To Kiss a Thief (20 page)

“Your father's grief must have been terrible.”

“Grief, ma'am?” he scoffed.

“Is it not possible that your father left because he could not bear to stay in the place where she had been?” she pressed. “Perhaps by leaving he hoped to escape his grief . . . and his guilt.”

He recalled his father's trembling hand as it drew back the tapestry that reserved his late wife's youthful beauty for his eyes alone. Thought of his father's choice not to occupy the suite of rooms he had once shared with St. John's mother. Grief? Guilt? He thrust those memories aside. “You are determined to persist in this delusion that one's past can be outrun.”

“No,” she demurred. “Although certainly one may be tempted to try.”

“A grieving man would have observed a decent period of mourning,” he insisted, his voice rising in spite of himself. “A grieving man would not have married the first silly female who threw herself into his path, and then ordered his son to call her ‘Mama.' ”

“He might have,” she countered gently. “Grief has been known to drive men to madness. I can well imagine a father hoping to allay a young child's anguish in just the way you describe—flawed though the means undoubtedly would be.”

“I assure you, he disdains such weakness.”

“Yes, of course.” She paused. “Most men do.”

He wanted to ask what she meant by that remark, but he feared he already knew. Another heavy silence fell between them, masked by the sound of wind and waves. Turning his gaze back to the water, he said at last, “I could never have believed, when I was a boy here, that I would one day grow up to see a pirate in the flesh.”

“In the West Indies.” The words were mumbled, as if her lips had suddenly gone numb. Antigua and Lynscombe were now tangled together for him in ways he was not sure he could explain. But Sarah seemed to need no explanation. “It changed you, that place.”

“Yes,” he agreed reluctantly. “The place. And the people.”

When he had first arrived at Harper's Hill, Edward Cary had looked him up and down with considerable doubt, his eyes lighting on the angry-looking wound that ran down St. John's cheek, still red from the fiery sear of Brice's blade where it had opened his flesh, the sting and tug of sheep's gut where Murray's needle had closed it again.

“No,”
St. John had been forced to confess.
“But I—I do not require much in the way of wages. I simply need—”

“Occupation?”
Cary had supplied the word with a knowing look.

Much later, when St. John had announced his intention to return to England, Cary had studied his face a long moment, his eyes lingering over the thin, white scar, the most obvious outward sign of the man he had been nearly three years past.
“Whatever it was that sent you here, I'm glad of it,”
Cary had said.
“But whatever it is that calls you home now, remember what you've seen, what you know. Remember the difference one man can make.”

A movement at the corner of his gaze jerked him back to the present. Sarah was knotting her ungloved fingers in the fringe of her shawl. “In all those years serving as a—clerk,” she said, laying skeptical emphasis on the word he had once used to describe his work there, “you must have learned a great deal about the management of people, of land, of money. Perhaps some of that could be put to use here.” He could see that the tips of her fingers were turning blue where the threads of yarn cut into her flesh and prevented the flow of blood. “You are seven and twenty now,” she pointed out hesitantly, as if she expected him to dispute the number. “Perhaps it is time to come to terms with what will one day be yours. Perhaps it is time to persuade your father you can do more—”

“More than what, Lady Fairfax?” he snapped. She spoke only the truth, after all. But he did not want to hear it. “More than bed an heiress?”

She jerked away from his words as if struck. Dislodged by her step, a handful of small stones skittered and scampered their way down to the beach. Instinctively, his long fingers met around her upper arm.

“Be careful, Sarah,” he cried, dragging her hard against his chest, pulling her to safety—although he felt in considerably more danger himself with her in his arms. Their hearts thumped in unison, an uncomfortably intimate rhythm. “You might have—” His voice rough with fear, he could not bring himself to finish the sentence. Alarm flared in her eyes as they flicked from his hand to the rocks below.

With the salty wind tangling her hair, she reminded him of the way she had looked that night on the quay at Haverhythe, terror and passion warring in her aspect.

Once he released her arm, she scuttled away from the cliff's edge, back to the relative security of the footpath. Before he could speak, apologize, explain, she darted off in the direction of the house.

What exactly had he brought her out here to say?

If he had declared a change of heart where their marriage was concerned, would she have welcomed his declaration? Or even believed it? Three years past, he had made no secret of the fact he had not wanted this marriage. And she had tried to run away from it herself—more than once.

Which told the true story of her feelings about him: the trunk stashed in the lane, awaiting a chance at escape? Or the much-handled miniature hidden inside it?

With a shake of his head, he followed her, deliberately holding himself a few yards behind, swiping at the undergrowth with his riding crop as he passed.

