A light carriage drawn by a single horse rounded the avenue. With relief Thomas saw that the driver was James Barton. He strode to the center of the lane and hailed him, and James reined in. Too late Thomas identified the passenger beside him. It was Fia. The black tricorn she wore at a rakish angle shaded her face but the taunting smile beneath gave evidence that she had recognized him.
“Thomas?” James called.
“Pip Leighton is over there. He is in need of assistance.”
“Of course.” At once James maneuvered the carriage off the drive and onto the grass verge, tied the reins, and leapt to the ground. “How can I help?”
Sarah, too, had seen, and apparently recognized, the notorious “Black Diamond.” The color bled from her face but she lifted her chin. “If we might impose upon you—” She broke off, coloring at having addressed a stranger so boldly.
“James Barton, ma’am,” James supplied, bowing. His worried gaze moved from Sarah Leighton’s distressed face to Pip’s.
“Lady Fia!” Mortification marked the boy’s face as he attempted to rise.
Thomas put a hand on Pip’s shoulder, pushing him down. “I am sure Lady Fia will forgive you for not rising.”
“Good heavens, Pip, sit still!” Fia said sharply.
Thomas looked at her, surprised by the real dismay in her voice. She continued watching Pip, her expression troubled.
“I have missed you,” Pip whispered, seeing in her countenance all the concern and care a smitten youth could hope for.
“Oh, Pip.” The tone was tender but then, as suddenly as a door slamming shut, her expression smoothed. “ ’Tis no wonder.” Her voice was breezy and offhand. “ ’Struth, I’ve been so damnably pressed for even a moment to call my own, I swear I miss myself! When last did you come calling? Was it this week or the week before?” She laughed. “I really should keep better track of my visitors.”
The intimation that she had forgotten that Pip had been injured fighting a duel over her honor was beyond cruel. Beneath Thomas’s hand he felt Pip tense. Sarah’s cheeks colored with surprised anger. James gnawed his lip miserably. “Fia …”
“Can you drive Pip to his house, James?” Thomas asked.
“But of course.”
Thomas glanced at Sarah. She stood rigidly, her gaze fixed beyond the carriage as she strove to pretend that the ruthless, ravishing creature who’d besotted her brother did not exist. Useless endeavor. ’Twould be like staring at the sun and denying it burned the eye.
Thomas pitied Sarah, knowing she would loathe his pity as much as she would hate accepting his escort home. But James’s carriage had been built for two occupants and while it might accommodate three there was no possible way it could hold four persons. James hesitated, obviously reluctant to leave Sarah but unable to think of an alternative.
Thomas bent his head in her direction. “If Miss Leighton would do me the honor of allowing me see her home …”
“But why should she have to do that?” Fia asked. “She must ride with her brother, of course.”
“But …” James said, looking back and forth between the two women, one so clearly overset, the other just as clearly amused. “But what of you, Fia?”
“Why, I shall impose upon Captain Donne to escort me home. He already knows where I live.” Her smile was wicked, her gaze dancing with a message for him alone. In this situation, under these circumstances, such flirtatiousness was outrageous and she knew it. But at least her willful naughtiness had the boon of saving Sarah Leighton from further distress and her outré behavior might at last waken Pip to her true nature.
“I would be delighted,” Thomas said formally.
“Then it’s settled.” She rose, and lifting her coal-black skirts, held out her hand in a commanding attitude. He had no choice but to take it. She alit as softly as black swan’s down beside him.
Pip’s face was naked with hurt astonishment. Fia did not look at him. Her winsome, wicked smile was for Thomas alone.
It took only a few minutes to see Pip into the carriage and Sarah beside him, and then James, with one last troubled glance at Fia, whipped up the bay, taking the Leightons home and leaving Thomas alone. With Fia.
Fia waited until the carriage disappeared from sight before turning. The saucy smile she’d fixed on her face vanished, leaving her face as smooth and enigmatic as ever. Without a word, she started walking, and Thomas fell into step beside her.
