“And that’s why I’m glad for you. And that’s why I wanted to assure you that I won’t do anything to put a brick in your road.”
Sarala didn’t move, despite the sudden hard pounding of her heart. “Considering that you’ve twice mentioned how you won’t make trouble, I assume you mean to. What do you want, John?”
He put a hand to his chest. “That’s rather unpleasant, Sarala. We’re simply old friends, and as such I know one or two…personal things about you. Things I would never relate to anyone. I just want to assure you of my discretion. Please don’t push me out of your life because we’re old friends.”
“Have I indicated any such thing? I would like us to keep the same relationship we’ve had for the past two years—not seeing one another.” She turned around again and walked back toward the house.
Halfway there DeLayne did grab her shoulder. “Don’t be difficult,” he said, pulling her around. “You know what I meant. You now have a very interesting circle of friends. I only want to be included among them, as I used to be.”
She pulled her arm free. “Continue following my father about as you have been, and you shouldn’t have a problem meeting a fair number of peers.”
The viscount shook his head. “Not good enough.”
Her uncertainty began to spin into anger. “Make do, John. I don’t want to see you every time I turn around.”
“Friends help friends. And now you’ve become acquainted with the bluest-blooded nobles in London. Without your guidance, I might well end up knowing only the Duke of Melbourne and Charlemagne Griffin, for example. I’d hate to have to spend all my time chatting with them and no one else.”
Black panic clawed at her. That was what DeLayne wanted, of course. That was how he did things—charm, and if that didn’t work, veiled threats. “Chat with Charlemagne about whatever you choose,” she said stiffly. “My only suggestion is that you stand well away from him when you do so. I’ve seen him box.”
DeLayne gazed at her for a long moment. “I suppose we could discuss where we’ve traveled in our lives, and who has been where. I believe I’ve been some places well before anyone else, for instance. Whether anyone else has been there after me or not, I don’t know.”
Sarala struggled to keep breathing evenly. “As I said before, do as you will. Good day.” Jaw clenched, she backed away from him.
“He’s a Griffin, my love. Do you think he would ever settle for a bundle of used goods? Especially if the rest of London were to discover such a thing?”
That would destroy her relationship with Shay. However staunchly he might wish to stand with her, the rumors would hurt him, and the Griffins. From his heated questions about who her lover had been, she had no idea what he might do in return. Regardless, even the thought of it made her simply want to curl up and die.
“All I ask,” DeLayne continued in the same easy tone, as though he hadn’t just been threatening to destroy her life, “is that you include me in your next family gathering. And that the next business venture in which the Griffins participate includes me.”
Sarala opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again. She wanted to hit him, to tell him to go to the devil. At the very worst she’d thought her poor judgment five years ago might ruin her chances at a marriage her mother could rejoice over. With Shay, she’d found someone whose capacity for reason and logic ran as deeply as his passion and his compassion. She’d been very lucky, very fortunate, and she knew it. Her future was so delicately balanced that a word from either DeLayne or Shay could send her tumbling past all hope.
“Very well,” she snapped, turning her back on him so he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes. “I will see what I can arrange.”
“And that is all I ask,” his smooth voice came. “Please give your father my regrets; tell him I had a tailor’s appointment or something.”
She walked back to the house numbly, barely pausing to wait for Blankman to open the door for her. Oh, she’d done nothing but make trouble for herself and for everyone around her since she’d stepped off the ship and onto English soil. The most useful thing for her to do would be to vanish, take up life somewhere in the north country as a governess or something. Surely some family would be willing to hire her despite her accent; her dark skin would pale in time.
The door rattled as she stood there in the foyer. Sarala jumped.
“I’ll see to it, my lady,” Blankman said, pulling the door open yet again.
Charlemagne stood in the doorway, a huge bouquet of red and white roses in his hand.
“Hello,” she said.
He smiled, the expression warming the gray of his eyes. “Hello. Are you in?”
“I seem to be.” She drew in a hard breath, wishing that she’d had just a little more time to think, and ultimately a little more time to feel happiness and joy before DeLayne ruined everything for her. “Do come in.”
“I wanted to apologize for being abrupt this morning,” Shay said, handing her the bouquet as Blankman sent for Jenny. Odd, that she still needed a chaperone after all this.
He followed her into the morning room. “You weren’t abrupt,” she said, trying to regain her usual sense of logic. “We both have several things to cope with at the moment. I do understand.” As she took the roses their fingers brushed, and she shivered. “Jenny, will you fetch a vase and some water?”
The maid hesitated in the doorway, then gave a nod and dashed off. Immediately Charlemagne closed the short distance between them to kiss her, deep and slow. She closed her eyes, relishing the perfection of his scent and his touch.
“I feel much better now,” he said, stroking the rim of her right ear with his fingers.
“I need to talk to you,” Sarala blurted, pushing backward and walking with shaking muscles to the nearest chair.
He stayed where he was. “I’m listening.”
She cradled the roses, breathing deeply of their faintly spiced perfume. “I’m changing my mind,” she said, lifting her chin. “I won’t marry you.”
