Corey McFadden (16 page)

It was unbearable watching her cry, knowing there was nothing he could say that would justify what Eleanor had done. Yielding to the insistent impulse, he put his arms around her and pulled her head to his shoulder, her small sobs tearing at him.

“It is your place to criticize, Joanna,” he said softly into her hair. She smelled so freshly washed, so clean, with a light, clear scent. Lilac again, he thought. “Anything involving the welfare of the children is within your concern. I want you to care about them. They need someone to love them.” His arms tightened around her as he spoke. She was quiet now, breathing in shaking gasps in his arms. She felt so good there. Unbidden came the distant thought that he needed someone to love him, too, but he pushed it away. There was no point in such thoughts.

Joanna’s senses swam with confusion. He had his arms around her and she could hear his steady heartbeat in his wide, strong chest. She could smell the clean-linen smell of him, and feel the pressure of his hands on her back as he rubbed her gently. She could feel the heat of him stretched the length of her, driving all thoughts of the children from her head. The children!

“You could love them, Sir Giles,” she said in a small voice at his chest, chastising herself, not even certain what for.

She could feel him tense. She made herself pull away and looked up at him. “They are missing their parents, Sir Giles. They need a papa, not a governess. You could love them,” she repeated with a hopeful glance at him.

There was a stricken expression about his eyes, almost hunted, and she looked away again. She had pushed too far, presumed too much. Now he would be angry, too. Why couldn’t she have minded her place?

“I don’t know how, Joanna,” came his answer.

“You don’t know how to love them?” was her astonished reply.

Now he looked away. Feeling suddenly awkward, he pulled away from her and turned toward the window. What she was asking was impossible. He had closed off those avenues many years ago and didn’t want them reopened. People disappointed him, or died. Love hurt. Better to stay away from it. He could work with his numbers and measurements. Numbers couldn’t hurt him.

“I just don’t think I can love anyone now,” he said, his voice cold and flat. “It’s been too long. All that is dead inside me.”

Joanna stared at his stiff back, uncertain of what to say. He was wrong about being dead inside. She knew that for certain. She could tell from the way the children had opened up to him that day on the beach. Children were not wrong about these things; they knew who would love them and who would not. But he would need time, and perhaps he would need to learn it for himself.

He turned back to her, his face calm, devoid of emotion. “I do not wish to distress you with my peculiarities, Joanna. I know that you mean well, and believe me when I tell you the children’s welfare is important to me. I will do my best to curb the evil temper of my stepsister.” He paused, and Joanna could hear the tension in his voice. “I cannot promise you much on that score, however. As you must have guessed by now, Eleanor and I barely tolerate the sight of one another and she despises the children, all children, I think. I apologize for airing the family linen in front of you, but I feel you are entitled to understand what sort of broth you have landed yourself in. The artist in you has recognized much of it already,” he said with a nod at the dark sketch.

His facade of calm was cracking now. Joanna could hear the pain behind his words and see it in his face. She longed to reach up and touch his cheek, to soothe away the pain, but she did not dare.

“So you can see that the only hope Emma and Tom have of normalcy is you,” he went on. “You are a godsend to my blighted household, and I beg you to stay with us and love them as we cannot.” There was a hopelessness to his tone that made Joanna shiver. This was how Papa had sounded in those few moments when his faith had deserted him.

She faced him. “I will never leave here, Sir Giles. Not unless you give me the sack and have me hauled off the premises,” she quipped, and was rewarded with the ghost of a smile from him. “You must remember that I am alone. I need someone to love me, too.” She smiled up at him reassuringly.

She needed someone to love her, too.
He stared into the soft brown depths of her beautiful eyes, mesmerized by the lights that danced within.

“Do I look like an absolute fright?” Joanna asked, turning to the mirror, confused by the haunted look in his eyes. “I don’t want to scare the children. Let me fix my hair,” she said, walking to her dressing table. Sitting, she pulled out a few pins and tried to capture escaped tresses with them. She made quick work with her brush, twisting the errant locks back into their proper coils, pushing pins in expertly, until all was secure. As she lowered her arms, she caught sight of his face in the mirror and caught her breath. Hunger, raw need, twisted his features. He was in pain. She turned quickly and looked at him, her breath catching in her throat.

