by Hazel Hunter
At the arched door to the tower Thorne stopped and gestured for her to step to one side. Then he pressed his hand on one side of the panel, which swung out with a faintly whining creak.
“A hidden spring latch?” Meredith asked.
He nodded. “My ancestor had some curious notions about doors,” he told her as he guided her over the threshold. “The other tower entry is fitted in the same fashion.”
Once inside Meredith looked up and gasped. The spiraling staircase seemed to extend up forever, although she knew it had to stop at the attic level. She then shifted slightly, and saw that the very top of the tower roof had been painted with a spiral that grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared into its own center.
“Have you climbed to the top yet?” she asked, feeling breathless.
“At present the water damage makes that too dangerous. Every landing has been rotted above the first floor.” Thorne came to stand beside her. “I have been invited to an assembly at Lady Hardiwick’s tomorrow evening. She wrote to warn that she will accept no refusal from me. Was that your doing, Meredith?”
She could feel the whisper of his breath against her cheek, and had to steel herself from leaning closer. “I think my mother may be the cause. She is most grateful for how you rescued me.” Should she warn him about Prudence? No, that seemed unkind, and she hardly imagined Thorne would have much patience for the giggly, silly thing. “You should go, sir. It is a chance to make your way into Renwick society.” And find a suitable wife, which he would soon have to do, a thought that made her stomach sink.
Thorne stepped closer. “I prefer the society I have here.”
“My cousin and I can hardly be called that.” Meredith met his gaze, which burned with a strange heat. “You will enjoy meeting our neighbors. I promise.”
“Do you know what I would truly like?” he murmured as he looked at her mouth.
Meredith felt the touch of his breath on her lips an instant before his mouth brushed hers, and became so light-headed she clutched his arm for support. That seemed to unhinge him, for he put his hands on her waist and hauled her body against his, all the while staring down into her eyes as if he had never before seen her.
“Why do you stop?” she whispered. “I am not afraid.”
His eyes glittered. “Then I must show you why you should be.”
Thorne kissed her again, but this time he covered her lips and pressed his tongue between them to open her mouth. Meredith gasped, and found her mouth instantly invaded and ravished, his tongue stroking hers and pushing deep in a strange, rhythmic fashion. This carnal act further affected her body to respond in the most curious manner, sending a brandied heat through her limbs and a throbbing ache into her breasts and between her thighs. When the colonel began to touch her Meredith thought it might help, but the shocking things he did with his fingers and palms made the bizarre sensations flare up as if her body were burning from within.
Thorne had somehow tugged her bodice down around her waist, and was now doing the same to her shift. When he had bared her breasts, he tore open his shirt and pressed her to his exposed chest, so that their heated skins met and rubbed together.
“My God, you feel so good.” He cupped her chin and made her look at him. “Are you afraid of me now?”
“Yes. No.” She closed her eyes. “Kiss me again, please.”
He seized her by the waist again, lifting her off her feet to bring her mouth to his. After another extended, deep kiss so passionate Meredith could barely breathe he hauled her even higher, nuzzling her bare breasts with his face. She tangled her fingers in his hair and thought she might faint from the sheer thrill of his closeness, and the heat of his mouth.
“We must stop,” he muttered against her lips. “Or I will have you here.”
A cracking sound made her peer up, and then she cried out as Thorne seized her and pushed her against the curved wall. A huge chunk of rotted wood smashed to the floor where Meredith had been standing, showering them both with shards and splinters. She stared at it as she felt her knees start to shake.
Without ceremony Thorne scooped her up in his arms, carrying her out of the tower and through the kitchen. He stopped when he reached the reception room, where he sat her down beside the fire and straightened her clothing.
“Look at me, are you hurt?” When she shook her head he pulled her close, holding her against his chest. “By God, Meredith.”
The fear faded as his warmth sank into her.
“As you see, my luck never improves.” She drew back and made herself smile at him. “Truly, I am well. Thank you for moving me out of the way.”
