Come the Night (The Dangerous Delameres - Book 1) (24 page)

“Might as well take her up to her room.”

A hard look. “You trust
me
for that.”

“Aye, so I do. Woulda trusted you even
before
I knew you was a Delamere.”

There was a queer tightening in Luc’s chest. “She’ll not thank me in the morning for the service. Nor you, I think,” Luc said grimly.

Tinker only smiled. “Happen not. But then females is allays known to say one thing and think another altogether different.”

Luc blinked.

He tried to forget what Tinker had said as he carried the sleeping woman upstairs.

~ ~ ~

Her hand lay clasped about his neck when he laid her in her bed in a room soft with moonlight. Even then, she would not let go.

Luc had to uncurl her fingers one by one.

He stood a long time that way, studying her pale face, her hair strewn like gleaming burgundy over her flowing white shirt.

So beautiful. So courageous.

So
young.

It would never do. She needed someone innocent. Someone who had never been tested by the harsher side of life. Someone unflaggingly secure and confident in his little world of piquet and hunting and a house in Berkeley Square for the Season.

The man Luc had been five years before.

The man Luc would never be again.

When he emerged, his face was expressionless.

Tinker studied him closely, one grizzled brow quirked. “You’ll be careful on the road tonight, highwayman?”

Luc shrugged. Slowly he slid his mask back in place.
“Careful
is not particularly high on my list. Still, for
her,
I might try.” He studied the rows of neatly tended flowers. “Before, you said you trusted me. But you’d best beware, James Tinker. I’m not even sure that I trust myself.”

The moon was already gone when he caught up his hat and vanished back into the lavender-rich night.

~ ~ ~

Far away in a magnificent house facing Berkeley Square, India Delamere sat up in bed, looking wistfully out at the night. She had just come home from her first ball and had just received her first offer of marriage from a most unexceptionable earl. She should, in short, have been glowing with happiness and entirely at peace with the world.

But she wasn’t.

Her eyes stung with tears.

Outside in the night a hackney clattered past with a noisy crack of hooves. A linkboy padded home through the shadows, light dancing from his swaying lantern.

The young woman started when a light tap came at the door. “Come in.”

A regal, white-haired lady frowned at her from the doorway. “What, still awake, gel? Too many beaus to dream of?”

“No, Grandmama. Nothing like that. It — it’s Luc.”

At that name the Duchess of Cranford stiffened. “Luc?” Her back went even straighter. “The boy is gone, India, as I’ve told you countless times before.”

“Then — then there’s no chance of a mistake? No chance that he might come strolling in one day, smiling lazily and dangling his silver cane as he was always used to do?” Her voice was wistful.

“I shouldn’t think it at all likely, my dear. Your brother is dead. It will be better for us all if we accept that fact.”

The red-haired beauty sat forward, her wrists tight to her knees. A tear streaked down her cheek, glistening in the light of the duchess’s single candle. “But I can’t forget him, Grandmama. I’ve tried but — but I could swear I feel him sometimes. At odd moments. It was always that way between us. Even as children at Swallow Hill, I knew when Luc had been thrown from his pony and he knew when I’d fallen from the old elm tree. And now” — her hands moved, gesturing at something real but not quite visible—”now, well, he’s
alive.
I know it, Grandmama. I can
feel
it.” Her eyes rose, hazed with tears. “And he is in great danger.”

She caught her grandmother’s hand and bit back a cry of pain. “Where is he? Blast you, Luc, where are you?”

~ ~ ~

Slowly the stars faded.

Above Lavender Close Farm the sky bled to navy and then gray. Finally streaks of crimson brightened the flat, tree-dark east.

Mist crept through the elms and oaks and hawthorns, over the sleeping streams, and through the little green valley.

Dense and white, the fog trailed everywhere. It silenced all, wind and bird and rich, dark earth. Nothing else moved. Nothing else even existed.

And for a few perfect hours the valley became a place of magic. Of joy. Of safety. A place where dreams could take tangible shape, as they did for all those sleeping there.

And all the while a solitary man sat watching on the hill above, hands buried deep in his pockets, eyes filled with a different kind of mist — and with the madness that comes from cruel memories.

Sunlight was streaming over the lavender fields when the workroom door flew open with a bang. Silver stood outlined against a haze of purple buds, her hair a wild auburn tangle around her shoulders. “Why didn’t you wake me? It’s nearly noon!”

Tinker looked up from the bottle of rosemary oil he was capping. “Can’t you just say good-morning like anyone else? It’s a veritable hoyden you’ve become, girl, and no mistake.”

“But it’s so
late
. I should have been down here helping you.”

“Me and the boy are managing just fine,” the old servant said flatly. “No call to think you’ve got to do everything around here yourself. Need another batch of rosemary oil,” Tinker called over his shoulder. “And after that some more dried mint. Then this batch will be ready.”

