Gwenyth’s brows wrinkled in a puzzled frown. “What’s Rafe to do with it?”
Anabel laughed as she floated back into a chair. “Why, Miss Killigrew, Rafe has everything to do with it.”
She motioned for Gwenyth to seat herself, taking over the room again as she had taken over the conversation. Gwenyth found herself slipping into a chair opposite, folding her hands in her lap so as not to strike the condescending smile from Lady Woodville’s lips.
Anabel continued on. “No matter what’s happened in the time he was away, Rafe is a peer’s son and as such, he is expected to behave in a manner befitting his rank and station.”
“They drove him away twelve years ago. Why should he be caring what they think of him now?”
“He should care because they drove him away. He must show them he’s returned a better man. He must assure them he is one of them again. With you by his side, do you think he can really do that? He’ll be driven away again, and this time there will be no homecoming. He’ll be forever an outcast.”
“But marrying you will secure him this glittering future?”
“It will do much to bury the scandal. Before my husband’s death, I ranked high in London Society. With Rafe as my husband I could bring him back into the fold.”
“Or would he be bringing you?” Gwenyth rose, determined to end this conversation. She was in no mood to be playing cat and mouse with Anabel Woodville. “Despite your admiration for straight talk, you’ve done little of it, Lady Woodville. You’ve done a fine job of showing me my unworthy nature and Rafe’s desperate straits should he do the disastrous thing and marry me, but you’ve not even begun to give me an idea of why you’d put yourself out for Rafe in such a way. You gave him nothing but sorrow before. Why should it be different this time?”
Anabel’s face grew waxen beneath the heat of Gwenyth’s stare. “How dare you!”
“I dare because you’ve naught but thought of yourself since Rafe’s arrival. It’s not Rafe’s love you want, nor even his money. It’s what he can do for you. An escape from here back to London, a way out of the drudgery and boredom that are your lot while you remain beneath your parent’s roof.”
Anabel’s gaze narrowed in bitterness. “I’ve been living the life of unpaid companion since Charles had the bad sense to break his neck.” Her green eyes blazed. “I’ll do whatever it takes to gain back the life I lost when my husband died.”
Despite trying to hold tight to her anger, Gwenyth felt it slipping away. She and Anabel were not so different. They both fought for their future. And there was no way to tell if Anabel’s desire for a life with Rafe wouldn’t end in his happiness. It was what he’d wanted. It was the life denied him so long ago. Gwenyth still sensed a slithering air of dread at thinking of the two of them together, but she could acknowledge now that jealousy and not premonition spawned such feelings.
Anabel’s pose of arrogance faltered. “What else is there for me? My penury keeps me tied to Campion Hall, and the lures I used to entice Charles fade with each passing day. I’m thirty now. Not many who can afford me would want me when they might have some sweet, young virgin. I would risk much to find my way back to freedom again. If it takes marriage to Rafe, so be it.”
Giving in to defeat, Gwenyth sighed. “And if Rafe isn’t the man you think him? Thirteen years and a great tragedy stand between the boy you knew and the man he’s become. You risk a greater disappointment if the life you envision is not the life you get.”
A wistful shadow flickered at the corners of Anabel’s eyes, softening the harsh lines of her face. “All is a risk, Miss Killigrew,” she answered slowly. “The trick is having the courage to brave the risk anyway and the faith that no matter what happens, you’re strong enough to overcome. I ask only for a chance at happiness.”
Gwenyth heard herself echoing Anabel’s words. “A chance at happiness?”
“It’s all I seek.”
Gwenyth stiffened her spine. The words she spoke were like acid on her tongue. “The Lord says seek and ye shall find. If you can capture Rafe’s heart, I wish you well with him. I’ll not be standing in your way.”
Chapter 30
Rafe climbed the stairs, the summons to London from DeWinter burning a hole in his pocket. They meant to drag him back, damn them. He’d tried to put the past beyond reach, yet it stretched grasping fingers out to him, threatening to hold him prisoner. Captain Fleming was to be resurrected. DeWinter and the Foreign Office had a use for him, and to hell with what he wanted.
