Should something happen to Chadwick, as Sir Henry’s heir, I would be responsible for the boy and Bethany.
You can take that first step with me, Meg.
Have you allowed yourself get taken in by a notorious spy? Twice?
And still, he came into her dreams, an angel in her bed, taking her into his arms and holding her, vowing to love her in health and sickness until death.
The cloaked figure following her faded with the shadows, and she opened her eyes, swept into the swirling sensation of her dream, running through thick, black smoke. But she was not Victoria. She was Meg Faraday. She could hear the steamer chimney bellow three times. A fire had spread into the engine room and panicked passengers were flowing onto the decks. Screams. Children crying. People shoving and clawing at one another to reach the quarter boats on deck. But she was trying to get back inside the companionway. No one would let her. Someone hit her shoulder and she went into the water just before the engine room exploded. Indistinct memories formed shapes against the flames, smells of the oil-filled sea swallowing her within its depths and the sound of the dying ship sinking into the sea. She clung to debris, and somehow found a barrel floating in the sea, begging God not to pull her down and take her child with her, promising Him her soul if He would only let her live.
It had been the first prayer she’d ever remembered saying in her life. And when she’d again awakened to sunlight and the destruction around her, she was alive.
“Maaaaaggie? Where are you?”
The vivid dream shoved her straight up in bed, her heartbeat pushing blood through her veins. Only her father called her by that name. Gasping air into her lungs, she blinked away the confusion in her brain. Sanity returned in slow degrees. Her bed was empty. Tangled in her blankets, she collapsed back into the pillows. She’d only been dreaming. Lord in heaven, she’d only been dreaming.
Hands trembling, she stretched across the mattress and fumbled in the darkness for the table clock set on her nightstand. The low-burning fire cast the only light. Her room was ice-cold. Last night she’d taken only a few drops of chlorodyne to help with the stiffness in her body. The narcotic effects were worse because she’d not eaten. She was barely coherent. The little hand on the clock’s face was on the four, but that was all she could read in the darkness.
She flung off the blankets and splashed cold water on her face. Remaining barefooted, she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her wrapper and, ignoring the tenderness on her side, belted it at the waist over her shift.
Nathanial was not in his room, which meant David still had not returned. Uncertainty turning to worry, she shut her son’s door and, after a moment’s hesitation, made her way to the studio, where she lit the fluted oil lamps that lined the walls.
Lifting one staff off its place on the wall, she turned it over in her hands, tucked it beneath one arm, and proceeded to work through the soreness in her body.
Nellis had enjoyed his little game with the tea yesterday. He had enjoyed telling her about David, and, at her most vulnerable moment of confusion, she had let Nellis slip through the cracks in her mind and poison her with self-doubt.
And as she worked her way across the room, instead of melding mind and body to create balance, she felt only growing frustration. Wasn’t this what Nellis had intended? Yet, the more determined she was not to believe the worst, the more her mind gave in to doubt. The circle only fed upon itself and, by the time she worked her way across the floor, she felt only a need to impale the bloody staff through David’s nub of a heart. Outside, the sky remained dark, enclosing her until she could barely breathe.
Sweeping her leg around into the next set of steps, she swung the staff over her head, turned, and came to a complete stop.
“David!”
He stood not two feet from her. Wearing his heavy coat and riding clothes, he looked as if he’d been dragged out of bed. Stubble heightened the dark look in his eyes, but it was not all anger she saw.
He lifted a dark-gloved hand and eased the staff away from his skull. “My horse threw a shoe about five miles from here,” he said. “Nathanial and I were staying at the inn outside Alfriston. I didn’t get Rockwell’s message until two hours ago.”
“He shouldn’t have been so quick to summon you.”
“What the bloody hell were you thinking, going to Nellis?”
Ignoring him, refusing to fall in to the volatility of her emotions, she straightened her neck and stretched out her left arm, looking over her shoulder as she bent at the knee. She stepped into the exercise, moving the staff with slow, precise movements. In nine steps, she reached the wall, pulled the second staff from its place next to the fencing foils, turned, and tossed it to David. He caught it midair.
“He knows,” she said. “He knows who you and I are. He knows about Nathanial.”
“Did Nellis threaten him?”
He threatened you, she wanted to shout. Calmly, she said, “He implied that if something should happen to you then as Sir Henry’s legal heir, he would become Nathanial and Bethany’s guardian.”
“That won’t happen, Meg.”
She knew that she dared tell him no more. A part of her recognized the danger of telling David about the telegram he’d received from Lord Ravenspur for fear he would violently confront Nellis. Especially when she suspected that was exactly what Nellis wanted. Yet he’d succeeded in making her question David’s loyalty. Even as he’d subtly threatened David’s life.
“Nellis told me how you earned your title and a page full of other accolades. You neglected to tell me how well you’d been rewarded for all of your dedicated work in Calcutta. He told me you are a killer. An assassin. Are you?”
David said nothing in his defense. But a darkness descended in his eyes and he was a split second late in raising the staff against her attack. “What are you doing, Meg?”
“Fight me, David.”
