by Julia Ross
Lord Jonathan released her arm, stepped away, and slipped off his crimson mask.
“Well, Mrs. Callaway,” he said. “How do you like our little domestic jungle?”
Her heart beat hard. Orchids she had never seen before nestled among the other plants.
“It’s amazing,” she said. “Yet I wonder if a real jungle is anything like this.”
“No, it’s not.” His eyes studied her as if he would peel away her skin. “This fantasy is missing the darker scents, the secrets—and the tigers, of course. The real jungle is neither so pretty, nor so tame.”
Prickles danced down her spine as she looked back at him. “It doesn’t feel particularly tame to me. It feels quite real, though the water must be piped in from somewhere.”
He laughed, though he still seemed on edge. “What a very practical mind you have, Mrs. Callaway! You must be a bluestocking.”
A sudden splashing started somewhere nearby, as if someone had just turned on a fountain. Sarah’s unsteady pulse skipped a beat.
“We’re not alone here, my lord,” she said quietly.
“No, but you’re quite safe with me, Mrs. Callaway.”
Lord Jonathan took her arm again to lead her deeper into the trees. The splash of falling water grew louder.
“So what did you think of Miracle?”
“Miracle?”
“Lady Ryderbourne. Nell Gwyn. Ryder’s wife. Miracle is her given name.”
“I think it’s impossible to resist her.”
“Ah! Though fortunately I did. She was sixteen when we first met, but she was magical even then.”
“Then you and Mr. Devoran met her at about the same time?”
“Yes, but that was a long time ago, many years before she met Ryder. What counts is that Miracle is among the most honest, compassionate, and courageous of ladies. I’m honored to call her my sister.” Lord Jonathan stopped to pluck a blossom. Fragrant white petals offset the golden-yellow heart—Coelogyne cristata, the combed coelogyne. Sarah had only ever seen it before in prints. “We all agree that white flowers spring in her footsteps, like Olwen.”
“Olwen White Track? The fairy tale—?”
“Beautiful, is it not?” His intense gaze fixed on her face as he twirled the orchid in his fingers. “Yet this plant’s a parasite, I believe.”
Her sense of threat deepened, as if suspicion or dread underlay every casual comment. Perhaps all those lurid accounts about this powerful aristocrat were true?
“That’s not a parasite, my lord,” she said. “It’s an orchid. It feeds mostly on air.”
“The host plant isn’t harmed?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then I’m very glad to hear it. I hate to think that something so apparently fragile might be dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” another man’s voice asked with a distinct note of humor.
Sarah spun about as if she were cleaved to the heart.
One booted foot propped on a fern-covered stump, his crossed forearms resting on that taut thigh, a masked corsair lounged beneath a riotously flowering vine. A live parrot sat on his shoulder.
A wave of heat spread down Sarah’s spine, tingling into every limb, as if her veins melted beneath the onslaught.
“Mr. Devoran!” She swallowed hard and bobbed a small curtsy.
His open-necked shirt offered shocking glimpses of a powerful male throat and chest, smooth and perilous. A scarlet belt beset with daggers and pistols emphasized his trim waist.
The parrot flew off to perch on a branch several feet away, where it began to preen its feathers.
Guy Devoran stripped off his black mask and bowed. “Good evening, Mrs. Callaway.” His eyes held a wild glint, as if he often spoke with angels or demons. “I see you’ve just had the misfortune to meet my other cousin, Wild Lord Jack. I trust the experience was entertaining, at least?”
Lord Jonathan laughed. The family resemblance was striking, both in bone structure and intensity—and in that perilous intelligence.
“Yes, indeed.” Though she was floundering to understand the strange undercurrents, a little rush of rage straightened her spine. “His Lordship was kind enough to show me a glimpse of the tigers in the jungle.”
Lord Jonathan raised a brow. “That was hardly my intention, ma’am.”
“Oh, I think that it was, my lord. After all, they say that you can transform yourself into a tiger to kill with one blow.”
“Good God!” Lord Jonathan laughed with real gaiety. “Do they?”
