Chapter Fourteen
Stones scattered under Jon’s feet as he half walked, half slid down the hill. When he reached the bottom of the little vale, he widened his stride to make it over the stream that trickled through the woods. More stones crunched as he scrambled up the slope on the other side. When he reached the top, he followed the track to the right and stomped up the next hill.
How far had he come? The burn in his muscles suggested it had been quite a distance. The molten fire coursing through his veins told him it hadn’t been nearly far enough. Jon pressed on, down one hill, up the next.
Whatever had possessed him to torment Annabella with such indecent talk? Oh, she hadn’t been unaffected. The way her eyes had widened and then swirled with glints of gold in their depths, those short gasps for breath. The deep shade of rose that had blossomed in her cheeks and spread to cover her entire face.
How she had fidgeted in her seat.
Oh yes, his words had touched her deeply. Trouble was, they’d had a similar effect on him. It had been all he could do not to lock them in the suite and follow up on those bawdy suggestions. She’s your wife, his dishonorable self whispered.
Jon shook his head. A wife he hadn’t exactly acquired in an honorable fashion. Removing himself from her presence had seemed the only alternative. But that left him with far too much unsettled energy. Of course he’d had no estate business. The estate was so effortlessly run by his father and older brother, it seemed to conduct its own business. So he’d left, just walked through the solarium and out the back door and strolled into the field adjacent to the forest. And then he’d spotted one of the trails he and Nicholas had run along when they were boys.
He was breathing heavily from exertion as he exited the woods onto a narrow lane sheltered by trees. Barely wide enough for a gig and mostly overgrown, the road had fallen into disuse long ago. Pausing, Jon squinted up the lane and then down, seeking any sign of familiar landmarks. Once, the whole of the forest had been familiar territory for him and Nicholas. No nook or cranny hadn’t been poked into by him and his brother. No log unturned, no hill too high. But even then, Nicholas had approached their play with a sense of ownership.
Turning left, Jon topped the next rise and stopped beside an ancient stone cairn, probably the remnants of some boundary marker. Plenty of those remained scattered about the countryside, falling down, largely meaningless except to those who cared about the land’s history. He pulled in several deep breaths and blew them out with force, trying to ease his body’s starvation for air. Sweat beaded on his brow. The fire in his muscles became a dull ache. Perhaps the next time he decided to punish himself, he’d simply run into a stone wall instead.
When he glanced around, laughter burst forth as he recognized where he’d ended up. A magpie scolded from the lowest branch of a nearby elm. Ignoring the noisy thing, Jon widened his stance and settled his hands on his hips as he looked out over the valley below. Hedgerows and stone fences formed an intricate pattern of lines that broke up the meadows into smaller bits of land.
“Halt!” Nicholas sprang up from behind a rather large gray boulder and pointed a long stick that had been cut to resemble a sword at Jon’s chest. “What business have you in Blackmoor?”
Jon grinned. “I’m the Tenth Earl of Seabrook. I’ve come to warn the Duke of Blackmoor that the enemy approaches from the south.”
The stick sword wavered and began to drop. “You’re not supposed to laugh about it.” Narrowing one eye, Nicholas raised the stick again. “What proof do you offer?”
Jon held out a round, flat stone with a curious gouge across the middle. “I have a talisman given to me by the Duke of Blackmoor himself, when last we met.” A giggle freed itself.
“How do I know you didn’t steal the talisman?” Nicholas leaned closer. Brilliant sunlight reflected like an orange candle flame off his hair. “You look like one of those barbarous southerners with your black hair and black eyes.”
Gales of laughter nearly rocked Jon off his feet. “Better a barbarian than a ginger-haired buffoon.” He pulled a short stick from beneath his coat and jabbed it at his brother like a dagger, touching him on the chest. Had it truly been a weapon he’d have struck a killing blow.
Nicholas fell forward, thrusting his stick toward Jon’s middle.
