The Greatest Lover in All England (10 page)

Sir Danny lifted her with his hand under her armpit and brushed the hair back from her forehead. Compassion put a rein on his histrionics; he seemed to have forgotten his lines.

Rosie glanced at Tony, who stood brushing his knees, then at Sir Danny. The eerie sensation of familiarity stifled her, and she wanted out now. Hurriedly, she offered, “We will accept recompense.”

Tony's cynicism returned in a hurry. How well she played the part of bewildered child to soften him for the monetary demands! Perching one hip on his desk, he folded his arms across his chest. “Generous of you, considering you have no proof.”

“You require proof?” Sir Danny gestured at Rosie. “As you can see, Rosencrantz is the right age to be the heir.”

“And his hair is brown, too. Lord Sadler's hair was brown,” Tony marveled. “What a resemblance. Why didn't I see it sooner?”

They stood too close together: Sir Danny, Rosie, and Tony. She felt hemmed in, overpowered by the men, a pawn in a chess game they played.

“There's only one problem.” Tony grinned into her face. “The heir—”

She braced herself for some unknown shock.

“—was a girl.”

She hadn't braced herself enough. “What?” She stepped back, knocking Sir Danny aside.

“A daughter,” Tony clarified, watching her for signs of betrayal. “Lord Sadler's only child was a girl. You're not a girl. Are you?”

With her hair pulled back from her forehead and no cosmetics to camouflage her complexion, all of Rosie's face lay pitifully bare. Horror, shock, and a sense of betrayal left it as white as well-milled flour. “A mis
take.” Rosie caught Sir Danny's arm with her free hand. “There's been a mistake. We'll go now.”

“Why hurry?” Tony straightened, towering over Rosie and Sir Danny. “Stay.”

“We have to go. Sir Danny.” She tugged again at him. “Let's go.”

She fluttered frantically, like a pheasant facing the hunter's arrow. Either she truly hadn't known the heir was a female, or she was a magnificent actress, and she'd already proved that to be false.

But what game was Sir Danny playing? Why wasn't
he
backing toward the door? Why was he smiling at Rosie in the manner of a father giving his frightened daughter into the hands of a loving husband?

“Danny, I beg you, Danny…”

She whispered hoarsely, clearly choked with some kind of emotion, but Sir Danny took both her cheeks in his hands and kissed her mouth, kissed her as if he bade her farewell. “Trust me,” he murmured, and pulled a paper from inside his vest. Handing it to Tony, he said, “If you would read this, sir, you would see the truth of the matter, and this news might be better received if you are sitting firm in a chair.”

Taking heed, Tony seated himself. He pressed his back firmly against the cushions to soften the blow, for Rosie's obvious anxiety, Sir Danny's burgeoning air of elation, warned Tony of the truth even before his gaze skimmed the document.

Written in a shaking hand, it consigned the child Lady Rosalyn Elizabeth Ann Katherine Bellot to the care of the actor Danny Plympton. It instructed the reader of this letter to allow and assist said Danny Plympton to place the child Rosalyn in Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth's care. It reminded the reader that the child Rosalyn was heir to a fortune
and an estate, and the queen herself would pay most dearly for the return of said child so she could be brought up according to the circumstances of her birth. Finally, it called down the curses of heaven on anyone who dared interfere with Danny Plympton's holy mission or the proper placement of the child Rosalyn.

Tony wanted to shout his skepticism to the skies. This was a forgery. This was part of the plan to dispossess him. This was treachery at its deadliest. This could not be the truth.

So he would play out the scene, stripping Rosie of her disguise and Sir Danny of his falsehoods.

“An interesting document.” Tony tossed it contemptuously on the desk. “But to whom does it pertain?”

“Aye.” Rosie placed one fist on her hip and arched back like a cocky youth. “What is this document, Sir Danny, and to whom does it pertain?”

“It is the will of a dying man.” Sir Danny looked right at her. “And it pertains to you. Dear girl—”

“Girl?” Tony mocked.

“Girl?” Rosie drew an audible breath.

Sir Danny's smile mellowed. “Sir Tony ridicules us. No man ever laid hands on a woman's chest and failed to realize what he held.”

Her fist slipped off her hip as if it had been greased.