Her apprehension and anger almost evaporated. Perhaps her nerves were so frayed that she read menace into everything?
“You’re a romantic figure in the penny circulars, my lord. Stories about the St. Georges provide plenty of entertainment for the masses.”
“Then may I reassure you, Mrs. Callaway,” Lord Jonathan said. “There are no tigers here. Even the canaries are caged. See! Up there!”
Sarah glanced up. Gilt cages swung from the ceiling. A soft twittering trickled through the quiet, then several birds broke into song.
Yet for a split second as she first looked up, Guy Devoran had met his cousin’s gaze. Energy sizzled between the two men, as if they shared some terrible, silent dread—and tigers stalked the room as clearly as if they truly gazed out from the greenery.
Sarah sat down on the stump. Her pulse pounded, alarm roaring in flood.
“The birds are charming,” she said. “Yet I fear that you haven’t yet had a chance to exchange family news with your cousin, Lord Jonathan. I’d be quite content to rest here for a moment.”
“Then if you would kindly excuse us, Mrs. Callaway?” Guy Devoran said. “Jack?”
The two men strode away and stopped to talk at the edge of the trees. Cloaked in green darkness, they glanced back at her once. Without question, some gathering peril had become too strong to ignore.
Sarah took a deep breath. Alien orchids bloomed all around her. Tantalizing scents wavered on the moist air. Water droplets fell from mysterious leaves to patter onto her face.
Yet her ears burned, though the noise of falling water drowned every word of that intense conversation. How could she possibly understand these aristocrats? Men with such casual power—but with all that restless energy dedicated, perhaps, only to hedonism?
It had been only ten years since the first exotic orchid had been induced to bloom in England. Since then the decadent plants had become a craze, each new import commanding vast sums at auction.
She glanced back at the men. Concentration and concern stamped each handsome face. Any idea that they were dedicated only to pleasure fled instantly.
Yet they strolled over to rejoin her at last with no obvious sense of urgency.
Sarah stood up, her heart in her mouth, as Lord Jonathan bowed over her hand.
He laughed up at her as if he had never known anything but merriment. “I regret that I cannot further our acquaintance, Mrs. Callaway. My wife, Anne, will bear our first child very soon, so I return home immediately. However, you’ll be in equally safe hands with my cousin.”
“Thank you, Jack,” Guy Devoran commented dryly. “After all that talk of tigers, I’m sure that your personal recommendation will go a long way with Mrs. Callaway.”
“I’m honestly not concerned for my safety,” Sarah said.
“Then the only question that remains, ma’am,” Wild Lord Jack replied, “is whether Guy is safe with you.”
The dragon robes rippled as he strode away through the trees.
Mr. Devoran leaned one shoulder against a stone pillar. The parrot flashed back to clutch its feet onto his shirt.
Its bright yellow eyes surveyed Sarah. “Safe with who? Safe with who?”
Guy Devoran laughed and walked the parrot down his arm onto his fist.
“There’s no distressing family news, I hope,” Sarah said.
“You’re kind to ask, but no, not at all, though Jack and I were glad to catch up. Thank you for allowing us the chance.”
“Yet I thought—”
“No,” he said. “Come, ma’am! I must adjust that loud fountain.”
He carried the bird away. Her mouth dry, Sarah followed.
They brushed past some trees into an inner court. Falling water shimmered in the glow of a handful of lanterns. No one else was about.
His shirtsleeves stretched over taut muscles as Mr. Devoran thrust the bird into a cage on a stand, then bent to adjust a valve hidden behind some greenery. The water subsided into a quiet ripple.
“You turned on this fountain to hide your voices?” she asked.
He glanced up. “As a signal to Jack that I’d arrived, that’s all. The guests won’t wander in here until they’ve all eaten supper. Then several couples will take advantage of the seclusion to indulge in a little naughtiness with other people’s spouses. Are you hungry?”
“Only for some truth,” she said. “I don’t really like being played with.”
“Played with?”
“There’s something important that you’re not telling me, Mr. Devoran. Was Lord Jonathan truly concerned about my intentions? Did he take me in dislike?”
