Alexandra couldn't contain a tiny sniff at Havers' words.
"It's been a long time, Yer Grace," the bailiff said quietly. Was there a touch of sadness in his voice? Alexandra wondered.
"Eight years," Hawke answered. A silence fell between them, and Alexandra had a feeling that both men were grappling with memories — and judging from the set of their faces, they were not pleasant ones.
Finally, Havers cleared his throat. "This may not be the time to speak of it," the old bailiff said uncertainly, "but I must be tellin' ye there's matters needin' your attention here, Yer Grace. The downstream weirs fierce in need of repair. Lower stretches of the stream siltin' up, and the swans ..." The old man's voice trailed off sadly.
"What about the swans?" the duke asked sharply.
" 'Tis dyin' off they are, Yer Grace. What with the siltin' of the shallows and problems with the weirs, the cygnets can't pass. 'Tis trapped in the marshes they are. Aye, trapped there, until they die." Havers' ruddy face took on a fierce look. "Royal swans have swum the high stream here for eight generations of Hawkesworths, with all the grace and purity we mortals will ever know this side of paradise." His voice hardened. "I only hope they'll be here for the ninth generation to enjoy as well!" Abruptly, the old man broke off, done in by the unaccustomed strain of so much talk.
"Why was I not told of this sooner?"
" 'Twas not for lack of tryin', Yer Grace. Davies's had my warnin's time and again, and he promised to pass them on to ye in London. Maybe ye never had them. Maybe ye'd other things on yer mind." The bailiff's voice was flat with reproach.
Frowning, Hawke thought back over the turmoil of the last two years. Two years since Isobel's departure. Two years during which he had forgotten just about everything else in his desperation to find his wife and rid himself of his reckless obsession.
He didn't recall hearing anything about the problems at Hawkeswish, but he couldn't honestly say they hadn't been mentioned. In the last two years he'd given his steward's monthly reports only scant attention.
With a feeling of shame Hawkesworth realized how far out of touch he had become with his staff and the conditions at Hawkeswish. The problem with the swans, he saw suddenly, was only one example of how he'd allowed things to slip while he was preoccupied in London.
"Then there's the matter of the vipers," the white-haired bailiff continued gruffly. "Somewhere they're breedin'. Tracked 'em time and again, I have, but can't find their nest. More than I ever saw before. What with the mild winter just past, we can expect even worse. Fairly worries me to death, Yer Grace, though I don't count myself afraid of much in this world."
This time, the reproach in the old man's voice was patent. The snakes were a menace at the best of times, Hawke knew. With their numbers swelled ...
"Have you searched the lowlands near the grotto?"
"Where ye caught yer first viper on yer tenth birthday? That I did right off. Caught one family there, but no more. The rest must've found a cool protected spot — a cave maybe. If only I had a few more men I could —"
"Why were not a dozen assigned to you?" the duke interrupted impatiently.
For long moments the bailiff did not speak, hesitating uncomfortably.
"Well?"
" 'Twas not Davies's place to go against yer orders, Yer Grace. 'Footmen to keep to the house, stable men to keep to the stables, and gamesmen to the park.' Those were yer last words on the subject."
Hawke felt a cold weight in his stomach as he remembered saying those words. Words spoken in anger and bitterness. Words spoken after he'd come across Isobel and that fresh-faced groom panting in the shrubbery.
"All that is about to change," Hawke said curtly, burning with anger at himself for his gross negligence over the last years. "You'll soon have all the help you need, Havers. We'll find the nesting grounds and rid Hawkeswish of this black menace. And hereafter, you have my permission to take whatever steps are necessary to protect the swans. Hire a hundred stout men from Alfriston, if necessary, and build new weirs. I mean to lose no more swans," he added harshly. His vow was as much to the woman riding before him as to the old bailiff.
Alexandra stiffened at his words. They would soon see about that!
"That I will, and promptly, Yer Grace! 'Tis a pleasure to have ye back again. And I'll be beggin' yer pardon for sayin' so, but 'tis at Hawkeswish ye belong. Yer no more the Marquess of Derwent. Two years it's been since yer father died. Yer the seigneur now. 'Tis Hawkeswish that needs ye."
