The Marsh Hawk (6 page)

“You speak treason, sir!” Rupert shouted, vaulting out of his chair.

“I speak truth.”

“Rupert!” Lady Marner shrilled. “His lordship is our guest.”

“He is
your
guest, Mother, not mine.”

“Her ladyship was right earlier,” the earl said, rising from the table. “This is hardly the forum for such a discussion. We gentlemen shall take it up amongst ourselves at another time.”

“We shall take it up on the dueling ground,” Rupert decreed, tossing down his serviette. “You leave me no choice but to call you out, sir. You have cut this house too many times these past two days for me to stand for treason spoken under its roof to boot! Since it is customary to postpone arrangements for such things until daytime hours, I would appreciate it if you would remain in residence until my second visits you in the morning.”

“Your servant, sir,” said the earl, offering a crisp bow.

Jenna's eyes oscillated between Kevernwood and Rupert. Her cheeks were on fire. She wanted to run from the dining hall, but her legs betrayed her. She couldn't move. Around her the gathering had become a milling mass of confusion. The women's cries and murmurings reached an ugly crescendo of sound that made her head swim. The men were rising from the table, their rumbling monotone impossible to translate. Across the way, Lady Evelyn had risen. She had thrown herself into the earl's arms and begun to cry. Her brother skirted the table and went to her side. Kevernwood's eyes met Jenna's. She couldn't read their message, but that molten, blue-steel gaze held her relentlessly, pierced her to the core before moving on to impale Rupert. She was numb. It was a numbness Rupert's cold fingers couldn't penetrate as they clamped around her arm. She was paralyzed, caught between the crossed swords of the two men's glaring eyes, as Rupert spirited her away.

Jenna scarcely had time to exchange her dinner gown for the frilly ecru negligee that Emily had laid out for her, when an assault on her sitting room door sent a shiver along her spine. She was alone. Emily was closeted with her mother, who had nearly collapsed in the dining hall, a circumstance that Jenna attributed more to the divorce corset she'd poured herself into than any genuine malaise over the duel.

The knock came again—rapid, urgent, almost desperate—and she threw the door open to Lady Evelyn St. John.

For a moment, they stared at one another across the threshold.

“Please, my lady . . . ?” the girl murmured. Her eyes were red and swollen, and she was trembling.

“It's late, Lady Evelyn,” Jenna said, stepping aside to let her enter, “and we have all had an unpleasant evening. I was just about to retire.”

“How can you sleep? They're going to kill each other! Don't you care, my lady?”

“What can I possibly do?”

“You can reason with the viscount. There is no necessity for this.”

“It's far too late for that.”

“You really
don't
care, do you?” Lady Evelyn accused, discovery lifting her voice. “How will you feel when one of them lies dead, knowing that you might have prevented it?”

“You credit me with much too much. Why don't you speak to his lordship?”

“It was your betrothed who challenged Simon, my lady. Simon tried to avoid this—you heard him down there. Now he cannot back down from the challenge. He is a gentleman. He will die in that duel first, albeit against the law. I cannot let that happen. The viscount must withdraw.”

“You don't know Rupert, Lady Evelyn. He would never.”

“Then we are lost. Someone will die. I shan't be able to bear it if Simon . . .”

Jenna couldn't bring herself to inquire about the obvious. She wanted no details. Why did her heart feel as though this woebegone creature before her had just pierced it through with a dagger? She stared at the girl. So this was what love was like. This was what she should be feeling for Rupert. But it was not Rupert that she was thinking of. She wasn't ready to delve deeper into the recesses of her wounded heart to uncover more of that, however—not then. It was enough of a shock realizing what love
wasn't
.

Jenna had never felt so alone as she did in that moment, an unwilling spectator looking into the breaking heart this desperate girl had laid bare before her.

“I'm sorry, Lady Evelyn,” she murmured. “I don't know what sort of relationship you presume that I have with Rupert, but I assure you, he is his own man. Right or wrong, lawful or not, nothing I could possibly say would alter anything.”

