Miracle (33 page)

Slowly, he opened his eyes. His shirt lay in a limp heap near the door. His breeches and boots had been tossed randomly; his stock was draped across the back of a chair, resembling a dead ferret.

Groaning, he rolled over and sat up, his gaze going immediately to the delicate feminine stocking cascading off the windowsill.

"Damn," he said.

His head hurt. His body ached. He smelled like Miracle. She was burned into his nostrils, his chest, his hands, between his legs. In his mouth. Oh, the things he'd taught her. He should be mortified.

"Damn."

He stood.
"Meri?"
he called.

Silence.

Clayton moved to the window, focused his bleary vision on the shore below.
GOOD MORNING, YOUR GRACE
was scrawled in big letters into the sand. A grin crept across his lips, and once again, the night's memories tumbled through his mind, causing his body to react, to grow turgid and restless.

He dressed quickly, not bothering to tie his stock or put on his coat, nor did he bother with his boots. With his clothes clutched in his arms, he ran down the beach barefoot, following Miracle's small footsteps, and took the shortcut to the castle so he reached Cavisbrooke in half an hour. He found Benjamin steeping tea and toasting crumpets.

The servant eyed him with a slightly horrified expression. "Good gosh," Ben said. "You look as if you've tumbled through the night with a doxy." Leaning nearer Clayton, Ben sniffed and frowned. "Good gosh, you
have
tumbled through the night with a doxy."

"Hardly," Clayton snapped. "Have you seen Miracle?"

In a wink, Ben's expression became concerned. "I'm afraid to ask—"

"Then don't." He moved to the back entry and looked off down the path. She wasn't conversing with her pigs. No sign of her at the henhouse.

"I believe this calls for something stronger than tea," Ben declared and pulled his flask from his coat pocket and proceeded to uncork it. He took a deep drink, closed his eyes, shuddered his shoulders, then grimaced.

"Agreed." Clayton snatched the bottle from Ben's hand and turned it up to his own mouth. The brandy hit his gut with a punch.

"Perhaps this is none of my business," Ben said, eyeing the flask, "but may I ask what the blazes you thought you were doing? You'll have to tell him, you know—His Grace, I mean—else he'll be expecting a . . . how shall I say this?"

"A virgin on his wedding night?"

Ben cleared his throat. "The moment she begins to whisper sweet—"

Clayton grabbed Ben by his coat and said through his teeth, "I don't want to hear about it. Understand? I don't wish to discuss it. I don't need reminding that I've made a muck out of this entire fiasco and that it serves me right for attempting such a farce in the first place. Now, draw me a bloody bath so I can drown myself in it."

Ben nodded, extricated himself from Clayton's grip, then hurried from the room. No sooner had the valet quit the room, than Clayton turned to discover Hoyt at the threshold of the back door, an ax in one hand, a headless chicken in the other.

"Well, now," Hoyt said, his eyes blurry behind his spectacles, his mouth set in a grim line. "I'd say
yer
lookin
' like a man with a weighty problem,
Yer
Grace."

"Do I?"

"Aye." John moved into the room, his limp exaggerated without the use of his cane. He slammed the fowl onto the chopping block and proceeded to whack off one crooked, yellow foot, which he flung to the cat that meowed and circled his legs. "I felt like a bit of meat today," he announced. Or maybe I was just in the mood to kill
somethin
'. What do you think,
Yer
Grace?"

"If you have something to say, Hoyt, then say it."

Whack
went the cleaver again. "I suspect you'll be
marryin
" the girl for certain now. I mean, now that you've spent the night with her and come home
lookin
' ragged as a tomcat. Not that she looked any better, though I venture to say she appeared a bit happier about her sorry state. Not like you. You look like a man with a noose around his neck."
Whack!
"Is there aught you'd like to tell me. Your Grace?"
Whack! Whack!
He tossed the cat another foot.

"Yes." Clayton took another drink from the flask, hissed
as the brandy burned down his throat, then said through his teeth, "She knows it was you writing the letters. Johnny, my man."

Stupid thing to say. He took another drink, but didn't look away. If the old man was spoiling for a fight, he was in the mood to give him one. Clayton wasn't going to be the only one dealing with a conscience in flux.

