Thea's bravado vanished. For Tom to find her there with this creature, for him to know what had happened last night, to face his gaze after he had warned her against Lord Randall, was the final shame and humiliation. She wanted to die.
The door to the room burst open, Lord Garrett's entrance knocking Hawley several steps backward. Magnificent dark eyes, so like Thea's, flashed dangerously. Lord Garrett, murder in his face, rushed forward, only to stop when he spied Thea.
The murderous expression faded, leaving his attractive features showing the strain of worry and sleeplessness he had endured. As he took in Thea's shattered look, his face softened, and, Hawley forgotten, he crossed the room to her. Kneeling before her, he took one of her cold hands in his, and said huskily, "Hello, Puss. You have given us quite a chase. But we have found you now and will take you home. Mama is most anxious to know that you are safe."
At his kind words, Thea's eyes filled with tears. "Oh, Tom," she cried, "I have been such a wicked person—but you must not blame Maggie. It is none of her fault—I made her come with me." Thea bit back a sob. "You must leave me here—I am ruined. Mama will not want even to lay eyes on such a sinful creature as I am. You will never want me near you. Nobody will. I can never go home again."
"Hush," he said, gently brushing back a lock of her black hair, black hair very like his own. "How can you say such a thing? There is nothing you could do that would ever change our love for you."
Two more gentlemen suddenly entered the room, then-faces stern and anxious. Thea's mortification was even greater as she recognized her mother's brother, the Baron Hazlett, and his eldest son, John. John was one year older than she was; they shared the same birth date and were very close. For John and her uncle to be privy to her shame only made the situation worse.
Lord Hazlett closed the door behind them. He and John stood there, looking large and intimidating in their greatcoats, their arms folded across their chests.
Keeping a comforting hand on Thea's, Lord Garrett glanced across to his uncle and cousin. "We shall need to procure a carriage for her and Maggie."
Lord Randall, who had remained silent, cleared his throat. Stepping nearer to where Lord Garrett knelt by Thea's side, he said, "That will not be necessary. Thea is going to be my wife. I shall have the care of her from now on."
In one movement, Tom was on his feet, the back of his hand striking Hawley violently in the face. "No, you won't," Tom said softly, the dark eyes nearly black with suppressed fury. "What you will do is leave this room and be glad that I have not killed you like the dog you are."
A muscle bunched in Hawley's jaw, and he controlled his temper with a visible effort. "Because we are friends, I shall overlook your actions," he said tightly, "but you are too late. I'm afraid that we, ah, anticipated our marriage vows last night. There is noth—"
Tom's fist smashed into Hawley's mouth. "Shut your filthy mouth!" Tom snarled, blood spurting from Hawley's lips as he reeled backward from the force of the blow. "Nothing you may or may not have done changes our plans to return Thea to her mother and her home." Contempt on his young face, Tom demanded, "Do you think that we would leave her to your tender mercies?" Tom's expression grew bitter. "I am ashamed that I ever called you friend, that I was ever so foolish and misguided to introduce you to my family. This is all my fault and I shall have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life."
"Oh, no, Tom," Thea protested, rising to her feet. "It is my fault. You must not blame yourself. I was stupid and foolish—I should have listened to you and Mama."
He glanced back at her. "No, Puss. The blame is mine. It was criminal of me, knowing what I did about him, to introduce you to him, much less to have invited him to stay at Garrett Manor." He shot Lord Randall a scathing look. "But I thought he was my friend, and I was arrogant enough to think that he would not dare try his tricks on my sister. I was wrong, and you have paid the price for my arrogance."
"I've had about all of this that I am going to take," Hawley snapped. "I have tried to make allowances for your strong emotions and your feeling of injustice, but there is not a damn thing that you or anybody else can do about it. Thea will be my wife."
"No, she will not," said Lord Hazlett, entering the fray. "We, the family, had already decided before we came in pursuit of you that this affair will go no further. Thea will come home with us and you"—his fine lip curled—"you, my lord, can go to the devil!"
Hawley looked thunderstruck. This was a possibility that he had not considered. "Do you mean to tell me," he said incredulously, "that knowing she has been alone with me for over twenty-four hours, knowing that we have made love, that you intend to keep it quiet?"
