Susan Carroll (41 page)

"And what have you learned?" Phaedra asked.
"Have you any definite proof connecting my grandfather to your
sister's death?"

"No," James admitted, "but I have seen the
ruthless manner in which your grandfather deals with other
unfortunates. Remember the Wilkins family? I know now that he would
have been capable of helping Carleton to dispose of my sister."

"Oh, James," Phaedra cried. "On the basis of
only suspicion, you would kill my grandfather?"

She thought that if she had been possessed of
the strength, she would have seized James by the shoulders, tried
to shake this madness from him. "Are you so eager then to stand
trial for murder a second time?"

"I've learned to be a little more subtle,"
James said. "I have been going through Weylin's business records,
his dealings with parliament, seeking something, anything, that
could ruin him, but leave him alive to suffer as I have done."

"And what on earth do you expect to-" She
broke off, going cold at the realization. "My God, you've already
found the way, haven't you? I gave it to you the morning I told you
I was Robin Goodfellow."

"Yes! Weylin's own granddaughter the writer
of revolutionary essays, loaded with information she gleaned from
him. The scandal alone would have brought him down He'd have lost
his place in parliament and been ostracized.” James choked with
bitterness. "The very thing I'd been looking for! And I cannot use
it, because of you!"

"I am sorry to be such a hindrance to your
plans," she said brittlely. "How unfortunate that I ever returned
from Bath."

James swore softly. "Damn it, Phaedra! You
know I never meant that. But surely you must see what a cursed
irony it is. I find the one woman capable of gifting me with love,
with the desire to do more than just exist and she is also the one
obstacle to my settling this score, to finally knowing peace."

"I only see one thing-that you will never
find peace this way."

She planted herself in front of him to stop
his pacing. Catching his face between her hands, she pleaded,
"James, I beg of you. Let it go. Leave my grandfather alone."

He forced her hands down. "I didn't know you
harbored such great affection for the old man that you would desire
so much to save him."

"It is not him I want to save, but you. If
you could but see your face when you talk of this vengeance. You
grow so cold, but your eyes burn as though you were consumed with
fever. It frightens me."

Her words appeared to have no effect. He
pulled away from her, his face rigid and remote as he retreated
into that dark realm where she had no way to reach him. The
sufferings he had endured were enough to have broken most men. It
was a testimony to his strength of will that he had survived
without descending into madness.

Phaedra loved him far too well to see him
hover now on that brink and make no effort to draw him back. In
desperation, she followed after him, catching at his sleeve. He did
not shake her off, but he seemed more distant than the night she
had first met him.

She lowered her voice, trying to infuse more
softness and patience into her tone. "James, you have been
grievously injured by my grandfather. I admit that, though I still
cannot believe he had any responsibility for Julianna's death. Some
recompense is indeed owed you. I simply wish that you could bring
yourself to extract a more gentle form of retribution."

He stared at her, the set of his mouth hard
and discouraging. "What do you mean?"

She was not altogether sure herself, but an
idea was forming in her mind. Now it took on a crystal clarity that
both frightened her and caused her pulse to race with undreamed-of
hopes.

"Could not taking his granddaughter away from
him be payment enough?"

His stony expression relaxed somewhat, but a
frown creased his brow. "I am still not certain what you are
suggesting."

"I am asking you to leave London and forget
about ruining my grandfather. In return, I will go away with you."
She made the offer with a defiance that barely masked her fear of
his rejection.

James regarded her for a moment in
uncomprehending silence. Then he said slowly. "You are offering to
come back with me to Canada?"

"To Canada or wherever you choose. To hell
itself if that is where you lead me."

His gaze raked her face as though he did not
credit what he was hearing. "You trust me enough to abandon
everything you have ever known and to put your very life into my
keeping?"

"Aye. I love you enough, even for that." She
kept her voice steady, although she quailed inwardly, certain that
in another moment he would smile with scorn, laugh at her. But the
light that broke over his face took her breath away. He looked like
a prisoner emerging from his dark cell, glimpsing the sun for the
first time in years.

"Phaedra!" He crushed her in his arms,
sweeping her off her feet.

"Then it would be enough for you?" she
breathed.

"Enough!" A sound escaped him, somewhere
between a laugh and a groan. "It would be a dream. I should have to
tread softly for fear of waking." He drew back to look at her, a
shadow of doubt darkening the glow in his eyes. "You truly mean it?
You would do this out of love for me and not some sort of sacrifice
to spare that obscene old man?"

She touched her lips to his. "I would come
for no other reason than that I should perish without you."

"You realize that the home I could offer you
would be nothing like this?" James gestured, indicating the gilded
magnificence of the bedchamber. "Canada is an untamed land, and
there is the war in the American colonies. Although we have not
been much disturbed by it yet, there is always the chance-"

Phaedra kissed him again to silence him. "I
should not mind any of that if I was with you." She gave a shaky
laugh. "Indeed, I might regard it as a challenge to convince your
Canadian friends they are supporting the wrong side in the
war."

James clutched her to him as though she were
an armful of mist he expected to vanish at any moment. Then he
kissed her with such infinite tenderness, kissed her as though he
would never let her go.

When he drew back, it seemed to Phaedra as
though their hearts touched in the meeting of their eyes. He swept
her off her feet, cradling her high against him, carrying her to
the bed to set the seal upon the pact they had just made.

As often as James had made love to her this
summer, Phaedra had experienced nothing like the passion that
coursed between them now. Before there had been a desperate edge
that had sparked almost a ferocity into James's loving. This time
he undressed her so slowly, with such great care, Phaedra cried out
with impatience for his caress.

Even after he stretched out naked beside her,
the warm, strong contours of his muscular frame straining against
her, James yet prolonged the moment of their joining. He kissed and
stroked, his hands molding her curves with trembling worship as
though she offered him a great gift, one that he scarcely dared to
accept.

