But then, Fia was a Merrick. Doubtless she had her own agenda. Well, let her.
Rhiannon may have been over ten years from this land, but being reared on a Highlands battlefield produces a pupil well versed in combat—of all kinds.
At the end of another long corridor the footman finally opened a door. Rhiannon swept back the green skirts of her borrowed dress and entered.
Ash Merrick stood in the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back, his black hair tied negligently at the nape of his neck. He regarded her watchfully. His stance was broad and challenging.
At the sight of him her breath caught. She hadn’t expected him and he was so damnably beautiful. “Your father sent for me. Where is he?” She sounded angry. Better than dazzled.
“Fia said you would have an audience with Carr. And so you shall.”
“I have nothing to say to you.” She forced the rising note of panic from her voice. “We have nothing to say to each other.”
“I miss you.” His words came out low, nearly inaudible, more whispered admission than declaration.
Her head snapped up in astonishment. Whatever she’d expected it had never been that.
Admission? Lie. He was a consummate opportunist. He simply wanted an accommodating prisoner, not a difficult one. Hadn’t she proven already how susceptible she was to him?
No more.
She lifted hot, angry eyes to his light, unrevealing eyes. “How unpleasant for you.”
“Tit for tat, eh?” His mouth tilted mockingly. “Standard practice in my family. I should tell you, in the interest of fair play, I’ve vast experience with payback.” The smile dissolved, replaced by an intent, hungry look. “I never meant to hurt you, Rhiannon. Use you? Yes, I admit to that. Have you? Definitely. But I never wanted you hurt.”
His eyes stayed locked on hers as he strove to convince her that he told the truth. She even half believed him. It didn’t matter. In Fair Badden, her soft heart would have turned to warm wax with his confession. But the Highlands bred no soft hearts or weak resolves. Only those who would fight for their survival rather than allow themselves to be used and cast aside had survived.
“Too late.” She watched for a telltale sign that she’d pricked his hard heart. “You should have gone away. I could have made some sort of recompense to Phillip.”
“I told you. Someone tortured that damn dog of yours on purpose.”
She felt the color bleed from her face.
“The same someone who scarred your face with a bullet and who hurled that knife at you at the Harquists’ party,” he went on in a cold biting voice.
She glared at him. “You misread Stella’s accident,” she insisted. “And as for the other incidents? Nonsense. And well you know it.”
His gaze flickered away from hers, the tiny involuntary gesture justifying her suspicions. But instead of the vindication she might have expected, she only felt hollow, emptied, and lost.
He had manufactured the whole story for whatever covert purposes of his own. Purposes he had no intention of revealing to her.
“It’s not too late,” she heard herself saying in a dull voice. “You can send me back to Fair Badden.”
His expression tightened. He sneered.
“No matter what Watt claimed, you would have ended an outcast. We were lovers and Phillip knows that. He’d never accept you now.”
How could he speak of it so unemotionally? But then, she reminded herself, he’d only been involved in the physical act. He’d given her nothing of himself that he hadn’t reclaimed the minute he’d left her.
“You didn’t offer me any choice, did you? Or Phillip,” she accused him. “You bludgeoned him with the knowledge of my betrayal. You lied to me in that, too.”
His eyes clouded. “I thought I was keeping you safe. I thought to make it impossible for—”
“Phillip to marry me?” Rhiannon finished coldly. “Well, as you so kindly have explained, you did that.”
“I thought to give him an excuse not to marry you.”
“I still want to go back,” she said, ignoring his fantastic rubbish. “You needn’t do anything but get me to a coaching inn.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing for you at Fair Badden. It’s done.”
Her breath felt hot in her nostrils but she made herself speak in a bell tone of coldness. “I do not know why you forced me here or why you even bedded me in the first place. Did the thought of a nameless orphan marrying into your English aristocracy so offend you?”
Amazingly, he laughed. “Now there’s as fascinating a motive for deflowering a girl as ever I’ve heard.”
