The Heart Denied (30 page)

"We're at Wolverton, sir--mightn't you want to stop? The fog's got thick and the horses a mite skittish." He rubbed his hands together. "A bit chill up there, as well," he added sheepishly, nodding toward his perch.

"Have we passed the inn?"

"No, M'lord, I wouldn't ask to go back. 'Tis directly ahead."

"I don't know how you can tell in this stew. Hie to it, then. Just one buttered rum, Dobson, you'll need your wits about you." He peered over the coachman's shoulder. "The moon will be up in a while."

Dobson nodded. "You coming in, sir?"

Thorne shook his head. "I especially need my wits about me. And I'd like to be in London before daylight."

Dobson tipped his hat. "We will be, M'lord. Thank you, sir." He shut the door firmly against the cold, creeping dampness.

Thorne leaned down and shook the copper brazier to stir up some heat and, drawing out his pocket watch, settled back to await the coachman's return.

* * *

Hobbs' heart leapt into his throat as he glanced up to see Gwynneth. She hadn't set foot in the stables since the night he'd stolen her virginity, and he hadn't dared inquire after her. He stood, searching in vain for any sign of emotion on her face. "Milady," he said hoarsely. "May I be of some service-"

"You've serviced me quite enough, thank you. Like the braying jackass that confuses a thoroughbred filly with his own kind. And now there is a mule on the way."

He stared at her, his breath suspended, his head suddenly light. "You're carrying my child?"

"I am. No other has ever planted seed in me...not even my husband, as you must surely know
by now."

He tried to speak, but she wouldn't let him.

"The babe shall be born nigh summer solstice, by John Hodges' estimation. Not," she said caustically, "that I had any doubt as to the eve of its conception."

Dumbfounded, Hobbs could only stare. That he had fathered the first offspring of Lady Neville, Baroness Neville of Wycliffe, was a miracle of profound justice--recompense for the land he would never own, for the power and respect he would never enjoy without benefit of an estate. Add to that the years he'd labored from sunrise to sunset for a living, when all along he should have been waited upon by others for even his simplest needs, amidst all the luxury of the manor house up on the hill.

He wanted to shout his triumph from atop the tower.

"I never guessed you were a virgin." A tremor in his voice betrayed his effort to match her reserve. "Otherwise, I'd have exercised more restraint."
But I would bloody well have taken you nonetheless
. "Have you told him?"

She gave him a withering look. "Do you think I'd be standing here on his land if I had? I should be in the nunnery whence I came, Tobias Hobbs, or deposited at my father's rotting shell of a Hall. And
you'd
be cold in your grave."

"Oh, I doubt that, Milady. Your husband is far too lily-livered for violence. Consider the strange brand of justice he administered when the Combs slut found her belly swelling and laid the blame at my door...he kept both of us on, and invented a new situation for the lying tramp!"

"Aye," Gwynneth said grimly, and pulled her cloak tight around her. "He'd have kept that woman in his house even were she a murderess, I think. But his benevolence has limits. And I'm not his serving wench, I'm his wife--his chattel, as you've said before--and you've taken me right under his nose. Thorne Neville may appear mild-mannered under most circumstances, but I have seen murder in his eyes...as will you."

"Then you will tell him."

"I must tell him something. He doesn't believe in virgin births."

Hobbs almost smiled. "Nor will he believe the babe is his nephew. Or niece."

Gwynneth frowned. "Pardon?"

"The babe will have Wycliffe blood running through its veins," he said softly.

She slowly shook her head. "There is no Wycliffe blood in my line. My father would have told me long ago."

Hobbs laughed--briefly, bitterly, hands clenching at his sides. "I should have known you'd misunderstand."

She stamped her foot. "Then
what
are you saying to me?"

"I am saying," he rapped out with sudden cold fury, his fist striking the post, "that
I am Thorne Neville's brother
."

* * *

"You," Gwynneth said when she found her voice, "are a raving lunatic."

She turned on her heel and beat a staccato path to the doorway, her hood flying back onto her shoulders. "I'll not stay to hear more, indeed I must tell your master of your lapse into utter madness!" she cried, her heart pounding.

"Hearken, Milady!" Hobbs was smiling when she whirled to face him, but his eyes were like flint. "I am not mad. I should be, knowing what I've known all this time, and helpless to do anything about it. I told you once that my mother was in service on this manor--a score of years ago."

Gwynneth blinked, remembering immediately.

"Her name was Cornelia Hobbs, a chambermaid...and some time after Catherine Neville's death, she swept herself right into the amorous clutches of the grieving widower."