Under any other circumstances, he might have leapt at the chance to escape Bodliam and the mess he’d created. He needed space and time to think. Resettle his bearings. But he knew Gwenyth meant to go. Her eyes and heart already looked to the west. If he left now, she’d be gone upon his return. He felt a black aching despair, a yawning pit of loss beneath his feet. With each moment that passed, the crumbling ground gave way, showing him what awaited him once she was no longer in his life.
He paused at the head of the stairs, debating whether to turn left or right. Left meant a chance to repair the damage done by his drunken rage. Right meant admitting defeat. Knowing that no matter what he said he could never hope to atone, still he found himself passing down the corridor toward her room. He couldn’t have her, but he was loath to think she hated him.
The door to her room stood open. He lifted a hand to knock but the vision before him rooted him to the spot. Gwenyth knelt upon the floor in front of the windows, the long shadows of afternoon pooled around her. Her hair fell across her shoulders and around her face, hiding her sorrow. But she rocked back and forth, her hands gripping her prayer rug, now butchered almost beyond recognition. Pieces of the once-vibrant tapestry trailed upon the floor, the magic destroyed.
She must have sensed his presence. She swung around, her face a mask of bewildered grief.
“It’s ruined. There’s nothing left,” she cried. No tears marked her face. Instead, her gray eyes smoldered dark as storm clouds, a hint of vicious lightning flickering in their depths. “A boy came asking after me. Sent by Mr. Purkiss, he was. The old man was needing his dressing changed and his ankle checked for swelling. I left to tend to him. No more than an hour, mayhap two, I was gone. When I returned…this!”
Her fingers clutched at the remains of the dark center square, a fervent look of desperation on her face as if she awaited something. “It’s no use. ’Tis spoiled, the magic gone.”
Rafe stepped into the room. “Who’s done this?”
Gwenyth shrugged, dropping her hands to her sides in surrender. Her eyes held a shrewd, knowing look, but she said nothing.
He frowned. “You know. Tell me.”
She gave a violent shake of her head. “I’ve no way of knowing.” She refused to look him square in the face, but dodged his questing gaze by dropping her eyes to the remains of her mother’s handiwork. “Pinning blame won’t rework the magic or repair the prayer rug. Morvoren’s work is gone and naught but mere scraps for the rag man.”
A chill draft fluttered the curtains, swirling around Gwenyth, worrying at the pieces of tapestry. The current of air smelled of the dark, hidden places of the forest, earthy and musty with age. But then as if the wind changed direction, it grew tangy and salt-laden like a heavy sea. Gwenyth drew in great breaths of the strange breeze. It seemed to ease her pain and settle the tension stringing her body.
His stomach knotted as she pushed an errant strand of hair behind her ear with one hand, and he spied for the first time the lonely, vulnerable child hidden behind the elegant perfection of her features.
Rafe had the urge to drag her to her feet, kiss away the anger burning behind her eyes, and crush her body against his until the steady thrum of her pulse met and matched his own. He asserted an iron will over such impulses. He’d done that before, and used it as a weapon against her. She’d fear the worst from him now, and who could blame her? Any words he could utter would only confuse her, making her suspicion blossom anew. He’d severed th
e bond between them with his callous brutality. He couldn’t make that right with mere words.
A single bag sat upon the bed. “You pack to leave?”
It was all he could manage to say around gritted teeth. Inane, but it kept him from howling his fury at her refusal to look past her fear to what might be if she only took that leap of faith with him.
Gwenyth’s hands fiddled with the ruins of the weaving. “I take only what was mine upon my arrival. Once I’m back in Kerrow, I’ve no need for such fancy things as I’ve been wearing.”
He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, touching the edge of the letter. Perhaps Gwenyth was right to worry over loving him. Danger already stalked him in the guise of Colonel DeWinter. No job he’d ever entered into for the Foreign Office had been easy—or safe. It could be that his future began to unravel even now, like thread from a spool.
“And so you leave today.” His words were careful, controlled, nothing to show her his true despair. He’d done that in the woods beneath Burhunt Down and gotten only sorrow for his trouble.