She’d sought to shame him and instead he mocked her. Humor glinted in his dark eyes though his mouth remained hard. A mouth that had moved with exquisite tenderness over her skin, burnishing her nerves with pleasure.
“At least I’ve given you some plausible explanation for your actions. I have no excuse for willfully betraying my betrothed.”
His nostrils flared slightly. “You don’t consider lust motive enough? I assure you”—his gaze unraveled over her face, her mouth, her throat and bodice—“it’s a most potent imperative.”
He didn’t move but she suddenly felt as though he’d surrounded her. She drew back a step. Her pulse tripped thickly in her veins. “But why bring me here then? Not for lust’s sake. If forcing a woman could pleasure you, you would have forced me by now and you haven’t.”
Strangely, her words seemed to anger him. “I would not rely too much on such an assumption.”
Once more she backed away from whatever emotion he strove so hard to suppress. His hands shivered at his sides.
“Let us say for the sake of argument that you are right,” he grated out, “that I would find no ease in forcing myself on you. Now for one minute, just one, allow that I am astute enough to realize that in taking you from Fair Badden I could only secure your contempt.” The very rigidity of his posture bespoke his fervor, forcing her to listen.
“Suspend your disbelief just a bit longer.” He held out a supplicating hand—this man she doubted had ever been a supplicant—and confusion rippled through her resolve, shaking it.
“Say that I took you here for no other reason than the one I gave you. That I believed your life was in danger and that I suspected Watt of being responsible. If you can find no other reason for my act, could not that one, as fantastic as it might seem, be the truth?”
His voice remained firm, insistent. His eyes pleaded with her. But the notion of Phillip intentionally setting out to harm her, or that anyone could conceive him capable of such, was absurd.
“Please, Rhiannon.” She’d never heard so raw a tone before. “Please.”
But then, Ash did not know Phillip as well as she. He might mistake Phillip’s nature …
Her gaze raked his face, trying to see what his expression might betray. She moved closer, close enough to hear the ragged draw of his breath, so intent she was barely aware of a movement behind her.
A voice—cultivated, bored, and imperious—spoke. “Well, Ash, now that you’ve fetched her I suppose you’ll want the money I promised you for your trouble.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Ash saw the spark of uncertainty in her eyes die, snuffed out with Carr’s words. She’d been searching for a reason for his actions; Carr had supplied one. Hatred of his father seethed in him. Carr’s words left him nothing. Nothing but the rattail shreds of pride and Ash refused to lose those here, in front of him.
Rhiannon was lost to him. Her cold, appreciative smile flailed him with its lack of accusation. That was the worst of it. He’d done no less than what she’d expected. He’d almost duped her again.
He looked away. There was still Raine to consider. He would always have Raine.
Carr had sauntered into the room and begun a slow circle around Rhiannon, one perfectly manicured finger raised to his lips in concentration.
“Two thousand pounds, I believe,” Ash said dully.
>
Carr ignored him, continuing his study of Rhiannon in her borrowed finery.
Fia’s gown, like all the ladies’ gowns at Wanton’s Blush, was designed to titillate and impress, provoke and advertise. Rhiannon wore the borrowed finery with regal disdain for its provocative qualities. Layered over some sort of hoop contraption, the heavy leaf-green silk de Chine shimmered with little gold glass beads. Treble ruffles of lace were gathered at the elbows and cascaded over her forearms.
Under Carr’s dispassionate stare, the faintest blush stained her slender throat and marked the upper curves of breasts uncovered by the low, square décolletage. She’d refused a wig. Her hair was coiled in a thick knot at the crown of her head.
The sight of her and of Carr studying her made Ash’s mouth dry.
“What shall I do with you?” Carr murmured.
In spite of his calm tone, it struck Ash that Carr was upset. The lines fanning the corners of his eyes were pronounced as were the twin grooves bracketing his aquiline nose. His lips had thinned with discontent. Carr, whose life revolved around beauty and appearance, class and status, would never have willingly shown his ire.
He obviously regretted whatever impulse had led him to offer Ash money for his services. He must suspect how close Ash was to realizing Raine’s ransom. Once Raine was out of prison Carr would be deprived of one of his more effective agents. He would hate that.
