Guilty Series (60 page)

There was a moment of silence. Grace shot Dylan a glance as if indicating he should take the lead in the conversation, but at that moment, Molly came in. “If you please, sir,” she said to Dylan, “I am going down to the farm, and I thought Miss Isabel might like to come with me and see the new kittens. They've got their eyes open.”

Isabel was on her feet at once. Ian, it seemed, had not yet been forgiven for doubting her paternity. “May I, Papa?”

Kittens sounded more fun than Ian, and he cast his daughter a glance of envy. “You may.”

She was headed for the door quick as lightning, dragging Molly with her, and Grace had to stop her. “Isabel, have you not forgotten something?”

The child turned to her uncle, dipped another curtsy, and said good day. She received the appropriate reply and was gone in a flash. Dylan laughed, watching her go.

When he returned his attention to his brother, however, his amusement vanished at once. Ian was looking at Grace again, a longer look this time, a subtle perusal of her person. It was rather out of character for Ian, who never stared at anyone for a moment longer than scrupulous politeness demanded. Staring was rude.

Nor did Dylan miss the nuances of his brother's attentive gaze. Grace, in her tactful way, did not seem to notice this masculine interest, but Dylan noticed it, and it tore at something primitive and elemental inside him.

Osgoode came in with tea and placed the tray on the table between Ian and Grace.

“How do you take your tea, Excellency?” Grace asked, her soothing voice such a civilized contrast to what Dylan felt inside him. He leaned back against the window so that the bright light at his back could shadow his expression. He didn't usually feel this way about another man's interest in the women he bedded, but this was not any woman. This was Grace, with her virtuous intentions, her gentry-polite manners, and her generous heart. Grace, who had just looked at him an hour ago as if he were king of the earth. This possessive instinct that flared in him with such quick savagery was new, and strange, and he did not like it. He felt smothered by it. His mouth turned down as he watched his brother watch Grace.

She poured out Ian's tea, added the sugar and milk he had requested, and presented his cup to him on its saucer, her manner polite, composed. She seemed thoroughly at ease.

Ian accepted his tea with the same polite reserve, and Dylan wondered why he felt as if he were in a play and he was the only one who did not know his lines. Grace glanced at him, but she did not ask if he wanted tea, for she knew he did not like it. Instead, she simply poured a cup for herself.

“I have read of your diplomatic efforts in Venice,” she said to Ian, “and I congratulate you for the success of your negotiations. Will the marriage of the Italian princess really prevent their war with the Austrians?”

While he went on about the negotiations of a royal marriage and Italian nationalism, Grace listened with interest, and Ian looked like a man staring at heaven wrapped in peach-colored silk.

Dylan moved from the window to stand behind Grace's chair. Meeting his brother's gaze over the top of her head, he deliberately put his hands on her soft, white shoulders above the rounded neckline of her dress.

Startled by such intimate contact in front of another person, she stirred a fraction, then was still. Ian raised a brow at him, dignified and proper and disapproving, but Dylan kept his hands where they were.

In the end, there seemed little purpose to the call, other than the usual one Ian had when he visited, the polite notion of paying respects. Ian always did that when they were in the same city at the same time because it was the right thing to do. Even when his thoughts were anything but proper, Ian was all about doing the right thing.

After about ten minutes of polite piffle, Ian rose to leave. Grace also moved to stand up, and Dylan let his hands fall away from her shoulders.

“It has been a pleasure, Excellency,” she said and actually held out her hand to him.

Ian kissed it, the perfect way, of course, without touching his lips to her hand at all. He then glanced at Dylan. “Will you see me out?”

That surprised Dylan. “Of course,” he murmured, and the two men walked out to the drive where Ian's curricle and groom waited for him. They stopped beside the vehicle, but instead of stepping up, Ian paused and looked at him. “I should like you to come see me tonight, if possible. Any time convenient.”

“What?” Dylan could not believe such a request had come out of his brother's mouth. These days, he was never invited to Plumfield. If he had been, he would have declined.

