“Come back to bed,” he said quietly, not wanting to startle her.
She turned slowly. She was no longer weak and hurting. She was standing now, a grown woman, and she had to deal with him. She said calmly, “I’m tired of that damned bed. I wish to remain standing for a while. You said you wanted to speak to me. Let’s do it.”
She was back to normal. It pleased him enormously. “As you will,” he said easily. “Thomas was here.”
Had he expected her to gasp? To shudder with fright? To totter toward him and beg for his protection? She didn’t do any of these things. Her expression was remote and remained remote. She looked calm and serene. She was really very good. He walked to her and stopped directly in front of her. He raised his fingertips and lightly touched her chin, the tip of her nose, ran his fingertips over her eyebrows. “The bruises are fading. By tomorrow you won’t be such a fright.”
She didn’t move. “Then I won’t request a mirror until the day after tomorrow.”
“As I said, Thomas came here.”
“I assume you handled him?”
He grinned. “No, I pleaded with him to allow you to remain here for a little while longer. He beat me into the floor but decided to let you stay. However, he said he’d come back and—”
She jerked. It was just a small sort of shiver really, but he’d discovered that during the past few days he’d become attuned to her, noticing small movements, small reactions, that gave her away.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “Now, let me tell you about a very unmemorable meeting. Lord, the man’s a villain and utterly without a conscience. I met him in the salon. Did you know that James, our footman, isn’t fond of Thomas? Why, I do believe James’s eyes got meaner than a snake’s when he said the man’s name.”
“Thomas is an animal. James has a brother who is owned by my uncle. Mr. Grayson tried to buy him but my uncle refused. Yes, Thomas is a swine.”
“Well, yes he is. Hush now and let me tell you of our rather boring conversation.”
Ryder had walked into the salon in high good humor, nearly rubbing his hands together in anticipation. He stopped, smiled, and said, “I believe your name is Thomas? Fancy seeing you here at Kimberly Hall without your bow and arrows and that very charming white sheet both you and your master enjoy wearing. I particularly applauded the white hoods. Ah, but my manners. Would you care for some coffee?”
“I have come for Mr. Burgess’s niece and nephew.”
“Oh?” Ryder smiled benignly at the overseer. He was tall, exceedingly thin, save for a belly that protruded between his vest and his breeches. His hair was grizzled and very short and there was beard stubble on his jaw. He looked as if he hadn’t slept much or bathed or changed his clothes in several days. His eyes were cold, very cold, and Ryder doubted if he’d ever been filled with the milk of human kindness.
“I do owe you for that arrow you put in my shoulder.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Thomas said. “If you please, Mr. Sherbrooke, Mr. Burgess is anxious to see his niece and nephew. He is naturally concerned for their welfare.”
“Ah, doubtless that is so. How could anyone ever question his feelings? However, whatever makes him think they could be here?”
“There is talk. Everyone knows. The gossip is that Miss Stanton-Greville is living here openly as your mistress, and in return for her favors, you also took in the boy. It distresses Mr. Burgess. Bring them down now and they won’t bother you again.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Thomas.”
“Damn you, Sherbrooke, you have no right—”
“No right to what? To rescue a girl who’s been beaten senseless? To take a small boy out of a locked room?”
“Hellfire, one of her lovers beat her! I locked the boy in his room to protect him!”
“One of her lovers beat her,” Ryder repeated slowly. “Which one, I wonder? Perhaps Oliver Susson? Now, he’s certainly a vicious brute, isn’t he? No, I think you must be mistaken. He’d already been dismissed, and according to my sources, he didn’t seem at all upset by his dismissal. Who else? Charles Grammond, perhaps? I hear his wife’s a regular tartar, perhaps she did it?”
“Damn you, Sherbrooke! Get them!”
Ryder smiled. “You will now listen to me, Thomas. I think you’re a conscienceless bastard. I will have no more dealings with you. Your master, however, is another matter. Tell him he will hear from me shortly. Now, if you attempt to bring back some of your cronies to Kimberly Hall and cause a ruckus, I will come after you. I will kill you and I will do it very slowly. Do you understand me?”