“Send me back, sir.” Rhiannon’s voice broke Carr’s contemplation and caught him off guard.
Ash smiled. Carr was unused to young women speaking in that tone to him. It was bound to exacerbate an already foul mood, and, indeed, the lines at the corners of his mouth deepened with displeasure but then smoothed.
“My dear,” he said, “you have only just arrived.”
“I have no desire to be here, Lord Carr.” She did not look at Ash and her voice rose as she spoke. “Indeed, I am here much against my will.”
“How is that?” Carr’s brows rose.
“Your son stole me on the eve of my wedding!”
A heartbeat’s pause while Carr absorbed this, then he gasped a melodramatic, “No!”
“Yes, sir!” Rhiannon said, nodding vigorously.
A wave of pity washed over Ash and he met her triumphant gaze wearily. She thought Carr had taken her part. She thought she’d horrified him with this tale of her son’s ruthless perfidy.
“The blackguard!” Carr’s tone rang with indignation and he spun on his boot heels to face Ash. Immediately the horrified indignation on his face was supplanted by indifference. He saw no reason to mask his real reaction from Ash. He looked up and saw Ash regarding him.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Carr asked in a voice rife with displeasure, but his expression was incurious.
Ash refused to defend himself. It would only amuse Carr, and Rhiannon already thought the very worst of him. “You sent me for her. Here she is. You owe me two thousand pounds.”
Carr composed his face to the proper aggrieved lines and turned back to face Rhiannon. “My dear, please forgive me. Had I known you were about to wed I would, of course, never have dreamt of tearing you from your foster home. I am amazed Ash was so fervent to do my bidding. Believe me, it is most uncharacteristic.”
Ash watched Rhiannon eagerly examine Carr’s benign countenance; saw the instant she perceived the tiny, false note of sympathy; saw her earnestness die and distrust replace it. Carr saw it, too, and for a second his eyes narrowed as he realized she did not wholly buy his act of sorrow, that she would not be, in fact, so easily gulled.
In spite of himself Ash felt proud of her.
“Why did you send your son for me after all these years?” she asked suddenly.
“I did not know where you were until most recently and then only by chance. A man who had come to Wanton’s Blush with a party of my friends, some native son of your little hamlet, mentioned your surname and I recognized it as the same as my own dear wife’s cousin.”
“Which wife was that?” Ash asked sardonically and was rewarded by a lethal glance from his sire.
“My second wife.”
“Why would anyone mention my name?” Rhiannon asked doubtfully.
Carr held up his hands before his eyes as though framing her. “My dear … such modesty is most becoming if a trifle, just the merest bit, jeune fille.”
Rhiannon colored and her gaze fell. Point for Carr. His smile was not without malice but Rhiannon, eyes still averted, did not see this.
“ ’Struth,” Carr said, “You are a most beauti—”
“Why did you turn me away all those years ago?” Her gaze flew up, discounting his flattery. He hadn’t won her. Not at all. “We came to your front door,” she went on. “My mother’s old nurse and I. She had a letter, she gave it to the man there and he took it away. When he returned he refused to let us in—”
“He did?”
Ash had to credit Carr, his expression of amazement was superb, especially followed as it was by that convincing blend of indignation and sorrow.
“I … I had no idea! I swear on all that is sacred, until this moment I did not know you had ever come to my home.” Carr moved closer to her and drew one of her hands up and between both of his, chafing it lightly. “I heard of what Cumberland was doing, of course. I knew your family would likely be punished for being dragged into taking a stance on the part of The Pretender—”
“My family gave their lives for him. Willingly!” Rhiannon burst out. “They were not coerced. They committed themselves with valor and honor and pride. And James Stuart is no ‘pretender’!”
Her outburst seemed to startle Rhiannon as much as Carr for as soon as the words had escaped her, she bit hard on her lips and scowled. Carr looked briefly taken aback but then, seeing Rhiannon’s discomfiture and confusion, he smiled sympathetically.
