by Louise Allen
‘I’ll do it myself, you get to bed now, Faith, thank you.’
Guin settled at her dressing table, pulled out the pins and shook her hair loose. It settled around her shoulders, whispering over the silk. Jared’s hair had felt like raw wild silk when she had freed it. Freed was the word, like loosing a caged animal. The brush snagged on a small tangle and she let its weight carry her arm through the motions of brushing, calmingly repetitive.
Hair-brushing gave one time to think. Think about Augustus. She reached out her free hand and picked up the miniature that always lay on her dressing table. Dear man. Kind man. She laid it down, traced a fingertip over the strong features. He was dead now because of an act of gallantry, an act of generosity to an unknown young woman. We will avenge you, she promised, blinking away tears.
Think about Jared instead. There was that faint hint of Yorkshire in his voice, but he had admitted he had grown up somewhere near here and boys would run wild with their friends, whatever their parents might have to say about it. Leaving that aside, his accent was educated, refined, without a suspicion of the self-improved about it. Listening to him in that ballroom the night before Augustus had died, there had been nothing to distinguish him from the men around him.
Then there was that pride, verging on arrogance – although he has much to be arrogant about, she thought. He had left home at the age of seventeen because of a slight on his honour and was not prepared to let it lie now. This was not a yeoman’s son, a country gentleman’s son. This was an aristocrat who’d had pride and honour and self-assurance bred into him, fed him with mother’s milk, beaten into him by the unforgiving expectations that aristocratic fathers heaped on their sons.
But he had not been the eldest son, the heir, the privileged one. When that situation had arisen and his father had to chose which son to believe his choice had been, inevitably, his heir. Who was now dead.
She had stopped brushing some time ago, she realised. Who is he? What has Jared just become? Downstairs was the Peerage, dusty on the shelf. He did not want her to know, did not want anyone to know. Would it be a betrayal to look?
Probably he would look at it that way, Guin decided. But she felt a deep revulsion for secrets that could do so much damage. She wanted to help and so she needed to know who might be Jared’s enemies. Was she justifying her own curiosity? Yes, she admitted, putting down the brush on the dressing table and belting the sash of her robe more securely. Yes, but she was going to do it anyway. He was angry enough over the way their feelings for each other were interfering with what he saw as his role as her protector, she may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
Her bare feet brushed silently through the silky pile of the Chinese rug and the staircase door swung open onto darkness on well-oiled hinges as a figure in white rose from the ground directly in front of her. Guin swung instinctively with her chamber stick, the hot wax spattering her hand before she made contact with solid flesh.
‘What the blazes are you doing?’ Jared demanded.
‘What am I doing? What are you doing outside my door?’ She put the chamberstick with its guttering candle down on the floor and sucked her wrist where the hot wax had burned.
‘Guarding it. The lock on the main door into the corridor is good but Thomas knows this house. If he gets in he could well come this way to do you harm.’
Guin looked down at the cramped landing space, the scuffed dust. ‘You were sleeping across my threshold out here?’
‘Attempting not to sleep.’ Did she catch just the faintest glimmer of amusement in his voice? ‘Where were you going?’
Guin was not certain how it had happened, but she was in Jared’s arms and his question was a breath on her lips. ‘I was restless.’
‘The idea is that you lock yourself in your tower, my lady Guinevere, and your knight fights the battle for you.’
‘This is not the Middle Ages, you are not the mysterious knight Lancelot disguised behind your visor and I want to take a broadsword to the enemy myself.’ It was difficult to speak assertively about broadswords when a man was kissing his way along the line of your jaw, nibbling your ear. ‘Jared – are you listening to me? Do you know what I want?’
‘Yes, I am, yes, I know.’ His voice was muffled in the angle of her neck and shoulder, then he looked up. ‘You want a broadsword and you want me to take you to bed.’ He was laughing at her, his eyes sparking amber fire in the candlelight, his hands sliding over her body with dangerous ease, those beautiful, mobile lips curving into a smile.
‘Not necessarily in that order,’ Guin murmured as he walked her backwards towards the bed. When her knees hit the edge she sat down and watched as he went to lock the stair door, wedged a chair under the handle then did the same to the main door. He laid his rapier on the bedside table and then turned to look at her.
Somewhere he had shed his coat, waistcoat and neckcloth and his feet were bare. Why, when she had seen him naked, the bare feet, the vee of skin at his throat should affect her so powerfully, she could not say, but heat flooded her. ‘Not the most romantic of preparations for lovemaking,’ Guin said, more to try and stop herself dissolving into a puddle of lust than anything.
‘This time I am going to take every precaution. You want romance too?’ Yes, he was laughing at her. Or perhaps it was with her – there was no edge, no malice in his amusement.
‘It would be nice,’ Guin said demurely.
‘What is this?’ Jared bent to pick up a scrap of red leather that lay by the side of her dressing table. ‘Book binding. Someone has been in here.’
‘No. No, that must have been on my skirts. I was looking at something in the study before I came up to bed.’
The red leather turned again between his fingers to reveal gold tooling.
‘The Landed Gentry. You know how battered the binding is on that old copy,’ she said.
