“That’s nonsense,” she said stoutly. “What reason would someone have for such malice?”
“Well, there’s James. He’s a frustrated, angry young man with a grudge against the mill, and he’s now second in line for the dukedom. There’s Aunt Adela, an ambitious woman who might do anything to advance her son.”
Her face flushed to a deeper crimson when she realized that he was throwing her list of suspects back in her face.
“There’s Vicar Donald, who is so dedicated to the word of the Lord, but not, I think, to the significance. And there’s Jasper, who—”
“Oh, shut up.”
Taking a chance, he got close enough to touch her. When she took no aggressive action, he grasped her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Sylvan, I don’t know why someone is after us. Maybe, sometime, one of us created a personal enemy. Maybe someone envies us our wealth or our influence. Maybe…maybe, I don’t know. But surely you can see you’d be safer—”
“Safer?” She watched him with narrowed eyes.
“Safer in your father’s house.”
She knocked his hands away. “I don’t care about my safety!” Stomping closer to the mill, she kicked one of the squared blocks that had formed the wall. He saw her miss a step as she experienced the pain. Then she tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, and raged, “I’m an independent woman. I’ve been taking care of myself for years. To have you try to protect me is an insult.”
“An insult.” Someone had been insulted by that statement, and he thought it was he.
“How can you even consider sending me away?” She strode back and forth in front of the mill; the destruction forming a backdrop for her beauty. “You have no reason to think anyone would harm me.”
“No.” Anger began to burn in him, slow and steady, but he held it off, and probed, “Is there any reason to think someone would harm you?”
She missed her step again, but not because she’d kicked anything. She missed it because of guilt. “No. No reason at all,” she said.
She refused to look at him, and his rage burst its bounds. She was lying to him. He’d planned on talking to her about the ghost-man who’d tried to attack her, but he had never imagined she would deliberately try to mislead him. And if she were telling him a falsehood now, what might she do in case of future attacks? Might she even now be hiding the truth about other assaults? “Damn you,” he burst out. “I can’t trust you at all.”
She turned with a flutter of skirts. “What are you saying?”
She had the audacity to look indignant, and he was glad. He knew why she was doing this. She wanted to stay, but her deception made the performance of his duty easier. “Blood will tell. Only a merchant’s daughter would make a scene about this.”
She froze. In a tiny voice, she asked, “About what?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
She actually staggered back. He hadn’t said anything. He’d asked a simple question in the surliest voice possible, and she’d placed her own interpretation on it.
“You’re sending me away”—the parasol fell in the dust—“because you’re ashamed of me?”
She might stoutly deny it, she might defy society’s precepts to hide it, but she was sensitive about being a merchant’s daughter—and he was sensitive about her getting killed. “Tell me something,” he said, “do you think my aunt Adela would have blessed my marriage to such a notorious woman if she had known I would recover?”
All the color fled her face, leaving her pasty with agony.
Rand took a step toward her before he remembered his mission, and stopped. He knew well how to act the part of a haughty duke, and he pressed his point. “Do you think Aunt Adela would have blessed my marriage to a merchant’s daughter if Aunt Adela had known I was destined to be the duke of Clairmont?”
It was a stupid question. No other person in the world thought as highly of the duke of Clairmont’s prestige; no doubt Aunt Adela had weighed the effect Sylvan’s entry would have on the family’s status and judged the ill effects negligible.
“Aunt Adela doesn’t want me?” She clenched her hands close against her waist. “Lady Emmie and James despise me?”
“What do you think?”
The wind blew, the morning lark sang, but through it all Rand could hear the harsh rasp of Sylvan’s breathing. Softly, he said, “There has never been an annulment in the Malkin family before.”
