Echoes in Stone (17 page)

He crossed to the sideboard. “Whether you drink it or not, I’m pouring you a glass of brandy. The color has left your cheeks. I won’t have you fainting on me again. Then, Jessamine, I believe it’s past time for us to have a frank discussion with one another. And I won’t do it shouting across the room at you.”

Jessa looked in need of the warmth the brandy offered. She’d drawn her shawl closer about her shoulders, but the lacy pattern allowed tantalizing glimpses of creamy skin to peek through. God help him. The remembered taste of her skin—

Fawn-colored brows arched in a worried frown over her eyes, which gleamed like emeralds in the firelight. She nibbled her lips again. Those lips—the first time he’d tasted them. The way she’d first fought him, then returned his kiss.

Dash licked his lips. The first time he kissed her, she’d tasted of clove-scented apples. The second time, she tasted of lemon custard. That was Jessamine. Sweet, and spicy, and tart.

His cock stirred again, but he tamped down his response. It wouldn’t do to wonder how her kisses would taste tonight. She might look the frightened innocent, but she was one of those Palmer women. Deceit was bred into their bones. He’d paid dearly for forgetting that once. It wouldn’t happen again.

“If I promise to not even come within touching distance of you, will you sit on the sofa with me?” He twisted his mouth into the semblance of a smile, cursing the ruined, ropey flesh that bisected his cheek and tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Dammit. As if the chit isn’t witless enough already, now she looks as if I’ve proposed murdering her
. “I believe we have a number of very private things to say to one another,” he said. He moved toward her, a snifter of brandy in each hand. “If we cannot trust one another enough to sit side by side, how can we trust one another with those confidences?” He assayed another smile.

She took a step toward the sofa.

That’s right, my little fly. Come closer
.

The blasted shawl slipped as she turned, revealing a pale, vulnerable neck curving into a marble-smooth shoulder. Gossamer wisps of gold hair caught the firelight, fluttering with her movement. She pulled the shawl back into place, giving him a coy smile over her shoulder as she did so.

It was a damned good thing he’d long ago learned to ignore the stiffening of his cock, and had locked his heart in an impenetrable house of stone.

22.

Maybe it was the manner in which Lily was lost…

POOR MAN. Judging from the look in his eyes, it must cause him considerable pain to smile. And yet he’d tried, for her sake.

Still, an icy chill slid down Jessa’s spine and settled in her chest.

How could he expect her to trust him with things she’d been trained never to speak of? She’d been in this cold house of stone for such a short while, yet twice already, she’d almost lost her life.

Jessa pulled her errant shawl closer about her shoulders and glanced over her shoulder. Captain Tremayne still stood near the sideboard, as if begging her permission to come closer. As painful as it might be for her, if she were to stand even the smallest chance of rescuing Holly from whatever darkness stalked these halls, she’d have to trust the child’s father with the truth. At least some of it. More important, she needed to make him trust her in return. She returned his poor smile with a tentative one of her own.

She moved to the burgundy sofa, accepting the proffered snifter of brandy, though she truly didn’t want it. Dash, true to his word, settled into the opposite corner, careful to maintain a respectful distance. He even doused his cigar, although she didn’t mind it.

“You needn’t have done that,” she said. “Papa enjoyed a cigar on occasion. The scent reminds me of him. He’d sit, just as you are now, a cigar in one hand, a whiskey in the other, and make us laugh with his stories. Marguerite never objected to him smoking in the parlor. She said she enjoyed the way it made the house smell like a man lived there.”

Some days, like this, she missed Papa so. He’d have been able to help her, to tell her how to proceed with this prickly man who sat so close.

Dash reached out as if to touch her, then drew back. Jessa drew a grateful breath. Her skin already tingled with awareness of Dash’s nearness. If he had touched her, she would have ignited.
Was this how it started with Lily? With Marguerite? The passion that made them reckless and witless
? She tamped down the disturbing prickles that shimmied under her skin. She couldn’t afford that. Not now.

