shock of excitement melted her heart, as if she had always wanted it and never known with quite how much white-hot intensity, until now.

With the black flame still scorching in his gaze, he slipped his fingers deep into her hair, stroking the back of her neck as he tipped her head back—and she melted, dissolving, as the clang and crash of battle roared in her ears.

“What is it?” she whispered again—though she knew, of course, of course, just as she knew that her blood had already made its own decision.

“Perhaps, this,” he murmured against her mouth.

Sarah felt his hesitation and knew in her bones how he fought, buckler and broadsword, more desperately than Ambrose de Verrant had ever battled against a host of Saxon enemies.

She could have helped him. She had one more moment to turn away, to say something brilliant or clever or sarcastic. Instead, she stood silent and craved only this one man's hot, bright, living caress.

Sarah closed her eyes and surrendered.

She opened her lips and allowed him her tongue, slipping her hands beneath his tailored coat, tracing the strength of his firmly muscled back beneath the smooth silk of his waistcoat—delectable beneath her barren hands—and a floodgate of ardor opened in her soul.

Sarah kissed him with recklessness, with abandon, and Guy Devoran kissed back, as if he would absorb her into his soul.

And she was ready—moist and hot and ready—for him to ravish her there in an earl's garden, beneath the great sleeping stone lion. To fold with him onto the sun-stark grass to allow him to take his pleasure as he would: a long, scorching pleasure that might leave her burned away to ashes, that might sear her with the white-hot rage and power of the angels.

His hands slid down to her waist, pulling her into his body, bending her helplessly in his arms, so that she clung to his strength.

She would have tugged away his cravat and jacket and shirt. She would have allowed him to tear away her dress to free her naked body to his gaze. She wanted it.

But he broke away suddenly, his lips bruised and swollen, his eyes on fire, to stare down at her like a man haunted by Sirens.

“God! God!” he said, as if the words needed to be dragged from the other side of the world. “If that doesn't drive you away, ma'am, nothing will.”

Sarah scrambled for balance, knowing that her skin flamed and her tongue might never find language again. Her knees gave way. She sank down to crouch beneath the lion's open maw, her mind lost for the witticism that might put everything to rights.

He turned and stalked to the bench where she had left her bonnet, then brought it back and presented it with a bow.

She pressed both hands over her mouth—her flaming, treacherous mouth—her blood still on fire.

Guy Devoran stared down at her, the bonnet dangling from his fingers, his eyes filled with nothing but regret.

“Well!” someone said with a nicely restrained savagery.

Sarah scrambled to her feet as Guy spun about.

Lady Whitely stood beneath the yew archway. She twirled her silk parasol and tossed her pretty head.

“There's always some satisfaction when one is proved right about something, Mr. Devoran,” she said. “Though the pleasure is most definitely spoiled this time, since the proof is only that our little botanist really is your whore, after all.”

The silk parasol revolved with elegant fury as she turned and stalked off.

Guy Devoran bowed and offered Sarah her bonnet. “I can offer you nothing but my regrets,” he said stiffly. “I'm sorry. You're all right? I must go after Lottie Whitely, before she spreads gossip.”

Sarah nodded. He was obviously desperate to be gone. “Yes, of course. Please, say no more about it.”

Avoiding his eyes, she grabbed her straw hat from his hand and jammed it onto her head.

She watched him walk away, lean and vigorous and lovely, and hated herself for being so absurdly, impossibly, in love with him.

G
UY
waited patiently in the Deer Hut, leaning his forearms on the windowsill, hands clasped, as he contemplated the dark lake and the faint hint of pearly light at the horizon. The dying summer night breathed the last of its silence, deep and still, before the birds stirred to welcome the morning.

He had set up this rendezvous while the Overbridge guests were piling into their carriages in the driveway at Moorefield Hall: five quick words, murmured into her ear from horseback, as Sarah stepped up into the governess cart.

“Tomorrow. The Deer Hut. Dawn.”

She had glanced up to meet his gaze with a flash of ardent, tiger heat. His blood had roared its response, but he had wheeled his horse away to ride beside Lady Whitely. Lottie had accepted his company at first with a sulky malevolence, then flirted outrageously all the way back to Buckleigh.

Guy heard Sarah's footsteps before he saw her. Quiet, but fast, walking up through the woods. His pulse quickened. Annoyed by his own eagerness to see her, he tried to empty his mind of everything but their goal: finding her cousin.

He had thought he loved Rachel once. He had made promises. Honor demanded his fealty to that obligation.

And yet—

Sarah's shadow flitted across the doorway. She stopped at the threshold and pushed back the hood of her cloak. In spite of his resolutions, heat surged in his heart at the sharp, spicy scent of green apples, overshadowing the damp aroma of the woods.