“Aieee…” shrieked Jon, falling to the side and rolling onto his back. “You’ve killed me.”
Nicholas dropped next to him with a low moan.
The clearing fell silent save for the titter of some finches in the gorse bushes.
“When I’m the Duke of Blackmoor, I plan to expand the Seabrook land.” Nicholas pushed himself up on one elbow and gazed over at Jon. “It’s not fair that I inherit everything and you get such a small amount of land because I was born two years ahead of you.”
Jon rolled to a sitting position and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me. Blackmoor can keep all the land.” He stared out over the valley, taking in the green hills dotted with black-faced sheep. “I’m not meant for here.” Ever since he’d returned from a trip south with their father, Jon had wanted to go back there. One day… one day.
The hills blurred… the sheep disappeared as Jon blinked away the memory. Yes, indeed. One day. And mayhap that day had arrived. With the fulfillment of his inheritance terms, he would have the ability at long last to pursue his dream of starting a shipping company. The notion of journeying to distant lands fascinated him. And if Annabella truly found him objectionable, his time spent away from her when he traveled might make their marriage tolerable.
But until then, he’d have to make certain their marriage remained intact. And that meant conversing with the woman who had probably cursed his name to the devil and back for the past couple of hours. He turned around and started for Blackmoor Hall at a slightly less punishing pace.
****
The servants had done a fair job of surreptitiously watching her. Oh, by all means, please follow me around. It certainly wouldn’t do if Lord Seabrook’s bride got lost in her new home — or worse, got caught making off with the family treasures. And she’d certainly seen plenty of those. If the oil paintings and marble sculptures prominently displayed in every room she’d poked her head into were any indication, Lord Seabrook apparently had plenty of feathers to fly with. Or was it only family money? Annabella snorted. Perhaps her husband was purse-pinched. That might explain the harrowing ride on the mail coach.
Well, she certainly wouldn’t have to worry about finances in the foreseeable future. She smiled as she crept through the salon toward the rear of the house. No one would find the banknotes where she’d hidden them under the mattress.
Each step across the plush carpet molded it around her satin slippers like a crimson caress. Portraits hung at intervals along the wall, stern faces she didn’t recognize, except a couple bore a resemblance to Seabrook without his irritating grin. She shivered. It must be some sort of ancestral gallery. On the stone wall at the far end of the salon hung a long leather shield decorated with metal knobs around the edge. A simpler version of the family crest sculpted over the door to the castle had been tooled into the leather. A lethal set of medieval battle axes formed an X on the stone wall to the left. On the opposite side, a pair of battered broadswords mimicked the placement of the axes. A shudder raced through her. Had some ancestor of Seabrook wielded these weapons in battle? Had the cold metal armaments tasted human flesh as they delivered mortal blows?
She turned to the right, anxious to remove herself from the deadly tools. The hallway was narrower. Charcoal sketches and small paintings clung to the walls on both sides, spaced between lit sconces, which provided only light enough to negotiate. She paused in front of a drawing of three women standing in a meadow, dresses fluttering about their feet, dark hair cascading over their shoulders. Two of them seemed to be plucking bows while the third looked on.
“Well, they certainly do like weaponry here,” she murmured.
As she took another step forwar
d, candlelight danced off a modest oil painting of a black-haired woman standing alone in a field. A pale cream dress in the fashion of a previous generation kissed the ground, completely obscuring her feet. Her hair was piled on top of her head, but she wore no hat, and Annabella could almost feel the wind rifling through the dark curls framing her face. A bow had been slung over her back and just showed above her right shoulder. She cradled a gleaming silver arrow in the crook of her right elbow like one would an infant. But it was her grin that halted Annabella’s next breath.
Seabrook’s grin.
“I’ve married into a family of grinning jackanapes.” With a sigh, Annabella moved on.
The door at the far end was the first she’d seen that hadn’t been open.
