by Julia Ross
Applause echoed about the room. “She’s got you there, Tom!” someone shouted. “The lady’s a wit.”
“Aye, but Tom still had an eyeful,” another man said.
Miracle handed back the tankard and winked at Tom. “Drink up, sir,” she said. “An old soldier must pay for his drink and his songs, but at least he can look for free.”
The wave of mirth was better humored this time.
Tom grinned. “How d’you know I was ever a soldier, missy?”
“Because you’re a brave man, sir, and you’ve seen the world.”
Open laughter swept around the room, accompanied by whistles and clapping.
“‘Greensleeves,’” a man with a white beard called out. “Or ‘Barbara Allen.’ Sweet songs for an old man, darling!”
She swallowed her surge of relief. “You’ll have them both, sir, if you’ll pass around the hat for me.”
“Damnation,” Tom said. “If you’ll give me a kiss, sweetheart, I’ll pass the hat myself.”
“And fall flat on your face?” the bearded man retorted. “You’d do better to feast those sore eyes from right where you’re sitting, my lad.”
Tom thumped his tankard on the bar. “Then let’s have ‘Greensleeves,’ sweetheart.”
“‘Greensleeves’ it is.” She winked at him again. “A ditty about a man who can’t get his lady to stay. Then we’ll try ‘Barbara Allen’ and hear about a man who dies from the loss.”
“I believe the lady dies, too,” a new voice said quietly, but Miracle had already started to sing.
She chose tunes designed to evoke home and longing and love, nothing bawdy, nothing too arousing. A group of Welsh drovers soon joined in, offering an exquisite harmony even when they didn’t know the English words.
The bearded man passed his hat when she finished, chivying the others to pay more. There was not a man left in the room who would molest her against her will now, though a couple of the travelers surreptitiously felt in their pockets. In a few minutes one of them would no doubt approach her privately to try to strike his bargain.
“There you are, darling,” the bearded man said. “Here’s enough raised from the lads for a mug of ale and a supper.”
She glanced into the hat. “Then I’d better sing some more. I’ve higher ambitions than that, sir.”
“The lady wants fine wine!” Tom shouted. “And a feather bed, most like!”
“No,” she replied. “The lady wants a horse.”
“If you’ll sell this one night to me,” someone said, “I will buy you a horse and a saddle to go with it.”
Miracle froze in her tracks. An echo tickled in the back of her mind—I believe the lady dies, too.
The speaker was almost lost in the shadows of a dark corner and wrapped from head to boots in a plain cloak. A broad-brimmed leather hat hung low over his forehead. His quiet voice had seemed almost cultured, that of a gentleman, though it was muffled by the tankard he had just raised to his mouth. She could see nothing of the man’s face, only the glimmer of long, clean-knuckled fingers, clutching the tankard as if he would crush it.
Her heart began to pound. The other men glanced sharply at the stranger.
“I’m worth more than that for just another ditty,” she said. “Come, sir, name your song!”
His hat and high collar still shielded his features, yet his eyes shone like flint. “No more singing,” he said. “I want the rest of this night, ma’am, from now until cockcrow. If you please me, you may have your saddle horse and whatever price in gold you care to name.”
A black-and-white dog growled low in its throat. Indulgence fled the room. The bearded man thrust one hand into his pocket, where he no doubt kept a weapon. Several drovers reached for knotted staves and clutched them in hard fists.
“Here, now,” Tom said, rising unsteadily to his feet. “The lady sings for all of us. If it’s to change to something else, share and share alike is our motto.”
“But it’s not mine.” With a grace that spoke clearly of danger, the stranger stood up to loom over the other men. Light glanced off the barrels of a pair of pistols held in each steady hand. “No inventive ideas, gentlemen,” he said into the sudden silence.
Staves fell with a clatter. Tom collapsed back to his seat.
The stranger slipped the pistols out of sight beneath his cloak and stepped forward. “Well, ma’am? Do we have a bargain?”
Miracle lifted her chin and faced him, though her blood beat fast in dark, terrified rhythms. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, sir, we have a bargain.”
“With all of us here to witness it,” the bearded man said. “And to seek retribution on behalf of the lady, if your boast proves empty.”
“You may tar and feather me in the morning, if I don’t keep my promise,” the stranger said. “But will she keep hers?”
The drovers fell back as he strode up to take Miracle by the elbow. She felt almost faint, as if the thick air had closed around her face, suffocating her. The lamplight wavered. The sea of faces blurred.
The man slipped a hand about her waist to pull her into the circle of his arm. Like a memory of pain, her nostrils imagined the heartbreaking drift of sea and horse, brightened with overtones of orange and lavender. Yet it was too late to demur or run away. She had made a bargain.
“A private bedchamber.” The tall man tossed a handful of coins onto the counter.
The innkeeper hurried to throw open a door at the back of the room. It led to a staircase.
The man thrust Miracle ahead of him up the stairs and into a bedroom beneath the rafters, lit only by a thin glimmer through dusty glass. He slammed the door closed and turned the key in the lock, then strode to the window. Starlight shimmered, its faint glow outlining his hat and long cloak, shaping a figure composed entirely of darkness.
