My love, another seeks to hold,
My heart abandoned there.”
“It’s as if an angel had come into my house,” James said as he applauded from the doorway.
Serena stood, swallowing displeasure at the intrusion. “I am not much of a singer, Mr. Osborne, but I thank you for the compliment.”
“I meant to collect Phillip for an outing we’d planned but I was drawn to the sound of your voice.” He crossed toward her. “You should sing for our small company after dinner tonight.”
“I am not a performer, Mr. Osborne.”
“What? It is not unseemly at a small house party to be entertained so! A guest should earn their keep and I am a man eager for diversion.” He smiled. “It’s not as if I’ve committed the offense of asking how much you charge for a song! Though I have yet to meet a woman who could not name a price when pushed to it.” He winked at her slyly before he openly made an appreciative survey of the rise of her breasts above the cut of her bodice. “What is a coin or two for lively entertainment between the sexes?”
Serena tipped her head to one side, studying the man. “Mr. Osborne, I wonder. I once knew a man who would blurt out the most extraordinary things. Horrible things sometimes but then at other times, it would be poetry and lengthy odes to make people laugh.”
“Was he a great man?” James asked.
“Not at all,” she said simply. “He wore rags and mumbled to himself from a corner of the pub and everyone who knew him credited him with having no wits at all. And I would have agreed until I spotted the game.”
“What was the game?”
“He knew exactly what he was saying and tempered every outburst to those within its hearing. Ladies and the older men of the priory would throw coins if he quoted the bible or spouted poetry. Gentlemen would pay him to leave if he made a jolly lively show of it and the rough locals would slip him a coin for his most ribald pieces.”
“So he had his wits.”
“His wits and a plan.” She nodded slowly. “He lived very well.”
“It is an interesting tale, Lady Wellcott. But I am not sure why you’ve shared it with me.”
“I shared it because I am determined to see if you have your wits only, or your wits and a plan—or neither.”
James smile died in an awkward slow demise. “Do you think to mock me to my face, Lady Wellcott? Is this what you consider a grand jest?”
“No, sir. I meant only to reassure myself that when you allude to some grotesque belief that all women are nothing better than whores that if it is just the impulse of your foul humor, I should know to slap your face. Or that if it was your hope to shock me, then I must try to understand what gain could be secured. Or were you speaking without thought or plan?” She held her ground. “For then the insult is one I will ignore, the way I would ignore the mindless barking of a dog.”
James’ gaze narrowed, a flare of disgust in his eyes. “How sensitive you are, Lady Wellcott! A compliment about your voice and an invitation to share your talents with my wife and cousin and…you bristle like a cat thrown in a bathtub!”
Serena smiled sympathetically. “My claws are sharp. A good thing I never lash out without warning and how fortunate I am that you are so understanding.”
James crossed his arms. “I understand you well enough. I am honored to have a woman of your station under my roof, but I don’t care if you are a crown princess. At the end of the day, you are just a woman and I—I am the master in this house.”
Serena nodded, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “What did you say, Mr. Osborne? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of all that barking.”
It nearly ended, right then and there, as James hands curled into fists and Serena sensed that she had pushed him far enough to achieve her aims.
He’ll strike and it’s all to the good. Pepper will be out of it and he’ll commit an act of violence he cannot retract.
“James!” Phillip called out from the doorway. “I thought you were going to meet me on the steps. Your land manager, Mr. Chilton, is already outside.” He stopped abruptly. “Oh, Lady Wellcott! I didn’t see you there.”
James turned away from her, his arms dropping. “I’m sorry, cousin. I was distracted by Lady Wellcott’s riveting presence and forgot the time.”
“I cannot blame you then,” Phillip conceded with a smile. “Do you mind if I pull him away, Lady Wellcott?”
“Not at all,” she said in a level tone that conveyed nothing of her frustration.
Damn the timing!
James retreated without looking back and Serena watched him stride out, his brisk steps betraying his unhappy state.
