As the minutes passed and Charles remained silent, Daphne sighed. “Aren’t you going to answer me?” she asked quietly. “Is there some reason that you don’t want to talk about Raoul?”
“There are several reasons,” he admitted, “but the main one is that I didn’t intend to bore you with family tragedies your first hour in your new home.”
She studied him for moment, reminding herself again of the brief time that they had known each other. They had known each other a month, and though trust and respect had grown quickly between them and she loved him, she reminded herself with a touch of wonder, they didn’t know each other very well…yet. She sensed that he was not deliberately hiding things from her, but that he had not yet decided how to present something that she suspected would be unpleasant. Guilt smote her. They had only been at Stonegate a matter of minutes, and she was already interrogating him like a shrew. Deciding that perhaps this was a topic that could be postponed, she finally said, “You will tell me later?” A faint smile curving her mouth, she added, “Even about the Old Earl?”
Charles laughed. “Especially about the Old Earl.”
Once Garthwaite had served them tea, a brief tour of the house was next. It was a big, handsome house, and Daphne had to pinch herself several times to make certain she was not dreaming as she was shown by Garthwaite into room after room, each one more spacious and elegant than the previous one. This magnificent place was now her home. With Charles at her side, she would spend the rest of her days in this house. Their children would be born here, and a tingle went through her at the idea of the wide hallways and empty rooms ringing with the sounds of children running and laughing through the house. She glanced occasionally at Charles, who trailed behind her, wondering what was going through his mind. His expression was hard to define. There was pride in his home—she could see it in his eyes—but there was also something guarded in his expression, as if he was protecting himself and dare not let his true feelings show. Had his stepmother tainted his love of the place? Or were there other reasons? Perhaps something connected to his father? His half brother? She sighed. There was so much to learn about his family, and it certainly did not help that her husband was disinclined to talk about them. Curiosity ate at her, and she wondered at the series of unfortunate events that seemed to have plagued the family. Obviously, his mother was dead. But what of his father? Charles had never once made any reference to him. She made a face. Until she walked through the front door of Stonegate, he’d not mentioned any of the others either, so that omission should come as no surprise. But she wondered how long ago Charles’s father had died. It could not have been recent for surely if it had been, he would have said something. A terrible thought occurred to her. Was his father’s death in the same period of time that had so cruelly taken John, Daniel, Sofia and…Raoul from him? A shudder rolled through her. Had she married into a family that was cursed? Telling herself not to be a goose, she pushed those thoughts away and concentrated on being delighted and awed by her new home.
Time flew, and soon enough, Daphne was being shown to her rooms to change for dinner. Having seen throughout the house the style and taste that Charles’s stepmother preferred, she had expected her bedroom to be as cold and rigidly formal as the rest of the house, and she had been prepared to dislike it on sight. Instead, she was charmed to be shown into a suite of rooms that revealed a very different hand at work. The amber silk walls and cream ceilings imparted warmth to the big rooms, and while the bed hangings and draperies of gold-striped bronze and the carpets in tones of hunter green, russet, and cream were somewhat masculine, she was quite happy with her new rooms.
Jane had already ordered a bath prepared in the attached dressing room, and Daphne was soon sinking into the warm carnation-scented waters. The water felt decadent against her skin, and the memory of Charles’s urgent mouth against her breasts sent a shaft of longing through her. Her cheeks pinkened. The things they had done last night! Heat that had nothing to do with the water temperature flooded through her, and she gasped as her nipples hardened and an insistent ache bloomed between her legs. Her mind was flooded with memories of Charles kissing her, tasting her, making love to her, and by the time she stepped from the tub, her whole body was tingling, yearning for his touch. Uncertain whether to be alarmed or amused by her reactions, she quickly dried herself and slipped into a blue dressing gown.
Her black hair waving wildly around her shoulders, Daphne wandered into the bedroom. She stopped short at the appearance of a small table laden with various covered dishes near her bed; a bouquet of white lilies and yellow rosebuds had been set in the middle, and two chairs had been drawn up next to the table. Candlelight bathed the room in a soft glow, and the perfume of the lilies drifted in the air.
The door that connected their rooms pushed open, and Charles strode in. He was wearing a black robe, the lapels heavily embroidered in gold and crimson thread, and a thrill traced through her at the knowledge that like her, he was naked beneath the fabric. Spying her, he grinned and said, “Excellent! You haven’t dressed for dinner yet.” His eyes slid down her slender form. “Although,” he murmured with a glint in his eyes, “I wouldn’t have minded undressing you…”
Trying to ignore the way a pulse throbbed low in her body at his words, she waved a hand in the direction of the table. “Is this your doing?”
“Indeed, it is. It has been a very long day, and I thought for tonight that you might prefer simpler fare and to postpone the grandeur of the dining room for another day.” He smiled. “One in which you are not longing for your bed.”
She smiled back him. “Oh. Am I longing for my bed?”
He walked up to her and pulled her into his arms. His mouth teased hers, his teeth nibbling at the corners of her lips. “If you are not, my sweet,” he said huskily, “I certainly am.”