“You are very pale.” His mouth thinned. “I will fetch your cousin, and some wine for the shock.”
As soon as he left Meredith buried her face in her hands, her whole body trembling with reaction. His kisses had thrilled her, and she wanted more of them. To be followed by such a terrible mishap felt like a punishment for her wanton behavior. Since the rig accident nothing terrible had occurred, and she had dared to feel hopeful that nothing would again for a long time. Yet her misfortunes had followed her here, and now would ruin everything she might have had with Thorne.
You have nothing with him. He is not yours. You will never be with anyone.
Tears welled into Meredith’s eyes faster than she could blink them back.
Thorne insisted that his steward drive them home in his carriage to give Lucetta the chance to comfort Meredith, who despite her brave face had been badly shaken by the incident. Harshad took the longer route to Starling House to allow them time to talk.
Lucetta had already seen the bruises, and the tear in Meredith’s bodice, and wasted no time in demanding an explanation for them. “Meredith, I must ask you, has the colonel in any manner behaved inappropriately toward you?”
She averted her gaze. “Not in the slightest. He has been exceedingly attentive, as you have witnessed.”
“What I have not seen is my concern.” She hated the harshness in her voice, so she took a moment to compose herself. “I should not interfere, but my duty as your chaperone is to protect you. What happened between you and the colonel in the tower?”
“He pulled me aside to prevent me from being struck by the falling wood, just as he told you.” Meredith followed her gaze and touched the darkening finger marks on her upper arm. “He was forceful, of course, but he was as surprised as I was. He did not mean to bruise me.”
She sighed. “My dear, you are very young, and you have no experience with men. Please tell me the truth now. Did the colonel make any unwanted overtures? Did he put his hands on you? Is that the real reason for those marks? You can tell me the truth.”
“No. Well, yes, he did put his hands on me, but only to carry me back to the reception room. I was close to swooning.” Meredith reached for her mouth, only to move her hand to rub the bruises. “He is a gentleman, Cousin.”
Lucetta’s mouth tightened. “That is not a recommendation to me.”
She said nothing more about the matter, and a short time later they reached Starling House. Harshad climbed down to help Meredith from the carriage.
“I am recovered, Mr. Naveya,” Meredith told him before she gave Lucetta a wary look. “I will see you in the morning, Cousin?”
Lucetta heard the note of strain in her voice, and saw how she had twisted her hands together to conceal their trembling. She decided to indulge in another falsehood. “I am sorry, but I promised to help my brother at the parsonage tomorrow, so the next day would be better for me.” That would also provide her with more time to determine what had truly happened between Thorne and her cousin.
“Of course.” Meredith glanced up at the steward. “Mr. Naveya, would you be so kind as to tell Mr. Thorne I look forward to seeing him at Lady Hardiwick’s assembly tomorrow night?”
Harshad nodded. “Yes, Miss.”
Lucetta felt worried as she watched her cousin walk in the manor. She should return to the parsonage now, but Jeffrey and Dei
dre would wish to talk to her over dinner, and she needed time to sort out her thoughts. “Mr. Naveya, do you need to drive back to the hall immediately?”
“No, Miss,” Harshad said as he closed the carriage door. “Do you wish to go for a drive? The road through the trees to the river has a pretty view, and very few use it.”
She agreed, and felt better as he turned away from the village and drove through the woods beyond the Starlings’ estate. The whole incident at the hall disturbed her deeply. Thorne had given her scant details about the mishap, and when doing so his anger had been quite visible. It seemed almost cruel that part of the tower landing should choose to fall when Meredith had just stepped inside. The bruises matched the sort of grip a man used when he didn’t wish someone to escape him. The tear in her bodice suggested someone had pulled the fabric down too quickly.
The timing of the calamity seemed a little too perfect as well.
