The tension drained from her face and she softened in his hold until she was again the fluid, responsive woman who had kissed him within an inch of his life. This time he knew better than to restrain her when she slipped from the bed. He bit back an appeal for her to stay with him. If his life depended on it, he couldn’t say whether he wanted her to stay an hour, a day, or forever.
Sidonie wandered along the beach, gazing out to the horizon. How could she have been so foolhardy with Merrick that morning? She was lucky he’d kept his promise and let her go. A man of his worldly experience must have guessed how close she came to yielding, good sense be hanged.
In spite of the sun, the wind was sharp. The sea was a vista of whitecaps. Brisk afternoon breeze whipped her hair around her face. Her half-boots crunched on the sand as she marched away from Castle Craven. And its enigmatic owner.
Merrick hadn’t joined her on her walk. In every way that counted, he’d been absent from her all day. Since their passionate interlude in the bedroom, he’d withdrawn, playing again the charming host, the interesting raconteur. Superficially his urbane manner remained unchanged between today and yesterday in the library. But she knew—she knew—he deliberately widened the gulf between them. Briefly this morning, they’d shared more than desire. Something breathtaking. Something of soul as well as body. He’d since recoiled from all emotional intimacy.
Discontentedly she bent to scoop up a smooth black stone and toss it into the waves. The sea’s ceaseless movement echoed her restlessness. Cursing her susceptibility to a rake’s stratagems, she collected a handful of pebbles and pitched them one by one into the water. A stupid, futile activity.
No more stupid and futile than knowing the damage a man could do a woman, yet still finding herself lured to destruction.
With unwonted fervor, she hurled a silvery piece of quartz. It splashed sullenly beyond the breakers. She sighed and chewed on her lip. Her hand opened and the remaining pebbles cascaded to the yellow sand.
She had nothing to gain and everything to lose if she became Merrick’s lover. Away from him, she knew that.
When she was with him…
The more he touched her, the more she wanted his touch.
Curse Merrick, he undermined everything she knew. Blinded by Roberta’s tales of profligacy and ruthlessness, she’d expected Jonas Merrick to be a villain from a fairy story. Instead the man she discovered was more enchanted prince than ogre. Her heart ached for him. Even as every moment she spent with him set her conscience kicking like an angry mule.
Because with every moment, she lied. If only by omission. And the lie was a heinous one that if never exposed would shadow the rest of his life.
Sidonie could prove Jonas Merrick was the rightful Lord Hillbrook.
Cataloguing Barstowe Hall’s library a few weeks ago, she’d discovered the lost marriage lines for Anthony Charles Wentworth Merrick, fifth Viscount Hillbrook, and Consuela Maria Albertina Alvarez y Diego. The document had been hidden inside a battered volume of Don Quixote. As Jonas’s father had claimed, a traveling English clergyman attached to an Oxfordshire parish had performed the ceremony at Fuentedivallejo in Spain in 1791. The officiating parson had died before returning home. When the French sacked Fuentedivallejo in 1813, its archives burned. Sidonie had found the only proof of the wedding still extant.
Sidonie’s hands fisted at her sides as she stared unseeing at the turbulent ocean. Heaven save her, she couldn’t tell Merrick what she’d found. Not without abandoning any hope of rescuing Roberta from the violent hell of her life. William legally owned Roberta like he owned the sheep and cattle on his estate. If he didn’t surrender his hold over his property, willingly or unwillingly, his wife was trapped forever.
Currently the marriage lines lay safe in Sidonie’s London bank. She hadn’t shared her discovery with Roberta—she couldn’t rely on her sister keeping the secret. In a couple of months, armed with her legacy and this information, Sidonie would blackmail William into releasing his wife. Not that she trusted William to give up without fighting dirty. Sidonie’s bankers had instructions to open the sealed envelope and publicize the contents if she suffered any mishap.