Her heart pounded uncontrollably. She hadn’t expected to see him again so soon. She glanced sideways, noting as she did so how strong his dark throat looked above the snowy collar and remembering too clearly the feel of his skin beneath her lips and the desire in his gray eyes.
“I know you were the lady in the silver mask at Portmann’s ball.” His words caught her off guard.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
Her actions at the Portmanns had been a mistake. But James had been otherwise occupied that evening and she’d come unannounced to the fete, and when she’d seen Thomas there, she’d decided to teach him a lesson regarding his own susceptibility to what he so openly disdained. Instead she’d only learned about her own weakness. It had been impetuous and she was never impetuous. She couldn’t afford to be.
Besides, she was above this. She was no green girl come begging for kindness, like the kindness Thomas had given Sarah Leighton and like the kindness she had so ruthlessly withheld from Pip.
She’d been selfish. So certain that because Pip was only a boy it would be safe to befriend him. And because he’d reminded her of Kay and in this tempest of plots and counterplots she’d so wanted a friend with whom she could just stop acting.
Well, no more. She would never again let her “want” threaten an innocent life. She was wiser now.
“Do you ever wear anything besides black?” Thomas’s voice startled her after so long a silence.
“I should think you a man partial to black and white. It saves you the bother of trying to identify any subtleties.”
He laughed, and her heart trip-hammered in response. He wasn’t supposed to have laughed. He was to have taken offense.
“I own it’s flattering on you, lady,” he said. “As was the gown you wore to the Portmanns’ masquerade the other night.”
She smiled, neither denying nor admitting his renewed charge. “Why, Captain Donne, you’d best be on your guard lest you fall under my sinister influence.” She said the words ruefully and was surprised when he scowled.
“It was good of you to offer Miss Leighton your place,” he said shortly.
But she knew her role now. She arched one brow, donning the bow-shaped smile men found appealing. “Oh, Captain. I think we both know that ‘good’ is hardly an appellation that springs to mind upon hearing my name. It suited me to walk. With you.” Her gaze slew provocatively toward him. “And so I am walking. With you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
She shrugged. “As you will.”
The day had grown warmer, making even her cloak uncomfortable. She loosened the silk frog at her throat.
“You knew that Sarah Leighton does not approve of you and yet you still let her have your seat.”
“Is that what this is about? Well, lest you seek my sainthood prematurely, let me explain. Sarah Leighton is a pitiable drab.” Beside her Thomas grew rigid with distaste. Good. “She is simply not worth considering a rival. Actually, she’s not worth considering at all.”
The lie tripped easily from her lips. In truth, she rather admired Sarah Leighton. The woman was decent and kind and her concern for her brother was honest. But that wasn’t an insight she was willing to give Thomas. Because insight meant advantage and she trusted Thomas Donne with an advantage less than any other man she knew—including her father—because where her father’s power over her was limited to threats, Thomas’s … She would not pursue that thought.
She went on, the quality of her voice hard and gaudily bright, like cheap-cut glass. “No. Howe
ver worthy Miss Leighton is, she offers no competition for James’s attention. He is quite certainly mine. And Pip is already under my sway. Which leaves only you standing so valiantly as proof against my charms.”
“You’re lying,” he said flatly.
“Ha!” She managed a good laugh. Light and amused. “You, better then most anyone here, know my background. I am a gambler, from a long line of gamblers. Is it any wonder I’m unable to resist a new challenge instead of contenting myself with prizes already won?”
She looked at him from beneath the thicket of her lashes. “Besides, ’twas you yourself who issued the challenge.”
He shot her a startled glance.
She stopped, beckoning him near so that he had no choice but to lean near to hear her words. “In my boudoir,” she whispered, letting the warm exhalation brush his ear. “When you came to chastise me. You said I was the one challenger you might not refuse.”
He did not draw back as she’d expected but turned his head to speak. Their lips were inches apart. His pale eyes glinted like polished pewter in his dark face. “That’s not what I meant and well you know it.”
