Dangerous to Love (21 page)

“A safeguard, merely,” Julian assured her when she reproached him about it at the noon meal. “You are still suffering from the effects of the accident. All in good time, Victoria, all in good time.”

Something else occurred to her. “I never saw an estate with so many gamekeepers and gardeners.” Now where
did her knowledge of estates spring from? “On my walk this morning, it appeared to me that half of them were strolling about, trying to look busy.”

The hand that was lifting a cup to his lips had become arrested in midair. Carefully setting the cup on its saucer, Julian voiced the same thought that had occurred to her. “What do you know of estates and gardeners and gamekeepers? How much do you remember?”

“I don’t remember anything of any significance.”

“Yet you mentioned an estate. What am I to make of that?”

It was his accusing tone of voice that made her color up. He was looking at her as though she were a stranger and not his wife of a few days. There was something wrong here. No. It was all in her imagination. She was suffering from concussion, that’s all it was.

She pressed a hand to her temples. “I beg your pardon, what did you say? These days, I can’t seem to concentrate on any one thing for more than a few minutes at a time.”

His expression instantly softened. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have pressed you like that.” His eyes glinted wickedly. “I suppose I’m as eager as you for the effects of the concussion to wear off, and you know why.”

He laughed when her color ran even hotter. “It’s no bad thing that I have business which takes me to town. There is plenty to occupy you here in my absence. Don’t—”

She didn’t let him finish. “You are going to town?”

“It’s not that far away.”

“Take me with you,” she said impulsively.

“That would not be wise.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“I’m only following the doctor’s advice.” After a slight hesitation, he went on casually, “I should mention that for your own protection my men have orders not to allow
you to leave the grounds. No, don’t look like that. I shall be gone for only one night. As I said, there’s plenty to occupy you here for that length of time.”

That was his final word on the subject, and nothing she said could move him.

An hour later, she was on the front steps, her eyes trailing horses and riders as they cantered down the tree-lined drive. Within moments, they had passed through the wrought-iron gates and were lost to view.

Without her husband, her doubts returned in full force. There was something far wrong here if only she could put her finger on it. She looked at the ring on her finger. It was a curtain ring, she was certain of it. He had promised her another ring, but he had not produced it. If she were not his wife, why would he lie to her about it? She was more than willing to be his mistress, as he well knew. And why was he keeping her a prisoner?

The result of so much useless, concentrated reflection was to bring a return of her chills and headaches. She wandered up to her chamber, slipped fully clothed beneath the covers, and dozed. When she wakened, not only were the chills and headaches gone, but she was seized with an electrifying thought.
You are my wife. Believe it. I have the marriage certificate to prove it.

Marriage certificate! Now why hadn’t she thought of that before now? When Julian returned, she would ask him to show her their marriage certificate, then all her doubts would be laid to rest. She need only contain her impatience until tomorrow. Tomorrow.  .  .. she could never live with this uncertainty for one more night. Damnation! Why hadn’t she asked Julian to show her their marriage certificate?

She was smoothing the covers of the bed when the thought struck her. In all likelihood, it was somewhere in the house. It was no great feat of logic to deduce that if it
was in the house, Julian would keep it in his desk. That thought quickened her footsteps as she made her way downstairs.

Her steps flagged when she came to the door to Julian’s bookroom. She hated to pry into his possessions. It smacked too much of deceit and betrayal, especially if she were found out.

She would not be found out, she told herself, because the first chance she got, she would tell Julian what she had done. And really, there was no shame in it. A woman had a right to look at her own marriage certificate. Resolved, she turned the doorknob and pushed into the room.

The massive walnut desk was a splendid piece of furniture, though rather old-fashioned, a combined bureau and cabinet, and was positioned against the wall between two long windows. The key was in the lock of the cabinet doors, as if to proclaim that the master of the house had nothing to hide here. Serena unlocked the cabinet and gently set the doors back on their hinges. The same key opened the front of the bureau. When she had lowered the front, she stepped back and surveyed the multitude of partitions and drawers that were revealed to her.

She knew at once that this was not Julian’s working desk. It was too neat, too much a showpiece. Everything was arranged in perfect symmetry. Her eyes touched on the decorative ivory quill with its matching pen cutter, the precisely placed silver-topped glass inkpots, with matching container for wafers, the ubiquitous china pounce pot. In this neat arrangement, she saw the hand of Julian’s housekeeper.

Smiling, she raised her eyes to examine the cabinet above. Her eyes lit up when she observed the ornamental pilasters topped by tiny gilded statues of Greek deities. Every desk she had ever known had a secret compartment.
No one of any intelligence kept valuables or important papers in it. Those were deposited in bank vaults, or with one’s solicitor. Marriage certificates and love letters and other things of that nature—things worthless to thieves and robbers—those one kept in the secret compartment of one’s desk.

She had to stand on Julian’s chair to reach the gilded figures at the top of the pilasters. She tried to twist and turn them every which way, but they were immovable. A decoy, she finally decided, and stepped down from the chair to rethink her strategy. It was then she noticed that on the bases of the pilasters were gilded initials, Julian’s initials, a
J
and an
R,
only they were in the wrong order, the
R
on the left pilaster, and
the J
on the right.

Thoroughly engrossed by the puzzle of the desk, she fiddled with the initials. And then she had it! They were keys, only they were in the wrong locks. Working more confidently, she pried the R from its socket and gave a crow of triumph when her guess was proved correct. It took only a moment to set Julian’s initials in the right order. There was a click, and the pilasters slid out to reveal the secret compartment behind a row of narrow drawers.

