by Jo Beverley
She did weep, though she did not mean to, wept deeply in his arms, against the devil on his naked chest, because gentleness, she found, went deeper into the soul than hard passion, and the thought of its loss was like ripping roots from her heart.
He stroked her hair, seeming to know these were tears that should be allowed to fall. “Say again that you love me, Maria. Please.”
Impossible to deny it now. She swallowed. “I love you, Van. But it doesn’t change anything.”
He pushed her back and smiled at her, a blissful smile that made her want to weep again, but bitterly. “Don’t try to deny facts, please,” she begged. “When I married Celestin, already somewhat on the shelf, you were a scrubby schoolboy!”
He shook his head. “Let’s look at things first.”
Chapter Ten
He slid out of the bed, picked up a leather folder from the table, and came back to sit up beside her.
Puzzled and wary, she eased up by his side. “What is it?”
“My drawings.” He undid a tie and opened the portfolio. “Are you a connoisseur? I hope not.” He began to turn sheets of paper to show rough sketches of army camps and assorted buildings. Tolerable, but nothing special.
What had this to do with their age difference?
Then as he turned the sheets, she reached out to stop him. “That’s Major Hawkinville.”
It was a quick sketch of a man in shirtsleeves at a desk laden with papers, but it captured him perfectly.
“Before Waterloo. That was an organizational nightmare.” He flicked through a few more sheets. “That’s Con.”
She saw a man with strong features and short dark hair standing in classic soldier pose staring into the distance, a long cloak concealing most of his uniform. He almost looked like a statue.
“He looks tired,” she said. “After battle?”
“Before Waterloo. He didn’t want to be there. None of us did, of course, but he especially. He left the army in 1814, so he’d been away for nearly a year. He’d grown used to living in sunlight, and came back to join us in the shadows. I think he’s still in the shadows, and I haven’t tried to help.”
He moved on and showed her a series of drawings of boys and men. Some were quick sketches, others highly worked pencil portraits. All were of distinct individuals. Not a professional standard, no, but drawn by a skilled amateur who had captured his comrades-in-arms in many moods.
She stopped him so she could read the names, and found that the writing wasn’t complete names. Ger, Badajoz, she read. Don, Talavera. With a chill, she knew that he’d recorded the battles where they had died.
Then one drawing said only, Hilyard.
“He didn’t die?”
“The bloody flux in a muddy village. We didn’t even know the name. We lost more men to disease than to battle.”
She took the folder and flicked through it quickly, seeing name and location on every one. “You only drew dead men?”
“They were alive at the time.” Before she could ask, he said, “I generally gave the pictures to the sitters. These are men who died before I had a chance. I’ve wondered if the relatives would like them. They’re not very good.”
“Good enough,” she said, staring at one near the end.
Dare, Waterloo.
There were a great many Waterloo ones, but this sketch had leaped out at her because she recognized the long face and merry smile. “He looks ready for a great adventure,” she said, touching the paper. “I think his mother would like this. They don’t have a recent likeness.”
“You knew him?”
“He’s a distant cousin.” She traced his smile. “He looks so happy.”
He picked up the paper and studied it. “Drove us crazy. We all knew it was going to be hell, but Dare saw it as an adventure. He was Con’s friend. Part of a bunch of Harrow men who call themselves the Company of Rogues. He was one of the enthusiastic volunteers that we scoffed at, but you couldn’t scoff at Dare. At least he knew he didn’t know.”
All the pictures disturbed her, but Dare’s in particular.
He and Van were of an age. Van could so easily be dead. Was that why he was showing them to her? “Why did you want me to see these? They don’t change anything.”
“Don’t they?” He flipped through the pages and pulled another one out, one not obviously different from the others except in being a little more clumsy. A picture of a sinewy, grizzled man who looked cynical but kind.
“Sergeant Fletcher. He taught me how to survive. When you were marrying Celestin, the scrubby schoolboy was drawing his first picture of a walking corpse.”
The clock on his mantel tinkled the hour.
He gave her the picture. “Don’t think that I’m a child, Maria, not knowing what I want and need. You are my heart’s blood. Perhaps we all know when we meet that one person who is the perfect match.” He took another sheet out of the folder, the very last sheet, and gave her a picture of herself. “Not drawn from life, of course.”
It was just head and shoulders. Her hair was loose, as she never wore it, tendriling down the front of a simple gown. She looked serious, but not unhappy, and unlike any self she had seen in a mirror.
“You have a gift, but this isn’t really me.”
“It’s the Maria I see.” He began to tidy the papers. “I will leave tomorrow if you insist, but my feelings will not change.” He tied the strings and looked up. “You do not have to protect me from myself.”
She caressed his scarred cheek. “How can I not? Love does that to us.”
“I’m not your child, Maria. I’m your lover.” He kissed her then, proving it, and loved her in the wild-fire way.
She lay there afterward, sweaty and sticky, stroking the lean length of his powerful body.
I’m not your child, Maria. I’m your lover.
When you were marrying Celestin, the scrubby schoolboy was drawing his first picture of a walking corpse.