God, how simple might that have been? Seconds more and I would have had him!
Best to warn Mrs. Osborne that she must lock her bedroom door and make sure that the maids are warned of their master’s foul mood. But I don’t think I should tell her that this is the last day.
It’s too close and nothing can tip our hand.
Damn it to hell!
Chapter Sixteen
After dispatching Pepper with messages for the housekeeper and for Mrs. Osborne, Serena paced alone in the garden under the covered walkway along the wall. She liked the shadowed quiet of the place and the privacy it offered. The vines had flowered even more since her arrival, creating a haven away from the house to think.
She regretted the exchange with Mr. Osborne but only because it hadn’t yielded a well-timed assault on the ground floor of the man’s home. She was inherently confident that they’d have been discovered before he’d murdered her.
Certainly plenty to break in that room to herald distress and bring the house crashing in…
Serena pressed her fingers against her closed eyes, willing the wall of anxiety to retreat. Bruises were easy to endure, if they were hers. But after staring down James Osborne, she dreaded the notion of Pepper playing such a part.
Perhaps I can alter the plan…now that I have his attention and his blood is stirred, can I divert him to—
“Lady Wellcott.”
She pivoted to absorb Phillip’s second ill-timed entrance of the day. “Sir Warrick. I thought you were out with Mr. Osborne on some grand adventure.”
“My horse became lame and I made my excuses,” he stepped forward, holding out a small basket as if it were a peace offering. “Yours is the company I would rather keep.”
“Really?” She smiled. “How flattering to be chosen over a survey of tenant cottages and weaver shops!”
He laughed. “I knew you would grasp the significance of my sacrifice!”
“What is in this basket, Sir Warrick?”
“It is a wicked offering, Lady Wellcott.” He lifted the cloth inside to reveal a bottle of wine and two cut crystal glasses. “I am tired of tea.”
“Blasphemy!” Serena gasped. “The scandal, sir!”
“I am at the mercy of your discretion, Lady Wellcott.”
“There is nothing to be done for it, Phillip. Open the bottle and we shall have to face it together.” Serena made her way to a low bench at the far end of the path. “Here, do your worst.”
He sat next to her, spread out the small cloth between them and opened the wine to pour them each a glass of liquid the color of rubies. “Why does wine always seem so much more luxurious when it is pilfered from someone else’s cellars?”
“Ah! One of life’s great mysteries!” Serena lifted the glass to study the facets of color. “Is it the sin that makes it sweeter?”
“I might toast that.” He held up his glass and she kissed hers against it, the bell like tone making a pretty finish to the gesture. “To the sweeter sin.”
“The sweetest sins of all,” she echoed softly.
The wine was bright and strong in her mouth, the flavor softening on her tongue as she inhaled the fragrance. She shook her head slowly. “God, I remember when wine and all spirits were so forbidden to me!”
She looked at Phillip, aware that she’d nearly spoken Trent’s name aloud for it was her gu
ardian’s one act of strict discipline to not allow her to taste anything strong under his roof. The man had forbidden nothing else—applauding her every feminine impulse and imaginative thought in the twisted guidance of a man who wished to bring up the “perfect woman”. If only she’d known that perfection’s price would be her own soul…
She leaned over to kiss him, tasting the echo of wine on his lips and tongue and wondering if he was experiencing the same on hers. She sighed and the kiss deepened.
Sweet taste of sin.
“I hate him so much that I fear you can smell it on my skin, Serena.” Phillip downed his glass and then set it aside, the jovial tone of the moment lost.
“I know.” She sighed and straightened her shoulders. “I don’t think you can avoid it any longer, Sir Warrick.”
“Avoid what?”
“Go on. It will eat at you like a cancer until you face it. You must demand the answers you need. Yes?”
“Tell me. Tell me what happened at Oakwell seven years ago.”
