Rake's Guide to Pleasure. (33 page)

Hart wanted to leave this place, jump into his carriage and move on. He'd passed her uncle's home at the edge of town. The wreckage had never been razed, the pristine white "Jensen" sign at the gate stood in morbid contrast to the piles of bricks and ruined wood.

She was only nineteen, the solicitor had said. Eighteen when her uncle died and alone in the world with only a pittance for income. Eighteen when she had first arrived in London.

The ninth Baron
Denmore
had run the entailed estate into the ground and sold off all unattached lands. He'd killed his only heir and so the title had rescinded to his uncle, but there had been no income to funnel to maintenance, no money to pay servants. Her great-uncle had inherited an impoverished title and crumbling estate. He'd wisely chosen to stay in his own home.

Hart had felt already overwhelmed with the story of the
Denmores
, and now these people, the Bromley family, sitting pale and frightened before him, and the young man, Matthew. Hart gritted his teeth.

Emma had claimed to be afraid of him, and Hart believed it now. The boy was pale and far too thin, his blond hair lank and in need of washing. Sickly as he seemed, his eyes burned with life. Hate and lust and conviction. The sister seemed afraid, the father resigned. And by the solicitor's account, Emma had lived here for months after her uncle's death.

"I understand that you took her in after the fire."

"We did!" the sister, Catherine, blurted. "She had no one else and we thought . . ." She glanced toward Matthew. "Well, we thought perhaps she would remain with us."

"We were to be married," Matthew said firmly.

Hart raised an eyebrow. "There was a betrothal?"

"Ye—"

"Not a formal one," the father interrupted, "no. But Emma was like family to us."

Hart stiffened at the sound of her name. He'd thought that a lie too. All the documents had named her Emily. "Emma?" he heard himself say. "I understood her given name was Emily."

The sister nodded. "Yes, but she preferred Emma. Matthew was the only one who called her Emily."

"It is her given name," Matthew insisted, his tone making clear he had argued this point many times. "To use it is to honor her mother and father."

A weight lifted from Hart's shoulders. It made no sense, changed nothing, and yet it did. Her name was Emma, just as she'd said. Hart felt pitiful in his relief, but so much lighter as he pressed on. "But she had plans to go to London?"

"No," Matthew barked. "She had plans to marry me." "And yet she did not."

"She was quite upset after her uncle's death. She lost her way, that is all. She only needs leading back."

Temper clenched Hart's hands into fists. "Yes," he ground out. "I understand you did your best to lead her back from London. By whatever means necessary. Mr. Bromley." He turned back to the father. "I find I would prefer speaking with you alone. Would that be possible?"

The sister sprang immediately to her feet, dropping a curtsy before she'd even managed to rise to her full height. "A pleasure, Your Grace," she chirped, then rushed from the room.

Matthew stayed seated until his father cleared his throat. Then he shuffled from the room under muttered protest.

"My apologies, Your Grace," Mr. Bromley said. "My son is . . ." He gave up with a shrug.

"As magistrate, you undoubtedly know of the trouble Matthew could face if he returns to London. Or if he continues to harass Miss Jensen. I would feel conscience-bound to turn him over to the authorities."

"Yes. Of course. I. . . They were friends once, truly. But when she refused his hand . . . He does care for her."

"As do you."

"Yes. I thought she would be my daughter, and I was glad for it. She was a quiet girl when she moved to this village. Watchful. But a good niece to her uncle. Devoted to him. Always puttering with him in his gardens.

"But after he died, she changed. Grew restless and nervous. Almost as if. . ."

Hart waited as the older man rubbed his forehead.

"I can't explain it. She would not answer sometimes when I spoke to her. It was as if she were already gone away. I knew then that she would not stay here, regardless what we all hoped."

"And one day she hopped the coach to London?"

"No, she left our home after a few months. Boarded with the miller for a time. We did not find out she'd gone from there until days later. She said she was moving back to
Denmore
, but Matthew found no sign of her there, and no evidence of the cousin she'd mentioned to the miller's wife.

"In truth, she'd run off and did not mean to be found."

Hart nodded and frowned. He was no closer to her now than he'd been in London. She was not here and clearly meant not to come back. "So she has no family at
Denmore
. And the new baron says he does not know her."

"Yes, I understand the title went to a distant cousin. He was taken by surprise."

"And you have no other ideas? No guesses? It's quite important that I find her."

The man's gaze fell away and shifted slowly about the room. Finally, with a long look of caution toward the archway that led to the hall, Mr. Bromley leaned forward. "I had thought," he whispered, "before Matthew found her in London . . . I'd thought she might have gone to the Yorkshire coast."

Sparks tingled over Hart's skin. The feel of the truth again, rare as it was. Lancaster had mentioned Scarborough and the sea. He made his voice as mild as possible. "Why Yorkshire?"

"I took Emma fishing once, in the stream behind that forest there. And she spoke of the water. How much she loved the sea. Her mother took her to Scarborough every summer when she was a girl." He looked again toward the hallway and leaned closer. "I never told Matthew," he added needlessly.

Scarborough. Yorkshire. Not the most narrow of directions, but it was better than searching the whole damned civilized world.

