Heather Graham (26 page)

Heard her name.

Rose …

He didn’t feel them all. On the thirty-second lashing, he passed out, entering into sweet oblivion once again.

He was very near death. For days on end, he slipped in and out of consciousness, feeling sunlight, seeing darkness.

Some kind soul fed and bathed him when his fever rose too high. Someone fed him gruel.

Then angels came. Angels in white robes. Angels who whispered. One angel, a naked angel. Walking to him, whispering his name.

Rose. Rose cloaked in the fiery splendor of her hair alone, Rose beautiful and sleek and satiny soft, if he could just reach out to touch her. Rose, with her innocent smile, with her emerald eyes touched by the glaze of tears.

Rose, reaching out to him, whispering to him. “Come back to me. Come back to me …”

Come back—and the law had been waiting.

Rose …

The angel vision faded away. He was in hell, and someone was laughing, cackling.

Then that, too, faded.

Someone, indeed, saw to it that he was shackled, for as the moments of consciousness came more often and lengthened, he could feel the cold steel against his flesh.

Then one morning he awoke, and the blackness was gone. He was alive. Sound and alive, and past the fever.

Alive, but oh, God!

He was quick to discover that he had fallen into the pit of an ungodly hell on earth!

Jesu, how had he come to this?

And the name came to him again.

Rose …

“Come back to me …”

And he had come back, and in that time, someone had sent a message summoning the law. Someone. Who else but Rose, who had pleaded so sweetly that he return?

“The hedges are coming magnificently, don’t you think?” the king asked.

Rose, still aggravated by all the time that it had taken her to get an audience with the monarch who had once claimed to be her friend, had a difficult time finding a polite response.

She felt she’d had a fair amount of time now herself to try to accept everything that had happened. At first there had been nothing but anguish. Then there had been numbness, and then the pain once again. Then she had walked the floors in torment. He had thought that she had conspired with Jerome. That she had planned to send him there to find Anne and Jamison dead. And he had also thought that she had sent a note to the lord constable, assuring him that if he failed to arrest Pierce at Huntington Manor, she would hold him until the law was able to find him.

He’d had no belief in her. None at all. He had died believing that she had betrayed him. She was furious with him. She wanted to see him again just to shake him and tell him how wrong he had been. Then her anger would fade, and the pain would be there. No matter how angry she was, or how furious he had been the last time they had met, she had fallen in love with him. And so it was the pain that remained.

And now she was absolutely determined to clear his name. He had been innocent of murder. She was going to prove it, somehow, no matter how long it took.

The king had put off seeing her, and now he didn’t seem to want to talk. But she knew that he wasn’t really so involved with the highly manicured garden. He stopped to touch a leaf here and there, but when he paused and looked back to her, his sparkling dark eyes appraised her studiously. “Rose?”

“Your hedges are magnificent, Your Majesty,” she said softly. “Your masques are always wonderful, your love of art is surely applaudable, and England is deeply blessed to have a monarch so devoted to the sciences. But as to the matter on which I have come …”

He nodded, and turned and walked along the row of hedges again. He could be so very charming, so lulling when he chose. Gentle, sensual, still young, and so quick to smile. “You attended the services for Anne?” he asked her quietly.

Lady Anne had been interred in Westminster Abbey very near Queen Elizabeth’s royal tomb. Charles has ordered it so. He had ordered a magnificent marble sarcophagus to be crafted for her, one made from a death mask that would forever do her gentle beauty homage.

“Yes. I attended the services. I understand that Jamison was interred at his family’s estate.”

Charles nodded. He had made Anne’s burial place his private concern. Everyone knew that Jamison had displeased the king; it was not surprising that his remains had been sent quietly home while Anne had been laid to rest with tender care.

“Ah, yes! Both are buried, and may God have mercy on their souls!” the king said. He strode back to her, linking his arm through hers. “There is nothing else to be done, Rose.”

“But there is!” she told him passionately. “Pierce has been cruelly accused—”

“Pierce is dead!” he said bluntly, then he softened. “Milady, I have avoided seeing you to give me time to search for him in hopes that he might have survived. I’m afraid I must assure you that he did not.”