“No!” Sylvan screamed as if she had been stabbed. “You…by-blow. You…” Her hands bunched into fists, and she quivered like a cannon about to discharge. “If you despised me so much, why did you have to make me happy? Why did you have to encourage me, make me think you admired me, act like you liked me? You could have sent me away before you made me what the world thinks me—a stupid, wanton, stupid, incompetent, stupid…woman.” Picking up a dirt clod, she flung it at him, and it exploded on his chest. “You didn’t have to make me like you. You didn’t have to—”
To his horror, tears streaked her face. She wiped them, defiantly, leaving a muddy streak, then stooped and jerked clumps of grass and soil out of the earth. In a continuous battery, she flung them at him and they hit him, striking his face, his hair, his stomach. He made no attempt to defend himself. How could he? If this release made her feel better, he wanted it for her. She sobbed out loud as she hurled each clod, ugly sounds that must have torn at her throat and ripped at her guts.
They were ripping at his.
Just when he could stand it no longer, just when he was about to go to her and take her in his arms and assure her she meant the world to him, she stopped and stared.
She was no gift of the man-elf now, but a human woman wounded beyond recovery.
“Sylvan.” Rand held out his open hands.
“Get your annulment then. Last night didn’t mean anything to you. It didn’t mean anything to me, either. Just never, never come near me again.” She spit at his feet and ran to the carriage, and Jasper drove her out of Rand’s life.
15
Rand stared at Sir Ogden Miles, Sylvan’s father and his host. This was worse than James had suggested. “Sylvan won’t speak of our marriage?”
Sir Miles pressed his shoulders against the tall flat back of his chair and rubbed his palms over the knobs on the bare wooden arms. “Worse. When I questioned her, she denied all.”
“She denied our marriage?” Rand felt the clutch of his heart. “And you believed her?”
“Not at all.” The man looked nothing like his daughter. Tall and thin, with clear brown eyes and a thick head of white hair, he bore himself with a dignity that completely hid his shrewdness. “But my daughter is ever defiant, and I have not been able to enforce my paternal will since she was nine.”
“She didn’t tell of the events which took place at Clairmont Court two months ago?”
“She refused.”
“Why?” Rand shot at her father.
“I was about to ask the same thing of you,” Sir Miles returned. He had welcomed Rand into his lavish home with every expression of gentility. He had taken him into a sitting room decorated in the latest style, and his servants had appeared with a generous tea aimed at refreshing the weary traveler. Sir Miles had expressed his sympathy at the loss of Rand’s brother, yet didn’t dwell on the still-sore subject, and he waited until Rand had dusted the crumbs off his lap before pressing him for an explanation of the marriage and its aftermath.
Sir Miles knew of the wedding because the Malkin family had notified him, but he knew nothing else. Apparently, Sylvan’s wariness prohibited any disclosures on her part, although why this man inspired such prudence in his daughter, Rand could not comprehend. Now he rubbed his eyes wearily. “I don’t understand her at all.”
“That is in bearing with the confusion I have experienced since the day she was born.”
“She is truly a woman.” Rand chuckled and expected to share a moment of communion with Sylvan’s father.
Instead Sir Miles seemed stiffly unamused. “M
ay her father inquire what caused this breach?”
Sinking against the back of the chair, Rand studied the toes of his shiny black boots. “I sent her away.”
“Why?”
“It was, I assure you, for her own safety.” Sir Miles expressed his dubiousness with a mere twitch of his brow, and Rand wondered if the man was always so skeptical or if Sylvan alone affected him in that manner. Rand asked, “Where is Sylvan?”
“I believe she has gone to spend a few days with one of her friends.” Sir Miles observed the effect of his pronouncement on Rand, then clarified unnecessarily, “One of her female friends. Lady Katherine Renfrew invited her to her country house for a week of frivolity.”
“Lady Kathy the Madcap?”
“Ah, you know her.”
Indeed Rand did, and thoroughly disapproved of Sylvan associating with such a woman. This, too, fitted in with the warning James had sent. James had gone to London after Garth’s death, not to spy on Sylvan, but to do what he wished—to talk politics, to go to Parliament, to practice being the important man he longed to be. James had done all that, but he’d heard rumors about Sylvan, too, and passed them on to Rand. Although Rand hadn’t believed them, he had seized the chance to come to London and to Sylvan.