Chapter 20

The tilled ground was soft and unbelievably rich, and the wind from the ocean often warmer than she expected. Already, tiny sprouts were beginning to peek through the dirt, protected by the hay she'd spread the week before.

Emma felt blessed whenever she stood here in her own garden, at the side of her own home. She could see the pale blue haze of the sea, just a glimmering line above the edge of the cliffs.

She'd found exactly what she'd wanted. She'd put the land agent on notice months ago, let him know exactly what she needed and where. He'd recommended four properties; she hadn't looked farther than the second.

It was perfect. Beautiful and quiet. Everything she'd ever wanted. Until the sun set and closed her up alone in her lovely cottage.

Emma brushed a hand over the waist of her dress, still tossed between desperate relief and a strange yearning. She'd taken the precautions recommended by the herb woman, and Hart had taken his own precautions. She'd trembled with relief when she'd felt the first of her monthly cramps, but she'd also felt the distinct concussion of a door slamming shut on her past. All of it.

Emma Jensen was gone. As was Emily. And the false Lady
Denmore
. She was now, simply, the Widow Kern. As false as Lady
Denmore
, but so very, very different.

She dug her spade hard into the dirt and wondered how different she really was. Her lust for Hart hadn't faded. That night with him had unlocked all those horrid desires that she feared. And yet. . .

It wasn't exactly what she'd feared. She wanted things from him, fantasized and dreamed about the promises of future pleasure he'd made. Her body roused itself at the mere thought of him. If she'd stayed in London she'd have been lost, just as she'd worried.

But the wickedness seemed to stop there. She didn't find herself watching the men of her new village with need. In fact, she'd even tried to look upon them with something close to lust and had failed miserable. The shirtless young men splashing in the sea did not tempt her to anything even close to sin.

It was just Hart.

The salt wind snatched away her sigh, and Emma leaned her spade against the grayed wood of her cottage wall. She would have to whitewash this summer to protect it from the constant caress of the wind, but she would miss the silvery glint of the worn boards.

Emma slipped off her apron and waved to Bess in the kitchen window. Then she headed straight for the path she'd already worn in the waving grass.

Bess couldn't begin to understand the charm of the narrow cliff path and the stone-rough beach below.
You’
ll
break your neck,
she'd warned countless times, but Emma thought the reward worth the risk.

Down on that narrow strip of sand she felt free. Strange, since she couldn't walk more than two hundred yards in either direction. But the steady breeze and the cry of the gulls and the strange green scent of the air. . . it all filled her up, pushed into all the empty places inside her and made her whole. She was young again, seven years old and happy. She was safe. Loved.

But she couldn't seem to carry that feeling back up with her. She certainly couldn't coax it inside to keep her company at night.

"This place is good," Emma whispered as she picked her way down the path. Her foot slipped on pebbles and she banged into the rough cliff face but hardly slowed at all. "My life is good," she muttered instead, determined to make it true. Soon London would be a distant memory. Hart no more than a . . . a . . .

"A footnote," she said, tasting cruelty in the word and trying to make herself believe it.

Something crawled over her neck. She brushed at the sensation, but it remained. Anxiety probably, sprung from her own guilt. She had lied and cheated and used people. Though she'd told herself that Hart was a powerful, impervious man of the world, there was no denying the burn of her shame. She'd hurt him, could only have hurt him more by her calculated disappearance.

Her hand rubbed idly at the nape of her neck, but the sensation remained, even through the hour she spent staring out to the white-capped sea.

He had started in Scarborough, certain that Emma would be naturally attracted to the crowds of the resorts. There was some money to be made there, trouble to find, though at this time of the year the crowds would be less flush than she was accustomed to in London. Still, perhaps the merchant classes were a livelier sort, and more easily swayed by her gentle manners.
If
she could manage gentle manners for any length of time. But she hadn't been in Scarborough. His week there had been entirely fruitless. He had found no trace of her, no evidence that she'd even passed through. Now he felt he was wandering aimlessly.

If he did find her, he no longer knew who she'd be. She was not the woman he'd thought she was. She was a girl. A daughter, a niece. A quiet young woman remembered fondly in her village.

She was not a widow or a vixen or a roving thief. She was not worldly or experienced. The sensual knowledge he'd recognized in her had been nothing more than the echo of years spent in a den of inequity. Or that was what he hoped anyway. Hoped that she had only seen and heard.

A sense of something misplaced would not stop taunting his brain. He'd been to
Denmore's
home once, a giant block of cold granite and crenellated towers, but he could remember little more than an impression of dark hallways and darker guests. Whatever memories he might have retained had been jarred from his brain a few days later when he'd proposed to his lover and found devastation instead of joy.

Vague memories aside, he was sure her childhood had been less than it should have been. First her mother had died, then her father and brother. Then she'd been sent to live with a stranger, a great-uncle she'd never met. At least it seemed she had been happy there, for a short time.

Hart no longer knew how to hate her; he no longer knew what to feel. He only wanted to see her and . . .

And what?

Whenever he tried to puzzle it out, his chest hurt, his lungs froze. So he moved blindly forward, tracking a woman who meant not to be found. A woman who'd torn down everything he'd built to protect himself.

"Only a mile more, Your Grace," the driver called back.