A Stranger's Secret

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “You don’t like me?”

  “I like you too much.” He ran his thumb across her knuckles. “But I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  “That’s honest, if not fair.” She clung to his hand as though it anchored her. “It’s not fair to me. And yet someone here isn’t trustworthy.”

  “To say the least.” The two-foot-wide table felt like too much of a barricade. He wanted to be holding both her hands, or better yet, have his hands on her waist, against her back, holding her to him.

  Oh, he was lost. He should stand now and retreat. Her clinging to his hand spoke of flirtation now. Her gaze upon his was pleading, a little desperate.

  “Why would anyone want to make me look guilty?” Her words emerged as a low cry.

  “To draw attention from their own guilt?”

  “But that means my grandparents, which is beyond consideration, or else Jago or Tristan are involved. And that makes no sense either. They are of good families and wealthy.”

  “Some men never have enough wealth.”

  He would never have enough of cradling her hand in his or gazing at her lovely face, hearing her rich contralto voice, or inhaling the sweet tang of her lemon scent.

  “Have you considered that the riding officers who searched Penmara are involved?” David asked.

  Or her own parents.

  He should ask her about them again, see if he could get her to admit she knew they were in England. He should tell her he knew.

  “Don’t you think it overly convenient they found evidence seeming to prove your guilt so easily?”

  She grimaced. “As though I would be stupid enough to keep it that close to hand. But, no, I hadn’t considered the officers themselves would be involved. It wouldn’t be the first time those paid to protect are the ones from whom we need protecting.”

  “And we’re both in the way of someone’s plans.” He cupped her hand between both of his, wanting to protect her, not sure if she needed it. “Perhaps you shouldn’t leave here when I go.”

  “Perhaps you should go for your own sake, although”—she added her other hand to his hold of her—“you may be safer here with all of us than wandering Cornwall on your own.” She stroked his hand, tracing her fingers over a serpentine scar across the back.

  “If you want to stay.”

  He couldn’t breathe enough to answer her. A band seemed to squeeze his chest, crushing his bruised ribs.

  “This must have hurt.” She traced the scar again. “How did it happen?”

  “The adz slipped.” His voice sounded like a mere croak. “I don’t remember any pain.”

  “You’re fortunate you didn’t lose your hand.” She ran her thumb from wrist to knuckles, then lifted his hand from hers and kissed the scar.

  A distant warning told David to run, make his excuses and race for the safety of his room.

  Instead, he rose, drawing Morwenna to her feet. “I’ll stay.”

  “I’m sorry you got caught up in all of this.” She cupped the palm of her hand to his cheek.

  He pressed her hand between his face and his own fingers. “I’m not in some ways, like right now.” He lifted her hand from his face, then kissed her fingertips one by one, watching her face for any sign of withdrawal, of protest. When she remained perfectly still, he released her. “I never thought I’d find myself welcome in a house like this.”

  “Welcome except for the little matter of someone poisoning you.” She fluttered her fingers at her sides as though not certain what to do with them. “I would think that would give you a disgust of us, especially me.”

  “Perhaps it should.”

  “Sometimes it does?”

  “Sometimes.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “But not right now.”

  “Right now?” She fluttered her lashes. Unlike her fingers, she knew exactly what she was doing with that luxurious fringe shadowing her eyes.

  When she closed her eyes, he understood she didn’t expect him to reply to her query with words.

  CHAPTER 14

  DAVID WAS KISSING HER. SHE HAD ENCOURAGED HIM TO do so. Still the contact stole her breath. Her head spun, and she clutched his shoulders, buried her fingers in the thick satin of his hair and allowed the contact to last as long as he liked, an interlude far too short and far more intense than she anticipated.

  When he lifted his head, she was too shaken to release him. She dropped her head onto his broad chest and tried to catch her breath.

  “My lady?” He curved one hand around the back of her neck, then slid his fingers into her knot of hair to cup the back of her head. “Morwenna?” He tilted her head up. Their gazes touched, then he kissed her again, longer this time and just as intensely.