He evaded her next move. “I’m not dressed for this.”
“Then undress. It isn’t as if I haven’t seen everything already.” She swung her staff and cut only empty air.
“The first rule.” His grin warned that she tread dangerous ground. “You don’t fight angry. Angry will get you killed.”
“And you are so adept at survival.”
The sconces around the room provided scant light, but enough to show him that she wore barely anything at all beneath the robe. “I fear you have the advantage, dear.”
“Oh!” She lunged.
Stepping to her left, he countered her every movement as if he was making love to her, with masculine precision to detail, guiding her every thrust toward ultimate surrender, and she missed her mark again, stumbling forward in a turn.
“Why did you go see Nellis?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” She gripped the pole with both hands and pushed against his. “I found what I was looking for.”
“Take it slower,” he warned.
“I can’t.”
She wouldn’t.
“Fight me, David.”
“Why do you think I haven’t pressed you about the treasure?”
“Fight, damm it!”
David held up his pole if only to counter the force of her attack. His eyes glittered over hers, warning her that he was perfectly capable of retaliation in kind. But he did not fight.
She swung the staff in a wide arc. He caught it with his hand, stopping her forward momentum with the same force of slamming against a wall. The contact jolted every muscle in her body. She bent over her legs, resting one hand on her side.
“You’re hurting, Meg. Let me help you.”
His tenderness served to disarm her. She recognized what he was trying to do for her. But he couldn’t continue to carry her on his shoulders. Bethany was right in that regard. She couldn’t hide behind people anymore. She had to do this for herself.
“I have nothing more to say.” She yielded the staff to him, but he grabbed her arm before she could walk away. “Let go of me. I’m not li
ke you, David. I can’t dismiss the pain and make believe it doesn’t exist.”
He dragged her to the wall with one hand and mounted both staffs beside the foils with the other. “You will allow me my say, Meg.”
“My name is Victoria. Why can’t you just remember the name?”
“Jesu, Meg, Victoria—”
“Why can’t you just let Meg Faraday die?”
He pulled her into his arms and, gripping her shoulders, placed his mouth a hairsbreadth from hers. “Because I love you, and you bloody ask the impossible of me.”
In her agitated state, his words were the very last thing in the world she expected him to say. “I have loved you always.” He leaned his forehead against hers and said with ferocity, “Don’t you understand that, yet?”
She swiped a knuckle across her cheek. “No, I do not.”
Cupping her face, David pulled her into a kiss. It was easier to kiss her than to convince her of his affection. He angled his head, opened his mouth over hers, and tasted only bliss. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, as if awakening from a deep sleep, rose on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck, and the kiss burned into something erotic. Just like that, he caught fire. He strained to pull her closer, to climb inside her, but the groan in his chest did not rise from pleasure. Sheer frustration targeted every nerve in his body and saved him from the consequences of his lust.
“Can you please not try to kill me anymore?” he rasped, his forehead pressing against hers. God grant him self-control. There was much he had yet to say to her and, his exhaustion notwithstanding, he would have his say. “I’m not going to leave you. Not ever again. You have to believe me.”
Meg pulled back, and he looked deeply into her eyes. He wanted to tell her he’d already taken steps to seek a pardon for her. But he couldn’t. Not yet. He was afraid of building too much hope, then dashing it on the rocks, knowing that such a task would practically require a miracle. But no one had ever spoken up for Meg before, or defended her, or offered her a chance. “I’m not pressing you about the treasure because I need you to trust why I am here. If you tell me you don’t know where it is. I’ll believe you. I’m doing everything in my power to help you. Do you trust me?”
She nodded.
“Then say the words.” He pushed his fingers into her hair and forced her to look at him. “Tell me you trust me to see you and Nathanial through this safely. That I know what I’m doing.”
“Time is on the other side,” she whispered. “Not ours. I only want to put an end to this. And I don’t know how. If I could find my father…”
His palms tightened on her shoulders, and he moved her to arm’s length. “Then what, for bloody sake?”
“Then I will never have any more nightmares, David. I could end this for everyone. I would be free. I only want to be free of him and my past. I don’t care how anymore.”
Finally, he knew. He understood. He watched her eyes become luminescent with tears that never fell. “Is that why you went to see Nellis?”
She walked to the wall and plopped down on the leather mat, but not so distracted that she didn’t adjust the robe to cover her bare feet. “He’s connected in some way to this case, but I’m not sure how.”
He squatted on his calves in front of her, spilling his coat on the floor around his feet. “Tell me why you believe that?”
“Everything started six months ago. His interest in the land. His obsession with me. Someone must have come to him. He knows too much about us, and he didn’t care that I knew that. It was as if he wanted to make sure I told you everything.”
He smoothed back her tumbledown hair, knowing that he was ten seconds from walking out of this room and going after Nellis. “Did he hurt you?”
Shaking her head, she did not meet his eyes. “Sheriff Stillings brought me home. No one laid a hand on me.”
“A person doesn’t have to strike another person to cause pain. Something else must have happened if you’re afraid I might ride over to his residence and knock in his teeth.”
