To Kiss a Thief (19 page)

The marquess's suite?
Why wasn't his father sleeping there, as he had when St. John was a boy?

“Thank you, Jarrell. And have some hot water sent up, please,” he added with a frown at his travel-stained clothes.

“Of course, sir.”

When he entered the bedchamber, he found a fire burning brightly in the hearth—a ridiculous extravagance surely ordered by his stepmother because he had complained once in her hearing that three years in the West Indies had thinned his blood. Peeling off his greatcoat, he tossed it onto the bed and then opened a window to cool the overheated room, pausing to look down on the gardens that filled the angle between the wings of the L-shaped house. Beyond that, where the sky grew hazy, lay the English Channel.

After his father had expelled him from Lynscombe—for so it had seemed at the time—St. John had spent remarkably little time wondering how it got on, imagining, in the way a boy will, that all would continue to be as it had always been. So long as his allowance had been timely, he had had no cause to consider its source.

Certainly his time in the West Indies, where nearly every plantation was owned by an absentee and left in the hands of an overseer, ought to have taught him to see things differently. The lives of the laborers, the care of the land—everything had depended on the character of that one man, and he had quickly learned how few men were worthy of such trust.

By tradition, a marquessate was a border land, entrusted by the Crown for defense against all invaders. But scarcity had nonetheless found a way to invade Lynscombe. And the Marquess of Estley, despite his oath, had done nothing to stop it.

Nothing, that is, but to make a deal with the devil—in the guise of Richard Pevensey.

St. John was, when all was said and done, still a prisoner to his father's poor choices.

When he turned away from the view, he saw that his coat had slid off the bed and onto the floor. As he bent to retrieve it, the contents of one pocket spilled out: a rock polished smooth by the tide and a misshapen lump of bluebell soap. Clarissa's prizes, acquired the day of the festival in Haverhythe.

He had forgotten how children accumulated treasures, had forgotten somewhere along the way how the love of a child could turn an insignificant object into something truly valuable.

Snatching them from the carpet, he weighed both items on his palm before placing the stone on his bedside table. Then, as his restless, pacing feet carried him out of his room, he tossed the remnants of Fanny Kittery's soap into the fire.

Without conscious thought, he found himself in the elegant sitting room that separated the suite's two bedchambers. Gold cut-velvet draperies framed a pair of tall windows overlooking the back gardens. A camel-backed settee and two chairs in the French style were arranged before a marble fireplace. Near one window was a piecrust table with a shining silver tea service atop it; by the other stood a splendid pianoforte. All was in spotless readiness for the mistress of the house.

Seeing no light beneath the door opposite, he steeled himself and entered the bedroom that had been his mother's.

It was a scene out of some lurid gothic tale. He drew in a sharp, quick breath, and the mustiness of disuse stung his nostrils. Ghostly holland covers still draped across every surface. No window had been opened to freshen the air. No fire had been lit to drive away the damp.

He felt unaccountably disappointed. But what—or whom—had he expected to find there?

Closing the door, he returned to his bedchamber. The soap crackled and hissed on the fire as its oils fed the flame. The warm air was now redolent of bluebells. Muttering under his breath, he disappeared into his dressing room.

“I beg your pardon, my lord?”

Jarrell looked up from pouring a ewer of steaming water into the washbasin. When St. John made no reply, the butler finished arranging items on the washstand and began to busy himself with unpacking a trunk of clothes that must have been brought down from London. “The household is a bit short on menservants just now, so I thought it would be best if I assisted you personally,” Jarrell said.

Having been without a valet for so long, St. John considered that, too, a ridiculous extravagance.

“Jarrell,” he said, flicking open his razor and shaving carefully over his scar, “where is Lady Fairfax?” Even here, her scent was heavy on the air.

“My lord?” Jarrell paused in his unpacking and raised quizzical white eyebrows.

“Lady Fairfax. My wife.”

“My lord, I had no notion there
was
a Lady Fairfax.”

“She arrived with me this afternoon.” At Jarrell's blank look, he added, “The woman in black.” Sarah had been dressed in mourning the day they had left Haverhythe, and the bright sprigged muslin had given no sign of reappearing.

The butler dropped his eyes to the carpet. Jarrell had known St. John too long to be obsequious. This was genuine embarrassment. “I put her upstairs, in the nursery. I took her for the governess.”

“Ah.” He would not be surprised if she was content to stay there. And perhaps he would be more content if she did.

“I'll have the situation rectified straightaway, my lord,” said Jarrell, handing St. John a towel and moving toward the door.

