by Cheryl Bolen
Control of all my estates and guardianship of my son and heir, Charles Edward Arthur Stone, I leave in trust to my beloved brother....
Beloved brother? Bedeviling brother, perhaps. Infuriating brother. Scoundrel brother. That was all Griffin had ever been to William—tormenting him, teasing him, and defying him at every turn, until even William's formidable store of patience had soured.
Griffin peered up at the silvery moon, which seemed distant and chill this night. Maybe things had not needed to come to such a pass. If things had been different.
But their fates had been written the day their father had been killed in a duel. That day every one of their indulgent, adoring servants had been swept away by the indomitable lady who had come to take the two Stone boys in hand—Lady Judith Stone, dowager duchess of Ravensmoor, a lady of such awesome will it seemed that even the towers of Darkling Moor bowed down before her.
She had descended upon the halls she had once ruled, driving out every vestige of her pleasure-loving son and his gentle, long-dead wife. Like a general she had mustered her own troops about her, intent upon crushing any rebellion mounted by her grandsons.
"You are the heirs of Edward Stone," she had told the two children, her gray eyes boring into them. "The blood of royalty courses through your veins. Your father flung the name of Stone into the gutters, but you will dredge it out and hold it up as a shining example of honor and nobility, if I must crush you within an inch of your life to see that you do."
Griff’s mouth curved into a grim smile as the gray-haired martinet's image rose in his mind. She had managed to bring William to heel almost immediately, bending him to her will with her diatribes about duty, layering him with guilt and more than a little self-importance.
But in Griffin even the daunting Lady Judith had met her match. She had endeavored to break his will through countless thrashings and punishments, but all she had managed to do was fray her own nerves to the snapping point. Griffin had refused to be the paragon of the nobility his grandmother desired. Instead, he mirrored his wastrel father in face, form, and spirit.
Griffin braced one long, booted leg against the chaise's floorboard as the vehicle jolted over a particularly deep rut in the road. If there were one pleasure in this bittersweet homecoming, it would be seeing Judith Stone's expression when he strode into Darkling Moor, trustee of the grand house and newly appointed guardian of the noble name Stone.
She had tried to sever the bond between the brothers with her meddling, and Griffin had let his love for William wither under the weight of his pride. But his final gift to William would be to honor the bond they had once shared.
He arched his head back against the squabs. He was a far different man than when he'd left. His cheekbones slashed in bronzed planes to a patrician nose, heavy dark brows shadowing eyes stunning in their intensity. It was his father's face a bewitching mixture of raw masculinity and bedeviling amusement. In many ways his face held the strong lines of Lady Judith's own.
His return would be the woman's worst nightmare turned real—Griffin snatching the heir to Ravensmoor from her control. Griff struggled to picture Charles Stone as he must be now—his chest thin, his cheeks shadowed with a sparse beard. At nineteen, he would no longer the imp with huge brown eyes Griffin had bid farewell to that long-ago day in the east meadow.
Griff had knelt before the quiet, frail child, Charles's too-pale lips quivering with tears he was manfully trying to stem.
"Don't go, Uncle Griffin," Charles had sniffled. "Please don't. Grandmama and Father will never let me run in the fields or swim in the stream if you go away."
"I have to, little man," Griffin had said, hating the pain in the child's innocent face. "Something... something happened, and..." He surrendered to the futility of explaining dueling, jealousy and death to the child. He said only, "I'm counting on you to be strong. Steal away to the stream if you want to. Be yourself, Charles. Don't let them own you like the manor houses or the hedgerows. Don't let them carve you into some stodgy statue to deck their accursed gallery."
The child had stared at Griffin, eyes solemn with promise. "Won't. Won't let them make me into marble."
Griffin had given the boy a ring carved in the shape of the mythical creature he himself had been named for. His throat rough with emotion, he thrust it on the child's middle finger.
"I cannot... cannot take it," Charles had managed between hiccups. "It's your favorite."
"This way you'll not forget me, boy."
