THREE HEROES

by Jo Beverley

  “Don’t be long,” she said, tracing a pattern in the dusting of sand on his chest.

  They’d had enough thought to spread their clothes beneath them, but some sand had still stuck on their skin.

  “It might not be for a year. I don’t see how I can bear it.”

  “A year?” She shifted so she could look at him. “You could ask to come back sooner than that.”

  “With what reason?”

  She’d kissed him. ‘To see me?“

  He smiled. “I don’t think anyone would be impressed by that. They’ll say we’re too young.”

  “Say you want to learn more about your future estate then.”

  He blinked at her, lashes clumped, dark hair stuck to his temples by sweat. “It’s not my future estate. It’s Fred’s.”

  She could remember, even now, the sick, aching coldness that had swept through her. “He’s younger than you,” she’d protested, already knowing it was stupid, that he wouldn’t lie about such a thing.

  “Perhaps he looks it, but he’s thirteen months older. Sorry I’m not the heir?” He said it lightly, teasingly confident of a laughing denial.

  But she’d been shivering as if they’d been tossed from August to November. It wasn’t just that he wouldn’t have Crag Wyvern, that he was a younger son who’d never be a lord. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong back in Sussex at Somerford Court. He didn’t belong anywhere any more than she did!

  If she married him she’d have to go wherever he went, rootlessly with the army, or moving from parish to parish as a curate’s wife, when all she’d ever wanted, above all other things, was to belong.

  Here.

  She’d given her maidenhead to Con to seal him to her. She’d seduced him. He hadn’t been unwilling, but he’d never have done it if she hadn’t taken the first steps. She’d done it to claim her place here at last, and instead she’d thrown her fate upon the waters, to be swept wherever the wind blew.

  What if she was with child!

  Looking back, she couldn’t understand that girl. Why hadn’t she seen that Con would have been her place, her security, her stability in the world? Perhaps she’d been misled by his gentle nature, his ability to simply enjoy life, and not thought him dependable.

  If so, she’d badly misjudged what lay beneath.

  She’d only been fifteen, though. What fifteen-year-old made subtle judgments about these things? Few sealed their lives with their folly, however.

  No wonder parents protected their young from their very youth.

  The light, the confidence, had faded from his face, and she had wanted to kiss him, to say that of course she didn’t mind that he wasn’t the heir. She could remember that. Remember feeling sliced into two parts, the part that loved Con Somerford, and the part that had gambled all to be Countess of Wyvern.

  The lightness had gone entirely, and he said, “Susan?”

  She’d wanted him so much, ached for him, the friend of her heart, that she’d only been able to leave harshly. She’d pushed away from him, grabbing her shift to cover her nakedness, to fight off the chill.

  “Yes, I’m sorry you’re not the older brother. I want to be countess. Nothing less will do.”

  Perhaps she’d hoped saying it like that would make it make sense. She had tried to add an apology, but eleven years later she still winced at its inadequacy: “I’m sorry.”

  He had simply sat there, naked, beautiful, the shock of betrayal stamped in every line of his face, so she’d tried once more. “You’ll be glad when you think about it. You don’t want to be tied to the bastard child of a smuggler and a whore.”

  It had been a mistake. She’d seen the spark of hope, the beginning of argument, so she’d clutched her clothes to her and fled, but not before shouting, “I don’t want to see you again! Never speak to me again!”

  And he’d obeyed.

  If he’d come after her then, or sought her out in the remaining few days, if he’d argued with her, perhaps she would have seen sense. But being Con, he’d taken her at her word, and she’d not seen him or heard him speak again until last night.

  Her heart had been shattered, but in a twisted way that had strengthened her will. Her mother had followed her heart and her desires into a shameful union, causing all Susan’s problems. Lady Belle could have married well. She’d been courted by half the county, including the earl himself.