"You lie."

"Do I? I wasn't given the sordid details. Suffice it to say that their dalliance resulted in 'the bearing of fruit.'  More poetic than your mule analogy."

"And I suppose
you
were the fruit."

His silence and bitter expression were more convincing than anything he might have said. Slowly, grudgingly, Gwynneth moved to the rough-hewn bench and sat down, pulling a watch locket out over her cloak and snapping it open. "Five minutes. Then
I shall take my leave...and God help you if you dare try to stop me."

Hobbs seemed unfazed by her threat, almost as if he hadn't heard it. "She was ashamed and afraid to tell Robert Neville her secret, despite his affection for her, and rather than risk rejection or humiliation, she fled the manor, collected her daughter of seven years from a nearby relative and high-tailed it to Birmingham. She reared us there, working her fingers to the bone for a seamstress in the town, although my half-sister had as much to do with my raising. We were both schooled for a time, until my mother saw fit to take me to Wycliffe Hall, where Pennington took me on as a groom. My mother returned to Birmingham with an easier mind. By that time she and my half-sister had a little dressmaker's shop there."

"And Robert Neville never knew you were his son?"

"Never."

"Your name didn't 'rouse his curiosity? And your age?"

Hobbs shook his head. "No doubt my mother was long forgotten," he said bitterly.

"Then Thorne has no notion you're his half-brother."

"None."

"Why haven't you told him?"

Hobbs gave a snort. "Ah, indeed...why haven't I simply trotted up to the south gardens entrance of his ancestral home, traipsing mud and dung through his spotless kitchen and down his carpeted hall and into his holy sanctuary--pardon me,
study
, with my hat in hand--only to inform him that I, his stable master, am in fact his
blood
brother
by half?" His expression mocked her. "Because, Milady, he should think me quite mad, as you did moments ago."

"No, you're wrong!" Gwynneth cried softly, her face suddenly alight. "He would listen. Thorne always listens, and you will convince him as you have me."

Hobbs smiled slyly. "You're thinking that then he'd be more likely to forgive me for cuckolding him? I think
not
, Milady." He sobered. "The reason I've kept it to myself is that I haven't a shred of proof to back my story. And were I Neville, and my stableman approached me after several years of relatively quiet service and claimed to be my brother, I'd laugh him out of my house straightaway--after I'd sacked him, that is."

"Yes, but you're
not
Thorne, and you don't know him as I do. He would at least listen, and give your claim some consideration. He might even make confirming inquiries."

"Of whom?" Hobbs scoffed. "My dead mother? There is no one to validate my claim, Milady. Certainly no one in Birmingham knew my father's identity. They only knew I was a bastard."

Gwynneth paled. "As this child of ours shall be, if you shirk your responsibility."

Hobbs gave a snort. "What, should I take you off to live in some hovel and seek another situation, with no references to give? I cannot leave this place, Milady. It has been my home for many years...and my goal, my quest, for the last two, ever since my dying mother told me of my birthright.

"'Tis
not
your birthright. You're the second son, you've no claim to the estate."

"I'm not stupid," he groused. "I'm well aware that Neville is the elder. But if he were to die, who should inherit?"

"I should, at present," Gwynneth said, her voice faltering. "But when he learns of this child,
neither
of us shall be his heir--you'll be in a pine box underground, and I'll be resident at Saint Mary's, a solitary outcast, never to take the veil. As for our child, who knows? Thorne might see fit to make it his heir. 'Twould be quite like him."

Hobbs sat down at his worktable, forehead in hand. "Proof," he muttered, rubbing his brow. "If I'd but proof of my siring, I should already have been declared next-in-line to the heir-apparent. You would be my dependent
upon Neville's death...and free to marry me."

Gwynneth shivered. "There is no point in such ramblings. He is quite alive. You are simply the stable master by his reckoning, while I am fertile with seed that does not belong to him. 'Twill not take him long to see a connection--he has several times chastised me for treating you as a familiar."

Hobbs' voice was ominously quiet. "He won't live forever."

"He will outlive you. He'll see to it." Gwynneth rose from the bench, staring down at Hobbs until he met her eyes. "You are a coward," she said quietly, and in some deep recess of her mind saw a fleeting vision of herself standing on the battlements. "Better our child should die, than to know its father is less than a man."

"See here now-"

"Your crude notion of love, and your consuming greed," she went on as if he hadn't interrupted, "have been my undoing." Having spoken without rancor, she felt a quiet strength steal over her, a peaceful acceptance of her situation. "Remember that, Hobbs. Remember it whenever you remember me."

