Come Near Me (28 page)

They were already quite wet. They could be back at
Daventry Court within the hour. And Sherry did very much want a few
minutes alone with Dickie, so that she could talk to him. If he was
Adam’s friend, she wanted to know that. If he was her husband’s
enemy, she needed to know why.

“Oh, all right, Geoff,” she said, pulling off her
bonnet and stripping it of its bright blue ribbon. “Here. Now, give
me your pocket watch and wait for my signal. We’ll watch for your
return from the barn.”

“I’ve missed you,” Dickie said, as Sherry held the
timepiece in her hand, watching as Geoff sprang his horses and rode
out of sight. “I’ve missed your smile, your laugh. I hadn’t thought
I would, but I did. I do. But I knew you’d come to me, eventually.
They all do.”

She swallowed down hard, turning to him, seeing a
fire in his eyes she’d never noticed before this moment. And she
knew, knew in that instant, that she had just made the biggest
miscalculation of her life.

“I think you’ve mistaken my reason for being here,
Dickie,” she said quietly, wishing she were able to look away from
him, from the beauty of his form, the compelling attraction of his
smile. It was like looking into the face of an angel. A very
naughty angel.

“No, my little doll,” he said, leading her inside
the barn, out of the rain. “It’s you who have mistaken your reason
for coming here. I’m temptation, little doll, and even you cannot
resist temptation, the lure of the forbidden. Daventry made his
biggest mistake when he forbade his so innocent wife to see me
again. The eternal lure of the forbidden fruit. You’d think someone
named Adam would have learned, wouldn’t you? But he didn’t. I
counted on that, and Daventry didn’t disappoint me, even if the
predictability of men is a disappointment in itself.”

Sherry yanked her arm free of Richard’s hold, more
angry now than afraid. “Stop it, Dickie! No more games! Just stop
it! I don’t know what you’re saying, or what you think you know,
but I’m not going to stand here and listen to another word of this
nonsense. I don’t know this game, I don’t know the rules, but I do
know that you’re a terrible, terrible, evil man. I’ll wait for
Geoff outside, and then we’ll be leaving.”

“Look at me. Adam doesn’t see you as a real woman,
but I do. Look at me, Sherry. Look at me. See me. See
yourself.”

Richard said the words quietly, but the command was
heavy in his voice. Unavoidable. Impossible to disobey.

Her eyes swimming with tears of frustration and
fear, Sherry did as she was bid. She turned, looked at Richard
Brimley.

She saw beauty.

She saw adventure.

She saw temptation.

She saw danger.

And she was unable to look away.

“I meant to have you, little doll,” she heard
Richard saying, his voice sounding far away now, yet luring her
closer to him. “From the beginning, I meant to have you.”

“From—from the beginning? When was that, Dickie? In
London?”

“Sshh, no questions. I could have you now, Sherry,
will have you soon. You’re still delicious, but Daventry now
intrigues me enough so that the game gets more interesting the
longer it runs, don’t you agree?”

“I—I don’t know what—”

“Of course you don’t. How could you? So innocent. So
incorruptible, so loyal. I gave you so much. But no one is entirely
happy with paradise, are they? They all can be tempted. Even you,
little doll, even you. But you aren’t ready yet. The stakes aren’t
high enough yet, are they? So we’ll play a little longer, you and
Daventry and I, until I tire of the game. In the end, you’ll choose
me. They always do. But it has to be your choice.”

“You’re mad. Insane. I wouldn’t choose to cross the
street with you.”

“Yes, I know.” He moved closer; cupped her chin in
his hand. “Otherwise, little doll, this would be over now. Instead,
it is just beginning. I’ve raised the stakes, you see. Now I want
you both.”

And then he kissed her. As she stood there, unable
to move, too frightened and confused to run, he kissed her. Not in
anger, as she’d supposed, or even in lust. He kissed her tenderly,
almost as if he cherished her. He kissed her so sweetly that she
began to respond, even against her will, pushing him away only as
she heard the horses drive up, signaling Geoff’s return.

Except that it wasn’t Geoff who cried out, “I should
have known! You
bastard!”
and leapt down from his curricle,
to run toward the barn.

It was Adam.

