by Anne Stuart
“Was it your fault?”
“No,” Jane said. “But that won’t matter to my father—he’s a stickler for polite behavior, not to mention punctuality, and he can’t very well blame the brats.”
“The brats?”
“My younger brother and sister. Two absolute hellions who nonetheless fail to make my father appreciate my subdued manner.” She laughed, a rich, hearty chuckle that was wonderfully infectious. She reached for Elizabeth’s box, the box that had strong coachmen staggering under its weight, and heaved it into the back of the cart with deceptive ease.
“I gather you’re in some sort of disgrace,” Jane continued, climbing up into the pony trap and holding out her hand for Lizzie. “Was it with a man?”
“No!” said Lizzie, affronted. “I was simply walking in the forest, entirely by myself.”
“What’s so shocking about that?”
“I wasn’t wearing much,” she admitted.
Jane laughed, a full-throated chuckle. “Well, I’m always in disgrace as well. It sounds as if your crimes aren’t much worse than mine, which usually include spending too much time in the stable and ripping my clothes. I expect we’ll get along famously.”
“Two unrepentant hoydens,” Lizzie said. “I’m supposed to be mending my wicked ways.”
“So am I. I think it’s a lost cause in my case. My parents gave up on me years ago. I’m doomed to be an old maid, and just as happy.” There was a trace of defiance in her rich voice.
Lizzie looked at her in surprise. “You don’t want to get married?”
“Not if I can’t have true love. Of course Gabriel says that true love doesn’t exist, but he’s being tiresomely cynical. I believe in it, I just don’t believe I’m going to end up with that particular blessing.” She shrugged. “I’m not going to worry about it though.” She’d turned the pony cart onto a narrow track. “This isn’t the main way to the house—Father would never stand for anything so shoddy—but it’s the fastest way to get you there and warm you up. Just don’t tell him I brought you in the pony trap, will you?”
“Why not?”
“He expected me to have the carriage set up, but that would have been another half hour, we’d have had to take the main road, and I wouldn’t have gotten here until it was pitch-black. Thank God Gabriel found me.”
“Gabriel? Was that the strange man?”
Jane laughed. “Strange, you think? I suppose I can’t argue—there’s no one on earth quite like Gabriel. Don’t mention anything to my parents about him. They’ll have the vapors.”
“They don’t approve of him?”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“But who is he? I thought he was a servant at first, but once he spoke I realized he couldn’t be.”
For the first time the outspoken Jane looked uncomfortable. “Gabriel is simply . . . Gabriel. You won’t be likely to run into him again—he keeps his distance from most people. Forget you ever saw him.”
For some reason the memory of his haunting golden eyes danced back into her brain. “Certainly,” she said briskly, in no means certain that she’d be capable of doing any such thing. “If you’ll tell me one thing.”
“Of course,” Jane said blithely.
“Who is the Dark Man?”
Chapter Two
WILLIAM FREDERICK Randolph Lindley Gabriel Durham moved through the woods in silence, weaving his way through the towering ruins of the old abbey. He blended in with the dark and the shadows, blended with the silence and the ghosts, and no one would have seen him. He preferred it that way.
It surprised him that he’d left the benevolent haven of the woods to find Miss Penshurst sitting on her luggage, trying not to show her fear. He wondered if she were about to cry. He didn’t think so. She didn’t have the look of someone who cried easily. She looked both too practical and too fey, an odd combination.
He’d seen her from a distance, from the edge of the woods where she never would have noticed him if he hadn’t wished it, and if he’d had any sense at all, he would have simply turned and gone back, somehow getting word to Jane that a forlorn young lady had been abandoned by the market cross. But he had never been concerned with sense; he believed in tempting his devils and satisfying his curiosity. That was all he intended to satisfy with Miss Penshurst. He accounted himself intellectually amoral, but he had certain standards, and despoiling virgins, both the well-bred and the working-class, was something he avoided.