Phaedra banded her arms about him, her lips
brushing the scar upon his throat, the only visible mark of all
that he had endured. She sought to draw out that pain from him as
much as she did to fan the flames of his desire.

He pressed her back into the downy softness
of the pillows, burying his lips against her hair, his breath warm
as he murmured, "Tell me again. Say it-that you will be mine."

"Yours," she whispered. "Yours forever."

A soft moan escaped her when he at last eased
himself inside her. He moved slowly, bathing them both in tender
fire. Phaedra became lost in the rhythm as though she already
followed James upon that sea of forbidden dreams-upon wild, dark
waves that, when they crested, left them both spent upon some
faraway shore.

Long after their passion had faded into warm
afterglow, James continued to hold her close, molding her flesh to
his. He clung to her, claiming her with a possessiveness that both
filled her with joy and frightened her. He could not seem to relax
the tension cording his strong fingers, as if he feared that by
releasing her, she would draw away from him and change her
mind.

"You will never want for anything, never
regret your choice. I swear it." His voice was a fierce whisper in
the darkness.

"Hush, love." Phaedra burrowed deeper against
James's shoulder, wishing he had not spoken of regrets. But it was
not hers that she feared so much as his. What if her love was not
enough? What if the time came when his desire for her was overcome
by the desire to be avenged?

No, she refused to consider that possibility.
Her love would be enough. She would make it so.

It took James several days to arrange for
their passage from England. By the night they were scheduled to
depart, Phaedra felt as though her nerves were as brittle as glass,
stretched too thin by the blower's art, ready to shatter at the
slightest touch.

On the day of the elopement, she alternated
between the desire to brim over with laughter and to burst into
tears. As the sun slowly set, bathing her bedchamber window in hues
of rose and amber, Phaedra fidgeted, scarcely able to stand still
long enough for Lucy to mend the flounce of her white satin
petticoat.

"Only a moment longer, milady," her harried
maid pleaded, taking several more quick stitches. "There. It is
done." Lucy smoothed the petticoats down over the whalebone hoops
billowing out around Phaedra. Then she helped her don a gown
fashioned of green pomona silk.

"You will look such a picture, milady," Lucy
crooned. "So beautiful. I declare-just like a bride."

Phaedra started, shooting a wary glance at
Lucy. If the girl were not so blithely imperceptive, Phaedra might
have feared she had guessed something of the planned elopement.

Glancing at herself in the mirror, she
supposed she could see what had occasioned Lucy's remark. She
certainly looked pale enough to be a skittish maiden upon her
wedding day. A hectic flush mounted high into her cheeks, the
glittering green of her eyes enhanced by the matching shade of the
gown.

As Lucy dressed her hair, Phaedra tried to
calm the flutters in her stomach by mentally rehearsing James's
plan. They were to attend a performance of Handel's opera, Rinaldo,
at Covent Garden Theatre in the company of her grandfather. Phaedra
was to pretend to be overcome by the heat, feeling faint. Knowing
full well that her grandfather would never bestir himself, it would
be left to James to take her out of the gallery for a breath of
air. From there, they would simply vanish into the night, bundling
into a closed carriage James had hired and make for Portsmouth. By
dawn tomorrow, they would have caught the tide, and England's
shoreline would be fast receding in the mist.

A simple plan. What could possibly go wrong?
All the same, Phaedra's hands trembled as she drew on her gloves.
Beset by all manner of qualms, she wondered what her grandfather
would do when the performance ended and neither she nor James had
returned. Would he have them pursued or simply sit back chuckling,
still deluding himself she had run off with the Marquis de Varnais?
If he did somehow glean the truth, Phaedra hated to think he would
experience his shock in such a public place.

Although she fought against the notion, she
could not help wondering if James had deliberately planned it that
way. Was he relishing the thought that perhaps he had indeed found
the perfect revenge against Sawyer Weylin? The spiriting away of
his only granddaughter would smash the old man's hope of realizing
his most cherished dream-that of acquiring a title for his family.
With Phaedra gone, he would have no family, and the broken old man
would end his days alone.

Despite all that he had done, Phaedra felt a
stab of pity for her grandfather. But she despised herself for even
suspecting that James had ever considered such things when he had
accepted her offer to go away with him.

The joy that suffused James's face of late
came not from the anticipation of dealing a crushing blow to his
old enemy, but from the knowledge that they would spend the rest of
their lives together.

Lucy at last finished arranging a tiny spray
of silk roses upon the crown of Phaedra's upswept hair. Only one
long red-gold curl was left to trail over the creamy expanse of her
shoulder.

“It is not the fashion," Lucy said, looking
pleased with her handiwork all the same. "But ever so much more
becoming."

Phaedra regarded her own reflection for a
moment before turning to Lucy. How loyal the girl had always
been,obeying her every command without question, even lying at
times to cover for her. On a sudden impulse, Phaedra enveloped her
maid in a quick hug.

"I don't know how I would have gotten on
without you, Lucy," she said. "You have served me well."

The girl looked astonished, but she blushed
with pleasure. "Why, thank you, milady. I hope I continue to do so
for many more years."

"Aye." Phaedra quickly averted her face.
"There is no need for you to wait up for me this evening."

Or ever again, she added silently. The
thought saddened her, despite her joy at the prospect before her.
Lucy bade her good evening and slipped out. Phaedra gave herself a
brisk shake.

She would forget all of these qualms when she
stood with James upon the deck of the ship, feeling his strong arms
about her, his lips warming her. It was only when she was left
alone for too long that she was beset by doubts.

She tried to subdue her nervousness by taking
a practical survey of her belongings. James had already spirited
away one small trunk, all that she could take away with her, except
whatever items she might fit into her purse.