Thomas didn’t know what to do. He’d told Mr. Burgess that this man wasn’t like the other men here on Montego Bay. This man was hard and smart. “As I told you, Sherbrooke, one of Sophia’s lovers beat her. Her uncle tried to stop it. If she’s told you differently, it’s because she’s ashamed of her notoriety. Now, be sensible. Why would you want to be saddled with a little cripple and a whore?”
Thomas didn’t get out another word. Ryder smashed his fist into his jaw, a hard, clean blow. Then he drew back his right arm and sent his fist into the man’s belly. Thomas yelled as he fell like a stone to the floor.
“James! Ah, I’m glad you’re here. Didn’t go very far, did you? Well, I very much do need your assistance now. Please ask another strong man to take this vermin back to Camille Hall and dump him there. In the dirt. On his face.”
“Yes, massa,” James said and he was smiling. “Dat man a bastid, a real bastid. He look good flat on de floor. No, not a bastid, he be a serpent.”
“His fangs should be dangling loose, at the very least,” Ryder said as he rubbed his knuckles. He frowned down at Thomas. “He’s got a big belly. That’s not good for a man. No, not at all healthy.”
He rubbed his knuckles again as he finished speaking, thinking again how good it had made him feel to vent his rage on that mangy bastard. He looked at Sophie and grinned just as he had before to James. “That’s all that happened. Nothing more. James and another fellow took him away.”
She said, “I’m glad you hit him. I hope you struck him very hard. I’ve wanted to many times. He’s a horrible man. Good heavens, you enjoyed that!”
“Perhaps,” Ryder said with obvious relish. “The man’s a rotter.” He fell silent then and he gave her a brooding look. “However did you manage to get yourself into this ridiculous mess?”
“What do you mean, sir? Ah, you wonder why I chose of my own free will to become a whore? Perhaps why Jeremy decided to become a cripple? I would that you be more specific.”
“You were much easier to handle on your back. You’re all vinegar again.”
“A pity, for you will never see me like that again.”
“Not even when I make love to you again?”
Another very small jerk of her shoulders. Yes, he was getting to knew her quite well.
“Sit down, Sophie. I’ll keep my distance. I don’t wish to frighten you.”
That got to her. Ryder was pleased; he was even grinning shamelessly when she said, “You don’t frighten me. No man frightens me.”
“As a matter of course I would believe you. You appear quite skilled with men. However, I am not other men and I do frighten you. You will admit it eventually and then, I daresay, you’ll be more careful around me. Sit down before I pick you up and set you down.”
She sat down, smoothing the nightshirt over her legs. It occurred to her then that it must surely be odd to be here in a bedchamber with a man wearing only a man’s nightshirt, and that made her smile.
She said then without preamble, “Kimberly Hall belongs to you, not to your brother, the Earl of Northcliffe.”
Ryder stared at her, his mouth open. “What did you say? No, that’s absurd, that’s utter nonsense. Wherever did you get such an idea?”
“Be quiet and attend me. Kimberly Hall belonged to your uncle Brandon. When he died, you inherited his fortune. However, Oliver Susson neglected
to attach the specifics of this property to the will he sent back to your family. At the time it was truly an oversight. Also, at the time, I believe your father had just died and thus there was some confusion because the new earl hadn’t sold out yet of the army. Thus, everyone believes that Kimberly belongs to the family—your older brother—not you, to be exact.”
“By God,” Ryder said, staring at her.
“Are you not rather rich for a second son?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now you are even richer for this plantation is yours.”
“I begin to see why Oliver Susson was one of your lovers.”
“Naturally.”
“I did tell Emile that there were always motives. Particularly where you are concerned, Sophie. You would never have become a slut without very strong motives.”