“Of course, my dear. Of course,” he crooned. “And after I heard that Cumberland had satisfied his depraved need for vengeance, I sent men to search for my dear wife’s relatives, most especially you, my wife’s ward and thus mine. Alas, they returned emptyhanded.” He lifted one hand and with his fingertips tilted her chin up, so that she would be forced to meet his eyes.
It took all of Ash’s self-control to stand still then, but if he were to indicate by word or deed that Rhiannon meant anything more to him than the two thousand pounds Carr had promised for her, Carr would use that to his advantage. And without a doubt Carr’s advantage would be Rhiannon’s disadvantage. So Ash stayed where he was even though the blood thickened in his veins and pounded in his temples and his hand shivered above where the stiletto hid in the top of his boot.
“What is this?” Carr suddenly said. “What is this scar on your face?”
“Nothing.” Rhiannon said, jerking her head back. “A highwayman shot at a carriage in which I rode. The bullet grazed my cheek.”
“Damn the bastard!” Carr’s low words vibrated with anger.
Ash stared, confounded. He knew every gesture and expression in Carr’s repertoire and the darkening of his sire’s throat and cheeks was beyond even Carr’s thespian talents. He was truly furious.
“I escaped, my lord,” Rhiannon said evenly.
“And did he?” Carr spat. “This … this highwayman?”
“Yes.”
“Damn!” Carr bit out. “Damn him to a painful death!”
“Really, sir. I suffered no great harm.” Her tone was amazed.
Carr took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “Yes. Yes. We must accept what we cannot change. You are here now. You are safe.”
“I was safe in Fair Badden.” Rhiannon kept her gaze locked on Carr, as though by ignoring Ash, she could somehow make him cease to exist. “I wish to return there.”
Carr scowled, released her chin, and folded his hands behind his back. “Return there? But how would that look? I mean by dusk everyone at Wanton’s Blush will know you are here, that you are my ward. How would it appear if I were to shun my obligations and
ship you back?”
“Returning me to Fair Badden won’t be a detriment to your good name, sir.”
Poor Rhiannon, Ash thought, too honest by half. She hadn’t been able to keep the sneer from her voice and Carr noted it. His eyes shot to her face, glittering. Gamely she continued. “You’ll be returning a bride to her fiancé.”
Carr pulled thoughtfully at his lip.
“Please,” she urged him.
“Well, perhaps,” Carr allowed.
Ash froze. Whoever endangered Rhiannon, it was someone in Fair Badden. She couldn’t go back there. She mustn’t be allowed.
“Put in such a manner, one could understand.”
“Exactly! You’d be righting a wrong done to an innocent girl—”
“Not so innocent,” Ash drawled, careful not to make any impression of urgency. “No, I don’t think that will do. You see, Miss Russell’s rather precipitate exit on the eve of her wedding will doubtless give rise to all sorts of sordid speculation. I fear her reputation is quite in tatters. As for her erstwhile bridegroom”—Ash paused and shook his head sadly—“I doubt he’ll have her now.”
“Bastard!” Rhiannon hissed.
Carr’s pale gaze flickered back and forth between Rhiannon and Ash. He moved across the room to Ash’s side and leaned forward. In a voice gauged so that Rhiannon could not overhear, he whispered, “Is that the way of it? I must say, she doesn’t look so very fond of you. Perhaps you lacked finesse? What say, Ash? Wasn’t she very good? Or weren’t you?”
It was a ploy, Ash knew, a simple gambit to discover what Rhiannon meant to him. Still, he nearly betrayed himself. He wanted to choke Carr to silence so very, very much. Instead he kept his expression blank.
“What the people of Fair Badden speculate on and what is truth—” Ash shrugged eloquently. “Surely you know how interchangeable such notions are. Ruining Miss Russell’s reputation was simply a matter of expedience. You wanted her. She wouldn’t go and I doubted whether her bridegroom would release her without a reason. I provided a reason. But remember, one can ruin a reputation without troubling to ruin anything else.”
The Passionate One Page 18