Secret Night (28 page)

Patrick ran down the stairs in his shirtsleeves and caught her arms from behind. She kicked and struggled, then sagged against him. "Why will none listen? Why do they want to see Papa hang?" she sobbed. "He is one of them! Do you hear me?" she shouted as Graves bolted the door. "He is one of you! He started with nothing! He is one of you!"

"You are all right-—you are all right," Patrick murmured soothingly against the crown of her hair. Looking over her shoulder, he ordered Graves, "Get someone to make a punch, will you?"

"Yes, sir—something with rum in it perhaps?"

"Yes—something strong."

"You don't understand—I've got to make them know he did not do it!"

Patrick half dragged, half carried her back to the bookroom, where he forced her into a chair. "That was a deuced idiotic notion—they could have brained you with a brick ere you said anything," he declared flatly.

He was standing over her, his hands holding her down. She looked up into his hazel eyes defiantly at first, then she dropped her head into her hands. Helpless, he stroked her shoulder, trying to give comfort. Finally, she seemed to collect herself.

"I'm sorry," she managed low. "I must've sounded like a madwoman."

"No, you were frightened," he responded more gently.

"It has been like that much of the afternoon. They have come and gone at will, and we cannot catch them. Before you arrived, we counted five windows that the cowards have broken."

"You need to hire Bow Street runners to guard the house, Ellie. Either that or you should consider leaving until this is over."

"No, I cannot go anywhere." She sat very still now. "But you are right about the runners."

"As your attorney, I can engage them for you."

She looked up again. "No," she repeated more definitely. "I shall have to learn how to do more things than hand out pamphlets in Covent Garden, I think. Now that there is but me, I shall have to engage them myself."

"You cannot do it all."

"There is nobody else."

The firelight played upon her shining hair, making it seem more red than gold, and as he looked into her face, desire for her nearly overwhelmed him. He dropped his hand and moved away.

"Would you like for me to stay?" Even as he said it, the strained voice he heard did not seem like his own. "Merely as a guest, I mean?"

"No. No, that will not be necessary, sir." She swallowed to hide her embarrassment. "I am quite all right now."

"And what if they come back?"

"What could you do? You cannot stop them any more than Joseph or the others," she countered. "Indeed, but we had James sit in the carriage outside, but then we feared they should destroy it with him in it."

"I thought perhaps you might feel a little safer, I suppose. I know—it sounds foolish to say it"

"Yes, well—" She glanced at the fire for a moment, then sighed. "And who is supposed to make me feel safe from you?" She studied her hands in her lap.

"I have never thought of myself as a weak woman, Mr. Hamilton."

She was using the formality of his name to distance herself, and he knew it. "I don't think you weak at all," he assured her.

"You do not have to toadeat me, sir," she muttered.

Joseph and another footman reentered, one carrying a silver bowl, the other a tray with two cups. "Ye got ter do something about that Frog, miss, 'cause he ain't wanting ter do nothing fer anybody."

"He isn't a Frog," she said wearily. "He is an émigré."

"Well, he's a Frenchy, ain't he? Mr. Rand—"

"I don't care what Papa has called him—I don't wish to hear it."

"Aye." He set down the bowl and took the cups, dipping the heated mixture into them. "Now it's a mite stronger than what ye've had," he warned her. "Graves said ye needed more than as fit fer a lady."

"As I am not a lady anyway, I am sure it will be fine."

Patrick took the cup from the footman and handed it to her, advising her to sip it. As the servants withdrew, she took a gulp and nearly choked. As tears came to her eyes, she croaked, "What is it?"

After tasting his, he decided, "It has honey, rum, and lemons it it—possibly something else also."

She shuddered as the fiery mixture hit her stomach. " 'Tis rather strong, isn't it?" she managed.

"It grows on you when you get used to it," he murmured.

"I very much doubt that."

"Just take it a little at a time, and it will make you feel more the thing," he promised. To demonstrate, he sipped his own again. "See—nothing to it. Go on— keep trying."