“Get undressed,” he said.
Anguish uncurled deep in her belly. “Just like that?”
He spun about, his cloak sweeping behind him. “This situation hardly encourages subtlety. Remove your clothes and lie on that bed. On your back. I would like to get my money’s worth—or are you already regretting our bargain?”
“I cannot afford to regret it,” she said, reaching for calm, though her veins ran with cold trepidation.
“The terms are quite clear: your body for my use; my gold for you to squander. Or do you first wish to find out just how much gold I have with me?”
“I agreed to give you what’s left of this night. I did not agree to either humiliation or revenge.”
“Revenge?” He threw aside his hat and dropped the cloak to the floor, then strode up to her as if arrogant power was his birthright. “But what if I wanted only another ditty? Would you sing it for me?”
“No, I have sung enough.” Miracle swept her hair back from her forehead with both hands. “You have purchased my body for the night, that’s all. Do with it as you will. You’ll get nothing else.”
She started to open the buttons that secured her dress at the shoulder, but his hand seized her wrist, stopping her.
“Your vocal cords are part of the bargain,” he said. “And I want a song.”
Miracle stood rooted, staring up at him, his palm burning onto her skin. Rage and hurt shone harshly in his dark-ocean gaze, yet he opened his hand and released her.
“Which song would you like?” she asked.
His boots rang on the wooden floorboards as he paced away to stand once again at the window. His shadow stretched, black on gray, to the opposite wall. She felt an inexplicable fear, though not of him.
He tipped his head back against the glass, as if his eyes had closed to shut out the night. “Sing me the song that the planets sang when they were first set in their orbits,” he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
MIRACLE STUMBLED AWAY TO SIT ON THE EDGE OF THE bed. She dropped her head into both hands. She did not really think that he was here for revenge. Yet an icy terror petrified her soul.
“I can’t,” she said at last,
looking up. “I know neither the tune nor the words.”
“But when you sang ‘Barbara Allen,’ and the Welsh drovers added that haunting harmony, I thought for a moment that I was hearing the music of the spheres, after all. Why not sing me the song of Jupiter, or the refrain that Orion chants as he marches across the heavens?”
“I don’t know any songs like that.”
“So not even the stars are cold and distant and inhuman enough for you? Aren’t the heavens your element, where every pinprick of light is perfect and unchanging—not vulnerable, not prey to human warmth, or mistakes, or even empathy? Is that my misfortune, Miss Heather?”
The chill fear raced like a flood in her veins. “I’m so very sorry, Lord Ryderbourne.”
He stood in silence for a moment, as if spun from black glass. “You had no idea who I was when we first struck our bargain downstairs, did you?”
“Not then,” she said. “Not immediately. No.”
His shadow leaped as he flung out one hand and pointed. “You’d have shared that bed with any stranger that offered?”
“For the price promised, yes.”
Silence enveloped him again, while her heart beat hard in her chest.
“Why did you run away from me in Brockton? Why the devil wouldn’t you let me help you?”
“You did help me,” she said. “There’s nothing more you can do for me now.”
“Except to pay for your favors this time with gold?”
“If it would help you to know that I’m glad that this latest pact turned out to be with you, Lord Ryderbourne, then know it.”
He spun on his heel to pace the room again, his boots striking a hard rhythm of distress.
“Of course,” he said. “Because you know that I shan’t force you to keep it. You may have my gold and return nothing. What you offer in exchange is anyway valueless to me.”
“It didn’t seem so at the Merry Monarch.”
“I didn’t know then that your only motivation was money.”
A welcome anger unfurled beneath her inexplicable fear. “What a grand, self-serving statement! Only those who take wealth completely for granted ever claim that money’s an ignoble motive. Other men have paid very well for what I gave you that night. I offered what I thought was a fair exchange for what I needed. I didn’t cheat or steal from you.”
“Didn’t you?” Even in the dark she could see the gleam of white teeth as his lip curled.
“Why did you come after me? How did you find me?”
“God! The simple questions? I suppose we can hardly begin with the difficult ones. Your gelding with the pretty map of Ireland on its rump has a new owner. This honest fellow purchased him from two rogues who’ve already been swallowed up by history, along with your saddle and everything else you possessed, even your riding habit. That knowledge was burning a void in my gut when I returned to the White Swan, only to discover that a dark-haired woman in a silk gown had been selling flowers to travelers.”
“That could have been anyone.”
“Exactly.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“Because, if it was you, where the hell else were you likely to go on foot in the dark? Where else was the nearest alternate route toward Derbyshire?”
She wrapped her arms about herself and shivered. “Who else knows?”
“My coachman and two menservants. One of them discreetly secured that hat and cloak, then my coachman dropped me off half a mile down the road, where my other man was waiting with a horse.”
“So you rode here in disguise. After which you brooded in your corner until I arrived, then you propositioned me as if you were a stranger. It’s horrible!”
He stopped pacing as if he’d run into a tree. “For God’s sake, until you walked into that room downstairs, I thought you’d been killed.”
She bit her lip and glanced away. “No,” she said. “Not yet. But you shouldn’t have come here like this.”
