by Sophia Nash
“Alex?” Her faint voice was like cool water flowing toward a parched and dying man.
Isabelle limped forward, breathing hard. “Did she answer?”
He nodded, unable to speak in his relief.
“I’m fine, really, just fine,” Roxanne’s voice bubbled up from below. “Tell Isabelle not to worry.”
Alex exhaled roughly and then turned to glare at the duchess. “She said you should worry.”
“She would never.” Isabelle placed her hands on her hips.
“She said she might strangle you for letting her go down there in the first place.”
“Well,” she huffed. “If this is how you’re going to go on . . .” She turned to head for her horse.
“Enough, Isabelle. Get back here, for Christsakes. I might need your help. Even if it is only to get more help should I happen to fall and kill myself.” He was having a difficult time drawing air into his lungs.
She stopped in her tracks. “This is not the way I expected to spend the day. But, yes, I shall help both of you and then I am going to return to London where people do not insult me, and I can sit in bed and eat bonbons and read novels about heroines and heroes who fall down rotting mine shafts instead of watching them!”
“You’re a wonderful woman,” Alex replied, but did not dare show her his face. He was even more worried he’d be unable to peel his hands off the edge.
He saw her shadow fall near him. “Are you going in after her or not?”
“Do I have a choice?” He couldn’t hide the hitch in his voice. “Of course I am.”
“Look, she said something about platforms. Yes. She said she was going down eleven ladders with platforms at the bottom of each ladder. She wouldn’t let me tie a rope on her. She said it might snag and would be too dangerous.”
“Then why is there a bloody rope dangling down there?”
“Don’t you yell at me, Alexander Barclay.”
“I’m sorry.” He dropped his head.
“Hey, are you all right?” Isabelle knelt beside him.
“I’m bloody fine. I’m going.”
“Isabelle?” Roxanne’s faint voice called out. “Lower the line another twenty feet.”
Alex shook his head. “If we survive this, remind me to never, ever, ever let her out of my sight ever, ever again.”
“Of course,” Isabelle whispered and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Do you want some candles? I know how to affix them to the hats in the dry room.”
He nodded.
Moments later, he pried his hands from the edge of the mine and lowered himself onto the first ladder. He looked up at Isabelle as he plunged into darkness and thought it might just be the last thing he saw for all of eternity. Her eyes reflected the gnawing terror engulfing him. The raw nerves he’d spent a lifetime trying to bury overtook his rational mind. Unconsciously, he took a step down to his own private hell.
And another . . .
Chapter 14
The descent into the mine was his nightmare come to life. His only lifeline was Roxanne’s voice growing stronger with each level he descended. She was pragmatic, giving advice about every detail. He could not utter a syllable in return. With each rung, his nerves unraveled a little more. Sweat flowed down his brow, and his hands grew unsteady. Two platforms down, and he was back in the tiny, dark Portuguese prison cell, starving, and waiting for death.
“Alexander?” Roxanne’s concerned voice reached him. “You know, I can do this on my own now that I have the rope. Don’t come down any farther. I can find my way out.”
He couldn’t reply. Three platforms down, and he was wondering how he was going to go on. He remembered the trick he had used sometimes in the cell. He would close his eyes in the dark and recall an entire day on le Mont of his childhood, from dawn until dusk. But he couldn’t do that here. He had to concentrate on not falling.
At least he had the small glow of the candle. By the sixth platform, his breathing was irregular and he was dizzy with fatigue.
He stumbled halfway down the next ladder.
“Alex?” Roxanne shouted. “Stop! I told you not to come down any farther. I’m perfectly able to get back to the top on my own. I’m just using the rope and climbing the one—”
He croaked out a curse. “Don’t bloody move.” He made it to the seventh level and didn’t even stop to ponder his state.
“I don’t want you to go another step,” Roxanne said, and then paused as if deciding what to say next. “I know what I’m doing. And—and you don’t.” Her voice had taken on a morbid, humorous edge.
Damn it to hell. “Right,” he retorted, stronger now. “Just like you knew what you were doing when you fell off the cliff.” The eighth ladder was slippery, but for some reason he was able to focus on his grip.
“This is a mine. It’s like a second home to me. I know exactly what to do. Just as I know exactly what to say in every predicament,” she said indignantly. “Unlike you.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” He ground out an oath.
“I don’t have any need of you or any more of your stupid notes. I can see to myself very well.”
“My notes? What in hell are you yammering about now?” He had reached the next rocky ledge without even knowing what he was doing.
“I refuse to discuss it. I’m leaving anyway,” she said, sounding much closer. “There are no rungs on the tenth ladder. I broke them.”
He ignored her in his indignation. “You’re the one who brought it up. What was wrong with my note?”
“You mean the one that said, drink your tea and be on your way since I’ve got so many more important things to do, and I don’t want to have to face or talk to you this morning?”
She was so close he could hear the effort of her breathing. She had not listened to his instructions and had obviously ascended the rope.
“You are like every woman from time immemorial. You say you don’t want something—in your case, compliments and romantic nonsense—when in fact you crave the reverse.” He could see the tiny light of her candle growing brighter with each platform.
