The belligerent expression evaporated from Edith’s square face and her cheeks grew scarlet as she batted at Phillip’s head, huffing insincere castigation. “Let me down, you young rogue! Let me down, I say. You best save these demonstrations of your manly vigor for your wedding night!”
The others broke into cheers and Phillip, grinning hugely, lowered Edith to the ground and swept a low bow before her. “I heed your sage advice, ma’am. Pray consider my … vigor duly hoarded,” he said, his gaze fast on Rhiannon.
It was too warm a jest. Rhiannon’s skin heated as knowing winks turned in her direction.
“What say you to that, Rhiannon?” Edward, ever the instigator, demanded.
“I? I know nothing of men.”
Hoots met this demure evasion and Rhiannon, smiling with an uncharacteristic impishness, stilled her audience with a wave of her hand, aware of Ash Merrick’s gaze resting on her with dutiful patience. She suddenly wanted to prick that indolent lack of expectation from his face, prove her wit was as sharp as any London lady’s.
“But of beasts I know much,” she continued, “and it is my observation that what a squirrel so dutifully hoards in anticipation of his winter bed, ends all too often nothing but … rotten nuts.”
Laughter erupted in the room. Even Edith, after a gasped “Rhiannon!” broke into loud guffaws. And Ash Merrick’s eyes, which Rhiannon had been watching, widened with gratifying surprise before he, too, joined in the laughter.
Only Phillip did not fully appreciate her wit. She was seldom forward, never ribald, and the look in Phillip’s eye suggested he’d fostered a kitten and just discovered it was a fox. For an instant his handsome face soured before his innate good nature reasserted itself.
“Mr. Merrick!” Phillip called to their guest. “In London what would a man do with so saucy and bold a wench?”
“It depends—” Ash answered consideringly, coming toward Rhiannon. Once at her side he put his hand on his hip in the attitude of a connoisseur looking over offered goods. Her friends, alert to the fun, moved in, encircling them.
Slowly, he began walking around Rhiannon. She notched her chin up at an angle, her pert attitude delivering him a challenge she found herself incapable of explaining.
“Depends on what?” She refused to turn like some cornered hind. She did not need to. She could feel the heat of his regard as intensely as if he touched her.
“On many things.” His voice was as smooth as French brandy warmed over a candle, intimate and close. His breath—surely it was stirring the hairs on the nape of her neck? Surely his lips hovered inches from her skin? He couldn’t under Phillip’s eye— He shouldn’t—
She spun around. He raised his brows questioningly … from a good five feet away. Their gazes met and locked. Gray. Clear. Soft as an April fog, cool as a November sea. Impossible to look at anything besides those dark-thicketed eyes, to look deeper into their depths and find … Weariness. Such awful weariness behind the calm, pleasant façade—
“For instance?” Phillip prompted.
Ash’s gaze broke from hers, severed like a spider’s strand by a razor’s blade. “For instance,” he said, “where in London ‘the wench’ is. There are different customs for different countries,” he said.
“Countries?” Susan Chapham asked.
“Yes,” Ash answered. “London isn’t simply one great heap. It’s an entire world with a myriad of tiny countries existing side by side, each barely aware of the other. Covent Garden and Seven Dials, Spitalfields and Whitechapel. In London’s vast acres these are principalities ruled by kings and princes without so much as a last name.”
“And would Rhiannon be a princess there?” Susan Chapham asked, and dissolved into giggles.
“I’d think she’d be a princess anywhere,” Ash said with calculated charm.
“Well, then she best not go to London since it would mean a coming down in the world,” John Fortnum stated.
“How’d you figure that?” Phillip asked.
“In three weeks’ time, she’ll be queen of Fair Badden,” John offered.
“Queen?” Ash Merrick asked as the others laughed.
“Queen of the May,” Susan explained, her tone resigned. “Three years running now. ’Tisn’t fair.”
“True enough,” Edith cut in. “I don’t see an end to it until the girl is wed and ineligible. Only virgins can rule on May Day, you know.”
“No,” Ash said. “I didn’t.”
“Never fear, Miss Chapham,” Phillip said. “I can promise you Rhiannon won’t be eligible next year. Or next month, for that matter.”
