Moonlight Masquerade (7 page)

Christine’s eyelids narrowed as she strained
to pierce the darkness to get a better look at her visitor. “That
goes without saying, my lord, even if I must take exception to your
use of the word
gracious
. Aunt Nellis has told me how she
had to beg your assistance—although I do thank you for taking us
in.”

The earl moved slightly, stepping out from
behind the chair to lower himself onto the seat, crossing his long
legs at the knee. “You give your thanks almost grudgingly, as a
child thanks its tutor for having just caned it,” he said, his
voice so deep, so silky, she could feel the insult slipping over
her like a finely spun garment.

Christine leaned forward, now able to just
barely make out the shape of the earl’s legs as well as the hand
that had boldly caressed her throat that morning. More than that
she could not see, for his upper body was still shrouded in deep
shadow.

“You’re playing some private game with me,
aren’t you?” she asked incisively. “This deliberate baiting serves
as some sort of twisted amusement for you. You must be in the midst
of experiencing a most dull winter season here at Hawk’s
Roost.”

There was no hint of amusement in the earl’s
answer. “I did not ask you here, Christine. You seem to have
forgotten that. However, if we are playing a game, it is
my
game. And we’ll play it by
my
rules.”

“How can I do that?” she asked, spreading
her hands in defeat. “I don’t recognize the game. Is it some form
of hide and seek? Then surely I should be allowed to know the
location of the secret passageways you use in order to spy on
me.”

“You don’t need secret passageways,
Christine,” he countered smoothly. “After all, you made very good
use of that window over there last night.”

Christine sucked in her breath. “You knew I
was watching you?”

“I knew,” he said, and there was a wealth of
sadness in his voice. “But you didn’t really see me.”

“But you’re wrong!” she exclaimed,
forgetting to be either tactful or ladylike. “I
did
see you.
Your hood blew back in the wind and I saw you. You—you’re
beautiful! Why do you hide?”

The hand moved, lifting from the arm of the
chair to disappear into the darkness. “I’ll go now.”

“Why?” Christine was in an agony of
embarrassment over her candid tongue, but still she persisted.
“What did I say that was so terrible? I only spoke the truth.”

The earl rose, averting his head, and
stepped back into the shadows. “Your truth, Christine. You spoke
your truth. Not mine. I overestimated you. You are nothing but a
romantic child, with a head filled with nothing more than childish,
romantic dreams. Once this storm is over your aunt should take you
back where you came from before it is too late. You will be eaten
alive in London.”

Christine’s next words stopped him in his
tracks. “A child, am I? Is that why you hid in the shadows to watch
me in my bath? Because I am a
child
?”

She watched as he approached the bottom of
her bed, his body still in shadow but his hand visible as his
fingers lightly traced the intricate lines of one of the sculpted
wooden posters. The movement was caressing. Hypnotizing. “You’re a
beautiful child, Christine. Beauty such as yours
fascinates
me, for it can hide so many ugly, unlovely flaws. What secrets do
you hide with your beauty, little one?”

“Secrets?” Christine echoed dully, not
understanding. “I have nothing to hide. Whatever would make you
think such a silly thing?” She snapped herself to attention,
purposefully tearing her gaze away from his stroking fingers to
stare down at her own tightly clasped hands. “I can’t believe we
are having this conversation. You are just an evil man, amusing
yourself at my expense. You were right. Please go now. I want you
to leave.”

Hawkhurst laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant
sound. “Never to darken your door again, Christine?”

Where she summoned her courage from
Christine would never know, but suddenly she heard herself saying,
“Not in this clandestine way, no. Even a romantic child knows not
to entertain gentlemen in her bedchamber. But surely we will see
you tomorrow evening at dinner, my lord? After all, you are our
host.”

The hand was withdrawn. The earl’s voice was
muffled, and Christine knew he had turned his back to her. “I dine
alone. It is—easier. But if you wish to flaunt convention and join
me in my study once your aunt is abed, we might talk a bit more, or
perhaps play a game or two of chess.”

“I—I’d like that,” Christine answered,
fighting the urge to leap from the bed and pursue him into the
darkness. “I’d like that very much.”

“Now, sleep, Christine. Your aunt is
correct. You need your rest.”

She merely nodded, knowing she was already
alone. Leaning back against the pillows, she debated whether or not
she should take up her candle and try to discover the entrance to
the passage the earl had used, but in the end she decided to wait
for morning before undertaking such a project. She was really very
tired, she convinced herself, unwilling to think she was respecting
the privacy of a man who, so far, refused to respect hers.

“Now, if only I knew how to play chess,” she
mused aloud, snuggling beneath the covers.

As the three-sided mantel clock struck the
hour of four, Vincent once again used the passageway leading from
his quarters to the guest bedchamber in which Christine Denham lay
sleeping. He had resisted temptation for as long as he could, but
he
was
a man, with a man’s weaknesses, a man’s desires.

The single bedside candle had long since
guttered in its holder, but moonlight streaming through the window
Christine had left undraped, as was her custom, cast a many-paneled
quilt of illumination across the width of the high-poster bed,
lending a soft, almost ethereal glow to Christine’s still
features.