She would not be the one to draw back. It had become a contest now, a game of dare and daren’t that she could not afford to lose, never ask why. She lifted her face, bringing her cheek close to his. He smelled of sandalwood and coffee. His skin was smooth. He’d shaved mere hours ago. “But it’s what I meant.”
He moved slightly so that the bright sun dazzled her eyes. She averted her face, blinking. Her lashes fluttered against his cheek. She heard him catch his breath, and suddenly his hands were on her waist, spanning her, holding her still.
For a second she could not say whether he intended to pull her close or push her away and she had the distinct notion that he didn’t either. She felt the imprint of each long finger, the breadth of his palm, his thumbs above her hipbone. She should move, slap him, berate him, but all she could think was that Thomas Donne was touching her with something less than eagerness but something more than indifference.
Every fiber of her body awakened. Her pulse hammered wildly. She couldn’t breathe and so held her breath and thus heard the ragged, ill-timed measure of his exhalations, passion’s obligato. His gaze searched hers, troubled and angry and confused. She swayed, and the movement caused her unhooked cloak to slip from her shoulders and pool at her feet.
One of his hands left her waist and traveled slowly up her spine to the nape of her neck. Her eyelids slid shut. His fingertips were rough, callused, and warm. She angled her head back, turning his touch into a caress, all of her concentration focused on the sensation.
His hand dropped.
The hand at her waist withdrew.
“You’re wearing Amelia Barton’s necklace.” His voice was hollow, devoid of inflection.
Well, yes. He would hate that. Amelia Barton had been, quite simply, the loveliest woman Fia had ever known. No doubt she’d been the loveliest woman Thomas had known, too. Perhaps he’d been in love with her.
She opened her eyes. He still stood very close. His eyes made up for the lack of emotion in his voice. They burned. “Is it?”
“You know damn well it is. James gave that necklace to Amelia on their wedding day.”
“Really?” She wanted to tell him that it was all window dressing. Part of the game. Part of the act. But she couldn’t trust him. She didn’t trust him. Thomas hated the Merricks. He’d done everything he could to hurt her brother Ash. There was no reason to think he’d treat her any more kindly. He hadn’t yet.
“He should never have given it to you,” Thomas went on coldly. “It’s been in his family for generations.”
She bent and retrieved her cloak. She stood up; he’d moved back. Casually she settled the light wool over her shoulders. She was cold. Chilled through to the bone. “How very flattering of James.”
“Leave him alone, Fia.”
“I’m afraid it’s a little too late for that, wouldn’t you say?”
“He deserves better.”
“Than what?” she demanded, stung. His words prodded the temper lurking beneath her chill composure. He’d touched her, caressed her. Now he looked at her with loathing, implying that she sullied a dead woman’s necklace simply by wearing it. “Better than me? James is quite capable of determining what he does or does not deserve.”
“Listen to me, Fia. I know you’re trying to involve James in some sordid intrigue or other. I won’t have it. Do you hear me? James Barton is a decent, honorable man and I won’t let you drag him down.”
Exaltation briefly flared to life, for a moment banishing her anger and hurt. If Thomas had heard rumors then others had, too.
Thomas read the triumph in Fia’s expression and mistook it for gloating. He buried the … the thing that had momentarily distracted him. Call it lust, for want of a better term.
For a short time he’d believed in a chimera: a Merrick with a heart. He’d imagined he’d seen wistfulness in Fia’s fading smile as she watched Barton’s carriage drive off. He’d thought then that she’d purposefully hurt Pip in order to keep him from a deeper hurt. And when he had touched her … how to explain the quickening, the surge of desire and tenderness? God help him, yes, tenderness. For her.
He could not believe his idiocy. A Merrick with a heart? He doubted this one had a soul. When had he become a vapid romantic instead of the realist life had made him? His hands ached to punish her for being beautiful and false and pitiless and for so effortlessly imitating something else.
“I’m warning you, Fia.”
“That sounds like a threat … Thomas.”
“No,” he said. “It’s a promise.”
