Edith Layton (21 page)

“True,” Alasdair said, and the man relaxed. Until Alasdair added, “But I believe there’s more. What were you going to do with Miss Corbet?”

The man’s eyelashes lowered for a second. He stayed silent.

“Tell him, Da!” Sharky pleaded. “’Cause you’d changed your mind, you said so!”

“So I said,” the man muttered, then looked at Alasdair. “You know too much to lie to,” he said in a defeated voice, watching Alasdair’s hand on the pistol. It never moved. “The truth’s that we was to turn her over to Lolly and never look back. But like the lad said, we decided to let her go and make for…” He caught himself and said, “…another place, by our lone-somes. London’s too crowded and too warm for us—’specially if we took all the loot and not just our share. Which we was goin’ to do. See, we keeps our word, but lately Lolly weren’t good to work for, he’d a way of makin’ sure nobody could prove what he done. All that money woulda greased our way to a new line o’ work. Healthier for me and the boy.”

He saw Alasdair’s expression, his voice grew rough. “We woulda let her go. Can’t prove it, o’ course. Who else could swear to it? No one, and that’s a fact. Who else would know? The boy would lie to His Majesty hisself for me—or for anyone,” he added with a gruff laugh, “and don’t I know it. He’s a natty lad and no mistake. But what I said’s the Gawd’s honest truth, believe it or don’t.

“The lad din’t want no harm to come to her, and it weren’t no skin off our noses if she went free—after we got the money. So I was goin’ to oblige the lad. We was goin’ to get word to Lolly she cut and run, and we was goin’ to do the same. Who’d know it was a lie but her? And if we asked her to keep it mum, I believe she would of. She’s solid as oak. And what would it matter by then? We’d of been gone, good as dead to them in London Town. ’N’ if we done that, and stayed, we woulda been,” he added with a cough of a laugh.

“So that’s truth.” The man shrugged. “I din’t know what Lolly had planned for her, but I could guess. Can’t say one good word about the departed. He was a
sad dog even for the likes of us to know, and we wished her well ’cause for all she’s a lady she’s a rum mort and no mistake.”

“Agreed,” Alasdair said. He paused, looked at the boy, and then glanced at the man. The boy stayed locked in place, watching him through slitted eyes. The father held his breath. Alasdair saw Kate’s expression from the corner of his eye, and could hear her quick and nervous breathing. He gestured with his pistol again.

“So, go,” Alasdair told the man. “And fast.”

“Thankin’ you kindly,” the man said. And in a blur of movement, he pocketed his pistol, spun and grabbed Sharky by the shoulder, hauled the carpetbag from the floor, and before Alasdair lowered his pistol, the pair were out the back door and gone.

The room was very still.

Kate’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, Lord. It’s over? I’m safe? They’re gone, and it’s all over?”

Alasdair was already at the window. “They had horses tied out back. They’re on them and off…going through the fields, now into the twilight…I can’t see so much as a tail in the distance now. They’re gone. It’s over,” he said a second later, from her side. “Poor Kate. I’m sorry.” He turned her around and took her in his arms and let her rest against his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“What for?” she murmured, feeling his breath in her curls as his big hand stroked her back.

“They wouldn’t have touched you in the first place if it weren’t for me,” he said bleakly. “They wouldn’t have known you existed, or cared. I was the one who endangered you, I contaminated you simply by my presence in your life. I honestly didn’t think Lolly would try for revenge, though there were others who might for deeds done long ago. Still, I thought our bar
gain would be a benign thing. No,” he muttered, “that’s a damned lie. I didn’t care then, I only cared about my own devices. You were the means to the ending I wanted. I’m responsible for your being terrified, being put upon. I put your life, and more, in danger. My God, Kate, you can’t know how sorry I am for that. You
are
all right?” he asked suddenly, looking down into her face. “They didn’t touch you?”

“I’m fine now,” she said. “They didn’t touch a hair on my head.” She resting against him, reveling in the closeness of his embrace. She felt safe for the first time in days, and in absolutely the right place for the first time in her life.

“I didn’t mean for anything like this to happen,” Alasdair said. “My God! How could I have guessed it? But the truth is I didn’t care—
then
.” His arms tightened around her. “By the time I knew how much I cared, it was too late. I didn’t want to give up the pleasure I found in your company…no. Damn!” he said violently, causing her to pull back and look up at him. “When will I stop lying to you and myself!”

He looked dark as the storm clouds that had just blown over. Kate wasn’t afraid of him, only worried for him, because he looked as troubled as angry, and none of his rage was directed at her. “Kate,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders, holding her gently but firmly away from him, “listen.”