“Sophia asked me to stay on for a day or so until His Lordship returns with Dr. MacNeil. I couldn’t refuse her,” she lowered her head, “though I wish with all my soul to be gone.”
Like a stab to the heart, her words pierced Rafe to the core. He hid his suffering beneath a brittle mask of indifference, giving a curt nod of understanding. “It’s a large house, Miss Killigrew. We needn’t see each other again.” And then he turned and was gone to nurse his grief alone.
Wearing naught but his breeches, Rafe sat at the water’s edge, tossing pebbles across the dark surface of the water. He’d spent his agony in hard-swum laps back and forth across the length of the lake, and now leaned against the rocky ledge, gaining back his breath, and trying not to think of Gwenyth. Damn her. If she couldn’t see past her ridiculous fears to accept him, there were others. As if thinking it made it so, a crunch of footsteps sounded on the gravel path. Anabel stood watching him, her admiring gaze tracing a path down his bare chest to rest at his crotch.
Her lips curved in a satisfied smile. “I knew you’d be here. You always came to the grotto to sulk.”
Rafe stood up, tossing the last of his pebbles into the water. “And you always followed after. Not much has changed in thirteen years.”
She approached, hips swaying in invitation, every curve outlined for him by the sheerness of her gown. Anabel was on the hunt. “You’ve changed.” She put a hand out, her fingers barely grazing him as they traced his tattoo’s design. He shivered under her touch, and she laughed. “You feel it too—this pull between us. I knew it from that first moment we saw each other in the gallery.”
When he didn’t pull away, she circled him. Her bold fingers explored the flesh of his shoulder. He felt her eying his scars as she caressed the heavy ridged skin of his back. “You poor tortured darling. You suffered so much because of me. Had I only known I’d have—”
“Married me and not Charles?”
She faced him again, her hands splayed on his chest. “I was going to say I’d never have led you on for so long. We were children playing at grown-ups, you and I. It would never have worked then.” She leaned forward, her lips brushing his ear. “But that isn’t to say it can’t work now.”
Her perfume reached into his memory, bringing back images of years long gone. Her body was his for the taking. He knew that was why she’d followed him out here. Her need was as great as his own. Gwenyth’s rejection goaded him forward. He’d show her how little he cared.
He crushed Anabel against him, her body melting into his. She gave a squeak of protest, soon silenced by his lips. He raised his head to see desire darkening her eyes. “I came back here, thinking you’d be a settled wife with a brood of children about your feet.”
Anabel twitched, and a look of disgust, gone almost instantly, passed across her flushed features. “Aren’t you relieved I had my ways and now we’re not fettered by a passel of Woodville brats to raise between us?” She ran her fingers through his hair as she rubbed her body against him. “Send your Cornish light skirt home, and we can be free to revel in each other.”
Rafe tensed. “Gwenyth’s no whore.”
Anabel shrugged. “If she’s no whore, neither is she your betrothed. From the start, you and I both knew you’d never go through with such a disastrous marriage, and now she knows it too.”
“What do you mean?” Rafe’s certainty waned under Anabel’s self-satisfied boasting.
“Miss Killigrew and I chatted in her rooms earlier today. She’s come to understand that her presence can only bring you further humiliation. But with me as your wife—Oh, Rafe.” She pulled his head down to hers, her lips capturing his in an urgent kiss.
His mind clearing, Rafe responded mechanically to her embrace. Anabel had been in Gwenyth’s rooms. Anabel despised Gwenyth. And what Anabel hated, Anabel destroyed.
The tapestry.
Gwenyth had to have known or at least suspected who had shredded her mother’s weaving, but she’d kept silent. Why? The answer came to him almost before he finished asking the question. He’d convinced her that he and Anabel would wed. She must have assumed that any accusations she made would be regarded as jealousy or spite. And would she have been wrong?
A heavy weight settled in Rafe’s chest as he reached up, pulling Anabel’s arms from around his neck. “You’re right. I have changed. But it’s taken coming home again to show me by how much.”