For one thing, virgins were tedious, prone to tears, usually frigid, and afterward always decided it simply must be true love to have made them forget themselves in his bed.
For another, he felt sorry for the poor creatures. They belonged in bed with some stalwart, unimaginative husband, who’d give them babies and perhaps some inkling of the pleasure that could be had. They didn’t need the temptation he offered. Most people were better off not even knowing what kind of arcane delights existed in the bed of a dedicated sensualist, or so he had once considered himself.
What he didn’t understand was why he was suddenly thinking so determinedly of sex now, and he could only come to the entirely unwanted conclusion that Miss Penshurst had set him off. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was passably pretty, but her hair was bound too tightly to her well-shaped head, covered by a plain bonnet, her eyes were too wary and too wise, her mouth set as if she was afraid a smile might escape. He wondered where she came from. He didn’t remember Sir Richard or Lady Durham ever mentioning a Penshurst connection, and while she was obviously well-bred, she wasn’t of the highest echelons that the Durhams usually pursued in their determination to make their way in society.
A wry smile crossed his face as he rounded the corner of the old kitchen area of the abbey. The stones were almost gone now, carted away to build the huge house that Richard Durham had managed to acquire, along with his title, some thirty-three years before. Everyone believed the old abbey was haunted by the ghosts of monks who once lived and worshiped here. Anti-Catholic sentiment was so strong that many of the villagers believed babies had been sacrificed at regular intervals before King Henry had dissolved all the monasteries. They believed the souls of the guilty monks still wandered the ruins, searching for new victims, and Gabriel did nothing to dispel the notion. He liked his privacy. And he knew the truth of the matter.
The tower was at one end of the ruins of the old refectory, still intact. Smoke was pouring from the chimney, though he expected Peter had already left. If Sir Richard ever knew his groom attended the unwelcome heir of Hernewood Manor, Peter would be out on his ear. And while Gabriel had more than enough money to afford a raft of full-time servants, Peter had his own reasons for not wanting to leave the manor.
Elizabeth Penshurst, he thought as he climbed the winding stairs to the place he thought of as his lair. She looked like a Lizzie to him. He needed to stop thinking about her. He’d made his peace with Sir Richard, in his own mind if not face-to-face, and he had no need to drive one more thorn into his side. Even if seducing his innocent kinswoman would make Sir Richard squirm indeed.
He wondered how long she would be there. Yorkshire was far too rugged for most southern English girls—if she was like any of his pest of a sister Edwina’s friends, she’d run screaming for the doubtful comforts of civilization before a month was up.
But he suspected she wasn’t like Edwina’s pretty little friends. She’d sat alone at the market cross in the biting wind, looking deceptively calm, when Edwina would have had a temper tantrum. He could be wrong, but he suspected there was an inner steel to Miss Penshurst, the kind his sister Jane possessed.
He could indulge himself, long enough to find out exactly who and what she was. And what she was doing at the back end of nowhere with an influence-seeking baronet of dubious lineage. One who would sell his soul for a better title.
The circular stone steps were worn down beneath his soft leather boots, and here and there one had crumbled dangerously. He left it that way on purpose—one small trap for the unwary trespasser.
He wasn’t sure why he spent so much time in the luxurious ruin of the still habitable tower when he had a house and estate of his own, far grander than Hernewood Manor, just waiting for his attention. For some perverse reason he preferred to live at the very edge of Sir Richard’s property, a tiny, stinging thorn in the old man’s side.
He paused at the top of the winding stairs. The heavy oak door was tightly closed, but his senses immediately became alert. He had a visitor, and he had little doubt it was an unwanted one.
Only for a minute did he consider turning and heading back down those stairs and into the night. He was seldom in the mood for visitors, and tonight he was even less so. Besides, he had an uneasy suspicion who it might be.