Jenny skidded back to the door just as Shay reached it and closed it in her face. He didn’t slam it, of course; being a Griffin, he wouldn’t. He did latch it, however, before he strode back to stand in front of her.
“Why not?” he demanded.
Wishing she could at least sound as calm and relaxed as she had when talking with DeLayne, she set the flowers aside. “Can’t you simply be a gentleman and accede to my request?”
Trying for a moment to look beyond his own abrupt hurt and frustration and anger, Charlemagne studied her face, her expression, looking for any clue to what might have happened. Her color was high, her gaze darting everywhere but to meet his, and her hands had clenched the rose stems hard enough to draw blood on the thorns. And yet from that kiss a moment ago he’d thought her finally reconciled to all of this.
“Humor me if you would,” he said in a low voice, the best he could manage and still sound in control of himself, “and tell me why you won’t marry me.”
She cleared her throat. “I’ve had time now to think about things, and you and I simply do not match well together.”
“I can scarcely think of anyone who matches me better, Sarala.”
“Well, that’s your thinking. Not mine.”
God, he wanted a drink. A very strong one. He felt as blindsided as if someone had struck him with a club. But getting drunk would have to wait—he needed all his faculties to figure this out before it was too late. And he thought he knew where to begin. “Did Melbourne say something to you?”
“No! No, of course not.”
“Then I don’t under…” His voice caught. He covered it by pacing to the door and back. “Did I say something? Because I certainly didn’t intend to injure you in any way, Sar—”
“No! I just don’t want to marry you. Now go home.”
He caught the shine of tears in her eyes. Moving closer again, he took the seat opposite her. He damned well wouldn’t beg, but something was very, very wrong. And he
had no intention of leaving without knowing what it might be. “No.”
Those same eyes widened. “Shay, you can’t do that! If someone says they don’t want to get married, the other person has to honor that re—”
“I don’t have to do any such thing.” Charlemagne folded his arms. If nothing else, maybe he could goad her into a confession. “I’m a Griffin.”
“Aha!” She jabbed a finger at him. “That—that—is the problem. You think that by virtue of your bloodline you’re indestructible, immune to any and all threats and dangers. And that is simply not true.”
He felt like giving a triumphant yell, himself. “Which threat am I not immune to?” he asked more quietly.
“Me. Do you have any idea how much damage I could do to you and your family?”
“Yes, I do. None.”
“Well, you are very, very wrong.”
A tear ran down her cheek, but Charlemagne held his muscles rigid to keep from rising to brush it away. He needed an answer to this before…before he fell into the chasm inside his chest that her words were ripping open.
“Why don’t you explain how that is?”
“Don’t make me call for my father, Shay,” she shot back, another tear joining the first, “to have you shown out.”
“I think you should call for him. Or shall I?” He rose, walking as evenly as he could make himself to the door.
“Stop!”
At the absolute misery in that single word he did stop, and turned around to kneel in front of her. “Then tell me what’s wrong.”
She drew a ragged breath. “But you’ll hate me,” she whispered.
“Impossible.”
“Shay, it isn’t—”
He took her hands. For someone with as much common sense as she had, for her to be so upset was unnerving. “Just tell me. If it’s as bad as you think, at least it won’t be your secret alone.”
For several hard heartbeats she stayed silent, but finally she let out a shuddering breath. “What would happen,” she said slowly, seeming to have to pull every word from her chest, “if someone who knew something…scandalous about me told everyone? And I do mean everyone.”
“The Griffin name would protect you,” he answered. “I would protect you.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not as easy as that. The man with whom I had a very brief…affair is in London, and if I don’t make introductions between him and the Griffins, if I don’t assure that he will be allowed to join in your business and enjoy a share of your profits, then he will tell everyone that you were tricked into marriage with a whore.”
He went cold all the way down to his bones. Her eyes, desperate and miserable, watched his, waiting to see what he would say, whether he would look away or frown or simply stand up and leave. “Is…does he have any proof that he took your virginity?”
Hope crossed her features so briefly that it might not have been there at all. “Does he need to have proof?”
“Not if he’s a believable, honorable-seeming gentleman, which I don’t see how he could be if he would threaten you like this.”
“He seems like a very charming, believable gentleman. That’s why I…was with him in the first place.”
“How old were you?” he asked, running fingers over the back of the tense muscles of her hands.
“Seventeen. It’s not entirely his fault, you know. He was older, yes, but he said things I wanted to hear, and I thought I knew everything. And what I didn’t know, I wanted him to show me.”
“You said you loved him.”
“I thought I did. I was very stupid. He wanted what a connection with my father would guarantee him. When I realized that, I told him to go away. He did, but was obviously intelligent enough to keep up the pretense of friendship with everyone involved. And now—”
“DeLayne,” Charlemagne ground out.
Her hands jumped. He didn’t need any other confirmation but that. The viscount hadn’t particularly impressed him, but he supposed to a young English girl living in India, he must have seemed exotic—not a soldier, not employed by the East India Company, but a landowner and a nobleman.