He wouldn't have believed it possible, but Tony was amused. “Is that what you told her? That I didn't realize I held a woman's breast in my hand?”

With profound significance, Sir Danny explained, “She
is
an innocent.”

Her bare face, previously so pale, flushed ruddy with color. Hugging her injured arm, she turned her back to them and swept to the window where she gazed out onto the lands.

Her lands? His lands? What had Sir Danny wrought? And why? Most crucially—

“Why?” Tony demanded aloud. “Why, Sir Danny?”

Sir Danny combed his flowing mustache with his fingertips. “There are many whys in this situation, sir. You'll have to specify—”

“If this document is the truth, and not some wretched forgery, then
why
did you not do as Lord Sadler instructed and take the child Rosalyn to the queen?”

Clearly uncomfortable, Sir Danny confessed, “I…do not read, and the gentleman…was dying, most horribly. He could speak only a little, and that none too clear, for the fever carried him off repeatedly.”

“It was the plague?”

Everyone knew the appearance of the black death; it had made itself a familiar visitor to England, and Tony never doubted Sir Danny when he said, “Most definitely. The gentleman had purple buboes on his neck, and his armpits and groin were swollen.”

“And you stayed?” Tony invested his voice with scorn.

Sir Danny stood as tall as his height would allow and looked Tony in the face. “Lord Sadler suffered the agonies of the damned, so worried was he about his daughter. Do you think I would abandon him? Do you think I could leave that child to die?”

“Black death was almost certainly her fate, and hence yours, also. Yet you stayed?”

From the still figure at the window came a soft utterance. “Sir Danny Plympton has always done all that is in his power to be kind, and he will always do what is righteous.”

Tony glanced at the figure silhouetted against the sun. Her cheek rested against the diamond-cut panes of glass, and she stared fixedly at something: the sill,
the stone wall, the bit of outdoors she could see. Her hunched shoulders, her pinched expression bespoke pain past bearing, but she defended Sir Danny. Not surprisingly, she believed Sir Danny's compassion to be greater than his fear. Tony himself believed it.

Changing his tack, Tony asked, “You stayed until Lord Sadler died?”

“Aye.”

“Afterward, why did you not deliver the child to the queen?”

Sir Danny shuffled his feet. “Lord Sadler mumbled about the queen and the child, but I believed his pleas to be the raving of delirium. The coach had no rich trappings, it was built for speed. He had two attendants, and they were dead. I did not believe he knew the queen.”

“A racing coach, perhaps?” Tony mused.

“I wondered if he sought to outrun death. But since I had the will read to me, I have tried to remember…” Squinting, Sir Danny tried to see into the past. “The coach had
no
rich trappings. None. No blanket warmed the occupants, no gilt decorated the interior.”

“Horses?” Tony asked.

“Gone.”

Disgusted, Tony stated, “The thieves cozened you, then.”

Sir Danny shared his disgust. “I only hope they sickened with the fever as they dangled at the end of a rope.”

So far Sir Danny's rescue made a horrible sense, and Tony feared it might continue to do so. Intensifying his interrogation, he asked, “You accepted responsibility for the child?”

“Aye.”

“Was she ill?”

“I thought she would die.”

The rueful tug of Sir Danny's mouth alerted Tony. “You hoped she would die?”

The rueful grimace grew. “Not hoped, nay. Never hoped. But I was a mere forty years, free and unfettered, and I did not want Rosie for even the short time I deemed I would have her.” He glanced at the figure by the window. “She was violently sick and puny and a deterrent to a carefree life.”

“When it became clear she would survive, why didn't you make an attempt to take her to London and follow Lord Sadler's directions?”

“London had proved to be an unhealthy environment for me.” Sir Danny's gaze shifted from side to side. “The plague, you see.”

Rosie once again proved she had been listening. “Was that when you'd been swiving the mayor's wife and got caught?”

Sir Danny's gaze shifted again, this time to glare at Rosie's back. “It might have been. I forget. Once in the provinces, finding someone who could read, and would read, to someone as disreputable as an actor, proved beyond me. I tried, believe me, I tried.”

Sir Danny's character became clearer and clearer to Tony; a more lighthearted vagabond he had never met. “For how long?” Tony challenged.

