Dark Temptation

by CHASE, ALLISON

  Sophie’s eyes went wide as Kellyn arced a familiar weapon in the air. ‘‘The espada ropera,’’ she answered.

  ‘‘Very good. You impress me.’’

  ‘‘Chad discovered it in an old tunnel beneath the house.’’ A sense of foreboding sent her backward until her spine pressed against the wall. ‘‘What are you doing with it?’’

  A feline smile curled Kellyn’s lips. ‘‘He didn’t discover this in any tunnel.’’ Assuming a fencer’s stance, she flourished the rapier and sliced at the air in front of her. ‘‘Such balance. The craftsmanship is extraordinary. Look at the hilt. Have you ever seen such a perfect fit?’’

  ‘‘I think you should put it down. It belongs to Chad.’’

  ‘‘Oh, no, Sophie, you’re wrong about that. This sword never belonged to Chad. Never truly belonged to his father, either. How could a thing of such beauty ever belong to any man?’’

  Sophie felt the walls of the room close in around her, cutting off the supply of air to her lungs. Her stomach clenched around a dawning dread. The rapier’s hilt appeared custom-made to the size and shape of Kellyn’s hand. A woman’s hand.

  This was not the sword Chad had found in the tunnel. This was its mate, the one he said had gone missing from the house. The one that had belonged to the ruthless pirate Meg Keating.

  Chapter 24

  ‘‘There’s the vicar’s curricle.’’ Barnaby Gordon extended a muscular arm to point. ‘‘They must be inside.’’

  The other two men following behind, Chad spurred Prince through Edgecombe’s open gates. Before the horse came to a full halt Chad’s feet hit the cobbles. He burst through the front door and shouted Sophie’s name.

  A feeble voice answered. ‘‘Lord Wycliffe?’’

  ‘‘Rachel!’’ He bounded to the foot of the stairs. Lying diagonally across the steps, she reached for the banister and attempted to sit up. Her other hand cradled the back of her head. She groaned. Chad slipped an arm about her shoulders and helped her upright. ‘‘Don’t try to move too quickly. What happened? Where are Sophie and the vicar?’’

  ‘‘My head . . .’’ Fingers rubbing back and forth through her hair, she winced. ‘‘Where am I?’’

  ‘‘You’re at Edgecombe. Don’t you remember?’’

  ‘‘Oh . . . yes. I . . .’’

  Gordon’s heavy footsteps drowned out her words. The farmer let go a string of curses as he crossed the hall and knelt at his daughter’s feet. ‘‘Are ye all right? What’s the bastard done to ye, girl?’’

  She winced and let out another groan.

  ‘‘It appears she’s been knocked unconscious,’’ Chad said.

  ‘‘I’ll kill him,’’ her father vowed.

  ‘‘Kill who?’’ She blinked several times.

  ‘‘Whoever hit ye, lass, that’s who.’’

  ‘‘Someone came up behind me. I didn’t see who it was.’’

  Reese strode into the hall and took in the scene. ‘‘Where is that bloody vicar?’’

  ‘‘Do you know where he and Sophie went?’’ Pushing to his feet, Chad stood poised to run. Every moment mattered; every second he lingered potentially placed Sophie in greater danger.

  Rachel shook her head. ‘‘Sophie left us first. She went in there.’’ She pointed toward the drawing room. ‘‘And then Mr. Hall went that way.’’ She gestured toward the dining hall. ‘‘He heard a noise and went to investigate. I waited a few moments and wandered after him. I didn’t like being left alone. But then I heard a sound on the staircase. I didn’t even have time to turn around. I felt a dreadful pain, and . . . and all went black.’’

  ‘‘What was Sophie doing in the drawing room?’’ Chad asked.

  ‘‘No, the library. That’s where she said she was going.’’

  ‘‘The library?’’ Foreboding sank to the pit of his stomach. ‘‘What was she doing in there?’’

  ‘‘I . . . I don’t know. She wouldn’t say, exactly. She—’’

  ‘‘Never mind.’’ He left her and strode into the north wing. The library door stood open, but he saw no sign of Sophie. As he returned to the hall, a moving shadow on the terrace seized his attention.

  Readying his pistol, he eased across the floor to the dining hall threshold. He peered inside to discover the terrace door swinging gently on its hinges. Just beyond, a shoe and a dark trouser leg lay at an awkward angle across the paving stones.