"I could never forget you!" The child had flung himself into Griffin's arms. And when Griffin finally walked away he felt as though he'd left behind a piece of his heart.
Griff reached down to where a bundle of his most treasured possessions lay upon the chaise's floor: A sword hilt protruded from the carpetbag's end. A blade, formed in Toledo, would be a fitting gift for the man Griffin hoped his nephew Charles had become.
Soon Griff would see whether Lady Judith had worked her will upon the boy. God knew she had broken far stronger spirits than Charles Stone's. But her reign over Darkling Moor would soon be over. And even Griffin's would be but a short one.
In two years Charles would reach his majority, but Griffin had no intention of languishing about Darkling Moor that long. He would set the estate's affairs in order, then engage someone trustworthy and eminently suitable to tend things in his absence—maybe Tom Southwood, the boyhood comrade Griff had run wild with in the streets of London. The friend who had married respectably and still kept up with Griff through yearly letters filled with the news of England. Then, once those arrangements were finalized, Griff would leave England and the vast Stone fortunes for good.
Griffin’s jaw clenched, his eyes hardening. It was what he wanted after all, was it not? What he had always wanted? To be free of the yoke that revered name had placed upon him? It was infinitely sensible, entrusting the estates to someone levelheaded and responsible. Someone already in England. So reasonable that William himself should have made the arrangements. So why had the unerringly sensible William summoned Griffin home? Had he sensed death's dark horse riding toward him?
A chill trickled down Griffin's nape, the cloak tossed carelessly over his greatcoat failing to deflect the cold night wind that penetrated the chaise. He had heard of people having premonitions, but he had never given credence to such tales. And William was even less superstitious than he.
It was impossible that William had suspected he would meet his death. Impossible.
Shadows sucked the chaise deeper into darkness. The light of the moon now scarcely reached through the trees. The very wind seemed colder. Griffin stared out into the mist-shrouded landscape. Even after ten years absence he recognized the strip of land.
Rogue's Row.
He remembered the spindly postilion's voice as he described the perilous stretch of road. Griff recalled that the man had fought mightily to dissuade him from traveling through the night woods, the postilion’s fear evident in his round, bobbly eyes. "It is a devilish evil place, your lordship," he had warned, "filled with haunts of the men murdered there, and the brigands who cut 'em down."
Griffin jammed his foot against the floorboard, levering himself upright as he drove the man's cowardly ravings from his mind.
"Aye. That is what I need to chase these maudlin thoughts away,” Griffin said aloud. “Some daring knight of the road to try my skill against."
His grin widened. A brigand... that would prove a diversion. Some devil borne of night, all swashbuckling courage and elegant manners, armed with a pistol or sword. Griffin leaned forward in his seat with a prickling of anticipation.
His fingers brushed the jeweled hilt of his own sword lovingly. Ah, England! The one thing the colonies lacked were brigands with a brilliant splash of style.
Griff started to lean back after a moment when suddenly the world seemed to explode.
Tavish shrieked; the blunderbuss thundered. The horses plunged, and the coach pitched wildly as another weapon blazed orang
e against the darkness. The chaise lurched one more time, wood splintering as a pistol ball found its mark, the wheels grating sickeningly to a halt.
Griff stared for a moment in disbelief. Then a slow smile spread across his features. A moment later, he lunged for his sword. His hard laughter echoed through the night, laughter that had chilled the blood of adversaries who had seen death dancing upon the point of Griffin Stone's blade.
Chapter 3
The waiting was always agony for Beau, but Owen Maguire's presence honed even that torture into something worthy of the Spanish Inquisition. Beau gritted her teeth, running a soothing hand down her stallion's glossy neck as she glared at the boy beside her.
His lanky frame sat awkwardly upon a horse too spirited by half, his face so greedy for excitement that Beau doubted that even a cudgel could drive caution into his thick skull. Yet her palms fair itched for a smooth length of wood so she could try it.