He dropped a green cloth over the parrot’s cage. “Not at all, though Jack certainly wondered if you might not be another orchid.”
“Difficult, dependent, and out of place?” She smiled, though her heart felt raw. “Not many of these plants will survive here, will they?”
“Torn as they are from their natural habitat? Probably not.” He gazed at a cattleya orchid, then glanced back at her. “But perhaps Jack only meant that you’re exotic, lush, and enticingly sensual?”
Surprise shocked her into laughter. “Good heavens! Is that why he asked me if orchids are parasitic?”
Mr. Devoran plucked a hanging blossom and touched her cheek with the cool petals. Transfixed, Sarah gazed up at him, her pulse hammering. She was painfully—absurdly—aware of the beauty of his mouth: the perfect white teeth and firm, expressive lips.
“You truly have no idea of your real effect on men, do you, Mrs. Callaway?”
He trailed the flower past the curve of her ear to stroke beneath her jaw. The petals lay soft and moist against her throat.
She swallowed. “Goodness knows, sir, I’m more like a weed suddenly sprouting between beautifully laid flagstones than anything very exotic. And I’m indeed taking advantage of your goodwill. I cannot deny that. Is that what so bothered Lord Jonathan?”
He tossed the flower aside and turned away. “Never mind. You must be starving. Come!”
She followed him past more citrus trees. A flight of stairs soared away from a dim hallway. His boots thudded into an absolute silence as he led her up several flights, then flung open another door that accessed an elegant little parlor.
A selection of sofas and chairs, picked out in gilt. A new Axminster carpet. Dried flowers filling the marble grate. Four towering blue-and-white vases, which no doubt had once belonged to the fabled emperors of China. A table laden with covered dishes.
Guy Devoran strode up to the table and lifted a silver lid. The scents of mushrooms, warm cream, and savory herbs snaked their way across the room.
Her mouth watered, yet she felt filled with apprehension, as if the very walls concealed secrets.
“My cousin Jack is rather fiercely protective, Mrs. Callaway, as you may have gathered. I hope he did not really discompose you?”
He removed another lid. Turmeric and cumin and coriander: creamed, curried chicken?
Doing her best to ignore the aromatic fragrances, Sarah remained standing just inside the door.
“Protective? Of whom?”
“Of his family, of course. He and I were boys together. We’re the same age, and notoriously look very much alike. Yet Jack’s experienced more real peril than an average man sees in a lifetime, and his sense of danger is particularly acute.”
“Lord Jonathan really thinks that I might be dangerous to you in some way?”
He glanced around and grinned. “Aren’t you?”
“Only if the lamb is a danger to the wolves.”
He laughed. “If you can trust me, you can trust my cousins, but Jack’s heart is very far off at the moment. He’s deeply in love with Anne and can’t bear to be away from her. Yet he also loves his brother and Miracle, and the duchess required his presence here tonight.”
“Because he’s also a godfather to the new baby?”
Another cover lifted to release the aroma of minted lamb and saffron rice.
“Exactly. However, if he truly made you uncomfortable, I must apologize on his behalf.”
The next dish revealed cakes slathered in rum sauce, and cream pastries with candied violets. Sarah swallowed the saliva that was flooding her tongue.
“No,” she said. “Of course not. Please don’t! I’m sure my presence was of very little import to him.”
Her combined discomfort and restlessness forced her to walk across the room. A strange woman in a powdered wig moved with her in the mirror above the empty grate: a disguise that was obviously redundant now.
She reached up to untie her blue mask. The strings immediately caught in the flock of little sheep, threatening to dislodge the entire headdress.
Mr. Guy Devoran’s reflection froze in place, his dark gaze burning with unsettling intensity over her uplifted arms and bent neck.
A tiny runnel of heat crept up her spine.
She was alone in a private room with a man other than her husband for the first time since Captain Callaway had died. An extremely attractive young man dressed in nothing but an open-necked shirt and buckskin breeches, with a black bandanna wrapped rakishly about his hair.
A man who had used the petals of an orchid to touch her face.
