Dark Temptation

by CHASE, ALLISON

  He had spoken from his heart when he told her their lovemaking connected them as nothing else could. But someday, perhaps soon, she would learn that she had forged that extraordinary, sacred bond with a criminal, with the sort of villain from whom he had claimed to wish to protect her.

  The truth would horrify her, not merely because of what he had done in the past, but for letting her believe that he was an honest man. A man who deserved the precious thing he had taken from her.

  Stolen, essentially, with his lies.

  He might have used the opportunity moments ago to tell her everything. Have it out and done with, and grant her the justice of slapping his face, calling him every unpleasant name she could think of and wishing him to the devil.

  He simply hadn’t found the courage—not to watch her walk away from him forever, nor to rip the joy of their lovemaking out from under her. He might deserve that sort of pain, but she did not, especially not today.

  His chest constricting, he watched her climb the sloping gardens and disappear into the house. Good. She would find Nathaniel and go home where she belonged. God willing, she would be safe there. Her uncle might not be the most trustworthy of men, but Chad didn’t think he would deliberately harm a member of his family. The Cornish were fierce when it came their kin.

  He started to return to the tunnel when a stooping figure exiting the carriage house sent him hurrying outside. ‘‘Nathaniel!’’ he called. The servant halted with a bemused expression.

  ‘‘I have a guest up at the house,’’ Chad said when he reached him. ‘‘Miss St. Clair. I want you to wait for her in the hall and escort her home when she leaves. Can you do that?’’

  ‘‘Aye. The horse is tended. I’ll escort the lady home.’’

  ‘‘See that she arrives safely. Afterward you may go home also, even if she bids you to come back to Edgecombe. I won’t need you again today after all.’’

  Without another word the servant shuffled away. Chad returned to the hothouse and, with the lantern in hand, lowered himself into the tunnel. Gripped by a sense of the morning’s events repeating themselves, he proceeded slowly through the moldering darkness. Trying to muffle his footsteps, he hunched as he walked, his muscles coiled to run if need be—if he discovered he was not alone or if the timbers holding up the ceiling suddenly gave way.

  This morning he might have been forever sealed in a tomb already inhabited by two souls from long ago. Sophie had saved him then, but what could happen now, in this tunnel? If he became trapped, what cries might he hear echoing from the past? Those of desperate, dying pirates? Of victims? Would his own shouts of remorse blend with theirs to ride the ocean winds and frighten the villagers in their beds at night?

  He pressed on, trudging much farther than he had in the previous tunnel. Fifty yards, a hundred. He lost count of his paces. Without his lantern the darkness would be profound. Even with its scanty glow the walls and ceiling closed around him as if to swallow him whole.

  A stale whiff of brine wafted from ahead. He had come to associate that odor with death, and with the gruesome image of a drowned girl rising up to demand his help. Again he thought of the other tunnel, and of the odd, wispy noise that had drawn his attention to the hidden trapdoor.

  Sophie had wished to know how he had found that entrance, and in truth he didn’t know. Since that night on Blackheath Moor he had tried to convince himself he’d dreamed the little ghost. But more than once these past few days he seemed to have been guided by a force he couldn’t explain. It had led him to the chapel last night with Sophie in his arms. It had even, perhaps, helped him crawl through the gap in the cave-in. He’d gotten stuck, then suddenly slid through as if pushed. . . .

  Could his little ghost be real? Could she be guiding him? But to what end?

  In midstep he froze, his lantern illuminating crouching shapes some dozen yards ahead. His heart careened into his chest as one of those shapes seemed to move. No sound came but for the distant hiss of the sea, and, creeping closer, he realized the movement had been an illusion created by the erratic beams from his lantern.

  Continuing onward, he reached out to tug draping fabric from a pile of crates. A yank on another cloth revealed a cluster of barrels crowded against the wall. His pulse raced. On either side of him, countless containers of various sizes lined the passage, leaving a walkway down the middle wide enough to admit one man at a time.

  So much for a cessation of smuggling in Penhollow, as the vicar had claimed. How long had this cache been here? Had Sophie’s midnight ship brought it in, while Chad’s unexpected arrival at Edgecombe had foiled plans to transfer the goods inland?