She’d had never liked closed doors… never appreciated being told she must stay out. The smooth oak cooled her palm as she defiantly pushed on it. Surely the staff wouldn’t follow her through. But she glanced over her shoulder nonetheless. Seeing no one, she shut the heavy door with a firm click, turned, and surveyed her surroundings.
The room overpowered. It loomed around her, intimidating. Bookshelves lined every wall from the floor to the ceiling, making the study seem much smaller than it was. Although several lamps shined and the curtains were drawn back, the dark décor seemed to cast everything in a dominating shadow. Yet, it didn’t seem dim, just… depressing, not happy.
Nothing at all like Seabrook.
Annabella tried to picture him sitting at the oversized mahogany and bronze writing desk, but she simply couldn’t imagine him working in such a study. At least not the Seabrook who’d stayed at the cottage. But what of the Seabrook who had grown up at Blackmoor Hall? Did he enjoy living there? Now that they were married, would they live there together, or did he have a home of his own?
She shook her head. Why should she care? It wasn’t as if she’d be with him very long, so why worry overmuch about it?
Her heart seemed to drop just enough to make her stomach flutter. The sensation was foreign. Something she’d never experienced before. Disappointment? No, that couldn’t possibly be. She was just anxious about being caught snooping was all. Would one of the servants alert Seabrook that she had invaded what was obviously a very private room?
I should leave. But she didn’t want to. She was doing nothing wrong. Besides, as her inconvenient husband seemed so fond of reminding her, she was Lady Seabrook.
With a sigh, she moved to the matching mahogany armchairs in front of the desk. Exotically sculpted griffins with their wings thrown back as if holding up the armrests dominated the chairs. Annabella trailed her fingers over one of the carvings. Each feather had been etched out with precise detail. Her hand continued up to the head. The cold bronze stood in sharp contrast against the smoother wood of the rest of the body.
She glanced behind the desk to the window. A bronze pedestal stood on each side, but the bright sunlight streaming through the glass made it difficult to make out the figures on top of the stands. Transfixed by curiosity, Annabella stepped around the desk to get a closer look. The pedestal on the left held a wolf statue. “Oh!” Annabella jerked backward and shied away. The animal seemed to be leaping off the stand, teeth bared, eyes intent on his prey — her.
She stepped to the other pedestal. No less intimidating was the griffin. Wings expanded, beak open, it appeared to be swooping down on her. They were both breathtaking and frightening at the same time.
She backed up until the desk chair stopped her. With a final glance at the statues, she sat at the desk. Everything was quite neatly arranged. The writing dais held a fresh brown blotter. A pewter sculpture of a griffin’s leg and foot to the right of the platform turned out to be an inkwell with several quills resting in tiny receptacles around the base.
Annabella caught her breath. “I can send a letter to London,” she whispered. Surely one of the servants would be willing to earn an extra bit of coin to post the letter from the mail depot in Coventry. She frowned. How could she work out the problem of sending Juliet some funds with which to return to Wyndham Green? Would the servant know how to handle the matter?
Seabrook would know.
She didn’t want to involve him. She still had no idea as to his intent. Why hadn’t he simply held his tongue when Vicar Hamilton had discovered them at the brook? He couldn’t possibly want to be shackled to her any more than she desired the union.
She opened the narrow drawer beneath the writing dais. Fine ivory-toned paper had been stacked inside as though waiting for her. Her shoulders relaxed for perhaps the first time since her untimely marriage, and she smiled as she lifted out a fresh sheet, smoothing it on the blotter in front of her. Then she chose a quill. Gracious, she’d never seen one so fine. The underside of the quill shaft had been stripped of the soft black feathers and the ones left along the top had been trimmed, squared off. The tip was sturdy, far superior to any she’d written with in her lifetime. The quill had to have come from a black swan. Only swans’ quills were so sturdy and yet with such a fine tip. She dipped it into the griffin’s foot, pleased to find the well filled with black ink.