Sir Miles seemed to discern more than Rand cared to say. “I spoke to Sylvan when she left, expressing my displeasure at her antics, but she has been in a state of manic activity since her return from Clairmont Court.” He templed his fingers and looked at them intently. “I did not understand why before.”
“Do you mean you understand why now?” Rand demanded.
Sir Miles inclined his head. “Not at all. My daughter and I have never reached accord except in one matter.”
“And what was that?”
“I make money. She spends it.” Reaching out, he rang the bell at his elbow. “I think perhaps we might wish to question my wife. Sylvan may have confided in her, although I find it hard to believe Lady Miles would be so unwise as to keep the truth from me.” A footman came in, Sir Miles directed him to summon Lady Miles, and Sir Miles turned back to Rand. “Allow me to offer my congratulations on your recovery from your unfortunate paralysis. Is there…any chance it will return?”
His delicate pause made Rand realize that Sir Miles might demand more from his son-in-law than a title and a fortune. Somehow Rand felt inadequate, a failure for allowing himself the weakness of paralysis. Yet he narrowed his eyes, swept his gaze down the spare figure of the merchant, and said coldly, “I don’t believe so.”
Sir Miles nodded and imitated the way Rand looked at him. Rand recognized the fact that Sir Miles was no stranger to intimidation or to the inflicting of it. Sir Miles must have sat opposite many a fine lord and listened while that lord begged for money or for an extension on a loan already given.
Sir Miles had become wealthy because of his recognition of opportunities, and a baron because of his discreet touch with usury.
Perhaps Rand could discern a reason for Sylvan’s rebellion against her father. But why was she rebelling against him, against Rand? Surely she could be brought to comprehend his reasons for sending her away so abruptly. Any woman as brave and clever as Sylvan would understand once her initial anguish had begun to fade.
The door behind him opened, and Sir Miles spoke. “Come in, Lady Miles, and meet Randolf Malkin, duke of Clairmont.”
Good manners brought Rand to his feet. Facing Lady Miles, he bowed and discovered that the same man-elf who had assembled Sylvan had also assembled her mother. Lady Miles was, perhaps, the original and was also, perhaps, the lovelier of the two. But her pale skin had probably not seen the sun in thirty years, and her fine green eyes appeared frightened. It gave him an uneasy feeling to see this older version of Sylvan shrink from him as if he were a beast. “Rand Malkin. At your service.” Rand tried one of his guaranteed engaging smiles and noted that it didn’t work. All of Lady Miles’s attention remained fixed on her husband.
“It would seem Sylvan has not told us the truth about her marriage. It would seem she has fulfilled my every desire and captured a fine old title,” Sir Miles said.
“Captured a fine old title?” Lady Miles frowned apologetically, as if she didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
Rand took her hand and led her to the sofa. “He means that I have the honor of being your new son-in-law.”
Lady Miles stared at him in puzzlement. “But that is impossible. To be my son-in-law, you would have had to—”
“Marry our daughter,” Sir Miles intoned.
Lady Miles abruptly sat down, and she whispered, “Oh, no.”
What had Sylvan said to her mother? Rand wondered.
Sir Miles said, “I wonder why she denied it.”
Twisting the fringe on the shawl that ringed her shoulders, Lady Miles said, “I can’t begin to imagine.”
“Or did she just deny me the truth?”
Lady Miles cocked her head and stared at her husband for long minutes, then a trembling rose from her toes to the top of her carefully arranged topknot. “She didn’t tell me.”
“No?”
“She didn’t tell me.” The topknot quivered, loosening little wisps. “She really didn’t. I didn’t know.”
Rand could stand it no longer, and interrupted to reassure her and distract Sir Miles. “I think we can safely assume you didn’t know. However, I brought the marriage contracts for you to examine, Sir Miles. We drew them up swiftly, but I hope they find favor in your eyes.”
Drawing the contracts from his traveling bag, he presented them to Sir Miles. Sir Miles looked at them for a moment, then accepted them in his long, tapered fingers. “You drew them up in a hurry, you say?” His brown eyes bored into Rand. “Why was that, pray tell?”