  Instead she’d followed her stupid heart to a tavern in a fishing village, and even if Mel Clyst was Captain Drake, that didn’t coat her shame with glory in the eyes of most of the world.

  Susan would not be the prisoner of her desires like her mother. She would not ran up to the Crag to sneak into the Saint George rooms to find her own George and beg him to forgive her. She would not send the letters she wrote to him after he left.

  Looking back, she was awed by the steely will of that fifteen-year-old, able to crash every instinct in order to pursue a goal of being a grand lady instead of a charity case.

  Hand over her mouth, she swallowed tears. She thought she’d forgotten better than this.

  The fifteen-year-old had ruthlessly tried to scrub Con from her mind. With age had come wisdom, and then regret, but she had still worked at forgetting. It was done and couldn’t be undone, and she’d felt at times that she might bleed to death if she let herself think of it.

  She should have known it hadn’t worked. For eleven years, every rock and plant and insect had reminded her. Irish Cove was intolerable. She’d never been there since.

  But she’d thought she’d buried it all deeper than this.

  She’d let two men seduce her solely to drive the memory of Con from her flesh. That hadn’t worked either, not even Lord Rivenham, a skilled rake, who’d given her all the pleasure she’d expected, and still failed to dissolve the sweetness of that clumsy time with Con.

  Fixed on her goal, she’d even tried to attract the attention of Con’s older brother, Fred. After all, she’d given up heaven for Crag Wyvern, so she had to have it or her sacrifice would have been for nothing.

  She could look back now and thank God that Fred Somerford had not been looking for a wife. Imagine meeting Con again after all these years as his sister-in-law.

  She’d realized eventually that the prize was worthless tinsel, but it had been far too late. She’d dreamed sometimes of finding Con and trying to heal the wounds, but amiable Fred had visited a few times a year and brought news, so she’d known that Con had gone abroad with the army not long after leaving her, and was rarely home.

  For some reason, his being out of England had made him even more lost to her. Even so, she’d written letters over the years to Ensign, then Lieutenant, then Captain George Connaught Somerford, letters she’d torn up and burned.

  She’d known all about Con’s career because Aunt Miriam had encouraged his brother, Fred, to visit the manor as often as he wished. It was partly true kindness, but also because she had two daughters and a niece, and why shouldn’t they end up as Countess of Wyvern as well as any other young woman?

  She remembered the time, at a family dinner, when Fred had produced a miniature that Con had sent him, done in his new captain’s uniform. It had passed from hand to hand. Susan had watched it circling toward her with a mix of unbearable anticipation and terror.

  Once in her hands it had stolen her breath. She’d had to pass it on before she’d had nearly enough time to absorb it.

  She’d desperately longed to snatch it, hide it, steal it.

  He’d been twenty-two when the picture had been done, the square chin stronger, leanness making the high cheekbones more pronounced. Following regulation, his hair had been powdered, seeming to emphasize his dark-lashed silvery eyes. He’d been smiling, however, and she’d genuinely rejoiced that he might be happy, might have forgotten her entirely.

  But he had still been at war. Weakly, she’d checked the obituaries and casualty lists, praying never to see his name.

  Through too many sleepless nights she’
d relived the moment of decision, imagining what might have happened if she’d followed her weak heart instead of her strong will. They’d only been fifteen. No question of marriage unless she’d caught a child which, thank the Lord, she had not.

  As a younger son Con would have needed a profession, but perhaps he would have chosen differently for her sake. Been safer. At the least she would have been with him, even following the drum.

  It had been a pointless, painful circling that she’d tried to block, but which had often sucked her down, especially if she woke in the gray middle of the night. Over the years, however, it had become almost a fantasy, the people no longer quite real—people she knew rather than a person she had been. That had drawn its fangs.

  Until now. Until here, with Con back marked in ways she would never have wanted him marked, but still Con. If she’d not been so willful, if she’d let herself love and be loved, might he still be the gentle, laughing person she’d once known?