How did Dash Tremayne manage to make her feel so hot? So unsettled? The sheer masculine beauty of the right side of his face drew her to him. The destroyed left side should have repelled her. The way he alternately hid, then flaunted that scar… If only he hadn’t stopped her when she’d tried to touch it that day in the woods.

“Jessa?” The low rumble of his voice slowed her runaway thoughts.

It was time. Holly. She’d confront her demons for Holly. She pulled her shawl closer, as if were armor.

“Some of this story happened before I was born,” she said. “I know much of it from what Luther told me. Or Uncle Stan.” A modicum of strength flowed into her, remembering those two men. “Uncle Stan isn’t really my uncle; he’s a family friend. Papa’s best friend, from the military or school, I think. I remember him visiting often while I was growing up. He never married. Having no children of his own, he made me his honorary niece.”

She’d never been honest with Dash about Luther. It all seemed silly now. “Luther was Marguerite’s steward. Well, everything, really. Majordomo, butler, handyman, whatever was needed. A dear friend. He was also my tutor, child-minder, strictest disciplinarian, and fiercest protector.”

“You love him don’t you.”

“Yes, I do. Holly would, too.”

She caught the flicker of something in the captain’s eyes, but elected to ignore it. “Those three men,” she said, “Papa, Luther, and Uncle Stan, provided most of the care for me when I was young. I think each, in his own way, tried to make up for my lack of a mother.” Jessa sipped her brandy. The trickle of warmth in her throat soothed.

Dash followed her movements with a sip of his own brandy. He blinked slowly, as if savoring the flavor, then refocused his unnerving gray eyes on her.

She raised her chin, meeting his unspoken challenge, refusing to let him rattle her.

“Marguerite grew up on the estate owned by Jack Palmer’s family,” Jessa said. “They were childhood playmates. I think she always had hopes that someday they’d be something more. Then she met Marcus Wilkerson.” Her stomach knotted. Wilkerson had been the bogeyman of her childhood, a name the grownups whispered in private corners after they thought she’d fallen asleep. She hurried on.

“Marguerite had just turned seventeen. She’d been sent to London to visit her aunt, likely to get her away from Jack Palmer, since that would have been an unsuitable pairing. By all accounts, Wilkerson had a pretty face, a minor title, and—at least then—an account in good standing at Whites. He seduced the naïve girl just up from the country. When her parents discovered Marguerite was—” Heat suffused Jessa’s face. Holly.

“Her parents discovered Marguerite was anticipating a ‘happy event’?” Dash asked helpful.

Jessa nodded, grateful she hadn’t had to say the words. “When that happened, they demanded Wilkerson marry her.”

Dash suppressed the urge to growl. “They would have done better by her if they’d kidnapped her and sent her back to the country, rather than handing her over to that bastard,” he said.

“Yes, I know. You already know some of the rest of the story. Four years after Lily was born, Wilkerson fled, with his daughter in tow. It devastated Marguerite. Not only had she lost her child, but to a monster whose heinous acts were on everyone’s lips. There had been hints in the gossip rags for years, but with the final scandal, after he’d defrauded some powerful men, everything ruptured into the open. Every door in London closed to Marguerite. She had no funds left. She was destitute, grieving, in ill health, and a social outcast. That’s when Luther appealed to Marguerite’s childhood friend, Jack Palmer.”

Jessa allowed herself another small sip of brandy, but dared no more. She didn’t need an unguarded tongue running away with her at the very moment she needed to steer such a narrow course in these dangerous waters and in the face of the storm brewing on Captain Tremayne’s face.

“By this time,” she said, “Jack had become a respected merchant in London. He came to Marguerite’s aid without hesitation. He was an honorable man, who’d never stopped caring for her. He couldn’t marry her, of course, since she was still legally tied to Wilkerson, but he did what he could for her. He moved her to a small house in an anonymous town outside London, and let it get about she was his special friend, Mrs. Wilson.”

“Better to be known as a man’s mistress than as the wife of a notorious child molester,” Dash said.

“Yes, exactly. Marguerite regained her health, and after a time, learned contentment. Then, of course, the inevitable happened. Marguerite found herself with child again.”