  Chad dashed outside to find the vicar sprawled on his back. Blood caked his hair and right temple. For a split second disbelief held Chad immobile. If the vicar lay here, unconscious, who had Sophie?

  Then he crouched and tapped the man’s shoulder several times. ‘‘Tobias. Wake up.’’

  The vicar’s eyes opened and then scrunched closed. Hall rubbed them with one hand, flinching when his fingers strayed to the wound on his brow. He ran his other hand over the paving stones beside him. ‘‘My spectacles . . .’’

  Seeing a flash of reflected cloud from beneath a holly bush, Chad retrieved the glasses and set them on the vicar’s nose. ‘‘What happened?’’

  ‘‘The blighter hit me with the butt of my own pistol,’’ Tobias said through chattering teeth as Chad helped him sit up.

  ‘‘Who did? And where’s Sophie?’’

  ‘‘Your damned groundskeeper, that’s who. At least, I think he did. He took my pistol . . . the rest is a blur. I can’t tell you what became of Miss St. Clair.’’

  Chad sat back on his heels. ‘‘Nathaniel hit you?’’

  ‘‘I came outside because I thought I heard voices.’’ The man frowned in concentration. ‘‘They may have been drifting from an open window upstairs, now that I think of it. I’m . . . no longer certain . . . but Nathaniel stepped out behind me. I thought little of his sudden appearance—he does work here after all, so I didn’t take a defensive stance. The next thing I knew he overpowered me and took my gun. Then I felt the most dreadful pain.’’ Wincing, he touched the side of his head. ‘‘Hurts like the dickens.’’

  ‘‘This doesn’t make any sense.’’ Nathaniel, turned violent? Chad couldn’t help but remember how the childlike servant had cowered when Chad had first discovered him in the kitchen.

  Had someone else commanded Nathaniel to attack the vicar? Chad had been so certain about the vicar’s guilt. The herbs. The poison. How else to explain his malady? ‘‘That tea you gave me yesterday. What was in it?’’

  ‘‘Why on earth should that matter at a time like this, my lord? What of Miss Gordon?’’

  ‘‘She received a bump on the head, though not as badly as you. Answer my question.’’

  Tobias held up an empty palm. ‘‘Gingerroot, yarrow, feverfew. A bit of lemon rind.’’

  ‘‘Do you swear?’’

  ‘‘Yes, as a cleric of the Church of England, I swear. What is this about?’’

  Chad hadn’t imagined his symptoms last night or this morning. Something had made him ill in a way he’d never experienced before. If not the tea, then . . .

  The brandy. But no, Kellyn had brought it. . . .

  And she had left it behind specifically for him, according to Rachel. He tried to shake the thought away. To what end would Kellyn have poisoned him? Ellie Rose, her own daughter, claimed Kellyn needed his protection. It made no sense, then, that she might be capable of such an act.

  Besides, had the brandy contained poison, the others would have felt the effects . . . unless the deadly ingredient had been placed in his cup only. Anyone could have slipped it in—Reese, even Gordon. For all he knew the two men had been walking him into a trap earlier with their scheme to overtake the scoundrels on the moor.

  A host of possibilities filled his mind, leaving him confused, drowning in suspicion. He could trust no one: not the vicar, not Nathaniel, not even Kellyn.

  Blood rushing in his ears, he pushed to his feet. ‘‘Reese,’’ he called through the open door. When the man appeared, Chad’s hand curled around the butt of the pistol tucked into his waistban
d. ‘‘The vicar’s been attacked,’’ he said. ‘‘Get him inside and clean the wound.’’

  ‘‘So much for your theory, milord.’’ As the barkeep stepped onto the terrace, Chad watched him for signs of sudden betrayal, but Reese only stooped to help the vicar up.

  Chad preceded them into the dining hall and grabbed a candle in a pewter holder from the sideboard. Circling the table, he snatched the flint and tinderbox from the mantelpiece. ‘‘You and Gordon stay here,’’ he said as Reese and the vicar made their way inside. ‘‘Tend to Tobias and Rachel.’’

  ‘‘Where are you going?’’

  Chad paused in the outer doorway. ‘‘I’ve a notion where I might find Miss St. Clair.’’

  But with whom would he find her? The brigands from the moorland farm? With Grady . . . or Kellyn? With no way of knowing, he bounded across the terrace, descended the steps two at a time and sped off toward the hothouse.