It was just as she had anticipated. There was nothing of interest there but her marriage certificate. Smoothing it open, she began to read. Her smile died as she scanned it over and over, unable to believe what she was reading. The names leapt out at her, and with the names came faces, and finally a complete recollection of events. One name drummed inside her head, her own name. Serena Ward. Serena Ward. Serena Ward.

She collapsed in Julian’s leather armchair as if she had been knocked into it by a powerful blow to the abdomen. Thoughts were crowding into her head so fast that she could hardly keep pace with them. Julian had engineered
the whole thing. Flynn had betrayed her. It was a Fleet marriage. Lord Alistair was an imposter. Julian hated her.

Those thoughts were easier to bear than the ones that followed. As Victoria Noble, she had conducted herself with all the aplomb of a half-witted moonling. Those long, flirtatious looks she had slanted him! Her eagerness for his kisses and caresses! What was the matter with her? True, she had lost her memory, but that was no reason to lose the wits she had been born with. Serena Ward would never have been taken in by a man of Julian Raynor’s stamp.

Longing so intense I think I shall die from it. I ache for want of you.
Dear God, that could not have been her speaking! The only ache Serena Ward had ever experienced for Julian Raynor was a strong compulsion to knock his head off. Victoria Noble should be locked up in an insane asylum for her own good.

Her face burned with shame. How could this have happened? How could she have tried to seduce him the night before? And she had tried to seduce him. She couldn’t lie to herself about that. She had done everything that she could think of to wake him and bring him through that door from the dressing room. She’d opened her window wide and shut it with a snap; she’d cried out as though she had awakened from a vicious nightmare; she’d slammed drawers and thrown her comb and hairbrush against the wall. He’d slept through the whole of it. His snores had been ample proof of that. A fine night nurse he had turned out to be! She could have been overcome with apoplexy, and no one would have been the wiser. Finally, when she had given up in disgust and had stomped downstairs to fetch a glass of milk and a biscuit (when he was the one who was supposed to see to her comfort), the perverse man had come through the door. She groaned when she remembered the way she had acted, coyly inviting
him to sit close to her, making sure that her leg brushed against his. And later.  .  .. No, she wasn’t ready to think about later, or she would expire of mortification on the spot. What must he think of her? Oh God, what must he think of her?

“It wasn’t me,” she said, in the manner of a child caught out in some particularly nasty piece of work. “It was Victoria Noble. She and I are two entirely different people.”

She had believed that she was an actress. Actresses did not suffer from prudishness or an excess of scruples. That’s why she had not cared whether she was his wife or his mistress. That’s why she had acted the coquette with Julian Raynor. Without knowing it, she had been playing a part. And that’s why she had been impatient with herself when she could not live up to the role she had assumed. Serena Ward and Victoria Noble had not known of the other’s existence, except in a pale shadowy form. Damn Victoria Noble for what she had done!

And damn Julian Raynor! He knew, and he could have stopped her. Instead, he had egged her on, taking advantage of the situation, making her feel things as Victoria Noble that to remember as Serena Ward filled her with d—

Heat. And hot and cold shivers. And an awareness of her body that was almost painful in its intensity. Just thinking about Julian and the way he had touched her, the way he had kissed her, made her ache to experience it all over again.
I
ache for want of you.
She must be depraved to feel this way about him, a man who had deceived her and abducted her. She wasn’t depraved. It was Victoria Noble who was depraved and so she would tell him if he dared to laugh at her. What did it matter what he thought of her? By the time he returned, she would be long gone.

That thought steadied her, and she was able to leave off her useless self-recriminations to take stock of her position. She was a prisoner here. There was no point in going to Julian’s men with long, involved explanations of who she was and how she had been abducted, leastwise, she did not think so. At any rate, she could not take that chance. They were all under the misapprehension that she was his blushing, love-struck bride. They wouldn’t be expecting her to creep away in the dead of night. Fine. She would creep away in the dead of night.

That was easier said than done. Even supposing she managed to slip away, she couldn’t simply walk all the way to London in the dark. It must be all of nine or ten miles distant. The first thing she must do was reconnoiter, like a general going into battle. Only when she knew the lay of the land would she be in a position to make her plan of escape. She had learned that piece of wisdom from Flynn.

He had abducted her and made her his prisoner. What did he hope to gain by it? Only one thing occurred to her. It had something to do with the escape route. Nothing else made sense. Was he perhaps a government agent? Did he hope to lay a trap for some unsuspecting Jacobite fugitive? Is that why he had confined her here as his prisoner while he went off to do his dastardly work? Without some clue to guide her, she would never solve the puzzle.

Her eyes narrowed as she contemplated Julian’s desk. Her conscience no longer bothered her. Drawer by drawer, she went through it systematically. When she found nothing there, she turned her attention to his books. An hour later, she was still none the wiser, except in one small particular. His library was as extensive as any she had ever encountered, especially in the classics section. Though this bore out what Flynn had once told her
about Julian’s love of books, it gave the lie to what Julian had told her about his early years. Only an educated man would have a library like this. He’d had no formal education beyond the age of thirteen—that’s what he’d told her. His story had moved her to tears and to admiration, as he had meant it to. How well he had played her! Her one regret was that she would not be here to see the look on his face when he discovered that she had escaped his net.

A voice in the corridor pulled her from her reflections. Moving quickly, she set Julian’s desk to rights. The last thing she did before quitting the room was to slip her marriage certificate into the inside pocket of her petticoat.