Suppressing that shimmer of awareness, Sarah dropped her hands.
Several sheep slipped down onto her shoulder. She grabbed at them.
Guy Devoran crossed his arms and smiled at her.
“Then I must at least apologize for those damnable sheep,” he said. “It was important that Ryder and Jack recognize you, and there were several shepherdesses here tonight. Otherwise I’d never have picked such a mad costume.”
“I really didn’t mind,” she said, though she thought suddenly that perhaps she did mind, a great deal. “I’d already surmised as much.”
She turned her back and struggled again to disentangle the mask.
“Jack’s integrity is absolute, and he might have noticed something relevant. After all, he also met your cousin once.”
Sarah jerked around to face him. To her mortification, wig, hat, and sheep all slipped a little over one eye. She was forced to put up both hands to steady them.
“But that was a year ago and only very briefly!”
“Nevertheless, he agrees that I must rescue her—though first I’d better rescue you.” Guy Devoran grinned as he strode up to her. “I don’t think you can salvage that unspeakable headdress. Fortunately, you don’t need it any longer.”
In one smooth movement he lifted away her silver wig. Some stray pins immediately caught in Sarah’s hair, threatening to tug the heavy mass into a miserable entanglement about her shoulders.
She glanced up—and felt as if she’d been unexpectedly caught in a net.
Guy Devoran stood locked in place, looking down at her. A tiny spasm tightened the muscles around his mouth, almost as if he’d received a small blow.
The silence sang, humming like a thin wire vibrating just beyond the range of her hearing.
For the length of a heartbeat they stared at each other, while streamers of heat unfurled in her veins.
Thick lashes rimmed his eyes. Each iris was a perfect dark chocolate, rimmed in the thinnest of black circles. His gaze smoldered—burning with power, and passion, and some dark, wicked knowledge—as if he were willingly consumed for her, as if his very soul were abandoned to desire.
No man had ever looked at her like this, as if he would burn directly into her heart to plumb straigh
t into those confused depths.
Sarah spun away, flushed with the knowledge that her frail skin had already betrayed her.
Her fingers fumbled as she disentangled the remaining pins and set the headdress on a nearby chair.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
Mr. Devoran strode away. For a moment he stood with his back to her, but then he tore the bandanna from his head and laughed.
“I no longer need my disguise either,” he said. “You’ve no idea how absurd I feel dressed up as Sinbad the Sailor.” He stripped off his red belt and tossed it onto a side table. The pistols and knives clunked. “With weapons made of wood, no less.”
Sarah pinned her wayward hair firmly back into place. “Plus a parrot.”
He turned and smiled as if nothing were wrong. “Yes, I thought you’d like Eight.”
“Eight?”
“Pieces of Eight—the parrot. That’s how high he can count, as well, but he’s also a very good watchdog.”
“You thought you needed a watchdog?”
He removed another silver lid and lifted out a decanter of wine. Rivulets ran down over the cold surface.
“Eight would have screeched like a banshee if any stranger had approached us. However, you were safely in the company of Ali Baba, a member of his family, and he’s known all of us since we were boys.”
“So nothing as simple as a costume would have fooled him for a moment?”
“A parrot’s a natural companion for any wicked set of rogues.” He filled two wineglasses and held one out to her. She thanked him and took it. “Though I’d trust no one better, my cousins can try anyone’s patience. It’s fortunate that Miracle and Anne have tamed them as much as they have.”
“Can duke’s sons be tamed by their wives?”
He laughed. “That depends on what you believe needs taming.” He gestured to the table. “But now perhaps I may make amends for all the outrages you have suffered by suggesting that you try some of these delicacies before you faint away from either hunger, a well-directed derision, or righteous indignation.”
The wine was deliciously cool. Savory aromas saturated her nostrils. Yet any desire for food had disappeared. Sarah’s heart was still beating too fast, as if he led her ever deeper into a mysterious forest where at any turn she might be suddenly lost. He had neatly avoided her real question about the parrot, and she felt almost as if she was being—with great subtlety—tested in some way.