Clandestine (34 page)

“Why?”

“Because of the way he treats Berry.”

“That's not enough, Sarah! Both Norris and Moorefield have sons about the right age. Both employed Croft at about the right time.”

“No,” Sarah insisted, standing up. “It's Lord Moorefield! And if Rachel managed to get one glimpse of the toddlers, she'd have known right away that Berry was hers.”

“For God's sake, Sarah! Even if you're right, the earl would never have agreed to see her, let alone allow her anywhere near the little boy. No, she must have returned to London defeated, then hid in those lodgings on Goatstall Lane, where either Moorefield or Norris soon sent Croft—calling himself Falcorne—to terrify her into silence.”

Sarah blazed like the setting sun. “Why won't you accept that Lord Moorefield is Daedalus?”

“Because you're relying on intuition, not facts. We've no evidence that Rachel's ever even seen the child.”

“Yet—even though she was afraid—she went back to Devon again. After writing to me as she did, that must have taken enormous courage.”

“Courage? More like foolishness!” Guy ran both hands back over his hair. “Why the
hell
didn't she come to me for help, instead?”

Sarah crumpled back to the chair. “I don't know, but Rachel didn't leave the house in Hampstead because she didn't love you, Guy. She left to go in search of her son.”

“Even that's a huge assumption!”

“Yes,” she said. “But at least the baby lives.”

Guy stopped dead. His rage evaporated.

“I'm sorry! I didn't mean to shout at you.” He strode back to the table to set his chair upright, then stood with one hand resting on the rail, gazing down at her. “I know you're happy about that, so why do you still feel so much dread?”

She shook her head. “It's all right. We're both upset.”

“I shall avenge your cousin, Sarah. Daedalus has finally flown too high.”

“No,” she said. “Only his son Icarus flew too close to the sun and was drowned.”

“In this case, our villain may still lose his child, but I swear to you that the little boy won't suffer for it, either way.”

She pushed away from the table to walk restlessly about the room.

“Yet there are so many mysteries left. Obviously, Rachel left Grail Hall that Christmas when she could no longer hide that she was with child, then she fled to Cooper Street to be near the coast.” Sarah picked up the list of names. “Yet her genuine letters from Grail Hall mention nothing about any of these men. Instead, she only wrote glowing accounts of remembering her meeting with you at the Three Barrels. Why?”

A horrific suspicion flashed into his mind that Sarah thought he was still hiding some desperate truth.

“Do you think that I was there at Grail Hall, as well? That I could be the father of this child, and am hiding that from you?”

She looked so startled that he immediately wished the words unsaid.

“Goodness, no! I don't doubt your word in that.” She dropped back to her chair. “Yet don't you see? In all those first letters when she was writing about you, Rachel must really have been inspired by falling in love with the father of her baby.”

Guy sat down and leaned back to study her face. Sarah was still afraid and he wasn't sure why.

“I've already realized that,” he said. “Not very flattering to my pride, is it?”

“Nor mine!” She laughed with a flash of bravado. “Why she didn't tell me the truth? Why did she hide her real feelings for this unknown lover and pretend it was all about her memory of one day with you?”

“Perhaps the man's married,” he said. “Perhaps she knew he would abandon her.”

Sarah stood up and began to pace the carpet again. “Why does life have to be so chaotic and unpredictable, Guy?”

Not sure why he felt so bloody uncomfortable, he glanced out of the window. The sun had broken through the clouds to sparkle on the damp cobblestones.

“I don't know. Perhaps there are always hidden patterns, though sometimes we can't see them.”

She laughed again, though he feared it was only the laughter of a heartbreak that he knew no way to mend and wasn't even sure he understood.

“Because it's a maze,” she said. “So all we have to do is find the end of the right ball of string, and we'll be led straight out into the sunshine.”

He felt desperate to comfort her, but had no idea where to begin. With perfect timing, the rattle of cans and the clank of metal announced the arrival of hot water and a tub in his room next door.

“You ordered a bath?” she asked.

“When I first came in. It appears to have arrived. I must get back to Devon right away, and clean, dry clothes wouldn't hurt.”

“And then?”

“I'll be off to beard Daedalus in his den.”

Sarah picked up her cloak. “Then go and bathe. I think I'll go out for a walk.”

He leaped up to seize her wrist. “Not without me!”

She gazed up at him. The burn of their contact began to melt through his bones. He yearned to pull her into his arms to kiss her—a need so intense that it hurt.

Yet Guy released her and stepped back.

“There may be danger,” he said. “Even here. Whether Daedalus is Norris or Moorefield, either way he's no fool. People talk. He may have guessed why you and I were at Buckleigh. We may even have been followed here. If suspicions were already raised, it's not so hard to find out that you're Rachel's cousin.”

Sarah tossed the cloak aside. “Very well. I'll take no risks and remain inside like a chick in the nest. Meanwhile, your bathwater's getting cold.”

He laughed, just because he loved the brave, wry humor in her voice, and strode away into his bedroom.

The door closed behind him.

Sarah stood for a long time at the window, staring down into the courtyard. She longed to stride down to the docks to the clear air of the sea, yet Guy was right. It might be dangerous, and anyway he would—just from gallantry—be worried.

Yet whatever he said, he couldn't really love her. He was still hurt by Rachel's desertion in Hampstead, even in the face of such a compelling reason—no, especially now that he knew the real reason.