Delilah, Countess of Chilton, was aptly named. She lounged against a pile of pillows, her beautiful eyes half-closed, her full, petulant mouth curved in a welcoming smile. “There you are, Gabriel,” she purred in her deep, sensual voice. “I was wondering if you were ever going to show up.”
Either Peter had still been there when she arrived, or she’d helped herself to his wine. There was another glass, and he took it, stalling for time. “I wasn’t expecting you, Delilah.”
“But aren’t I a happy surprise?”
“Not particularly. Where’s your husband?” There was no disapproval in his voice, just boredom.
“Oh, chasing after some lovely young creature. He doesn’t care what I do, you know it as well as I do. I’m lonely, Gabriel.” She looked up at him from the pile of cushions where she lay, artfully arranged to expose her best assets, and he viewed her dispassionately.
Her assets were indeed remarkable. She was a beautiful woman, small, delicate, with full, lush breasts semi-exposed by her wispy, low-cut gown. Her hair was a midnight black, rich and tumbled around her feline face, and her expression was mocking, provocative, beneath the thick fringe of eyelash.
He turned his back on her, crossing the room to stand by the fire. The earl and countess of Chilton had arrived in Yorkshire some six months ago, and according to Peter they’d been hounded out of London for some unspeakable indiscretion. He could only imagine. Decadent and willful, they were the sort of people he had once sought out, the same sort of people he had come back home to escape. He’d had his fill of London and licentiousness. For now all he wanted to do was keep to himself, reading the ancient texts he’d found in his travels, studying the Old Ways, the Old Religion.
Unfortunately the Chiltons had followed popular sentiment and become enamored of the ancient British religions as well. Gabriel had no idea what they believed or why, and he preferred to keep it that way. He expected their constant invitations had little to do with scholarly interest and more to do with widening the scope of their perennial house parties and the variety of bed partners.
Either way, he was not interested in their bizarre entertainments.
He was admittedly human, despite the rumors they spread about him in the village. He could be tempted by a beautiful wanton as well as the next man, though the thought of the countess’s effeminate husband left him decidedly unmoved.
But temptation and acting upon that urge were two different things, and Delilah Montgomery had always been a shade too eager for his tastes.
“I’m celibate, Delilah,” he said wearily, staring into the fire.
“You don’t need to be.” He could tell by the rustle of clothing that she’d risen from her provocative pose and was coming toward him, and he stiffened his backbone, ignoring that other, annoyingly stiff part of him. Odd, but Delilah was more tempting than usual. Most times he was able to banter with her and then dismiss her, but tonight he could feel that long-smothered need. “Druids weren’t celibate—far from it. They could be quite bawdy. Where do you think all the little Druids came from?”
She came up behind him, leaning against his back, and she smelled like a woman, like firelight and wine, and he knew if he turned he would kiss her, and then he’d be lost.
He turned anyway, impatient, reaching for her, and then stopped. She stared up at him in frustrated confusion, but it wasn’t the face he was expecting. For some reason he’d pictured another woman standing behind him. Waiting for him. And he knew he could blame the young woman who’d stared up at him in dismay earlier that day.
“Druids have been dead for more than a thousand years, Delilah,” he said gently, taking her hand from his arm. “Go home. There’s nothing for you here.”
She had a delectable pout, and she knew it. She accepted her dismissal gracefully enough—she’d certainly had enough practice in her determined pursuit of him. “I came for a reason, you know.”
He smiled faintly. “I can imagine.”
“Not that reason, Gabriel,” she said with a moue. “We’re hosting a small party to celebrate May Day in a typically country fashion, and Francis and I were both counting on you to come.”
“I seldom socialize, you know that.”
“We’re seekers as well as you are. We want to learn of the Old Ways, the Old Religion, and what better time than Beltane? I promise, I’d be a very apt pupil.”
It was women like her who’d driven him out of London, back to the woods and the secrets. “You aren’t interested in religion, Delilah.”