“Understand me, Ryder. I don’t care if you own all of Jamaica. My uncle wanted this plantation and he thought my talents would give him an excellent chance at it. Don’t get me wrong, I was to be used just to soften you up. In his final estimation, he didn’t think you would care about living here, or care about the uncertainty of sugar profits, and thus, you would sell out to him, stuff the guineas in your aristocratic pockets, and sail happily back to England.”
“And at the appropriate time I would have been told by Mr. Susson that Kimberly Hall belonged to me.”
“Yes.”
“And with you as my delightful mistress—you and that other woman with the big breasts of course—I would be delighted to sell to your uncle. Did he intend to send you back with me to England? As my mistress?”
“I don’t know what he planned.”
“Why did you agree to this?”
Her look was hard and cold. “Don’t be absurd. You’re so excellent at assigning motives, why have you let down here? Jeremy was to be his heir if I cooperated. If I didn’t cooperate, he said he would throw both of us out. Jeremy is lame; he would never be able to make his way here.”
“And naturally, you could.”
She didn’t react in any way, merely said in that same cold voice, “Quite probably.”
“Lord David became your lover so that he would fleece Charles Grammond.”
“Yes and he performed admirably.”
“And Charles Grammond was your lover so he would be quite amenable to selling his plantation to your uncle.”
“Yes.”
“How did you ever manage to rid yourself of Lord David?”
She smiled. It was an impish smile, a young smile, and he found himself reacting to it. He realized it was the first genuine smile he’d ever seen from her. “I told him I had the pox.”
“Good God, that’s wonderful.”
“I would have probably told you the same thing once you had sold Kimberly to my uncle.”
“Ah, but the difference is that I wouldn’t have simply believed you.”
“That’s what I told my uncle. I told him you weren’t like the other men. I told him you weren’t stupid. I told him that he should be very cautious with you, perhaps even fear you. He refused to heed me.”
“You aren’t making much sense about this fear business, but no matter. He didn’t listen to you. He wasn’t afraid enough of me, more’s the pity.”
“No. He measures all men with himself as the standard. He’d heard you were a womanizer, a young rakehell with no more morals than a tomcat. He thought it would be marvelously easy.”
“I’m not a—” He stopped and frowned down at his bruised knuckles. Jesus, what an appalling thought. His mind shied away from it. He swallowed, then shrugged negligently. “Well, he was wrong, wasn’t he?”
“About you being a womanizer? A tomcat? No, surely not. If you’d been like the other men, you wouldn’t have realized that it wasn’t me.”
“Are you telling me that you didn’t sleep with any of them? That it was always this other woman?”
She looked at him steadily. “Would you believe me if I told you that I had not?”
“Probably not.” He raised his hand to cut her off. “No, attend me, Sophie. I have never before met a woman with such a repertoire of feminine tricks as you have, and believe me, I’ve been treated to the best. I wish I knew the female equivalent of a rakehell or a tomcat. You surely fit the mold. You’re remarkable in your scope of seductive devices for one so young. Now, enough of that. It’s not important. Back to your dear uncle. It still takes me aback that I own Kimberly Hall.”
“It’s true.”
“But what if I hadn’t come here? What if my brother had come instead?”
“Uncle Theo considered that unlikely. You see, he knows all about your family. He even hired a man back in England to find out everything he could about the Sherbrookes, about you. The man wrote back with a goodly number of details.”
“He did all this before he and Thomas began their little scare campaign?”
“Oh yes. It was all well planned. Uncle Theo knew that Samuel Grayson was superstitious and could be manipulated. He knew if he played on his fears, why, he was bound to write to your brother, begging for help. And he did. He even told my uncle that he was going to write. Of course, my uncle encouraged him to write, encouraged him in his superstitions, stoked the fires, so to speak.”
“I begin to believe that Uncle Theo deserves to have me wring his miserable neck.”