~ ~ ~

Adam was very accomplished with his fives, as good a
boxer as Chollie. Possibly better. So how he came to find himself
lying with his head in Sherry’s lap as the world slowly came back
into focus was beyond him. He’d had enough anger, enough fury
inside him to mill down a dozen men. Yet he hadn’t landed a single
punch before Richard Brimley had felled him with a fist that had
seemed to appear out of nowhere, knocking him straight into
unconsciousness.

“Adam? Adam, are you all right? Oh, God, I thought
you’d never wake up!”

He looked up at Sherry, at her tear-stained face,
and something inside him went very cold. “Let me up, Sherry,” he
said. He rolled away from her, slowly got to his feet. “You didn’t
go with him?” he then asked, looking around, seeing that Richard
Brimley was no longer in the barn with them.

“Go with him?” Sherry scrambled to her feet. “Are
you out of your mind? Why would I go with him?”

“How long?” Adam rubbed at his aching head,
exercised his stiff jaw a time or two. “How long have the two of
you been meeting? How long, Sherry? Or did I imagine that kiss? Did
I imagine that you weren’t kicking at him, fighting to escape his
arms?”

“It wasn’t like that, Adam,” Sherry said, her tears
enough to melt his heart, if he’d still had one somewhere inside
him. But he didn’t. He’d known, known from the beginning. Some
things are just too good to last. Too perfect to exist outside of a
dream. And now the dream was over. For whatever reason, Richard
Brimley had proved that to him.

“No, of course it wasn’t, Sherry. It never is,” Adam
said dully, looking past her, out into the driving rain, the
gathering darkness. He felt slow, sluggish, as if he were trying to
swim through a huge bowl of honey. “Where’s my idiot pawn of a
brother? One of the grooms said you rode out with him.”

Sherry looked blank for a moment, then reached into
her pocket, pulling out his brother’s timepiece. “He’s been gone
for almost thirty minutes,” she said, looking at Adam in panic.
“The course could be driven in ten. Dickie said so. My God,
Adam—”

What followed was a nightmare within a
nightmare.

The drive through the sheets of gray rain. The turns
and twists, the backtracking, trying to find the correct roadway
out of a half dozen that branched off in every direction. Sherry’s
tears as she sat beside him, telling him she was wrong, that he was
right, that Richard Brimley was a monster, that she loved him, she
loved him with all her heart and soul, would never betray him.

Then there was the wreckage, and the screams of the
horse that hadn’t died when Geoff’s curricle left the road, tumbled
into the ditch on top of Adam’s only brother, pinning him, crushing
him.

There was Sherry, kneeling in the ditch running
nearly wild with rainwater, holding Geoff’s head above the rushing
water, keeping him from drowning. There was the eternity it took
for Adam to find enough help to lift the smashed curricle from his
brother’s body; leaving Sherry and Geoff alone for all of that
time; praying to any god who would listen to let his brother live.
Just let his brother live.

The next morning, as Sherry sat vigil with a
blessedly unconscious Geoff, as the sun broke through the clouds to
start another perfect day in this most imperfect world, Adam
returned from the deserted Frame Cottage and walked outside to
stand looking out over the garden.

A garden full of dead roses.

“Some sort of blight struck ‘em down, my lord. I
cain’t explain it, but they’ll all have to come out. Enough ta make
a man weep. A garden like this one. Won’t see another like it, none
of us. I’m that sorry, I am,” Augustus said, tugging at his
forelock before going back to his shovel, digging out one of the
bushes at the roots. “A blight, my lord. Has to be that.”

Adam turned and walked back into the house.

Good and Evil

Hell is a city much like London—

A populous and smoky city.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

After...

La vieillesse est l
’enfer de femmes.

Old age is a woman’s hell.

— Ninon de Lenclos

A
dam told Chollie
the whole of it, from the first day he’d met Sherry beside the
stream until the moment he’d seen the empty shop on Bond Street and
known, just known, that Richard Brimley was back in their
lives.

He didn’t spare himself in the telling,
letting Chollie know what a fool he’d been, how he’d been duped,
how shabbily he’d treated his wife, the woman he loved above his
own life.

“Have you spoken with Sherry again since
asking her about the dead roses?”

Adam shook his head. “She’s too upset. And I
can’t blame her. Not after the hell I’ve put her through. But we
both know what’s happening. Richard Brimley is back, playing his
game again.”