The way he looked not at her, but at the group of their friends, as though he spoke for their benefit more than hers, made Rhiannon uncomfortable.
“What say we get married earlier, Rhiannon, and give these other beauties a chance at the crown?” he asked, smiling.
The chattered gaiety faded in awed interest. The proposed marriage of Phillip Watt to Rhiannon Russell was the most extraordinary—and in some people’s eyes the most foolhardy—piece of romance within Fair Badden’s memory. Phillip’s father, because he was enormously rich—and some said enormously dotty—had not only agreed to the wedding, but had settled enough money on his son so that Phillip could take the bride he desired and not the one he needed. And that woman was Rhiannon who, though pretty and darling, had no name, no family, and no dowry.
She could not help but leap at the chance to legalize her union early, before Phillip or his father came to their senses. They all looked at her, awaiting her flattered and hasty acceptance.
“No,” Rhiannon said.
“No?” Phillip echoed.
Several jaws grew slack. Few people had ever heard Rhiannon utter that syllable, and never so flatly.
She fidgeted, her twisting fingers betraying an unease her cheerful voice did not. “I … I willingly if shamefully concede my greed. If there’s any chance I should be fortunate enough to be May Queen again, I’ll snatch it.”
“But you’d be queen of my heart,” Phillip said. “Is that not kingdom enough?”
Pretty words. A lovely sentiment. But Phillip’s back was still to her and he had opened his arms in the direction of their friends, appealing to them, not her. Several nodded in agreement. If he had just looked at her when he said it …
Ash Merrick was looking at her.
Of all those present, he was the only one. He watched her intently.
Her heartbeat hastened. His regard was more than a summation of her physical self. He gauged her, weighing her reaction, studying her as if all his conscious thought were centered on her. She had never been the focus of such acute concentration. Not even Phillip’s.
Phillip glanced over his shoulder at her, awaiting her reply. She should say yes. She should be grateful. She was grateful. Phillip could have chosen a gentlewoman, an heiress, perhaps even better, but he had chosen her. He represented everything she had ever needed. She would wed Phillip and be safe and happy in Fair Badden for the rest of her life.
But not yet. Not so soon.
“I have admitted my greed,” she said, forcing a bright smile to her lips. “I cannot help it that I want both crowns.”
Phillip blinked. Indeed, the entire party seemed nonplussed.
“If that can please you, Phillip?” she added faintly, suddenly despairingly aware of what she’d risked with her ill-advised teasing. For that was all it was … teasing. Of course she would marry Phillip. Tomorrow if he insisted. But deep within, a half-drowned Scottish-tinged voice begged different.
Phillip’s face grew ruddy.
“Ach, you great oaf!” Edith suddenly barked into the quiet room, stomping forward to cuff Phillip smartly on the ear. He yelped and jumped back from her onslaught.
“Have you no finer feelings? No dab of sentimentality?” Edith demanded. “Can you no see the gel wants her wee bit of courting and the trimmings of a fine and well-planned ceremony to mark the occasion of her wedding? None of your harum-s
carum elopements for my Rhiannon. You’ll wed her fit and proper. Not hieing off like some stable hand with his milkmaid, you great … man!”
The storm clouds lifted from Phillip’s handsome face as comprehension took its place. “Is that it, Rhiannon?” he asked, his fond gaze just the smallest bit patronizing.
Edith caught Rhiannon’s eye, clearly warning her.
“Aye,” Rhiannon said. “That’s it.”
“Well, then, you’ll have the grandest wedding Fair Badden has ever seen!” With the pronouncement the men and women surrounded Phillip, clapping him on the back and calling loudly for drink to toast his magnanimity.
And Rhiannon smiled, and demurred, and accepted the ladies congratulations on wresting a feast from her bridegroom and the gentleman’s appreciative sallies about knowing her own worth, and she lowered her eyes in embarrassment and did not look at Ash Merrick again. Because she knew he’d sensed her lie.
Chapter Six
Ash lay on his stomach beneath the bud-spangled limbs of an ancient elm. A fair breeze flirted with his cheek. Bees, woken to industry by spring’s beckoning warmth, murmured in the clover. Beneath him a bed of fresh-sprung grass cushioned his abused body.