Bram appeared from the neighboring room, dried
lavender dusting his shoulder and a glass decanter hefted against his chest. “Right here, Tinker.” He peered over at his sister. “Oh, are you finally awake, Syl?” Without breaking stride he gave Tinker the decanter, then moved off in search of the other ingredients the old man had requested.

“Aye, managing just fine, we are. And the fragrance for that milliner in Norwich is nearly done too.”

“Oh.” Silver watched Tinker finish his task. “Then … I guess you don’t need me.”

“Not a whit,” Bram called cheerfully from next door. “Got the dried mint right here, Tinker.”

“But — that is, I suppose I should check that new potpourri blend. I’m not sure I liked the ginger we added.”

“All done,” Tinker said.

“All
done?”
Silver gnawed at her lower lip.

“Did it two hours ago. Bram changed the amounts, added some clove oil, and now they’re just fine. Nothing to it, in fact.”

It had taken
her
half a day to come up with that blend. “And you changed all of them?”

“Aye, all six dozen.”

Six dozen?

“Going up to the house,” Bram called. “Need a book.”

“Keep your eyes open. Fetch me some orris root while you’re at it.”

Silver stared at Tinker after Bram left. “You don’t think it’s over, do you?”

Tinker’s fingers stopped for a moment and then he shrugged.
“He
doesn’t. He’s been right about everything else so far. Probably right about this nastiness too.” There was no question who the
he
was.

Silver felt an odd tightening in her stomach. “Blackwood told you that?”

Tinker nodded. “Wants you to leave too.”

“I won’t. That’s final.” Silver picked up a glass decanter and held it up to the light, swirling the clear golden oil.

For some reason it reminded Silver of Blackwood’s eyes. Of the keen sweetness of his lips. She frowned, shoving aside the vessel. “Did he happen to say, well, anything else?”

“Anything about what?”

“Oh, I don’t know, about what happened here. Just … anything.”

Tinker studied her. “His name’s Luc, by the way. With a
c.
Thought you might like to know. And, no, I don’t reckon he did.”

“But how — that is, who—” Silver’s cheeks filled with color.

“He told me. Last night. Yes, we had a good bit of conversation last night.”

Silver felt a queer dizziness trail through her stomach. “I was in my own bed when I woke.”

Tinker sniffed and went back to work. “Passing strange, that. I reckon Master Luc must’ve carried you there.”

Silver’s hands tensed. “He did?”

“Aye.”

Silver found it difficult to breathe. “Oh.” And then her chin rose, small and defiant. “Well, I must say, I think it
most
improper of him. And of
you,
for letting him, Tinker.”

“Don’t reckon I coulda stopped the man even if I wanted to,” came the terse reply.

An odd burning, half pleasure and half pain, attacked Silver’s chest.

Tinker turned. “Don’t you have some sort of work to do, miss? Boy’s probably lost in one of his books. You may as well go fetch him afore he’s forgotten all about what I sent him up there for.” A slight smile curved his lips. “Unless you plan to stand there mooning through all the
rest
of the day.”

“Mooning!
What makes you think—” Heat flooded Silver’s cheeks. “You insufferable man!” she muttered.
“All
of you are!”

~ ~ ~

She walked slowly through the fields of lavender and rosemary and honeysuckle, waiting for her flush to fade. Idly she noted which fields needed to be pruned and which to be watered. But all the while her thoughts were on a full, hard mouth crowned by a silver scar. On reckless amber eyes. On an unpredictable man she barely knew.

The man she loved.

With a gasp Silver went dead still in the middle of a lavender furrow, her face ghosting to gray and then sheet-white.

The knowledge had come unbidden, creeping in upon her while her mind was occupied with bud counts and root rot and how to stave off the next wave of intruders. How had this happened? How could she have lost all reason like this?

In love with a highwayman. A hardened, unfathomable felon notorious from Southampton to Peterborough.

No, it was impossible. It was unimaginable.

And yet it was true, Silver realized, chewing on her lip, one white hand to her hot cheek.

“What have I done?”

She sank down in a heap between two lavender bushes and drew in a long, ragged breath. There in the rich black earth she sat frozen, staring up at the wisteria-covered cottage while the sun poured down on her shoulders and the lavender wind combed through her hair.

Luc.
Tinker had said that was his name — spelled with a c. A strange sort of name, to be sure. But then it suited him, for her Luc was a very strange sort of man.

Luc.
Her Luc.

She was in love. With
him.
Silver let her breath trickle out, one hand fisted at her breast.

In blasted
love
with the blasted Lord of Blackwood, like a regiment of other silly females before her.

Damn and blast! How
could
she?

There was no hope for it, of course. She would just have to run the rascal right out of her mind.

And so she would — if only she could forget how it felt when he held her and made her blood sing with passion. If only she could forget the hunger in his eyes when she’d kissed him in the conservatory.

“Damn and bloody blast!” she muttered. Enough was enough. She had to get the man out of her thoughts and now!

Silver was still pondering how to manage it when a dense black cloud enveloped the cottage.