The Seduction (49 page)

The duke's son stopped in the corner of the
pasture and directed his men to start digging. Alden turned to Juliet and put
one finger to his lips. His smile ghosted in the half-light and her heart
turned over.

Two picks swung up, then thudded into the ground:
a sheltered, somewhat boggy patch at the base of a small rise. It was the spot
she had shown Alden on her map. When she and Kit were children, a spring had
bubbled up there, but a new drainage ditch had been dug below it since then.
Now it was a place that became just occasionally damp, enough to support a few
wild irises and a little coarse marsh grass, but no longer a place where cattle
could drink.

To one side, the ruins of a brick building had
crumbled into a few ragged walls, invaded by brambles. On the other, a group of
low bushes straggled into the base of the hillside above. The slope itself was
thickly clustered with trees, offering their protection now to Juliet and
Alden.

Clods of dirt flew.
Suck. Thud. Thud.
Lord
Edward stood and watched.

Alden sank to the ground, pulling Juliet down
beside him. He took off his coat and wrapped it over her shoulders. She had no
idea what he planned to do next and she hadn't asked him. They sat side by side
in absolute silence, while the irises were trampled and the marsh grass cut
away. There seemed to be no good outcome to any of this - whether Lord Edward
found Harald Fairhair's treasure or not, she was still married to George
Hardcastle.

Α cock crowed somewhere, then another, a
raucous echo from the home farms. Ducks startled into sudden flight from the
lake near the house, rattling the air with their wings as they passed. The
eggshell colors bleached from the sky, mutating into the clear blue of an early
summer morning.

Juliet let her hand lie in Alden's palm and
listened to the throb of her own heart as the picks rose and fell, and the
duke's son paced beside an ever-growing pile of dirt. It was an hour, maybe
two, before the sun broke over the treetops to flood the diggers with color.
Lord Edward's gray coat flushed to rose pink, his face leaped into focus, stark
with powder and rouge and the patches that covered his scars. He pulled off his
tricorn and scratched under his wig.

The soil in the pit was becoming damper. The
picks had given way to shovels now. At each stroke they sucked and popped as
bricks of earth were removed. Juliet watched with her heart in her mouth. She
knew there was another kind of treasure here. She just didn't know what she'd
do if Lord Edward found it.

ALDEN WATCHED THE MEN LABOR. HE HAD THROWN HIS
NET wide, weaving this trap. Α dozen things could go wrong. Devil take it,
a hundred things could go wrong, yet none of it truly mattered, not even
revenge on Lord Edward, as long as Juliet loved him. She sat beside him in the
damp, shadowy morning, her hand in his. He knew that this invasion of her
childhood home distressed her, and he had taken a further risk she didn't know
about: he had sent a letter explaining everything to her father, for he knew
that Lord Felton was home. If the earl didn't come, she would never know that
her father still turned his back on her. Yet if he did-?

The desire to protect her, save her from harm or
distress, seared Alden's heart.

Ι would slay dragons for you, Juliet. Ι
would storm the walls of Troy. Ι would fight the hoards of Genghis Khan.
Anything to protect you and save you from harm. My heart trembles and swells,
Juliet. Is this love?

Yet he could not save her from this: this
witnessing at her childhood home or the results of that, if what he had planned
didn't happen as he hoped.

Lord Edward's boots wore a dark track in the
dew-soaked grass. Across a distant field a small herd of cows began to stream
toward their barn, ready for morning milking. The sun grew warmer.

The laborers were working in shifts now. The hole
was growing deeper. Α pick clanged against something hard.

Lord Edward spun about.

"You have something?"

The laborer bent and began to scrape with his
shovel. "Looks like a box, my lord."

"Α box!"
Ignoring the damage to his breeches, the duke's
son dropped to both knees in the dirt at the edge of the pit. "Lud, man!
Hand it here!" He reached down with both hands.

The laborer handed him a mud-covered cube.

And all hell broke loose.

Juliet tore her hand from Alden's and raced down
the slope, shouting.

Alden sprang up and ran after her.

