“They fell out over it. Some, like Russell and Crawley, wanted desperately to sell. Both were young and in debt at the time. Others, including an unnamed gentleman who held considerable sway over the others, this leader Crawley speaks of, did not. That is why Crawley thinks that fire was a ruse. That other gentleman ensured he got his way by telling them there was nothing to sell due to it, but Nigel accused him of lying. When Crawley recently chanced upon one of Miss Russell’s copies, that proved the paintings still existed somewhere, and he assumed that copy meant she knew where they were.”
That unnamed gentleman probably knew a large sale of art was easier said than done, Gareth guessed. Crawley would have learned that quickly enough. Had Ives not been given this mission and drawn his bastard brother into it, would one day Crawley have approached Mr. Fitzallen to obtain help with that sale?
“What are you smiling at?” Ives asked.
“A bit of potential irony. So, all is as set as it will be, it appears.”
“In exchange for his freedom, he will take me to where it was stored before the fire. The mere notion of doing so had him laughing for some reason.”
“Why not see if that big fellow Wiggins knows too? Then you won’t have to bargain. Lance may have terrified Wiggins enough he told everything he knows.”
“That is a good idea. We should go find out. Erasmus can ride atop the carriage, the lady inside, Crawley can walk, and you and I will take our horses.”
Ives began walking away.
“I think I will leave the rest to you,” Gareth said, stopping him. “And the lady is resting, I believe. She is tired, being of a delicate nature.”
Ives turned and walked back. “Feeling faint, was she?”
“Completely undone by the drama.”
“And you intend to stay behind and watch over her health?”
“Someone has to.”
“She has a sister. What are we to do about her?”
“Take her to her friends in the village. The Neville sisters. She will like that.”
Ives laughed lightly. “For the ladies’ sake, and their reputations, my intention is the village learn nothing of this kidnapping. I trust they also will be discreet?”
“Miss Russell is the soul of discretion. I am sure her sister will see the rightness of it too.”
Once more Ives walked away. “I will come when all is finished and tell you where we found what pictures could be retrieved, if we find any at all.”
“Better yet, write me a letter.”
CHAPTER 27
The spring breeze drifted over Eva, stirring her anticipation. She lay immobile and listened to the sounds also entering through the window she had set ajar.
Voices and boots moved around the house to the front. Horses grunted and stomped, and a carriage door opened. Erasmus exclaimed in pain, and Harold cursed him. Then the carriage rolled, its sounds diminishing with each moment.
She listened, waiting. Finally, bootsteps on the boards below paced slowly into the library. A pause, then more steps coming to the stairs. She imagined Gareth noticing her bonnet on the chair in the reception hall.
Up the stairs those boots came. The sound of each footfall aroused her more. She cast aside the sheet that covered her, so he would know at once that she wanted all the danger he could provide.
He did not enter the bedchamber. Instead he went into the dressing room. She heard him in there, moving around. He made her wait a long time. All the while her desire tightened until she was hot enough that the breeze tantalized her body with its cool, feathery caresses.
Finally he entered the chamber, his hair damp from washing, his eyes full of passion’s depths. He was naked, too, just like her. Naked and beautiful and aroused.
He came over and stood beside the bed. “You are impatient.”
“Yes.”
“I think I will make you wait, anyway.” He caressed two fingertips down the side of her face. The slow stroke continued along her jaw, then her neck. Her breath quickened as he touched lower yet, up the swell of her breast. When he grazed her tight nipple, her back arched in reaction to the exquisite sensation. He dallied there until she writhed and moaned and gave up trying to contain the pleasure.
“No more demands that I not touch you, Eva, or that we retreat into friendship. No more being good and careful.”
She was beyond arguing. She would agree to anything. Yet not only her body accepted the command. Her heart nodded as well, secure and sure that love left her no alternative. No more denial of what now centered her world.
His fingertips meandered again, down her body. Despite how her whole consciousness licked at the pleasure, she likewise wanted him to know such sweet torture. She reached over and used her own light caress on his erection, running her fingers up the shaft.
She had imagined making love to him many times since their last encounter in London. She saw herself doing it properly with great sophistication. She had not pictured it like this, so passive, almost languid. She had been a goddess of Venus in those dreams.
She swung her legs around and sat on the side of the bed. She took him in her hands more purposefully. She circled the shaft with one hand and used the other to caress the tip. “Like this?”
“Yes.” His voice came ragged and low. “Damn, yes.”
She liked that note in his voice. Loved that he stood in front of her, feet widely placed as he sought not to sway. Loved how he let her learn on her own what made his teeth grit and affirmations come out like muttered curses.
He stepped closer yet and reached below her arms to tease her breasts. The power and impatience claimed her again. Control trembled out of her. She kissed his stomach while she caressed him. Kissed him in gratitude for the pleasure and so much else. And it seemed very natural to move the kisses to the tip of his erection.
