Shit.
James nodded stiffly. “Yes. A lovely surprise. We shall both be right there to join you ladies.” He gave Phillip a look full of icy reproach. “Won’t we, Phillip?”
“Oh, I am living to have tea in the garden.” Phillip kept his voice level but sarcasm bled through to betray him.
She rewarded him with a smile to make a lesser man bay at her feet. “Imagine that, Sir Warrick! Such achievable dreams! Aren’t you wise!”
She left both men at the bottom of the stairs and Phillip’s hands fisted useless at his side.
If I don’t strangle you, Raven Wells, before the week is out, you will have Providence alone to thank for it.
The tea was a disaster. James, for all his proclamations that both men would endure the challenge ahead, did not have the courage to even sit down. His nerves failed him at the sight of the lady that Phillip had so roundly insulted. James brusquely kissed the top of his wife’s head with a mumbled apology about the demands of his ledgers before striding back to the safety of the house.
Phillip took a contrite seat across from the ladies, made a silent prayer for a sudden rainstorm and then glanced up at the betrayal of a clear blue sky.
Spring in England. It should be damn well raining all the time…
“Isn’t this a nice surprise?” Phillip tried to smile. “Tea in the garden.”
Delilah gave him a puzzled look. “Come now! I know I have failed to provide jugglers, but surely this is not such a sad scene.”
“It is truly elegant,” Lady Wellcott said quietly. “Nothing can match the splendor of nature for a dining room. Don’t you think so, Sir Warrick? A long table set with silver under a grand tree…”
“Until you find a bug in your drink.” He was being a surly child and he knew it. She was deliberately evoking memories of their shared past and he was in no mood to indulge her. And immediately regretted his pout when Lady Wellcott set down her tea cup.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Osborne. I am suddenly unwell but I know your cousin will entertain you well enough. He is such lively company.”
She stood and left them before Delilah could compose a protest and James’ flush of relief died quickly when he was left with an openly distressed Delilah Osborne.
“Phillip! You promised! You swore you would be your most charming self with Lady Wellcott! But…this?” She placed her hands on the table. “What flavor of insanity has seized you?”
“The horse ride didn’t go well. I fell in the brook. I’m—feeling out of sorts.”
The snap of anger in her eyes didn’t soften as he’d hoped at the mention of his mishap—and that was the moment when Phillip realized that he was truly out of his cousin’s good graces.
“Looking at you I would say that the only injury you suffered was your pride.”
“Delilah, in all honesty, I should tell you before your husband relishes his chance that I may have—Lady Wellcott overheard me just before we walked out to join you in a candid conversation with James regarding my…reluctance to play the suitor.”
Delilah’s eyes widened. “Reluctance?”
“More like repugnance. It wasn’t my best moment.”
“Phillip,” she began and then stopped taking a slow breath. Phillip braced himself for a scathing lecture but instead felt the lash of guilt he couldn’t avoid when Delilah’s eyes filled with tears. “I…have already entreated you to be kind. What else can I do?”
“Delilah.” Words failed him.
“Lady Wellcott is very—very important to me, Phillip. If you drive her off…”
“I don’t wish to drive her off. Though,” he sighed. “That’s not to say I won’t be relieved and happy to see her trunks on your front steps. I’m so sorry, Delilah.”
Tears overflowed in a demonstration of genuine distress and Phillip was defeated. “You are not sorry! But if ever you loved me, Phillip Warrick, you will cease acting like a jilted and ridiculous bully in Lady Wellcott’s presence! You will…oh God!”
Delilah became too upset to plead her case and Phillip instinctively came around the table to kneel next to her and take her into his arms. He closed his eyes helplessly as she cried against his shoulder.
“Delilah! I will make amends, I swear it! Lady Wellcott will—I would leave before it came to such a thing and…” He reached up to stroke her hair as he had when she had been a child lamenting a spoiled dress. “Delilah, what is this? What distresses you so? Why do I have the feeling that there is more to this?”