When they reached the river, Lucetta tapped on the roof, and Harshad brought the horses to a halt. She didn’t wait for him to help her but climbed out and walked down to the embankment, now mostly brown with the grass that the first frost had withered. The damp, chill air slapped at her face, as if trying to pull her back from her dark thoughts. Yet Lucetta could not shake the sense that the rotten wood had not fallen by chance.
Something about Meredith’s latest accident whispered of evil intent.
Her thoughts followed the path most obvious: Alistair Thorne was to blame. Why would he take her into a tower he knew to be dangerous? He knew the moment he’d offered to show it to her that she wouldn’t resist; Meredith had chattered on several times about her admiration for the staircase towers.
Until today Lucetta liked Thorne, but now she wondered if her judgment had been flawed. Would the colonel have tried to deliberately hurt Meredith? For what purpose? Was he crazed? Did he take sport in tormenting the innocent? Had he caused her rig to crash to bring her under his sway?
You cannot paint every man with the same brush, her heart warned, but her head wanted no part of sentiment. She had a responsibility to protect Meredith. That came first.
Harshad came to join her, at which point Lucetta gathered her skirts and sat down. She would be sorry for that when she had to launder her gown, but just now she needed to be still and rid herself of all these unfounded suspicions. Fortunately, the steward only crouched down beside her, and said nothing. When she glanced at him she saw his dark eyes reflecting golden shards from the sun beams piercing the trees.
“You are a very good companion, Mr. Naveya,” Lucetta finally said. “Most men would inquire as to why I sit here like a broody hen.”
“Everyone wishes time to think,” he told her as he watched the sluggishly-moving waters. “Our thoughts are all that truly belongs to us and no other, Miss.”
Learning that he was a solitary soul wasn’t a surprise, and yet she suspected, like her, it was not by choice. She thought of how she had felt when she had left home to take up her first position. “It must have been very difficult to leave your family behind in India.”
“I did not leave them,” Harshad admitted. “My parents were killed by rebels when I was a young boy. Their killers took me and my sister to Malabar, where they sold us at the slave market.”
Lucetta went still. “My dear Mr. Naveya. I am so sorry that I reminded you of such a dreadful time.”
“Being a slave is dreadful,” he agreed. “Because I was strong for a boy of eight the man who purchased me sent me to work in his mine. Many slaves died in those tunnels, but I found an old passage they had forgot to close completely. Being small let me squeeze through it to escape. That was when the dreadful stopped.”
It hurt to think of him being used so savagely, and at such a young age. “What of your sister?”
He shook his head. “For a long time, I searched for her, but I know what they do to girl slaves in Malabar. I think if she still lives, she would not wish for me to find her.”
Lucetta reached out and briefly touched his hand. “I should not have pressed you for details. Please, think no more of it.”
“It is good to talk with you.” Harshad looked up at the sky. “Each day I wake and thank the Lord Ganesh for my freedom. Each night I kneel before the moon and ask for my sister to be blessed with the same. Do you pray, Miss Branwen?”
She wished she could, but since London she had been unable to even consider that God might exist. “I fear my faith is not what once it was.”
When she tried to rise he put his hands over hers. “You have carried a burden alone too long. Share it with me. Tell me what happened in London.”
“I was accused of being a thief by a man everyone believed to be respectable and trustworthy. My employer, Lord Carlton.” She waited for the steward to react. “I freely admit that I stole from him, and I will never return what I took.”
Harshad nodded but said nothing.
He had trusted her with his unhappy past; she could do no less. “I have always had trouble sleeping. One night I went downstairs to get a book, and heard a child sobbing. I followed the sound to one of the bookcases in his lordship’s library. The crying was coming from behind it, so I found the hidden latch, pulled it open, and walked into a secret chamber there.”
Harshad regarded her with sorrow in his gaze. “What did you find, Miss Branwen?”
“My employer, with one of his sons. They were both naked, and he was forcing himself on the boy, using him for his own gratification.” She curled her hands into fists. “I jerked Carlton away, and took the child upstairs and locked him in my room with me. He wept in my arms all that night.”