“Jarrell, wait—”

The elderly butler had been at his post too many years to reveal anything like surprise. His face impassive, he stopped and stood, ready to receive the young master's orders.

Was it possible to love a place? Perhaps. If a man were capable of feeling love.

St. John had been away from Lynscombe for almost twenty years, unwillingly at first, it was true, but quite deliberately at the last. He had told himself time and time again that he cared nothing about it. Lynscombe was not yet his responsibility, and God willing, would not be for quite some time.

Still, he had married a fortune to save it—and he knew, deep within himself, in the place some fool might be tempted to call his heart, that it had not been the act of an indifferent man to do so.

Just as dueling David Brice had not been the act of an indifferent man.

He had been ready enough then to believe his wife a liar and a thief. It had been a very convenient brick in the wall he had been determined to erect between himself and the woman he had never wanted to marry. But the mortar had always been rather flimsy stuff, and a few days in Haverhythe had eroded it badly. Now, half an hour in Father's study had knocked what remained of it to the ground.

He could not very well suggest that the Viscountess Fairfax remain in the nursery permanently. Every excuse he had had for keeping her at arm's length was gone. But to bring Sarah to the rose suite, to know she was sleeping just a few feet away, when as many miles would not be enough to . . .

“My lord?” Jarrell prompted.

St. John shook off his ruminations. “It grows late, Jarrell. And she will wish to see our daughter properly settled. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

“Very good, sir.”

If the butler found such an arrangement strange, he did not show it as he finished his task, helping St. John into a fresh shirt and then smoothing the shoulders of his coat over it. “May I say, my lord,” he said when he at last turned to leave, “we are all very glad to have the family at home once more. Like old times, it is,” he said with an expression of satisfaction on his face that bordered on a smile.

St. John gave a curt nod of acknowledgment.

Perhaps his father had exaggerated the desperation of the situation. He would, as suggested, take an early ride, inspect the estate for himself. Then, when he saw that things were really not so bad, he would be within his rights to return to London, as he had planned, and do whatever he must to forget everything, and everyone, he left behind.

S
arah's pen hovered above the square of watercolor paper—not proper writing paper, but the only paper she had been able to find in a search of the three attic rooms that made up the nursery. Or at least, the only paper that had not been emblazoned with the Sutliffe coat of arms.

A drop of ink hung suspended from the quill's sharp tip, threatening to blot the effort of hours. She had been working on the letter—well, two letters—since before the first pink blush of dawn had provided sufficient light to write by.

The first, to Abigail Norris, had come more easily, but only because she had pretended to be writing to a perfect stranger. The gossip would have spread through Haverhythe by now, of course, but Sarah refused to allow herself to think about Abby's reaction when she learned the gossip was true.

She had labored over the second letter, but still had managed to produce only a few sentences. Casting her eyes over the words one final time, she at last admitted to herself she could think of nothing else to say—or no better way to say what had to be said. Across the middle of the page, she wrote, “
Your loving daughter, Sarah
,” and put the pen aside. Finding no sealing wax in the small desk where she sat, she pushed herself out of her chair, drew her ragged woolen shawl around her shoulders, and walked across what must once have been the governess's room to the windows overlooking the front of the house.

Her gaze traveled across a parterre garden and down a long sweep of lawn. The village, far below, was almost entirely obscured by a carefully placed planting of trees. But what she had seen of it yesterday afternoon was still vivid in her memory.

At first, only a few dilapidated fishermen's huts had marred the coastal scenery. Those were a common enough sight and might be easily explained away. But when they soon gave way to dusty streets, abandoned shop fronts, and unkempt houses, the only explanations she could find offered no comfort. She had understood her marriage was to make life better for someone, even if it had not been her.

Dull eyes had followed the carriage's progress through the village of Lynscombe, seemingly drawn more by the movement than by curiosity. Shuffling along the street, a young woman had struggled beneath the weight of the bundle of rags she was carrying—no, a child, Sarah had realized with no small amount of shock. The church, with a gaping hole in its slate-tiled roof, looked as if a strong storm off the Channel would topple it. In the yard of an inn called the Red Lion, according to a sign that had faded to a rather sickly shade of pink, aimless young men clustered. She wondered that they had not fallen prey to the wiles of some conscription officer luring them with the king's shilling.

