Lady of Desire (12 page)

“Want to see some smugglers’ caves?”

“Real smugglers?” Justin cried, turning to him, the wind running riot through his carroty hair.

Billy nodded with cool bravado. “Coast is crawlin‘ with’em.”

“Aye, Captain!” Justin yelled, but Reg paled and clung to the gunwale with a white-knuckled grip as the little boat rode the blue waves past the towering, folded cliffs.

“It sounds a bit… dangerous.”

“It is.” Billy flashed him a fearless grin, handed the telescope back to Reg, and slid down jauntily at the oars. Justin took his place at the bow to catch the sea spray on his face, while Billy rowed hard against the seething sea.

He was a strong boy, taller than the others. Everyone said he was going to be big like Papa, for he was already as broad across as his seventeen-year-old brother, Percy.

Beneath the stark, stone ruins of an ancient fort high upon the sun-baked pinnacles, he rowed past the round-mouthed cave where a fortune in black-market goods was rumored to be stored. All the girls around here were in love with the romantic dashing smugglers. With a cocksure look, he asked his friends if they wanted to go and have a look inside the caves, but was secretly relieved when both shook their heads in fright. They were glad enough not to have spotted the French fleet and Boney come to carry out his longstanding threat to invade England.

At length, Billy rowed them back to the short stretch of beach from which they had set sail that morning. While sunset smoldered in the west behind them, he and Justin hopped out of the boat, barefooted, their trousers rolled up around their shins, and dragged the skiff back up onto the golden sands. Their bellies rumbling, they climbed up onto the dramatic vantage point of the promontory to have their picnic of Cornish pasty and West Country cheese washed down with a jug of delicious scrumpy.

They sat in contented silence for a while, watching sunset light the ocean, a spreading stain of liquid gold. The sky glowed fierce fiery orange and pink streaked with purple, while restful blue stole down softly from the east, lighting the little stars one by one. Billy felt lulled by the rhythmic thunder of the waves buffeting the rocks below like a mother’s heartbeat.

Slowly the sea deepened to indigo and the sky to black, and the lighthouse on the small rocky islet a league offshore sent its beam sweeping out over the water and the rocks where the seals snuggled down for the night. The boys remembered then that Cook had promised them clotted cream with black treacle when they returned. They climbed to their feet; gathered up their play pirate swords and fishing rods, their catch of bream and monkfish in the bucket, their finds of seashells and interesting rocks, bits of serpentine and feldspar wrapped securely in a polka-dotted neckerchief; and trudged homeward through the twilight.

Billy slipped the telescope into the deep pocket of his coat just as he walked through an odd chilly patch. The misty coolness grazed his cheeks like a ghost wafting past. The sensation raised the hackles on his nape, but then, as the boys stepped up onto the crest of the ridge, the towers of Torcarrow came into sight, then the rest of the sprawling pile. Torcarrow consisted of a fourteenth-century fortified manor house appended to an ancient towered keep overlooking the sea, for the warrior lords of Truro and St. Austell had guarded Cornwall against French invaders for nearly three hundred years.

But as Billy gazed down the sloping green toward his home, he felt his blood run cold.

Father’s carriage was there.

At once, his heart began to pound. He had not expected Truro the Terrible back for another few days, but there, by the light of the flambeaux burning around the courtyard of the east entrance, he beheld the marquess’s coach crouched like a beast ready to spring.

Billy swallowed hard and did his best to mask his fear from his friends. He suddenly lost his appetite for Cook’s sweet treat and could think of nothing but returning his father’s telescope to its glass case in the study before it was missed. Unfortunately, the dusty oak-paneled study was the first place the marquess usually went upon returning home, to see to any matters of business or correspondence that might have arisen during his absence. Drunk or sober, Lord Truro enjoyed the duties that enhanced his sense of power and control over all matters pertaining to his holdings and possessions, among which he counted the members of his family.

It took the lads another twenty minutes before the meandering drive brought them into the shadow of Torcarrow. Billy led Reg and Justin around to the kitchens to deliver their fish and to tell Cook they were ready for their dessert. Anxious to return the telescope before his sire reached his study, he excused himself and told his friends he’d be right back, but he paused, glancing at Mrs. Landry, their dear old Cook.