She bristled at the command. “Trent used to say that. Tell me. God, he loved to hear a good story, didn’t he?” Serena held her own elbows and then leaned back against the wall of vines, settling in like a queen holding court. “Oddly, I find myself averse to telling any man anything. But I did invite this, didn’t I?”
“Please, Serena. Tell me your side of it. After we parted ways, I came back for you. The weather slowed me down and I lost time. Too much time. But there was no sign of where you had gone.” He lifted the bottle to pour them each another drink. “I lost weeks searching until I became convinced that you were irrevocably gone from me and from life itself.”
Serena went still but then took the offered drink. She looked up at him to study him, the grip on the crystal glass in her hand growing nerveless. “You truly came back for me?”
He nodded. “You’d emptied your cases by the side of the road and even your bonnets had blown into the hedges. It was a…miserable scene.”
“That it was.” She squared her shoulders. “How could it be otherwise?”
“Damn it. If I’m to own my mistakes, then is this not a chance to ensure I am schooled in full measure? Here is your chance, Lady Wellcott. Punish me with the truth.”
“And what makes me think you’d believe that truth? That you wouldn’t insulate your pride with the poison of Trent’s making? For I of all people know how insidious that poison can be, Sir Warrick. I, who was baptized in it, without my knowledge.”
He bowed his head, absorbing that defeat was all too possible. “Please.”
“Very well. But I need to pace about if I’m to get through it all. So, I’m asking you to sit and allow me to move as I must.”
“Granted.”
True to his word, he kept his seat as she stood to take command of the shaded walk. “There was a touch of truth in that letter, Sir Warrick. I was an illegitimate child abandoned at birth. I was given at my father’s request to a vicar and his wife. It was an idyllic beginning and I am forever grateful for their care.”
“But Trent?”
“The reverend and his wife were killed in an epidemic and I was placed into a home for orphaned and unwanted children. My father wasn’t immediately aware of the change and then asked a trusted friend, the Earl of Trent, to track down his lost daughter. Trent offered to not only find me but “see to me”. Generous of him, yes?”
“Oh, hell.”
“Ah, yes! You can see the shape of the rest of it. Trent already apparently had some grievance against you and decided that a young girl with good bloodlines and a clear complexion was just the thing. All I knew was that I had been plucked from a nightmare and my guardian was my savior. He shared nothing of his plans, nothing of his dark notions and I—I obliviously enjoyed buying bonnets and silks, devoured what education I desired and dreamed of a life where I would never be cold or hungry again.”
Phillip’s color changed as the story he’d begged her for now began to batter his conscience. But he said nothing.
“I fell in love with a handsome man who fell off of his horse. I fell into his arms at every opportunity because I didn’t know what it was to fear. I gave myself to that man without a nod to self-preservation, so sure of the wisdom of my own heart and convinced that the happiness he gave me would sustain me for centuries.” Serena took a good swallow from her wine, savoring the taste but also the agony in Phillip’s eyes. “Then he swept me away with a vow to marry me. And then he threw me from his carriage in the rain.”
“Shit.”
“Yes. Exactly as one would scrape dung off your shoes.” She nodded. “But here’s the bit you were particularly interested in, correct? Some recounting of the horror of screaming after that carriage, of crying your name until my voice was a ragged ruin, of kneeling in the mud and begging a merciful God to strike me down?”
“No.”
She smiled, emptied her glass in one elegant draw and then set it aside on the bench next to him. “Oh, don’t lose your courage now! Here is where the story becomes a little more interesting, Sir Warrick. Because God didn’t end Raven Wells. I did. I left her by the side of the road and determined that never again would I trust to Fate. I walked down that road in the opposite direction that you had flown and made my way over several days to my father’s estate.”
“Your father? You knew who your father was all along?”
“It wasn’t hard to guess, but when he made an appearance at the county dance and spoke to me, I knew my suspicions were true.” She moved to the end of the covered arches and looked out into the garden. “What a bedraggled thing I must have been by the time I rang the bell at his servants’ entrance. I gave my name and offered my services as the lowest of the low, as a scullery maid or kitchen girl. I bid the housekeeper tell their master that Raven Wells would be eternally grateful to sleep on his stone floors and had no hope beyond that shelter. And God help me, I meant it.”