The months of drunkenness and debauchery had taken their toll. That atop two years chained to a French ship’s galley as a “political prisoner.”
The thought still provoked his bitter amusement. He’d never had the least interest in politics and neither had Raine.
He and his brother had stumbled into the trap the McClairens had set for his father in retaliation for his betrayal of them. The clansmen hadn’t quite known what to do with Carr’s evil progeny. Being McClairens and thus relentlessly faithful they couldn’t quite bring themselves to murder Janet McClairen’s sons. Though, Ash thought with a twist of his lips, they’d come damn near three years before when they’d beaten Raine to a bloody pulp for supposedly raping a nun.
Ash’s eyes narrowed. It still made no sense that they’d spared Raine after they’d captured him the second time. Though right at this minute Ash wasn’t sure Raine would be grateful, because the McClairens, thinking to break Carr’s back financially if not literally, had sold his sons to the French. They, in turn, had demanded a ransom from Carr.
A ransom that hadn’t been forthcoming. Until Carr had capriciously decided to pay for Ash’s release—but not Raine’s. Carr’s decision to leave Raine to rot still bit into Ash’s heart like saltpeter in an ever-gaping wound. It, as much as anything else, compelled him beyond endurance and exhaustion to find the means to secure his brother’s freedom.
Little wonder his health was depleted and near breaking. But though he was exhausted unto death, sleep was hard coming.
Even though he’d been in Fair Badden a week, he still felt as alien as if he’d been shipwrecked on Africa’s dark coast … and just as wary. Fair Badden was simply too good to be real, particularly with what he knew of the world.
Yet at night he slept on a feather mattress with the sound of crickets clicking beneath his open window like the nervous worrying of papal beads in a novitiate’s hand. Each morning he was greeted with smiles and pleasantries. Each day he drank sweet water from a deep, clear well and ate fresh bread, smoked meats, and farmhouse cheeses.
Each day Rhiannon Russell and Edith Fraiser divided homely duties between them: preparing confits and honey; distilling clover into a fresh, pungent wine; stitching sun-bleached clothing; and tending the rows of herbs outside the kitchen door.
He watched all this domestic harmony skeptically, looking for some sign of dissent. He did not find any. Though sometimes Rhiannon Russell would catch his eye and the tranquil submissiveness that seemed the hallmark of her character would be betrayed by a roguish gleam or a conspiratorial flash of a smile when one of his more subtle sallies blew far over the head of the worthy Mrs. Fraiser.
He wished Rhiannon didn’t smile like that and that her eyes didn’t gleam like that because, against all likelihood, Ash Merrick was charmed. And that surprised and alarmed him.
She was interesting. Lovely. And natural. And he’d had a surfeit of artifice.
More, she accepted him. As decent. As a gentleman. And no one here was wise enough or discerning enough to warn her differently.
Why should they? They were of the same opinion: the ambitious and self-satisfied Edward St. John; homely and sincere John Fortnum; all the eager lads who clamored for a story that they might taste secondhand London’s dangerous habits. Even that great gold monolith Phillip Watt.
Restlessly, Ash rolled his tense neck, the movement releasing the grass’s fresh perfume, a scent at variance with the darkening of his thoughts. Watt was heavy-handed and complacent and his status as fiancé had fired his ardor. Several times Ash saw the boy attempt to sweep the unwitting Rhiannon to some secluded enclave for a spot of slap and tickle. Or perhaps not so unwitting, Ash thought with a small smile.
That was part of her charm, after all, the flash of amused knowledge that leapt to her greening eyes when she blithely upset one of Phillip’s amorous plans. She might be innocent but she was not gullible.
Neither was Edith Fraiser, the canny old cat. She’d certainly manipulated him adroitly enough.
She’d spent the week watching Ash. Every time he looked at Rhiannon, the old dame was looking at him. A few days ago, after sending Rhiannon on some errand, Edith had cornered him. Smiling and bobbing her head she explained that she was old and stiff and not nearly the duenna she need be. Therefore, she declared with impeccable reason, in Carr’s stead Ash must be Rhiannon’s chaperon.