  He’d seen himself as Saint George, warrior against evil, but at some point he’d had a dragon tattooed on his chest.

  She stood, and planning a route that would avoid any possibility of bumping into him, she hurried to the Saint George rooms.

  Chapter Six

  The Saint George rooms were decorated in a vaguely Roman style, with a mock mosaic floor and classical white linen draperies. The picture of George and the dragon was a fresco that took up most of one wall in the bedroom. This wasn’t the first time that she’d come to look at it.

  Saint George did look a little like Con, but now the saint looked softly unformed in comparison to the hardened warrior. He held his upright lance in an elegantly curved hand that seemed incapable of strength and violence. Con had touched her once last night, to pull her to her feet, and his hand had been hard and strong. The saint’s cocked-hip stance seemed more feminine than masculine. There had always been a grace to Con’s movements, but they were strong and direct, and now they were devastatingly, completely masculine.

  The dragon was not dead. It reared up behind the saint, its head horned like a devil, the fainting virgin sacrifice chained to the rock behind it. Fangs and forked tongue were visible at the slightly open mouth. It was truly an evil dragon, and she wanted to shout to the stupid Saint George to look behind him—

  The door opened, and she whirled to look behind.

  Con stopped as if frozen, and perhaps a hint of color touched his brown cheeks. “I’m sorry. Are you using these rooms now?”

  She knew she was red, and her mouth felt sealed by dryness. She made herself speak. “No. I have the housekeeper’s rooms below. I... I was—”

  “Don’t lie.” It was said flatly. “There was something special between us, wasn’t there?” He came over to look at the picture, but carefully distanced from her. “I was an arrogant young ass to see a resemblance, though.”

  “No! No, you weren’t.” It was pointless to think she could soothe his pride after all these years, but she couldn’t help it. “The first earl stood as a model for it, you know.”

  “I suppose that might account for it then.” He turned to her, and there was even a hint of humor in him. “Though I’m not sure I want a resemblance to the Demented Devonish Somerfords.”

  A hint of humor only, like the promise of sun on a heavily overcast day.

  She wanted to ask why he was here, but she knew. For the same reason she was—a pilgrimage to the past.

  She wanted to ask why he’d had this evil dragon etched into his skin.

  But she knew—because of what she’d done to him in the past.

  Most of all, she wanted to ask if there was any way to undo the hurt at this late date.

  But no. The wounds she had inflicted must have healed and scarred over long since. Scars, like tattoos, could not be rubbed away. There was no bridge back to sweet yesterdays.

  And anyway, she realized, she was here to find the mad earl’s stash of gold for David and the Horde. It was by rights the Horde’s money, and desperately needed, but Con wouldn’t see it that way. He’d see only a new, fresh betrayal.

  Unless the run had gone smoothly.

  It was a glimmer of brightness. If the run had gone as perfectly as she thought, then the Horde wouldn’t truly need the money. She wouldn’t have to betray Con again....

  There’d been too long a silence between them, and she was in danger of saying all the wrong things. To break the moment, she moved to open a nearby door in the wall. “There’s been an innovation since you used these rooms.”

  Seeming calm, he strolled over and looked into the room. “A Roman bath?”

  “Yes.” She led the way across the short stretch of tiled floor and up the steps so they could look down into the huge mosaic bath. She hadn’t thought about the picture, just about getting away from that other one.

  Now she was blushing because the picture on the bottom showed a hugely endowed Saint George, identified by his helmet, which was all he wore, about to impale a woman who was presumably the rescued princess.

  Rescued? She was still bound to the rock with iron chains and obviously struggling to escape her fate.

  “Physically impossible,” Con remarked, “or a bizarre form of murder. I’m not sure this bath is possible either. Are the taps functional?”

  “Of course.” She walked around the wide rim to put the width of it between them. “There’s a cistern in the attics with a furnace below it. It takes time to heat the water, but the bath can be filled.”