‘Why were you going downstairs, Guinevere?’ This time there was no sensual amusement behind the words.
She could lie. There were so many excuses she could find. ‘To look for you in the Peerage.’
‘I said – ’
‘I understand. But you cannot keep it a secret for ever. We need to know, we cannot fight this battle with some of the information missing.’
He shrugged off her words with a slight lift of one shoulder. ‘You wanted romance? Romance is for courtship.’ The laughter had gone although the smile lingered faintly, empty now. ‘You would be justified in having expectations of that, Guinevere, because you are correct and you will find my name in the Peerage.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes, it matters and I should have thought of that before I came into your chamber. What we had before was an affaire, a brief flare of passion with a clear understanding that nothing could come of a liaison between a lady and a swordmaster. Now things are different, but I have nothing to offer you except an empty courtesy title, taken second-hand from my brother and the prospect of I know not what when my father is no more. At the moment I live on what I earn and that has not changed.’
‘So now you are Lord – Lord what?’
‘Viscount Ravenlaw. James Andrew Jared Forrest, son of the third Earl of Huntingford.’
Guin stood up and dropped a curtsey. ‘My lord. And I have no expectations of you that I did not have of Jared Hunt, swordmaster.’
‘Then you should have. You should expect me to marry you. An honourable man would offer you his hand. An honourable man who could keep you in the manner befitting you, that is. I cannot do that because I have no expectations whatsoever and no status in Society. I would not put it past my father to disinherit me of every scrap of unentailed land – and that is what supports the house and the household.’ Now even the ghost of the smile had left him. ‘A lady may condescend to take an inferior as a lover. An impoverished viscount does not take advantage of that lady, not without honourable intentions.’
‘You are splitting hairs, and you did not take advantage of me.’
‘I wanted you and I still want you. As a lover. I have had two husbands. One was a scoundrel, the other was a good substitute for my grandfather. I am in no hurry to take a third simply because he has a title.’
‘Guinevere, we would be a scandal. We are a scandal, only not many people know about us.’
‘Augustus would have approved of us. Theo, who is head of the family now, approves of you. And you have a Duke and Duchess as close friends – they will not condemn us, surely? Besides,’ she added when that produced no response, ‘I am caricatured as a wanton widow who plotted with her lover and nephew by marriage to kill her own husband. After that a swordmaster-viscount is positively respectable.’
He picked up his sword belt and buckled it on, the refusal as clear as if he had spoken it.
Do I have any pride left? Probably not. I can be shameless for one last throw, I suppose. ‘You do not want to be Ravenlaw. You do not believe that your family wants you. Stay as Jared Hunt, open your salle d’armes, be the man you created for yourself.’ Be my lover.
‘Before I was the spare with a vigorous older brother who married a fertile woman. I was not needed. Now William is dead and leaves no son. I have a duty.’
‘To the father who would not believe you?’ she demanded. How could he be so…
‘To the title, to the name, to the estate and its people. I have no idea how my father is. He was always a reclusive countryman, just as William was, and I have made no effort to find out. Whether he wants me or not, I have to make the effort now.’
‘He will only hurt you again,’ she said passionately, standing up, closing her hand over his on the pommel of the rapier.
Jared shrugged, both shoulders now, a weary, resigned thoroughly English movement, not the elegant gesture of the French-taught swordsman. ‘I am not a boy any longer and I do not care what he thinks or what he says. There is nothing he can do to wound me now and even if there was, that does not change where my duty lies.’
‘You will tell Theo and Dover?’
Jared shook his head. He released his hold on the pommel and curled his fingers into hers. ‘I need to discover who I am, what I am. How my father is. He will be mourning, angry with fate, if I know him at all. He may make it easy for me to help, he may make it downright impossible, but I must find out.’
‘You will be walking into a place where your sister-in-law is the friend and confidante of a murderess. She wounded you unfairly, cruelly all those years ago, I do not need to have the details to know that. She will feel guilty and guilt often turns to hatred. She will fear you now.’
‘She has no cause.’ Jared turned until they were face to face, fingers entwined, sending messages of pressure and touch seemingly of their own accord. ‘I loved her once, so I thought.’
‘When will you go?’ Guin asked. She could smell the plain soap on his skin and the dust from the stairwell and, almost on the edge of her consciousness, the disturbing scent of aroused male. He still wants me.
‘Tomorrow. Dover and Theo will be with you. You will be safe. I would leave it longer, but I may find proof there, with Bella.’ Jared bent and kissed her, his mouth warm and possessive, the pressure fleeting. ‘I should have better self-control,’ he said ruefully as he released her hand and went to move the chair away from the latch of the tower stair door. ‘Go back to bed, Guinevere, you need your sleep.’
There was no snick of the lock on the other side when he closed the old oak behind him. He was staying there then, cramped on the cold stone, guarding her. Wanting her. Denying them both, the maddening, honourable man.
Chapter Twenty Two
Guin climbed into bed, snuffed out the candle and lay imagining that she could hear Jared’s breathing on the other side of the door. Of course this could never be anything but an affair. How could she agree to marry him now, if that was the alternative he was offering to them remaining as lovers? She had lost two husbands in suspicious circumstances, the print shops had been full of her image. Her innocence would not weigh in those scales. Even if they managed to resolve this awful situation, neutralise Elizabeth’s venom, prove Theo innocent, scandal would still cling to her.
