The Runaway Countess (35 page)

But it was Roane’s life she put in his hands. And it wasn’t her life to give.

Besides, would Trent really choose a highwayman over his father? What of family honor and the prestigious lineage? No, Trent would never willingly bring harm to his family name. Never.

He glanced in her direction and she quickly closed her eyes. She did not want to talk this morning, could barely breathe for the raw hurt in her chest.

He slipped out the door and she rolled to her belly, pulled a pillow over her head.

She feared it was obvious that she loved him. That he had been able to tell last night as she fought her need to run to him, to hold him. As she gave him her body, her heart.

Trent, with his unsuspecting kindness and implacable justice. He had burrowed inside her heart and made a home there.

Mazie pulled the pillow tighter around her. The vulnerability and longing together were almost more than she could bear. But she would, for Roane. For herself.

It wouldn’t be forever. Soon she would leave.

Soon she would find a way to break the chains that bound her heart to Trent’s.

Chapter Twenty-One

“So from that spring whence comfort seem’d to come/Discomfort swells.” Shakespeare

Trent hadn’t slept a wink. That made two nights of no rest. Granted, last night he’d lain pressed up against Mazie’s smoothness, listening to the rhythm of her breath. In all not a terrible way to pass the time. But, too agitated to sleep, he’d been up with the birdsong.

Golden and bright, the dawn had spoken of fair weather and the undiminished light of the noonday sun. He could only hope it portended the truth of the day. As his luck was going, he rather doubted it.

Sitting at his deskfor indeed, the great hulking structure was
his
he stared at the list of the highwayman’s victims. There was something there, something that wanted to wend itself to the surface of his brain, but he could not discern what it was. A name perhaps, or a memory.

“You are a worse fool than your father feared.”

That
memory, Trent pushed aside. Harrington had been irate when Trent dismissed him from his position as magistrate, had spouted all kinds of bile. There was no great meaning behind the insult.

“My lord”

Trent looked up. “Not now, Sterns.”

“Forgive me.” Sterns stood across the length of the room, framed in the doorway, “But Lords Dixon, Horris and Nash are here with Mr. Harrington. They insist upon meeting with you.”

Trent paused, irritation crawling across his skin. He shook his head and looked back at the papers. The gall. “Send them away. Employ the assistance of a footman if you need. I am not to be bothered.” He did not want to consider why they were here. The possibility that they wanted to plead Harrington’s case repulsed him. And incriminated them.

He opened Harrington’s file at his elbow and flipped thought the pages until he found the letterhead with the coat of arms. The same coat of arms he had seen on Horris’s pocket watch and Dixon’s lapel. The design featured a raven that signified strategy, loyalty to friends and divine providence, and an escarbuncle or jewel-like design denoting supremacy. In the raven’s talons was a gold coin. Money.

Trent placed his hands evenly on the cool wood of his desk and forced his brain to be calculating. There was no room for emotion in this.

The men were in some kind of a group. A group that included the very abusive Harrington. A group that motivated a highwayman to risk the gallows to torment them.

He needed more details. He needed to know what they had done.

Cold pricked at his spine and his mind screamed that he should stop.
Stop.
Before he found evidence incriminating his father. But he needed to know. He needed to solve this.

Trent stood and paced the room, much more satisfying now that all the god-awful furniture had been removed. He looked for evidence of the seal anywhere in his father’s study, behind picture frames, in the swirls on the grandfather clock. It must be somewhere.

His stomach dropped with his own certainty.

It must be somewhere.

It wasn’t among his father’s papers that he had combed through over the last weeks, nor in the attic nor in the library. Perhaps it had been destroyed. Perhaps it had been papered over. He was half tempted to peel off the blue wallpaper the men had recently hung. Driven on, he looked behind the curtains, in the grain of the windowsills.

Nothing.

He looked down, exasperated. His eyes fell on the odd curl of the rug, the part of the pattern that did not fit with the others. Now that the Louis XIV table had been removed, the asymmetry of the design was more noticeable. His breath refused to be even as he studied the drunken swirls. There must be some purpose to the anomaly. He could not fathom that it was just random chaos. The scroll looped around a
fleur-de-lis
then up toward the top of the rug where it disappeared under the massive desk.

Again, Harrington’s words echoed. “You don’t know what you are doing.”

Trent followed the pattern, walked to the other side of his desk and crouched into the leg space. It was dark, so he could not be sure, but it appeared that there was some design there. A cross of some sort, another
fleur-de-lis
. And a wing. An angel. No, it was black. A bird.

A raven.

It would have a coin in its talons.

And the crossa ray of an escarbuncle.

Hell.

His hands shook and he felt numb, detached, as if he had just been told of a death.

He stood and tried to move the desk. Hewn of the barrel of a tree, it didn’t budge. He threw his shoulder against it, tried to lift it and drag it. He anchored his feet and pushed with the power of his desperation. Nothing.

“Sterns.” His yell scratched at his throat and echoed off the walls around him. “Sterns!”

It took a few moments, but the butler appeared, his coats swinging. “My lord.”

Still, Trent tried to push the desk. “Gather some footmen. The strongest you can find.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sterns hurried off and Trent watched the doorway, impatient for his return. A passing downstairs maid peeked in, probably wondering what the yelling was about. Her eyes widened when she saw him and she scurried away.