“Yes,” Ian said, looking earnest and serious and even more stuffed shirt than usual. He brushed back a lock of his dark brown hair with one hand. “I am not making this request lightly. It is important, Dylan. It concerns a matter of business, so I would like you to come alone, please.”

Dylan sure as hell wasn't taking Grace with him. “Very well. Six o'clock?”

“Six, it is.” Ian stepped up into the curricle and took the reins from his groom. Dylan watched the carriage pull out of the drive and start down the shaded lane, then he went back into the house. Dylan felt vaguely uneasy.

When he returned to the drawing room, he found Grace standing just outside it. “May we speak privately?” she asked him in a low voice, glancing around for servants. Without waiting for an answer, she walked to the small writing study across the corridor, and he followed her.

He closed the door behind them, and to his surprise, she shut the window. Then she turned round and spoke. “Dylan, I know it has not been all that long since we…became involved, but something about our arrangement must be understood.” Her serene voice was low and cool. “Please do not ever touch me in that way again.”

He cooled as well in the chill of eyes that looked at him like the Arctic Ocean. He planted a slight smile on his face as his insides clenched and the noise rose in his ears. “I love touching you.”

“I cannot allow you to do that to me in front of another person. It is not decorous. I should not even have to point this out, Dylan, and you know it. What was that about? I know you and your brother do not get on, but—”

“Get on?” he interrupted. “I saw how he looked at you.”

“He was scrupulously polite, which is more than I can say for you. You demeaned me, Dylan.”

That lashed at him like the quiet sing of a whip, and he felt the sting. He could not defend himself on that score, he knew, so he veered to the other. “Polite?” he repeated. “Bloody hell, I knew what he was thinking. He was looking at you as if he wanted to get you out of your clothes.”

To his amazement, she did not dispute it. In fact, she seemed indifferent to it. “And if he was?”

“You are my mistress, Grace, and not available to be his. I was simply reminding him of that fact.”

“I am not your mistress, Dylan. A mistress is a possession, something bought and paid for, something owned. I will not allow you to treat me as if you own me. You pay me only in the capacity that I am governess to your daughter. In bed, there is no money between us. I am not your mistress. I am your lover.”

“Either way, you are mine.”

“No,” she contradicted him, calm and poised in her defiance. “I belong to myself, and when and how I choose to give of myself to anyone is a choice I make. It is not for you to decide.”

She turned to walk away and he reached for her, wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her there, burying his face against her neck. She stayed rigid in his hold, stiff and unyielding, and he gave it up. The moment he let her go, she left the study. The door closed softly behind her. He stared at the painted white surface, suffocating in the airless room. “Mine,” he told her through the closed door as if she were standing on the other side, but when he opened the door, she was not there. He thought of her eyes and her smile and that afternoon in the nursery, and his chest ached with the rage of jealousy, possessiveness, and—God help him—fear.

Dylan stalked into the music room and sat down. He had never felt this way before, and he did not understand himself. He opened his folio and set to work, using his music to shred that sickening jealousy and fear and get it out of his system. There was no time to get mired in the agonies of composition that usually plagued him these days, and he pounded keys with such force that they overrode the noise in his head. He wrote fast and furious, ending the symphony with a rollicking finale that, when played with full orchestra, would bring down the house.

He grabbed the quill one more time. At the bottom of the last page, he wrote one word.
Finis.

Breathing hard, he put the quill down and stared at that word, not quite able to believe what he had just done. He had finished it, after days of struggling to find the end, he had just sat down and written it in a way he had not done for years, without thinking, without struggling, without being blocked by the noise. He had completed an entire symphony, when only a few months ago, he had thought anything he wrote would be a miracle.

He laughed out loud with exultation. He had done it, by God. At last.

Dylan gathered up the sheets of music and tucked them into his folio, then he rose from the piano. He had to find Grace and tell her. She was probably still angry with him, but she would forgive him, she was too softhearted not to forgive him. She was just made that way, soft and sweet and way more forgiving than he deserved.

