Baleful Godmother Historical Romance Series Volume One

by Emily Larkin

  “I can hear when you’re lying.”

  Lucas’s smile froze. He looked away, out the window. Memories slid over one another in his head like a deck of cards being shuffled—and halted at one he’d long forgotten: Tish the day after her twenty-first birthday, eager to show him and Julia a new trick she’d learned: how to tell truth from lies.

  He hadn’t believed it. Julia hadn’t believed it. They’d spent two hours trying to prove that she was wrong, that it was impossible—but Tish had caught every lie he and Julia had attempted. Every single one.

  And then she’d never mentioned it again, and that memory had been buried by a thousand others.

  “So you can still do that trick?” he said, finally.

  “Yes.” Tish took his hand and interlaced their fingers. “Truthfully . . . how are you?”

  Lucas stared out at the gray clouds, the leafless rose bushes, the raked gravel paths, and thought about Julia, and how much he missed her. “I’ve been better,” he said finally. “But don’t worry about me, Tish. It takes time, is all.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Lucas smiled at her. It came out lopsided. “No, love. But thank you.”

  Tish didn’t release his hand. “I’m glad Tom’s back.”

  “So am I.”

  “Does it help?”

  Lucas thought about how Tom made him feel: the terrifying mix of panic and elation, the sense that his life was spinning out of control. Should he say Yes, or No? Both would be the truth.

  But that wasn’t what Tish meant; she was asking about Julia’s death.

  “It helps a lot.”

  Lucas stared out at the winter landscape and tried to find a word for what Tom was to him. More than friend. More than lover. When Tom was with him, he no longer had the sense of having lost a limb. He felt whole again. Was there a word for that?

  Savior. I think he’s my savior.

  With a sense of shock he realized he’d uttered those last words aloud: “I think he’s my savior.” God, how would Tish interpret that? Lucas laughed hastily and tried to make a joke of it: “Or perhaps my ruin.”

  And that was the truth. He and Tom were surely destined to be each other’s ruin if they didn’t halt this mad, dangerous affair.

  Tish didn’t return the laugh. There was a frown on her brow.

  “Tish, don’t worry about me,” Lucas said firmly. “I’ll be all right.” And then he wondered whether that sounded like a lie to her, because he wasn’t at all certain that he’d be all right once Tom left. It would be like Julia’s death all over again. Oh, God, how will I cope?

  Tish didn’t look completely content with this answer, but she nodded and let go of his hand.

  Lucas turned towards the door, glad the conversation was over. “When are you leaving?”

  “At ten.”

  “I’m going to Cornwall next month.” Lucas held the door open for her. “Tom hasn’t seen Pendarve yet.”

  Tish halted in the doorway. Her expression was serious.

  “Tish?”

  “I love you,” Tish said, her voice almost fierce. “And if there’s ever anything I can do for you—anything—I hope you will tell me.”

  “Of course I will. Honestly, Tish, don’t worry about me.”

  Tish stepped close and hugged him briefly. “Be careful!”

  Lucas blinked. “I’m always careful.” And then a shiver of premonition crawled up his spine. Does Tish know about Tom and me? He tried to look puzzled, not alarmed. “Tish? What’s this about?”

  “Nothing. Good-bye!”

  Lucas stood in the doorway and watched her walk briskly down the corridor.

  Tish didn’t know. She couldn’t know.

  Chapter Seventeen

  He and Tom rode over to the folly once Tish had gone. They climbed the stone steps to the grassy courtyard; Tom glanced in the direction of the dungeon. “Later,” Lucas said. “Let’s get the painting finished first, in case it rains.”

  Tom looked at the sky and shrugged. He set the easel up.

  Lucas stood in the familiar pose and tried not to worry, but the conversation with Tish gnawed at him. Tish couldn’t know . . . could she?

  The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that Tish did know—and that she’d been warning him to be careful.

  It became difficult to stand still. His heartbeat was spiky with agitation. “Tom,” he blurted finally.

  “What?”

  “I think Tish knows. About us.”