And you need Hawkeswish. Although the white-haired bailiff did not say the words, he might as well have, Hawke thought.
Overhead, a kestrel hung in the wind, cried shrilly, then darted toward the cliffs to the south. Hawke watched blindly, feeling a crushing weight of guilt, recognizing how close he'd come to disturbing forever the beauty and order of his ancestral home.
He'd never take Hawkeswish for granted again, by God! "One more thing, Havers."
With a look of dismay, the old man abruptly halted his joyous plans for the new weirs.
Hawke's face was unreadable. "These grand projects are not to commence until tomorrow. Today it's still warm clothes and a fire for you."
"Aye, Yer Grace," the bailiff said happily.
Engaged in his thoughts, Hawke did not notice the sudden stiffening of the woman riding before him.
"Marquess of Derwent?" Alexandra asked sharply.
"My courtesy title before my father's death. You know the name, I see. I wonder if I ought to be complimented or offended that my reputation has preceded me. Do I dare ask what exaggerated tales you've heard?"
Alexandra did not speak. The green downs swam crazily before her staring eyes, which darkened with a flash of blind hatred.
"As bad as that?"
Her teeth grated as she struggled to choke back deadly rage. He could laugh about his reputation! This blackguard, whose lazy, careless signature had endorsed her father's recall notice?
Marquess of Derwent? Now the Duke of Hawkesworth?
Her father's murderer!
Riding in taut silence, Alexandra clutched her bitterness to her like a cache of bright golden coins and pondered the future. Gone was her fury, and in its place stood cold determination and a raw hunger for revenge.
Unseen by her captor, Alexandra's aquamarine eyes hardened. Yes, it would be sweet, she told herself, so very sweet to see this man suffer. It would be her pleasure to make him taste the torment her father had experienced during the last days of his life.
A tight little smile twisted her mouth as she saw the great house in the distance.
Yes, she would stay — and gladly! She would study him. She would learn everything about him.
And when the time was ripe, she would ruin him, as cruelly and decisively as he had destroyed her father in India. It would give her pleasure as nothing else could. The thought of revenge had been all that kept her going through the bitter weeks after her father's suicide.
It seemed that fate had brought her on a long and twisting path and delivered her into the keeping of her worst enemy, then presented her with the means to mete him the savage punishment he deserved.
Perhaps, she thought grimly, there was justice in the world after all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The shadows outside Alexandra's window grew long and spindly.
Behind the wooded hill the sun faded, and the shaded lines bled together into the gathering gloom of twilight. Then blackness fell upon the downs.
Night. A time for dark imaginings. A time for revenge.
She stood motionless at the window long after the moon had climbed over the trees, and she saw before her not the rolling English countryside but images of a harsher plain.
To her dreaming eyes came the vision of tall schooners rocking at anchor while the sun climbed bloodred from the Bay of Bengal. She saw white stucco houses, quiet in the blazing noonday sun. In her ears was the rhythmic click of the punkah wallahs at their ceaseless fanning, while mint and g
inger drifted in the window with the white dust of the bazaar.
She saw faces, too, some known and some unknown — her mother's fragile beauty, now no more than a dim memory. Her ayah's unlined walnut skin. Her father, his bearing stiff and regal to the end, only the pain in his eyes and the tenseness of his jaw hinting at an inner torment.
Alexandra reached out to him, but he looked right through her and marched off with his hands clasped behind his back, as he used to do when pondering some difficult question of government policy.
Father! Alexandra called vainly, but he was gone. He could not help her anyway. She was a woman now and revenge would be hers alone.
Across the room a doorknob clicked loudly.
"Why are you standing here in the dark?"
It was a rich voice, Alexandra thought impassively. A voice of dark compulsion. The voice of a man used to giving orders and being obeyed. The voice of a man who got whatever he wanted.
Except this time.