Delilah shook her head and pushed away from the comfort of his arms. “Nothing matters beyond the peace of this visit, Phillip. Please! Behave! And…” She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief he held out to her. “And I shall write Grandmama and sing your praises.”
Phillip raised one eyebrow at Delilah’s sweet nature that had defaulted to offer him a reward before resorting to the more obvious choice to threaten a thunderous report to his Great Aunt Bella. “I will do everything in my power to earn a glowing account of myself.”
“You will? Truly?”
He nodded solemnly. “Honor demands it. I cannot have my favorite cousin thinking me a ridiculous bully.”
“A jilted and ridiculous bully,” she echoed, a trace of humor finally returning to her.
“Terrible choice of words.” He sighed. “I will have to do everything in my power to get you to never repeat it again.”
She smiled. “See that you do!” Delilah pat his hand as one would a senile old man’s. “Now, sit down and have tea with me, Cousin Phillip. I cannot face Mrs. Watson if I put her to all this trouble and not a single cup was enjoyed.”
Phillip returned to his chair. “I will leave your housekeeper’s happiness to you after this. I can only manage so many tasks, Delilah, and pleasing Lady Wellcott is an assignment I suspect Hercules would have run from…” Delilah gasped but he went on quickly, “And a trial I shall cheerfully overcome. I am honor bound.”
Honor bound and hell bent.
Chapter Seven
She pleaded a headache and had a dinner tray sent up that night, fully aware that Phillip would be blamed for her absence and suffer a miserable evening to cap off his miserable day. Pepper took in a full accounting of the lectures he’d endured down in the servants’ hallways and conveyed the best tidbits to her mistress.
“It’s a roasting, poor man! Mr. Osborne’s furious to think Sir Warrick’s insulted you beyond recovery.” Pepper giggled. “Not a whisper of a defense, until Mrs. Osborne finally had to end it to keep her heart from breaking.”
“Mrs. Osborne does not have the stomach for conflict.” Serena noted and took a bite of beef from her plate. “Serves Phillip right. I’ll take a tray for breakfast, as well. That should round out the lesson nicely.”
“If he survives until lunch, I don’t think that man will be inviting you out for a ride ever again!” Pepper said and then helped herself to a piece of bread from her mistress’s tray.
“Good! I am still sore from making a fool of myself. They say pride goeth before the fall, but I swear I would feel better if I had fallen off that animal instead of galloping around attempting to look like Diana of the Hunt to prove some obscure point.”
Pepper shook her head. “You don’t need to prove a thing to that man.”
“No. You’re right.” She held out a bite of candied beets, aware that it was Pepper’s favorite. “It is time to expend our energy where it will do the most good.”
Pepper took the fork and the women sat across from each other, merrily sharing the tray and falling into the easy conversation of dearest friends before Serena began to make notes of the names of all the maids and manservants, gathering the intelligence of the house like a general preparing for the battle ahead.
Pepper was an invaluable scout, adding crisp details to paint in personalities and sketch out the routines and timing for Southgate and a Mr. James Osborne.
They worked into the late hours of the night and then as Pepper headed off to bed in the se
rvants’ quarters, Serena dropped all her notes into the fire. For the Black Rose never left a written trace of their work…
And Lady Serena Wellcott was too clever to forget anything.
**
The next afternoon, she took a leisurely stroll in the gardens and simply waited. She knew it wouldn’t be long before the eyes of the house alerted Sir Warrick to her solitary presence and pushed him out the door to apologize.
For amusement, she began to count to a hundred and before she’d reached the sixties, he was there. His expression hardly contrite but instead surly, a sure sign that he hadn’t come entirely of his own volition.
Serena smiled. It was impossible not to enjoy the moment. “Oh, Sir Warrick! What a delight to find you here—and so unexpectedly!”
