Clandestine (36 page)

Guy pushed his chair back from the table. “Then you're quite sure that Lord Berrisham is really your son?”

“Oh, yes!” Rachel bit her lip and blushed. “He looks just like Claude.”

“We believe you,” Sarah said gently. “But don't you see? All the witnesses to what really happened are dead.”

“Why does that matter? I know that he's mine and I already have a plan to take him.”

China rattled as Guy sprang up and strode away across the room.

“For God's sake, Rachel! There's no proof. Successfully steal Moorefield's baby by yourself, and you could end up on the gallows. Make the attempt and fail, and at the very least Betsy Davy will face dismissal, when she's all the little boy has.”

“But I
know
that he's mine!” Rachel's eyes filled with tears, as if for the first time she was on the verge of hysteria. “I
know
it, Guy!”

Sarah caught her cousin's hand and squeezed her fingers.

“We're all worn out,” she said. “We'll finish talking in the morning. It's time to go to bed.”

To bed!
As she said the words, she felt that white, sick pain and tasted her wine in her mouth again. She'd been sharing Guy's bed ever since the Anchor, but her cousin had no idea of it. Would Rachel assume that she could ensnare Guy again, body and soul, exactly as she had in Hampstead in the house with the top-hatted chimneys?

The situation was hideous: hideous and scandalous and excruciating.

“I have a slight headache,” she said and realized it was true. After all, she and Guy had been traveling for days, and though she'd been unable to eat much, she'd had four glasses of wine. “I think I'll go up right away.”

Giving Guy an awkward smile, Sarah fled the room.

Once in the hall, she had no idea where to go, but the man who had met their carriage on the moor stepped out of the servant's hall, carrying a tray with some sliced fruit.

“I need to go up to my room,” Sarah said. “Is there a woman who can show me?”

“Third door on the right at the top, ma'am,” Peters said, jerking his head. “Your boxes have already been taken up.”

She stumbled up the stairs and pushed open the designated door. A large four-poster dominated the space. Her cases sat in one corner. Guy's trunk sat next to them. Some helpful lackey had already unpacked his shaving kit and laid it out on the washstand.

Sarah crossed to the window and opened it. Mist still hung low over the moor, shrouding the entire world, trapping her in this nightmare.

A great love can feel very private
.

It could undoubtedly grow privately, and perhaps it ought to die the same way?

But what if one knew now with absolute certainty that this love would never, never die, not until verses of repentance and the hope for salvation were engraved on one's tombstone? What then?

The summer night wasn't truly cold, but it was damp. Sarah shivered and closed the window. The bed waited, fresh sheets already turned back. Her nightgown lay across the pillows. But what if he didn't come to her? What if, right now, he and Rachel—

Sarah couldn't lift her boxes by herself, but she pulled out the bare essentials for the night and grabbed her nightgown from the bed. Carrying the small bundle in her arms, she walked out into the hallway and opened door after door.

There were five decent-sized bedrooms, and the clean linen was stacked in a cupboard at the end of the hall. She chose a pleasant chamber facing east, made up the bed, and crawled exhausted between the covers.

Yet she lay awake for a long time. It was horrific to contemplate Guy's finding her in his bed if he were secretly wishing she wasn't there. Even worse to wait for him there, her heart eager, her blood on fire for him, then have him never come at all.

This way, if he wanted to find her, he could easily do so. The choice was his.

At last she fell asleep, dry-eyed and desolate, and in the morning he still hadn't come.

B
RILLIANT
sunshine blinded her when Sarah woke up, as if to mock her misery. She washed and dressed, then stood at the window for a moment, gazing out at the purple heights of Dartmoor basking beneath a clear blue sky. In spite of the bright sun, it was still early. A small band of native ponies grazed in the far distance.

She had been madly, overwhelmingly in love and let those giddy emotions cloud her judgment. It had all been remarkable, wonderful, as if Guy had magically transported her to the wood near Athens ruled by Titania.

Now, however much it hurt, she must return to dull reality. She could allow herself some grief at the wrenching loss, yet she must also find the determination and courage to stand aside and let Guy rescue Rachel once again.

If Sarah Callaway had not initiated it, he would never have taken a plain widow to his bed. Contemptible to let anger or pain override compassion for the fragile cousin she had grown up with, and especially for the innocent baby Rachel had borne and lost in so much agony.

Yet it hurt, it hurt, and her heart burned with indignation and pain.

No one else seemed to be up, so Sarah walked downstairs and into the unkempt garden. Water gurgled somewhere out of sight. She followed the sound, winding along a stone path through the dense greenery. Flowers and shrubs struggled against a rampant growth of weeds.

A little stream trickled over rocks into a damp, mossy hollow, thick with watercress, the banks brightened by a clump of purple loosestrife.

Guy sat on a fallen log staring at the water.

Her heart failed. She turned to flee, but he spoke without turning his head.

“Sarah! Please stay!” Sunlight fired highlights in his dark hair and danced over the entrancing lines of his face, though his gaze was lost in shadow. “Does that take so much courage?”

Courage? Perhaps it was only weakness that prevented her from turning and running away.

“Where's Rachel?” she asked.

“Presumably still in her bed. You'll notice that I said
her
bed, not mine.”

“But I thought—”

“No, you didn't
think
, you feared.” He rose and gestured to the log. “Will you sit here with me?”

She forced herself to walk forward, one foot, then the other, and sat down. The stream plopped and rushed merrily as it wove between the stones.