He was beginning to know his own heart, but until he felt more certain of hers, it would be far wiser to hold his tongue.

When he reached the manor, Sarah was nowhere in sight. A smart gig stood on the drive. As its driver descended, the hems of a set of bronze skirts peeped into view, followed by the toe of a delicate ankle boot. The brim of a jaunty hat. And a cascade of fire-red curls.

“Eliza!” he called, stepping forward to offer his hand. “How good to see a friendly face.” He was sorely in need of someone who would not fuss or scold or shatter his defenses.

“Ah, Fairfax.” She smiled. “Just back from your morning ride?” she asked, as her emerald eyes flickered over him.

He glanced down at his disheveled kit, almost surprised to find himself still wearing it. Long, scraggly blades of grass clogged the fringed tip of his crop. “Something like that,” he concurred, thrusting it behind his back.

“Lady Estley was most insistent I arrive first thing,” she said as they approached the house. “She is planning a party this evening to celebrate your return. Supper and cards. With all the most important local personages,” she added, an acerbic little smile curving her lips.

He laughed. “A small party, then. Well, you are welcome at Lynscombe, Eliza. Whatever the circumstances.” At the bottom step, he paused. “Do you know?” He did not add the words “about my wife.” He could see by her expression he did not need to.

“Lady Estley was kind enough to share the shocking discovery with me. Three years spent in hiding, doing God knows what with God knows whom, a child born in the interim . . .” She broke off with a theatrical shudder.

“Have a care, Eliza,” he warned. Their friendship gave her a great deal of license, but she must understand how things stood now. “You are speaking of Lady Fairfax.”

“
Lady Fairfax
,” she echoed. “Never say you've come to care for that shopkeeper's daughter you married? After all she's done? Why, even before the first scandal broke, you swore to me you never could.”

“Pevensey is hardly a—” he began. But his feeble protest was arrested by her searching green eyes.

As she studied his expression, her own shifted slightly. Before he could read it, however, she had recovered and something like a smile quirked her lips. “Apparently, I would have done well to remember that promises are like piecrust. Easily broken.”

At the top of the steps, Jarrell opened the door as if on cue. “Good morning, sir. Ma'am,” he said, bowing them through. “I put the other guests in the green receiving room.”

“Guests?” The word echoed in the empty hall.

The butler inclined his head again. “Mr. and Mrs. Richard Pevensey arrived not half an hour past, my lord.”

S
arah flew up the wide central staircase to the first floor. If her head had not already been reeling from the strange encounter on the cliff, certainly the butler's announcement would have sent her into a spin. She paused only long enough to allow a footman to open the set of double doors, then entered the large and impressive room behind them.

Before an imposing marble mantelpiece in the center of an elegant green and gold room stood a middle-aged couple in traveling clothes. They grasped hands and turned as one toward the sound of her entry.

The woman came forward first, her brown hair streaked with gray as it had not been three years back. “Sarah?” she whispered, one tentative hand extended toward her daughter.

“Oh, Mama.” Sarah tangled their fingers together and pulled her mother down to the nearest sofa, fearful her legs would not support her.

With a soft sigh, Mama held their joined hands in her lap and patted Sarah's absently, her eyes searching her daughter's face as if trying to assure herself this was not some fevered vision.

In his characteristically energetic fashion, Papa paced, his movement stirring the draperies. “And where have you been hiding yourself all this time, my girl?” he scolded.

“I have been living in a fishing village on the northern coast of Devonshire.”

“So close?” her mother whispered.

Sarah's eyes dropped closed, as if they still felt the strain of looking out over the water, searching for some glimpse of Bristol in the haze on the horizon. “So close.” When she was more composed, she met her father's gaze once again. “I told the people there I was a widow,” she explained, plucking at her skirt.

“On what did you live?” Her mother gasped.

“I gave lessons on the pianoforte to some of the children in the village,” Sarah answered, lifting her chin as she spoke, refusing to be an object of pity. “It was not much, but I was very careful with what I earned. I boarded with the widow of a fisherman. I lived simply. I made do.”

Papa paused. “That's all very well and good, my dear, but really . . . three years?” His voice was sharp with annoyance. “I don't see how you could allow your mama to worry so. You know the state of her health.”

“I do,” Sarah acknowledged. Mama's health had been a source of concern for as long as Sarah could remember, although no ailment had ever been specified. She thought even now that her mother did not look as bad as she might have—fatigued by the journey, of course, and older, but not exactly ill. “I'm sorry, Papa. I thought it would be best if I left—that it would spare you some of the pain, some of the scandal.”