Lady Evelyn nodded her lowered head in defeat.

Jenna stared toward the girl's collapsed posture. She almost pitied her. Did the earl know she'd come? No. Kevernwood impressed her as being his own man, as well—certainly not the type to let a woman fight his battles for him. Poor girl. Jenna did pity her. This duel wasn't about the fragile state of the British economy, or the tenant farmers, or the poor king's madness. It was Rupert's jealousy that threw down the gauntlet.

“Go and get some rest,” she said, turning the girl toward the door. “There's nothing to be done now but pray that they have the good sense not to go through with this insanity.”

Jenna sank down on the edge of the four-poster. It was long past midnight and she was too overset to sleep. She went to the window and looked down toward the garden wall. A tall, sculptured hedgerow all but prevented her from seeing the cluster of French lilac trees burgeoning just beyond the arbor. She opened the window, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply, inhaling the exquisite perfume living in the still night air. These lilacs were a more delicate variety than the ones in her own gardens at Thistle Hollow, deep amethyst in color, and a thousand times more fragrant, if that could be.

She heaved a ragged sigh and closed the window. She needed to think. It wasn't that she wanted to. The thoughts were hammering at her brain, and if she were to let them in it couldn't be in that house.

Foraging through her clothing, which Emily had hung neatly in the wardrobe, she unearthed the long cashmere pelerine she had brought along to ward off the evening chills, slipped it on over her negligee, and went below to the garden.

But it wasn't the delicious fragrance of French lilacs that filled her nostrils when she entered through the arbor. It was the provocative aroma of tobacco, an exotic blend she'd never smelled before, and yet there was something vaguely familiar about it. She wasn't alone among the lilacs, and her heart nearly stopped as he stepped from the shadows of a tall tree close by.

Kevernwood.

Her quick intake of breath caught in her throat as he emerged still dressed as he'd been at dinner, minus the black cutaway jacket. He'd also removed his neckcloth, and his ruffled shirt was open at the throat exposing a patch of dark hair curling beneath.

“F-forgive me, my lord,” she stammered. “I couldn't sleep. I didn't know . . . I didn't mean. . . .” It was no use. The traitorous emotions rippling through her body had tied her tongue.

“I wanted a smoke,” he said, strolling closer. “I didn't think it wise to have it in the house, considering. God knows but that your betrothed might deem it a hanging offense and, alas, I have but one life to give for king and country this season.”

“And I've spoiled it for you,” she regretted, ignoring the sarcastic last.

He began tapping the ashes from the bowl of a small clay pipe against the trunk of the tree beside him.

“No, don't!” she cried. “Please. I will leave. There are other gardens, my lord.”

“No—no, do not trouble. I've finished, really.”

He had taken away her excuse to escape, and she stood studying him for an awkward moment trying to invent another.

“My father used to smoke a pipe,” she said meanwhile. “I loved the aroma of his tobacco. I have never smelled anything quite like yours before, though, and yet . . . there is something vaguely familiar about it. Is it a custom mixture?”

The earl nodded. “I have it blended by a tobacconist in London,” he said, tucking the pipe into his pocket. “He flavors it with licorice, whiskey, rum, and a little latakia from the Mediterranean. Most women object to it as being too overpowering, but I find it a very satisfying smoke.”

Jenna turned to go. She couldn't believe she was standing there, half-dressed, in the garden in the middle of the night, casually discussing tobacco with a man who was probably going to kill her betrothed in a duel.

“I shouldn't be here. I'm sorry,” she murmured.

“Why did you come out here at this hour?” he said, his deep voice turning her around again.

“Flowers have the same effect upon me as your pipe has upon you, my lord,” she replied, swallowing her rapid heartbeat. “I couldn't sleep. I wanted to think, and I always do that best whilst communing with nature.”

He came closer, hardly limping at all. For a moment she toyed with the idea of telling him about Lady Evelyn. She'd almost decided against it, but when he continued to advance she could no longer control the rush of excitement that pulsed through the core of her sexuality, quickening her heart, setting off alarm bells in her brain.