Daphne melted into his arms, her mouth opening to him, savoring the taste and thrust of his tongue. His hand on her bottom, pushing her up against his hard shaft, made her moan, and her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling his head closer to her.
Dinner was quite late.
They eventually feasted on turbot with lobster, lamb cutlets, peas and asparagus, plover’s eggs in aspic jelly and meringues à la crème, among other dishes and then once again, retired to bed. It was only when they were lying side by side, breath, pulse, brain, and body slowly returning to some degree of normality after another bout of lovemaking, that the subject of Charles’s family came up again.
With Daphne cradled next to him, her head nestled on his shoulder, Charles stared at the silken canopy overhead. Fate was a peculiar thing, he decided ruefully. It seemed incredible that he had left Stonegate hardly two months ago intent upon discovering if Raoul was alive and slaughtering innocents again and had returned a married man. A married man, he admitted, a bit astonished, who was madly, wildly in love with his wife. He turned his head and dropped a fleeting kiss on Daphne’s forehead. It almost didn’t matter that she didn’t love him, that Adrian and April were her first concerns. As long as she allowed him to be part of her world, he was content. He frowned. Actually, he allowed, that was a dashed bloody lie. He knew that he would never be satisfied until Daphne loved him…as he loved her.
Charles was pleased and not a little surprised at the promising start of their life together, but then he didn’t know why he should be. He supposed that there might have been a way to escape the parson’s mousetrap once they had been rescued from the sea cave, but by then, he was so thoroughly in her thrall that even finding an honorable way out of marrying her had held no appeal to him. With a start, he realized that he’d wanted to marry her. Even back then. It had been a gamble, perhaps the biggest in his life, but then, he acknowledged cynically, he was ever the gambler.
He pressed another kiss to Daphne’s forehead. Yes, he was a gambler and look what it had gained him. The only woman he could ever imagine sharing his life with, the only woman he could ever imagine bearing his children. Something clenched
within him, the idea of children, the awareness that last night or even tonight, he could have planted a child in her womb, filling him with a curious mixture of panic and joy.
The thought that one day he might be a father had never crossed his mind. Would he be a good father? he wondered uneasily. He’d adored his own father; John had been a good father to Daniel, and Julian was an exemplary father. Perhaps there was hope for him.
Raoul’s contorted features jumped into his head, and a kernel of fear lodged deep within him. He’d always believed that Raoul’s sheer evilness had come from Sofia, but what if he was wrong? What if part of the malignancy that had driven Raoul to inflict such horrific acts on innocents had been inherited from his own side of the family? What if he carried that same evil seed? And passed it on to his own child? A shudder roiled through him.
Daphne felt the movement of his body, and she angled her face toward his. “What is it? Are you cold?”
Charles shook his head. “No,” he said flatly.
A note in his voice alerted her, and rising up on one hand, she looked into his grim features. “What is it? Have I done something to displease you?”
“Good God, no!” he exclaimed. He smiled crookedly. “I was thinking of family…and the family that we may have one day.”
She frowned. “And this makes you uncomfortable?”
“No. It’s just that….” His voice trailed off, and his eyes searched hers. Dare he tell her the truth? Was this the moment? He swallowed. She had a right to know. But what if she turned from him in revulsion and disgust?
The expression on his face alarmed her. She touched his cheek. “Charles, what is it? Surely it is not so terrible that you cannot tell me.” She smiled slightly. “After all, we have faced Sir Wesley together—what could be worse than confronting a vile old ghost?”
His gaze roved over her features, and he traced the shape of her mouth with one long finger. “There is so much that you don’t know.”
“But you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?” she said softly.
Charles nodded slowly, his mind made up. “Some of the Westons have not been very, uh, virtuous,” he muttered. And that, he thought disgustedly, doesn’t even begin to cover it, not when you consider the Old Earl and his legion of by-blows scattered throughout the British Isles and…Raoul. Daphne looked expectantly at him, and avoiding the hard ground, he added reluctantly, “I loved my father, but after my mother died, he became…a drunkard and a gambler. He brought us to the brink of ruin, and if it hadn’t been for his marriage to Sofia, we might have lost Stonegate.” Deliberately, he said, “Theirs was no love match. He married her for her money because if he hadn’t, Stonegate would have fallen in rack and ruin about our ears. Sofia’s fortune is the only reason that Stonegate exists as you see it today.”
“That doesn’t sound so very bad.” She gave him an encouraging smile. “Impoverished gentlemen have been marrying heiresses since the beginning of time.”
He was avoiding the crux of the matter, and he knew it. He sighed, wondering when he had turned into a coward. But he knew the answer to that—when he had fallen in love with Daphne. He could not bear the idea of her recoiling from him in horror and revulsion. And she is very likely to do just that, he thought wretchedly, when I tell her about Raoul. What woman wouldn’t?
Her face full of concern, she touched his cheek again. “Charles, what is it?” she asked quietly. “What is so very bad that you feel you dare not speak of it?” She smiled faintly. “I may not find it so very bad, you know.”