“Should Lord Ryderbourne have pulled up in his coach and four with the Blackdown arms emblazoned on the panels, instead?”
Pain fought with the anger in her heart. “Now that His Lordship knows the true nature of his fantasy, he should not have come at all.”
He reached into his pocket. Ribbons trailed from his fingers in long glimmers of silver. Miracle stared in silence at the white satin slipper as he held it out to her.
“This is all I have left of our previous encounter,” he said. “Your carriage had already shriveled into a pumpkin, your horses were twitching their little mouse noses behind the wainscot, your silk gown was shredding into rags, while you fled headlong back to the ashes. Yet, true to form, you left me one slipper. How the devil did you expect me to react?”
The depth of his rage and anguish threatened to drown her. “I’m not Cinderella. I’m a harlot. Once you knew the truth, I thought you’d forget about me.”
He crushed the slipper in his fist. “For God’s sake! You think you can present a man with such an experience, enigmatic and unexpected, and expect him to simply ignore it?”
“Yes. I thought so. What can a duke’s son want with a woman like me, except to buy another night in my bed? Unfortunately, I’m no longer selling.”
He tossed the slipper onto the bed and stalked back to the window. “So you break another promise!”
“Not another. I kept the first one: I left you a note.”
His back seemed rigid, frozen in starlight. “I remember.”
Long shudders raked up her spine. “I expected you to be disgusted,” she said. “I expected you to curse me.”
“Even though I’m the only witness you have that whatever you did—or believe that you did—it was done in self-defense?”
She jerked upright. “You cannot know that.”
“Before you were left to die in that boat, you’d been beaten.” Power and frustration built in his voice, like water behind a dam. “I—and only I—can testify to that in court.”
Her angry sense of the ludicrous forced her to laugh, though her heart felt like breaking. “Lord Ryderbourne would stand up before the King’s Bench to tell the world about the night he spent at the Merry Monarch with a notorious harlot? How many bruises did he count in the throes of his passion? In which interesting locations did he spot all those charming contusions? The innkeeper and the maids would certainly make splendid witnesses. It would be the richest scandal London’s enjoyed in years—”
“You have no idea of the power that my family holds in society.”
“Yes, I have!” She stalked up to him. “It’s a position that would allow you to make an even bigger fool of yourself than you already have, and your family would never allow it. Poor, besotted Lord Ryderbourne—tricked into taking the whore’s part! His Lordship wishes to tell the court in every detail all the naughty little things that they did together that night? Explain why he’s prepared to drag his noble name through the mud? You think there’s any court in the land that would let me walk away free after that? One word from your father, and the judge would know exactly what to do.”
He seized her by both arms. “How do you even know what you did? No one is missing. I talked to Hanley—”
“Lord Hanley? Why? Where?”
“In London. At his club. It wasn’t hard to learn the name of your latest protector.”
“So now the nasty earl is wondering why Lord Ryderbourne is so interested in his missing mistress? Did Lord Hanley follow you here?”
“Follow me?”
Miracle stared up into his eyes. “Yes! Back and forth up the turnpike after that honest fellow who bought my horse and saddle? To the White Swan, where so many witnesses saw me take my one risk?”
His hands crushed. “Why the devil would Hanley come after me?”
“To find me, of course. To bring me to justice. He was at the White Swan. I saw him there, though he didn’t see me.”
“Hanley seemed both unharmed and disinterested when I last saw him in London. You’re ce
rtain he was at the White Swan?”
She wrenched free. “You think I wouldn’t recognize my own lover?”
His face blanched. He dropped his hands and turned away. “That was a foolish question. I’m sorry. But why do you think he followed me there?”
“Lord Hanley is very interested in my fate, but of course he’s not harmed. He wasn’t the victim. He was the witness.”
“Of what?”
“Does it matter?” Miracle laughed, not caring if the memory of that night was poisoning her laughter with bitterness. “I felt obliged to express my opinion to a friend of his. When words seemed insufficient, I used a knife. You may say it was in self-defense, if you like. But whatever her reasons, a whore’s attack on a gentleman is enough to stretch her neck. You cannot save me in the courts, my lord. Your theories and your passion would never stand against Lord Hanley’s account.”
“Nevertheless, I’m offering you my protection. I could take you to any of the duchy properties. I could keep you hidden—”
“And what a pretty accomplice to crime you would make! You’re a duke’s son, so they won’t hang you, only gossip about you as you watch my last dance at Tyburn. Or would you squander your honor to challenge Lord Hanley to a duel and hope to dispatch him, so that he cannot bear witness against me? Or perhaps, once I’m found guilty of murder and condemned, you could become the court jester and petition the King for clemency? For whose sake? Mine or yours?”
He strode across the room, bouncing blows with one fist off the plaster wall. “Just tell me this: If I had seen what Hanley witnessed, would I have wanted to stop it?”
Miracle was surprised into the truth. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Very definitely!”
Starlight silvered his cheekbone, the skin smooth as satin, as he stared out at the night. “Then Hanley deserves to die for not doing it.”
Ice seemed to crack and splinter across her vision. “Oh, God! You want to fight a duel over me? Forget him! Forget me! You have a life of your own, full of obligations. Go back to it!”