Slumped before the fire in his bedchamber, Charles stared at the leaping flames as if he could read his future in the dancing depths. Even Garthwaite’s tap on the door and his cautious entrance with a tray of bread, cheese, and some sliced roast beef and fruit that Cook had added to tempt Charles’s appetite elicited little interest. Having placed the tray on a low mahogany table near Charles’s elbow, only Garthwaite’s discreet cough made Charles turn his head and look at him.
“Will there be anything else, sir?”
Ignoring the food, Charles glanced across the room to a bombe chest that held a Baccarat decanter and some snifters. “Decanter full?” he asked.
His homely face pained, Garthwaite said, “Indeed, sir, I filled it myself only an hour ago.”
“Then that’s all. Good night.”
Garthwaite hesitated, and Charles sent him a wry look. “You may have known me since the cradle, Garthwaite, but I would suggest that you not try to bully me tonight into going to bed like a good little boy. I haven’t been a good anything for decades—and I’m not about to start changing.”
“It’s not for me,” Garthwaite said austerely, “to question your desire to drink yourself into the grave, but I would remind you that you would be doing precisely what Madame would have expected.”
Charles gave an ugly bark of laughter. “Point taken. Go to bed. I shall eat some of the damned food, and I promise I shall not drink myself into a stupor…tonight.”
Satisfied with his efforts, Garthwaite bowed and departed.
Putting a thick slice of pungent yellow cheese on a chunk of bread, Charles bit into it and forced himself to eat, even going so far as to take an apple and eat it once he finished the bread and cheese. His Spartan meal finished and feeling he had satisfied his butler’s expectations, he stood up and crossing to the bombe chest, poured himself a large snifter of brandy. Reseating himself before the fire, he once more simply stared at the fire, his thoughts roaming in no particular direction.
The house was quiet except for the sound of the lashing wind and rain outside and inside, the occasional crack and pop of the fire. Charles should have been relaxed, enjoying the comfort of his own home, but he was not. He had not lied to Julian when he had said that the place was full of ghosts. Not only did the ghosts of Raoul and his stepmother haunt its many passages and rooms, but others wandered there, too.
Staring into the fire, he could almost conjure up the face of his older brother, John, dead for well over a decade, glimpsing briefly in the flickering flames John’s easy smile, the steady gaze of the green eyes so like his own. John had been the conscience, the mainstay of the family. Everyone, even Harlan, their father, had looked to John for guidance. Charles lifted a toast to his brother’s ghost. You were the best of us, he thought sadly. And Raoul killed you. For a moment, black rage roiled up within him, but he ruthlessly tamped it down. John was dead, and so was Raoul. And thank God, he thought, that Father had not lived to learn that his youngest son had killed his eldest. John’s death had been hard enough on Harlan, and his grieving father’s only solace had been the knowledge that one day, John’s son, Daniel, would inherit Stonegate.
Charles closed his eyes, pain and disillusionment engulfing him. Daniel’s reign as Master of Stonegate had been brutally brief. What? A year? Two? Before his death by his own hand. Introduced to Lord Tynedale, a notorious rake and gambler, by Raoul, Daniel, young and inexperienced, had proved to be easy prey for Tynedale. In a matter of months, Daniel had gambled away the fortune he had inherited from his mother and committed suicide. Had Raoul known what would be the outcome of introducing Daniel to Tynedale? Or had it just been the devil’s own luck, Charles wondered. He took another swallow of his brandy. Something else they would never know the answer to, he decided wearily.
They were all gone now, Harlan, John, Daniel, Raoul and Sofia, and he was the sole survivor, the last one to carry on the line of this branch of the family. And here he sat, alone in a house full of ghosts and questions, full of recriminations and guilt. How could he have lived all those years with Raoul and never seen the evil that lurked behind the careless charm? Never guessed, even for a moment, that a vicious killer inhabited his younger brother’s body. Half brother, he reminded himself again, throwing his head back and finishing off the brandy. Whatever the relationship, Raoul had died over two years ago. Or had he?
Putting down the empty snifter, he got up from his position near the fire and wandered into the sitting room that adjoined his bedroom. He lit one of the candle sconces on the wall, and a small pool of light pierced the darkness. Crossing the room, he walked to a large desk, and opening the middle drawer, he reached in and pulled out a slip of paper. In the faint light from the wall sconce, he studied the words on the paper. He sighed. They had not changed. Taking the letter back with him into the bedroom, he laid the letter near the tray of food and after refilling his snifter, settled once more before the fire. He sat there for a while before he picked up the letter and began to read.
The letter was from Viscount Trevillyan. Not really a friend of mine, Charles thought, more of an acquaintance, but Trevillyan had been Raoul’s closest friend and Raoul had often visited Trevillyan in Cornwall, sometimes spending weeks on end there. After Raoul’s death, Charles had maintained a relationship with Trevillyan, as he had with several of Raoul’s other companions, hoping that by knowing them, he could learn more of his half brother—learn if others had glimpsed the demon that lurked behind Raoul’s smiling façade.
