Mad About the Earl (34 page)

Rosamund experienced pain, betrayal, and loss, just as everyone did. Her beauty was no armor against them.

Why hadn’t he seen it before? Perhaps he’d been too busy protecting himself from pain. He loathed his own looks and hated being judged by them. Yet he’d done the same to her, hadn’t he, without even knowing it.

Her beauty had always staggered him; it still did. But he knew now that if some bad fairy took away Rosamund’s stunning looks tomorrow, his feelings for her would not change.

And he knew now, without a shadow of a doubt, that he loved her.

She’d said she loved him. Indeed, she’d never shied from his looks, even when they first met, though his scarred, puckered face must have come as a shock.

Did she see past
his
exterior, too? He was beginning to believe that she did. The thought was frightening, exhilarating.

She entwined her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her once more. “Griffin, I’ve changed my mind. I need you. Make love to me. Please.”

*   *   *

When Griffin finally thrust inside her, Rosamund released a long, soft sigh.

Griffin’s lovemaking was slow and passionate and careful—as it often was—and immensely pleasurable, too. He did not do anything different, but everything had changed between them, nonetheless.

Tonight, he’d made her feel safe and loved and secure.

But it was more than that. Her love for him had deepened somehow. When he touched her, when he stroked her inside, it was as if her pleasure existed on two planes, spiritual and physical. Each heightened and informed the other until she lost touch with the difference between them and flew with him in a glittering transcendence of color and light.

There were no words to express what she felt. She only hoped he experienced some small fraction of that unparalleled bliss, too.

“I love you,” Griffin whispered.

She squeezed her eyes shut as silent tears of thankfulness leaked from them. At last! She couldn’t contain the happiness that flooded her. Her joy in hearing him say the words was so intense, it was almost painful.

“Oh, Griffin! Oh, my darling.” She stroked the hard line of his jaw, laughing and crying at once. “I love you, too.”

*   *   *

Griffin was waiting in the drawing room at Steyne House when Lady Steyne walked in.

He rose, more from the desire to intimidate than from politeness.

The lady had been unpinning her bonnet, but at the sight of him, her movements faltered and her hands fell to her sides.

Then she lifted her chin and stared up at him, cold lights sparking in her eyes. “How did you get in here?”

“Oh, it really was not so difficult.”

She whipped around and saw her son lounging in the doorway. He pulled the doors shut behind him and leaned back, surveying her for a long, silent pause. Then he strolled toward her like a panther stalking prey.

Griffin grinned as his mother-in-law shrank perceptibly in stature and confidence.

“I—I thought you were out of town,” stammered the marchioness. Her face hardened. “But perhaps you merely made that excuse to avoid my party.”

“The absence was unavoidable, or I would have attended, I assure you. Perhaps then I might have saved my sister an intolerable insult. From her own mother, no less.”

Lady Steyne drew herself up. “Oh! Is that what this is about? I assure you, the girl has far too much sensibility. There was no harm intended. If I’d known she had such strong objections…” With a smug curl of the lips, she lowered her gaze. “Well,” she said softly, “she could hardly be expected to confide such things to her brother. Or to her husband, for that matter.”

“That won’t wash, ma’am, so don’t waste your breath,” said Griffin. He no longer felt a particle of jealousy toward Lauderdale. Clever of her to prey on that particular weakness. A few weeks ago, she might well have succeeded.

Icily, Xavier said, “I trust you do not mean to compound your villainy by implying that my sister willingly participated in your little scheme?”

Lady Steyne opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.

“Because if you are, indeed, implying such a thing, I shall have to think of a suitable punishment in addition to throwing you out of this house and cutting off the outrageously generous allowance I pay you.”

Her eyes widened as the enormity of his words sank in.

“What?” she screeched. “You selfish, ungrateful blackguard! I should have aborted you when I had the chance.” She picked up the nearest object, which happened to be a fine example of Chinese porcelain, and hurled it at Xavier’s head.

He caught it so deftly, he might have been playing in the slips in a game of cricket. Turning, he set it on the mantel.

With an aristocratic sneer, Xavier said, “Take your malice and your tantrums somewhere else, Mother. Like every other man who has ever figured in your vain, shallow existence, I am done with you.”

Xavier opened the door and spoke to a footman outside. “Have Her Ladyship’s bags packed and the traveling carriage brought around.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” sputtered Lady Steyne. “This is outrageous! Preposterous! Xavier, you cannot do this to your own mother. What will people say of you?”

“I do not doubt they will say a great deal,” he agreed. “But if you spread tales of that night or lies about Rosamund, you may be sure that I will hear of it. And I will destroy you.”

“I want what’s rightfully mine! Two children I brought up on my own when he left me. Do you think that wasn’t a sacrifice?”

He curled his lip. “We would have been safer with a pack of wolves.”

After a moment, Xavier shook his head. “No, my lady, you frittered away your fortune on jewels and pretty gowns and on your gaming, too, I have no doubt. You have your jointure, however—”

“A pittance!”

“On the contrary, ma’am,” returned her son. “It is far more generous than you deserve.”

She licked her lips and shifted her stance. “What would you give for my silence about Rosamund?”

The look Steyne bent on her sent a shiver down Griffin’s spine. “Shall I tell you what I will do if you do not remain silent?” he purred. “The lives we lead in these modern times are so fraught with danger, are they not? Carriage accidents, a stray shot from a poacher in the woods, an inadvertently large dose of laudanum at night.” He spread his hands. “So many possibilities.”

Finally cowed, Lady Steyne began to weep. Even Griffin was a little shocked at that one.