Lord Hazlett nodded, his gaze full of dislike and condemnation.
Hawley gave an ugly laugh. "Oh, by God, this is rich! The girl is ruined, and you intend to hide that fact. And what," he gibed, "do you intend to tell a future suitor? That she is only slightly soiled? Only a little damaged?"
The words hardly left his mouth, before Tom was at his throat. His fingers biting into Hawley's throat, he growled, "Silence! You are never to utter another word about this. I particularly never want to hear that you have even spoken Thea's name. Do you understand me? Speak her name, and I'll kill you."
Hawley was blind with rage. Hoping to come about without bloodshed, he'd forced himself to suffer the insults of this impudent puppy, but by heaven he would no longer. It was clear that he now had nothing to lose—without Thea's fortune financial ruin stared him in the face; all his plans and schemes had come to naught.
Hawley broke Tom's hold on his throat, and slapping the young man across the face, he said, "Name your seconds!"
Tom's eyes glittered, the imprint of Hawley's hand scarlet on his cheek. "Gladly."
"Tom! Are you mad?" demanded Lord Hazlett. "A duel is the last thing we want. If we are to brush through this without arousing a scandal, we must keep everything quiet."
Tom nodded reluctantly. He looked at Hawley. "Thea's reputation is worth more to me than the satisfaction I would gain from skewering you, my lord." Caustically, he added, "You'll forgive me if I refuse your challenge."
Balked at every turn, his pride battered and his future ruined, Hawley was spoiling for a fight. He needed someone to strike against, someone upon whom to vent his rage, and Tom was right in front of him.
"Coward?" he asked nastily.
Tom blanched. "Coward? You dare to call me a coward? You, who prey on the young and innocent?"
Lord Randall examined the nails of his fingers. "Well, I do not know what else to call a man who refuses a challenge."
Tom's hands clenched into fists. "I accept your challenge—if you will have my cousin act as your second, my uncle shall act as mine, and we fight here and now."
Hawley smiled. "Swords?"
"Swords."
Despite the protests and pleas of the others, neither man could be persuaded to back down. In a terrifyingly short time, the rules had been set and a space cleared, the furniture pushed back against the walls to provide an area for the duelists. The gentlemen of her family tried to hustle her out of the room, but Thea would not budge.
Her eyes huge black pools in her white face, she asked fiercely, "What difference does it make now? I know you are trying to protect me, but it is too late. I must stay. I must."
There was no dissuading her, and, after a helpless shrug, Tom turned away to face his opponent, who stood in the center of the cleared space. His blade kissed the tip of Hawley's. "En garde."
Both men had shed their jackets for freedom of movement, and the fight that followed was swift and vicious. It was clear from the onset that Hawley intended to win, delivering a furious onslaught that immediately drove Tom backward. Again and again their blades met and clashed as the deadly sound of steel against steel ringing in the small room.
The two men were evenly matched in height, but Hawley was more muscular and far more experienced; Thea's heart nearly stopped a dozen times when it seeme
d inevitable that Tom would fall beneath Hawley's attack. Tom fell back time and time again from the expert thrust of Hawley's flashing blade, barely able to prevent Hawley from slipping under his guard.
It was silent in the room except for the heavy breathing of the two combatants, the clang of their swords and the slide and stamp of their booted feet across the wooden floor. Arraigned against the wall, her uncle's arm clasping her comfortingly, Thea watched in silence, terrified by the violence she had caused.
The tempo of the fight gradually changed, Tom's flying sword working magic as his blade clashed against Hawley's, blunting Hawley's forward charge. A grim smile curved Tom's mouth as Hawley retreated, the sound of his blade singing in the air as he closed on his enemy, the flashing blade slipping beneath Hawley's guard to open a long rip along his shoulder.
Blood bloomed crimson against the white of Hawley's shirt, and he seemed astonished that Tom had managed to strike him. Breathing heavily from his exertions, Tom stepped back reluctantly. His sword held down by his side, he said, "First blood. Shall we cry quits?"