She turned away, her head held high, and walked over the threshold--out into the night, and out of Tobias Hobbs' life.

* * *

"I am sorry, M'lord, but the household has long retired for the night," said the politely surprised voice from below. "Might you call again tomorrow?"

Caroline came out onto the gallery and leaned over the balustrade. "Who is it, Gilbert?" She peered just beyond the small aura cast by the footman's candle. "Thorne? Is that you?" She drew her scarlet China-silk wrapper snugly over her breasts and descended the stairs, her hair a luxurious mantle over her shoulders. "Lord Neville," she said graciously, having gathered her wits. Reaching the foot of the stairs, she ignored Gilbert's scandalized expression and held a hand out in greeting. It was promptly grasped in long, strong fingers.

"Mistress Sutherland. Please forgive my intrusion at this strange hour, but I must speak with you." The piercing blue eyes all but demanded admittance.

"Come to the drawing room, then. Gilbert will take your hat and cloak." Turning to lead the way, she scowled at her disapproving footman. "You
may retire, Gilbert. Lord Neville knows his way out."

Inside the drawing room, Caroline stepped around Thorne to shut the doors behind them. She hadn't so much as taken her fingers off the brass handles when she sensed him behind her, and froze. Somehow she knew he was standing as close to her as he could without touching.

Seconds ticked by; still he made no contact.

"I should go and change into something more appropriate," she said faintly. Her fingers tightened on the handles.

The scent of sandalwood floated beneath her nose and mingled with her fragrance. She closed her eyes, struggling to calm herself, and whispered tautly, "Why have you come?"

Chills raced from her scalp to her toes and back again as his warm breath caressed her ear.

"Upon my last visit," he said huskily, "I confessed I stood hovering at the edge of a certain pit."

Caroline bowed her head against the paneled door; her breath caught as she felt the subtle press of Thorne's powerful body against her barely clad curves.

"I have just this day," he murmured, his lips grazing her ear, "been pushed into it headlong."

Caroline opened her eyes to the gray light of impending dawn. The fire had died in the grate, but she felt warmth aplenty under the blankets. There the fire had died less than an hour ago. She smiled to herself, then heard a soft rustling across the room.

Thorne was at the window, holding the long velvet draperies aside to peer into the chill morning gloom. Caroline knew there was nothing to see on the street or the green; residents of this wealthy suburb of London would never dream of being about so early, and the servants took the alleys. But Thorne, with his rural roots planted deep, had seldom been able to out-sleep the dawn.

She turned over, gathering the covers cozily around her. "Come back to bed," she purred, yawning and stretching like a sleek, sated feline.

She heard the smile in his voice as he let the drapery fall and approached the bed. "Have you slept at all, vixen?" He leaned over her. "Seek your dreams," he murmured, and touched his lips to her eyelids. "I'll not take my leave before breaking fast with you."

She frowned slightly. "Leave?"

"'Tis Christmas Eve," he reminded her. "I must leave for Wycliffe this morn."

"Must you?" she asked, then mentally kicked herself. Of course he must. Thorne wouldn't spend Christmas away from his home and his wife. Too, there were the servants to consider, and perhaps even some guilt to assuage, as he'd spent the last two days in Caroline's home...and the last three nights in her bed.

As she pressed two long-nailed fingers against his lips to signify her acceptance, he caught them gently between his teeth and flicked them with his tongue. Caroline's hips bucked with the sudden lightning in her loins, prompting a low chuckle from her agitator.

Pride pricked, she nonetheless reached for him, and in one fluid movement he lifted the covers to slip beneath them and slide willingly into the silken trap of her long limbs. Their mouths merged hungrily for a time before she suddenly threw the bedcovers back--only to straddle her lover's brawny thighs.

"Whoa, what's this?" The huskiness of his voice sent delicious shivers up her spine, but she resisted when he took her by the hips and tried to sit her astride his rigid member. He ceased his efforts then, and waited, the gleam in his eyes momentarily eclipsed by curiosity.

She held herself above him, warning him with a slow shake of her head against any sudden movement, then took the middle finger of his hand and slid it into the warm wetness of her mouth.

He grunted and tried again to pull her down onto his straining shaft, but she'd been prepared for that, and gripped his wrist; holding him at arm's length, she resumed her oral assault on yet another long, brown digit.

He lay there, glaring as best he could through the lust in his eyes. "Am I to endure this teasing indefinitely?"

Caroline filtered a smoky look through her lashes. "You've little choice, my lord...you are entirely at my mercy." She bared her teeth in a wicked smile before clamping them gently on the pad of his thumb.