“You will,” he stated unequivocally.
Fear knotted in her stomach. Whatever Charles was keeping from her, it was obvious that it was more, and a great deal worse, than a drunken, spendthrift father. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Then perhaps you better tell me about it.”
He looked away from her a moment. They stood at the edge of a chasm, and he wished they’d had more time together before it had yawned before them. Once he told her, would she shrink away from him in panic and aversion? Would she shun him? Order him from her bed? Yet unless he spoke, the secret of Raoul would lie between them like a black, ugly festering wound, destroying any chance he had of winning her, any chance of them finding lasting happiness. His jaw clenched. He must tell her…and live with the consequences. God help him.
His face set, he pulled her down next to him. When she was comfortably nestled beside him, he said bleakly, “Let me tell you of Raoul….”
And so he told her. Everything. Nell’s nightmares. The dungeon beneath the Dower House. The multitude of women who had died shrieking beneath Raoul’s knife. John’s murder by Raoul and Sofia, and Sofia’s death by his own hand. His reason for being in Cornwall. Everything.
When he was finished and Daphne lay stiffly and silently at his side, his heart sank. Would she now look at him in terror and repugnance, knowing he had shot and killed his stepmother? Knowing that at least some of the same blood that ran in Raoul’s veins ran in his? What would he do if she turned from him in disgust? How could he live?
That such creatures as Raoul and Sofia existed appalled Daphne. Despite the challenges she’d faced, she’d led a normal, unassuming existence, one in which murderous relatives and wanton slaughter did not exist. She’d been prepared to hear of some philandering rake or an adulterous spouse, perhaps even an illegitimate birth lurking in the midst of Charles’s family, but nothing like the horrific tale he had just related.
The inexplicable mental link between Nell and Raoul was difficult for her to grasp, but the ghostly events at Beaumont Place helped her understand and accept that there were things for which no rational explanation existed. John’s murder repelled her, and her heart ached for Charles. Knowing how she felt about Adrian and April, she couldn’t conceive the motives, emotions that had driven Raoul to commit such a dastardly act. That Raoul murdered for his own pleasure disgusted and horrified her, and it was utterly obscene, she thought, that Sofia had known and protected him. There was no question in her mind that Sofia had deserved to die. As for Raoul…She shivered. To think he might still be alive and living near Beaumont Place.
She jerked upright. Wide-eyed with terror, she blurted, “We must warn the others! What if he was to snatch April? I could never forgive myself if something happened to her.”
Charles took comfort that she had not leaped from the bed making the sign to ward off evil at him. Carefully, he said, “April is safe. He only stalks those of the lower classes, choosing as his victims women whose disappearance will not make much of a stir.”
“Which doesn’t make it any better, does it?” she said gently. Looking at him, seeing the rigid way he held himself, her heart ached for him. It had not been easy for him to speak of such intimate horrors. How he must have suffered knowing that his brother…. She paused, and her mouth tightened. His half brother had been a monster. And now, having confessed his terrible secret, he looked as if he were braced for a beating. Love and understanding stirred in her breast.
“Oh, my poor dear Charles! How ghastly for you,” she cried. Flinging her arms around him, she hugged him tightly. “You must have suffered so very much, knowing that Raoul had killed your good John and helped cause Daniel’s death. I cannot imagine how you stayed sane.” Raining soft little kisses along his jaw, she murmured, “Sofia deserved to die. She was a wicked woman, but she cannot harm anyone again—she is dead, punished for her wickedness. I hope that as she burns in hell—as surely she must—she knows that you are Master of Stonegate and that her fortune is yours to do as you please. And if as you believe Raoul is alive, we will find him and stop him.”
A fierce light leaped to his eye, and his heart began to beat again in thick, rapid strokes. Jerking her onto his chest, he found her mouth and he kissed her again and again, love surging through him. Sweet, adorable Daphne! She had not rejected him. She was not repulsed by him.
Daphne responded frankly to his kisses, wanting to draw away the hurt, the pain she knew he had suffered. Stil
l suffered, for it was clear that guilt and remorse ate at him. He made love to her with a tenderness that woke a desire so powerful she shook and trembled from the force of it. His touch was so gentle, filled with such passionate homage that she was half mad with longing, and she writhed on the bed, begging him to take her, pleading for him to end the sweet agony he had aroused. With a smothered groan, he joined them together, his swollen member sliding in and out of her slick warmth in increasingly frantic thrusts. In those last moments, there was a feral madness between them, gentleness gone, hands, mouths, and bodies seeking, demanding succor until breathless and gasping, their bodies convulsed and ecstasy flooded through them.
When he could speak again, Charles bent over and brushing back the waves of black hair that cascaded across her forehead, kissed her tenderly. “Do you know,” he said softly, “I am very glad that you went exploring in that cave. I do not like to think what my life would be without you.”
Daphne’s heart lurched at his words. She loved him, and unless she was reading more into his words than he meant, it appeared that he might very well love her. It wasn’t a declaration of love, but it was close and she treasured his words, holding them close to her heart.
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