“Lady Evelyn paid me a visit in my rooms earlier,” she blurted. “She is afraid for you.”

His smile disappeared and he stopped in his tracks. The moon shone down on them and there was something in his eyes that she couldn't identify, though it sent cold chills the length of her spine. He was very close, searching her face in the moonlight.

“She shouldn't have done that,” he said.

“She wanted me to use my influence with Rupert . . . to persuade him to withdraw the challenge.”

Consistently, his blank expression told her nothing.

“She was dreadfully overset,” Jenna went on. “I'm afraid I couldn't offer her much hope in that regard. Rupert is quite fixed in his ways.”

For a long moment their eyes met trembling in the moonlight before he prowled closer. The evening dampness had framed her face in tendrils, and he reached to brush a stray one from her cheek.

“I told you, you do not love him,” he murmured, seizing her in strong arms that pulled her close.

Before she could catch her breath, his mouth closed over hers. He tasted of the tobacco and traces of sweet wine. He deepened the kiss and swallowed her moan as his warm, skilled tongue glided between her parted teeth and entered her slowly—totally.

It was wrong, but she didn't resist. She was being compromised, alone, past midnight, half-dressed in the arms of another, while her unsuspecting betrothed slept in the manor but a few yards away. If someone were to see, her reputation would be ruined. But the earl had stirred her passion awake and she was beguiled, as foxed by his closeness as a lord in his cups.

His massive hand roamed beneath the pelerine and took possession of her waist. Slowly the hand inched upward. Deftly, his tongue teased, pulling back, then plunged deeper, and a husky groan resonated from his throat to hers as her trembling tongue responded.

Her heart leapt. An involuntary pulse throbbed wildly at her very core, spreading a delicious, achy warmth through her most private regions as he crushed her closer still, molding her body to his, grown turgid with arousal.

All at once she remembered where she was and what was happening to her. What was he thinking—that because she wasn't begging him to spare Rupert in the duel she didn't care? Or was it that he thought to take her favors as payment for Rupert's safety? These thoughts, coming in rampant flashes, were stabbing at the sexual stream that flowed between them, mortally wounding the magical sensations his touch had ignited.

His hand found its way to her face and slid down the length of her arched throat. He spread the cape wide and murmured her name against her lips as his fingers slipped lower. But it was when the roughened skin of his palm explored her décolleté that she sobered. What happened inside her when he touched her there was so terrifying that she wrenched free and slapped his face, with all the strength she could muster.

Unprepared, he staggered backward.

“How dare you!” she demanded, her breast heaving with passion and indignation beneath the pelerine she pulled tight around her. “I've just told you that a woman who worships you came begging me to plead with my betrothed to cancel the duel. Is this how you would betray that heart?”

Breathing hard, he stared. His handsome face showed her no emotion.

“Rupert warned me that you were a Jackanapes,” she said to his silence. “I'm sorry now that I didn't believe him. You are no gentleman, my lord.”

“So I was wrong,” the earl said, his voice like gravel. “You do love him after all?” He raked his hair back. His moist brow, pleated by a frown, glistened in the moonlight. “Well, you can put your mind at ease, my lady,” he said. “Your precious Rupert will not be seriously harmed in the duel, nor arrested for instigating it. You didn't have to try and buy his safety with your charms.”

“W-with my—”

“You didn't have to degrade yourself. I've already instructed my second that we shall use swords, not pistols.”

“
Swords
?” That possibility hadn't occurred to her. “What kind of swords?”

“Fencing swords, the
épée de terrain
. Sword fights are outlawed in England, my lady. If one kills someone with a sword these days, he can no longer excuse himself as having acted in self-defense, hence duels fought with the sword are not fought to the death . . . unless, of course, one of the duelists is an out and out bounder. Once one of us is blooded or disarmed, the duel will end.”

“But . . . I don't understand. Why did you choose the sword over the pistol?”

“Because your betrothed is hopelessly inept with the pistol, my lady.” A husky laugh lived in his throat. “I would surely kill him with one.”