“Do try to hide your glee, Lady Wellcott.” Phillip let out a long slow breath. “I think you’re the only one I know who can arrange it so that not only do I get pushed into an icy stream, you have them all convinced that I am at fault and somehow owe you an apology!”
“Oh,” she looked at him through a flirtatious batting of her eyelashes. “You do not wish to apologize, Sir Warrick? Are you sure?”
“I do wish to apologize.” The hard edge of frustration disappeared from his voice and the sincere tone jolted her nerves. “Where should I begin?”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Wherever you wish.”
He nodded. “Delilah is very dear to me. I’ve roared and fussed at you and…it comes to naught. I am sorry, Lady Wellcott. Yesterday, you pleaded for a day’s respite but you deserve more than a single day.”
“And what do I deserve then, Sir Warrick?”
“It is exhausting to hate and regret is a disease that destroys everything in its path. I should know, Lady Wellcott. I have wasted years…” He let out a slow breath and then put his hands behind his back. “I apologize for distressing you during your country holiday. I apologize for spoiling Delilah’s peace of mind and I hope that you will not punish her for my boarish behavior by leaving.”
“So, this apology is for Delilah?” He’d missed the mark in so many ways, it astonished her but his sincere concern for his cousin was not without merit. Delilah was worried that Phillip would send her packing. Phillip had promised to ask her not to leave and to “apologize”. And God help him, the man had done just that.
Just that and not one thing more.
She shook her head, a sad smile crossing her features. “Aren’t you dear?” She stepped closer, indulging in his presence. “What a puzzle.”
“I want a truce, Lady Wellcott. For Delilah’s sake.”
“For her sake, I grant it. I shall go even further, Sir Warrick. Would you like me to smile and laugh at your jests, sigh at your heroic stories and ensure that no one in that house believes that I am not completely charmed by your person? How does that sound?”
“Like some kind of deadly trap,” he admitted quietly.
“It is.”
“God, woman. I think I’ve demonstrated my good intentions, have I not? Mercy.”
She took an unsteady move away from him, pain lashing through her chest. Mercy. A little word. A little word. Banished. I banished it from myself. Even when the scales are balanced, mercy has no weight.
“I cannot give you what I do not have, Sir Warrick. I cannot provide something I know to be a lie in this world. What mercy? What mercy do you understand? Tell me what mercy looks like and I will drown you in it—I will choke you with it.” She shook her head. “Assure your cousin that I will not abandon her. But you are nothing to me. The only thing you have demonstrated is how blind you are. You are like a madman apologizing for dancing after burning a house down with children inside! You disgust me.”
“God damn it! I do not owe you an apology, woman.”
Her eyes widened and she stared at him in shock. “No? Truly? For anything?”
Phillip stubbornly crossed his arms. “I’ve paid for my sins already. I don’t have to make an accounting to you. Our parting was rude, I’ll grant you that and I’ve regretted my behavior but—it was not unprovoked, Lady Wellcott.”
Serena’s gaze narrowed and she deliberately shifted to make sure that he was blocking a view of her from most of the windows. “I didn’t think to think less of you, Phillip. But thank you.”
“Do you really hate me so much?” he asked softly.
She held very still—as enigmatic as the stones of the earth. “I? Hate you?” Raven’s breath caught in her throat. Hate. It was a tidy word that felt misplaced from the raging fire of loathing and longing that warred inside of her. “I do not have to confide my feelings to you, Phillip. You have no right to any confessions of my interior landscape, no glimpse of any part of my soul that I do not wish you to see.” She began to walk back toward the house her head held high.
Phillip held his ground but stopped her in her tracks when he spoke. “Tell me what you want, Serena. An abject apology for failing to be the dupe you and Trent wanted? Shall I write you a cheque? To compensate you for your wounds? Would that assuage your dislike? Or do those offers only solidify your opinions of my worthlessness?”