During the whole of their journey through the village, she had been unable to pull herself away from the carriage window. Now, however, she turned from the memory with a shiver and walked across the corridor to the vacant playroom. Thanks to the light from another row of high, narrow windows, these facing the gardens at the back of the house, the space was bright. But oddly quiet. Clarissa was still asleep, exhausted by their travels, and Emily had risen not long ago and gone downstairs to fetch breakfast. When they had arrived, not a toy had been in sight, but Clarissa had moved with a child's unerring instinct to the wall of cupboards. In the blink of an eye, she had emptied them of the set of blocks, army of toy soldiers, and cricket ball and bat now littering the floor.

Sinking to her knees in the middle of the room, Sarah slowly began to restore order to the space, although she knew the gesture to be a futile stay against the forces of chaos that would awaken soon enough. Absently, she arranged the jumble of wooden soldiers into orderly ranks, wondering as she did so whether St. John had been the last child to play with them.

She wanted to despise him for his coldness. But a part of her could not help but pity the lonely child he must have been, growing up in this house that seemed a world apart from the one that surrounded it.

She had not seen him since their arrival, when her attention had at first been taken up entirely by Lynscombe Manor, that monument to generations of Sutliffe prosperity, its elegant, symmetrical façade of Portland stone a shimmering pearl against the earthy, autumnal landscape.

The disparity between the house and the village below had pierced her heart. The Marquess of Estley, it seemed, was no better than the Earl of Haverty.

Her thumb rubbed across one of the soldiers' painted faces, worn away by time and a child's affection.

It remained to be seen whether his son would be any different.

Once inside the house, she had expected St. John's father to thunder at him, at her. But when Lord Estley had at last broken the silence, Sarah realized her error. There would be no raised voices, ever. The marquess spoke with a quiet authority that was far more chilling.

No one who met the two men could fail to be struck by the resemblance between them. When she had first met St. John and his father, she had taken girlish pride in the knowledge that her handsome soon-to-be husband would only grow more handsome with age. But until yesterday, she had never before realized how much St. John hated the resemblance. Perhaps he always had—she did not know.

Something about the unaccustomed sag of St. John's shoulders in his father's presence had given her the sense that the battle he was about to engage had its roots far in the past, long before Sarah had entered his life.

What story had St. John's father been told about her long absence and sudden reemergence into their lives? And what had been his reaction to it? He had bid her and Clarissa welcome to Lynscombe, but she could not help but wonder whether the warm greeting would soon be retracted.

Lost in her thoughts, she almost did not hear the nursery door swing open behind her.

“Do you need help with the tray?” she called over one shoulder, thinking Emily had returned.

“I beg your pardon, ma'am.” A strapping young footman blushed to the edges of his powdered wig and bowed. “I was sent to fetch down your trunk.”

“My trunk?” Sarah echoed, her eyes darting to the other room, where it sat.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“But who—why—?” She scrambled to it, but not before the footman had bent to hoist it to his shoulder.

“Just following Mr. Jarrell's orders,” he answered her partially formed questions as he strode through the doorway to leave.

The butler might be a footman's highest authority. But
his
orders had come from someone higher yet—someone in the family—Lord Estley. Was she being sent away at the first possible opportunity, ripped unceremoniously from her daughter?

Tears stinging her eyes, she groped her way blindly out the door, emerging into the corridor just in time to see where the footman had gone. She raced after him, down one, perhaps two, sets of stairs, through a maze of corridors and doorways, into another part of the house entirely. When he disappeared around a corner, she followed, not looking where she was going. One shoulder struck a wall, nearly knocking her off her feet.

And then the wall reached out and stilled her, steadied her, and she knew it for her husband.

“Running away again, Sarah?”

Caught by his arm, pinned against his length, she felt the words as much as heard them, the way they rumbled in his chest and stirred the wisps of hair at her ear.

“No, I—
yes
,” she insisted, trying to break free. “My trunk!”

His eyes followed the footman as he opened a door and passed through it. “You needn't concern yourself with your luggage, ma'am,” he insisted, setting her back on her feet. “Your things are merely being moved to more comfortable accommodations. Rooms better suited to the Viscountess Fairfax.”

“The Viscountess Fairfax?” she echoed uncertainly.

“You may have found ways to avoid the title in Haverhythe, Sarah,” he said, casting a disparaging glance over her black dress, “but I assure you that in Lynscombe you must expect to hear it often. And to suit your behavior to its worth.”

Sarah straightened her spine. “When, my lord, have I ever done otherwise?”