“Cooky, where’s Mother?”

“Why, Master William,” the stout old woman said, giving him a subtle warning look, “Her Ladyship has just retired to her rooms for a rest. A bit of the headache, I’m afraid.”

Billy absorbed the news grimly. Mother had a sort of internal barometer that always measured Truro’s brewing storms. Whenever she felt one coming on, she wisely retreated to the safety of her chamber and did not come out until the headache had passed. She never asked Billy about his bruises.

With the telescope hidden in his loose coat pocket, banging guiltily against his side with every step, he prowled stealthily through the corridors, past the big, mahogany staircase. He saw the servants huddling here and there, trying to keep out of the master’s way. A familiar, eerie quiet had come over the house, but well before his father’s study came into view, he heard the marquess yelling at a footman. The dressing-down sounded even more stringent than usual.

“Bloody hell,” Billy whispered to himself as he heard his father accusing the footman of stealing his telescope and threatening to turn him over to the sheriff.

“Father, perhaps they were only cleaning it!” Billy heard his elder brother, Percy, say inside the library.

A superior seventeen-year-old down from Oxford, Percy, the heir, was, aside from Mother, the only one in the household who never took a beating. It was just as well, for he was a thin, poetic sort of lad who caught a sniffle in every cold breeze. One round against Father would probably have killed him. Billy, however, was another story. Billy could take a punch.

As he walked toward the study, his palms went cold and began to sweat, but somehow he summoned his courage. Even before he stepped into the room and saw his old man, drunk and disheveled in his rumpled velvet coat, slamming the bewildered footman against the wall, he knew that when he confessed to the deed, it was going to be a bad one.

Best to go out boldly, he thought, unaware that Reg and Justin had followed him and were about to see everything that was to happen.

He squared his shoulders and strode into the library, pulling the telescope out of his pocket. “Sir.” He held it up. “I have your telescope. No one stole it. It’s right here.” He stopped, holding up the spyglass as his father turned around, his chest heaving, his face red from his tirade. “I borrowed it.”

Truro’s bleary eyes narrowed at Billy. He dropped the liveried footman unceremoniously. The young manservant scrambled away. “Well,” said the marquess. “Borrowed it, did you, now?”

Billy held his ground. The redness of Truro’s eyes due to drink made his green irises look all the more wild and bright. With his lank brown hair streaked with gray and his scruff-darkened jaw badly in need of a shave, the marquess looked more pirate than Billy could ever hope to be, but as his father bent near, breathing liquor fumes in his face, all Billy could think of was the giant of Portreath.

“Father,” Percy said in a warning tone as the marquess stalked slowly toward his younger son.

Billy held his father’s stare with the insolence of one who had long since learned it was no good groveling.

“Father,” Percy begged in despair, “please! Leave him alone—”

The first blow sent Billy flying into the nearest bank of bookshelves. He banged his lip on a wooden shelf and fell, a rain of books tumbling down upon him. His father strode through the pile of dusty, unread tomes and picked him up by his arm, lifting him just high enough to get a good angle for a second punch and a third. From the corner of his eye, Billy saw his blood fleck the open pages of
he Morte d’Arthur
, but there was no escape from the hail of his father’s punches and kicks. Truro even picked up a hefty dictionary and slammed him in the head with it.

“How many times have I warned you not to touch my things? You little thief! Thought you could sneak it back without my knowing, did you? You think you’re clever?”

Billy was aware of his own voice spluttering out a frantic denial and a cascade of apologies that did him no good whatsoever. He let out a sharp cry of pain as his father grasped a handful of his hair and jerked his head back.

That was when he realized that this time his old man was going to kill him.

“Father!” Percy shrieked, rushing toward them, only to be sent sprawling when Truro swiped him away with a stinging backhand.

“
Never
touch my things. It’s that school that’s teaching you to put on airs, ain’t it, William? Well, maybe you just need to stay here with me where I can teach you some manners!”