Behind her came the grate of a flint and the hiss of flame along a wick. His scent filled the room, the rich smell of the outdoors, of leather and wool and a faintly spicy soap.
She felt a tug at her hair as his bronzed hand circled a red-gold coil that spilled over her shoulder.
"Let go of me," she said coldly. "Before—" She stopped herself just in time.
Immediately, the duke's face changed, hardening. For an instant Alexandra saw surprise sharpen the deep gray eyes; then his cold mask dropped in place. "Before what?" Hawke's hand tightened, capturing the lock of hair.
"You're hurting me. You are a man who will always hurt people, I think."
"That was not what you thought this morning. This morning your body twisted with a different sensation, although you are loath to admit it. Why do you fight me, little hellcat?" he demanded roughly. "I offer you my protection and the myriad comforts that my wealth can provide. I offer you the pleasure of my body. At this moment I can think of a hundred women who would give anything to be in your position."
"Then make your offer to one of them, for I won't join the ranks of your besotted mistresses!"
Alexandra wrenched away from his hand, turned her back to his mocking face, and paced to the other side of the room. Looking down, she saw the lantern gleam on a dark shape protruding from beneath the bed.
Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully; then her breath caught in her throat. When she turned back toward her visitor a moment later, a smile curved her lips. "But perhaps I've been hasty," she said softly. "I shall think on what you offer. And perhaps tomorrow you will do me the honor of showing me some more of this charming countryside. Someplace distant and very secluded?" Her eyelids fell, and she studied him beneath a veil of lashes.
"What are you up to now?" Hawke growled, closing the distance between them in two strides to capture her shoulders. "One minute you're a termagant, and the next—" He dragged her roughly against his chest, his silver eyes blazing across her face. "The next minute, you employ the tricks of a practiced harlot. Which are you?"
"Take me riding tomorrow, and perhaps you'll find out," Alexandra challenged, running her tongue delicately across her upper lip.
Hawke's breath checked abruptly. Mesmerized, he watched the soft pink skin play across her damp lip. His groin twisted painfully with a hot stab of desire.
By God, he wanted her! Right there on the carpeted floor, her long ivory legs gripping his waist!
Right now.
Alexandra's mocking voice cut into his fevered thoughts. "Tomorrow, Your Grace. Unless you admit you cannot wait. A wager, let us call it."
"You little bitch," Hawke growled. Then abruptly, his hands dropped from her shoulders and balled into fists. "I can wait, Alexandra. Believe me, what I do to you tomorrow will be worth waiting for."
Long after Hawke had left her, Alexandra lay awake in bed watching his shadow move back and forth in the light beneath the connecting door. But he did not return, as she had known he would not. The wager and his twisted male honor prevented him.
No, the duke would not return before morning, and that would give her all the time she needed.
Carefully, she slipped from the bed and knelt on the floor, then searched until she found the heavy length of metal. Her trembling fingers caressed the cold barrel of the pistol that Telford's thug had used against her the day before. In the chaos that followed, it had been forgotten.
Alexandra crept to the window. In the dim moonlight she could make out a lead ball rammed home in the barrel. A long narrow barrel, she saw, rifled for precision. The weapon used the new style of copper percussion cap, she noticed, her eyebrows rising sharply. Hardly the sort of weapon one would expect to find on the beefy-fingered brute who had assaulted her.
But this was not his weapon at all, Alexandra realized. It belonged to James Telford, Hawke's deadly enemy.
How appropriate, then, that it had fallen into her hands.
Carefully, she tore a piece of cloth from her habit and wrapped it around the pistol's hammer. She didn't want the damn thing to go off until she was ready, Alexandra thought with a grim smile. She took another length of cloth, ran it through a hole she'd made in her chemise, and knotted the weapon securely in place at her knee, where it would be well concealed.
Then she stood up and surveyed her handiwork, her face set with cold determination.
She did not regret that she would have only one shot. Her father had taught her well. One would be enough.