“You look—fine,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Will you take supper with me and the children? I think we should join them if you feel up to it.” He desperately needed to get out of this room. She was so lovely in the fading light, her face flushed and her brown eyes full of emotion. He felt like a starving man staring in at a banquet through locked windows, hopeless and maddened with need.

“Let’s go,” he said simply, holding out his hand to her. She was so utterly beautiful, so natural. There was not a pot or paintbrush on her table, nothing but a hairbrush, comb, and pin box. He ached with the intimacy of watching her brush her hair, an intimacy he dared not pursue further, not unless he wished to mock and twist the one decent thing in his life now.

Joanna stood and walked to him, giving him a shy smile. It was so improper, having him here in her room. No decent woman would be caught dead in such a compromising position. But she didn’t care about that. Not now. All she cared about was the press of his warm fingers as they closed now on hers, and the confusing but exhilarating feeling that coursed through her veins at his touch. With no more words possible between them, they made their way into the hall.

* * * *

It was near dawn and Eleanor’s head was pounding. More and more lately she had the headache and she couldn’t understand why. She sat at her dressing table and stared at her reflection in the light of the single candle burning next to her. The paint was holding well enough, but she could use a touch-up here and there. She picked up her brush and opened her pot, dabbing a bit of the thick white paste onto a few spots on her face. She rarely washed it all off these days. Her face looked worse and worse without the paint. She had been blessed with beautiful, flawless skin as a young woman, but now it seemed to be dark-spotted and lined, and the paint needed to be applied ever more thickly. She left her wig on as well. Her hair underneath was in no better form than her complexion, coming out in clumps when she washed it, rare as that was. Lord Howard said it was the arsenic and lead in the paints, but he was a malicious soul and would take great delight in telling her the one thing she could not bear to hear. Besides, it was absurd. People had been using lead paint since the time of the Tudors and it caused no one any harm. Anyway, everyone died of something, didn’t they?

She applied a slash of crimson to her lips and sat back to view the results. Passable. In a dim light. God, how she hated getting old. Why was thirty-four so old? She still had her courses; she could still have a baby. Not that she would, of course, she thought, shuddering. Children were a nasty horror. She would never forget the sight of that drooling idiot clinging to Philippa’s dress and wailing on and on. She had never been so humiliated in her life, particularly as all of her bright and brittle set had needled her about it mercilessly all evening, calling her ‘Mama’ and suggesting she go see if the children’s bottoms needed wiping. Disgusting. And, of course, Philippa had not failed to notice how possessively Giles’s hand had grasped that little hussy’s shoulder. Oh, there was something going on there, all right, all that virginal act notwithstanding. Well, she had plans for the little tart. No doubt Giles was much taken with that phony innocence the girl seemed to wrap around her like a cloak. Well, Giles would be surprised when he realized the little whore was no better than any of the rest of them. Thought to catch herself a knight, did she? Not for long.

Eleanor stood with a snarl and walked to the door. Hawton was late. If he delayed much longer, the servants would be about, and she preferred to keep up the pretense of a business relationship with him, at least with the household. It wouldn’t do for him to be seen emerging from her room at dawn, particularly if the word filtered back to Giles. They had been lucky so far in Giles’s indifference, but it wouldn’t do for him to become suspicious of Hawton.

Anyway, she wasn’t sure she wanted Hawton’s prodigious talents tonight. She had something even more exciting on her mind, something that might make her free of the fetters of her poverty, her dependence on her stepbrother, and this rotting hole of a prison in the north of nowhere. Yes, if she could take advantage of Lord Beeson’s proposition she would have her own money to play with—a great deal of it, apparently. Oh, she’d have to cut Hawton in on it—it was unfortunate, but there would be no way to run this scheme without his aid, particularly after she moved to London. If she had her own money, Giles would have no hold over her. She could get herself a townhouse in London and stay there forever and let the dark stones of this hell house fall around his head.