The day she’d found the marriage lines, she’d wanted to get Roberta away from William. But caution had swiftly prevailed. Sidonie knew enough of William’s fondness for litigation to ensure the document’s authenticity. Sidonie had written to the clergyman’s former parish requesting confirmation of his Spanish travels and a copy of his signature for verification. No reply had arrived before Roberta played her disastrous card game with Jonas Merrick. In any case, Sidonie would still have come to Castle Craven. William’s loathing for his cousin verged on mania. Even a threat as powerful as losing the title wouldn’t save Roberta from her husband’s retribution if he discovered she’d cuckolded him with his enemy.
Sidonie had immediately recognized that she was wrong to conceal the truth for her own purposes. Then she’d recalled William’s latest attack on Roberta. She’d recalled years of abuse turning her lovely sister into someone Sidonie no longer recognized. Sidonie despised William because he was a cowardly bully, but she also loathed him because he’d stolen her beloved sister from her. Roberta, her childhood protector, had become lost in a world of her own, caring only for the turn of a card or the roll of the dice.
With the marriage lines, Sidonie could remove Roberta from William’s influence and reawaken the warm, vibrant woman who must exist under the nerves and tantrums. The marriage lines would literally save her sister’s life and offer a new, happier future to Roberta’s children, Thomas and Nicholas.
But Sidonie hadn’t yet met Jonas Merrick when she made these optimistic plans.
On that overcast afternoon at Barstowe Hall, stifling her qualms had been easy enough. As far as Sidonie knew then, maintaining the status quo harmed nobody in any material way. William had the title, much as he disgraced the family name; his cousin had the money. Any inconvenience the rightful heir suffered through losing his inheritance must have faded over time.
So Sidonie had told herself. So she’d believed.
Until she looked into Jonas Merrick’s eyes and recognized how bitterly he resented his bastardy. Until her stupid, yearning heart burst to do anything within her power to ease his terrible isolation.
A few words from her and she’d change his life.
A few words from her and Roberta was condemned to lifelong misery.
A prickling behind her neck warned her she was no longer alone on the blustery beach. Slowly she turned from the wild sea. Merrick wore white shirt and breeches, but he’d made a concession to the chill by flinging a loose coat across his shoulders. He looked strong and virile. A breathtaking memory of how he’d kissed her that morning blinded her to everything but his presence.
He strode toward her, his boots striking the sand with hard purpose. “Have you been down here raining curses upon my head?”
She flinched at his question, although he’d spoken with his usual taunting humor. He was like a mistreated dog, swift to snarl to fend off a kick.
Oh, Jonas…
Her heart squeezed with agonizing compassion. He was so wounded, she wasn’t sure anyone could heal him. Certainly not a chance-met girl who dallied a mere week. A girl who betrayed him with every breath. Her decisions had become so vilely complicated. The horrors she’d imagined waiting at Castle Craven paled to insignificance in comparison. She’d thought only to risk her body. Instead she risked her soul.
“Sidonie?” His eyes sharpened on her face.
“I don’t need to be alone to curse you.”
“I suspect not.” He studied her as if guessing she hid something.
Of course she hid something. And not just that against every dictate of virtue and self-preservation, she wanted him.
As he approached, she saw that the distance remained in his eyes. She should be grateful. If he kept her out of his heart and soul, she was far less likely to make a fool of herself. That wasn’t
how she felt. She felt like he locked her out in the snow while inside he sat by a hearty fire drinking brandy.
He gestured along the beach. “Shall we walk?”
“Yes,” she said, even as she shivered.
He noticed her discomfort. He noticed everything. “We should go inside.”
Back to the house? Back to the unending, tormenting awareness that simmered between them? In a way, he was even more appealing under open sky with the wind ruffling his thick gypsy-black hair. But out here she was less oppressively conscious how every moment made surrender more inevitable.
“N… no.” She loathed the betraying stammer.
“As you wish.” He whipped off his coat. Heavy folds settled around her, swaddling her in warmth and a heady mixture of scents—horses and leather and the sea and, most intoxicating of all, Jonas Merrick. Wrapped in his coat, she felt wrapped in his arms.
She made a halfhearted attempt to return it. “Won’t you be cold?”