His voice was gentler, if no less bitter, and he searched her expression for her reactions as he spoke. “I was using you for my own purposes. I wasn’t aiming for respectability, I wanted revenge on a pair of people who had ruined my life, and you were the key and the lure and the bait to bring them to their reward. God help me, Kate, but it was your cousins the Scalbys I was after, and nothing else, no matter what lies I told you.”

He spoke desperately, his eyes blazing. “They ruined my father and tried to ruin me, they caused his suicide and almost caused my own. I lived only to destroy them, that’s all I’ve wanted these many years. I’ve finally enough evidence of their wrongdoing to disgrace them publicly, and they know it. They’re hiding, waiting for me to strike. Maybe they’re waiting for me to bargain with them, they always want something, they probably think I do, too. But all I want is their ruin.

“The waiting is part of my revenge. I wanted them to think I was getting involved with you so I could worry them even more. I didn’t know you and told myself no harm would come to you. And yes, since you were their relative, I thought bedamned to you, too, if that turned out not to be so. That’s what I thought
then
. I promise that’s not what I feel or want, or need now.”

“What do you want now?” she asked, and held her breath.

He smiled, a bitter smile with no real humor in it. But he looked in her eyes and what she saw in his took her breath away.

“What do I want?” he said. “You need to ask?”

A
lasdair continued to hold Kate in his arms, but lightly, so she could move away if she chose. He hoped she wouldn’t, it was bliss to hold her safe and close after all his wild imaginings about what harm might have come to her. It was bliss mixed with balked desire simply to hold her close and not be able to do more. They were alone in the taproom of a deserted inn at the edge of a heath in the middle of nowhere. She was pliant, fragrant and docile, yet he merely held her because it wasn’t the time to do more. And still, he felt at peace. It couldn’t last, he knew that. She’d asked him a question. He thought he’d answered, and now he waited for her response in words or actions.

When she did speak, it was to his cravat, because she kept her head down. “You answer my question with another? No, Alasdair, that won’t do. I’m tired of polite games. I’ve been abducted. I’ve been terrified. I feared for my life
and
my honor and didn’t know which I was more afraid of losing. It turned out that my
kidnappers were as kind as they could be to me under the circumstances, but I never really knew what they intended for me. I don’t think they knew themselves. I almost escaped once. I didn’t break down either…well, not often. I think I was very brave.” She paused and then said quickly, “I’ll be even braver now.”

She dared look up, straight into his eyes. “You just admitted you’ve lied to me all along. You said you used me to get at my relatives. You say you’re sorry for it. I asked you what you wanted of me, and you play word games with me! Games, with
me
? After all that?” Her eyes blazed. “Oh, damn and blast—and I don’t care what you think of me for saying that, either! How dare you?”

“It was either word games or physical ones, and I wanted to give you the choice,” he said gently.

She took in a breath and glanced away.

“You’ve been through a lot, Kate,” he went on. “I didn’t want to add my bit to your distress. You kissed me. Don’t think I’ll ever forget it, don’t imagine for a moment I don’t want more. But you were wild with relief then. A man’s responses under fire are unthinking ones, as are a woman’s. They can be forced by events. When you come into my arms for more than shelter, I’ll be more than happy to take advantage of you.”

She backed a step. He dropped his arms at once, and felt he’d lost much more than one small woman from his grasp.

But she faced him squarely. “What
is
it you want of me now, Alasdair? Do you want anything more of me at all? I suppose the Scalbys know about our arrangement by now. It may be I’ve answered your purposes, and there’s an end to our association. Is it? Please tell me with no roundabout. We should let the poor innkeeper and his wife up from the cellars, but they’ve
been there so long another minute or two won’t matter. It will matter to us. Soon as they’re here, we’ll be back to all the nonsense and manners of polite society again. For once, for now, we can talk honestly.

“…And,”—she looked down, then up, and blurted—“you also said your revenge on the Scalbys wasn’t what you felt or needed or wanted now. So what
do
you want and need and feel? I know flirtation is considered clever, and sincerity isn’t fashionable, but I’m so tired of playing games with you. I was tired of it before Sharky and his father nabbed me. I’m doubly so now.”

“Triply so, I should think,” he said quietly. He stayed still, brooding on some inner argument. Just when she thought she should let it go, shrug, or laugh, suggest they let the innkeeper out of his prison now and worry about it later, Alasdair spoke at last.