  When Tom painted, he had an expression of narrow-eyed yet slightly unfocused absorption, as if he was daydreaming and concentrating hard at the same time. That expression vanished now. “What? Nonsense!”

  “She was asking about you—about us—and then she told me to be careful.”

  Tom stared at him for a moment, the paintbrush held in mid-stroke, and then shook his head decisively. “No.”

  “But—”

  Tom put down the paintbrush and crossed to where Lucas stood. “Tish told you to be careful because she’s worried about you. Everyone’s worried about you.” He cupped the back of Lucas’s head in one hand, leaned close, kissed him lightly. “She doesn’t know. No one knows. All right?”

  “But—”

  “Relax, Lu. She doesn’t know.”

  Lucas closed his eyes and leaned into Tom. His agitation began to unravel. Tom was correct. Tish couldn’t know.

  Tom kissed him again—softly, gently, reassuringly—and stepped back. “Ten more minutes and I’ll be done. All right?”

  “All right.”

  Tom was good to his word. Ten minutes later he stepped back from the easel, surveyed the painting critically, and then said, “Finished. Come and have a look. Tell me what you think.”

  Lucas had been watching the painting grow for days, but there was a big difference between an almost finished painting and a finished painting. He peered closely, trying to determine what Tom had done in the past hour to make Sir Gawain stand out so vividly. “It’s incredible. What did you do?”

  Tom shrugged. “Mostly shadows and light.”

  Lucas examined the painting while Tom cleaned his brushes and packed away his painting kit. If he hadn’t known that Sir Gawain was himself dressed in a tailcoat and breeches and with an old rapier in his hand, he would never have guessed it. This was Oscar—older and taller, but still unmistakably Oscar—wearing chainmail and a tabard and brandishing an impressive longsword.

  “I don’t know how on earth you do this, Tom. It’s like magic.” And then he hesitated. “Can I pay you for it?”

  Tom snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “But you’ve spent hours—”

  “I enjoyed it,” Tom said. “I like spending time with you.” He hesitated, and then said, “Wellesley wants me back by the twenty-second.”

  Lucas felt the smile drain off his face. “He’s recalling you from furlough?”

  Tom shook his head. “Just wants me to give testimony. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two, and then I really should visit m’ brother. I’ll be gone ten days, two weeks at the most.”

  Lucas stared at him in dismay. Two whole weeks without Tom.

  “And then we can go down to Pendarve. Just the two of us.”

  Lucas nodded, but the dismay didn’t go away, because at the end of December, Tom would leave. And he wouldn’t just be gone two weeks. He’d be gone months. Years. Maybe forever.

  Tom glanced in the direction of the dungeon. His head tilted, asking a silent question.

  Lucas’s dismay stuttered to a halt.

  Tom stood looking at him, his head cocked to one side, his lips quirked at the corners.

  Lucas’s throat grew tight. His heart thudded loudly.

  “Now?” Tom said.

  Lucas blushed, and nodded.

  Tom laughed. “I love the way you blush, Lu.” He took Lucas’s hand and tugged him towards the dungeon. “I’d like to paint you with oils,” he said, as he led Lu
cas down the twisting stone staircase. “You’re wasted as Gawain.”

  Coolness and shadows and privacy enveloped them. Lucas’s heart began to beat faster in anticipation. The sound of Tom’s name was loud in his head: Tom, Tom, Tom.

  Tom pushed him firmly back against the wall, and stepped close, pressing the full length of his body against Lucas. “You should be Atlas,” he whispered in Lucas’s ear. “Or Samson.”

  Lucas tried to find a reply to this, but his mind was blank. All he could think of was how good it felt to have Tom pressed against him like this, thigh to thigh, chest to chest.

  Tom didn’t wait for a reply; he kissed Lucas, and it wasn’t a soft, gentle, reassuring kiss. It was rough and hungry. Lucas’s hips rocked involuntarily—and Tom rocked back—and Lucas didn’t wait for Tom to ask him, just said, “Hand,” hoarsely, and they both fumbled with their breeches. His whole body jolted when his cock touched Tom’s, and jolted again when Tom’s hand wrapped around them both.