  If he hadn’t held her so close, she might have dropped to the floor, her legs useless.

  She had been kissed many times. Too many times. She had been married for nearly a year. She didn’t know this man well enough to be kissing him, and knew of his distrust of her even while he found her as appealing as she found him. He might even be kissing her to soften her into admitting something she couldn’t admit because she was innocent of it. She wasn’t convinced she wasn’t kissing him to soften him into telling her whatever he was keeping from her. Yet this touch of lips, mingling of breaths, the taste of tea, and the solid strength of his arms around her with the gentleness of his hand in her hair, sliced her to her core, opening and unraveling pain and heartache and rage she kept under wraps.

  She knew how to suppress the pain. She had done so too often in her life, letting passion and physical pleasure mask the fear and loneliness of being the one left behind when others sought a better life. She had encouraged David to kiss her for just that reason, she now realized. His swift response told her he was only a step away if she gave the word, a gesture. But she couldn’t go through with it. The unhealed rawness of her heart stung too much for bad behavior to rescue her this time, especially at the expense of a good and godly man.

  Slowly, reluctantly, she released him. Cold washed over her where they had touched. Inside she burned—longing for what she would not take, anger over what she had lost, the boiling up of tears for her grief. She could deny the wanting. She could clamp down the anger. Usually, she could stifle the grief. But the sweetness, the gentle hunger of David’s kiss had torn her heart open too wide for that.

  The first sob rose unbidden. She clamped her teeth together to hold it back. Yet others followed in rapid succession, threatening to choke her if she didn’t let them out.

  No, no, no, she could not, she would not burst into tears in front of him. She couldn’t weep in front of him after enticing him into that embrace. She. Could. Not.

  She pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle the sobs and spun on her heel to flee. Blinded by tears, she ran in the opposite direction of the door and bumbled into the French windows. Her fingers fumbled at the latch. Once, twice, she tried to lift it and failed.

  “It’s locked, my lady.” David’s warm voice with its broad vowels and throaty r’s purred behind her.

  The lock clicked. The door popped open on a blast of cold March night.

  And her tears fell faster. She couldn’t even attempt to stop her weeping now. She had lost control.

  Blinded, she stumbled onto the terrace and across the flagstones to grip the balustrade. She leaned over it as though the cold stone could stop the pain rising inside her like waves on an incoming tide, and with each sob, words emerged, three words again and again. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.”

  He said nothing. He was there beside her, his large hand with its scars of a laboring man resting on her back, warm through her shawl and gown. He remained silent and still beside her, a rock to cling to in the storm of her grief, until her weeping ceased from sheer exhaustion if not an end to the artesian well of her pain. When she fell silent and was able to straighten, he gave her his handkerchief and still said nothing.

  She applied the soft linen to her eyes and nose, managed to bre
athe normally for several moments, then lowered the handkerchief to look up at him.

  Light from the parlor silhouetted his profile, and part of her still quivered. It was such a beautiful profile, his features chiseled strength, a steady stability she so lacked in herself.

  “Thank you.” She swallowed. “That was a wholly humiliating display.”

  “But a long time coming, I’m thinking.” He brushed his scarred knuckles across her cheekbone. “And it’s sorry I am if I caused it.”

  “You? How could you cause it?” She twisted the handkerchief between her hands.

  He bowed his head. “I had no business kissing you. You’re a lady, and I—”

  “I am a lady by birth and marriage.” She pressed her palm against his cheek. “That is where my ladyship ends. My behavior—” She choked on the next word she should say.

  “You have been graciousness itself.”

  “Because I want to know what you know about the wreck.” As she made that confession, she knew exactly how she could keep him from feeling that the kiss was his fault and suffering guilt over it. She knew how she could keep him away from her where she might succumb to temptation again and bring him down to her level of reprehensible behavior. “I am well aware of how my looks affect men, and I tempted you into kissing me.”