"It is no game we play here," she whispered, echoing Molly's words of earlier that day. "This night's success, our very lives, depend—"
"I know, I know!" Owen's impatience rippled through his voice as he fondled the shiny new pistol Beau had given him. "My ears are numb with your instructions! We ride down upon the coach. I block the road and hold the drivers at bay while you get the fun of slitting the passenger's purse-strings."
Owen leveled his weapon at an imaginary target, mimicking a soft popping sound as he pretended to squeeze off a shot. "Take that, you rich scum," he said. "Your purse at once, else I blow your blasted head off."
"The only thing you are going to blast," Beau snapped, "is this raiding, if you don't control yourself! There will be no shootings. No killing. The Devil's Flame—"
"Never takes a life," Owen trilled in a sing-song voice. "Well, I don't know why. You might as well shoot the aristocrat curs! It will be hanging for us whether we kill 'em or not, and they can be witnesses against us if they live."
"They'll not have to bear witness against you," Beau ground out, "for I'll drive a pistol ball through you myself!" She tried to calm herself so that she might reason with the willful boy. "Owen—"
"I'll fare all right, Beau. Truly," he said. But a moment later his eagerness burst through again. "Was there ever such a night? With the wind and the darkness? And my pistol, it gleams."
Beau sighed, taunted by the memory of her own sense of invincibility on her first night—that wondrous sense of power, adventure that had raced through her veins like the headiest of wines.
Yet in the time that had passed since her first experience even she had learned to face a night ride with caution.
A bead of sweat trickled down Beau's neck; the mask covering her face felt stifling as it blocked out the night breeze. "Owen," she said, "I am trusting you. Putting my fate in your hands, even as you are doing the same with me. There is no room for arrogance, no—"
Beau suddenly fell silent, Owen's long-suffering sigh cut off. "Beau, look!" the boy gasped. His arm flashed out, his horse skittering sideways at the sudden movement.
Beau glimpsed a bobbing point of light racing toward them from the road below, heard the pounding of hooves as four dark horses thundered along the rutted ribbon of earth. Close. The equipage was too close, moving too fast... but there was no knowing whether another unwary traveler would happen along this night. And unless they snagged a purse, Molly would be at old Nell's mercy again.
"Now!" Beau drove her heels into her stallion's sides. In that instant the image of Owen's face seared into Beau's mind—the boy's bravado and arrogance had vanished, leaving behind the peaked countenance of a frightened child. Wrong, it felt all wrong. She felt a sinking sensation in her stomach, but it was too late to do anything but pray things came right as her pistol blazed fire.
She clutched the reins in one hand as her black stallion hurtled toward their prey. Her own tension echoed in her mount's sweat-sheened muscles as she struggled to jam her spent pistol into her high-top boot. Her second pistol was inches from her hand as the spirited Macbeth closed on the oncoming coach. The sound of Owen's horse charging awkwardly behind her filled her with dread, but Dame Fortune seemed to be with them. One of the chaise's team swerved, its traces splintering. The coach would have to stop.
She felt a familiar surge of triumph. Then Owen and his ill-controlled beast careened into the narrow strip of road, driving the coach-horses into renewed frenzies. A wail of alarm breached the youth's lips as he failed to catch hold of the lead horse's bridle, failed even to keep his own mount in check. The reins slithered from his grasp to trail perilously upon the ground.
Beau wheeled Macbeth in a tight circle, fighting to control the situation. But Owen's fear-crazed mount and the postilion's shrieks were driving even her well-schooled stallion to restiveness.
With an oath Beau yanked back upon Macbeth's reins, hating the roughness she was forced to use, hating even more the unfamiliar panic she felt.
"Hold!" She bellowed the command in a guttural voice, ripping her other pistol free, but the coachman and postilion had already sprung from their seats and were dashing into the dense vegetation beyond.
"I—I'll stop them!" Owen screamed. “Shoot—”
"Nay! Don't!" Beau flung her arm to deflect the boy's pistol, but she was too late. The leaden ball whizzed directly over Owen's mount's head, winging one bay ear.
Wild-eyed, the gelding reared, crashing into Macbeth. Beau battled to cling to the horse's back, her own weapon flying from her hand as Macbeth slammed into the chaise's curved side. Pain streaked up her leg, yet she managed to hold on.