The notion was so bizarre that he’d been blindsided into acquiescing. Since then he’d spent hours padding after the courting couple to see that Rhiannon’s chastity remained intact.
In fact, that was what he was ostensibly doing now—chaperoning the happy couple. His orders were clear: Under no circumstances were Rhiannon and her swain to enter the yew maze, where “untoward” things might occur. He’d accepted with outward amiability but had taken himself off as soon as Phillip had steered Rhiannon through the maze’s entrance.
For while he might enjoy letting down his guard and having these people assume him noble and gentlemanly, he wasn’t quite ready to rap Watt’s knuckles if they chanced too close to Rhiannon’s breast. Because if he witnessed that, he would imagine his own hands brushing her velvety skin.
He imagined far too much regarding Rhiannon Russell.
He imagined her as he’d first seen her, flushed and pretty and awash with pleasure. Only in his mind her pleasure was sexual and the heat rising from her throat brought there by his touch. His hands had loosened her hair and his mouth had brought the full color to her lips. And his palm had molded to the sweet swells and lush line …
God, what was he thinking? He frowned, casting about for an explanation for this … fancy. He would not give it any weightier title.
The answer was simple: He hadn’t had a woman in years. Upon his return to England he hadn’t dared offend his newfound London “friends” by lifting their sisters’ or wives’ skirts. He wouldn’t spend any of his hard-earned money on an expensive whore, or his health on a cheap one.
Of course he wanted the girl. He wasn’t so used up, he thought angrily, that he wouldn’t appreciate swiving a fresh, vivacious chit. He stirred uneasily.
Damn her for thinking him a tame and friendly sort. It irritated and fascinated him. How dare she think him better than he was? The only thing he’d ever been loyal to was his brother, and even that loyalty was blemished, for he could not quite bring himself to wrest Rhiannon from Fair Badden and deliver her to Carr and accept the money Carr offered for the job. Not even for Raine. Not knowing that once at Wanton’s Blush she would in all likelihood die. All Carr’s brides died.
Even closed, Ash’s eyes narrowed in concentration. He’d assumed his father had sent him here to fetch another rich bride but Rhiannon had nothing. Less than nothing. Yet why would his father have sent him here otherwise?<
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Carr only concerned himself with that which brought him money or influence. He’d even let his youngest son rot in a French prison rather than pay his ransom.
Raine’s ransom.
Ash’s mouth flattened. It was the carrot Carr always dangled before him. How many times had his father cajoled and manipulated him with the promise of Raine’s ransom? How many times had that promise been “postponed”?
If only Ash could earn enough money on his own. But each pigeon Ash plucked at the gaming table, each program he undertook to earn the fantastic sum the French demanded for Raine’s life, brought him only marginally nearer that goal. As much as Ash hated his father, Carr alone had the wherewithal to purchase Raine’s freedom.
But then, Ash thought bitterly, why should he? Carr had found a faithful puppet in Ash, one he could make dance with the tiniest jiggle of the strings. But when Ash had arrived here and discovered that his father’s plans had been trumped by a country boy and his doting father … When he’d seen Rhiannon …
It was rare that Carr was thwarted. Ash would enjoy each moment to its fullest. And finally, with the familiar and poisoning vitriol singing in his blood, Ash fell asleep.
The black stone walls oozed cold, inky sweat. Chill seeped into the murky corridors. Ash slumped in the middle of the slanted stone floor beneath his prized rag of a blanket, capturing what warmth he could from his own breath, past shivering, merely enduring.
Behind him the cries and mutterings of the other prisoners faded. He tensed, waiting for the inevitable attack, the latest test of his waning strength, the newest contender for the stinking rag he himself had fought over. Animal and base, he strained to hear the muted approach.
There. A touch. Experimental and wary.
With a thick oath, Ash grabbed his assailant’s shoulders and pitched him to his back. He threw himself on the prone figure. Snarling, he throttled him, meeting—
—Rhiannon Russell’s panicked eyes.
With a gasp, he jerked his hands from her throat.
“My God.” He’d nearly killed her. What had he become that even in his sleep he could kill? He struggled to clear his thoughts. He needed to say something, do something. He closed his eyes, dazed and sickened.
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