Thorne lunged into a sitting position. Holding Caroline at the small of her back, he reached down to cup the thick-thatched mound between her legs, making her gasp as he slid his long fingers through her moist folds and deep inside her, where he stroked her with a relentless rotating rhythm that sent liquid fire through her veins and turned her knees to water. Meanwhile his tongue thrummed a taut nipple, and as Caroline groaned in delicious agony, he closed his mouth over it and suckled hungrily.

Her climax was sudden and convulsive. In a half-daze she lay atop him, where she'd collapsed at the first onslaught of pulsing contractions, and was nonplused to hear a low rumble of laughter in his chest.

"So, I'm entirely at your mercy."

She raised her head to see his goading smile. "Do not be so quick to mock, my lord," she warned, and before he could say another word had straddled him again. "Now," she said softly, digging her knees into the down mattress, "you must promise to behave, and not to interfere."

He said nothing, made no move. Watching his face, Caroline sensually rolled and massaged her colossal breasts until their dark peaks projected in bold invitation.

The predatory flame in Thorne's eyes flared like a fresh-fueled torch. Caroline felt his hardness leap and throb against her inner thigh, where it left a moist, pearly precursor of his seed; still he kept his hands down on the bed, if only by clutching desperately at the counterpane.

"Well...do you promise?" Lifting one breast, she slowly circled its aureole with her tongue, watching Thorne hunger after every move. When with a soft moan she closed her lips over her taut nipple to suckle, she heard him groan long and deep from within his chest. His every muscle was rigid, and his manhood--thick, heavily veined and lengthened beyond Caroline's expectation--waved and lunged wildly in the air, searching frantically for some warm, wet softness in which to bury itself.

"I promise," he said thickly. "I promise...God's blood, wench, but you're a merciless tease!"

With altogether a different sort of promise in her black-velvet eyes, Caroline released her shiny, jutting peak with a flick of her tongue. "Very good," she whispered, and felt Thorne's skin break into gooseflesh as she ran her nails lightly up his rib cage and into the thick mat of black curls on his chest.

Settling back on her haunches, she stroked his thighs, all the while gazing at his magnificent member. Knowing he was watching raptly, she ran her tongue slowly and deliberately over her lips; scooting backward a bit for better leverage, she deliberately wriggled her curvaceous bottom in the air.

"I cannot endure much more of this," he said through his teeth.

Her hair tumbled forward then, wave after black silk wave assaulting his hard belly, making him flinch and suck in his breath as she bent over him with a throaty chuckle. "Not to worry, my lord," she purred. "Deliverance is at hand...
this
hand, in particular." She wrapped her slender fingers as best she could around his engorged manhood, and gently retracted the cowl of velvety foreskin to bare his glistening glans; then, giving him a sultry look, she parted her moistened lips and slowly lowered her head.

* * *

The oriel windows of the great hall were unusually bright, as Thorne had expected. As the coach drew near, he noticed a dim glow from Gwynneth's chambers. His own chamber windows were more luminous; apparently he was expected home tonight despite his neglect to send word. He steeled himself to act the cheerful and contented master for the evening, though he hadn't felt the peace and quiet joy of Christmas since before his father's illness and death. This year would be no exception.

But Jennings' enthusiastic greeting was heartening, and rounding the wood screen into the festooned great hall with its roaring fire, Thorne sensed his own mood elevating, and the savory aroma of succulent roast goose stuffed with sage and onion only heightened it.

From the dais, Arthur and Dame Carswell were keeping watch on the festivities. Byrnes, Markham, Bridey and numerous scullery, parlor and chambermaids were gathered up and down the length of the U-shaped table, which bore a wassail bowl and several platters of food. Some of the footmen and grooms, all young men with roving eyes, were swaggering about with cups in hand for the benefit of the many unattached females, while others, having braved the risk of rejection, were now dancing to the tune of a sprightly fiddle.

Thorne spotted William milling about the outer edges of the throng, then saw him exit alone through the larder--a rendezvous to keep? He wouldn't have expected such from the shy, gangly youth. Just then Dobson entered from the kitchen with his men, having unhitched the horses and returned them to the stables in short order, and William was forgotten in the merry mayhem that ensued.

Conspicuously absent was Hobbs. Thorne cynically supposed he'd found more entertaining means of celebration.

One other glaring absence startled him. Gwynneth seemed to be missing from the revelers. As mistress of the manor she should have hosted graciously in his stead until he arrived. But then again... He experienced a wave of guilt as he considered his own deliberate absence the last three days.