“Kate,” he said, fixing her with a steady stare, so dark she couldn’t read the emotions there, “my mother died when I was thirteen, and my father ran wild with grief. He was a good man, but I never realized how much of that good was her influence, because he was absolutely lost without her. He had few personal friends. Those he had were really her friends, and they dropped away when she was gone. The estate was prosperous, his estate agent honest and diligent, the house ran itself. He had few interests outside of my mother, she made his home and was his life.”

Kate saw some hint of emotion besides sorrow passing over his face as he added, “I was their only child and away at school, so he didn’t even have a family to occupy his time.”

“Surely you don’t blame yourself for that?” she asked, startled to realize that fleeting emotion she’d seen had been guilt.
He shrugged. “I was their first and last child, she couldn’t have others after I was born, as though I broke the mold and slammed the gate closed after me.”

“That’s nonsense!” she said with some heat.

“Of course,” he said with a sad quirk of a smile, cutting her off. “But we all believe some kind of nonsense or other, don’t we? At any rate, there was my father, rudderless, alone, and beside himself with who knows what other nonsensical guilt? He was her husband, after all, he probably had more to believe he should blame himself for.

“Whatever the reasons for his inconsolable grief,” Alasdair went on, “he went to London to cure himself. By God, I wish he’d gone to some spa, here or abroad! Sharpers flourish in those places, but they’d only have taken his money, and only to make a profit. Instead, he met the Scalbys in London, and they took his money and his life for the sheer pleasure of it.”

His expression was bleak, his voice becoming monotone. “They befriended him and succeeded in diverting him. They were famous for their mindless entertainments, and that was what he was after. He went to their parties, invested in their schemes, sank himself in their debaucheries. But something else was happening, too. Time went by, and as it did, it began to heal him, just as everyone said it would. His numbed senses came alive again, and so did his conscience. He found himself deeply regretting what he’d been doing with his life. I know, because he told me so when I came home from school and met the Scalbys at last.

“You see, I’d passed my vacations with friends for some time. Motherless boys get all sorts of kind invitations, Leigh’s house was one of my favorite places for Christmas. But finally, when I was sixteen, Father said I could come home again. I’d written to ask him to
please let me see him and our home once more. He wrote back to say yes, come home. I did, and was surprised, because the Scalbys were staying there along with a huge party. I was appalled and fascinated by them and their friends and excesses. That helped wake my father to his responsibilities again.”

He smiled at her expression of indignation. “Yes, I blame myself for that, too, and I know it’s folly. But if I hadn’t come home, my father mightn’t have wanted to free himself of the Scalbys just then, and maybe everything would have been different. As it was…”

Alasdair turned his head to look out the windows. Kate realized he wasn’t seeing anything there, or in the present.

“As it was,” he said abruptly, “the Scalbys didn’t like being cast off. They called in their debts. Turned out my father had invested unwisely and too well. They owned almost everything he had. They wanted to own it all. So,” he said briskly, “they insisted on being paid, or they’d simply take all the rest. My father asked for leniency, they denied it. He couldn’t meet them or the world’s eyes after his shame, and so he put a bullet through his own eye.”

Kate flinched.

“Witnesses said my father killed himself after he’d spoken with them, as they left the house that morning, as they were driving away, in fact. His note to me said merely, ‘I’m so sorry. Forgive me. Good-bye.’”

Kate reached to touch him, stopping when she realized it would be intrusive, it was as if he’d forgotten she was there. Nor did she want to recall him to the present. She wanted to hear more, know more, before this rare confiding mood of his had passed.

“I’d been out that morning,” Alasdair said. “I came home to find myself an orphan with heavy debts to
pay. The estate was entailed, so I kept it. But there was no money to support it. I started trying to recover it that day. I used my friends’ advice and connections. I left school and shipped abroad.

“Yes,” he added with a wry smile, “my formal education isn’t as good as I’d wish, I’ve tried to correct that, too. I worked very hard after I left school, Kate, with my hands
and
my brain. I was lucky in my past associations, going to school with the richest boys in the land was a great help. I found work as a clerk, then a secretary, then an overseer. I worked on other men’s estates and plantations, and in their homes and offices. I went on to be a go-between, a cat’s-paw, and finally an agent for friends, enemies, and eventually His Majesty. What money I made I gambled with, but since I hadn’t had much luck, I used wit. And since investing isn’t all luck, I did well with it. In time I regained everything. Except my father’s life, of course. And my honor.”