He was a man, mature enough to be fair mate for her. He was more than her lover, though. He was the man she loved as she had never thought to love. She would marry him quickly, joyfully if she could give him at least hope of a child.
Could she be his mistress? Let him marry a suitable young woman who would bear him children?
No. Never. If he married someone else she could never corrode his marriage like that, and she didn’t think he would consider it.
So ... As he’d said, they could be happy without children of their own. The title would die, but if he didn’t mind . . .
Was she being weak or strong?
Would he—and this was the crucial question—would he come to regret it?
She turned and looked at her mate, her destiny. He was sleeping, lashes long on his cheeks, looking at ease. Perhaps he had not slept much these past nights.
She had the sudden realization that her life had flowed to make this moment possible.
When she had entered society at sixteen—shy, proud, and rather awkward—Van had truly been a scrubby schoolboy. They would never have found each other. The years since had been necessary to bridge the gap of years and experiences.
Without the army, Van might not have become her match. With his wild nature, he might have become one of the callow, irresponsible young men of the ton.
If she’d not married Celestin, she would now be settled with some other man, not free to love. Without the pleasures and pains of that marriage, she would never have been able to deal with Van’s complexities.
Fate had shaped them and finally tossed them together for this brief trial. This was her golden moment. Her only chance. She brushed silky hair from his forehead, tussling with courage and honor in her mind . . .
His lashes rose and he smiled, confused for a moment, then warm. “Marry me, Maria.”
She was struck dumb again, but surrendered in a whisper. “If you’re sure . . .”
His eyes shut, then opened, and she saw the gloss of tears. “I’m sure. Maria!” He gathered her in for a h
ug that made her squeak. They broke apart, laughing.
“I feel wicked,” she protested. “Wrong.”
He grinned. “Of course you do. You are lying ravished in an unblessed bed. But marriage will fix that.”
“I’m not sure our sort of ravishment is right even with a blessing.”
“Oh it is, it is,” he murmured, nuzzling at her breasts.
She suddenly held him there, held him close, stabbed by the thought that no child would ever suckle at her breast. And that she was binding him to her barren fate. She was a greedy, wicked woman.
“Promise me you won’t regret, Van.”
It was a whisper because he could not promise that, but he said, “I promise.”
They lay for a moment, but then he stirred, pulled apart, and sat shamelessly naked facing her. “I’ve shown you the things. I still have the words.”
She sat up, too, suddenly wary. “Words? What more is left to say?”
He looked down for a moment, then met her eyes. “I don’t want to raise false hopes. It’s still in the hands of fate. But you may not be barren.”
The pain of tears swept through her. “Van, don’t! We have to accept the truth.”
“Then accept it. Listen.” It was an officer’s command and she stilled.
“I’ve spent time with Oncle Charles and Tante Louise, and things they said didn’t entirely match Natalie being your husband’s daughter. For a start, the idea only stirred about six years ago.”
“That was when Natalie’s parents died and she came here. The truth came out because her mother was beyond scandal. And why else would she come to live with Maurice? Van—”
“She came here because there was nowhere else” he interrupted. “The wars wreaked havoc with Celestin’s family in Europe. She also came here, I believe, because it suited him.” He took her hand, her ringless left hand. “I set Hawk to making inquiries, Maria. It’s his forte. Celestin was almost certainly not in the right place at the right time.”
She looked at him, her brain feeling fogged. “What? Why would he lie? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t matter anyway, Van. There are four others!”
“All definitely false.”
She stared at him. “They can’t be.”
“They are. It can’t have been hard to find women unfortunately with child willing to call a man the father in return for an income.”
She pulled her hand free, moved back, back against the headboard. “Such women would say anything for money, too. Did you arrange this to try to persuade me into marriage?”
She was suddenly reminded of the man she had first met, the one who’d threatened and disarmed her. He neither attacked, however, nor shrank from her. “I knew you might think that. That’s why I wanted our feelings settled first. The matter of children doesn’t matter that much to me, Maria. I’m sure that’s undutiful of me, but you matter more than the damned title. I set Hawk to finding out the truth to remove the last barrier in your mind. That’s all. Talk to the women if you want. I think you’ll be convinced.”
His leashed anger stung, but a trace of doubt lingered. “Why would Maurice do such a thing, construct such a painful, complex lie?”
“Because he was a self-made man who cared about appearances. He doubtless wanted to found a dynasty, and when it didn’t happen, he couldn’t bear to have people think it was his fault.”
That rang with the clarity of absolute truth.
“So he constructed another facade!” she exclaimed. “The swine. The worm. The toad! I felt so guilty. So flawed.” She launched herself toward him. “Oh, Van, please forgive me! I should never have even thought you might have made it up.”
He pulled her into his lap. “Of course you should have thought it. I was desperate enough.” He brushed hair off her face and looked into her eyes. “It might still not happen. There might not be children.”
She smiled up into his eyes through tears. “But there might be. That’s enough. And you are more important to me, too, than children of our bodies.” All the same, she ran a hand down her belly. “But think, there might be a child growing now!”