“The man my uncle hired wrote that your brother had many responsibilities and that it was highly unlikely that he would come; your younger brother is at Oxford studying to become a man of the cloth. That left you and your fifteen-year-old sister. Naturally it was you who came. Everything went just as he’d planned. He simply misjudged you, that’s all. He assumed you’d be like Lord David—frivolous, narcissistic, rather stupid, and wanting only to sleep with me. He was wrong; he simply wouldn’t recognize that he’d failed. You never for a moment believed there was anything supernatural about the incidents, did you?”
“Of course not,” Ryder said, his voice clearly abstracted.
“Nor did you ever want to become my lover.”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I don’t share.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Oliver Susson agreed not to say anything to my brother or to me until your uncle decided it was the right time?”
She nodded.
“Did Jeremy know any of this?”
“No, I tried to protect him as best I could. Also, Uncle Theo was always very careful to treat him well, both in private and in public. Even now, everyone believes both Jeremy and I are very lucky. Indeed I imagine the gossip is that Uncle Theo is too loving, too sentimental, to even realize that his niece is a whore.”
“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard. You’re tired. It’s time for you to rest and for me to do some thinking. I want this mess resolved and soon.”
She didn’t sleep for the simple reason that she was too frightened about the future. But she did lie on that damned bed for three hours, her mind squirreling about frantically.
CHAPTER 8
SOPHIE WALKED QUIETLY down the upstairs corridor of Kimberly Hall to the bedchamber where Jeremy was sleeping. She wanted to speak to her brother, to reassure him, to make him promises that she prayed she’d be able to keep.
She quietly opened the door and peered in. The room was small, but as in all the other chambers, there were floor-to-ceiling louvered doors that gave onto a balcony and those doors were wide open. She smiled. Jeremy many times slept on his balcony at Camille Hall. He was probably doing the same here. The mosquitoes never bothered him.
He wasn’t in his bed. She still smiled even as she walked slowly to the balcony. He wasn’t there either. Her smile froze.
Oh God.
She’d seen him today, briefly, and he’d been very quiet, too quiet. He’d looked at her for a very long time and she’d known he was troubled, but she hadn’t said anything to him because Ryder had come in. And that was why she’d wanted to see him now.
But he was gone.
Uncle Theo would hurt him badly, perhaps even kill him, for now there was no reason for him to pretend to kindness, to affection, for either of them. She realized she was breathing in huge gulps that made her ribs throb and ache. She leaned forward, hugging her arms around her.
When the pain drew back, she still didn’t move, just stood there, very still, staring out onto the beautiful scene before her, but not really seeing the glistening waves beneath the near full moon. The stars were points of cold white in the sky, a sky empty of shifting clouds. Slowly, she turned and went back to her own bedchamber. She found her gown in the bottom of the armoire. It was ripped and soiled but she didn’t care. She dressed quickly, ignoring the pulling and aching in her ribs, her mind set on what she had to do. She merely shook her head when she realized she had no petticoats, no chemise, no stockings, nothing but the gown.
Nor could she find her shoes. No matter, she’d go barefoot. She crept down the front stairs as quietly and stealthily as a thief, and into the small estate room that was also the Kimberly Hall library. There was a gun case there, thank God, a tall oak affair with glass doors. It wasn’t locked. She knew guns and thus picked out a small derringer. If she had to protect Jeremy, she would shoot whoever it was at very close range. She had no intention of missing.
She slipped out of Kimberly Hall five minutes later, walking quickly down the graveled drive, ignoring the small rocks digging into the soles of her feet, welcoming the evening breeze that stirred tendrils of hair on her forehead.
It was a beautiful night, a still night. Her heart pounded in slow, steady strokes. If only she knew how long Jeremy had been gone. She was afraid, but she was calm. It was about time she took over responsibility for herself and for Jeremy. Dear God, please give her enough time to prove herself.
It took her twenty minutes to walk to Camille Hall, cutting through canefields, keeping in the shadows as much as possible. She cut her feet but ignored the jabs of pain, even ignored the blood when she felt it sticky and cold on the soles of her feet.
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