  When he had entered into the smuggling conspiracy, part of the bargain had been that Edgecombe would not be used. What a fool he’d been to think his wishes would be respected, as if the men he’d dealt with possessed a sense of honor and fair play.

  Another thought rose up to grip him around the throat. Had his father known? Had he given his permission, as with the vault beneath the church? Or had whoever used this tunnel done so only after Franklin died? Then another, more disturbing doubt arose, one he had contemplated days ago but had found no good reason to pursue.

  Had his father’s death been an alcohol-induced accident, as reported, or something more sinister?

  Chad knelt to shine his lantern on the letters stenciled across a cask. CHATEAUROUX, it read. The names of other French towns emblazoned the crates and barrels around him. Had the goods been smuggled in from France through the age-old Cornish practice of fair trading, or had they been seized by more violent means?

  Killed for the cargo.

  He lurched to his feet as the whisper curled about his ear. Holding his lantern high, he looked up and down the tunnel, searching for . . . a ghost? He lowered the lamp, knowing he should feel foolish for entertaining the notion, but unable to shake the sudden chill that raised gooseflesh down his back.

  The far-off lapping of waves drew him past the stacked booty; he followed twists and turns until the tunnel gave way to a natural cave. Shrill winds coursed in off the nearby water to shriek along the jagged walls. The reek of seawater became stronger, more pungent. Brightening light from ahead rendered the lantern unnecessary. He set it down and kept going.

  In the bend of a sharp turn a half dozen torches set on poles leaned against the cave wall. He picked one up and sniffed the scent of oil emanating from the charred rushes. Were these Sophie’s altered harbor lights?

  An opening ahead brought him out onto a rocky ledge. Beside it a high natural breakwater curved inward toward the cliffs to form a tiny inlet, concealed to boats passing in the channel waters.

  Beyond the rocks on which he stood, a narrow, pebbled beach spanned the inlet. Where the cove opened onto the wider expanse of the sea, the treacherous currents of the Devil’s Twirl churned the waters. Such a tide would persuade most, but perhaps not all sailors to steer a wide berth around this area, rendering the inlet that much more invisible. Invisible enough to hide a small boat, such as the one that filled Chad’s vision and raised a maelstrom of questions.

  Chained to a spike driven into the rocks of the breakwater, Grady’s sailboat bobbed up and down in the waves.

  Sophie averted her gaze from Chad’s four-poster bed as she struggled into her petticoats and corset and stepped back into her dress. She had no wish to confront the twisted jumble of coverlet and sheets that marked the deepest connection and most genuine trust she had ever shared with another human being. Though glorious beyond imagining, neither the connection nor the trust had proved any more enduring than the fading golds of a moorland sunset.

  The truth that had dogged her from the hothouse draped like a shroud across her heart. Lovemaking had brought her and Chad no closer than before, had banished none of the brooding shadows that so often fell between them. He continued to present as enigmatic a facade as ever, his inner self protected behind a sheer cliff face she could neither breach nor scale.

  The grim fact left her b
ereft and made her wonder how she could have relinquished her maidenhead so blithely to a man of whom she knew so little.

  What was he hiding? What did he fear? Or did he simply not feel for her what she felt for him? Would feel, if only he’d stop pushing her away.

  She thought back on their time together . . . and realized something that made her sink onto the edge of the bed. Always his dark moods erupted in response to her probing into the matter of harbor lights, mysterious ships and the question of possible smuggling here in Penhollow.

  He had found the tunnel beneath Edgecombe’s cellars, but refused to explain how. Could he also have known the location of the tunnel in the hothouse, and only pretended to discover it today to deceive her?

  He continued to deny being at Edgecombe on that day she first saw him.

  Glancing up, she regarded her reflection in the dresser mirror, beholding features that in the past hour had lost their blissful glow and taken on a wary pallor. Could Chad possibly . . . be involved . . . ?

  No. Wrenching her arms behind her to secure the buttons down the back of her dress, she gave a vehement shake of her head. How could she consider such a notion about a man who had awakened her to the most tender, breathtaking passion?