Trevillyan’s letter was a polite reply to one Charles had written him months ago before he had left for another of his aimless travels through the British countryside. With the war with Napoleon still dragging on, the Continent closed to him, Charles had contented himself with visiting Wales, Scotland, and even crossing the Irish sea to wander Ireland. It hadn’t mattered much to him where he went, the main point was to be on the move and not be at Stonegate.
Charles skimmed over the weeks-old news of London and Trevillyan’s return to his country seat, Lanyon Hall, in Cornwall, near Penzance, for the winter months before the Season began again in the spring. From the complaining tone of his letter, Charles gathered that Trevillyan was not one for the quiet of the Cornish countryside in winter—or at any time, if he read correctly between the lines. But it wasn’t Trevillyan’s complaints about the lack of society and his utter boredom with the running of his own estates that had caught Charles’s eye. It was a short paragraph near the end of the letter that had riveted Charles’s attention when he had first read it, and as his gaze skimmed over those words again, a faint sick anticipation stirred in his belly. With mounting dread, he read those words again.
At least, thank God, there was a break in the boring routine last week. The whole neighborhood is in an uproar. The body of a woman, horribly mutilated, was discovered by one of our local farmers. No one could talk of anything else. Gossip has it that the body of another woman killed, in a similar manner, was found several months ago, but I have not spoken with anyone who could confirm it, so I suspect it is nonsense. The identity of the young woman found last week is still not known, nor as I write this, have the authorities, a group of complacent old men, who do little more than shake their heads and wring their hands, discovered who murdered her. I doubt they ever will.
Charles read the words several times, wondering at their significance. Could it be mere coincidence? Or was it possible…? He considered where his thoughts were taking him. Did he really believe that Raoul was alive and continuing his horrific deeds in the wilds of Cornwall?
Was it conceivable that his half brother had miraculously survived his terrible wounds and had somehow made his way to Cornwall? But how would he live? Where would he live?
Charles frowned. Money. That was the answer. With no other heirs in the offing, he had inherited the bulk of Sofia’s fortune, and still stunned by the events of that night, he had not paid any attention to any other bequests made by her in her will. Was it possible that she h
ad anticipated Raoul’s eventual exposure and had guessed that there might come a time when he would have to go into hiding and arranged for him to have funds to draw upon? She had been a coldly clever woman, not unintelligent, and she might very well have anticipated not only that the truth about Raoul’s activities would come out, but also for a time when she might not be there to protect him. She would have known that if Raoul was exposed as a vicious murderer and on the run or in hiding, he would not have been able to inherit her fortune, nor have access to his own, so it made sense that she would have made other plans….
Charles set the letter down and took another swallow of brandy. He would write his solicitor tomorrow asking for a full accounting of Sofia’s various bequests. His gaze slid to the letter.
Picking it up again, he stared at it for several minutes. A cold smile curved his mouth. I wonder, he mused, if Viscount Trevillyan would like a visitor to help break the boredom of winter in Cornwall?
He glanced around the room. There was nothing for him here except ghosts and memories. He might as well be in Cornwall.
For a moment, doubt assailed him. Was he really going to trek to Cornwall and impose himself upon a man he barely knew? And poke and pry around in God knew what dark crevices, hoping to flush out a murderer who wore the face of his half brother? His half brother everyone assured him was dead?
He picked up his snifter, swirling the last of the brandy around. Well, what the hell else was he going to do? Stay here and live with ghosts and questions and guilt?
No. He would go to Cornwall and inflict himself upon the unsuspecting Lord Trevillyan.
Charles tossed off the last of the brandy. I am, he decided, committed to a fool’s quest. And I’m sure that Julian would think me mad. He grinned. Perhaps my cousin is right—I am mad.
Surrender Becomes Her
Prologue
Devon, England
Spring 1795
“Why won’t you give it to me?” Isabel demanded, hands fisted on her small hips in a most ungenteel manner. “It’s not as if the money doesn’t belong to me. It’s mine! You have no right to hoard it.”
A shaft of late afternoon sun shone in through the long windows of the library, transforming her red hair into a halo of fire and Marcus was struck again at how often his seventeen-year-old ward reminded him of fire. Sometimes she resembled nothing more than an appealing, cheerful little fire and other times, as now, despite her diminutive stature, a dangerous tower of flames ready to burst into a conflagration that could leave him seared to the bone. Already feeling as if his skin was singed, he very much feared that today was going to end with a conflagration.
The discussion, if one dared to call it such, was taking place in the comfortable library at Sherbrook Hall, Marcus’s country estate in Devon, and had begun some ten minutes earlier when Isabel had burst into the house demanding to see her guardian. At once! Since Miss Isabel had run tame through the Hall all her life, the butler, Thompson, with unruffled aplomb, had promptly shown the young lady into the library and gone in search of the master of the house. The instant Marcus had stepped into the room, Isabel had launched her attack and he had been attempting, not very successfully, to defuse another explosive situation with his tempestuous ward.
“I have every right,” he said patiently. “I am your guardian and as such it is my duty to see that you do not squander your fortune before you come of age or marry.”
Isabel stamped her foot. “You know very well,” she said hotly, “that my father never intended for you to be my Guardian! Uncle James should be my guardian—not you.”
