The Charmer (11 page)

chapter
12

T
hey made love on white sand at the edge of the surf. Red silk formed the sea, lapping lightly against them, as if air created its swells. A turquoise tent of sky stretched above, framing Sophia's face. Clouds of gold drifted overhead.

Pleasure moistened her eyes, and joy softened her mouth. She eased forward so he could lick the tips of her breasts. Her sighs of anxious desire came in a rapid rhythm that matched the speed of his thrusts. He caressed up the thighs straddling his hips. Grabbing her waist he pressed her body close and careened toward the end. Her scream pierced the bliss, and shattered the world. . . .

Adrian's eyes snapped open. An aggressive chorus of dog barks assaulted his disoriented senses.

The scream had been real. A scream of shock, not ecstasy.

He shot out of bed and dragged on trousers and shirt and boots. He threw open the door and instantly faced the backs of two footmen dressed in Everdon's livery. The hounds' vicious snarls behind Sophia's door discouraged any investigation.

“We heard glass break and her scream,” one explained. “Someone should go in, don't you think?” He stepped aside, making clear who he thought the someone should not be.

One of the inn's maids fretted near the stairs. “She came for me to fix her gown, then sent me to wake the coachman and footmen,” she said. “I didn't see no one about, sir.”

Adrian shoved open the door and strode into Sophia's chamber. The mastiffs were halfway to his throat before they caught his scent. They quieted immediately and crowded his legs, demanding orders to kill someone.

An open portmanteau stood beneath a broken window whose remaining shards hung like teeth. Splintered glass littered the floor. Sophia sat on the bed in last night's black gown, holding a wad of cloth to her arm. She turned wide, terrified eyes on him.

He went over and moved her hand away. With a firm rip he tore her sleeve apart. Blood oozed freely from a cut near her shoulder. He wiped it away with the cloth, and then pressed against the wound.

“You are understandably frightened, but you are safe now. For all the blood, it is not a bad cut. Tell me what happened.”

She gestured toward the corner of the chamber. A good-sized rock rested there. “Someone hurled it through the window. It missed me. I was cut by a piece of flying glass.”

A mixture of anger and worry clapped through him. “You could have been seriously injured. Had you been leaning over that portmanteau, the glass would have showered you. If you had been in bed as you should be at this hour, you wouldn't have been hurt at all.”

“Well, I wasn't in bed.”

“No, you were up and packing at three o'clock in the morning. Your footmen are dressed for travel, as are you.”

“I could not sleep. Since there is a moon, I decided to make good use of the time.”

“So you roused your whole retinue. Except me.”

“Weren't you told? Goodness, that was a terrible oversight.”

“The oversight was deliberate, and we both know it.”

She glared at him, pushed his hand away, and took the cloth from him. She blanched when she saw how much blood it had absorbed.

“It looks worse than it is,” he reassured again. He let her tend to herself for the time being, and walked over to the rock.

There was a folded paper tied to it. A letter. He scanned down to the signature. Captain Brutus.

The note carried a familiar tone. Its writer urged the duchess to see the light, and cajoled her to support not just Parliamentary reform but also universal suffrage. He scolded her for hesitating to use her new power for the greater good. He addressed her as “Sweet Sophia,” closed with unseemly affection, and claimed to presume the communication because of their “old friendship.”

Nowhere did it contain any threats, but Captain Brutus was letting the duchess know that he was back, that he was watching, and that hurting her would be easy.

He gave her the letter. “I doubt that your attacker is still about, but I will go and check to be sure.”

He made an inspection of the streets nearby, but Lyburgh slept silently. No evidence of Captain Brutus could be found.

He returned to the inn's carriage yard. Everdon's grand coach stood ready, with its horses in rein. The coachman lounged at its open door.

“Where is the other carriage? And the wagon?” Adrian asked.

The coachman groaned. “Will she be wanting them, too, now? If so, it will delay us. Just so's she knows that.”

“Actually, she will not be wanting any of them. The duchess has changed her mind and will wait until morning.”

Shaking his head at the inconstancy of women, the coachman lumbered to the lead horses and began undoing all of his labor.

Inside the inn, Adrian found the two footmen cooling their heels in the public room.

“You will be relieved to know that Her Grace was not badly hurt,” he said. “Where are the others?”

“We were all the inn maid came and got. Just to be us, she made that very clear. Tom and Harry are still asleep, unless the noise woke them,” one explained.

One carriage and only two footmen. Free of the slower vehicles, that coach could make good speed. He doubted she had planned to aim for the next borough.

“I expect that her change in plans surprised you.”

“Not for us to question, is it? If the duchess wants to leave at night instead of morning, if she wants to go to Portsmouth instead of Devon, we do it.”

“The plans have changed again. Her Grace has thought better of this night journey.”

Adrian headed for the bedchambers. The maid still huddled on the top stair. He sent her for some warm water and salves, then returned to Sophia.

The letter had fallen to the floor by her feet. Blood smears on the paper said she had read it.

He took over with the cloth again. “I had hoped the suspicions about Captain Brutus were wrong, but that letter says not. I apologize for prying, but now I need you to tell me about him. What is his real name?”

“I do not know. He was sentenced to New South Wales as John Brutus.”

“Would you recognize him?”

“He was an educated young man. Golden-haired. Of middle height and stature. Eyes ablaze with purpose. I do not know if I would recognize him. Seven years of servitude probably wrought some changes.”