Just as she was righting herself, Owen's horse charged beneath Macbeth's nose, bolting into the woods.
Macbeth reared, massive hooves flailing. For an instant Beau feared Macbeth would topple over backwards, so wild was his panic. She felt her beloved stallion struggle for balance, felt her knees tearing free of the saddle. The reins whipped through her fingers.
She cried out, fighting to grasp something, anything, and failed. She slammed into the hard-packed earth with a force that drove the breath from her lungs. Her head spun as she struggled to cling to consciousness.
As though from a distance she heard what could only be the coach's door being flung open.
Beau shook her head, trying desperately to clear it, as she scrambled toward the underbrush. But she had not even managed to reach the side of the road before something hard and heavy pinned her to the earth.
Beau gritted her teeth against the pain. A sudden awful stillness engulfed the clearing. By force of will she turned to face her assailant.
Moonlight glinted upon a glossy boot, planted firmly upon the folds of her cloak. Polished leather clung to a well-muscled calf. The boot gave way to breeches that molded to a thigh honed to a perfection found only in the most excellent of riders. Beau's gaze flew upward past a flat stomach to shoulders so broad they seemed to dwarf her with their power. Then her eyes locked upon a flash of white in the darkness—teeth framed in a smile as grim as the pair of unsheathed swords clasped in the man's hands—swords that were pointed almost carelessly at Beau's chest.
"Leaving our little fete so soon, Sir Rogue?" The voice sliced at Beau's courage. "I would be devastated if you trundled off to your nest of thieves and claimed that Lord Griffin Stone was a poor host."
"Stone..." The memory of the Spectator's tale awakened in Beau as she repeated his name in a husky voice. She cringed inwardly, recalling the tally of vanquished foes accredited to this man's blade, but she clung to defiance. "Go to the devil!"
Moonlight gilded his rich, dark hair; dim light from the chaise's lamps lit the planes of the notorious rake's face. Beau stared, frozen, her heart thundering as she braced herself for the death-thrust she knew would come. But the accursed nobleman only stood there, his eyes glittering, a low, deep laugh emanating from his chest.
"It seems, my friend, that you attempted to dispatch me to Hades only moments ago. Tried and, I must add, failed—most regrettably for you."
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Beau cast a fleeting glance toward the break in the woods where the horses had bolted. Perhaps Owen even now was riding to her aid. But that thought brought renewed despair. The inept fool was most likely halfway to London by now.
"Go to hell," she blazed at her assailant.
"Temper, temper! Your language is most appalling, even for one of your occupation. Here I have been longing to clash with an honorable English blackguard. I have been pining for the... elegance... the knights of the road possess, and you sprawl there, swearing like a fishmonger. It is most disconcerting."
"Disconcerting?" Beau burst out, trying to rip her cloak from beneath his boot. "I'll bloody disconcert you, if you'll let me the blazes up."
The man swept her a courtly bow, removing his boot from her garment as if he had not known it was there.
"How clumsy of me," he said, again leveling a gleaming blade at Beau's throat. "I most humbly beg your pardon."
Heedless of the weapon, Beau scrambled to her feet and planted her hands upon her hips as she faced him. "You can beg pardon until you turn purple, and I'll not forgive—"
"Forgive me for witnessing a grand rogue like you bumbling about like some fair-day jester? I must admit that, were the tables turned, I would be most ashamed."
"The Devil's Flame does not play jester!" Beau spat, groping desperately for some way to fend off this daunting nobleman's attack. She grasped one wild, reckless hope. "I warn you," she snarled in her most frightening tone, "a dozen of my men wait to swoop down upon you. Even now their pistols are leveled at your cowardly belly. I have but to give the word—“
The nobleman's grin grew wider, and Beau fought the urge to slam her fist into that arrogant face.
"Then by all means do so, Sir Flame." Stone urged. "Call down your wolves upon me. I shall attempt to shore up what flagging courage I possess to meet this blood-crazed horde."