  They made love fast, frantically, biting each other’s mouths, panting, groaning. The rhythm of Tom’s hand was merciless and the sound of his name was deafening in Lucas’s head: Tom, Tom, Tom. His climax was short, sharp, brutal, close to pain.

  Afterwards, they stood leaning into each other in the cool dimness of the dungeon, their cocks nestling quietly in Tom’s hand, and the feeling of intimacy between them was far greater than when they’d been straining together. Lucas rested his forehead on Tom’s shoulder, closed his eyes, and felt the familiar urge to cry, felt the familiar conflicting emotions: panic and joy and shame, pure happiness counterbalanced by the sense that they were hurtling towards ruin. He wanted to say, We have to stop this, and at the same time, Hold me forever.

  Tom sighed, and opened his hand.

  Lucas opened his mouth to say, Don’t, and managed to swallow the word. He fumbled with his drawers, with his breeches.

  “Uncle Lucas? Uncle Tom?” The voice was young and female, echoing in the stone stairwell. “Are you down there?”

  Tom recoiled away from Lucas as if the words had been a musket shot.

  “Uncle Lucas?” This time Lucas recognized the voice: Selina, Robert’s eldest daughter. Riding boots clattered on the steps.

  Tom hastily crossed to the other side of the dungeon.

  Lucas shoved his shirt-tails into his breeches.

  “There you are!”

  Selina appeared around the bend in the stairway, her sister Emma behind her, and behind them, Emma’s governess.

  Shit, shit, shit, whispered a panicked voice in Lucas’s head. Were his breeches properly fastened? His shirt fully tucked in? He didn’t dare look down and find out.

  “What are you doing down here?” Selina asked brightly.

  There was a thin, sharp, terrible pause, and then Tom said, “I thought it might make a good backdrop for a painting, but it’s too dark.”

  Selina skipped down the last of the steps. “Do you think so?”

  No, no. Go back up. Selina and Emma wouldn’t recognize the faint, musky odor of sex, but the governess might.

  “Dramatic, but too gloomy,” Tom said, at the same time that Lucas blurted: “Tom finished Sir Gawain. Did you see it up there?”

  “Yes,” said Selina. “It’s divine.”

  “Will you paint us, too, Uncle Tom?” Emma asked shyly.

  “Emma,” the governess reproved in a quiet voice.

  “Maybe,” Tom said. He moved towards the staircase and made an ushering movement with his hands, like a farmer’s wife trying to herd geese. “When’s your birthday?”

  To Lucas’s utter relief, they yielded to Tom’s urgings, turning and heading up the stairs again. “February,” he heard Emma say. “And Selina’s is in August.”

  Tom followed on their heels.

  Lucas stayed where he was, listening to the receding echo of voices and scuff of feet. His heart was pounding against his ribs, his lungs clenched as tightly as fists. Awareness of how close they’d come to disaster reverberated in his head. If Selina had come down the steps earlier, if she’d not called out . . .

  What fools they’d been, reckless and careless and unmindful of danger, thinking they were safe when they weren’t.

  He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. To be almost discovered by Robert’s children.

  An unforgivable thing to do to Selina and Emma, to Robert, to Almeria. He and Tom would have deserved to be ruined.

  Lucas lowered his hands and opened his eyes and took a deep breath. This stops now.

  He started for the stairs—and stepped on something soft. The handkerchief Tom had used to catch their seed.

  “Christ,” he said, under his breath. He picked it up—crumpled and damp and smelling of sex—and shoved it in his pocket.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They all rode back to Whiteoaks together, Lucas and Tom, the girls, the governess, the groom who’d accompanied them. Lucas stayed as far from Tom as he could. He conversed with the governess in awkward, stilted sentences. Did she know what she’d almost stumbled upon? By the time they reached the stableyard, he was fairly certain she didn’t.

  They’d been lucky. Undeservedly lucky.

  He dismounted and gave his mount to a groom.

  “Lu,” Tom said.

  “Not now,” Lucas said, brushing past him. Not now. Not ever again.