Her expression had softened with a wistful sadness. A pulse of jealousy beat quietly in Adrian's head.

“How did you know him?”

“I chanced upon him one day by accident. I rode deep into the woods that edge the estate. Suddenly I entered a clearing and there he was with five other young men, like a Robin Hood. They were preparing to go on one of their raids that night, to burn threshing machines. The whole county had been in an uproar about him for weeks. I was not alone in finding his growing legend very exciting and romantic.”

“You are lucky that you left that clearing alive.”

“He only asked for my oath of silence. Two days later a note came for me, unsigned, asking me to come to the woods' edge that afternoon. I knew it was from him. Mother had died recently and my life was terribly vacant. I went. Five times over the next month we spent the afternoon together.”

“Your father found out?”

She nodded. “He never confronted me. He never asked me to betray him, but he arranged for the betrayal anyway. He let me learn that a trap was being set one night. Of course I ran to tell Captain Brutus. But I was the trap. Papa and some others followed me. I never forgave my father for using me like that. He in turn produced evidence that Brutus had been learning the movements of the landowners from me, so that he could plan his raids. My Robin Hood had a reason for listening to my girlish social gossip. I guess I never forgave my father for laying that out so brutally either. The lesson of the episode was not lost on me.”

He did not doubt that. Two men who claimed to care for her had used her to their own ends most ignobly.

“When he went before the Assize court, my father demanded that I bring witness. I refused. Papa tried to break me the way you might a horse. He browbeat me endlessly.” She shrugged. “When that did not work, he beat me literally.”

Adrian bit back a curse, but a breath of it sounded anyway.

He pictured Alistair Raughley, self-righteous in his sense of civic duty, taking strap or cane to her. Outrage scorched at the image, flaming higher from memories of his own beatings at the hands of the earl. During his youth he had been the family whipping boy, receiving the punishment no matter who instigated the transgressions.

The idea that she had experienced the same brutality wrenched something inside him. Whippings could be the least of it, of course. A father's coldness could lash in a thousand ways without a hand being raised.

A pained expression flickered, cracking her composure. “You are wondering if it worked. It did. I brought witness at the court against that young man, about what I had seen in that clearing and what he had told me.”

“He was a criminal and Alistair was your father. To anyone's mind, your choice was clear.”

“I sent him to hell, Burchard.”

The maid entered with the water. He instructed her to place it on the washstand and go and wait outside the door. He removed the cloth and checked the cut. “It does not look as if it needs sewing. The maid can get it cleaned and bandaged. I do not think you need a surgeon.”

“I am relieved to hear it. I would not like to be delayed by it.”

“If you still think to leave tonight, you are mistaken. I have told your coachman that you will not be departing until morning after all.”

“You had no right to do that.”

“You can hardly travel with that wound still fresh, and you should rest.”

“I will wait until morning to depart, but I intend to be off at dawn.”

“Dawn it will be. There will be one other change, however. You will not go to Portsmouth so you can sail back to France. I am keeping you in England, where I have some control over your safety.”

Reference to her safety checked her argument. Either that or acceptance that her plan had failed.

“You will sleep in my chamber,” he said.

“I will not.” She pointedly looked him over, reminding him that he was dressed informally, to say the least.

“This is not a contrivance to spend the night with you. You will use my chamber and I will take this one. Whoever did this knew which window was yours. I do not think that we will see any more drama tonight, but we will not take the chance.”

She began to protest, but thought better of it. Her shoulders sagged. “You think that I am a coward.”

It wasn't clear if she meant because she had intended to run away, or because she refused to share a chamber. The notion that the two were related occurred to him.

“You said at Marleigh that you would try taking up the reins. Why did you decide to flee to France?”

“I changed my mind. Frivolous women like me do that all the time.” She spoke flippantly, but her gaze met his eyes and then slowly descended. It lingered for a moment on the gape in his shirt that exposed his chest. For one delicious moment he expected her to lay her hand on his skin.

She looked away. “I will have the maid clean up the glass. It is dangerous.”

Her retreat into practicalities did not fool him. He understood why she had decided to flee. It had not been the act of a frivolous woman, because she was not frivolous, despite the mask that she often showed the world.

She was frightened of him, and of what had started. Nor was she indifferent. She would not have to run away if she were.

“Would you prefer if I separated from your entourage? Will this duty be easier if I am not with you?” The words were harder to say than he expected.

She thoughtfully toed at the letter on the floor. “If something happened to me, Wellington would have your head. Also, it appears that I may need some protection after all. Under the circumstances, it may be best if you come along.”

“Will you promise that I will not wake one morning to find you have taken the coach to a seaport?”

“I will see this part of it through. Leaving was a foolish impulse. The enormity of it all overwhelmed me suddenly, that is all. I will manage it in the future.”

She shot him a glance that clarified her declaration.
I will manage you in the future.

The carriages and wagon lumbered back into Devon. Each mile took them closer to a storm.

Heavy black clouds announced the oncoming tempest, but it was not a spring rain that kept Adrian alert. Other signs of a different kind of storm claimed his attention, and, on occasion, his intervention. The
thud
of a clod of dirt against the carriage. The curse of a wagoner when he saw the ducal crest. The milling of farmers along the fields' edges, and the hateful shouts that they yelled at the passing noble.

There had been trouble on the way from Portsmouth to Marleigh, but this was more consistent. It was as if someone had guessed the duchess's route and was riling the people deliberately.

Adrian knew who that person undoubtedly was.