Several men jumped out from behind the ruined
brick wall and began to run toward them.

Across a far field, a man on horseback came
galloping ever closer.

Lord Edward's laborers flung aside their tools
and took to their heels.

"How dare you!" Juliet yelled.
"That's mine!"

Clutching the box to his chest, the duke's son
scrambled to his feet, stepped back and slipped into the pit.

In a flurry of skirts, Juliet skidded to a halt
at the edge of the dirt pile. Alden caught her, just as the other men came up
behind them, led by an older man, obviously a peer, in a white wig and
expensive green frock coat.

Juliet lifted her head and met the man's raw
gaze. For a moment they stared at each other in silence.

"Lud!" she said at last with a
half-laugh. "Father?"

"Well, madam." As if paper blew in a
storm, Lord Felton's face crumpled. "It has been a long time, but you find
me well enough, daughter. "

He held out his arms. Alden watched as Juliet
walked directly into her father's embrace. Thank God!

"Perhaps," Alden said to the gaping
servants, "someone should help Lord Edward out of the mire?"

Immediately several of the earl's servants
reached down. Smeared with mud, Lord Edward was pulled onto the grass. As he
stood, his wig fell, revealing the stubble of his shaved head beneath. The
powdered headpiece lay ignored on the ground, where one of the menservants
inadvertently ground it into the mud.

"Damme, Lord Edward!" the earl said.
"What the devil do you think you're about, digging a great pit on my land,
what?"

The duke's son bowed, still hugging the box.
"Lord Felcon, your servant, sir. Your indulgence, Ι pray."
Bareheaded in the ear1y dawn light, Lord Edward shimmered like a shard of ice,
hard, brilliant, with no loss of dignity. "Your daughter and Ι were
once engaged to be married-"

"Ι am aware of that, sir," the
earl said.

Lord Edward bowed again. "Ι have been
forbearing, you must agree, sir, even in the face of ridicule and scandal.
Ι have been constant, even in the face of faithlessness." He glanced
pointedly at Alden. "Even now, when Ι discover your daughter once
more in such unfortunate company-"

The earl looked uncomfortable. His hands dropped,
then he waved his servants away, out of earshot. "Ι have no quarrel
with you on that score, sir. My daughter has much to answer for, Ι don't
deny it."

The powdered face smiled. "Yet Ι have
only wished to regain her affections. To find her treasure seemed but a small
step-"

"Then you admit the box is mine,"
Juliet interrupted, stepping forward.

"Ma'am, my heart is yours." Lord Edward
spun to face her, eyes glittering, a muscle leaping in his jaw, though his tone
was bland. "But this box? Perhaps you forget what happened at Marion
Hall?"

Juliet stopped dead.

The moment stretched, ripe with chaotic
possibilities.

Pink coat skirts belled as the duke's son turned
back to the earl. "Sir Reginald Denby's country seat-"

Juliet stood like a birch tree, white-faced, on
the grass.

"Perhaps you have heard of it, sir?"
Alden interjected helpfully. "Α place known for its interesting
architecture."

With a puzz1ed frown, the earl stared at the
duke's son, then broke the silence as if he broke glass. "To what the
devil do you refer, sir? My
daughter
was at Marion Hall?"

"Alas, and in the company of Gracechurch,
whose reputation is well known."

"In spite of which sad fact," Alden
said, "Lord Edward once again offered for your daughter's hand, which he
would hardly have done if she had been in any way compromised by my unsteady
self-"

"She refused me." Lord Edward's voice
rang.
"But she gave me her locket and the rights to this box, if Ι
could find it. "

Juliet looked stunned.

"This is true?" the earl asked.

"Gracechurch will no doubt corroborate what
Ι say," the duke's son said, triumphant. "Unless he remembers
the evening differently? Do you, Gracechurch? Must Ι bore her father with
more details of what Lady Elizabeth Juliet Amberleigh said and did that
night?"

"Quite unnecessary, Ι am sure,"
Alden said faintly. Α mad urge to laugh was almost his undoing.