"Yes, well—you are a man, and you are supposed to like this sort of thing." Nonetheless, she drank gingerly, making faces at him over the rim of her cup. "It could definitely use more sugar."

"In a little while, you'll feel more the thing," he predicted.

"Unless I drink myself unconscious like Papa, I won't feel much better about anything."

"You need to take your mind off your troubles."

"I cannot. I only wish I might do something useful to help Papa." She took another taste of her punch. Feeling the slow warmth diffuse through her stomach, she added, "You behold a desperate female, Hamilton. I have even considered trying to bribe the justices."

"I wouldn't recommend it."

"No, I suppose not."

"Ellie—"

Glancing up, she was all too aware of the warmth that seemed to lighten his hazel eyes. Rather than acknowledge it, she looked to the portrait of a young man over the mantel. "I cannot ever remember him like that," she said slowly, "but Mama said it was a good likeness."

He followed her gaze. "Who is it?"

"Papa. Sir Thomas Lawrence painted it before he was commissioned to do Queen Charlotte—I think it was shortly after he came to London, in fact." She drank again, then smiled. "Papa says it flattered him."

The young man who stared down at him was actually handsome in his loose cambric shirt and flowing stock, his red hair windblown above his piercing blue eyes. "I should think so," Patrick murmured finally. "But there is a certain resemblance between you."

"Actually, I am rather a compromise between them, I think. He was redheaded, she was blond; he was volatile, she was rather placid—and she was reared quite properly in the vicarage, while he was apprenticed so young he can scarce remember his parents."

"When I first met her, I thought you favored your mother more," he mused, still sipping his punch.

"I am my father's daughter, sir—much more like him than my mother in most things." She studied the painting again. "He had it made for her. Her father disapproved of him terribly, so when Lawrence did Queen Charlotte and became exceedingly famous, Papa sent it to the Binghams with his marriage proposal."

"And that lightened the old gent's objections?" "Not entirely. I think those were dispatched with money."

"Gold is usually persuasive," he murmured. Leaning
forward, he refilled her cup, then his.

She looked down at the steaming punch. "I've never been foxed, you know," she murmured. "But I don't want to think about being alone just now."

"You aren't alone."

"No." She sipped, then held the cup in her lap. "I mean, before Ben, Papa and I were so very close that I could say anything to him and he could say anything to
me. Then I met Ben at the Lord Mayor's house, and
nothing was ever the same. Papa was determined to
despise him, you see, and Ben was the kindest, most generous person I have ever known. You would have i bought that after the way the Binghams had treated him
,
Papa would have been more inclined to tolerance, but he wasn't."

He didn't want to hear about Ben Rose, so he tried to
turn her thoughts from the dead man. "Are you feeling more the thing?" he asked.

'I feel like I am somebody else," she admitted, her voice low, husky. "I feel like my mind could float away from my body." She drank again. "But I was telling
you
about Ben, wasn't I?"

"One man never likes to hear about another, Ellie."

'But you are nothing like Ben. Ben," she pronounced
definitely, "wanted to do everything right. He thought if we waited, Papa would come around, but I knew he wouldn't. I begged Ben to elope with me, you see. He considered it dishonorable," she added sadly. Looking directly into Patrick's eyes, she laid, "You have never worried about such things, have you?"

'Not often."

"But then I expect you have never loved anyone like that, have you?"

"No."

"And you cannot have ever hurt like I have, Hamilton. And now I shall lose everything—Ben, Papa— even Mama, for I cannot forgive her, you know." She brushed halfheartedly at wet eyes. "There I go again, Hamilton, feeling sorrier for myself than for Papa," she managed huskily.

"Patrick," he said softly.

She blinked again. "What?"

"My name is Patrick."

Her gaze dropped to her hands. "If I said it, I should have to concede intimacy between us, sir, and I don't know if I am prepared for that."

"Even after last night?" he dared to ask her.

"Particularly after that." Her fingertip traced the punch where he'd spilled a few drops of it. "I feel terribly ashamed, you know. Now I am no better than those women Papa has frequented."

"You are nothing like them, Ellie—nothing at all like them."