“You know, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve figured out your physical fault and it’s—”
“Don’t want to hear it,” he interrupted. “And by the way, you snore.”
“Is it a long gurgle, with a loud snort at the end? Kind of like the noise you made all night long?” she asked sweetly.
“I do believe now would be the proper time to tell you that you are, indeed, frigid.”
“You also drool,” she retorted. “Hold the rope steady, I’m almost up to your level. And grab on to the one length of the broken ladder in case I need it.”
He did as she asked, muttering loudly about females who did not do as they were told, and damning all well-meaning notes and compliments to hell.
When she shimmied to his platform, using the rope and the ruined ladder, he had to lean in close to drag her onto the flooring. He finally gazed into her eyes in the soft glow of light radiating from his candle. He could see her eyes. There was great concern reflecting out of their blue depths.
For him.
And that was when he knew . . .
Roxanne had recognized the voice of a person in trouble and out of his league. She’d heard it before from time to time—usually it was a young man on his first trip down. But Alexander’s voice had held something else in it. It wasn’t simple fear. It wasn’t desperation. It was paralyzing agony.
She didn’t know why, but she did know that the only thing that had kept her sane when he had hauled her up from certain death on that cliff earlier in the summer was the levity in Alexander’s voice after he saved her. And now she was returning the favor. “Hey . . . it’s you,” she murmured nonsensically. And then she slowly slid into his arms, taking care with the candles.
His chest was solid as a tree trunk despite his labored breathing. Roxanne wracked her brain for more nonsense.
“And just think,” she said, voice steady, “when we
get to the top, you shall have the rest of the afternoon to shower me with lectures. And all the while you’ll have the added pleasure of knowing I prefer them to false compliments. Oh . . . ouch!”
“What is it?” His composure was stretched to the limit.
“Splinters. Lots of them. You’ll be able to torture me while removing those, too.”
He was silent, his arms still encircling her.
“Alexander?”
“Yes?”
“Let’s go. I need you to ascend first, to test the rungs as some are not sturdy.” She could not trust him to follow her.
He didn’t move. He had a death grip on her. It was time to pry him from whatever was keeping him there.
“Look, I have bad news. And more bad news.”
He instantly pulled away to look at her. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” She tugged him to the rickety ladder and urged him forward. Before he could stop on the higher platform, she had him reaching for the next ladder. “My fortune is not where my father said it was.”
“Who cares about your bloody fortune,” he said tightly.
She smiled in the darkness. She might just have to love him even more.
The next platform, she remembered, was not as sturdy as the others. “Careful, step to the left,” she said. “I care about my fortune. Someone obviously stole it.”
“I refuse to talk about this now.”
“Well, I want to. I have to see Dickie Jones, the only man my father ever trusted. He’ll know who took it.” They were on the fifth level, and she touched his arm to see if he was still shaking.
“Please tell me you won’t go down any more mines,” he retorted.
“I won’t as long as you promise never to write another stupid note to me.”
“Agreed,” he said immediately.
They ascended the next two ladders rapidly.
“And I will leave within the week. I’ve placed us all in jeopardy.”
“How so, aside from nearly causing me apoplexy?”
“I caused you to nearly kill Lawrence, and surely he is beginning to wonder if I really died since you gave him back my ring. Not that I blame you, you understand. I adore that you shoved that tiny, hideous thing onto his finger. But even Lawrence can be a little smarter than I give him credit for at times.”
They tackled the next ladder in silence. Roxanne’s stinging arms were so tired, she could barely feel them, and her chemise and clothes were soaked through from her exertions in the heated shaft. The hole of light was growing very close and she had to hold Alex back from bolting toward it.
“And I hate that I took Isabelle into my confidence. It is too much to have asked of her.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Alexander retorted.
Thank God he had reverted to his old self.
She plucked at the back of his coat just before he reached for the last ladder. He turned his head and she could see his profile. “Thank you, Alexander,” she whispered. “You’re one in a million.”
“The feeling is entirely mutual,” he ground out. “And in case you are wondering, that was not a bloody compliment.”
As the cooler air rushed down to meet their last few steps, Roxanne strangely felt elated. She wasn’t sure of the why of it. She only knew that instead of being terrified at the knowledge that her father’s fortune might be lost to her forever, she didn’t seem to care. She felt alive. And she felt free for the first time in her life.
She ran into Isabelle’s waiting arms, and closed her eyes to the luxury of the other woman’s friendship.
But when she opened her eyes, while still hugging her petite friend, she did not expect to see what she did.
Alexander’s back was to her as he stalked toward a chestnut gelding grazing near shrubs of mauve heather and gorse in full bloom. He threw aside the felt hat, snatched up the horse’s reins and swung onto the animal’s back. In an instant, he was galloping away from the mine without a single backward glance.
Alex had the unnerving sensation that he was running away. He had never run away from anything. He prided himself in facing up to every hellish situation no matter what the cost. He would rather die bravely than live as a coward. But right now he felt chickenhearted even when he had no reason to feel anything of the sort.