  He climbed the stairs to his bedchamber fast, and stripped off his riding clothes. His hands were shaking. “Pantaloons and Hessians,” he said to Smollet. “The bronze green tailcoat. And a fresh neckcloth, please.” No more riding alone with Tom. No more trysts. Why did that make him want to cry? He’d known all along that what he was doing was wrong and dangerous and stupid. I should never have let him come here with me.

  He dressed in the clothes Smollet brought him. It took three tries to tie the neckcloth. His damned fingers wouldn’t stop trembling.

  He gave up on the Mail Coach and tied a Barrel Roll instead, then shrugged into the tailcoat and looked at himself in the mirror. A little too pale, a little too tense.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Smollet asked.

  “Perfectly,” Lucas said. “Never better.”

  * * *

  He was in the green and gold salon, sipping tea and eating macaroons with Robert and Almeria, trying to pretend that he hadn’t nearly brought disaster down upon his whole family, when he remembered the handkerchief. He choked on his tea, put the cup down in its saucer with a clatter, and pushed to his feet. “Forgot something!” he blurted, and hurried from the salon.

  Lucas took the stairs three at a time, half-ran down the corridor, burst into his room.

  Smollet wasn’t there.

  He went hastily through his clothes, found the tailcoat he’d worn riding, groped in the pocket. The handkerchief was gone.

  Lucas closed his eyes. Shit.

  * * *

  After dinner, when Tom said, “Lu, we need to talk,” Lucas didn’t try to brush him off. He went with Tom to the library.

  Neither of them sat. Lucas was too tense. The meal he’d forced himself to eat sat uneasily in his belly.

  Tom said, “Look, Lu, about today,” at the same time that Lucas said, “Do you have your crest on your handkerchiefs?”

  “What?” Tom said.

  “Your handkerchiefs. Do you have your crest on them?”

  Tom’s brow creased. “No. Why?”

  “Because Smollet found that handkerchief you used today. I put it in my pocket—and I forgot it was there—I should have rinsed it out, but I didn’t—and Smollet found it!”

  Tom stepped forward and laid a hand on Lucas’s arm. “Lu, he’s not going to wash it himself. The laundry maid—”

  Lucas jerked free and retreated two steps. “We have to stop. We have to stop right now.”

  Tom lowered his hand.

  “It doesn’t matter who washes the damned thing. Smollet found it, and he’ll know it’s not mine, and it smells of us.” He heard his voice, heard the p
anic in it.

  “Lu, you’re overreacting—”

  “It’s not just the handkerchief! Robert would never forgive me if his daughters had seen us—and he’d be right.”

  Tom grimaced faintly, and Lucas read that expression as agreement.

  “Tom, we have to stop this. You know we have to stop this.” He took a deep breath. “I think it’s best if you don’t come back after seeing your brother.”

  Tom physically flinched. “What?”

  Lucas looked away from his face. “I don’t think you should come back.”

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Tom said stiffly, “What about Pendarve?”

  Lucas shifted his gaze, met Tom’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Tom stared at him for a long moment. His eyes were bright and hard, his mouth tight. He turned on his heel and walked stiffly across the library and shut the door behind him with a short, sharp click.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lucas lay awake that night and thought of all the ways in which he’d been a fool. Finally dawn came. He climbed out of bed and dressed, responding to Smollet’s comments with monosyllables, unable to look the man in the face. Then he went down to breakfast and stared at his plate without eating anything. And then Tom left.

  Almeria was talking about an excursion to Bath, and Robert about the hunting season, but the words were just blurred sounds in Lucas’s ears. He excused himself and went up to the farthest nook of the vast attic, a place he’d come to often in the weeks after Julia’s death, the only place at Whiteoaks where he could be certain of being alone.

  Fool, fool, a thousand times a fool.

  He sat in the same shadowy corner he’d sat in so many times before, drew up his knees, rested his head on them.

  The familiar sense of having lost a limb was back. Not just Julia gone, but Tom, too.

  At least up here there was no one watching him. No one to hear him cry.

  * * *

  The next day, Smollet placed a folded square of white fabric on Lucas’s dressing table. “Master Tom’s handkerchief,” he said. “Should I have it sent to him, or will he be back?”