If it hadn't been for Mrs. Siskin's letter arriving at the house with the top-hatted chimneys in the one week that Guy was away from home, Rachel would never have left him. Perhaps in the end they'd have married.

He was not free.

Yet anyone who read Rachel's letters with this new knowledge could be certain that she had been very desperately in love with her baby's missing father all along, and very probably still was. In which case, Guy had never been more to her than a means to find protection when she ran out of funds—exactly as he had feared—and now he must be certain of it.

How could that not hurt? Sarah closed her eyes and tried to remember John's face. In the months before he died, they had achieved a frail, fragile love that she would treasure till she died. Yet she had still lied to him and told herself it was for his sake, not hers. So who was she to insist now on the truth? Or even claim that she understood much about the true nature of love?

Meanwhile, her future stretched bleakly before her: long, barren years with Miss Farcey in Bath, teaching the daughters of the gentry about geography and botany. And after that? A lonely and impoverished old age. How could the memories of nursing John be enough to sustain her, now that she had tasted real passion?

Without making any clear decision, Sarah walked up to the door separating the two bedrooms. She hesitated for a moment with her hand on the latch, hearing the little splash of water through the door as he bathed. Her bones turned to liquid gold, melting in the furnace of her own desire, telling her exactly what she wanted.

Her pulse beat in mad, excited rhythms as she turned back, stripped off her dress and corset, and prepared the little sponge as Mrs. Mansard had shown her. If she had deeper motives than pure lust, her heart was too exhausted to know them, so this time she didn't hesitate at all as she opened the door dressed only in her shift and walked in.

Guy had just stepped from the tub. Ebony-dark hair slicked over his head like the coat of an otter. Tiny rivulets ran down over his naked body to soak the towel beneath his feet.

Without making any attempt to cover himself, he turned to face her.

Beautiful. Beautiful. The beauty of a fit young man in his prime, as muscled and lean as a racehorse.

Her blood burned. Her bones caught fire.

The towel in his hand dropped to the floor.

She stepped forward into his open arms. Cradling her head in his fingers, he tipped her face back to ravish her mouth with his own.

Moisture steamed where his damp, hot flesh pressed against the shift that covered her body. She rubbed her belly against his, feeling the thrust of his arousal and the power of his naked thighs. Desperate, molten, as he broke the kiss she caught his jaw in both hands and stared up into his eyes.

“You cannot go to Devon without me,” she said.

A shadow darkened his eyes. “We can continue together only as lovers, Sarah.”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm prepared to take that risk.”

“Then you win,” he said. “It would take a better man than me to defy what's happening between us. Since you insist on it, we're in this together from this moment on, and may the devil help us.”

He wrenched the linen shift off over her head, then stepped back to gaze at her naked body. Ardor flamed in his eyes as if she, too, were divine.

Her blush scorched, but he swung her up into his arms to carry her to the bed.

A
S
the coach rolled back toward Devon they made love on the padded seats, contorting their limbs to fit in the awkward space, laughing and fervent and entirely without inhibition. They made love every night—over and over again—when they stopped at the posting houses on the road.

They laughed and joked and feasted together.

Yet a shadow traveled with them, like an impenetrable barrier of smoke. However much he tried to hide it, Sarah caught glimpses of that darkness in his eyes. Some vital part of Guy's soul had withdrawn into some deeply private place, as if—whatever physical passion they shared—his real essence could no longer be touched.

Nothing more was said about marriage and nothing was arranged about how a gentleman might usually set up his mistress. Guy bought her no gifts and offered her no money. Neither did he try to press a ring on her finger, or persuade her that they were meant to be together for all time. And never—not even in their deepest ecstasy—did he say again that he loved her.

Guy simply ravished her with the power of his body and his mind, and said nothing at all about the future.

Sarah tried to calm the panic hidden in her heart and savor him, because these strange days out of time would never come again.

Until Rachel was rescued, he was not free.

July had almost slipped into August when they rolled through Exeter and headed for Dartmoor.

Satiated and fully clothed for the moment, she leaned back to study his dark hair and eyes, to drink in that lithe, almost fey grace as he turned his head from the window to meet her gaze. She knew his power and his tenderness in every pore of her being, and was helpless in the face of it. Yet he still guarded his most private thoughts from her, and she had forfeited any right to trespass.

“Where, exactly, are we going?” she asked.

“To a cottage on the moor. Knowing I'd undoubtedly be coming back, I rented it secretly before I left Buckleigh. They're expecting us.”

“Who is?”

“The men I left here on Dartmoor to watch events and gather information while I was gone. We arrive under an assumed name, just as we've traveled.”

She had paid it no attention on the journey. Guy had arranged their rooms and their meals.

“You're Mr. David Gordon again?”

“No.” He gave her a quizzical smile. “We're Mr. and Mrs. Guido Handfast.”

Sarah laughed, but her pulse stumbled and the ache in her heart opened like a wound to throb with new pain.

She glanced from the window. They were traveling up into a thick white mist that blanketed the top of the moor. Great blocks of granite, stacked like huge, abandoned toys, loomed and faded. A troop of wild ponies suddenly broke across their road, then scattered in a clattering of unshod hooves to disappear as if they had been swallowed.

Yet the silhouette of something more ominous wavered darkly in the mist ahead of them.

“There's a horseman coming our way,” she said.

Guy leaned across her to look out. He rapped on the carriage ceiling.

The horses pulled up as the approaching rider came into focus: a wiry, thin-shanked man on a brown pony.