“You’d be surprised what can interest me. The Druids were so delightfully . . . savage.” Her smile was rich and full. “You know you aren’t a holy brother anymore, Gabriel, and you aren’t an archangel like your namesake. You might as well accept the world and all the lovely things it has to offer.” She put her delicate hand on his arm, stroking him very gently through the rough cloth of his sleeve.
He controlled the faint shiver of desire that washed over him. He didn’t deny it—he was a man who accepted all his strengths and weaknesses, and lust was a normal emotion when confronted with a temptation like Delilah Chilton. If it weren’t for her husband, he’d probably give in. If it weren’t for the cold calculation in the back of her fine blue eyes.
“You don’t need to deliver your invitations in person, my dear. You have servants,” he said, stepping away. “Use them.”
“I do. At every possible chance,” she added with a ripe laugh. He’d seen the men and women employed at Arundel, all quite remarkably good-looking, and he had little doubt she did exactly as she said.
She’d been lying on her rich, fur-trimmed cloak, and she reached down and caught it, pulling it around her voluptuous figure. “Please come, Gabriel. Don’t disappoint us. I promise I won’t invite your father.”
She was more than capable of doing just that, just to watch the ensuing debacle. “I’ll send word,» he said, noncommittal.
“Or come yourself,” she cooed, reaching up and pressing a kiss against his mouth. She left the oak door open as she descended the dangerous, curving stairs.
He stood there unmoving. A gentleman would have seen her safely down those stairs with a lantern to guide her. She would doubtless have a servant and a carriage waiting nearby, but if he had any decency at all he would see her safe.
He wasn’t feeling particularly decent, and he knew full well if he went after her he might not be able to resist. He wasn’t sure why it was so important to resist, when he’d spent his life indulging his appetites, his curiosity, and his intellect, but he trusted his instincts.
He heard a slight banging noise from beneath him, and he started for the door in sudden guilt.
“Don’t go, lad. She’s a deceitful wench, out to destroy you if she has half a chance. She won’t fall and break her neck—it’s only the good who die young. Haven’t I warned you?”
Slowly Gabriel turned at the sound of the familiar voice. Brother Se
ptimus, tall, thin, scholarly, and disapproving, stood by the fire that could never warm his bones, his monk’s robe hanging loose on his gaunt body, his tonsured head bowed, his craggy old face creased in disapproval.
“You’ve warned me, Brother Septimus,” he said wearily. “And I’ve listened.”
“Good lad,” murmured the Cistercian monk. “I’ll be watching out for you.” And he vanished, as silently and as swiftly as he had appeared.
“Damned ghosts,” Gabriel muttered under his breath, and reached for his glass of wine.
FRANCIS CHILTON greeted his wife’s return to the carriage with a faint smile, handing her a glass of wine without spilling a drop as they pulled away from the forest. Their driver was well trained.
“And how did it go, my precious? Will he join us on Beltane?”
Delilah took a sip, shivering beneath the rich animal throws that Francis draped around her. “He’s being very stubborn, Francis. You’d think he’d realize what an important occasion this is—Beltane comes but once a year, and it’s the most significant time for any number of reasons which he knows even better than we do. He’s resisting.”
“Of course he is, darling. That’s what makes him so much fun. I have my utmost faith in you, precious. You’ll triumph in the end, I know you will. You’ll bring Gabriel Durham to me in good time.”
“I’ll do what I can,” she murmured. “But I want him, too, Francis. You do realize that?”
“You’ll have your chance, dearest. In the meantime, perhaps we ought to consider the sister.”
Delilah leaned back against the squabs, a small, savage smile on her face. “Ah, yes, the sister. Such fun, Francis.”
He leaned forward and kissed her mouth in a gentle salute. “Such fun indeed, darling.”
HERNEWOOD MANOR was an imposing edifice, nestled in the heart of a steep valley at the edge of a forest. Made of white stone, it was nevertheless a dark, unwelcoming sort of place, Lizzie thought. And its inhabitants, with the sole exception of Jane, weren’t much more hospitable.