Scandal would cling to Jared too, the long-lost second son reappearing conveniently to claim his inheritance, the reasons for his disappearance a subject for gossip and speculation. He must marry and marry well to counter that in the eyes of Society. Sophie the Duchess would be able to find any number of well-dowered eligible young ladies of breeding for him. He did not need a twice-married, scandal-ridden wife from the obscure Lancashire gentry.
She was not going to cry, she told herself. She would go to sleep thinking of ways to expose Elizabeth and avenge Augustus, find a way to live her life when all this was over. Guin rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. The man had ears like a cat, he would probably be able to hear the most silent tear…
Ravenscar was as rugged as its name. It was bleak even in sunshine, growing out of the sandstone outcrop from where it loomed over a deep-cut ravine with a narrow torrent at the bottom. All around the landscape was more benign, green, prosperous, but Ravenscar looked what it was, a house that could withstand a siege, built in an age when your neighbours would take your stock by force of arms and your womenfolk too if they could.
But it was home. He had thought that he hated it, never wanted to see it again, but now Jared blinked hard to get the battered silhouette into focus then set about breaching its defences.
First it was necessary to get inside the high stone walls without going through the two-storey gatehouse. He had no intention of announcing his presence until he was inside and knew who was there, but the section of wall to the south, where some penny-pinching repairs in the mid eighteenth century were beginning to crumble, offered the same handholds that he had used as a schoolboy.
The turf was soft as he dropped down at the back of the shrubbery. The sense of being fourteen again almost made him grin, before the silent mass of the house sobered him as returning always had. It was the classic E-shape of the 16th century, a long range to the west with two side wings at either end of the eastern side and a massive porch forming the central stroke. He had no intention of walking in at the front door.
The grounds seemed deserted and garden room door was probably unlocked. Jared sauntered across the grass between shrubbery and house. No-one glimpsing him would see suspicious or furtive movements.
The handle turned under the pressure of his hand and he was inside, edging between benches holding pitchers and vases, a pair of shears, bundles of wire and a vast bucket full of greenery. It seemed Bella, or the housekeeper, still arranged flowers in the house.
The hall clock struck ten as he came out of the shadows under the great carved oak staircase. Unless his father had changed his habits he would be in his study now for an hour. That would be the usual time for summoning boys in disgrace. Jared recognised now that it had been deliberate in order to give the culprit – usually himself – a sleepless night and no appetite for breakfast. He wondered if some long-engrained habit had made him time his arrival for just this hour.
Voices from the front of the hall – a pair of footmen by the sound of it – brought him out of time past back to the present, sent him away, down the corridor to the study door.
The hinges were as well-oiled as they ever had been and he was inside and in front of the desk without the man sitting on the other side of it looking up. He had always found it a strange choice, that piece of frivolous French rococo furniture when something massive and oak would surely have suited his father better.
‘Wait,’ The Earl was writing something across the bottom of what looked like an invoice, something dull and agricultural from the absence of any fancy bill-head and the closely packed lines of writing.
Jared stood, as patient and silent as the best-trained footman. The bent head in front of him had the same golden brown hai
r as his own, but short and thickly laced with silver now. The shoulders in their mourning black were as broad as he remembered, the handwriting as determined.
His father put the pen on its stand and looked up. ‘Yes?’ He came to his feet as he spoke, the colour draining out of cheeks weather-beaten from the hunting field and riding the estates in Yorkshire weather. ‘Who the devil are you?’ Then, ‘Jack?’
‘I go by Jared these days.’
‘Jack.’ His father seemed not to have heard him. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Good to see you, too, Father dear. ‘I heard about William. I am sorry.’
For a moment his father’s face crumpled, the grief raw and brutal, then he had his formidable composure in place again. ‘You’ve come to see what you can lay your hands on now, have you?’
Well, it wasn’t as though he had expected any other reaction, certainly no-one rushing out to kill fatted calves and open the best champagne. ‘No. I have my own life, my own concerns and my own business. This – ’ He waved a hand to encompass study, house, estate, title, ‘– This would be a damned nuisance.’
His father sat down again with a thud. ‘My son is dead and you call it a damned nuisance.’ When Jared made a sharp gesture of denial, he added, ‘You’d turn your nose up at an earldom?’
‘I won’t have the choice when it comes to it, will I? Until then, I thought I had a duty to come back and see if I could help. Bella did not mention seeing me the other day, then?’
‘Bella? No, of course not. She knows no more about you and your whereabouts than I do.’ The colour was coming back into his face now and his breathing slowing. Jared told himself that he really did not want his father’s death by apoplexy on his conscience.
‘She has known where I am, who I am, for nearly a month. Yesterday I encountered her in Whitby.’ It did not seem that he was going to be offered a chair so Jared took one anyway. His father simply stared at him as though he was a ghost. He supposed he was. ‘It is probably a waste of breath to say this, but I did not force myself on her all those years ago and I am not the father of her child.’