  “I am capable of resisting temptation and did not.”

  “And I would have kissed you if you hadn’t kissed me.” She hugged her arms beneath her bust and stepped back far enough to break the contact between them. The physical contact. “I cannot help but suspect you are keeping something from me, and I learned a long time ago that men have a difficult time keeping secrets from a lady they are enamored of in a physical way.”

  In silence, he gazed down at her, his expression inscrutable with the light behind him. Then he sighed and she expected him to condemn her, accuse her of being the immoral woman she thought she had left behind with her marriage and faith.

  “My lady, who’s to say I did not kiss you for the same reason, or would not have embraced you whether or not you encouraged it?” Of all things, his voice held a lightness, as though he smiled.

  Speechless, she stared at him.

  “Why,” he continued, “would you think I am such a weak man that I cannot make these decisions on my own? The truth is, I’ve been wanting to kiss you since I woke to the sight of your beautiful face leaning over me. The wanting has only grown the stronger with more time in your company. That said, I do not believe for a minute that you kissed me to get secrets from me. I have lived my life in a way I hope is pleasing to the Lord, and I am no saint, as none of us are, whether ’tis telling a white lie to remain out of trouble, or kissing a beautiful lady.”

  “I have done a great deal more than kiss handsome men.” If one strategy didn’t work, then she would try another—giving him a disgust of her.

  “Ah, my lady.” The kindness of his voice and ghosting touch of his fingertips on her face nearly brought her to tears again. “There is no degree of sin. We all need forgiveness, is what I’m saying to you. It’s how we go forward once we’ve received the forgiveness that matters. And I’ve seen enough to believe you have not gone forward as you went on in the past.”

  “I might have with you.”

  “But you did not.” He stepped closer so he could cup her chin in his hand and raise her face so, no doubt, he could see her expression in the light spilling from the parlor. “What I’m wanting to know is why you wish to convince me now that you are a lady of loose moral character and not a lady who honors God’s Word in her life that I believe you to be.”

  “Because—” She took a long, shuddering breath. “Because I don’t want you to care for me.”

  “I’m afraid ’tis too late for that already, or do you think I go about kissing ladies for whom I care naught?” He bent his head and brushed his lips across hers in a gesture holding more affection than passion. Then he took her elbow and urged her to the house. “I’m thinking it’s time for you to go to your bed and me mine before the footmen send for your grandparents and Sir Petrok has me tossed out on my ear.”

  “More like they’d have me tossed out on mine. It wouldn’t be the first time.” She managed a half smile and stepped over the windowsill to see a footman peeking around the edge of the door. “We’re all right, Joseph. I needed air, and Mr. Chastain was kind enough not to let me go into the night alone.”

  The footman raised one eyebrow but said nothing as he opened the door wider to let them pass before him. “Shall I be putting out the lights, my lady?”

  “Yes, and bank the fire.” She reached the steps and grasped the rail with one hand and her skirts with the other, removing her arm from David’s hold. “Good night, Mr. Chastain. Sleep well.”

  “And you, my lady.” He didn’t follow her up the steps.

  All the way to the landing where the steps split between wings, Morwenna felt his gaze upon her as though his hand rested on the center of her back in such a lovingly gentle gesture of kindness.

  “I’m afraid ’tis too late for that already,” he had said, “or do you think I go about kissing ladies for whom I care naught?”

  He had admitted that he cared for her. He had made a declaration of feelings far deeper than she suspected he felt for her. Lust in a man she could manage. Love was something different. She needed to have a care of the heart of a man who loved her. The last time she hadn’t taken care, she had ended up married to him. She honored him with everything she could, and she adored him for accepting her with all the black marks against her.

  But had she loved him?