Anabel’s lips curled into a pout. “What are you talking about?” She tried grabbing Rafe’s hands, but he backed out of her reach.
“I thought I could do it. I really did. I thought I could begin again with you. I was prepared to try.”
Anabel drew herself upright, disbelief and outrage hardening her features. “It’s that peasant trollop,” she sneered. “She has you so confused you don’t know what’s good for you.” As suddenly as it slipped, her mask settled back into place, and Anabel was once again the seductive siren, trying to lure him in. She eased close, her hips sliding against his, allowing him to feel the heat of her body. “Well, I do know, Rafe Fleming,” she purred. “We’ll wed, and I guarantee after one night with me, you’ll forget your little village healer ever existed.”
How could he have been so blind? How had he ever thought they might marry and make a life? It would have been a match made in hell. Anabel hadn’t changed. She was as unfeeling and ruthless as ever. Her hand came up to caress his chest, and Rafe grabbed it. “I said it’s over, Anabel.”
She wiggled to get free, but his fingers only tightened around her wrist.
“All of it. My dreams of you. My dreams of coming back to Bodliam and taking up my old life. That’s just what they were. Dreams. But I’m awake now, and I see what I really am and where I belong.”
Her eyes crackled with green fire. This time there was no effort to hide her true feelings. “You’re mad,” she spit. “Where would you go? What would you do? You aren’t like her, no matter how hard you pretend.”
His earlier fury returned as if the laps of swimming had never happened. Rage over Anabel’s betrayal, held in check for thirteen years, spilled forth, mingling with the fresher, hotter anger over Gwenyth’s rejection. His vision narrowed to a pinprick as it seemed even the blood in his veins rose to a boiling point. He wanted to lash out. Make others feel his hurt. Make others understand even an ounce of the humiliation and anguish he’d suffered.
Anabel’s bones seemed to bend beneath the strength of his grip. Her skin whitened under the pressure. Her gasp of shock and pain checked him only moments before he lost control. Flinging her hand away, he closed his eyes as he sucked in great heaving breaths.
Opening them again, he saw Anabel had backed away, cradling her wrist, fear widening her eyes. “You’re an animal.”
The rage gone as quick as it came, his shoulders slumped in exhaustion. “Goodbye, Anabel. Forever.”
He knew what he hadn’t wanted to face before. He would ride f
or London, but after that, he wouldn’t be coming back. Bodliam was no longer home. With or without Gwenyth by his side, he’d forge a new life somewhere else. He’d started over once. He would do it again.
It was the graveyard watch, close to two in the morning, when Rafe lifted the latch on Gwenyth’s bedchamber door. Refusing to risk a candle, he used the filmy light of a low moon and his own memory to guide him.
It took only a moment to find what he sought, Gwenyth’s valise. His heart thudding so loudly he was sure she could hear it, he unbuttoned the flap and reached in a hand. He knew what he searched for would be within. Even in pieces, the tapestry would never be left behind. His shaking fingers brushed across the soft material of the weaving, folded into a tight bundle. Surely Gwenyth would wake and find him here, and then what would he say? What could he say?
He stilled the unexpected attack of nerves and bent his mind to the task ahead. He’d no time for hesitation. Sliding the tapestry from the bag, he tucked it beneath his arm. With a quick glance at Gwenyth asleep within a shimmering halo of moonlight, he clamped his jaw tight, hardened his heart to his purpose, and crept from her bedchamber, weaving in hand.
Chapter 31
Lord Brampton returned with Dr. MacNeil whose snapping black eyes observed everyone and everything with a keen and penetrating gaze. He questioned Gwenyth about the birth like an inquisitor, His Lordship standing by.
At the end of the conversation, Dr. MacNeil pushed his spectacles up his knife-blade nose, directing his frank stare at Lord Brampton. “You should be extremely grateful to Miss Killigrew. She’s as well trained as any of the young surgeons at the University of Edinburgh, and a damn sight more intuitive. By all accounts, Miss Killigrew saved the child from death or injury. Perhaps Lady Brampton as well.”
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