Rand could have groaned. Of course, Sir Miles would seek the reasons behind such a hasty marriage. Seen through the eyes of the Malkin family, their ardor in the meadow had been embarrassing, but not ugly or lewd. Seen through Sir Miles’s eyes…
Staring directly at Sir Miles, Rand said, “When I at last convinced Sylvan to wed me, sir, I would allow no formality to impede our nuptials.”
Sir Miles placed the contracts on the table beside him. “I don’t need to look at these. I’m sure they’re more than adequate, considering the condition of the goods you bought. I’m only grateful you were willing to pay the price.”
Rand came to his feet, fists clenched. “You cold, despicable—”
A soft noise of anguish beside him brought him to a halt. Lady Miles was wringing her hands, her gaze sick with despair.
So Rand had a choice. If he followed his impulse to smash his fist into Sir Miles’s thin face until he obscured its lack of emotion, he would be gratified, but Lady Miles would suffer. It was a choice Sylvan must have faced many times in her life, and it had marked Sylvan.
And Sir Miles? He sat calmly, observing Rand as if he were a butterfly under glass. He had prodded Rand into action and now watched, interested in the results.
Carefully, Rand unbunched his fists. “I used to wonder how a young, unmarried woman came to Brussels as a guest of Hibbert’s. I begin to understand at last.”
Sir Miles’s gaze frosted over, and he might have been carved from ice. “As I said, Sylvan has not responded correctly to my guidance for years.”
“You held the purse strings and the moral responsibility for her reputation.”
“When I tightened the purse strings, she fled to her friend Hibbert, and as for responsibility—well, I gave her the best education, the best clothing, the best—” He seemed to realize that he was excusing himself, and he snapped, “You’re an impertinent young pup.”
“Oh, I think I’m old enough for you to accuse me of being a dog.” Rand mocked, but inside he fumed. In the Malkin clan, when one of the women strayed, every member of the family shouted and cursed, but they still cared, and the man culpable assumed his responsibilities.
Sir Miles cared nothing for Sylvan. She was nothi
ng more than a china figure he’d bought to place on a shelf, and as each hairline crack developed in her perfect exterior, her value plunged.
No wonder Sylvan kept flinging herself off the shelf.
For the sake of Lady Miles, Rand felt he ought to stay and smooth the relationship with his new in-laws. But he doubted his own ability to maintain his temper, so he bowed and smiled at Lady Miles, trying to appear a model husband for her wayward daughter. “I’ll seek my wife at Lady Katherine Renfrew’s country home, then. I thank you for your assistance.”
He found himself on the top step of the mansion, clutching his hat and gloves and shaking with frustration—the same frustration that had walked with him every day since he’d sent Sylvan away.
Two months. No, more than two months, and not a single event had occurred on Clairmont Estate. Oh, there had been a few births, a few marriages, even one death, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Everyone in Malkinhampsted and at Clairmont Court had waited, breathless, for the next ghostly visitation, and nothing untoward had materialized. The ghost had disappeared.
Rand waited for it, wanted it to appear. He tried to imagine every possible motivation for the beatings of the women, for the attack on Sylvan, for the explosion of the mill. He refused to suspect the culprits Sylvan had suggested, yet at the same time, he kept his own counsel and did not consult James or Jasper. He made sure his womenfolk were guarded at all times, and he frequently slipped from the house at night to exercise his legs to restore them to full use. He reasoned he might as well stand guard. He couldn’t sleep without Sylvan in his bed, anyway.
Yet all his preparations were for naught. The ghost had disappeared.
Of course, the village women didn’t go out walking alone at night. With the mill gone, they stayed home, preparing meals, caring for the children—and worrying about the crops their husbands tended.
It hadn’t been a good time for him, and it hadn’t been a good time for his people.
At last, the inactivity had convinced him to come to London and bring his bride home again. He knew Sylvan would resist him. He kept his shirt unwashed—the one she’d thrown dirt at. It reminded him not to expect too much from her in the way of civilized behavior. Yet his whole being sizzled when he remembered the night they’d spent together, and he knew that the feeling between them was anything but civilized. Tonight he planned to prove his dedication to her and to their marriage.
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