He had gone down that hellhole and he had seen her back to safety.
And everything she had said was correct. She had placed them all in jeopardy. She shouldn’t have brought Isabelle to the mine. She shouldn’t have gone there at all. At the very least she could have told him her intentions. Not that she ever did anything that did not suit her. Roxanne Vanderhaven had become a plague on his existence. He was glad she was leaving.
And he was going to marry one of Prinny’s favorites. What did it matter, really? There was no question he would have married at some point in his life. Not that he could say precisely why he knew that. It was one of the unspoken rules noblemen could not avoid: birth, baptism, marriage, death, and a variety of arcane taxes along the way. And really, what did it matter whether he wedded now or later?
But he’d be a mewling nodcock if he allowed anyone to continue to dictate the way he was living right now—with an insufferable mockery of a house party and a woman who was causing him to do things he had sworn never to do again.
It was all going to end this very night.
And so it did.
Candover didn’t know what awaited him that afternoon when Alex sauntered into the famed portrait gallery, which echoed every sound from its hallowed walls covered with more brown-eyed Barclays than should ever exist in one place in Christendom.
“What in bloody hell? I won’t have it,” the other duke retorted.
“Don’t care,” Alex said, calmly leaning against the great yawn of the marble mantel seated in the middle of the long, ancient hall. “We’re culling the herd. Within the hour. I’ve informed the maids and valets to begin packing, and I’ve sent the Cossack ahead to St. Ives where it’s being arranged for all of you to spend the first night of your journey to Town.”
“You can’t do it,” Candover seethed. “Have you forgotten the Prince Regent’s orders and all that? And it’s bloody discourteous to the ladies and their families, who were ordered here by His Majesty not so very long ago.
“Give over. It’s been an age.” Alex clenched his hands. “All of them are to go, except those on this list.” He extracted a piece of paper from his vest and handed it to Candover, whose sour expression bespoke of years of practice.
“You want my older sisters to stay, and Isabelle? Oh, and of course, Mary Haverty. No huge surprise there. Hmmm. But you want the rest to depart . . . including me and Barry?”
“You read very well.”
Candover’s eyes narrowed. “Your hospitality almost moves me to tears, Kress. And here I thought I had grown on you.”
“Oh, you’ve grown on me, all right. Like a barnacle on a ship’s arse.”
Candover’s expression darkened. “If you think I will leave you alone with four innocents, two of whom are my sisters, you’re more daft in the attics than I thought.”
“I’m willing to compromise,” Alex began, stroking his chin. “You may take yourself off along with your sisters, but I shall personally invite Isabelle and Mary to stay on.”
“Isabelle will not accept,” Candover ground out.
Alex smiled. “If you think you have a chance of convincing a duchess in her own right to do as you say, be my guest.”
Candover’s expression turned thunderous.
Alex continued smoothly, “My cousin will act as chaperone as will my great-aunt.” No need to inform him that Roxanne Tatiana Harriet would be leaving sooner versus later. Nor was it a good time to reflect on his great-aunt’s blindness, which seemed in question most of the time.
“Oh, I’ll go all right, Kress. If only for the pleasure of informing His Majesty of your complete disregard of his orders and your abysmal progress on the matrimonial front. But you hav
e forgotten the archbishop. He will stay.”
“The archbishop,” Alex echoed, amused. “Ah, yes, the archbishop. That gentleman is so bloody quiet, I’ve yet to see him anywhere on the Mount. I suppose it will be an age before he finishes his reflections in the chapel for the sins he committed the night of our revelry. Poor man.”
“Yes, it’s too bad you fail to show even a hint of the same remorse.”
“So you are on your knees in the chapel every morning?”
Candover ground his molars to bits. “The archbishop must stay. Especially for Isabelle. You are not to come within ten feet of her or you shall face my sword.”
“How chivalrous of you. I shall be certain to tell her of your theatrics and devotion. Really, Candover, you should try just a mite harder to curb your jealousy. It’s an ugly trait. Shows a lack of confidence in one’s abilities, don’t you think?”
The richest duke in England shifted on his feet and Alex was hoping for a good explosion. He’d never seen Candover shed his cool façade. It was impossible not to try and flummox the most famous stiff upper lip in the land. But Alex was not to be satisfied tonight.
“You know, Kress, it’s often said that what one most despises in another is the very trait he himself possesses in abundance.” Candover smiled.
It was only the second time Alex had ever seen the other man’s teeth. “Yes, well, thank God we will not have to put up with each other ere long. And by the by . . .”
“Yes?”
“I have one last favor to request.”
Candover’s brows rose to the roof.
Chapter 15
Alex figured it was best to get it all over with in one fell swoop. He’d faced down Candover, who was already presumably barking orders for his servants to prepare to depart, and now it was time for Alex to conquer a greater adversary . . . Roxanne Vanderhaven, the most audacious countess who had ever lived and breathed fire on mortal mankind. The passion, humor, and fury she could inspire in his breast during one single twenty-four-hour time span was dangerous to anyone’s health. He felt no need to justify his actions. None at all.