"Never!" cried Hawley. His lips curled over his teeth in a feral grimace, he leaped toward Tom, his sword poised for Tom's heart.
Thea screamed, but Tom nimbly met the maddened charge and the fight began anew, everyone aware that it would now only end in death. Tom fought steadily, his dark eyes intent, his young face grim, as he met every deadly thrust of Hawley's blade. As the minutes passed Tom once again gained ascendancy and compelled Hawley to retreat across the room.
Forced backward by Tom's attack, Hawley stumbled and fell against the table that had been pushed against one of the walls, the remains of the meal he and Thea had shared scattered across it. His blade locked with Tom's as Tom bent him over the table, he sought for a way to blunt Tom's attack. When their swords swung free, as Tom angled for the final thrust, Hawley's free hand suddenly brushed against the still-hot teapot from breakfast. In a mad rage his fingers closed around it and with an oath, he threw the contents into Tom's face.
Blinded, Tom staggered backward, dropping his guard as Lord Hazlett and John gasped in stunned disbelief at Hawley's dishonorable act. Before either could call a halt to the struggle, Hawley's sword sank into Tom's breast in a swift lunge. Tom groaned and sank to one knee, his hand clutching his breast, blood seeping from between his fingers.
Thea screamed and struggled free from Lord Hazlett's grasp. But it was too late; Hawley's sword plunged again into Tom. Tom sagged farther, his dark head bent, as he fought back the black waves that lashed over him.
"Die, you damned arrogant puppy!" Hawley shouted, his face livid and ugly as he towered over Tom.
Tom lifted his head, and, smiling queerly, gathering all of his fading power, he thrust clean and true, his blade sinking deeply into Hawley's heart.
For an instant Hawley looked incredulous, as if he could not believe what had just happened—the next, he fell dead to the floor.
Thea flew across the room to Tom's side, and, his enemy vanquished, he slumped bonelessly into Thea's slender arms. His head cradled on her lap and his eyes closed, Thea stared in horror at the rapidly spreading blood across the front of his shirt.
"Oh, Tom," she pleaded. "Do not die, I beg you. It is all my fault. You must not die. You must not!"
Tom's lashes fluttered, and he looked up at Thea's tearful features. Running a finger down her tear-stained cheek, he said weakly, "Don't cry, Puss. It is not your fault. The fault was mine." A violent spasm shook him. Almost in a whisper he added, "Not yours. Mine." And then his eyes closed, and he was still.
She held him near, her tears falling heedlessly. Mindless with grief and guilt, she rocked back and forth, clutching Tom's lifeless form to her breast, oblivious of the body of the man she was to have married lying only a few feet away.
Eventually Lord Hazlett was able to wrest Tom's body away from her. John's strong arms around her, she was urged toward the door, where the innkeeper and his wife crowded around trying to see inside the room. At the doorway, she took another glance at her brother's body, guilt knifing through her. Almost by chance her gaze fell upon Hawley's sprawled form. Hatred such as she had never believed possible curdled inside her. She would never, she vowed fiercely, believe the sweet words and promises of any man again. Never.
Chapter 1
London, 1798
Whistling softly to himself, Patrick Blackburne took the steps to his rented house on Hamilton Place, two at a time. It was a fine September morning in London, and having just come from a sale at Tattersall's, where he had bought a nice chestnut mare that had caught his eye, he was feeling pleased.
Life had been good to Patrick. He'd been blessed with a handsome face and form, as well as a fortune that allowed him to live where and how he pleased. Across the Atlantic Ocean from England, he owned a large plantation and fine home near Natchez in the Mississippi Territory. His father had been a rich, wellborn Englishman who had taken a respectable fortune and had made it a magnificent one in the New World; his mother, even more wellborn, was related to half the aristocracy in England and possessed a large fortune of her own. Patrick's father had died fifteen years ago and Patrick had inherited that fortune at the relatively young age of twenty-three; in time, since he was an only child, he would no doubt inherit his mother's fortune.
It could be argued that his mother, Alice, had abandoned Patrick at twelve years of age when she had decided she could no longer bear to live in the backwoods splendor of Willowdale, the Blackburne plantation near Natchez. Only England, London in particular, would suit her. Her husband and Patrick's father, Robert, had given a sigh of relief and helped her pack, not about to give her a chance to change her mind.