“A scullery maid,” he repeated in a horrified whisper. “I cannot bear to think of it.”
She laughed. “There are worse things, Sir Warrick, to be in this world. And since you’d already proclaimed me a whore, I’m surprised you aren’t more pleased to hear that I aspired to a more honorable career.”
“I was wrong.”
“Of course you were.” She looked at him with disgust. “How is it that you still look surprised when you say those words, Sir Warrick?” She shifted her gaze back to the window. “I never scrubbed a single copper pot. The instant the duke realized I had landed at his doorstep, I was brought upstairs to meet him again.”
“A duke?!” Phillip looked like a man who had seen a ghost. “My god, it’s a penny dreadful.”
“He is—and the esteemed author of my present existence. The duke was horrified to learn of his friend’s betrayal of my care and the true nature of my “rescue”. He’d have struck Trent down himself, but I—I begged for mercy. Not out of some generous Christian spirit but because even then, I knew…I knew that I wanted the pleasure of it for myself. But that is for another day. Let’s see. Where did I leave off? Yes. My father took me in and I was once more relieved of catastrophe to land in silks and feathers.”
Phillip said nothing more and she was glad for it.
“Only this time, my savior had no dark plans for me; only paternal care. The Duke of Northland has no direct heirs. Even so, naturally he could not acknowledge me publicly as his, but a title was purchased along with token holdings, a massive fortune set aside and respectability carved out with his connections and cemented by a year abroad. I became Lady Serena Wellcott.” Serena circled back to take a seat next to him. “But every good story must have a twist, Sir Warrick. Can you guess at mine?”
He shook his head. “No. Abandoned, orphaned, used in a wicked scheme, ruined by a rogue only to land in the care of a duke and given a new identity? Haven’t there already been too many twists and turns?”
“Hardly. For you see, now the dark plans and wicked schemes are mine. I
am the mistress of my days and nights. And revenge, I have learned, can be an elegant and satisfying thing.”
“You don’t mean that. Not after experiencing all of that at the hands of Trent and—“
“And at your hands?” She let him shift in his chair in the glorious discomfort of the truth. “Do you not remember Lady Morley?”
“The wife who ran away from her husband…”
“I helped engineer her entire escape and Lord Morley never did find her.” She leaned forward as her passion for the subject seized her. “It was power. Power I had never known before! I had aided a woman in need and as time passed, it came to me that the world may have a place for me after all. I would assist women who had no recourse to justice, no chance for happiness, or who had been wronged. I would make it my life’s work to balance the scales by using all the lessons of my youth, the talents honed by tragedy and plenty alike, and I would see to it that no woman who petitioned for mercy went unheard.”
Phillip sat up straighter. “Why are you here, Serena?”
A flash of anxiety whipped up her spine at the realization that she may have said too much but Serena smiled at him as if he’d asked about the weather. “Because Mrs. Osborne is your cousin and I heard a rumor that you had been invited to this little country gathering, Sir Warrick. It has been a few years and I decided that I was ready to see what kind of man you’d become.”
“And seek your revenge?”
She slowly reclined back in her chair, her gaze shimmering with confidence in her sexual prowess. “Frightened, Sir Warrick?”
“I am not frightened of you. Should I fear?”
“No, not directly.”
“Then you were here to hurt my family in some petty strike at—“
“Don’t be an idiot, Phillip. I’ve already told you. I’m no brutish henchmen to prowl around the halls and injure your relatives without cause.” She rolled her eyes. “God, why do men have no imagination?”
Serena stood in an elegant maneuver that barely gave him time to get his feet underneath him before he realized that this time she was not pacing but abandoning their vine covered grotto.
Lady Rises (The Black Rose Trilogy Book 2) Page 12