  In her dream Sophie felt the ocean pitching beneath her, tossing her about like a piece of driftwood. A sharp wind sent needles across her face. Her stomach roiled with the rhythm of the swell, while the bitterness of brine coated her nose and mouth. The back of her head throbbed.

  Knowing it was a dream didn’t help. With each cresting wave her panic escalated. Would she be dragged out to sea? Sucked down by the Devil’s Twirl? Dashed against the rocks? Chad should have been here by now. Should have kissed her awake, taken her in his arms and whispered reassurances in his smooth, rich voice. A voice that spoke directly to her heart, her soul.

  Any moment now he would gently wake her and they would make love, bury their fears in shared ecstasy. With the joining of their bodies and hearts they would thrust away mistakes and lies and danger. Any moment now . . .

  She struggled to conjure him. To fill her dream with his essence and his strength. But she remained alone, all alone in the great, heaving sea. Oh, it was her own fault. She had pushed him away. Called him a liar.

  But hadn’t she also lied after a fashion, insisting she could never trust him, never love him again?

  Sophie. Open your eyes.

  For an instant her heart leaped. But no. Though eerily similar to Chad’s, the voice belonged to his father’s restless spirit. In the library Lord Wycliffe had tried to convey a vital message: a mere fire hadn’t killed him.

  She struggled to open her eyes, but her lids felt as though they were weighted with lead sinkers. The ache in her head intensified.

  Fight, Sophie!

  Using all of her strength, the whole of her will, she achieved narrow slits. Brooding clouds billowed above her. The white bellies of gulls flashed and darted in dizzying circles. To her left a wall of granite edged her vision. Her hands groped for purchase on a rough wooden surface. A splinter jammed her middle finger and sent pain shooting up her hand.

  This was no dream.

  Murmuring voices competed with the waves and the cries of the gulls. Voices she knew. Trusted. Or had. She tried turning her head from side to side, wincing at the pressure against a tender spot beneath her hair. Curved wooden planking framed the sky above her and a single mast swung in and out of her vision. She was lying at the bottom of a small sailboat.

  A series of images flashed in her mind. The rapier. A harried march across the gardens. A dark and winding tunnel. Then a burst of light. Clouds. Waves. A sunburned face framed in wild auburn hair. The Irish mariner. Then she’d experienced a burst of pain, and blackness. Had she dreamed it all? Had the message Lord Wycliffe tried to communicate in the library proved true, or had her imagination conjured it all?

  The boat dipped, and a figure filled her view. A figure draped in gold-and-crimson silk, looking down on her in triumph.

  Sophie forced a word past her lips, little more than a croak. ‘‘Meg.’’

  Chad groped his way through the tunnel, the flickering candle sending grotesque shadows dancing at the corners of his vision. At times he thought he glimpsed the ragged little form he’d come to know so well, and thought he heard the whisper of her small feet against the ground behind him. But he knew now that it wasn’t ghosts he needed to fear. The true danger resided in the hands of the living.

  Pale light seeped from ahead. His lungs burning, he blew out the candle, set it down and pulled his pistol from his waistband. Then he crept toward the mouth of the cave, ready to shoot if necessary.

  The opening in the cliff face formed a jagged frame around a scene that froze the blood in his veins, for all that he had anticipated it. Grady’s sailboat was no longer chained to the breakwater. Though its sail remained tightly furled, the little vessel heaved up and down in the waves, fighting seaward against the incoming tide.

  The Irishman stood at the center of his small craft, using an oar to guide it past the rocks just off the beach. Far out across the water, barely discernible on the hazy horizon, a ship waited. High on its main mast a red and black topsail nudged the sky. His pulse racing, Chad went still, arrested by the sight and trying to make sense of the situation. Once Grady reached open water and unfurled his sail, he would reach the ship in a matter of minutes.

  The mariner leaned low for a moment, and Chad spotted Kellyn—who had claimed not to know where Grady was. She was sitting at the bow. But where was Sophie?

  The boat dipped into the hollow of a wave, and he detected a scrap of russet on the deck. What had Sophie been wearing this morning? A carriage dress. Yes, a russet broadcloth carriage dress.