She placed the tip of the quill to the paper, paused, and lifted it again. Should she address the note to “Annabella” or to Markwythe? The idea of writing to her stepbrother in the guise of her mother left a bad taste in her mouth. He’d know. He already knew she’d sent an imposter. The quill tickled as she brushed it along one cheek. Aunt Charity! Her aunt would see that “Annabella” received her message. She had to warn her friend and help her leave London.
She set the quill to the paper again.
“Please don’t do that.”
Annabella jumped, jamming the quill into the paper. Ink spilled from the snapped feather, and she let out a curse. Then she narrowed her eyes at the annoying man standing in the doorway.
“Seabrook, it’s terribly rude to sneak up on someone,” she mumbled. “If I had one prayer it would be for the devil to put me out of my misery and take you now!” She looked up and caught his somber expression. Her breath hitched.
“Annie, please don’t.”
How could she answer when she had no idea what he meant?
“Annabella, please.” Jon touched her arm. Liquid warmth ran up her arm and exploded in her heart. Her heart? At his touch?
The breath left her lungs and she jerked away. But something in his face… his eyes… gave her pause. A part of her wanted to confess everything to him. Beg him to help her. But she was still so angry at him for allowing Vicar Hamilton the knowledge he’d compromised her so they’d have to get married…
“Don’t what?” she asked, injecting a chill into her tone.
“Don’t alert your friend to the fact that you’ve been found out,” he said simply.
“Seabrook, I—”
“Annabella, for once in your life— I’m sorry.” He ran one hand through his hair. “I believe it is past time we had a conversation.”
“A conversation about… what precisely?”
Seabrook eased into the room, wariness gleaming in those nearly black eyes that he kept locked on her. “I sent Grey a message — the morning after my arrival at Wyndham Green. He was…” He shrugged. “…concerned regarding your welfare. I dispensed with his concern by confirming his suspicions that you were, in fact, not in London, and I assured him of your wellbeing.”
Horror chilled her blood. “You knew?” she murmured slowly, trying to work it out as she spoke. “All that time and you knew who I was? I thought the vic—” She shook her head. “Why did you let—” A purple mist swamped her vision.
“Annie!” barked out Seabrook, startling her with the alarm in his voice.
Breathe! Annabella inhaled sharply and the room cleared. Seabrook leaned in close and she retreated another step, rapping her ankle on something hard. Frowning, she glanced down at the griffin’s pedestal.
“Did you find it amusing to have me acting as your maid?”
Seabrook quickly glanced away. Not so f
ast, however, that she didn’t catch the twitch of his lips and the merry little twinkle in his eyes. Fury swarmed through her veins.
“You horrid, wretched, vile—” She rolled her hands into fists. If she could get just one good strike in before he reacted, it would be worth whatever he might do to her. “I’m not some pathetic child to be toyed with like — like—” She broke off with a gasp. A message to Markwythe! Juliet!
Seabrook made an impatient slicing gesture in the air. His dark eyes hardened into black onyx. “I never considered you someone to be trifled with. I wasn’t certain who you were. And I didn’t know for certain who was calling herself Annabella in London. I suspected, but I didn’t know at the start.” He took a step forward, crowding her against the window. The air between them became charged.
“Why did you say nothing?”
“I—” He pulled a hand down his face, drew in a deep breath, and shook his head. “I can’t answer that. I… don’t know.”
Annabella willed her heart to slow its incessant charge against her chest. He didn’t know? What manner of answer…? She stole a closer look. She must have gone mad, for he looked almost… vulnerable.
“What reason do you have for asking me to refrain from contacting Juliet?”
“Your broth—” He sighed. “I merely confirmed to his grace that the lady in London is not you and that you are unharmed. He has no idea she is the daughter of a servant. When I left he was… tolerating her presence. I think she fascinates him, actually. And I do not believe the two of you intended… harm. If you send your missive…”
Markwythe will know. Already does know. A message would compound their deception and it might cause him to go harder on Juliet.
“What am I to do? I cannot just leave her there,” snapped Annabella.
Kay Springsteen Page 16