Tears welled into her eyes. She had cried so many times over the past weeks that she had thought her eyes forever dried. Yet the king spoke the words with the same bitter sadness she felt herself, and for the first time, she realized how deeply others felt his loss as well.

“Dead—but innocent!” she insisted.

Charles stopped walking, gently swinging her around to meet his eyes. “Rose, you must face what happened. I don’t believe myself that Pierce killed Anne in a rage of jealousy. I believe that fool Jamison did so, not even purposely, perhaps. Maybe Anne’s death was an accident; who knows now? But there she lay, dead, and Pierce came upon them …” His voice trailed away. “And so he slew him. He threatened to kill him. He vowed to do so.”

“It could have happened that way,” she argued, “but it did not! Jerome was the murderer, I know it! He sought me out, using me to get Pierce to ride to Huntington Manor! Your Majesty, it was as cunning and heinous as everything else he planned. Who gains from these deaths!” she cried. “Jerome! You know that Pierce didn’t kill Jamison! He would never stab a man in the back!”

He sighed. “Rose—”

“I tell you—”

“Rose!” He squeezed her fingers and she fell silent, her eyes downcast. “Rose, look at this as a court of law would. Pierce made the threats. Yes, Jerome came to you. He warned you that Jamison was hurting Anne. But then Pierce came upon the scene. And then …”

“And then he still didn’t murder him in cold blood!” Rose cried.

“I don’t believe it myself, Rose. But Pierce is not here to tell us the truth.”

“That is why we must speak for him!” Rose implored. “Your Majesty, I have carefully kept silent, for fear of endangering my servant, but I have a man in my employ who was with Pierce when he rode to Huntington Manor. He saw that Anne and Jamison were dead before they ever arrived.”

“Ah, yes, the elusive fellow who fought the lord constable with your husband,” Charles murmured.

Rose was startled. Then she realized that she had underestimated the king. Pierce had been his very good friend; he had loved him like a brother. He had certainly demanded that no stone be left unturned in determining what had happened. He had known about Geoffrey, and perhaps he had even known that she had been determined to keep the man in hiding for his own welfare for the time.

“His name is Geoffrey Daraunte.”

“I know Geoffrey,” the king said. “He was with me in Europe, along with Pierce.”

“Then you’ll know that he’s telling the truth—”

“I’ll know, Rose! I’ll know! But the only way to clear Pierce would be to bring him to trial. And he’s dead. So I would be left with Jerome, the aggrieved brother and brother-in-law of the deceased, and Geoffrey Daraunte, a foreigner, to argue before English peers. He is dead, Rose. If he were to magically spring back to life, I’d still have to see that he was arrested and brought to trial. Perhaps we could prove Jerome guilty. I don’t know how. Pierce left behind a cloak covered in blood. The evidence against him is damning.”

“It is just what you see!” she whispered. And she couldn’t help thinking about the things that Pierce had seen that night. Betrayal. From her. When she had been innocent. Jerome had used them both.

And now he was free.

And very, very wealthy as well.

She prayed suddenly, fiercely, that God would send a lightning bolt striking down from the heavens to sizzle him to ash. But that wouldn’t happen, she was certain. God seemed to make justice something very hard to come by.

“Rose, I am deeply sorry, but Pierce is dead. We need to let this lie for the meantime. Perhaps, later, when the scandal has somewhat died down, I can do something about clearing his name. He was never convicted, and I’ll not allow anyone to confiscate his estates. Though I imagine that you’ll want to go home now, you’ll retain all the rights to Castle DeForte. Will it matter if this lies quiet for a while?”

Rose inhaled and exhaled on a shaky breath. “Aye, Your Majesty, it matters! I’m going to have his child. He must be declared innocent! A daughter could be forever tainted when she sought to marry if this charge is left hanging over her head. And a son! He could be shunned by his peers. Please, Your Majesty!”

Charles sighed. “Rose, I will do my best. It will take time.” He kissed her forehead. “Go home. Go back to that savage wilderness you call home and love so very much. I will stand as godfather for your child when it is born, and no one will say a word ill of the little bairn. I will do my best to clear your husband’s name. But be patient, Rose. It was a lesson I had to learn in a very cruel fashion all those years ago when I wandered Europe because of that jackal Cromwell!”