* * * * *
In the gray dawn Hawke opened the connecting door, his face lined and shuttered. He was surprised to find Alexandra already dressed and ready, but he was careful not to show it. Her face was very pale, Hawke thought, and there were dark smudges beneath her eyes. She seemed very distant, almost preoccupied, which infuriated him.
They did not speak as they descended the broad stairs and found their saddled horses waiting.
Aladdin carried two full saddlebags, Alexandra noticed, looking questioningly at Hawke.
"We don't return until tomorrow." His slate eyes were hard and mocking.
She merely shrugged and did not look at him again, lest he see her tension and the bitterness that lurked just beneath the surface of her cool exterior.
Hawke's goal was a low hostelry near the coast, the haunt of sailors, smugglers, and trollops — a place where he would flaunt her and make her see exactly what he thought of her. He did not plan beyond that, although the idea of taking her back to the Sylphe hovered in the back of his mind. That would be decided in its own time, he told himself grimly.
He kept to a brisk pace — fast, but not so fast that it would tax the horses over a long distance. Steadily on they rode, and he did not rein in Aladdin until he saw the high crest of the chalk cliffs and the Channel glinting beyond. By then, the morning was well advanced.
"We stop here," he said curtly. As he spoke, he leaned back in the saddle to stretch his shoulders and neck, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his back.
"Where are we?"
"Someplace very remote," he answered mockingly. "The Channel is just beyond that rise, in fact. On a very clear day you can just make out the coast of France." He frowned, squinting against the sun, eyeing the line of offshore clouds. "But not today." Abruptly, he turned back, grasped the reins loosely, and crossed his hands before his chest. "Get down."
In spite of her resolve Alexandra felt a moment of fear. But she steeled herself to ignore it and held her thoughts upon the moment of perfect, burning revenge soon to come. The pistol was a cold weight upon her knee as she looked up at Hawke. "You do me too great kindness, sahib."
Grim faced, Hawke dismounted and removed the leather satchels from Aladdin's back. Then he set the horse free to graze.
"Won't they run away?"
"Aladdin won't stray far, and if I know Bluebell, she'll stay close to Aladdin."
Hawke took a blanket from one of the satchels and spread it on the ground. He lay back, propped on one elbow, and studied her coolly. "Come her
e, Alexandra," he ordered.
She jumped slightly, and their eyes locked. She was still standing next to Bluebell, her fingers gripping the reins. She could feel the horse at her back and was strangely loath to leave its comforting warmth. The mare nickered, sensing the strange tension between the two riders. For a long moment Alexandra did not move.
"You'll have to come a great deal closer than that for what I have in mind, my dear. Or have you lost your nerve?"
Alexandra's breath came fast and jerky as she saw the predatory silver gleam of Hawke's eyes. A moment later, she raised her chin defiantly and moved to sit on the corner of the blanket farthest from his reclining frame.
His hand shot out with lightning speed and dragged her sprawling across his chest.
"Much better," he whispered as his fingers slid across her back, molding her to his powerful body. "Why do you look so frightened, my dear? This outing was at your request, as I recall."
Alexandra clenched her teeth, steeling herself for the encounter to come.
Hawke's eyes narrowed. "I mean to have an answer. Which are you, my dear? Harlot or termagant?" Slowly, his hands moved down her back, curved to cup her buttocks, and forced her against his thighs.
She caught her breath as she felt the hard outline of his manhood hot and insistent against her belly.
Hawke laughed, but there was no trace of warmth in his hard, mocking glare. " 'Distant and very solitary,' " he reminded her. "Is this what you had in mind?"
Alexandra's mind was racing. She shifted her knee slightly, edging the pistol closer to her hand. "Someplace where we won't be disturbed, Your Grace," she answered, never taking her eyes from his face, afraid he might notice her preoccupation. "Someplace where we could get to know each other better without fear of interruption." As she spoke, her fingers searched vainly for the knot that held the pistol in place.
"And then?"
Alexandra twisted slightly. "And then?" she repeated, her voice faintly unsteady.
"Well? Is this another of your tricks, woman? There's a word for your sort of female, you know." Hawke's voice was jeering.
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