Leslie LaFoy (31 page)

“The one that's in the ground.”

“I wasn't aware that you've been putting one in. It's an awful lot of hard work for one man to do. How have you managed it without the necessary slaves? We only have a handful of field workers left, and I've been using them to plant my crops.”

His brother stared at him, his mouth sagging open and his pale eyes widening with panicked realization. “But,” Wyndom sputtered. “Surely…”

“No,” he assured him. “No one's planted the tobacco for you as they have in the past. I told you last winter that I wasn't going to, that if you wanted to call yourself a planter, you were actually going to have to
be
a planter. Do you remember that conversation?”

Wyndom dropped his head back into the pillows and stared up at the ceiling. “This is your idea of revenge, isn't it?” he asked flatly. “For being forced to marry Claire. You're punishing me for it, aren't you?”

“This has nothing to do with Claire,” Devon corrected, anger suddenly sparking. “It has everything to do with your immaturity and irresponsibility. It goes well back—to long before Claire stepped foot on Virginia soil. She's just as much one of your victims as I am.”

Wyndom, still staring up at the ceiling, sighed. “As soon as I receive my payments for last year's crop, I'll be leaving Rosewind.”

He could have agreed, could have encouraged his brother to imagine that such an escape was possible, but Wyndom's problems stemmed from having those around him too long support the ease of his fantasies.

“You won't be able to afford to run away,” Devon said bluntly. “If you'll recall, you agreed to let me attach your crops for the monies I lent you for planting and for paying your gambling debts to Jasper. You're not going to clear enough to buy yourself a meal at the Raleigh, much less a single night's lodging. You'd best plan to stay right here, Wyndom.”

Tears edged Wyndom's voice as he asked, “And do what?”

“Grow up?” he suggested, wishing he didn't feel sorry for his brother. “Be responsible? Make a positive contribution to the productivity of the estate?”

“In other words, be your bootlicking toady.” He tried to laugh, but the sound strangled amidst tears deep in his throat. Clearing it with considerable effort, he finally managed to tightly say, “Thank you, but no.”

His heart aching for his brother's misery, Devon decided that honor and compassion required him to try reason one more time. “Wyndom, our father's world is gone forever. We can't—”

“Oh, spare me, Devon,” his brother snarled, his gaze snapping down from the ceiling. Cold fire flashed in his eyes. “I've heard it all before.” Motioning in Devon's general direction, he added, “I brought a mail packet from James City. It's on the bureau by your elbow. Don't neglect to take it with you as you leave.”

Devon looked down to see the bundle wrapped in twine. As he picked it up, Wyndom blew out the light. With the packet in hand, Devon backed out of the room, quietly saying into the darkness, “Good night, Wyndom. Tomorrow will be a better day.”

“Go to hell.”

Struggling against a sense of futility and overwhelming sadness, Devon closed the door softly, turned, and made his way down the darkened hall. The light was still on in Claire's room, and he paused in front of her door, wanting to knock, wanting… He wanted her to hold him, to let him cry on her shoulder. He wanted to pour out his pain and regret and hear her promise to make it all come right for him. He wanted Claire to help him carry the burdens he was bearing for Wyndom, for Rosewind.

Slowly, he walked on to his own door. It was too much to ask of her.

C
LAIRE ANGLED THE BOOK
to better catch the candlelight, hoping the improvement would keep her mind from wandering. A few minutes later, having read the same paragraph no fewer than three times and not being able to recall a single word within it, she gave up and tossed the volume onto the foot of her bed. Why wasn't she tired? she wondered. The last few days had been physically grueling. By all rights and logic, she should have fallen sound asleep the minute her head had touched the pillow. Instead, she was wide awake and restless, feeling as though there was something important she should be doing.

Climbing out of bed, she crossed to the window and looked down on the kitchen and its gardens. A tiny wisp of smoke rose from the chimney, and the windows were dark. She sighed, knowing that Hannah and Meg had finished their work and retired for the night. Telling herself that she should do the same and simply will herself into sleep, she resolutely marched back to her bed and climbed between the sheets.