The cleaver poised in the air momentarily before John slowly lowered it to the block. He said nothing for a long while, just stared down at the chicken, his heavy breathing slightly ruffling the white and brown feathers. "Just tell me this," he finally said, his voice weary. "Do you love her? Truly love her? That's all she wants,
ya
know, is someone to love her." His head turned. He regarded Clayton with faded eyes. "I've never quite understood why
ya
come back,
m'lord
. If I thought for a flea's wink that
yer
reason was
nothin
' more than to beguile her for some insidious reason, I'd kill
ya
right here and now with me own two hands. But I've seen the way y a watch her. I hear the way
ya
speak to her. I loved a woman
meself
, once. Aye, [ did. I know what love can do to a man. 'Specially
lovin
' a woman like Miracle. One look in their dreamy eyes and a man can loose himself. He can become a little insane himself, I vow. Aye, damn me, but
iove
can make a man into a fool that fast." He snapped his fingers. "And once it's there, mate, it'll always be there. Imprinted on
yer
damn heart. You can try to fool
yerself
, tell
yerself
that there will be others, but there won't be no others like her. '
Til
yer
dyin
' day
ya
won't ever forget the look in her eyes when she laughs, or cries, or flares up in anger."

His throat growing tight, Hoyt stared down at the chicken. "Damn me, but I've gone and butchered Agatha. I don't rightly know what come over me."

"Love makes fools of us all," Clayton said softly.

"I'll have to dispose of the corpse, I reckon."

"I reckon."

"This'll be our little secret, Your Grace? She'll think

Agatha wandered off and got plucked by a mutt or
someaught
."

Clayton nodded.

Hoyt moved toward the door, the limp, footless fowl drooping from one hand. As he disappeared over the threshold, Clayton took another drink from the flask, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Were his feelings for Miracle so obvious?

Did the same emotions fill up his face the way John's did when he thought of Miracle's mother?

Oh, yes, those eyes could drive any man insane.

He went to his room. Ben was adding one last bucket of hot water to the washtub, a great fixture on wheels hand- painted with pictures of flowers and butterflies and bunnies peeking up from copses of grass. Ben helped him remove his clothes, then, without relinquishing the brandy flask, Clayton stepped into the tub, wincing as the hot water bit at his thighs that were slightly smeared with Miracle's blood and his own semen.

He slid down into the steaming water and lay back his head, felt his skin swell and his scalp prickle with the heat while the memory of John's face, weathered and wrinkled, had illuminated with as much pain as bliss when recalling
Lorraina
Cavendish.

Would he, Clayton Hawthorne, Lord Basingstoke, look similarly twenty years from now when he recalled those moments of passion in Miracle's arms? Would his eyes reveal the pain he experienced each time he thought of her loving another man—as
Lorraina
had loved her husband?

Because there was no way around it. Lovely, dreamy, childlike Miracle, who talked to animals and stole royal horses, would someday become the duchess Salterdon, his brother's wife, if he, Clayton, persisted in continuing this grievous game of switched identities. He could reveal himself now for who and what he was, why he was here, and have her toss him out on his ear, never to see her again, or he could continue the ruse and be forced to spend the rest of his life desiring her from afar.

Christ, anything was better than living his life with no Miracle at all.

She moved silently up behind him, slid her arms over his shoulders, plunged her hands into the hot water, and spread it across his chest. "My lord," she whispered against his ear. "I've missed you."

His eyes closed, and Clayton smiled.

"I've sent Benjamin for tea, and I've told him to take his merry time."

"You'll have people talking,
Meri
Mine."

She laughed gaily and sat on the edge of the tub. The rising steam made her cheeks flush; it turned the snug bodice of her light brown gown transparent. Her nipples looked like pert coins pressed into the worn material.

"I was wondering," she said. "Will every time we make love be that glorious? Is it always that wonderful?"

"That depends on the people, I suppose."

"I'm talking between us, of course. You and I."

He wrapped his fingers around her wrist. It felt brittle as a bird's. "Only if you agree to become the duchess of Salterdon."

Sliding from the tub and going to her knees, Miracle took the soap from Clayton's hand and slid it over his shoulder. He easily recognized the stubborn tilt of her head, the set of her chin. Frustration mounting, he grabbed hold of her arm, his fingers painting wet splotches on her sleeve. "What the blazes is wrong with you? Most women would sell their soul to marry into that sort of wealth and position."

"I'm not most women," she replied, and batted her lashes. "Or so you said last night."

"This isn't a laughing matter, Miracle."

Miracle pulled away, rolled the soap over and over in her hand until lather bubbled up through her fingers. Her small white teeth nibbled at her lower lip. She looked, he thought, like a scolded child.

"If I leave here again without you,
Meri,
I won't come back. Ever. And think of this . . . you may well be pregnant—ah, Christ, I hadn't even thought of that." He covered his face with his hot, wet hands, dragged them through his hair that was fast becoming saturated by sweat and steam. "Pregnant. Now wouldn't that be a hell of a mess. What the devil was I thinking?"

"Pregnant," she said softly, with a touch of wonderment in her voice; her entire face began to glow; her eyes shone. Leaning nearer, her freckled nose almost touching his, she said, "Do you think so? Would it please you? Would you like for me to give you a child,
m'lord
?"