  She could not believe ill of such a man. Would not. If Chad harbored secrets, she must believe he had good reasons, ones he would eventually share with her as long as she continued to have faith in him.

  Standing, she regarded her reflection again and experienced a ripple of censure. Her dress showed clear signs of having lain in a crumpled heap on the floor. Her hair fell in a tangled mass halfway down her back. She certainly couldn’t return to Aunt Louisa’s in her present state.

  Remembering the dress Chad had found for her following their cliff-climbing escapade, she left his room and began searching the others, hoping to find any semblance of ladies’ toiletries or accessories that might help set her to rights. She discovered them in a room hung with deep crimson draperies accented with gold.

  A dressing table drawer yielded hairpins and a ribbon. Running her fingers through her hair to smooth it, she sat before the mirror and approximated the simple coif she had arranged that morning. Curiosity prompted her to open other drawers. She found silk stockings, brightly colored garters, an elaborately embroidered shawl.

  If this hadn’t been his mother’s room, whose hairpins held her twisted chignon in place? She went to the wardrobe. Dismissing a niggling qualm concerning the ethics of snooping, she threw open the doors. Several dresses hung inside.

  As she sifted through them, her brow wrinkled at the odd variety. There were some whose gaudy fabrics she dismissed as simply being in bad taste. Others were hopelessly out of fashion. In fact, the slashed sleeves and quilted petticoats spoke of an era long past, of a time when the Tudors ruled England and pirates roamed the seas. A notion shivered up her spine. She fingered the stitching of the brocade designs.

  These were no relics from Meg Keating’s day. The fabrics were too fresh and vivid. These dresses had been made much more recently, intended to mimic the antiquated styles. She couldn’t imagine why, unless the wearer knew of Edgecombe’s history and enjoyed playacting, hardly something one would expect of a countess.

  A mistress, then? Perhaps the late Earl of Wycliffe and his paramour had indulged in acting out strange fantasies in his isolated manor. Or . . .

  She clenched her fingers and squeezed her eyes shut, but could not block out the wretched possibility that today she had become merely one more conquest for the present Earl of Wycliffe. Dear God, no, she far preferred to salvage some small part of the day’s joy, rather than be left with nothing but the knowledge that she had acted the fool.

  Yet no matter how hard she tried, she could not entirely dismiss the suspicion raised by those garish dresses.

  ‘‘You don’t belong in here.’’

  With a shriek she slammed shut the wardrobe doors and turned to see Nathaniel hunching in the doorway. She pressed a hand to her throat. ‘‘You startled me. I didn’t know you were in the house. What are you doing above stairs?’’

  ‘‘Looking for my lady. Milord said I must escort you home.’’

  ‘‘I see.’’ The man unnerved her, but she felt fairly certain he wouldn’t harm her. She cast a glance at the closed doors of the wardrobe. ‘‘Nathaniel, how long have you worked at Edgecombe?’’

  ‘‘I did the trimming. Now I cook and tend the horse.’’

  ‘‘Would you know who has used this room? A relative, perhaps?’’

  He shrugged, but a twinge of anxiety flickered in his craggy features.

  ‘‘You’ve nothing to fear,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m simply curious. Has the earl had any . . . lady visitors other than me?’’

  The gaunt shoulders shrank inward. ‘‘Little roses,’’ he whispered. His gaze flitted erratically, as if he saw visions invisible to Sophie. ‘‘No one knows about the roses. Only me.’’

  ‘‘What about the roses, Nathaniel?’’

  ‘‘Roses gone now. All gone.’’

  His puzzling words and his unfocused gaze raised a frisson of fear. He seemed cut off, lost in a world of his own imagining. If she could no longer reason with him, what might he be capable of doing?

  ‘‘It’s all right, Nathaniel. We needn’t dwell on it.’’

  ‘‘Dead and gone to the ground.’’ His attention swerved suddenly back to her, piercing in its intensity. ‘‘Little roses gone away, never to come back.’’

  ‘‘Of course they’ll come back. We’ll plant more.’’

  ‘‘No!’’