She was cupping her hand around the candle flame before blowing it out when there came a soft knock on the door that separated her room from Devon's. Her
heart started and she stared at the wooden panel, her pulse and mind racing.

“Claire?” he called quietly, tentatively.

“One moment, please,” she answered, throwing off the covers and snatching up her dressing gown. Shoving her arms into the sleeves, she hurried to the door, then paused just long enough to cinch the belt around her waist and take a single calming breath.

Despite the effort, her heart was still pounding and her hand was trembling when she opened the door. Devon stood on the other side, his dinner jacket removed and his shirttail pulled from his breeches. He'd opened the front, affording her a glimpse of dark curls and sun-burnished skin. Her breath caught as her pulse warmed and danced. He cut a dashing, rakish figure in his formal dress, but there was something about him in a casual state of disattire that stirred her senses in the most delicious way.

“I'm sorry to disturb you at the late hour,” he said, extending his hand. “But a letter for you was in the packet Wyndom brought from James City. Since it bears the King's seal, I think you might not want to put off reading it.”

The King's seal?
Certitude instantly struck her. The day of reckoning had come as she'd always feared. And she didn't want to think about it, didn't want to face it.

Taking the folded and wax-sealed piece of parchment from Devon and deliberately turning her thoughts in another direction, she wondered aloud, “How would anyone other than my uncle know to send it to me here? Do you suppose he told the King—or someone representing him—where I am?”

“Very good questions,” he allowed, smiling. “Maybe the writer will provide the answers.”

Her fear melted in the warmth and ease of that smile. Bless Devon and the way he could so effortlessly
relieve her apprehensions. It was magical and she adored him for it.

“Please,” she said, resisting the impulse to hug him and resolutely stepping back, “come in and have a seat.”

He hesitated, his brows knitted as he considered her.

“Please, Devon,” she insisted, motioning to the bench seat before the cold hearth. “Do come in and be comfortable. It's silly to stand in the doorway and deny yourself entrance into a room in your very own house. I promise not to ravage you.”

He laughed softly and she retreated again, disguising her flight by focusing her attention on carefully opening the letter. Dropping down onto the edge of her bed, she angled the paper into the light, acutely aware that Devon had stopped at the foot and was leaning his shoulder against the poster, watching her.

“It's from the Court of Chancery,” she said aloud as she read. “A grand jury is to be impaneled to hear evidence against my uncle to the end of indicting him for fraud. I'm to appear before the bench as a material witness in the case being constructed against him.”

“Are you being investigated for any wrongdoing?”

She heard the note of genuine concern in his voice, and she was grateful for it. “No. It says that an informant has sworn to my innocence in the matter and that I have nothing to fear in rendering a full and truthful account.”

“Ah, an informant,” he repeated quietly, turning so that his back propped him against the ornately carved poster. “If they know enough of your uncle's business dealings to swear to your innocence in them, then they'd be close enough to him to know his plans for our marriage. That explains how the court knew that you could be found at Rosewind.”

“It would have to be someone he trusted as a friend.”

“Not necessarily,” he countered, turning to smile at
her. “It could just as well be someone invisible. A clerk. A secretary. Someone who, like yourself, was given responsibilities for important tasks and expected to accomplish them without being seen or heard.”

Claire mentally ran her eyes over her uncle's home, his offices. “There are several scores of such people in my uncle's life. It could be any one of them. He's not a likable man and doesn't inspire loyalty to anything but the paltry wages he pays.”

He nodded, pushed himself off the post at the end of her bed, and crossed to the bench seat she'd indicated earlier. Sitting on the edge with his elbows resting on his knees, he stared down at his clasped hands and asked, “Can you offer your testimony in writing or do you have to physically appear before the bench?”

Claire went back to reading the letter. “I'm to surrender myself into the protective custody of General Gage in Boston, Massachusetts, during the first week of June. I'm to be taken back to England under military escort and transferred into the protection of the court so that I'm available to testify beginning sometime in late July or early August.”

Having reached the end of the correspondence, she laid it in her lap and looked up at Devon. He was still hunched forward, staring at his hands. His lips were a hard line, his jaw granite.