Chollie took a drink from his glass, sat
back, crossed one leg over the other. “It would be helpful, I’m
thinking, if you were to know why he was ever around at all. A game
is it, Adam? I’ve never heard of such a game.”

“I agree. It’s time we stopped calling it a
game. Anyone who would go so far as to insert his own people into
my home, to spy on us, to make Sherry’s life miserable? That person
has passed miles beyond playing games.”

“And yet that fellow Rimmon is still here,”
Chollie pointed out. “Worse, he’s still breathing. Which means you
have a plan, boyo, doesn’t it?”

“No, Chollie. It means I don’t have the
faintest idea what to do, so I’m doing nothing, for fear of making
some fatal misstep.”

Chollie stood, began to pace. “Richard
Brimley. Dickie Brimley. I thought I knew the whole world one way
or another, but I’ve never heard the name. What does he look
like?”

Adam smiled ruefully. “He’s pretty—that’s out
of his own mouth. And I suppose he is.” He closed his eyes, tried
to conjure up Richard Brimley’s face. “Dark hair, rather unique
blue eyes—a chin a little too feminine for my tastes. Rounded, you
know, like Byron’s. Yes, that’s it. He rather reminds me of
Byron—without the dark, brooding moods, or the poetry. The women
were mad for him. Except for Sherry. She simply liked him He made
sure everyone liked him.”

“Ratherlike Edmund Burnell, except in his
looks, of course,” Chollie said thoughtfully. “In fact, very much
like our new good friend, Mr. Burnell. Have you asked Edmund if he
knows this Brimley person? Not that it would do any good if the two
of them were friends, would it, for he’d only lie to you. You’ve
already thought of that, haven’t you? Of course you have. Sweet
Mary, Adam, I don’t have geese walking over my grave today, don’t
you know. They’re fair dancing a jig on it.”

Adam came to a decision. “Then pack them up,
Chollie, and have them dance along with us, all right? We’re on our
way to see Lady Jasper.”

“Lady J?” Chollie pulled a face, blessed
himself. “Must we?”

“Think about it, Chollie. Lady J is Burnell’s
aunt. If he’s a part of this, Lady J’s a part of it. She’s just the
sort to enjoy tearing the wings from butterflies.”

~ ~ ~

Sherry walked through the morning in a daze,
trying to sort out the events of the past days, the past months,
and having no success. She disliked keeping secrets from Adam, but
he’d been so quick to leap to all the wrong conclusions before,
about her, about Dickie.

Except that Adam knew. He had to know that
Dickie was back, knew that the man was playing his infernal game
again. They both knew.

It wasn’t fair. They’d been to hell, and were
coming back. Both of them. Less trusting, less open with each
other, but slowly finding their way back. They’d never have the
perfection, the dream they’d once lived. Never again. But it had
been Adam who had said it:
Dreams, especially those very rare
real-life dreams, should be held tightly, or else they slip
away.

They hadn’t held on tightly enough, either of
them.

Either that, or it was impossible for any
dream to last forever. How could a person exist only within a
dream? That wasn’t real life, was it?

“This isn’t real life either,” she told her
reflection as she looked into the mirror in the drawing room,
seeing herself looking pale, drawn, as if she hadn’t slept in
months. “I just wish I knew what it is.
Why
it is.”

“Mr. Edmund Burnell to see you, my lady,”
Rimmon said from the doorway, and Sherry nearly jumped out of her
skin. “Shall I show him in?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she told the man. “No.
Wait a moment, Rimmon,” she added hastily. “I believe I’d like a
private word with you first.”

“Ma’am?”

Sherry looked at the butler, visually
inspected him. Did he look anything like Emma Oxton? Was there any
hint of Richard Brimley in his eyes? No. No, there wasn’t.

“As you’ve probably heard by now, Rimmon, I
dismissed Emma yesterday. Did she return for her things?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, my lady,” Rimmon
said, bowing. “The comings and goings of lesser servants are not my
concern. Perhaps if you were to inquire of Mrs. Clement?”

Sherry screwed up her courage. “No, Rimmon,
I’m asking you. You are the person who recommended that Emma be
taken on as my personal maid, aren’t you? When you yourself were
hired, when Hoggs so very unexpectedly had to leave his post. Where
is Hoggs, Rimmon? I forget.”