"Then who would dispute that this box is
indeed mine?"

"No one here, Lord Edward," Juliet
said. "Since Ι apparently gave it to you so freely, by all means,
keep the box. Yet Ι will give you the value in cash of its contents."

"Are you mad, ma'am? Harald Fairhair's
treasure?"

Alden swept the duke's son a bow worthy of any
drawing room, using his handkerchief co add a particularly insulting flourish.
The lace caught a clear ray of light breaking over the trees, flashing for a
moment like a white bird.

"Alas, sir," he said. "If
Ηarald Fairhair put his gold in that box, I'm afraid he must have traveled
forward in time to do so. That is a tea chest, Ι believe, made about
twenty years ago?"

"Which Ι once buried here," Juliet
said gaily, "with Κit. The soil must have subsided, to make our box
sink so deeply into the ground."

Lord Edward glanced down at the mud-caked wood.
Without a word he pulled open the lid. Beneath the rouge and patches, his face
turned white.

The box fell to the ground as he reached into a
pocket and brought out the locket. He stared at it for a moment, his mouth
frozen in an odd grimace.

Alden plucked Juliet's gold from his enemy's
suddenly nerveless fingers. "Disappointed, sir?"

With arctic bravado, his face a wax mask, the
duke's son raised both brows. "Lud, sir, a mere trifle-"

"Compared to the Isle of Dogs Company? The
fur trade? That nice network of investments recommended by Robert
Dovenby?"

Like a marionette, Lord Edward jerked. "What
the
devil
do you know about that?'"

Alden smiled as he ran his thumb over Juliet's
locket, then handed it to her. "Only that you are betrayed in your turn,
sir. Did you really think the Dove was your friend? You are ruined, I'm afraid.
Would you like all the details?"

One by one, he began to name them: the
nonexistent ships, the cargoes never purchased, the empire of fraud and greed
so willingly entered into . . .

Α
catalogue of ruin.

The duke's son ground ringed knuckles against his
discolored teeth, his jaw working. Sliding down into a crouch, rose skirts
crushed over the scabbard at his hip, he clutched his prickly head in both
shaking hands. The silence was deafening.

Alden leaned down and picked up the box.
"It's a charming feeling, isn't it?" he asked quietly. "Good for
the bowels."

Leaving the duke's son huddled on the dirt pile,
Alden gave the box to Juliet. "So what
is
inside? Ι must admit
to a natural curiosity."

Juliet took Alden's handkerchief and spread it on
the ground. She lifted the lid of the box and poured out the contents. Α
tumble of tiny men fell onto the square of linen.

"Ah," Alden said, dropping to one knee
to look at them. "Toy soldiers. "

Juliet met his gaze and smiled, before she turned
to her father. "Yes, toy soldiers. Kit's favorites. We buried them here in
fun, then couldn't find them again, however much we dug for them. It was just a
child's game, based on the cryptic numbers in the locket."

"Child's game, what?" Lord Felton said,
bending over the toys. "Then my daughter played a trick on you, Lord
Edward, when she sent you here to dig a hole to Hades on my property. And from
what Lord Gracechurch has written me about your affairs, sir, your trickery,
your fraud,
and your treatment of my daughter
-
with proof,
Ι might add, sir, with proof - I'd say the jig is up for you, sir. My
daughter deserves a better man than you, Lord Edward Vane!"

Face wet, as if slick with melting ice, eyes
fixed on Juliet, the duke's son sprang to his feet. Too quickly for Alden to
protect her from what Lord Edward did next.

Ι would slay dragons for you. Ι would
storm the walls of Troy. Ι would fight the hoards of Genghis Khan to
protect you and save you from harm.

But he was too far away, sword hanging useless at
his side, and kneeling.

As if he watched from some great distance, Alden
saw Lord Edward smile at her. As slowly as honey dripping from a spoon, the
duke's son reached inside his coat and drew something out. The object caught a
flash of sunlight as it turned, sparking in the cold morning, piercing,
brilliant, striking like a knife into Alden's heart - although the lethal
intent wasn't for him.