Bleeding from the nose and the corner of his mouth, feeling his left eye already swelling shut, Billy lifted his head and looked into his father’s face in silent, pleading pain. The marquess slammed his head down on the strewn books and kicked him in the stomach. Over the next few minutes, several eternities ran together, and Billy felt awareness slipping away from him. His ears were ringing almost too loudly to hear someone crying.

“
Stop
!” a high-pitched voice screamed.

Miraculously, the command worked, but when Billy rallied himself to look over at the doorway, he saw Justin and Reg standing there, pale and terror-stricken—and his humiliation was complete. His pride crumbled, his terrible secret revealed. In an instant, his whole life was ruined. His new friends were bound to tell the other boys at school what they had seen; then everyone would know that he was worth nothing, unwanted. The haven he had found at Eton vanished into the mist like the lost kingdom of Lyonesse, which according to legend, had sunk into the sea off the Cornwall coast centuries ago. His father straightened up slowly and regarded the intruders for such a long, hazy moment that Billy half feared he would attack them, too.

“L-lord Truro?” Justin stammered in appalled amazement.

The marquess cleared his throat, tugged at his coat, and smoothed his long, wild hair. “Gentlemen, my son is guilty of a serious infraction of the rules of this household. I’m afraid you will have to return to your families at once. The holiday is over.”

“Billy?” Reg whispered. “Are you all right?”

He could not bring himself to look at him or at Justin. Tears stung the backs of his eyelids, but he refused to let them fall.

“Do not be alarmed, boys. William is quite hardy. Moore, ready the coach. The young masters will be leaving tonight.”

“Tonight, Father?” Percy cried. “It’s dangerous on the roads at this hour—”

“Accompany them yourself if you don’t like it,” Truro bit back.

“I will!” Percy answered in affront. He turned to the younger boys. “Justin, Reg, I will go in the coach with you to make sure you arrive safely.”

“See you at school, Billy,” Reg offered timidly.

Please don’t tell anyone
, he wanted to beg them, but his pride forbade him to ask any favors from any person. Not when he had been told no from the day he was born.

Truro ordered everyone out of the study, leaving Billy half buried under a heap of books, teetering dizzily on the verge of unconsciousness. When Reg and Justin had gone to collect their belongings, the marquess warned the servants not to interfere, but to leave him to his punishment of solitude.

The marquess passed a hostile glance over the destruction he had wrought. “I want this room cleaned up before you retire,” he growled at Billy, then closed the door behind him, plunging the room into cool, silken darkness.

For a long while, Billy didn’t move. He closed his eyes, awash in misery as pain throbbed through his body. Unable to hold them back anymore, silent tears rolled down his cheeks more for the loss of his brief happiness at school. He wondered in despair if anyone was ever going to love him. But then, as he lay there, crushed in body and spirit, a maelstrom of unholy rage began churning in him, gathering force. It drove him up onto his hands and knees in the darkness. He looked down blindly at the books he had been ordered to put away and saw the flecks of his blood that speckled a few of the pages. He reached down slowly and began picking the books up, but as he lifted one, the fury burst from him. With a cry of pent-up rage, he grasped a handful of the pages and tore them out.

He shredded the book, and another, throwing the leather bindings across the room, a creature gone wild. He no longer cared. He felt his body shaking but was outside himself somehow; the pain ceased to matter. He had come to the end of what his pride and his spirit could endure; his revenge felt glorious.

He seized his father’s telescope and used it to smash the glass case, bending the instrument in the process. His chest heaving, he looked wildly at his father’s desk and stalked over to it, sweeping its contents onto the floor. He picked up the ink bottle and hurled it, splattering blue-black stains across his father’s naval portrait from his youth. With the image of young Lord Truro irrevocably destroyed, the anger left him suddenly.

Billy stood staring in the moonlit room at the ruined painting, his father’s hated face blacked out by the misshapen ink stain. A tide of pure terror rose within him as he returned slowly to his senses and looked around in belated disbelief at what he had done.

His father’s study was destroyed. The business letters, ledger books, and accounting statements were strewn about the room, torn, crumpled, chaotic.

What have I done? He’ll kill me now for certain. I have to get out of here…