He raised her chin when she hesitated to answer.
“She had you.”
His expression softened. His thumb brushed her lower lip and caressed her cheek. “Where did I go wrong, then? How is it that I am trying to give myself to you today, and you no longer want me?”
She let out a slow breath. Her hand pressed his against her cheek, and she leaned into his touch. “This is my undoing, though, for you know I want you.”
“But there is a problem.” He forced her to look into his eyes.
“I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember. And somewhere, I became accustomed to you not loving me back.” She pressed her fingers against his lips when he started to speak. “‘Tis so much easier for me to marry without love, to form a union that has no emotional or physical expectations. Marriage is a simpler thing when each spouse goes their separate ways with only the business arrangement that binds them.”
He took her hand and pressed a kiss onto her palm. “With the exception of going separate ways, we can pretend our marriage is whatever you want it to be. You marry me, and I shall do all I can to make it easy for you.”
She shook her head. “It cannot work. When it comes to you, I cannot bear the thought of a competitor. Not in marriage. Not in forever. I cannot be near you and share my life with you, believing that I might only be second in your affections. I cannot bear to think that when you make love to me, you might be thinking of Emma. I cannot…”
“You do not need to think any of those things,” he said gruffly, silencing her with a kiss. His mouth was demanding, and Gwyneth gave in to it the moment their lips touched. She clutched at him as he drew out the need she had been trying to hide.
“You are only one in my heart. You are the only one in my mind.”
She felt herself being backed toward the sofa. “What are you doing?”
“Do you see this room? Do you see all of Emma’s belongings? Do you see her portrait looking at us?”
She followed the direction of his gaze and guessed what was going through his mind. She shivered. “Not here, David.”
“Why not here? On this bed, with her looking on.” He swept everything off the sofa to the floor. He took her mouth in another kiss. “I am going to make love to you right here, surrounded by the belongings of a woman long dead and gone…and I want you to know that we have nothing to fear.”
Her palms pressed against his chest. She half-heartedly tried to push him away, but the rest of her body fought her own protest. She answered another one of his kisses.
“I want you, Gwyneth. I want your body. I want your heart.” He took her hand and pressed it against the front of his breeches. “’Tis you doing this to me. No one but you. I want to make you cry out in pleasure. I want to bury myself deep inside of you and feel you close like a sheath around me. I want us to become one—here and now—with the sun shining in on us and with dreams of our future in our heads. She cannot touch us, Gwyneth, for she is gone. ‘Tis only us now. You an me.”
Gwyneth pressed her lips against his neck. “Take me, David.”
****
Lord Cavers died in the autumn of the same year that his only daughter was wed to the Earl of Aytoun. There were many friends, but very few close kin who attended the burial service.
Walter Truscott went up to the funeral as a representative of the family. He found the service to be just the empty spectacle he’d anticipated.
The earl’s widow shed not even the obligatory tear, as far as Walter could see. Augusta, obviously furious about something, was barely contained during the ceremony. She left immediately after the burial. Emma and Lyon, though still considered newlyweds, arrived stone-faced and somewhat distracted. Walter knew Lyon well enough to sense that a great storm was already brewing in that relationship.
Neither Pierce nor David could come. Walter delivered a letter of condolences from the dowager Countess Aytoun to Lady Cavers, since her ill health was keeping the older woman confined to her London townhouse.
The only person who truly mourned Charles Douglas’s passing was Gwyneth. One would have to be blind not to realize that the fifteen-year-old’s grief was genuine. From everything Walter had gathered over the years, Lord Cavers was the only friend the lassie had ever had in that household, and the rumors were already spreading about the sizable fortune that had been left for her.
The rumors were confirmed immediately after the funeral. Lyon asked Walter to take the countess back to Baronsford while he tended to some other business, and Walter had no choice. No one but the two of them, alone in the old closed carriage.
“From the moment she first stepped into Greenbrae Hall, I guessed what her game was about. She was there to steal everything that belonged to me,” Emma fumed the moment the carriage started. “Gwyneth and her bright green eyes and sing-song voice and sickening righteousness. She and her perfect manners. Her obedient ways. Pretty little Gwyneth and the insipid smile she pasted onto her ugly face whenever his lordship came around. She did a fine job of fooling the old bastard.”
“She was and is a bright light in that house. She made his lordship happy,” Walter asserted. “There are more than a few things you might have learned from her over the years.”
“What the devil for?” she snapped. “I wasn’t his child anyway, and he knew it. And why pretend I liked him, when ‘twas obvious he hated everything about me. The old pig showed it, too, in leaving what that should be mine to Gwyneth. He even robbed his own wife, giving more than he should have to his precious niece, his pasty-faced angel, his do-gooder ice princess—the lying bitch.”
Walter felt his hackles rise on behalf of Gwyneth. Hers was an innocence that Emma would never comprehend. He also felt angered for the dead earl, who could not defend himself.
“You have nothing to complain about. Lord Cavers always treated you fairly. You were never deprived of anything…to the day he died. He never hinted to anyone…as far as I know…that he might not have fathereyou. He made certain that your worth as a marriage prospect was not marred in any way.”