"Then why are you here?" she cried. "Did you come for another tumble?"

"I don't know why I am here," he answered quietly. "I was going home until I got into the hackney. Then the words just came out when I gave the driver the direction."

She drained her cup, and her mood changed abruptly. "I think you came to get foxed," she decided solemnly.

"Perhaps I did." She was too tightly strung to press just yet, he told himself. "So—shall we get foxed together?"

Looking across to him, she held out her cup. "Yes— and I shall take some more." For a long moment, her blue eyes were fixed on his face. "You know," she said slowly, "were it not for everything else, Hamilton, I should have liked you. But God ought not to have given you those eyes. It was most unfair of Him."

"Oh?"

"They are far too enticing for a man to have."

"That's not very discouraging, Ellie."

"No, it isn't, is it?" she admitted. "All right, then let us speak of the stage. You did say you wished for the stage, didn't you?"

"When I was fifteen or sixteen, I wished for it more than anything."

"I would that you told me about it."

"Only if you tell me what it was like growing up with all this," he murmured, lifting his hand to sweep the room. "I was a younger son in a house in sad need of repair. And I'd hear of how you came to be a female reformer."

"Is that why you don't keep a fancy carriage or a pair of high-steppers?" she asked, ignoring the latter. Or why you do not have a big house in Mayfair?"

"I don't know. I spend what I want, but my needs have never been as great as the money that came my way, I suppose."

"Well, when Papa spends money he says it is be-cause he never had anything when he was young. I have often thought it could go the other way also— that one might be inclined to hang on to one's fortune if one had but lately come into it."

"I do have a tilbury and a pair," he admitted, smiling. "But you asked about my acting ambition, didn't
you?
You may very much wish you had not."

"No, I'd like to hear it." She held out her cup. "After you pour me some more."

They sat together before the fire, talking of nearly everything from his disappointments to her concern for those beneath her. One by one, sleepy servants dutifully appeared to ask if anything more was needed, until Elise finally sent them up to their beds, leaving the two of them quite alone.

As he filled her cup with the last of the punch, he murmured, "I have the distinct feeling that you are getting the better of me."

"How so?"

"You know all my secrets now."

"All of them?"

"Most anyway."

She looked at him, seeing the warmth in his eyes, daring to wonder if this were the way she and Ben would have been if they'd wedded. Two people together in the closeness of one fire-warmed room, sharing hopes and fears so deeply buried it took rum to expose them. And yet beneath everything they'd said, there had been a constant, intense awareness of him, of his every gesture, of the way he moved, the way he held his body.

"Is something the matter?" he asked, reaching to take her hand, holding it.

His skin was warm, almost hot, where his fingers grasped hers, making her want to pull away before they burned her. Afraid he could see the effect he had on her, she closed her eyes to hide it from him. She swallowed and tried to compose her thoughts.

"Ellie—"

"Please—" Despite the rum, she felt tauter than a bowstring now, as though she would break into pieces if he touched her further. "I think you had best go. It grows late, and—and I—"

"Kiss me, and I will leave," he said softly, lifting her up from the chair.

"I cannot"

"I know what you feel, Ellie," he whispered, drawing her into his arms. "I can feel it also."

"No, you—"

She got no further as his lips met hers softly, gently, nibbling at the corners of her mouth, tempting her. His hands moved over her body as though there were no clothes between them. Her own lips parted, and as he possessed her mouth, she knew a hunger greater than any shame.

When at last he released her, his eyes were dark with desire. "Do you still want me to go?" he asked harshly.

The very air between them seemed to crackle. And it was as though every fiber of her being cried out for what he offered. For answer, she twined her arms about his neck, clinging to him as though he were life itself, raising her head for another kiss.

It was still dark when the puppy began licking her hand. As she drew her arm back from where it had hung over the side of the bed, she came awake with a groan. For a moment she lay there, aware first of the ache in her head, then that Patrick Hamilton slept soundly behind her. And everything came back to her with an almost painful clarity—the dog, the punch, the whispered words of surrender.