  She shoved open her bedchamber door and sought solitude behind the heavy panel. She would take refuge in sleep, in helping Grandmother with the garden on the morrow, in playing with her son, in entertaining whoever came to call. She would not think about whether or not she had loved her husband. She feared that answer, for it made her a worse woman than she thought she already was. The answer didn’t matter now anyway. He was gone, as her parents were gone, as her cousins were gone, as her grandparents would go one day, likely sooner than any of them were ready to go.

  As David would go, the best reason in the world to not let herself love anyone. They all left in one way or another.

  Besides, her practical self remembered that David was poor, a mere boatbuilder. She needed money from a husband. If she married, her grandparents must approve of the man or they would not release her dowry. They would not approve of David, the boatbuilder, for all their kindness to him. Besides, David’s life lay in Bristol, not Cornwall. Her future rested in Penmara, in making up to Conan for not loving him the way he wanted her to.

  And there, the answer slipped out despite her efforts to keep it hidden even from herself. She did not love Conan with the devoted passion he felt for her. She loved him as a friend. She adored him for giving her something better than what she had as the Trelawny grandchild who didn’t know how to behave—the respectability of being a baroness. But the growing devotion to him she experienced died in anger over his death. He should have done what she was doing—seeking investors for the mines—instead of smuggling and dying like a common criminal.

  “So I will do it for you and prove to everyone I am not useless.” She flung herself onto the bed, already turned down by a thoughtful maid, and buried her face in the pillows.

  Somehow, somehow, somehow, she would prove she wasn’t involved with the wreckers. She would find enough investors for the mines. She would secure her son’s future as the baron of an estate prosperous enough he could take his rightful place in the House of Lords. She would do it without Trelawny money so everyone knew she had done it, not her grandparents. The only way to survive, to keep her heart from breaking, was to succeed on her own.

  David took his brother’s letter out of its hiding place and reread the part where they would see him home as soon as they could manage the money to come to Cornwall. Someone should arrive at any time, he hoped. “Be honest with yourself.” H
e spoke the admonition aloud. “Before you succumb.” He didn’t need to be more enmeshed with Lady Penvenan. He had no business kissing her, let alone kissing her as he had. He was in no position to marry her or anyone else. Even if she would have a poor boatbuilder, far beneath her in social rank, the poor part was a stumbling block. She needed money. Why she needed it when her grandparents were so obviously possessed of overflowing coffers, David didn’t know. Nor was it any of his concern. What did concern him was his own behavior toward a lady he had no intention of wedding.

  Her bringing up the notion that she had lured him into her arms with the purpose of drawing secrets from him made him wonder if his motivations were indeed the same. He hadn’t thought so at the time. Candlelight playing over her porcelain skin, her eyes alight with laughter during their game, her nearness were all enough of a lure on their own, yet now, in the quiet of his chamber with the sea crashing on the rocky cliffs below his window, he remembered something his brother-in-law had said after David’s sister had gone shopping in Bath without anyone in the family knowing of her excursion.

  “She can say she only went with friends, but I’ll get her to tell the truth tonight. She can’t keep secrets from me when her head is next to mine on the pillow in the dark.”

  Jack had been right, and Rebecca had confessed nothing so terrible the two of them weren’t cooing over one another in the morning. David had been amused at the time. Now he felt a little sick that part of his mind might have been considering something similar only without the benefit of marriage.

  If only he could leave that moment and not face Morwenna in the morning, all the same. Of his behavior resting upon his shoulders for everyone to see, he was quite certain. Yet not even the shirt on his back was his own. Though his brother Martin had slipped a guinea beneath the wax seal, it wasn’t enough to get David very far toward Bristol, and he could scarcely walk as far as Penmara village in the thin shoes that were his only footwear, let alone farther. And what if he missed Will or Mama or whoever was coming to see him? Most importantly, could he truly leave Cornwall without discovering what his father was doing in Falmouth when he died, what had happened to the money, and how to explain away the shipwreck that dropped David nearly on the doorstep of the family who bore the crest of the pendant his father had been clutching when he died?