“Well,” she ventured, trying to alleviate his suddenly dark mood, “it does resolve the issue of deciding where I'll go and what I'll do after our marriage is annulled, doesn't it?” She winced at the sadness even she could hear in her voice.

“And after you've satisfied the court?” he asked without looking up. “What will you do then? Where will you go?”

His kindness and concern only deepened the strange melancholy settling over her. Reminding herself that her problems weren't Devon's, she forced herself to
smile, to think of the best possible outcomes. “If my uncle's indicted and then convicted, the Crown's likely to seize the Seaton-Smythe properties to recoup the monies he misappropriated. Perhaps I can persuade the court to give me Crossbridge Manor as a reward for my assistance.”

“And if they aren't willing to be so generous?”

“In traveling for my uncle,” she countered, scrambling to see other avenues, “I've met a considerable number of good and decent men. Many of them have families. I think several of them might be willing to offer me employment as a nurse or tutor.”

“If they aren't? Then what?”

“Do you always expect the worst, Devon?”

“Expecting the worst is a requirement of survival at Rosewind,” he replied, pushing himself to his feet. Hooking his thumbs over the waistband of his breeches, he stared into the cold hearth. “And it's amazing how often the worst I can imagine pales beside what actually happens. So answer my question, Claire. What are you going to do if you can't find employment as a nurse or a tutor?”

She was certain that she would; she was educated and reasonably genteel. But Devon was too committed to bleak prospects to accept her assurance that matters would work out well in the end. Thinking that perhaps the ludicrous would pierce his gloom, she laughed and said, “I don't know, Devon. Throw myself in the Thames?”

Slowly, he turned to her and, with the solemnity of a man climbing the gallow steps, said, “You could come back to Rosewind.”

God, what she wouldn't have given for his words to have been wrapped in one of his smiles. It would have made all the difference in the world. “Thank you,” she replied, hiding her bruised heart behind a smile. “That's most kind of you. Would I be returning as your wife, your mistress, or your housekeeper?”

His brows shot together. “You're my wife.”

“In name only. And only for a short while,” she pointed out. “In fact,” she mused aloud, glancing down at the letter, “with my uncle soon to be embroiled in defending himself from the King's justice, he'll be much too busy to spare us so much as a thought. There's no reason for us to maintain our sham marriage a day longer. He isn't likely to be in any position to bring consequences to bear on either one of us.”

He didn't say anything. Instead, he just stood there pensively, his gaze fastened unseeingly on her, his thoughts obviously elsewhere. A troubling elsewhere, Claire decided.

“Devon?”

He blinked at the sound of her voice. “Maybe we should postpone the annulment until after you've rendered your duty to the court. If you're granted Crossbridge or if you find employment that suits you, then we could proceed from there. But if those avenues don't prove fruitful, you could return to Rosewind.” He took a long, slow breath before adding, “You know that I don't have much to offer you, but…”

“But it's far more than what
I
have?” she finished for him.

He narrowed his eyes, seeming to have suddenly realized that she wasn't tumbling head over heels to accept his magnanimous offer. “Well, yes,” he answered warily.

“It occurs to me, Devon, that I'd rather make my way alone than accept a marriage offered out of pity.”

“Pity isn't the right word,” he quickly protested. “You've done wonders for Rosewind and—”

“You feel an obligation towards me?”

Again he considered her, hesitating before saying, “Something like that.”

Claire smiled thinly. “You have debts enough, Devon. I won't be another piled atop those already burdening you.”

“You're not a burden. And you have to know that I find you attractive.”

God yes, she did know that. And she was just as drawn to him. But what would bind them when the novelty of physical discovery became tarnished by the common reality of day-to-day life?

“Pity, obligation, and lust,” she summarized. “Do you consider those motivations an adequate foundation for a lifelong relationship?”

He was silent, but the truth shone in his eyes. Under it lay the same sorrow that was battering her own heart.

“Neither do I, Devon,” she said softly, rising from the bed, the letter in her hand. “And I think it best if we don't let your chivalry or my uncertainty cloud our judgment. The problem is mine and I'll find a solution. You needn't feel any duty to rescue me from the situation. I've been taking care of myself for a very long time. I'm quite capable, you know.”