Xavier sighed. “Oh, dear Lord, spare me.” He opened the door again and said to the footman outside, “Take her away. Escort her to the carriage when all is ready for her departure. If she gives you trouble, you have my permission to throw her into the street.”

The footman, definitely one of Xavier’s men, received these orders with commendable impassivity.

The defeated marchioness swept from the room, her head held deliberately high. Xavier turned back to Griffin.

“That was immensely satisfying,” he said. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to do it for years.”

“I enjoyed it, too,” Griffin admitted. He held out his hand. After only a moment’s hesitation, Xavier shook it.

Xavier’s face, Griffin noted, appeared slightly gray, and his eyes looked almost feverishly bright. Despite the vitriol that laced his dealings with Lady Steyne, it could be no easy thing to cut ties with one’s sole living parent.

Gruffly, Griffin said, “If I had stopped her in the first place, none of this need have happened. If I’d known—”

Xavier’s sleek brows twitched together. “It’s not your fault. You could not have known what she was capable of. Truthfully, even I did not guess.” His mouth set in a grim line. “I should have been there. I could have prevented it.”

“You are not responsible for your mother’s actions.”

Xavier shrugged and turned away. Then he said, “I owe you an apology, it seems.”

“What? Good God, no.”

“You love my sister,” said Xavier softly. “And she you. And I was wrong about both of you.”

The feelings he had acknowledged to Rosamund were too new and raw to admit to anyone else. Griffin made no reply.

He glanced out the window to see Lady Steyne being firmly escorted to the traveling carriage. Her head was high, but a hectic spot of crimson bloomed in each cheek.

He hoped to God they’d all seen the last of her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I saw who killed Allbright.

The letter was written in the same hand as the previous one he’d received at Pendon Place. Only this time, the writer had troubled to send it to the London house.

Griffin stared hard at the note. He’d wondered whether there’d been any more point to this correspondence than simple malice, and now he had his answer.

Blackmail. Clearly, the writer wanted money and was leading up to a demand. Pay him once, however, and Griffin would be paying for the rest of his days. He had no intention of allowing himself to be bled dry over Allbright’s death.

There must be a way to find out who was sending these notes. The same person who’d started the rumor around Pendon, no doubt. Someone literate … Someone with an ax to grind …

Suddenly Griffin realized he had a sample of Crane’s writing at home at Pendon Place. He’d seen it a time or two when he looked up his grandfather’s estate records, but he could remember nothing about it.

He’d immediately suspected his grandfather’s former steward when the first note came, then told himself his own prejudice led him to suspect Crane of everything from smuggling (of which Crane was doubtless guilty) to stolen cattle and failed crops.

Logically, it seemed pointless for Crane to write such an ineffectual note as the previous one. Crane was a man of action, not one to sit around writing poisoned-pen letters with no particular aim.

But what if the point were to keep Griffin on tenterhooks until he was so softened by fear, he’d pay any amount to silence the writer of that note?

That sounded too subtle for Crane, somehow. If he knew the truth, he would also know that he held Griffin’s life in the palm of his hand. He wouldn’t wait to use that information to his own best advantage.

“Griffin, Lord deVere called again this aft— Oh! I’m sorry.” Rosamund pulled up short. Then she hurried toward him, concern pinching her features. “What is it? Griffin, what’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” he said, tucking the note into his breast pocket. “Nothing. What did deVere have to say?”

She continued to stare at him with a worried frown in her eyes and something else, too.

Hurt, he realized. She knew he hid something from her, and she wanted to know what it was. The fact that he did not intend to tell her would continue to lie between them, keeping them that fraction of distance apart.

A sudden rush of remorse and frustration swept through him. He
wanted
to tell her, but he’d promised not to divulge the truth to anyone. It wasn’t his secret to tell.

She was talking about a ball, he realized, rattling on as if she hadn’t cared one way or the other about this secret he kept.

He scowled. “A ball? Here? You must be joking.”

“We have been in Town for over a month, easing Jacqueline into society,” said Rosamund. “It is time to launch her in style. She now has the confidence to carry it off and sufficient acquaintances in London that it will not seem like we are throwing her into the shark pool without a raft.”

She laughed. “An unfortunate metaphor! But ton parties can be very like shark-infested waters without the support of one’s family and friends.”

He nodded. He knew that from firsthand experience, did he not?

“And,” she continued, “we will gather all of the prospective suitors on that odious list of Lord deVere’s together in one place so that you can make your inspection.”

She said it as if inspecting a load of callow youths were an enticement. He sighed. Well, he supposed it was, in a way. He needed to get Jacqueline riveted to someone by the end of the season. Since Rosamund’s allegiance was firmly with Maddox, that left Griffin to play Cupid.

“Does it have to be a damned ball? Why not a soiree-type caper or one of those devilish musicales?”

“Oh, but there is
nothing
like a ball!” said Rosamund. “What could be more conducive to matrimony than dancing in a gentleman’s arms?”

Suddenly those luminous eyes dimmed a little, and her gaze lowered.

With a pang, he realized she regretted never having danced with him.

“I suppose we could have a soiree,” she said unenthusiastically.

Inwardly, he cursed. But when she’d looked so excited and happy about the damned ball, how could he gainsay her?

“Oh, very well,” he grumbled. “But do not, under any circumstances, expect me to dance.”

She flew to him and hugged as much of him as she could and pulled him down to kiss him repeatedly on the lips. “Oh, thank you, Griffin! You will not be sorry. It is going to be the grandest ball London has ever seen! Everyone will be there.”