His reaction told her how much he wanted that. His quiet moans guided her explorations. Tension coiled tighter in him until she suddenly found herself falling back on the bed. He spread her thighs wide and lifted both her hips until they angled off the bed. He thrust into her three times. Each time his head went back and his eyes closed as if he felt the same as she did, that this joining relieved an unbearable hunger. Then he hitched her legs around his hips and took her, watching while she cried out, and begged for more.
* * *
“I should go home. Rebecca will be alone.”
“She is visiting the sisters. Harold will bring her back, and wait. There is no need to go yet.”
“You worked that out neatly.”
“I thought so.”
She sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed. “I am hungry at least. I will go find us some food.” She reached for her chemise and pulled it on.
“I’ll come. The day is fair. We will dine out in the sun.” He went to the dressing room and pulled on some clothes.
When he returned, she looked down on her half-naked self, then at him in nothing but trousers again. “There will be no one to see us out in the sun, but it still seems a wicked thing to do.”
“You like wicked, so that should please you.”
Down the stairs they went. He spied her bonnet and sketchbook in the reception hall and picked them up on the way. He set the bonnet on her head. “That will spare your complexion.”
She felt the bonnet, looked again at her dishabille, and laughed.
In the kitchen Eva set about making up a tray to take outside. Gareth idly paged through her sketchbook, flipping back and forth. He found a drawing she had done of him while he slept. She must have done it that afternoon in London. It was very good. Like her copies, it showed a keen eye and steady hand. If given half a chance she would probably become a very good artist.
He flipped more, and the pages opened at a most peculiar drawing. “What is this?”
Eva looked over. “Oh, that. Nigel did that. There are a few others there. While first recovering, he proved too restless to handle. He did not even sleep well, but he could not walk far or rest e
nough to read. I suggested he try sketching. That was the sorry result. Still, it occupied him for several days at least.” She reached up for plates.
Gareth tucked the sketchbook under his arm, took the tray, and followed Eva out to the garden. They made their luncheon at a rustic table under a budding tree. He puzzled over Nigel’s odd drawings while he munched on ham and hard eggs.
“I think it is a view,” he said. “A primitive one. Old maps were done this way.”
She stretched to look. “Perhaps. He had no training. That is how a child would draw, mixing up perspectives like that. However, now that you mention it, I think that is the view out our back window. That would be the far garden wall there, and these must be the trees.”
He turned the page to see more of the same, only much more elaborate. This view had buildings. A memory, perhaps.
He paged on, to Eva’s recent work. She had been busy. While he studied her drawings, however, something about Nigel’s kept prodding at him. Suddenly he knew what it was. He went back to the second one.
He knew this place. He identified the house and walls and ponds and hills. The outbuildings lined up exactly as they should. Crude little horses even stood in their correct pasture up near the edge of the page.
“Eva, did your brother know someone connected to my father’s family?”
“I don’t think so.” She came and peered over his shoulder. “Why do you think he did?”
“Because this looks like Merrywood. Even the drawing of the house is a childlike rendering of it, with the hipped roof and rusticated basement level.”
“If you say so. I always assumed he was trying to replicate my views, with poor results.”
It was not the main house that had attracted Nigel’s best attention. Rather the rendering of the outbuildings showed great care in details and placement. He had included a few tenant cottages to the east as well, and had even drawn the roads leading to them. He had mapped the estate fairly well. One of the cottages showed no wagons or chickens near it. Vacant, then. Nigel had graced this cottage with a thick dark line beneath it. To the left of it on the same road another little cottage appeared, only with half a roof and darkened walls, as if a fire had destroyed it.
He stared at that cottage.
One of the gentlemen involved in the theft had died recently. The one who held great sway over the others. The one who had probably faked a fire to convince his comrades the paintings were gone and unavailable for sale.
The one who had a burned tenant cottage in view of his main house, that he had neglected to rebuild or repair for over five years? Gareth remembered noting just such an eyesore as he approached Merrywood.
Percy, you thieving blackguard.
No wonder Crawley thought it so amusing that he and Ives were the ones to be tracking down those pictures. How he would laugh when, after buying all he could by dangling the promise of more information, he finally took Ives to Ives’s own family home as the most likely place to find the rest of the collection.
Eva rose and strolled over to some shrubbery. Early bulbs had sent up flowers in front of the greenery. She bent over to pluck a few. Her chemise rose in back as she did, revealing the lower swells of her bottom. Gareth closed the sketchbook, far more interested now in his lover’s charming eroticism.
He would write to Ives and tell him to search Merrywood and its cottages for any pictures the family should not have. He would not have to tell Ives anything else. With a few inquiries it would probably be learned that Nigel and Crawley at times rode out to drink in country taverns with Percy, Duke of Aylesbury, a man known to cause pain and grief to others for no other reason than his own perverse amusement.
CHAPTER 28
“You are very subdued, Eva. This journey is supposed to be fun for you, but you have been lost in your thoughts for long stretches, and are now again.”
Eva pulled herself out of her thoughts. She squeezed the hand of the man riding beside her in the coach. “I am sorry. I received a letter from Sarah right before you came by to get me.”