He dropped down next to her and rested a forearm on each thigh, his fingers relaxed, his hands shaped so beautifully. A desperate longing seized her heart: to undo the past, to undo everything, to spin life into a fairy tale, where a redheaded schoolteacher might truly win the heart of a man like Guy Devoran.

He gazed into the water in silence for several more moments, making no move to touch her. Sarah sat in a kind of suspended agony and waited.

“You should know this,” he said at last. “I told you once that I had been infatuated with your cousin. I was certainly hurt when she left me. In fact, I was enraged by her desertion, but I know now that it was the hurt of wounded pride, not that of a broken heart.”

“Yet you felt desperate?”

“I certainly felt responsible. I told you the truth about our day on the yacht. I did not tell you that afterwards I hunted for her for several months. The memory of Rachel standing in that breeze at the bow of the boat haunted me. Jack knows all of this—and Ryder. They might even tell you that I was a little demented when I couldn't find her.”

“Because she was hiding in Knight's Cottage by then. How could you have known where she was?”

He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the stream. “I couldn't. I don't blame myself for that. With the money Jack paid her, she could afford to live anywhere, until—though you were still sending her what funds you could spare—she ran out of money and turned up on my doorstep.”

“That winter must have been terrible for her,” Sarah said. “To be alone with her grief, while writing to me as if she were still working as a governess.”

“I know it hurts, Sarah, that Rachel didn't confide in you—just as it hurts that she and I became lovers, though I discovered very quickly that I'd built up an image of her based on a fantasy. Yet she seemed so damned fragile, standing there in the rain on my doorstep, trailing a broken wing like a ringed plover.”

Sarah stared at the stream, the delicate froth of bubbles where the water was trapped for a moment behind a rock, though it was the stone that would be worn away.

“But she's not fragile, Guy. She's brave and resourceful, and it took great courage for her to come back here to Devon as she did. I've been used to protecting her all my life, yet now I think that Rachel may be pure steel at the core.”

“That's one way of putting it.” Guy tossed another pebble. “But what your cousin is at the core, Sarah, is self-centered.”

She felt flayed. “No! If Rachel's been selfish or deceitful, it was only for the sake of her baby—or sometimes for her own survival after her lover abandoned her.”

“I don't deny that she's suffered very terribly, or that she deserves our care. But the plover is a trickster, offering an illusion of broken feathers. As soon as she thinks she's safe, she flies off. This is not to my credit, Sarah, but what I felt for your cousin was always a great deal closer to pity than love, and it still is.”

“Then you deny her courage?”

“No, but I assume that you fled my room last night because you feared that I wished to be with Rachel, instead of you. I can imagine no worse fate. I shall protect your cousin to the best of my ability from the results of her own foolishness, but my heart—unreliable as you seem to believe it—is yours and always will be.”

Sarah closed her eyes against the sun, then glanced back at the tumbling stream. The water laughed and sparkled as sudden tears blinded her.

“You didn't say so on our journey,” she said. “Not once.”

He glanced down at her and smiled. “Did I need to?”

She hugged her arms about her waist, remembering, remembering. “Perhaps not.”

“I rather thought that I'd been proving my love for you day and night ever since we left the Anchor. Or do you still believe that a man's passion can have nothing at all to do with his heart?”

A little breeze moved along the stream. The tall spikes of purple loosestrife swayed.

“No, it's not that. Not any longer.”

“Then you're abandoning some very basic female wisdom,” Guy said dryly, “for that's very often true—except in this case.”

Sarah dropped her forehead onto her knees and laughed. “Yet when you tell me that you love me, it's as if the sky parts to show me a glimpse of heaven, though a new trap yawns at my feet, one I can't begin to fathom.” She looked up. “I can't explain it, Guy. I only know that I'm afraid.”

A third pebble splashed into the water. “Because the best, deepest love can only survive on a foundation of courage and trust?”

“Yes, but I would trust you with my soul.” Heat seared her cheeks. “Though last night I was indeed racked by doubt, I still couldn't flaunt—I couldn't! Not with Rachel in the house.”

He laughed. “Not even in secret?”

“Guy, even if I admit that I love you with all my heart, I'm still afraid that the gods may be planning some terrible punishment for such hubris. I can't really explain it.”

He lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips. “My beautiful Sarah, don't you know that I came to you last night? Alas, when I discovered where you'd hidden yourself, you were already asleep.”

“You couldn't have come in,” she said. “I'd have known.”

“Because you and I are tied together now as if bound by Ariadne's thread? No, I stood staring down at your sleeping face, then crept away to my own lonely bed. It wasn't easy, but you and I should never come together in confusion and fear. I love you.”

He closed his fingers gently over her palm. Her blood surged in deep waves of desire, even at so simple a contact. She knew she would step blindly from a cliff top, if he held her hand like this and asked her.

“I believe you,” she said, but she released his fingers.

He stood to gaze down into the rushing water. “Rachel and I talked for another hour or two last night. She never once expressed any sorrow for the pain that she's caused you. She takes it for granted that you'll always defend her and fight for her happiness.”

“I shall,” Sarah said.

“And so, I suppose, will I.” Guy held out a hand and helped Sarah to her feet. “I wrote this morning to d'Alleville at his family chateau in France—that's the only address Rachel's ever had—and sent the letter to Ryder to forward for me. A plea to an absent lover, if he lives, may make a stronger impression if it's franked at Wyldshay.”

Cold fingers touched her spine. “If he lives? You think Claude d'Alleville may be dead?”