“How foolish that people place any weight on reputation!” A tense laugh escaped her throat. “How empty that all is.”
Walter shot her a hostile glare. “You say so now that you are married. You have nothing to lose.”
“Nothing to lose?” Her smile was as false as the mole on her powdered cheek. She pretended that she had not a care in the world. “My reputation since my marriage has a few marks against it, not that I can blame my father for that. Lord Aytoun, my honorable husband, was deeply troubled when he discovered that I was not a virgin when he carried me to the marriage bed.”
Truscott felt his stomach churn. A sour taste climbed into his throat.
“You have suddenly gone quite pale, my love.” Her gloved hand rested on his knee.
He brushed it off with no gentleness.
She laughed again and pulled the black veil from her hair and face. Pulling pins, she shook her head and a mass of golden curls cascaded down over her shoulders. “You haven’t a thing to worry about. Lyon believes David and I were intimate before my marriage, and I refuse to say anything to contradict that. ‘Tis amusing to watch, though. He is so focused on one man, one relationship, that I might have had, when I’m fairly certain I can match the number of times he has taken a different woman to his bed with affairs of my own. ‘Tis almost comical how a man’s mind works.”
He turned his face away. He needed to get away from her poison.
She slid closer to him on the seat. Her shoulder brushed against his.
“Now are you to be angry with me, too. And why should that be, my love? Are you jealous? Would you like to know how our lovemaking compared with those other times? With Lyon? With David?”
“I’ll not be trifled with, Emma. Let me be.”
“But I cannot let you be. You must be able to see that.” She touched his knee again, this time sliding her hand up the inside of his leg. “’Tis been so long, Walter. But I still cannot
forget how ‘twas between us.” Her lips touched his chin. “We can escape to the tower house for a few hours and you can take me. You can have me as often as you want. You can do to me whatever you want. No one needs to know.”
He shoved her away so hard that she fell off the seat onto the carriage floor.
“I’ll know,” he snarled. “I am not treacherous to my family. You are married to my cousin, a man I highly respect. Hear this clearly, Emma. I have put behind me what we once had…and what we once did. Nothing more shall happen between us. Do you hear me? Nothing.”
Banging on the wall of the carriage, he shouted for the driver to stop. Before the vehicle had lurched to a complete halt, though, Walter was out the door and striding toward the woods and the river…away from his nightmare.
CHAPTER 18
As little as she knew of Captain David Pennington, Violet was confident that all would be well between him and Gwyneth. It was obvious that he cared deeply. And, as little as Vi knew about love, she also sensed that the man’s affection was genuine. Obviously a passionate man, he was not one to give up on what he wanted.
Images of Ned Cranch flickered in Violet’s brain. Gwyneth had never had any experience with the lying and cheating type that Ned had been. She might not even know what blessing it was to have someone who truly cared for you, who was truly committed to you, who wanted a future that included both of you. A man who respected you and treated you right. Violet shook her head and began straightening the books on the shelves. She wanted no thoughts of her own past with the dead stonemason to cloud her thinking.
Captain Pennington would take care of Gwyneth, and a small light had been lit in the recesses of Violet’s mind that maybe then she could stay here, where she could visit her babe from time to time.
She had left the door to Gwyneth’s bedchamber open, and she turned as the excited maid arrived, breathless from running.
“A visitor has arrived for Miss Gwyneth, miss. We put her in the Oak Room.”
Violet remembered David’s threat and promise. She straightened her dress and headed for the door, thinking that maybe she could buy her mistress some extra time. “Did she give a name?”
“’Tis the first time she’s been to Greenbrae Hall, Miss Violet, but we knew her right off.” The maid lowered her voice. “’Tis the Lady Aytoun herself downstairs waiting. From Baronsford. Good thing Lady Cavers is not here. for she’d have raised a fuss, to be sure.”
The girl continued to chatter away, but Violet stopped dead, her feet rooted to the floor. Her heart was racing with panic and embarrassment. A hundred other feelings rushed through her mind. She didn’t know what she would say to Millicent. She couldn’t think of any way to explain. She had no idea where even to start.
“I shall go and get Miss Gwyneth,” she whispered, trying to force her feet to move.
“Actually, her ladyship said she wanted to speak with ye first,” the maid said, staring at Violet. “Are ye unwell, miss?”
“I’m perfectly well, thank you.”
“Well, we were all verra impressed that she knew ye.”
None of them would have been impressed if they knew the circumstances in which Violet had left Lady Aytoun’s household, Vi thought. She took a deep breath and smoothed the invisible wrinkles in her skirt before starting down the stairs.
****
David had underestimated how much he’d needed Gwyneth, how much he’d wanted her, how much he’d missed her. As a result, they lay in a tangle of partially discarded clothing, their bodies still hot from their frenzied lovemaking, and he was in no hurry to move. He also knew it would take almost no persuasion to coax him into repeating the performance.