He started to leave the music room and go in search of her when he heard the clock chime. He glanced at the mantel and realized it was already six o'clock.

Christ,
he thought, he was supposed to be at Plumfield. Ian would be steaming when he arrived an hour late, but he had to go. Tonight when he returned, he thought, he would patch up his quarrel with Grace. Tonight at the cottage he'd make up with her any way she wanted.

 

A horse was faster than a carriage, and Dylan rode to Plumfield, arriving at a quarter to seven. He expected his brother to be quite put out over his lateness, but Ian did not seem to mind. He accepted the explanation of losing track of time over a new symphony without even a hint of reproach. He seemed preoccupied with other thoughts, and Dylan realized whatever his brother needed to discuss with him truly must be of vital importance.

Ian had long ago accustomed himself to all manner of different cultures and delicate political situations, and however important the matter to be discussed might be, he never came straight to the point. Instead, he led Dylan into the drawing room and poured wine for them both, then they talked of seemingly trivial matters for over an hour.

They discussed estate business first, then Ian shifted the conversation to Isabel. He asked what Dylan intended to do with the child. Dylan replied that he was keeping her with him, and that in a year or two, when she was ready, they would do a tour together—a plan he decided on even as he spoke it.

Ian was cautionary. “A young woman cannot hope to go beyond the restrictions of society,” he pointed out. “Her future is inevitably that of all women, a suitable marriage and children.”

The idea that his daughter's fate was to be inevitable was enough to make Dylan rail against it. He casually mentioned a few names, including Sappho and Maria Teresa d'Agnesi, and tried to tell himself it wasn't Ian's fault that he was as dull and conventional as a sermon.

“So until then, at least, she remains in the care of Mrs. Cheval?” Ian asked.

The question was bland, but Dylan set his jaw at the mention of Grace, and every muscle in his body tensed. He met his brother's inquiring eyes across the five feet of space between their chairs. “Yes.”

The other man sighed and sat back. “Dylan, about this woman. You do know about her, do you not?”

“Know about her? I know she is from a good family in Cornwall, and that she is a widow.”

“No, I mean do you know
who
she is? About her husband and all that.”

“She eloped and disgraced her family,” Dylan said irritably, “though I don't know how you came to hear of it. Your sensibilities are offended, I am sure, but mine are not. Nor am I concerned for Isabel's sake. Grace is an excellent governess, and Isabel has become fond of her.”

“Yes, but Dylan, surely you know—” Ian broke off and took a swallow of port, looking like he needed it. “You've been here in Devonshire for two months,” he said as if thinking out loud. “You have not heard.”

Alarm began to prickle the tiny hairs at the back of Dylan's neck. He took a heavy swallow of claret. “Ian, for God's sake, let us not engage in endless rounds of diplomatic fencing. Whatever you have to say to me, say it straight out.” He lifted his glass for another swallow of wine.

“She's Etienne Cheval's widow. You must know that. So…” His voice trailed away delicately.

Dylan froze, his glass midway to his lips. “Etienne Cheval, the painter?”

“Yes. The Great Cheval.”

Dylan made a sound of derision. “You must be mistaken. Cheval is a common enough name.”

“The paintings confirm it. I recognized her the moment I saw her.”

He was French…ten years older than I…not a settling down sort of man…artists, why are you all so tormented?

It was true. In a sudden rush of certainty, he knew it. Of course she knew about artists. She'd been married to one. Why had she not told him who her late husband had been? Cheval, the painter. Did it matter? He closed his eyes, and something cracked inside him. If it did not matter, she would have told him.

“I do not care if she is your mistress,” Ian said, his voice forcing Dylan to open his eyes, “if you are discreet. But there is your daughter to consider.”

Grace was better with Isabel than any other woman could be, and Dylan didn't know how Grace's being the widow of a painter, however disreputable and famous he had been, affected Isabel. He set his glass down carefully. “Ian, what do you mean?”