“Bad news?”
“Not really bad, although Sarah is beside herself. It appears Mr. Trenton has been calling frequently now that Rebecca is staying in Birmingham again.”
“The poet.”
“Yes. Worse, however, is that Mr. Mansfield has not been calling at all. Sarah is sure that Rebecca has ruined her chances there.”
“If she did not favor the man, you would not want her to marry him, would you? Life is long to be in a marriage one does not want.”
Very true. Eva could not fault that response. Besides, she would never want Rebecca to be one of those girls who finds herself merely tolerating the marriage bed. Not when she knew herself how wonderful that could be.
“But Mr. Trenton?” She sighed. “Am I too horrible for hoping my sister marries a man with at least a modest fortune and decent prospects?”
“She is young still. Eventually she will talk philosophy with Mr. Trenton, too, and that should end that flirtation.”
She laughed. The duke had told Gareth that upon his arrival in her home, he had found Wiggins close to tears, holding his head, while Rebecca lectured him. Wiggins had told Lance he would rather be sent to the hulls than spend one more minute listening to her.
“We are entering the town,” Gareth said, pointing out the window.
“Are you going to tell me which town it is now? Your secrecy has been peculiar.”
“It is Coventry. When we pass through the oldest section, you can imagine Lady Godiva riding slowly on her horse. Out of respect, everyone went inside and shuttered their windows, so her gesture on their behalf would not carry the humiliation her husband intended.”
The carriage took them to those lanes, then turned off onto another one with fine houses lining it. It stopped in front of one that looked to be the sort that would house a prosperous merchant. Three stories high and built of cleanly dressed white stone, it had a small garden in front surrounded by an iron fence and gate.
Gareth opened the carriage door and stepped out. “I want you to meet someone.”
She accepted his hand and joined him on the pavement. “Who?”
“My mother.”
She instinctively dug in her heels. “You might have warned me.”
“I might have, but I didn’t.”
She felt her hair, to make sure it had not been too ruined by an indiscretion that took place in the carriage an hour ago. “Under the circumstances, you should not have been wicked. She is sure to know just looking at us.” She gave him an examination and found no evidence at all. “Fine. By looking at me.”
“Do not worry. A mother knows her son. If she guesses, she will blame me, not think badly of you.” He took her hand. “Come now. You will like her.”
They entered the house through a door held by a manservant. A footman escorted them to a drawing room. Upon their arrival, a woman looked up. No one had to say this was Gareth’s mother. They looked much alike. She was not a pretty woman. Perhaps not even beautiful in the usual way. But her dark eyes and hair, and wide mouth and chiseled face created a memorable, striking visage that might make more predictable beauty appear shallow and boring.
Her eyebrows rose when she saw Eva. This visit was equally a surprise for her, it appeared.
“Mother, I would like you to meet Miss Russell, a neighbor of mine. Miss Russell, this is my mother, Mrs. Johnson.”
* * *
“She is not only a neighbor.” His mother stated that as soon as Eva left the drawing room. On hearing the house had a good garden, she had asked to see it, after suffering through a pointed interview in which his mother asked about her family, her life, her education, and a number of other motherly questions.
“No.”
“You have never brought one of your lovers to meet me before.”
“No.”
His mother sipped the remnants of her tea. He waited.
“She has almost no fortune. Her family lands are much di
minished, and what there is must be shared with that sister. She has been on the shelf for some years already, and while she is attractive, she is not a great beauty like some of the women you have known.”
Had the list of deficiencies come from anyone else, he would have responded harshly. She was only being a mother, however. He was just lucky that Eva did not have one who could point out what he lacked.
“She suits me.”
She laughed. “They have all suited you, for a while.”
“I think she will suit me for a long while. A very long while.”
She appeared a little dismayed.
“I came to tell you that the property is mine now. Lance withdrew the petition. The house is mine, and the property, as my father wanted.”
Her face lit with joy. “I never thought I would see this day. I am happy for you, and glad that Allen’s wishes have been respected.”
“It should be habitable by summer’s end. I would like you to visit Albany Lodge in the autumn, and see what I have made of it.”
She stilled. Her expression became unfathomable. “Albany Lodge?”
“I suppose I never told you. That is the name I gave it.”
“Your brothers do not mind?”
“It is not for them to mind or not. However, neither seemed shocked or unhappy about it.”
Her proud expression trembled. Her eyes filmed. He went over and sat beside her and took her hands in his.
She sniffed, and dabbed her eyes with her delicate handkerchief. “Thank you. I am honored, Gareth.” She composed herself, and gripped his hands. “That young woman. If you get her with child, you must do the right thing.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“You will have no excuse, and it will not do to have a whole line of bastards in the family.”
He laughed. “Yes, Mother.”
She smacked his shoulder. “Oh, stop that. I am glad you care about her. You would have never brought her here otherwise. Go to her now, and be on your way.”
He stood, then bent and kissed her head. “I will see you again soon.”
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