Serena pivoted back to face him. “I will break my own rule and tell you exactly what I want, Phillip.” She smiled, a thing so beautiful it frightened him because the grey in her eyes was so cold his bones felt brittle to see them. “I want victory. I want to break you in every way it is possible to break a man. And when you are on your knees, only then I think I will be whole. I will bury what is left of Raven in your ashes and you, Phillip, you can make your peace with the Devil however you wish.”
“And now what? Do you expect me to volunteer to stay? To stand by and participate as a victim and be broken?”
“Of course not.” She closed the distance between them slowly, a strange seductive sway in her hips hypnotizing him into holding his ground.
God. This is how a bird feels when a cobra spreads its hood and begins to dance.
“Fight me, Phillip. Defend your ground. Prove your manhood and your bravery.” Her lips pressed into a pout that made his cock irrationally hard. “You’re not afraid of a weak fragile woman. You’ll not run for all the world to mock and pity. Strike me down, in any way you can. Stop me. Hurt me. Do. Your. Worst.”
“You’re insane, Serena.”
She shook her head. “I am not insane. I am swimming in reason. But I dare you, Phillip. For I tell you, I will do my worst and I will win this game.”
“The game ended seven years ago.”
“If you say so, Sir Warrick.”
“Put your claws away, Lady Wellcott. We both made mistakes that fateful spring.”
She was close enough to kiss and he briefly considered it. Her countenance softened.
“Yes. Tell me. I know my own sins. But what would you say was your worst misstep, Phillip?”
“Besides accepting Lord Trent’s invitation to come to Oakwell Manor?”
She shook her head. “No. That wasn’t it.”
“Wasn’t it?” he scoffed.
“No.”
“What then?”
“Could it be that you never asked yourself why he would send that letter?”
Phillip’s brow furrowed. “Wasn’t it obvious? So that he could crow over his achievement in humiliating me.”
“Why? Why send it when his threat to expose your foolish error to the papers would have done the work and more?” She sighed. “If I was his creature, why admit it so openly? Why give it away?”
“I don’t understand. He meant for me to read it after we were married. It wouldn’t have mattered to—“
“Ah! But you could have annulled the union based on the fraud or your belief in my besmirched character. You had written proof of his scheme in your possession to see to it all.”
“I…had no such proof after I gave the letter to you.”
She smiled. “An act I have neglected to thank you for.”
“So tell me again, what was my great mistake, Lady Wel
lcott?”
“Yes. One last favor for old time’s sake. You must learn to look at things from a different vantage point, Sir Warrick. For then, it might occur to you that the best revenge might have been robbing you of the woman you appeared to love. If Trent wanted to hurt you, which clearly he did, then what better way than vomiting lies about your bride and destroying your peace of mind?”
“But…I…”
“Your greatest mistake was that no matter how duplicitous the earl proved he was, you still relied on his words and submitted your wits. You saw the word ‘whore’ and your pride did the rest. You muted your own heart and every experience that defied his lies when it came to me. You had my innocence as a gift I gave freely only because I loved you. I was fearless! I cared nothing for my reputation or honor. I only knew that you were the man I wanted above all else. But you—you’re a man defined by pride and vanity. You valued your honor more than anything—more than love, more than me. As he knew you would. Do you still think I hate you, Sir Warrick?” She stepped back, whipped open her fan and curtsied. “Well, what a lovely afternoon’s interlude. If you’ll excuse me, I’m fatigued and in need of a headache powder.”
She left without another word and Phillip sat down hard on a garden bench, his entire body rendered numb.
I’d never looked at it like that.
Damn it.
Chapter Eight
She rang the bell and waited for Pepper, pacing and walking off the fog of her emotions. Phillip Warrick’s presence was so much more potent than she’d allowed herself to remember. God help her, in the middle of all those invectives, she’d nearly begged him to kiss her again—came within a breath of pressing her body against his.
Her desire for him had not faded.
Worse, it had grown over time.
Pepper came through the door with a peppermint striped satin skirt draped over her arm. “Are you changing early for tea?”
Lady Rises (The Black Rose Trilogy Book 2) Page 6