  “Ah, I see the drain too. What an interesting anatomical position for it.”

  A laugh escaped her before she caught it, and their eyes met for a moment across a space both physical and temporal.

  He looked away. “Where does it drain to?”

  The tiled walls gave the room a slight resonance, and she felt that her pounding heart should be audible too. When he wasn’t looking at her, she was drinking in the details of him, of his manly beauty so unlike—so like— the youth.

  “Out of a gargoyle’s mouth,” she said, “and down on anyone who happens to be below.” She pointed to a gilded chain. “It’s polite to ring that bell first.”

  He looked around at the mosaic walls, where even the stylized trees were subtly phallic and gave tantalizing glimpses of other lewd activities. “Did my dear departed relative use this facility much?”

  “Now and then, I gather.”

  “Alone?”

  “I don’t think so. It is rather large for one.”

  He looked at her, completely the earl. “I wish to move into these rooms, Mrs. Kerslake. I’m very fond of baths. See to it, if you please.”

  She almost protested. Having him in the Saint George rooms was too close to the past, and she hated to think that he’d changed so much that he liked this lewd display.

  But she said, “Of course, my lord.”

  Whoever he was now, however, she didn’t want him sharing this bath. With Diddy, for example. As they left the room she tried to establish some rules. “I run this house in a respectable manner, my lord. I hope you will not use that bath in any lewd way.”

  “Are you trying to dictate my conduct, Mrs. Kerslake?”

  “I believe I have a right to concern myself with the welfare of the servants, my lord.”

  “Ah, I see. But if I were to bring in ladies—or others—from outside to share my bath, you would have no objection?”

  She met his eyes. “You would be exposing the servants to impropriety.”

  “And they have not been so exposed before?”

  ‘Times have changed.“

  “Have they?” He let it linger, then added, “And if I do not obey your dictates, Susan, you will do what?”

  It was a neatly decisive blow.

  The only possible retaliation was her resignation, but she couldn’t leave Crag Wyvern just yet.

  At her silence, one brow rose. There was a hint of humor, a lot of triumph, but also speculation. She didn’t want him thinking about why she needed to stay.
>
  She headed for the door. “I believe your breakfast will be waiting, my lord.”

  “I believe my breakfast will wait for me. There have to be some privileges of rank. Show me the late earl’s rooms.”

  She wanted so desperately to escape, but she wouldn’t simply be running from time spent with Con. She’d be fleeing the dream-memory friend of her heart. Her first clumsily wonderful lover. The youth she’d deliberately hurt. The man he had become.

  More urgently, she’d be fleeing the dragon, coiled, patient, and the embodiment of silver-eyed peril. With a horrified glance back at the huge picture she saw that though the color of the saint’s eyes was impossible to tell, the dragon’s eyes were silver-gray.

  “Mrs. Kerslake?” he prompted with a hint of authority.

  She gathered her wits. “As you wish, my lord. They are next door so the earl had easy access to the bath.”

  She had to control her wretched reaction to him. If he felt anything at all for her it was anger. And yet... and yet he’d admitted he’d come here for the same reason as she, and that there had been sweetness between them once....

  She realized she’d almost walked past the first door to the Wyvern rooms, and stopped to unlock it. The key seemed to fight her about going into the lock, probably because Con was standing close beside her. She could swear she felt the heat of his body. She could certainly detect a faint but recognizable smell.

  She’d not thought people had such a powerful individual smell, but even though he’d bathed, there was something, something in the air that carried her straight back to a naked tangle on a hot beach, and a youthful, muscular chest she had nuzzled and kissed again and again.

  Stop it!

  The key jerked home and she turned it, then thrust the door open, blessing the stale, pungent air that swamped sweeter memories. These smells—herbal, chemical, and the lingering hint of vomit—were all of the old earl. She walked briskly to fling open the window.

  “He died here?” Con asked, as if he could smell death. Perhaps a soldier could.