He laughed as he strolled ahead. “The devil looks after his own.”
She scurried to keep up. “I wish you wouldn’t be kind,” she said in a subdued voice, holding her wayward hair back from her face.
“I’m never kind.”
“You never admit it at least,” she muttered, guilt scourging her like a thousand flails. She had a troublesome inkling that if she weighed sin against sin, her trespasses against Jonas Merrick far outweighed his against her.
Chapter Nine
Jonas couldn’t bear this. He whirled around to face Sidonie. “Don’t deceive yourself that I’m a good man.”
Shocked, she stared at him. Then her chin tilted at the familiar angle. “I think you’re a better man than you believe.”
His laugh was weighted with bitterness. “My sins condemn me.”
He’d hoped to daunt her into backing down. He should have known better. “Name one. Confession is good for the soul, they say.”
He bit back the retort that he didn’t have a soul. Once he’d have said that was categorically true, but some rusty shreds of honor had scraped into agonizing life under Sidonie’s influence. Why else would she still be virgin after nearly three days in his clutches? “They talk a lot of twaddle.”
“You raised the subject of your wickedness. I just want to confirm how bad you really are.” She paused to brush back the flyaway hair around her face. The breeze was strengthening. “Tell me just one thing you’ve done that puts you beyond the pale, then I’ll leave you to brood romantically over your wrongdoing.”
“Very droll.” How he regretted challenging her. But then he remembered with repugnance the way she’d looked at him when he’d given her his coat. Strategy might insist he gull her into thinking him a decent fellow, but the prospect of her bitter and inevitable disillusionment made him cringe. Not for the first time since meeting Sidonie, he cursed that inconvenient, reluctant honor that hindered his stratagems.
“Have you killed someone?”
He could see she thought he fretted over mere trifles. “Not with my bare hands,” he snapped, turning to stride down the beach.
She scuttled to keep up. “Tell me.”
He wanted to consign her to Hades. Instead, he stopped and faced her. If she was so all-fired keen to count his crimes, he’d damn well tell her. But how to choose one misdeed from the hundreds to his discredit? “You want to know if I killed someone?”
She too halted, wisely keeping a distance between them. She probably guessed that he wasn’t far from grabbing her slender shoulders and giving her a good shake. “Yes.”
His eyes narrowed on her and his answer emerged as a supercilious drawl. “My dear, I’ve killed thousands.”
Sidonie tangled her hands in her skirts, partly to preserve modesty against the brisk wind, partly to hide her sudden trembling. “I don’t believe you.”
That superior smile she’d learned to hate twisted Merrick’s lips. “On my mother’s grave, I swear it’s true.”
Swiftly shock subsided and reason kicked into life. She knew he played a game with her. A grim, grotesque game, for sure, but nonetheless there was some trick here. “How?”
His amusement evaporated and she saw he regretted revealing what little he had. “I’m not proud of this, Sidonie. Leave it.”
No. No, no, no. This was the first time since this morning’s kisses that she’d managed to breach the shield around his emotions. She wanted to know everything about him. Not so that she could hate him. She was tragically aware that she’d moved past the point where she could ever hate him. So much for her brave claim to despise the entire male sex.
“Jonas, tell me what you did,” she said quietly, subsiding onto the sand under the headland and gesturing for him to join her. She wasn’t sure he would, but after a hesitation, he sighed. He looked sad and tired. Whatever he had done—and she couldn’t believe he’d really killed thousands—weighed heavily on the conscience he claimed not to possess.
He didn’t answer for so long that she began to think he wouldn’t. Then he sighed again and started to speak in a bleak, empty tone as if he described another man’s experiences. “I’ve spent a lot of my life angry, Sidonie. Angry at being a bastard. Angry at the shame dogging my father, dogging me. Angry at William’s blind arrogance. Angry at…” He paused and she watched his hand rise toward his scars before he lowered it again. “Well, you can imagine.”
“You had reason,” she whispered, but he hardly seemed to hear her.