He made himself breathe. Yes, inhale. Good. Then took himself for a lap around the room like a groom settling a frenzied horse. Sunlight beamed through the south windows. The scent of wet earth was stronger along the west wall. How often his father had talked of family honor, of the far-reaching consequences of each of Trent’s decisions. He arrived back at the desk in the center of the study. Looked down at his hands. He studied the lines on his palm, his heart unwilling to live through what his head already knew.

Two footmen appeared and Trent almost told them to leave. To let it be. “We will move the desk,” he said instead. “We needn’t move it far, just away from the windows a yard.”

The footmen must have sensed something for they kept their eyes carefully downcast as they circled the desk and each took a corner.

“On three, we will lift. One, two, three…” Nothing. It did not budge. “Try again.” Nothing, like the secret did not wish to be known. Like the bond of blood and kinship pressed down with impossible strength.

The son was not to destroy the father.

Sweat beaded on his forehead. He wanted to walk away. To forget. “Try harder!” He raised his voice, impatient with his own cowardice.

Truth above all else.

Another maid wandered outside the doorway, her curious eyes peeking in. Great, now the household would think he was in the grips of remodeling madness. He did not care.

“On three.” They tried again, the footmen red in the face from exertion. The desk raised an imperceptible amount, not enough to move it.

Trent wanted to hit something. “We’ll need more men.”

“’Tis awkward without anything to hold on to,” a footman muttered apologetically.

“Sterns!” Trent yelled.

“Milord.” The butler appeared in the doorway immediately.

“More men.”

“Yes, sir.”

Two more men entered at once, as if they also had been waiting in the hallway. Good, they weren’t making a scene the entire household would speak of over their dinner. How the earl lost his mind over a desk.

He waved the two men over. Now five of them circled the desk like pallbearers. “Don’t drag it over the carpet. On three. One, two, three…” Still not enough lift. “Bloody hell.” At least he did not yell that.

“What’s going on in here, Trent?” His sister’s soft voice rent the room.

He glanced up to find her and Mazie in the doorway. He did not want them to witness this, but he could not find the force to send them away.

“Did you not like how I remodeled your study?” Cat took a tentative step inside.

“No, no.” He glanced at Mazie, who watched him with wide, quiet eyes. “It was fine, Cat. Wonderful. Perfect. Thank you.” What was he saying? He turned back to the footmen awaiting his instruction. “Harder this time, with your all. One, two, three.” The desk lifted with the five men straining against the weight. They shuffled awkwardly and managed to move it a yard away.

“Put it down here,” Trent puffed. “Watch your feet.”

The men did as he instructed. Stone still, they waited for orders.

“That will be all.” He would not look at the design until they had left. He would keep his eyes glued to their backs.

They filed out and there stood Mazie, her face serious. Mazie, whom he had touched last night. He swept his eyes down the length of her.

“This isn’t a very good location for the desk.” Cat walked into the room. “You won’t get the good light from”

He did not hear the rest for his eyes had shifted down Mazie’s blue day dress to her slippers, then across the carpet. Across the loops and asymmetry to what had been hidden beneath the desk.

He stared at the design, comprehending and not comprehending at once. He felt off kilter, as if stepping off a boat after a long sail, as if something was splitting apart within him. Or coming together.

And he knew. Could never undo the knowing.

His father had been one of them. Corrupt. Dishonorable.

It was here before him, in some kind of twisted symbolism. Dixon, Nash, Horris, Harrington, his father, they all boasted the same coat of arms.

They were some kind of secret society. Like the Freemasons. Some kind of a fraternal order with what
…
a financial agenda perhaps? Or political.

His father had allowed Harrington’s corruption. Encouraged it.

He had abused his power, preyed upon his own dependents.

Trent’s mind tumbled. Memories of the Pentrich Uprising. Of his father’s coolness. My God, his father had known about the revolt all along. He had not feared it because he was controlling it. He had used an agitator to start the uprising, then taken pleasure in attacking the revolutionaries, fought his own villagers.

Trent wandered to a chair and sat down.

Hard.

He felt oddly numb, like he was watching the truth unravel from outside his body. Mazie came to his chair. She placed her hand on his arm. He stared at it for a moment, feeling her touch grounding him. It had weight and warmth and was real. What else was real?

He forced himself to look around, gather his wits.

“You look like you need a drink,” Cat murmured from across the room, like his madness was contagious.

“That is putting it mildly.” The words sounded odd, his voice foreign.

“What is it? What did you see?” Cat demanded.

He felt the hard mask of his face, nostrils flared, eyebrows down and jaw tense. He did not care. He glanced at Mazie. Her eyes were on the carpet. “Have you seen it before?”

She paused. “Yes.”

“I cannot believe he knew…” he whispered. “He was a bloody paragon, impossible to please, loftier than the king. And it was all an act. A lie. He was a liar.”

“Who, Trent?” Cat pressed.

Mazie looked at him, a frown of compassion between her eyes. She knew exactly what he spoke of.

A roar filled his ears.

It would end. Now. It would end now. “Sterns!” Trent called for the fourth time that morning.

“Sir.” He was still waiting in the hallway.

“I want Harrington, Dixon, Nash and Horris here at once.”

“Of course. But they left an hour ago.”

“I don’t care.”

Corruption.

Greed.

Abuse.

What more?

His eyes on the raven, he let a wave of dark rage pour through him. He wanted to be that bird of midnight blackness. He would claw at the face of his world; rip it apart with his razor-sharp talons. Shred and shred his dark reality until the truth no longer existed.

The single candelabra barely pushed back the darkness. Mazie sat before her mirror and studied her reflectionjewels in her hair, jewels in her ears and love in her eyes.