  He waited another moment, willing Kellyn to disprove his suspicions by grabbing the second oar from the deck and using it to topple Grady into the waves. But she didn’t. She sat still, hands braced on the seat on either side of her as the boat pitched and swayed, tugged by the devilishly swirling tides. Chad caught more brief views of Sophie. For every few yards the boat progressed, the forceful waves pushed it back again toward the beach. If he hurried he might be able to wade out to them before they reached open water.

  He cocked his pistol, took aim and stepped from the mouth of the cave. ‘‘Grady!’’

  The ruddy face turned in his direction at the same time a blow struck between Chad’s shoulder blades. The force sent him to his knees. At a shout from the dinghy a boot swung into Chad’s vision and kicked the pistol from his hand. His fingertips exploded in pain. The weapon flipped end over end until it clattered onto the rocks of the curving breakwater. A second shouted order sent a worn pair of trousers streaking past. Chad blinked and discovered his own pistol pointing at his chest.

  ‘‘Nathaniel, no.’’

  The servant said nothing as he made his way back from the foot of the breakwater. He merely aimed the pistol and stared into Chad’s eyes with his own faded brown ones.

  Infinitely worse, however, was that the voice commanding Nathaniel didn’t belong to Grady. It belonged to Kellyn.

  His friend. His father’s friend. This proof of her treachery pierced Chad through.

  ‘‘He means to hurt us, Nathaniel,’’ she shouted. ‘‘You must fire the pistol to stop him!’’

  ‘‘You don’t want to do that, Nathaniel,’’ Chad countered in as calm a voice as he could muster. ‘‘Kellyn is mistaken. I am your friend. I make certain you’re home before dark, don’t I? Would I do that if I wished to harm anyone?’’

  ‘‘Only by day.’’ The man stopped at point-blank range a few feet away.

  ‘‘That’s right, Nathaniel. I’ll see to it you are home by nightfall.’’ He held out his hand. ‘‘Why don’t you give me that thing so you don’t hurt yourself.’’

  ‘‘Shoot him, Nathaniel!’’

  ‘‘Don’t like pulling the trigger.’’ An expression of pained reluctance crept across Nathaniel’s face. ‘‘Hurts my ears. Didn’t want you to pull the trigger. Might have hurt the lady.’’

  Chad wanted to blurt that Kellyn deserved to be hurt, but a softening in Nathaniel’s face led to quite a different notion. ‘‘You mean Sophie? You were afraid I might hurt Sophie if I fired, weren’t you? That’s why you hit me.’’


  ‘‘Mustn’t hurt the lady.’’

  ‘‘Did you attack the vicar?’’

  Nathaniel shook his head and pointed to the boat. ‘‘I took the gun. He hit the vicar.’’ His voice plummeted to a whisper. ‘‘He’s a bad man.’’

  ‘‘Damn it, Nathaniel, shoot!’’ Kellyn gestured into the air with a lengthy object that reflected the pewter gleam of the clouds.

  The rapier he had found beneath the house? Chad pondered the revelation for the briefest instant. Holding his breath, he stared into the end of his own pistol. From the corner of his eye he saw the sailboat change direction.

  ‘‘She’s coming.’’ The servant’s gnarled fingers tightened around the butt of the weapon. ‘‘She’s angry.’’

  ‘‘Quick, Nathaniel, hand me the pistol. I can protect you from her.’’

  The hull scraped the rocky humps protruding from the water. Kellyn’s red hair fluttered like flames around her shoulders as she stood up. The rapier dangled from her right hand. With her left she lifted her skirts and prepared to climb out of the boat.

  ‘‘She’s coming!’’ Nathaniel’s body spasmed and the gun went off. The report echoed against the cliffs. The shuddering blast knocked Chad off his feet.

  He landed on his back on the beach’s pebbled surface. The fall stunned him, and a second or two passed before he determined that he hadn’t been hit. That Nathaniel could have missed him at such close range seemed a miracle, one he hadn’t time to ponder. He rolled to his feet . . .

  . . . and saw what had thrown Nathaniel’s aim so wide of the mark—what continued to hold him spell-bound. At the mouth of the cave pallid light and ashen shadow mingled and swarmed, gathering in an image so translucent it might have been no more than the water’s reflection, except that Chad recognized the size and shape of the figure it formed.

  Nathaniel stood immobile but for the quivering smile forming on his lips. His hand went slack and the pistol dropped. Chad wasted no time. Scrambling to get his feet under him, he launched himself at the weapon. He skidded headlong across the wet rocks, seized the gun in both hands and sprang to his feet.