It was known that theirs had been an arranged marriage and that they had been indifferent to one another from the beginning. Within months of the wedding, their indifference had turned to outright loathing, and Patrick, arriving almost nine months to the day after the wedding, had been born into a household that resembled nothing less than an armed camp.
Used as a weapon between the warring partners, Patrick continually found himself in the middle of his parents' frequent and virulent battles. It did not engendered in him any desire for the married state and was the main reason he had reached the age of thirty-eight with nary a matrimonial prospect in sight.
His mother's rejection of Natchez and everything connected with it had hurt and confused him as a child. Patrick loved his home and thought the spacious, three-storied mansion at Willowdale to be comfortable and elegant. To this day, he still enjoyed tramping through the wilderness that bordered the plantation and had never understood why his mother detested everything connected with Willowdale and Natchez. When he was twelve, his mother's attitude had baffled him and, to a point, it still did, but he had learned to accept her contempt of a home and place that he adored, though her occasional comments about it could still cause a pang of resentment.
His parents' marriage, Patrick admitted, had been like trying to mate chalk and cheese; neither had been at fault. With his wife gone, Robert finally had peace and enjoyed his remaining years—never setting foot in England again for fear of coming face-to-face with his wife. As for Alice, she was wildly happy in England. These days she bore little resemblance to the miserable woman who had lived at Willowdale. Her relationship with Patrick was a trifle distant, more because he had grown up apart from her and had chosen to live the majority of the time at Willowdale. When he did come to England, she greeted him with warm affection, and he enjoyed seeing her.
Patrick's mother was the last person on his mind this particular morning as he entered the house. Setting down his narrow-brimmed hat on the table in the foyer of the house, he frowned when he spied an envelope lying there, addressed to him in his mother's fine script.
Now what? he wondered. Surely not another ball she wished him to attend? Since his arrival in England only two weeks ago, he'd already escorted his mother to a soiree; driven her on three different occasions arou
nd Hyde Park in his curricle; and endured an uncomfortable family dinner with her husband of just over a year, Henry, the tenth Baron Caldecott. Surely he had shown himself to be a dutiful enough son. Couldn't she now leave him to enjoy his own pursuits?
Sighing, he opened the letter, his frown not abating one whit as he read the missive. She wanted to see him this afternoon. Urgently.
A thoughtful look in his deceptively sleepy gray eyes, Patrick wandered into his study. Now why would his mother need to see him urgently? Especially since he had just taken her for a drive around Hyde Park not two days ago and at that time she had been relaxed and carefree. Certainly there had been no sign that she had anything more urgent on her mind than what she was to wear to Lady Hilliard's ball to be held on Thursday evening.
Seating himself behind a mahogany desk, he proceeded to write a reply to his mother. That done, he wrote another note, canceling the plans he had made with his friend Adam Paxton to watch a match at Lord's Cricket Ground on St. John's Wood Road. Naturally they had a friendly wager on the outcome.
At two o'clock, as requested by his mother, garbed in pale gray pantaloons, a bobtailed coat in plum, his dark gray waistcoat extravagantly embroidered and his cravat neatly tied above his frilled shirt, he mounted the steps of the Caldecott town house on Manchester Square. After giving his hat to the butler, Grimes, he walked through the grand hallway into the front salon.
His mother was seated on a sofa, her pale blue bouffant skirts dripping onto the floor. A silver tea tray sat in front of her, and, as Patrick entered the room, she said, "Ah, precisely on time. I worried that I'd had Grimes bring me the tea too soon."
The resemblance between mother and son was not pronounced. Except for the fact that both were tall and had the same wide-spaced gray eyes and black hair, their features were totally dissimilar: Patrick was, to Alice's dismay, the very image of his father. It always gave her a shock when he walked into a room, the sight of that firm, determined jaw and chin, the straight, bold nose, and arrogantly slashed black brows making her feel for a second that her first husband had come to drag her back to that godforsaken plantation, Willowdale.
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