Jessa shifted, uncomfortable. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Dash until now, but didn’t think she could bear to see the look in those silver eyes when she told him the next part. There would be disgust. Condemnation. Although the sin wasn’t hers, she’d nevertheless borne the brunt of it all her life. She dropped her eyes, staring into her snifter.

“Yes, Marguerite’s my mother. Almost no one knows that for certain, although, of course, over the years, there’s been speculation.” She blushed, but the information appeared to have had no affect on Dash, who merely nodded at her, inviting her to continue.

“She went away, gave birth to me in a private home for women in that sort of trouble, then returned without me. I was to be adopted, or put in an orphanage, or whatever it is that happens to children born in those circumstances.”

Dash startled, narrowing his eyes, but didn’t interrupt her.

“Only Luther had known of Marguerite’s condition. She hadn’t told him she planned to abandon me. She simply disappeared, telling no one where she was going. Neither Luther nor Jack talk much about those days, but I heard enough when they thought I wasn’t listening.” She turned and gazed into the fire, burning brightly in the grate.

“They feared she had done something desperate,” Jessa said. “Something fatal. When she returned, obviously no longer with child, Luther was frantic. And furious. So was Jack, when he found out. Mother had hidden her condition even from him. Together, Luther and Jack hunted me down. Brought me back.”

Jessa drew a steadying breath, but didn’t turn back to Dash. “Marguerite was in no fit condition to raise a child. Maybe it had to do with losing Lily. Maybe it was the manner in which Lily was lost, or the man who took her. I don’t know, but it broke something in Marguerite.”

Jessa fiddled with her brandy glass, then looked back to Dash, steeling herself against the judgment in eyes. The censure she, as an illegitimate child, had endured all her life.

There was none to see. Almost worse than the condemnation she’d expected was the hint of pity. Yet, anger smoldered there as well. But when he spoke, his voice held only the merest thread of his fury. “How could she do that to you? One would think, after having lost one daughter, she’d have clung even more to the next one. Would have valued you more. You were a gift. A blessing.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand these unnatural creatures, these women who cast aside their children.” His fist clenched the stem of his glass.

Jessa feared it would shatter. Without thinking, she reached out to pat his hand, to urge him to loosen his grip on the fragile glass. As it always did, sparks of energy arced between the two of them.

Dash hissed as if burned.

Jessa pulled back her hand as if she’d touched that same flame.

Dash closed his eyes, turning away from Jessa. “Go on,” he said. “Finish the damn story.”

“Captain, I don’t understand it myself. Luther says sometimes, when a woman has a baby, it makes her sad. Perhaps she’s afraid she won’t be a good mother. Perhaps she’s afraid the child will come to grief through her actions. No one knows why; it just happens. Her own foreboding can bring about that which she fears the most. One reads about it in the papers on occasion. A woman killing her children. Or herself. Luther feared it would happen to me. So Jack Palmer took me into his home, saying I was a foundling, a charity case, although everyone, of course, assumed I was his by-blow.”

Jessa glanced down at her glass, surprised to find it empty. That explained her calmness. She rose, stretched, then poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the sideboard. It wouldn’t do to relax any further. Already, she was far more comfortable with Dash than she should be. She downed it with a quick swallow, poured more into the glass, then returned to the sofa. She perched on the edge, as far away from the captain as she could manage.

“The next few years were fairly simple,” she said. “Ostensibly, I lived with Papa, but I shuttled back and forth between his home and Marguerite’s. When she was doing well, I stayed with her for quite long stretches of time. Neighbors only thought she was watching a child for a friend. All that changed the year I was eleven years old.” Jessa lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, then looked up into Captain Tremayne’s hard pewter eyes.

“Marcus Wilkerson died that winter,” she said. “And Lily came home.”

23.

She crackled with energy, and laughed a great deal…

DASH ROSE AND followed Jessa’s example, filling a glass with water, then gulped it. The tepid water eased his thirst, but did little to cool his temper.

Jessa had come to the point of the story most interesting to him. Yet, he found himself dreading the next part. Did he really want to know more about his late, mad wife?