What was he doing here? Why was he torturing
himself this way—and torturing this innocent young girl with his
unwanted attentions?

Christine murmured softly, stirring in the
bed, then was still once more. He moved closer, knowing he
shouldn’t. She was so small lying there, her hair so very dark
against her pale skin. So very lovely. And so unlike the tall,
blonde Arabella.

Arabella. Vincent closed his eyes tightly
against the pain the thought of her evoked. She had been so
beautiful, so gentle, so unspoiled. So trusting.

And he had killed her just as surely as if
it had been his hand that had held the knife that had opened her
veins.

Vincent rubbed at the left side of his face,
his fingers having long since memorized every inch of skin below
his cheekbone. He had been punished for his stupidity, his vanity,
his selfish love. Punished first by Fletcher, Arabella’s brother
and once his best friend, Fletcher Belden—who’d had every right to
want to see Vincent suffer—and then, for more than four years, by
himself, when Fletcher’s revenge had served to do only half the
job.

Vincent lived in a prison of his own making,
unable to forgive himself, ashamed to go on living while Arabella
lay in a cold, unyielding grave. He had borne his penance silently,
even gratefully, for a little over four years, feeling he deserved
it. But now the pain, at last beginning to ease, had suddenly come
back to him twofold.

For now there was this small, dark-haired
girl lying in a bed in his house, filling his mind with thoughts he
believed he would never have again. Filling him with desire, with
longing, with dreams that could never come true.

“Christine,” he whispered hoarsely, holding
out his hand as he came alongside the bed. “Have I been alone so
long that I will dream dreams about any female who happens to
stumble unwittingly into my path?”

His hand settled lightly on her hair, its
warmth like a living thing beneath his fingers. She slept on
peacefully as he gazed his fill of her, tracing the shadows her
absurdly long lashes cast on her cheeks, devouring her soft mouth
with his eyes.

Could he dare? Would she wake as she had
that first time, her liquid blue eyes filled with horror, to scream
and scream and scream? By what right did he think to use her this
way? But he had to try, he had to know.

His breathing ragged, Vincent slowly lowered
his face to hers, the hood he still wore from his earlier stroll in
the garden concealing his features. His lips brushed hers lightly,
tentatively, then withdrew, only to claim her mouth again, hungry
for just one more sweet taste of her.

Christine moaned almost inaudibly, her
breath sighing into his mouth, and he hastily backed away, his
entire body racked with desire—and something more than desire.
Something good, something wondrous, something he knew he did not
deserve. She sighed, a slight smile forming on her lips, but she
did not open her eyes.

Vincent turned on his heels and fled from
the room, back to his own chamber, to fling himself into the chair
that sat in front of the fire.

He had been in prison for over four
years.

Now he was in hell.

“O
h, dear, it looks
perfectly dreadful out there, doesn’t it? So desolate, so eerily
bright even at this late hour. Just how deep do you think the snow
is now, Lazarus?” Aunt Nellis Denham asked fretfully, peering out
one of the floor-to-ceiling drawing room windows, a worried frown
on her usually frowning face.

The servant, busying himself with placing
the gigantic silver tea tray on the table in front of a settee and
then setting out two cups, one for each of the Misses Denham,
replied absently, “It’s hard to say exactly, ma’am. What with the
wind blowing about and all, the snow comes to m’knees in some
places and to my rum—” he broke off, then jerked to attention to
finish—“er, that is to say, even higher in other places.”

Christine lifted a serviette to her mouth to
cover her smile. Little did Lazarus know, but the word
knees
was normally more than enough to send her aunt into spasms. The
woman must have a lot on her mind not to have already launched
herself into a homily on the evils of using familiar terms in
female company.

“All in all then, Lazarus,” she said
helpfully, seeing the man’s distress, “you would say there is quite
a bit of snow on the ground. Isn’t that correct?”

“Yes, miss,” the servant answered, shooting
her a grateful look as he handed her a cup of hot tea. “His
lordship said just tonight as I took his evening meal to him that
it looks like the old albatross won’t fly any time soon, whatever
that means.”

“Your reclusive employer has quite a
singular way with words,” Christine remarked in a choked voice,
determinedly spooning sugar into her cup.

The old albatross, not realizing that
Hawkhurst had been referring to her or there would have been the
devil to pay, turned away from the window to accept the cup from
Lazarus’s hands. “And now, Christine, tell me,” Aunt Nellis said
after taking a restorative sip of the hot liquid, “did you enjoy
your first dinner downstairs? I rather thought the capon was spiced
a fraction too freely, but then I have always had a sensitive
palate.”

Obviously, Aunt Nellis was trying to impress
Hawkhurst’s servant with her worldliness. At Manderley, the woman
would have been satisfied with a single chicken baked in butter
sauce, but Christine was too polite to point that out to her now.
Besides, she had other matters weighing on her mind.

Sneaking a quick glance at the mantel clock,
Christine only mouthed some random words of agreement and then
suggested that her aunt make an early night of it. It was past ten,
and she was a mass of nerves about missing her private meeting with
Hawkhurst just so that her aunt could practice her wiles on
Lazarus.