Arthur, having waited to distribute the manor's monetary brand of Christmas cheer, seemed greatly mollified by Thorne's arrival. He knew nothing of Gwynneth's whereabouts, but refrained from looking too sympathetic at Thorne's obvious embarrassment.

"She took tea in her chambers this afternoon, M'lord," Byrnes replied to Thorne's terse inquiry. "She give me leave 'til the morrow and said she'd be praying in her chambers this eve, as 'twas only fitting, and said she hoped I'd do the same in mine." The maid glanced guiltily at her half-empty cup.

Thorne's smile was grim. "Aye, well, saints have no need of Christmas. 'Tis we sinners who have cause to celebrate. Carry on, Byrnes."

The huge pewter wassail bowl was refilled, and mugs of the steaming beverage were lifted for any and every possible excuse. If Gwynneth's retreat was resented, there was no sign, and Thorne reflected, again cynically, that the night's revels were all the merrier for her absence. High-spirited conversation punctuated by peals of raucous laughter echoed through the rafters of the great hall. Manners slipped a notch or two; cheekiness was more than usually tolerated, kisses and embraces stolen under the great cluster of mistletoe that had been cut from an apple tree in Carmody's orchard. The traditional Yule log was burning--an entire beech tree, fed trunk-end first into the roaring fire throughout the twelve days of Yuletide--and with music that seldom gave pause, since when one fiddler tired another took his place, the dancers were soon working themselves into a lather.

Thorne sat at the head of the table, Arthur to his immediate left and Gwynneth's empty seat to his right, and tried to enjoy the merriment. But no matter how many mugs of wassail he consumed, he could not dull his painful awareness of one woman's absence.

Where was she this night, Combs and her unborn? Though not a praying man by habit, he sent a fervent hope heavenward that she was alive and well and sheltered by more than a mere stable.

The celebration dwindled to an end long after midnight, the Yule log carefully dowsed and the clutter abandoned for morning. After seeing that no drunken bodies littered the great hall, Thorne retired to his chambers, pausing outside the door as he considered visiting Gwynneth--a moment of madness he let pass.

And so it was that the master and his household settled down for the short remainder of the night, not in the least suspecting that Christmas festivities at Wycliffe Hall would be over almost as soon as they had begun.

* * *   

"M'lord!" Byrnes hastily curtsied to Thorne, who had just stepped out into the gallery. "A happy Christmas Day to ye, sir. Does her ladyship await in your chambers?"

One eyebrow took wing. "No, Byrnes, I haven't seen your mistress this morn. Perhaps she's gone to the church."

"But M'lord, her bed hasn't been slept in, and her fire burnt out last eve from the looks of it. I...I thought she was with ye, sir." She blushed to the roots of her mouse-brown hair.

"You thought wrongly," Thorne said, though not unkindly, and turned toward the great stairs. "She very likely went to early Nativity Mass," he said over his shoulder. "Have William inquire at the coach house."

* * *

"M'lord."

Thorne looked up from his ledger, surprised to see Arthur. "Shouldn't you be on your way to Kettering?"

"That can wait. I've just come from the coach house, where I heard William asking after her ladyship." The furrows in Arthur's brow deepened. "Dobson says no coach was ordered this morn. Her ladyship has not gone to the church."

Thorne went back to his work, his jaw tightening almost imperceptibly as he said, "Perhaps Hobbs escorted her there on horseback."

Arthur shook his head. "He's in the stables. And though he reeks of spirits and gawks at me cross-eyed, he swears he hasn't seen her ladyship in two or three days."

Feeling a bit cross-eyed himself, Thorne sighed and said tersely, "Very well. 'Twill embarrass her no end when she's found, but call for a search. Get Carswell to organize it. Only the house, mind you. I doubt she's ventured out into the cold and damp."

"Mightn't you want to join in, M'lord? The servants might otherwise think-"

"Let them think what they may." Thorne slammed the ledger shut. "As they will at any rate." Looking up, he saw Arthur's discomfiture and softened his expression. "I'm the last person she wants to see. Nevertheless, when she's found, have her sent to me."

* * *

A half-hour passed, and as reluctant as Thorne was to admit anxiety over Gwynneth, he found himself glancing frequently at the mantel clock. His door was ajar, and the sound of muted voices and hurried steps told him the search was still on. After another quarter-hour, Arthur poked his head in the doorway.

"Where is she?" Thorne asked sharply.

"I wish I knew, M'lord. I do know she's not in this house."

He stepped back as Thorne sprang from his chair and rounded the desk.