“Even though my father was a rich man, I was avid to amass the kind of fortune that erased any stain of bastardy and scandal. I’ve since discovered there isn’t that much money to be had. But I was young and still hopeful that if I couldn’t gain respect as Lord Hillbrook’s heir, I could gain it as a man who through his wealth held the fate of nations hostage. I wanted to be so rich that the world could never hurt me again.”
Sidonie remained silent. The revelation that he’d defied his fate was no surprise. He was a fighter. She admired that about him but knew he was in no mood to accept praise. What he said indicated that he’d been scarred before he reached full adulthood. Curiosity about his disfigurement stirred, but she stifled questions. If she interrupted Merrick now, she’d never learn about his past.
“I wasn’t too fussy about where I invested my money or where my enterprises found markets.”
“You broke the law?”
He shook his head. “No, I was canny enough to stay on the right side of legality. But I transgressed a thousand moral laws.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “So many ways. To give you an example, I aided the Ottomans in their oppression. They had gold. I had the materials of war. If I didn’t consider consequences, the match was made in heaven. However, if I did consider consequences, the match stemmed from hell.”
Profiting from the horrors of war. She could imagine how that weighed on his soul.
“What made you stop?” She didn’t doubt that he had stopped.
“I went back to Greece after my father’s death. I saw at firsthand what use my armaments were put to. When I returned to the village where I’d first tasted baklava, there were only ghosts to greet me. A Greek patriot had taken shelter from the authorities and the local Sanjakbey had executed every man, woman, and child in the place in retaliation.”
How appalling. How sickening. Sidonie didn’t bother pointing out that Merrick wasn’t personally responsible for the bloodshed. Nor that he couldn’t be sure his munitions had done the damage. That would be fatuous. “I assume you made reparations.”
He stared out over the thundering sea, his eyes blind as he revisited old guilt. “You still try to see me as a better man than I am.”
She realized that somewhere in his accounting, she’d reached for his hand. She tried to withdraw, but his grip closed with a firmness that belied his outward calmness. “Did you make reparations?”
His tone remained cold and detached despite the tension in his body. “What recompense can you make for a
murdered family, a lost community? I stayed long enough to locate the scant survivors hiding in the hills and smuggled out those who wanted to leave. I send money to the few hardy souls who stayed. It’s not enough.”
“It’s something. I assume you never again sold implements of war.”
“I’d had graphic demonstration of the result of my rapacious greed. I decided I could live with less spectacular profits. The munitions factory in Manchester is now the world’s largest fireworks producer.”
Despite the seriousness of the moment, she couldn’t restrain a gasp of admiring laughter. “Oh, that’s wonderful, Jonas.”
He stared at her with complete disgust. “Didn’t you hear a word I just said?”
She frowned. “Of course.”
He shook his head as if despairing of her good sense and stood, brushing the sand off with his free hand. Sidonie told herself to make some attempt to assert herself. At least pull her hand away from his. She tightened her grip. He clearly believed his confession would make her despise him, whereas so much of what she’d heard had been true to the man she knew. Right down to the final flourish of imagination in turning a factory forging tools of death into a firm producing materials of beauty and happiness.
How was she to resist him? Jonas Merrick was a man such as she’d never known.
From her place curled up on the library’s window seat, Sidonie eyed Merrick where he stood before the shelves. This room was, in its way, even more seductive than yesterday’s Turkish bower. Elegantly furnished as if transported whole from a gentleman’s residence in London. Stacked floor to ceiling with books. Polished mahogany furniture. And circling the space high in the air, a charming balcony edged with a delicate gilt railing.
The dilemma tormenting her on the beach had given her no rest since they’d come inside an hour ago. One thing was clear. She must tell Merrick about his legitimacy. Roberta’s plight was appalling but it didn’t justify stealing this man’s inheritance. Sidonie would have to devise some other way to save her sister. Misery weighed her down as she recalled that in Roberta’s eight years with William, the marriage lines had offered the first chance of rescue. Nonetheless that wasn’t Jonas’s concern. By keeping the secret, Sidonie condoned William’s theft of the rights and privileges of the viscountcy.
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