Which was true, Marcus admitted to himself. Isabel’s father, Sir George, had been nearly seventy when he had stunned the neighborhood by marrying a woman young enough to be his granddaughter and had promptly fathered a child. To Sir George’s joy, Isabel had been born a scant ten months later. His death at eighty, when Isabel had been ten years old, had come as no great surprise to anyone. It was the death of Marcus’s own father some four years ago that had come as a shock to everyone. At the age of fifty-nine, the elder Mr. Sherbrook had gone to bed one night full of rude health, never to awaken the next morning. Numb with grief and disbelief, he had been informed by his solicitor several weeks later that in addition to inheriting his father’s wealth and estates, he had also inherited the guardianship of Sir George’s only child, thirteen-year-old Isabel. Marcus had been aghast, assuming like everyone else that Sir George’s younger brother, James, would become Isabel’s guardian. But such was not the case. At the time the agreement had been drawn up, Sir George had not felt that James, a committed bachelor living in London, would make a good guardian for his daughter. A much better choice, he had decided, would be his dear friend and neighbor, Mr. Sherbrook. Unfortunately, Sir George had not distinguished between the elder Mr. Sherbrook and the younger Mr. Sherbrook and had made no provision for the death of Mr. Sherbrook senior. Consequently, though everyone knew Sir George had never envisioned the son of his best friend being his daughter’s guardian, that is exactly what happened. Even now Marcus felt a wave of incredulity flood through him. He had been only twenty-three years old at the time. What had he known about being the guardian of a young woman? Not much more, he thought wryly, than I know at this very moment.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Isabel said, when he remained silent. “You were not meant to be my guardian.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Marcus replied, “but since your father made no other provisions for your welfare before he died and no one expected my father to die so unexpectedly, I’m afraid that we are, er, stuck with each other.”
Isabel shrugged. “I know all that and, generally,” she admitted grudgingly, her quick temper subsiding a trifle, “you’re not so very bad. I just don’t understand why you have to be so, so stubborn about this one thing. It is not as if I am even asking for such a huge sum. Your new curricle and that lovely pair of blacks you bought cost more than I am asking you to give me.” Her eyes narrowed. “And it is my money. Not yours.” When Marcus said nothing, she muttered, “And it would not be squandered.”
“That is a matter of opinion,” he said. She scowled at him and he grinned. “Come now,” he coaxed, his cool gray eyes full of amusement, “you know that as your guardian there is little that I deny you, but it would be remiss of me in this instance to allow you to spend a small fortune on a horse.” He shook his head. “Especially that horse.”
Her temper flared and her topaz-colored eyes narrowed. “And what, pray tell, is wrong with Tempest?”
“There is nothing wrong with him. The price Leggett is asking for him, while high, is not exorbitant. And I’ll agree that the stallion is beautiful. His bloodline is impeccable and anyone with an eye for good horseflesh would be proud to own him.”
Her black expression cleared instantly and a blinding smile crossed her small, vivid features. “Oh, Marcus, he is a wonderful stallion, is he not?”
Marcus nodded, bemused, in spite of himself, by that smile. “Yes, he is.” Recalling himself, he added, “But he is not for you.”
The smile vanished like the sun behind a thundercloud. “And why not?”
“Because,” he said bluntly, “you don’t have the strength or the experience to handle an animal of that size and spirit right now.” He smiled faintly. “You’re both young and untrained and you’d probably kill each other within a week.” At her gasp of outrage, he held up a hand. “But there’s another reason I won’t fund this latest fidget of yours. How many times have you concocted one outrageous scheme after another, only to lose interest within a fortnight? Remember when you were going to breed goats? Or you were certain that you wanted to raise chickens? If memory serves, the goats nearly ate your Aunt Agatha’s rose garden to the ground before they could be sent to market, and as for the chickens…. Wasn’t there something about a rooster and the rosewood newel post of the main staircase in Denham Manor?” Ignoring the storm gathering in her eyes, he continu
ed, “Now you say you want to breed horses, but what about next month or next year? Something else to consider: what will happen to your horses, all your plans, when you go to London next year for the season?” He shook head, smiling at her. “I know you. By summer your head will be full of nothing more than ball gowns and all manner of fripperies, the parties and the balls that you will be attending next spring, and the gentlemen you will have falling at your feet. And when you marry, as you surely will, brat, you will have no time or thought of horse breeding. The expenditure for Tempest will have been wasted.”
Her ready temper returned in an instant and her small hands clenched into fists. “Unfair!” she protested furiously. “I was eleven years old when I wanted the chickens and it wasn’t my fault the rooster flew into the house; papa’s old dog, Lucy, chased him there,” she said defensively. “It’s true the goats ate Aunt Agatha’s roses last fall, but it was good for them. This year you can’t even tell that the goats had ravaged them and the bloom has been spectacular. Even Aunt Agatha said so.” She shot him a look of dislike. “And it wasn’t all of the roses, just some of them.”
Ignoring her outburst, Marcus said, “My point is that you haven’t a very good history of following through with these fancies that take you. How do I know that Tempest and your scheme to raise horses isn’t just another case of goats in the roses and roosters in the house?”
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