Harshad made a soft sound. “This is why he accused you of being a thief, to cover his own filthy crime.”
Lucetta shook her head. “Not at first. His lordship called me to his library the next morning. He informed me that what I had witnessed was something beautiful, a love he claimed that I could not understand. He offered me a sizable amount of money if I agreed to say nothing. I did. The moment he left the house I told his wife what I had witnessed. As I suspected she knew nothing of her husband’s abuse of the boy, and was horrified. I convinced her to buy passage for herself and her children on a ship to Canada, where friends of her family had settled. I gave her Carlton’s bribe along with all of my savings. When it came time for them to sail, I helped them slip out of the house and accompanied them to the docks. Then I returned to the house to await his lordship. When Carlton discovered they were gone, along with all the money, he demanded I tell him everything. I refused, and he had me arrested.”
“So, he thought to bully you this way,” Harshad said softly.
“I did steal from him. I took his money, and his wife and children from him. He simply could not prove it without revealing his own repulsive secret.” She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “As vengeance on me he made sure to ruin my reputation in London. I will never work there again.”
“You sacrificed yourself to save them,” he corrected softly. “This is a noble thing.”
“Noble?” She uttered a bitter laugh and shoved herself to her feet. “I wanted to kill Carlton in that dreadful room, right in front of that poor child's eyes. I wanted to take up an iron from the fireplace and beat his head with it until I cracked his skull open. I am a thief, Harshad, but I very nearly became a murderer.”
“You did not, Lucetta,” he insisted. “You saved a woman and her children by giving all that you had.”
“Including my faith in God.” She took in a deep breath, and felt lighter than she had in weeks. She also realized they had been using each other’s given names, something that warmed her heart. “Thank you for listening, Mr. Naveya.”
He bowed to her. “It is an honor to know such a woman as you, Miss Branwen.”
He walked back to the carriage with her. At the door he stopped and faced her. “My master did not make the wood fall on your cousin, or cause her rig to overturn. I know you are thinking this, but he could not do such things
. He has no reason to hurt Miss Meredith. He is nothing like Lord Carlton. I swear this.”
Lucetta felt astonished by how well he had guessed her thoughts. It also made her feel rather uncomfortable. Was she so easy to read? “I will trust in your faith in the colonel, then, Mr. Naveya. Please take me home now.”
When they reached the parsonage, before stopping Harshad had to go around a large, grand carriage sitting directly in front of the entry. As soon as Lucetta glanced back she saw the black lion crest on the side door of the other conveyance, and her throat tightened. Lord Carlton would only have one purpose in calling on her brother.
As soon as Harshad halted Lucetta sprang from the carriage and marched up to the front door, which opened before she reached it. Her former employer, coldly elegant in pale blue and silver, stopped short as soon as he saw her. His thick lips spread into a gloating smile before he walked past her without a word.
Dread swamped Lucetta as she watched his lordship drive off. Whatever he had told Jeffrey, it would cast her in the worst light—of that she had no doubt. But she consoled herself with the knowledge that he would not have told her brother the full truth. Carlton dared not expose himself to Jeffrey as he had to her. A penniless governess’s charges might be dismissed as feminine confusion or vengeance against an employer; a respectable vicar’s word would carry more weight.
“Sister.” Jeffrey emerged from inside, his expression bleak. “I have had a visitor and, well, we must talk now.”
“Yes, I think we should.” She would tell him everything, Lucetta decided, and let him advise her as to how she should deal with his lordship. She should not tolerate any further harassment, and Jeffrey might be willing to help her seek some protection from the villain by obtaining counsel, or perhaps even taking him to court. There his lordship would not be able to tell his web of lies.
Once they had retreated to Jeffrey’s study, he gestured for her to sit and went behind his desk. There he drew from an envelope a letter, which he handed to her.