  His shout set her feet in motion. Ducking around him, she darted into the corridor and scurried down the staircase. She didn’t slow her pace until she’d cleared Edgecombe’s boundary walls and a backward glance assured her the servant hadn’t followed. She paused to catch her breath before continuing on.

  A gauzy fog blanketed the moors, pooling in the bottomlands, muting the landscape to a dull haze and spreading an eerie calm. The continuing drizzle numbed her face and hands to match her spirits, but she was grateful the weather would be blamed for any dishevelment in her appearance. In a constant reminder of what she had done—of the part of herself she had given away—her thighs smarted with every step. No amount of rain could wash away the discomfort or ease the weight of the doubts pressing in around her.

  Had Chad played her false, not just today, but all along?

  As she rounded a bend in the road, her aunt’s farmhouse rose into view.

  ‘‘Sophie! Sophie, come quick!’’

  Rachel stood outside the gate, waving her arms above her head. At a second shouted hail Sophie broke into a run.

  ‘‘It’s Dominic and Ian,’’ Rachel blurted when Sophie reached her. ‘‘Something’s happened to them. They should have been back by now. Oh, Sophie, it’s been more than an hour. Where can they be? It’s my fault if they’ve come to harm.’’

  Sophie placed a hand on her cousin’s shoulder. ‘‘Slow down and tell me why you believe anything has happened to them.’’

  ‘‘Because I sent Dominic to bring Ian back to the house.’’

  ‘‘Isn’t your father opposed—’’

  ‘‘Yes, but you know he and Mother rode up to Mullion today. So I thought . . .’’ She grabbed Sophie’s arm and started her walking in the direction of the village. ‘‘I know something has happened. I keep thinking of those poor dead men caught in the schooner’s nets yesterday.’’

  Lengthening her stride to keep up with Rachel’s frenzied pace, Sophie believed she understood. With her parents away, Rachel had planned to meet with her beau. But their tryst had never occurred.

  ‘‘Whatever has detained them, I’m certain it can have nothing to do with what happened yesterday. Calm yourself on that account. You know how young men are. They’re probably at Kellyn’s right now, warm by the fire and filling their bellies with oatcakes and ale.’’

  ‘‘No. Not Ian. He would not have wasted a moment
after receiving my message.’’

  At the reference to her brother’s part in the events, Sophie couldn’t help suggesting, ‘‘Perhaps Dominic didn’t deliver the message.’’

  ‘‘Of course he did. He promised. Father might not approve of Ian, but Dominic does. They’re the best of friends.’’

  Sophie said nothing, but she didn’t doubt that her surly cousin would break a promise, even to his sister.

  As if reading her thoughts, Rachel bristled. ‘‘I realize you and Dominic aren’t fond of each other. And perhaps for good reason. He’s so like Father. You wouldn’t be the first person to take a dislike to him. But in his heart of hearts he is a decent man, and he loves me. If anything has happened to him because of me . . .’’

  ‘‘It hasn’t. I’m sure he’s fine.’’

  Rachel chewed her lip. In tense silence they walked on through the misting rain. Smoke from the village chimneys curled into view, rising like dark threads being sewn into the clouds. Movement on the stretch of moorland several yards up ahead drew Sophie’s attention. Expecting to see a deer, she was surprised when a man materialized from the soupy vapors. On unsteady legs he ran onto the road.

  ‘‘It’s Ian!’’ Rachel sprinted forward.

  ‘‘Rachel, stop.’’ Sophie took off after her cousin. At such a distance, and in the rain and fog, the girl couldn’t possibly identify the individual with any certainty. In oilskin and homespun woolens he might have been any ruffian in his cups from an all-night sojourn at Kellyn’s. Or someone to be feared even more.

  Yet in the next instant Sophie realized that had the figure been Chad’s, she would have recognized every line and plane of his physique, the set of his shoulders, the way he moved, even from dozens of yards away.

  Rachel’s instincts proved correct. As they reached the young fisherman, he lurched forward, striking the road hard with his knees. He caught himself from landing on his face by wrapping his arms around Rachel’s waist. His cheek pressed up against her belly, his visible eye swollen shut amid a mass of ominous colors.