Papa looked skeptical. “Still, to let us go on believing you had died—?”

She felt a twinge of guilt but pushed it down. She had decided to go, yes. But she had also been driven to do it. “I am sorry that you were hurt, sorry that you worried needlessly for me. But perhaps if I had seen even a glimmer of that concern on the night of the nuptial ball, I would not have felt that I had to leave.”

Mama withdrew her hand and Papa said reproachfully, “What could we have done?”

She was accustomed to thinking of her mother as easily cowed. After all, Papa was a big man—tall, barrel chested, with a voice to match, and despite his tailor's efforts to smooth those rough merchant-class edges, they insisted on wearing through. Mama rarely did anything to invite his wrath. Certainly Sarah had never thought of her father as weak.

Until now.

When she looked at him, Sarah could only see his misguided sense of his own inferiority to men like the Marquess of Estley. “You might have believed in me. You might have come to my defense,” she replied quietly.

“We thought you dead,” her father reminded her. Mama gave a quiet sob and raised a handkerchief—a black-bordered handkerchief, Sarah noted with a pang—to one eye. Papa stepped to his wife's side and patted her shoulder as a sort of silent reprimand of his daughter.

“But before that?” Sarah plunged ahead, biting back her sympathy—sympathy no one seemed willing to extend to her. “Did you really think I had stolen the sapphires?”

“That old necklace? Of course not.” Papa sounded astonished. “Who could think such a thing? But it seemed quite likely that you had been duped by the one who did steal it.”

Mama nodded gravely. “The situation with the officer had a very bad look to it. Anyone might be forgiven for thinking that you—that you and he—had . . .” She blushed and looked away.

“How could you believe it of me?” Sarah whispered. Neither one answered. “Well, I had
not
,” she asserted, on her dignity. “But it was perfectly clear to me that everyone believed I had. So I left.”

Sarah waited. Surely there were more words to be said after so many years. But for a long, painfully silent interval, none seemed to come. At last Mama rose and wandered around the room, studying its features. “All that is in the past,” she said at last with what could only be described as a sense of relief, as if some long-disrupted order had finally been restored. “You've returned now, Sarah. You are where I always imagined you would be—the mistress of a nobleman's estate. The Viscountess Fairfax.”

“Yes, my dream come true,” she agreed, fighting to keep the sardonic edge from her voice. “After a fashion.”

“What do you mean, ‘after a fashion'?” Papa demanded.

“Lord Fairfax intends shortly to return to London to live. Alone.”

Mama recoiled. Papa frowned. “Nonsense.”

“I assure you, he does.”

“Having seen the state of things here, my dear, I daresay he has discovered he cannot afford to.”

Sarah had no notion how much it would cost to maintain their separate households. “Surely the family will not have run through the whole of my dowry,” she reminded them.

“Your dowry?” Papa's lips twitched in a half smile.

“Yes. Thirty thousand pounds ought to—”

“Why, yes, I daresay it would,” he interrupted. “If, that is, Lord Fairfax had much more than the
promise
of those thirty thousand pounds.”

“What do you mean, Papa?” Her pulse leapt. “Did not my husband receive my dowry when we wed?”

“He might have, if not for your mama's stroke of cleverness just as my solicitors were drafting the settlements.”

Mama, who had strolled across the room to examine some piece of bric-a-brac on a corner shelf, smiled without looking up.

How many times had she begged her mother to intercede when her father had grown stubborn about his plan to secure a title for his daughter? Now it seemed that she'd been in favor of marrying Sarah off all along. “What did you do, Mama?”

Mama replaced the china
objet
and made her way back to Sarah. “I knew you were apprehensive about this marriage, my dear. So I did what I could to encourage the growth of your husband's affections—to ensure that you would not be shunted aside.” Sarah frowned her incomprehension. “I simply suggested that the money might be given out over a number of years, rather than all at once—with the proviso that the payments continued only as long as you and your husband lived under the same roof.”

No
. Sarah mouthed the word, but no sound came from her lips.

“I ought to have been more specific, I suppose.” Mama gestured toward the windows and the rural landscape beyond. “I certainly did not mean for you to be shut up in the middle of nowhere.”

“Lord Fairfax knew of this . . . stipulation?” Sarah forced the words past suddenly dry lips. That would certainly explain why he had found it prudent to keep her from falling to her death.

Papa shrugged. “I cannot say what he knew when you married. He seemed in rather a hurry to sign. But Lord Estley assured me in his letter that his son would be made to understand the implications of the arrangement.”

“I'm sure he realizes he cannot afford to separate from you now, dear, despite any—lapses in judgment on your part,” her mother reassured her.