“Where did you go yesterday?” she asked.
David relented to the change of topic. “I found the stone mason who once worked on the church. Mr. Gibson gave me his name. The man will be here tomorrow, and I will see how many others follow his lead. I put the word out tonight that I am hiring people interested in honest employment.”
“You did that?”
“I need people who are not afraid of the dark. Someone willing to hunt rats in caves. People willing to fight for themselves, and for a change.”
He didn’t know how he could make anything change at all, when he didn’t know where to begin. But he knew this place and these people mattered to Meg. Or maybe she just mattered to him enough that he would give her anything. “Do you know what Sir Henry told me yesterday?” He tilted her face with the palm of his hand. “He believes that most of the people in this town will stand by you.”
“But no one comes up here anymore.”
“Do you think that may be a direct cause of my presence here more than any fault of yours?”
She laughed, striking at her tears. “Judge not lest ye be judged? You think because they are all mostly smugglers and thieves they will be more forgiving of me? Even when Nellis makes known certain facts about us? None of us will be able to show our faces again. No one within a hundred miles will trust me or you again.”
“After last night, they trust I will find the caves with or without their help. They also trust me to see the caves permanently sealed when I do. And you can trust me to deal with any man who sets foot on Rose Briar without an invitation to visit. What is there not to trust? I’m an open book.”
Tears clung to her eyelashes. “Do you really love me?”
Realizing he saw the mirror of his heart in her wet eyes, he held her hands in his palms and brought her fingers to his lips. He had fallen in love with her long ago from afar, he realized, knowing his heart had been in jeopardy from the first time their gazes connected from across a polo field in Calcutta. “I should have found a way to help you years ago. But I could not.”
“You were honor bound to do your job, David. You still are.”
Understanding honor meant that he also understood dishonor, and recognized the fine line he walked. He only knew he loved Meg, and would not allow her to die in prison.
When she spoke, her voice was nearly inaudible. “I believe I’ve never known anyone like you from the first time I looked at you walking off the polo field,” she said. “I can even describe the attire you were wearing and the color of horse you rode. You were the only man I’d ever met who didn’t lay his heart at my feet on the second encounter of our acquaintance.” She withdrew her hand from his. “I have yet to meet your equal in that regard. You did your job very well.”
David sat against the wall and, drawing one knee to his chest, leaned his head back. They sat shoulder to shoulder, the years between them narrowing to a thin line.
“Whatever Nellis told you is no doubt all factual on the surface. I was what I was.” He braced one wrist on his knee, and pondered his life as one who studied a self-portrait that no longer resembled him. “But that is as far as it goes. I know I did things in my life…”
“Why did you become a priest?”
David considered the leather creases in his gloves, slowly removing them as he spoke. “I had a need to do something good in the world. To give back something I felt I had taken. Does that sound romantic or overly philosophic?”
“Did you?” she asked. “Do something good then?”
He thought about the past years and what he had accomplished. “I’d like to think I did.” His mouth tilted into a grin. “I married off two of my brothers.”
Meg leaned her head into his shoulder. “You did?”
“One willingly and the other not so willingly.” He rubbed his jaw in memory of that latter experience with his youngest brother. It had been months since he’d thought of his family. He did so now with a need t
o see them, until he turned his nose into Meg’s hair and inhaled the faint scent of myrrh and quince. She’d washed with his soap today.
“What are they going to say when they learn you are no longer a priest?” he heard her ask as she insinuated herself between his legs and sat back on her ankles. Her wrapper gaped open, revealing the fleshly curve of her bosom swelling against her stays.
“I wonder that any of my family ever believed it of me in the first place,” he said, lifting his gaze to encompass hers, wondering how he’d managed so many years of celibacy when his mind so easily drowned in the carnal libation he drank from her eyes. “They don’t even know where I am.” He pulled her to her knees in front of him. “Or at least they didn’t until I sent a post to my brother-in-law a few days ago.”
“A post?”
“My sister is married to the undersecretary in the Foreign Office,” he said as he rose on his knees to the softer leather mat beneath Meg’s legs.
“I don’t understand,” she said in a breathy voice, dropping her head back against her shoulders as he found succor in the cleft between her breasts.
The sun had yet to rise, no one in the house stirred or was due to awaken, and he rose above her, kissing her deeply, neither gentle nor patient in his want to have her. “Where is the blessing in having a brother-in-law in high places, if I cannot call upon at least one favor in this lifetime?” he said, lowering her to her back and falling above her as he caught his hands on the floor.
“This brother-in law? He works for Lord Ware?” she asked.
David tore off his coat. “Is this a conversation we want to be having right now?” he asked, pulling his shirt over his head. He fumbled less at the buttons on his trousers.
“Wait!” she breathed between their frantic kisses.
But he’d had enough of waiting and talking. He pushed aside her robe then sat back on his heels and let his gaze traverse the hills and the valleys leading to the apex between her thighs. “Truly, David—” she struggled to sit, only to catch herself on her hair. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this just now—”
Intimately aware of his presence between her legs, he cocked a brow. “Do you love me, Meg?”
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