“I must tell you, David,” Gwyneth whispered, “this was even more exciting than our first night in Gretna Green.”
She smiled and stretched lazily next to him, one slender leg moving on top of the breeches that David had never completely rid himself of. She pressed a kiss on his neck.
They had managed to open her gown at the neckline, so he could see the bandages and glimpse her ivory breasts. The skirts were a rumpled mass of material, and both of them were lying on them. Her curls were a tangle and the silky skin of her neck carried the marks where his lips and rough face had rubbed against it. She was a delicious mess, and he gathered her closer against him.
“Do you believe me now when I say that when it comes to making love, for me you have no peer?”
Gwyneth looked around the room first, her gaze pausing on each of Emma’s paintings. The magical green eyes were misty when they finally met his.
“I believe you.”
“Will you also believe me when I say that long before Emma’s death—in fact, from the time she accepted Lyon’s marriage proposal—any infatuation I had for her ended?”
“I believe you now.” She gave a small nod. “But your actions spoke differently then. You left immediately following her death. You showed no regard for the condition Lyon was left in. Many, myself included, could only assume that ‘twas your love for her that drove you away, and the fact that you clearly blamed what that happened on him.”
“What drove me away…” David paused, studying Emma’s portrait for a moment first. The events surrounding their fall from the cliffs whirled in his brain. The voices of so many people, the anger that permeated the air during that time, came rushing back. There was no mood of celebration at Baronsford that day, only hostility. He finally looked back into Gwyneth’s face. “I didn’t believe Emma’s death was an accident.”
“It had rained all night. The cliffs must have been slippery. She could have simply fallen off the rocks.”
“She knew those cliffs better than anyone. She’d been running up and down that path since we were children,” David argued. “But why would she go there, anyway?”
“Who knew why Emma did so many things?”
“Certainly not I.” He glanced at her. “At the same time, though, I knew I had to leave Baronsford. I was certain that someone had pushed her. And with that kind of thinking, I knew that my presence would be of no help to Lyon.”
Gwyneth extricated herself from his embrace and sat up, pushing her skirts down. She looked at him. “And you believed Lyon pushed her.”
“He had the greatest reason. Of everyone there that last day, he was one feeling the most wretched about her. He never had a great deal of patience. ‘Twas clear that she had now driven him nearly out of his mind.” David rolled back and stared at the ceiling. “The fact that he was incapable of speaking after his accident did not help me, either.”
“He was severely injured,” she said sharply. “And you are his brother. You should have had more ith in him.”
“I know. I deserve your reprimand,” he said, turning back to her. “I now realize that. But at that time, all I knew was that I had to get as far away as I could from Baronsford, and Emma, and any memory of her. I had severed my ties with her once before. I didn’t want to grieve again. I didn’t want to think about anything. I had no desire to lay blame, either. I only wanted to forget.”
Gwyneth studied him in a moment of silence. David could feel the emotions that she was battling. He told himself this was another thing that he loved about her. She was honest. She said what she was feeling. She was so different from Emma. He didn’t have to guess the true meaning behind what she did or said. She was the person she showed herself to be.
“And did you forget?” she finally asked, putting a hand gently on his.
“Forget Emma? Yes.” David entwined their fingers. “But forget Lyon and what was happening to my family?” He shook his head. “I found myself starved for any news of them. The worry of what was going to become of Lyon never left me, and then there was all this other news. Lyon was married and miraculously recovering. And then Pierce coming back, and he was being married. In the end, ‘twas the same as when we were children. My two older brothers were always a step ahead of me, and I had to work so hard to keep up with them. They were all getting
on with the future. I did not want to be left behind. I wanted to be part of them—part of their lives.”
“You are back with your family now. But what do you believe now about Emma’s death?”
He stared across the bed at Emma’s portrait. “Lyon told me he didn’t kill his wife, and I believe him. I have told him as much. But I already know that saying the words will not be enough for him. Not after leaving Baronsford a year ago the way I did.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I need to find out who really killed Emma.”
She sat up straight. “What you are talking about is not the simplest of tasks.”
“It might be, if we think it through.” He touched her knee, rubbing the dress against her skin. “Emma left the castle a number of minutes ahead of Lyon. She went straight to the path along the cliffs. Now why would she go there at that early hour of the morning, and right after a heated argument with her husband?”
“To cool her temper?”
“She could have taken a walk in the gardens, or gone to the deer park, or taken a horse out for a ride. She could have done any number of things more suited to the weather that day. Why would she choose to go somewhere as secluded as the cliff walk.”
“Perhaps she had a pre-arranged rendezvous,” Gwyneth whispered.
David frowned and looked into her face. “We know a great deal about Emma now that I did not know then. Do you think she was going there to meet her lover?”
There was absolute silence. Gwyneth gathered her knees to her chest and stared into space.
“We have to find some answers,” he said firmly. “We know who the guests were at the house on the day that Emma died. And I believe most of the servants here then are still here. We shall just ask some questions, find out what was going on in her life, and who else was angry enough to push her off that cliff.”
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