“We-ell.” Sir Danny seemed to contemplate the time, then said brightly, “For a long period. But naturally, as time went on, my efforts lessened. Remember, I had no idea Rosie was an heiress. To me, she was only a frightened child who clung to me with flattering desperation.”

“For how long did you search?”

“Until…” Tilting his head from side to side, Sir Danny searched for an acceptable answer.

“How long?” Rosie asked.

Sir Danny let out his breath with a sigh. “Until you
worked your way into my heart. Until I couldn't think of losing you.” He looked from one to the other, waiting for a challenge, but neither said a word. “So, have you faith in me?”

Tony replied for the two of them. “Unfortunately, we do.” Pulling a candelabra close, he held the letter close to the flame. “But what's to stop me from burning this paper?”

Sir Danny flinched. “There's nothing to stop you from burning the letter, murdering Rosie and me and all of our troupe and burying us on the grounds of Odyssey Manor. I knew that from the beginning. For that reason, I investigated you thoroughly before I offered our services for your house party.”

Investigated him? A cheap half-pence actor had investigated him, head of the Queen's Guard, son of Alfred Lord Spencer? The edge of the letter turned brown, and a faint curl of smoke lifted toward the ceiling.

Sir Danny's gaze never left the paper. “I spoke to the men who served under you in Her Majesty's Guard. I spoke to the servants in your town house, and I slipped onto the grounds of Odyssey Manor and spoke to your servants here. The way a man treats the lesser folk, sir, often provides a clue to his character, and you'll be pleased to know your character passed the test. You have the loyalty of your servants. They assured me you are all that's honorable, and on that honor we now depend.”

Tony stared at the hand holding the paper. Closer. Closer. So easy to light it on fire, to send it into oblivion. The proof would be gone. His estate would be his forever. Sir Danny would be once more nothing but a traveling actor and Rosie…he'd have to do something for Rosie. Perhaps she could work on his estate as a serving maid or a—

“Curse you, Sir Danny. Curse you to hell.” In his rage, Tony knocked the candelabra to the floor. The impact brought Rosie around to watch him as he snuffed each candle with the heel of his boot. Subsiding, he studied the wary woman who would dispossess him. “Why now? Why did you find someone to read this now?”

“Ludovic.” Wiping a shaking hand across his brow, Sir Danny tried to hide his relief and fear.

“Ludovic is the cause of this?” Rosie shook, too, but not with fear and not with relief.

Tony didn't understand why they could hear the rasp of her breath, why her whole body tensed as if to flee or fight.

“Ludovic is challenging me for control of you.” Sir Danny watched her with a frown of puzzlement. “He wants you, and he's not good enough. Even before I knew who you were, I knew he wasn't good enough.”

“So now you're going to replace Tony with me as lady of Odyssey Manor?”

Sir Danny held his palms flat out in a stop signal. “Not at all. I trow, you both misunderstand. Because of my…irresponsibility, Rosie, you have no training in the management of an estate such as this. Not to mention the Sadler foundry—”

“Ah, you know about that, too.” Tony grimaced.

“—and the Sadler town house. Our blessed queen has granted Tony shares in shipping and the right to sell silken cloth, and the income from that must be considerable.”

Tony sneered. “Well, you'll have to advise her on the best way to spend her wealth, won't you?”

Sir Danny chided Tony's skepticism. “It would not be in her best interest for me to advise her, nor can I believe you wish to be removed from all of the privileges which you worked so hard to gain.”

“Ah!” Tony opened his arms in mock embrace. “You want to hire me to care for my former possessions.”

“Not at all,” Sir Danny said sharply. “I want you to marry Rosie.”

Somewhere, children played. Somewhere, women laughed. Somewhere, men shouted. But in the study at Odyssey Manor, silence reigned. A silence unbroken by movement, breath, or heartbeat. A silence so complete as to be a hole in time.

Then Tony's arms collapsed, knocking documents to the floor, and Rosie's elbow struck the window. Papers fluttered in a winsome accompaniment to the ringing of the glass.

In one comprehensive glance, Tony absorbed her emotions. Attraction, fear, amazement, and something else. Fury? It could not be. What right had she to be furious?