He looked at her, and she realized he saw her again. He paused, started to speak, frowned as if he was about to say something and changed his mind. “I’m a rich man now, Kate,” he said more easily. “But the other part of the debt I must repay is much heavier and harder to satisfy. I’ve been gathering evidence against the Scalbys for years. My father’s wasn’t the only life they wrecked. They’ve been cruel, intemperate, and depraved. They suck people in and leave them without their money or reputations. They blackmail, too. The only thing more important to them than their pleasures is their fortune. But their name is the most important thing of all to them. Because whatever they did, they did discreetly, and so whatever their reputation, they still have a place in Society. That’s what I want to take from them.

“With all I found, it wasn’t enough to ruin them.
Until recently. Now I’ve proof that they were also traitorous. Once the world knows that, they’ll be through, I’ll be done with them, and my father avenged. I want to see their faces when I tell them that, and that’s what I tried to use you for.”

“But you only had to explain and ask for my help!” she cried, “I’d have given it to you, immediately. Of course I would have! Why, I heard all sorts of stories about the Scalbys all my life. Why do you think my parents didn’t insist I see them? In fact, they warned me about them, and said if I saw them, I should keep my head, and my distance. As if I wouldn’t! Some children heard about the bogeymen in their closets. I knew about their reputation. Society forgives what simple country folk do not, you see. I suppose I didn’t tell you that because I was ashamed. They
are
family, after all.”

He cocked his head to the side. “The scrupulously honest Miss Corbet keeps secrets?”

“Well, of course,” she said, flustered. “Only saints don’t. Everyone has something they don’t want to tell, and if it doesn’t affect anyone else directly, why should they? What a strange world this would be if we said everything we knew or were thinking! I’d never tell poor Sibyl she shouldn’t wear white because it makes her look like a ghost, though she asks me about it whenever she gets dressed. Her mama won’t let her wear anything else, so what good would it do to be truthful? It would only hurt her. If she had a choice, I’d be honest. But she doesn’t. So I’d have mentioned something of what I’d heard about the Scalbys to you before we actually went to visit them. But otherwise, why should I?”

“Why indeed?” he asked. “Kate,” he said suddenly, urgently, gripping her by her shoulders, “you did tell me, discreetly, when you kept saying your family was
distant from them and you didn’t care to visit them. I didn’t want to hear it, or I’d have asked more. I have been persistent in my pursuit of your cousins, and not very scrupulous. Unlike you, it isn’t just things I’ve thought.

“I’ve done things I’d rather not talk about. I never debauched anyone,” he added quickly. “All were willing. I’ve had affairs, but affairs of the mind or the body, never the heart. I don’t know if that makes it worse or not. But I’ve never been incautious or intemperate. I don’t have any diseases, no by-blows, no vengeful cheated lovers in my past. I’ve been as fair as I could be with whomever I’ve dealt with, and I’m healthy—in body, at least. Even Leigh has said I’m mad on the subject of my revenge.”

“I don’t blame you,” she exclaimed. “And I forgive you for not telling me all, too, if that’s what’s bothering you. They did a terrible thing to you and you have every right to seek vengeance. I even understand why you thought you had to use me. I’m only sorry you didn’t trust me enough to be honest, but I don’t blame you for that either, or for what happened to me. It was this Lolly person who ordered Sharky and his father to snatch me. I heard them talking about it. So don’t blame yourself anymore.”

“Thank you for forgiving me,” he said, watching her closely, “but that’s not what’s bothering me, Kate. I told you what I was, so you could know me better. No one should make an uninformed decision. You asked me what I want and need and feel. You asked me a question, but before I answer that, I have one question for you.”

“Oh?” she asked, her rapid breathing making her breasts rise and fall. Her eyes were bright again, her lips parted, her head tilted toward him as she waited.
“You know what it is,” he said roughly.

She stared at him. It certainly sounded like he was going to propose to her. She thought she might die of expectation. If he asked her, she knew what to answer, because she never wanted to leave him again. “Well, in another man I might know, but I can’t ever predict you, Alasdair,” she said. “And to tell the truth, so much has happened that now I confess I’m muddled and confused. So could you please tell me straight out?”

“It’s past time you were as muddled as I am,” he said, smiling. He was going to say more, but he saw what leapt to her eyes, and pulled her back into his arms.

This time he took his time, fitting her to his body, settling her in his clasp. She went willingly, and was smiling when his mouth touched hers. He nudged her lips open, sliding his tongue between them. She welcomed him, crowded closer, daring to give him back what he’d given her. He chuckled low in his throat, the sound and vibration making her body thrill. His big hand caressed her cheek, her neck.

His lips left her mouth and placed small nipping kisses on her throat before he sought her lips again in answer to her silent protest at his abandonment of them.