The flick of a crop against his palm made her flinch. He was dressed for riding, she realized when she finally allowed her eyes to focus on him. Correction, he had just returned from a ride. Mud speckled his boots, sweat dampened his hair. And the subtly exotic scent of his cologne was now tempered with heat and horse. He had risen early, ridden hard by the look of things, and was returning to his chambers to freshen up before breakfast.

His chambers. The Viscount Fairfax's chambers. Which must be very near to . . .

She glanced at the door through which the footman had vanished with her trunk.

She could not hide her blush, but it did not seem to matter, for he was not looking at her. His pale eyes were locked on his hands. Yet she sensed, somehow, that his own thoughts were traveling the same ground as hers.

“Do you ride, ma'am?” he asked after an awkward moment.

“No, my lord. Papa called it a country pursuit.”

Another snap of leather against flesh. “Very well, then. We shall walk.” And without another word, he set off down the corridor, in the opposite direction from which Sarah had come.

With a tug on her shawl to pull it into place around her shoulders, she followed.

* * *

Avoiding her gaze, he set off around the corner of the house, marching through the frostbitten remains of what had once been a formal garden, and into unkempt wilderness. His eyes sought and found a once-familiar path, although it was now so overgrown as to be almost invisible. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of Sarah's stumbling footsteps and labored breaths. With a muttered oath, he slowed and offered her his arm.

Still, they did not speak.

After a few moments, they crested the small bluff overlooking the English Channel. Here, only a few scrub trees, those strong enough to withstand the salt air, dotted the landscape. He stood beside her, listening to the seabirds and studying the seemingly random pattern of waves as they built, next upon last, each erasing evidence of what had come before it, like cherished dreams swept away by haunting memories.

He did not know why he had invited her—perhaps
ordered
would be a better word—to walk with him. What he needed was a moment's peace, something time spent with Sarah was unlikely to offer. Something his morning ride had certainly not provided.

It had been a far cry from his recollection of the place. But he knew his boyhood memory could not be trusted. Perhaps in truth, Lynscombe had not changed in the slightest since he had seen it last. Perhaps it had always been run-down and neglected and in need of capital to shore it up.

Well, he had it in his power to change things now.

For better or worse.

Thirty thousand pounds would allow mortgages to be paid, repairs to be done, improvements to be made, and then some. He could save Lynscombe, if he agreed to resurrect his marriage. If he were willing to play along with Pevensey's scheme and tell his wife he could not bear to be separated from her after all.

But that way, he was quite sure, lay madness. If a few days together had weakened his resistance, what might a month do? Or a year?

Experience had taught him that not caring at all was far preferable to caring too much. And he did not want to care—about Lynscombe, Clarissa, any of it. Especially not Sarah.

He did not
want
to care, but it was growing more and more difficult to deny that he
did
.

When he dragged a shuddering breath through his nostrils, she darted a glance at him. “Whatever it is you have to tell me, my lord, it cannot be worse than your silence.”

“Are you certain of that, my lady?” he shot back.

“No.”

Her voice was so soft that if he had not been looking at her, he would not have known that she had spoken. He walked a few steps farther. “The path continues along this ridge and goes down to the water,” he explained, indicating a well-worn trail cut from the limestone, which led down to a sheltered stretch of the strand. From the cliff's edge, they could watch the incoming tide carve out rivers and islands among the sand. A dark line along the chalky face of the bluff marked high water, when the little spit of beachhead would disappear entirely. “Once the favored haunt of a little boy who fancied himself a pirate.”

Cautiously, she craned her neck to peer down to the beach and shivered. “It is difficult to imagine you playing here. Growing up here.”

“It was the only home I knew until I was almost ten years old.”

“When your mother died,” she ventured, more certainty than question in her voice.

He wanted no one's pity. Certainly not Sarah's. “Yes. Father married the present Lady Estley soon afterward—too soon, some might say,” he acknowledged, striving to sound matter-of-fact. “My stepmother preferred—prefers—London and Sutliffe House at all seasons. And my father has been content to indulge her. Once upon a time, I imagined . . .” He slashed at the heavy beard of a stalk of grass with his crop, scattering its seeds to the wind. “Clearly, he cares nothing for this place.”

“Perhaps there is another explanation for his absence.” She paused. “Forgive me for asking this, but did your mother die here?”

“She did.” After so many years, the wound ought to have healed, but beneath Sarah's prodding it still felt achingly raw. “She fell down the nursery stairs after coming to the schoolroom to listen to my lessons one morning. Her neck was broken,” he said, pushing out the words over the sound of Sarah's gasp of horror. “And—and the child she had been carrying was lost, too. I knew nothing of that at the time, of course.”