“His identity doesn’t matter, Shay. What matters is that if he doesn’t get what he wants, he will do as he threatens. So the choices are for the Griffins to make him wealthy and important, or for me to distance myself from you before he can do any damage to your family in addition to mine.”
“And what would you do once you’d distanced yourself from me?” If he’d been completely mercenary and without any conscience at all, her suggestion would make the most sense as far as the Griffin name was concerned. God, if Melbourne found out, was that what his brother would recommend, too?
“I’d be ruined. If my parents and I returned to India at once, though, Father could hopefully renew some of his business dealings before the news reached Delhi.” She gave a grim smile; obviously she’d been thinking this through in her usual logical, intelligent manner. “If you weren’t a Griffin, I doubt the news would even travel that far. You’re so famous, however, that even I had heard of your family before I arrived in London.”
This was not going to happen. Not like this, and not for this reason. “You did leave out one alternative,” he said in a low voice.
“And what might that be?”
“Dead men can’t gossip.” He stood, releasing her hands in the same motion. “Any idea where the bastard is staying?”
“Shay! No, this is—you can’t be serious! Stop!”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” he muttered, ignoring her protests, his mind already plotting the deed as he strode to the front door and outside to Jaunty. “I’ll be able to find him easily enough.” No one threatened his loved ones. Ever. DeLayne was a dead man.
Chapter 18
And Sarala had thought things couldn’t get any worse. “Shay!” she yelled, but he and his chestnut horse galloped down the drive without giving any indication that he’d even heard her.
“My lady?” Jenny asked from behind her in the foyer, a vase in her hands and her expression bewildered.
“Jenny. Come with me at once,” she said, running down the front steps toward the stables.
“My lady!” Blankman called after her. “What shall I tell—”
“Tell my parents I’ve gone to dinner with Lady Deverill!” she yelled back, not slowing. “Horton,” she continued as she reached the stable, Jenny behind her, “I need a carriage. Now.”
The head groom took one look at her face and charged back into the wide open doors of the stable, shouting at his groomsmen to harness up the coach. She would have preferred a curricle or phaeton or something she could drive herself, but as poor as her knowledge of London streets was, that made no sense.
“Where are we going, my lady?” Jenny panted, the vase still clutched to her breast.
Sarala took it, handing it to a passing gardener. “Return this to Blankman,” she instructed, and looked back at her maid. Where were they going? She could hunt Shay down, but even if she could find him, she doubted she could convince him of anything now any more effectively than she’d done five minutes earlier. “We’re going to Griffin House,” she decided. Her own life, her own reputation—none of it would matter if something happened to Charlemagne.
“But Lady Sarala, you’re wearing a morning dress. You can’t go to Griffin House looking like that.”
“Fashion will have to wait.” The horses and coach thundered into the yard, Horton himself on the driver’s perch. “To Griffin House, at once,” Sarala ordered, allowing another of the grooms to hand her and then Jenny into the carriage.
Halfway to Grosvenor Square two additional difficulties occurred to her: first, that the Duke of Melbourne might be elsewhere on a late Monday afternoon; and second, that during the course of one of their brief conversations, DeLayne had given out his address in London to Charlemagne.
“Hurry, hurry,” she muttered, leaning forward to look out the window. She couldn’t sit by while Shay committed
murder on her behalf.
As soon as the coach stopped in front of Griffin House she flung open the door and jumped to the ground. “Please,” she said, hurrying up the steps to where the tall, white-haired butler pulled open the front door, “is the duke in? I need to see him immediately.”
“If you’ll wait in the blue room, my lady, I shall inquire.”
She allowed herself and Jenny to be herded into the pretty blue room off the foyer. “At least tell me if he’s here,” she said, turning in the doorway. “It’s very important.”
“I shall inquire,” he repeated in the same tone, backing out of the room and closing the door behind him.
“Damnation. Idiotic pride and propriety. Don’t they know what could be happening right now? Shay could…” She couldn’t finish the sentence, or the thought. DeLayne had hunted tigers with her father. If he saw Charlemagne coming, she had no idea which of them might end up injured or dead. Her breath choked in her throat. “I can’t wait here.”
“But my lady, you—”
Sarala strode to the door. “I am not going to sit about and be polite when—”
The door opened just as she reached it. “When what?” the Duke of Melbourne asked.
Thank goodness. She seized his arm. “Your Grace, I need to speak to you in private. At once.”
He nodded, sending a glance over her head at Jenny. “Wait here.”
Sarala followed him down the long hallway to a large office dominated by an exquisite mahogany desk. Once inside the room, he gestured her to a chair.
“May I offer you some tea?” he asked, leaning back against the front edge of the desk.
Tea? “No, thank you,” she said, declining the seat. They didn’t have time to chat. “I’m here because I didn’t know what else to do. Shay—”
“If you’re here with some complaint that you think will cause me to settle more money on your family, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. And you can’t know already if you’re with child.”
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