She lowered her head and nodded. She would have to put her trust in him for the moment.

She longed to run out and drive a sword straight through Jerome’s treacherous black heart all on her own. But she couldn’t do such a thing. Jerome had appeared, head bent and grieving, at Anne’s funeral. When she had tried to accost him, he had begun screaming to the crowd that she was a murderer’s accomplice. It had only been Geoffrey’s quick thinking and amazing speed that had saved her, for he enfolded her in his cloak and nearly dragged her to their carriage.

He was a good man, she knew, and she had clung to his support through these long, awful days. Garth, who had seemed like death himself after Pierce had fallen, had also been her mainstay.

The three of them, she and Geoffrey and Garth, had made their way like wraiths through the castle, none of them knowing how to live anymore.

Then she had slowly roused from her lethargy and noticed the subtle changes in herself. She had missed her time. Perhaps …

Then she had been positive.

She had been wretchedly sick. And there were other signs.

Life began to matter again. She wanted her child, his child. And she was willing to fight again. She was determined that she would never be naive again, she would never be used.

She might never be happy, but she would be strong. The incredible new life she carried within her had given her not just life, but fire.

Garth had dropped ten years with her announcement. And as she watched the old man move about the castle with a spark to his stride and a new rumble in his voice, she knew that he was imagining a little boy, one who would be just like Pierce.

She hoped, for Garth’s sake, that it would be true. But if the babe was born a girl, then Rose was determined that she would know from the very start that she had been born a duchess, that she was powerful, that she must never be tricked …

Never be hurt.

But that was all for the future.

The king was asking her to be patient now. He meant to be godfather to her child, and she was suddenly convinced that he also meant to see that Pierce’s name was cleared. Charles II was a charmer and diplomat; he valued his throne greatly, and he was not beyond doing the expedient thing.

But he was also a good man, Rose was convinced. One who believed in the ties of loyalty. He would keep his word to help her—when the time was right.

She couldn’t ask for more.

He took her hand suddenly, pressing his lips to her knuckles. “Rose! My beautiful little colonial flower with all the thorns and bristles! Take heart, have faith! I will help when the time comes.”

She bit into her lip, lowering her head. She nodded.

“And now, I am enchanted, as always, to have you in my company, but I’ve a long and tiresome day before me. My brother James has all manner of woes to set before me, I’ve promised to speak with members of the Royal Society on earth-shattering scientific discoveries, the Spanish ambassador is demanding an audience, Edward Hyde, my chief minister and my brother’s father-in-law, wants an hour of my time, and I have promised dinner to my wife and a rousing game of tennis to Lord Walton. My brother bested me in my last yacht race against him, and I’ve a mind to see to my vessels at the royal shipyard. Ah, I can see it in your beautiful eyes, Rose! I am thinking of yachts, while you are filled with righteous fury. First, you must remember that it is a sport I introduced to this country myself. Secondly, it is part of life, of living, to go onward. So if you will forgive me, little flower …?”

She swallowed hard. Little flower. For a moment the king had reminded her so much of Pierce!

“You’re staying with us awhile at court, I hope?”

She shook her head. “Just the night, I think. I am not feeling very well, and prefer to be home. At Castle DeForte. And I will be sailing home soon, I think. Since Pierce will not—will not be with me, I think that I would like to have my child in my father’s house.”

“I can well understand,” Charles assured her. “But for the night then, Lady DeForte, I think that you’ll find your quarters here warm and well prepared for your visit. Tell me, though, is this man of yours here with you, Geoffrey Daraunte?”

She nodded.

“Waiting for you now?”

She smiled slowly. “Just at the garden gate. In case I needed him. To swear to all what he saw on the night that Anne was killed.”

Charles nodded. “Send him to me on your way out then, please, milady.”

Mystified, Rose agreed. She curtsied to him, murmuring a swift “thank you” for his time, turned, and hurried along the trail to exit the garden. Geoffrey was waiting just beyond the king’s guards. “He wishes to see you,” she told him, puzzled.