He covered her hand with his. “And we’ll certainly be willing to work hard at putting one there. I’ve always been lucky, you know.” He rolled her down beneath him on the bed and reached out to take a silver box off the table.
She could hardly think for hot muscles weighting her, but she focused on it. “What now?”
He opened the box to show her a ring, and a piece of sharp stone. The ring held a fine, flashing ruby in a circle of diamonds.
“A new ring?” she said. ‘“I still have the other.”
“My Maria needs a ring with fire in the heart.” Still over her, his erection pressing between her thighs, he slid the ring onto her finger. “A new ring for a new beginning.”
She looked at it. “You were very sure of me.”
“I wasn’t sure at all. But the only way to fight is to convince yourself that you’ll sweep all before you.”
“Thank God you always did.” She brought the ring to her lips, tears escaping. “I’ll always cherish the other one, too.” She looked back at the box. “And the stone? A flint ... ?”
He put the box aside, but kept the flint in his fingers. “When you burst into my room that day I’d already pulled the trigger—”
“Van!”
“—but the flint failed. This flint. Sheer demon’s luck, but mostly luck in having a valet who loves me more than I deserve, and finding a woman willing to fight my devils with me.”
He tossed it on the table. “Marry me in Hawk in the Vale, Maria, soon?”
She traced the demon on his chest, and knew they could make it little more than a memory of darker times. “Can we share our happiness with everyone there? A grand party for all? Your friends will attend?”
“Hawk and Con? I’m sure of it.”
She hoped he was right. She suspected that Major Hawkinville still disapproved, and the Earl of Wyvern seemed to be a dark mystery. If his friends failed him she would fill any void, but if she could, she’d heal the connections to them, too.
With love so strong, and happiness burning in them like a winter fire, how could they fail?
“A wedding, my lord. In four weeks. In Hawk in the Vale. A celebration to show that sometimes we poor mortals can find heaven here on earth.”
The Devil’s Heiress
Chapter One
June 1816, Sussex
Home. It had been a word without much meaning, but today, with his village en fete for his friend’s wedding, the contact, the bone-deep belonging, was like a cannonball for Major George Hawkinville—one slamming into earth far too close and knocking the wind out of him.
Following Van and Maria out of the church into the midst of the bouncing, cheering crowd, he felt almost dazed by the familiar—the ancient green ringed by buildings new and old, the row of ramshackle cottages down by the river, the walled and thatched house at the end of the row…
Hawkinville Manor, his personal hell, but now, it would seem, his essential heaven.
“Welcome home, sir!”
He pulled himself together and shook hands with beaming Aaron Hooker. And with the next man, and the next. Soon women were kissing him, not all decorously. Hawk grinned and accepted the kisses.
This was Van’s wedding, but Con was introducing his bride, Susan, here, too. Clearly the villagers were making it into a return festivity for all three of them.
The Georges.
The plaguey imps.
The gallant soldiers.
The heroes.
It wasn’t the time to be wry about that, so he kissed and shook hands and accepted backslaps from men used to slapping oxen. In the end, he caught up to the blushing new bride and the very recent bride, and claimed kisses of his own.
“Hawk,” said Susan Amleigh, Con’s wife, her eyes brilliant, “have I told you how much I love Hawk in the Vale?”
“Once or twice, I think.”
; She just laughed at his dry tone. “How lucky you all are to have grown up here. I don’t know how you could bear to leave it.”
Because a tubful of sweet posset could be soured by a spoonful of gall, but Hawk didn’t let his smile twist. He’d been desperate to leave here at sixteen, and didn’t regret it now, but he did regret dragging Van and Con along. Not that he’d have been able to stop them if their families couldn’t. The Georges had always done nearly everything together.
What was done was done—wisdom, of a trite sort— and they’d all survived. Now, in part because of these wonderful women, Con and Van were even happy.
Happy. He rolled that in his mind like a foreign food, uncertain whether it was palatable or not. Whichever it was, it wasn’t on his plate. He was hardly the type for sweethearts and orange blossoms, and he would bring no one he cared for to share Hawkinville Manor with himself and his father. He had only returned there because the squire was crippled by a seizure.
If only he’d died of it.
He put that aside and let a buxom woman drag him into a country dance. Astonishing to realize that it was shy Elsie Dadswell, Elsie Manktelow now, with three children, a boy and two girls, and no trace of shyness that he could see. She was also clearly well on the way to a new baby.
Somewhat alarmed, he asked if she should be dancing so vigorously, but she laughed, linked arms, and nearly swung him off his feet. He laughed too and ricocheted down the line off strong, working-women’s arms.
His people. His to take care of, even if he had to fight his father to do it. Some of the cottages needed repairs and the riverbank needed work, but prizing money out of the squire’s hands these days was like getting a corpse to release a sword.
A blushing girl missing two front teeth asked him to dance next, so he did, glad to escape mundane concerns. He’d dealt with mass army movements over mountainous terrain, through killing storms. Surely the squire and Hawk in the Vale couldn’t defeat him. He flirted with the girl, disconcerted to discover that she was Will Ashbee’s daughter. Will was only a year older than he was.