She’d have to concoct some sort of legal scheme—a trust of some kind, left her by a distant uncle or cousin. In France, perhaps. Giles knew she had distant relations in France but he knew nothing more than that. Nor, in fact, did she, the connections were so attenuated. It would be important that the funds remain outside of the control of her stepbrother, but that could be accomplished with the right turn of a legal phrase or two, and she’d have enough cash to hire a sharp London solicitor to see to the phony documents.

Where the devil was Hawton? She’d sent word to him hours ago to meet her when the party broke up, and he was certainly able to see from his cottage down the hill that the lower-floor lamps had been extinguished. She hadn’t seen him since she’d fled the house some ten days ago. There had been something so different about him that last night, almost frightening in a way. He hadn’t seemed at all like a steward, more like the lord of the manor. But it hadn’t been entirely unpleasant. No, there was something decidedly delicious about the way he had taken her in the chair, without so much as a ‘by-your-leave-milady’. Indeed, it had been her own twisted feelings that had driven her away the next morning, because she had felt so dependent, so uncertain of herself, and she did not like that one bit.

But now she was back in control, although that bitch of a governess was proving a thorn in her flesh.

There was a barely perceptible knock on the door. At last. She crossed to the door and opened it with a practiced, silent ease; she had seen to it that the hinges were well oiled. It was easier to have him come to her than for her to traipse down the hill to his cottage in the middle of the night.

He came in quickly and she shut the door quietly before either of them spoke.

“You’re late,” she said in clipped tones.

“There was a light still on in the downstairs library. I waited awhile to see if it would go out, then I decided it must have been left burning by accident. I stopped in to check, and there was no one there.” Hawton deliberately left off the ‘my lady’ and let his eyes slide possessively along her body. It had bothered him that she had run off without a word after their last encounter. He desperately needed to reestablish control over her. He could not go back to being the steward servicing her ladyship.

She gave him a long, seductive smile. She liked it when he looked at her like that. She felt a tingling between her legs. Yes, maybe she would let him take her tonight. But not until after they talked.

“Come and sit down away from the door. I need to talk with you,” she said quietly, walking ahead of him. He followed, surprised. Eleanor rarely had anything to talk about.

She seated herself on her chaise and patted a place beside her. He sat, not knowing what her game was, but looking for the first opportunity to put her off stride, to get the upper hand.

“I have had a proposition put to me, Hawton. I—perhaps we—stand to make money, a great deal of money from it, but it will have to be handled with the utmost discretion.” She paused, wanting to tantalize him.

“My lady?” It slipped out before he could stop himself. She had his attention.

“One of my friends has—connections—with a certain establishment in London. It is a new enterprise but should prove very popular if handled properly. He has a need for help in his—shipment route. The merchandise will be coming from Ireland to London, but, you understand, it must all be
sub rosa
.”

“Are you talking about smuggling?” Hawton tried not to let his disappointment show. Smuggling could be lucrative but it carried great risks when the revenue agents turned their attention on the suspects, and Hawton did not consider himself a man inclined to endanger his life or liberty.

Eleanor gave a brittle little laugh. “How unimaginative of you, Hawton. I am talking about something much more interesting than that.” She stopped. She was enjoying this. She was hot with the thought of the money to come—and Hawton. “I refer to a new ‘virgin house’, Hawton. Do you know what that is?”

Hawton tried to keep his mouth from sagging open. A whorehouse that specialized in virgins, often real virgins, children, really. There was nothing lower on the face of this earth. He drew a deep breath before speaking.

“I do know what that is, my lady, but I wonder if you have considered the risks involved. The social opprobrium alone....”

“There is no risk to us Hawton, if that’s what you mean,” she snapped. Lord, she hadn’t expected the man to be a prude. “My friend is well-insulated in London. Those who actually run the place don’t even know his name. And all we need to do is intercept the shipment of girls every few weeks. They’ll be sent down here to our coast from Ireland, and we are to hold them for a few hours, a day at most, until the coaches are ready to take them away. It’s just a matter of timing, and, after all, there is no one here for miles to note what we do.”