Until that moment, Sarah had not realized a part of her, deep inside, had still been dreaming—dreaming of a fairy-tale resolution to the dilemma she faced, one in which her husband recognized her worth and reaffirmed their bond.

Until that moment, she had not fully understood why wiser heads frequently counseled, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Would the handful of days she had now spent with her husband count for anything, or must they first make up for the thousand or so spent apart? She had no notion of the formula to be used for such calculations.

Thankfully, a tap at the door prevented Sarah from having to form a response. “Come in,” she called, wondering how much of her reunion with her parents had been heard through the door—and by whom.

Emily Dawlish entered the room and looked around uncertainly before locating Sarah on the sofa and offering a belated curtsy. “Mr. Jarrell come and said there were guests who'd be wantin' to see 'Rissa.” Emily reached a hand behind her skirts and drew the girl forward.

Clarissa clutched Emily with one hand and twisted the other in her pinafore. “Mama?”

Sarah dropped to her knees and held open her arms. “I'm right here, dear one.” Clarissa ran to her with a gleeful giggle. “And here are some people you don't know yet. This,” she said, freeing one arm from Clarissa's embrace to gesture behind her, “is your grandmama. And this gentleman is your grandpapa.”

She felt Clarissa's head tilt where it rested on her shoulder. Gathering her daughter in her arms, Sarah rose to her feet and turned back to face her parents. “Meet Lady Clarissa Sutliffe.”

Clarissa twisted so that she could study the unfamiliar faces.

Mama reached out with trembling fingers to brush away a lock of Clarissa's golden-brown hair. “Oh, Sarah,” she whispered.

“Well.” Papa's chest swelled, his eyes only for his granddaughter. “Well,” he said again.

Clarissa seemed to see an opportunity in his open admiration. “Bring present?” she asked, turning her wide violet eyes on him.

Sarah started to shake her head in admonishment, but Papa only chuckled. “What's that? A present for you, little one? I regret to say I did not think to—but that oversight shall be rectified first thing in the morning!”

A shy smile curled Clarissa's lips.

“I'll take her back to the nursery, shall I, mum?” Emily asked, stepping forward.

“Yes, please, Emily,” Sarah agreed. “I'll be up as soon as we're finished here.”

Papa's doting gaze followed Clarissa out the door. “A pity, though, that she was not a boy,” he sighed when the door had latched behind them.

“Not at all,” Mama insisted. “A girl is a blessing.”

Sarah turned, something in her mother's tone rendering those words suspicious. “I do not disagree, Mama, but is there some reason in particular—?”

Her parents exchanged a glance. “I promised Estley another ten thousand on the birth of a son,” her father explained, looking somewhat chagrined by his own conniving.

Sarah sagged onto the sofa, and her mother took up the spot beside her once again.

“Yes,” Mama agreed, “and if Clarissa had been a boy, there might have been . . . questions. Now you've been given another chance, Sarah. He will want an heir.” She leaned forward to brush her daughter's cheek with a cool, dry kiss and whispered, “Just take care not to conceive quite so quickly this time. Remember, dear, a gentleman never expects a lady to be eager for the marital bed. The longer he must wait for his son, the more time you have to secure him.”

Sarah drew back from the unwelcome advice and began to pleat her skirts, trying to distract herself from the memory of St. John's touch. The heat of his body as it met hers.

The chill of the bed when he left it—left her—the moment the deed was done.

Recalling their exchange at the cliff's edge, she understood at last what he had been trying to tell her with those cutting words about bedding an heiress. Awakened to a sense of his obligations by his experiences in the West Indies, he had decided to return to Lynscombe, despite the pain returning obviously caused him. For the sake of his home and the people there, he would make the necessary sacrifices.

Starting with her.

A love match?
She had indulged in a foolish fantasy years ago. She had been a child.

Now she had a child.

If she were free to act only for herself, as she had been three years ago, she could refuse to be his sacrificial lamb. But for Clarissa's sake, she would have to accept this marriage. And everything that came with it.

“Really, Sarah,” her mother sighed with an affectionately disparaging shake of her head, reaching out to stay Sarah's nervous fingers. “Black does not suit you at all. When you send Fairfax the next payment, Richard, include a bit extra for your daughter's clothes. One hopes the village has a tolerable seamstress. But the fabrics must come from town, I think . . .”

What would Mama say if she knew what had become of the last set of fine gowns her father's money had purchased?

Sarah opened her mouth to protest, but her mother merely gripped her hands more firmly.

“Don't say no, dear. You've earned it.”

Forcing her parted lips into something she hoped would pass for a smile, she bit back her reply.