She laughed, quicksilver and bright. But still, God help him, it sounded as though it hurt her to make that quicksilver sound, like razors stropped her heart to make it. Against all reason and all his hard-earned knowledge, he almost reached out to her.
But then she turned and walked away, heedless of being alone and unchaperoned. He followed her at a discreet distance until they reached the street, where she hailed and entered a carriage.
Chapter 8
Ye look done for,” Gunna said flatly.
“ ’Tis your imagination,” Fia said, her needle flashing in and out of the small hooped frame she held. Needlework, she’d discovered from one of Cora’s nurses, was a soothing occupation.
Across the room Kay studied one of his school-books. His unexpected arrival yesterday had been not altogether welcome. Fia had canceled her plans for the evening, unwilling to let Kay roam the town house un-supervised. Thank heavens Mrs. Littleton’s Academy for Young Ladies, which Cora presently attended, did not allow their charges to hie off as Oxford apparently did.
“And is it my imagination or my failing eyesight that has yer eyes lookin’ red-rimmed and yer voice hoarse as a bittern’s call?” Gunna said, interrupting Fia’s thoughts.
“Honestly, Gunna. I am fine.”
In truth, she felt worn thin. The interminably long nights of posing and posturing were taking their toll. Too often she felt light-headed and started each day trembling with exhaustion.
Her confrontation yesterday with Thomas hadn’t helped. Ever since, she’d felt irritable and tearful—she, Fia Merrick, queen of self-possession—and her much-vaunted composure was strained to near breaking. She did not know how much longer she could keep this up. But it wouldn’t do any good to admit that to Gunna. The old woman would only fret, and when all was said and done, her fretting wouldn’t change a thing.
“It’s not natural to live like this, changing day to night and night to day,” Gunna grumbled.
Fia shot a sharp warning glance in Kay’s direction. Kay did not know about her reputation and Fia wanted him to remain in ignorance as long as possible.
“Drinking and riding and carrying on …”
Fia looked at the old woman with a mixture of exasperation and affection. Apparently Gunna had decided not to heed her unspoken warning.
&
nbsp; “Well, it’s day now and here I am,” Fia said with false brightness, “awake and alert, ensconced in my own home, blamelessly embroidering, and yet still I manage to invoke disapproval.”
“Don’t use that tone on me, Lady Fia MacFarlane,” Gunna said. “It’s yer own good I’m lookin’ after and—”
“And I appreciate that, however inappropriate,” she cut in, once more looking in Kay’s direction.
“Cannot we quit this place and go back to Bramble House and take up where we left off?” the bent woman asked for the hundredth time. Fia had never told Gunna everything about the arrangement she’d made with Carr.
As long as her father wanted Fia in London, in London she would stay. When he’d told her she would marry whom he said she would marry, she’d agreed. If she didn’t she would lose Bramble House, and she would not even contemplate that. Of course, Carr did not know that. He thought she acquiesced to his demands through fear—of himself and being poor.
“No. We cannot,” she replied. She put her fingers to her temple, rubbing little circles. “You know, Gunna, I do feel a bit fatigued. Perhaps a restorative might help. Would you be so kind as to make me one of your tisanes?”
She felt a soupçon of guilt when she saw the concern flood the exposed half of Gunna’s face and witnessed the alacrity with which the old woman shot to her feet and scurried from the room. But it was surely kinder to give Gunna a problem she could fix rather than have her worrying uselessly about something over which she had no control.
Kay glanced up as soon as the old woman had left. “Gunna’s right. You look pasty.”
“Such flattery. You shall give me a conceit of myself.”
Kay, used to Fia’s calm irony, went back to his reading. At fifteen, Kay still looked very like the boy she’d met six years ago. His expression was still as open, his hair still had a tendency to cowlick, and he still took people at face value. She wondered when that would change and if she would be the instrument of his eventual awakening.
She steeled herself against the possibility. The world’s wisdom, she’d long maintained, eventually seeks those who do not seek it. Indeed, ’twas possible she did Kay a disservice in shielding him. She picked up her hoop.
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