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‘Pardon?’
‘Deaf. Hard of hearing. A woman who would sleep through the night no matter what might happen in her house.’ A glint in his eyes softened the insult. ‘Your cousin, Liam Kingston, for instance, keeps hours that a poor sleeper might find tiring.’
Despite everything she laughed. ‘And for your sister’s sake it is just as well that he does.’
‘Indeed,’ he returned. ‘A lucky coincidence that.
What was your cousin doing following the Carisbrook coach in the first place?’
‘Pardon?’
‘My driver noticed a carriage dogging his heels through the city streets. On memory he would say it to be a hired hack and I know that your aunt does not keep a conveyance.’
She was silent. Lord, he had worked it all out with little more than a passing clue.
‘Perhaps he was mistaken. Liam has only recently come to London and I can think of no reason for him to be following your sister.’
‘Can you not? Then perhaps it was me he wanted.’
‘And what would my cousin want with you?’
‘That’s the same question I have been asking myself these past few days.’ His voice was laconic.
‘And did you find an answer, your Grace?’
‘I did not, Lady Emma.’
Leaning back, the lights glinted off his timepiece and threw refracted rainbows across the floor at his feet. Danger and stealth. And manners. Was there ever a combination quite so appealing?
‘My cousin is a wealthy and respectable married man.’
‘So you say.’
‘Who makes his money from cotton,’ she continued, not liking the disbelief she could so plainly hear in his voice. ‘He would have no need for blackmail, if that is what you are suggesting.’
‘I suggested nothing.’
‘Or kidnapping,’ she continued and then bit down on her lip. Lord, she was being drawn into showing her cards by a master. The thought had her temper rising. Dredging up every skill she had ever shown in acting, she plastered a smile on her face.
‘Why, your Grace, it is really too bad of you to jest me, for surely that is what all this is.’
‘Assuredly,’ he returned, bowing as the music stopped, implacable politeness replacing the humour. ‘Although sometimes I greatly doubt that you are quite as vapid as you make out to be.’
Emerald’s heartbeat faltered at the tone and without even trying she could see the lonely mantle of distance that lay between him and everyone, keeping them back and away.
Cross this line and be damned.
The missing fingers and his limp underplayed the jeopardy, but she could not afford to let her guard down.
Supper had been set up on a long table to one end of the salon, and Asher led her over to join the Learys and Jack Henshaw and Charlotte Withers at one of the smaller tables around it. After finding them each a plate of food, he sat down beside her and the topic turned to music.
‘Do you have a speciality, Lady Emma? An instrument that you play.’ Flora Leary’s eyes were full of interest.
‘No. I am afraid not.’ She did not imagine that the harmonica was the sort of instrument the Bishop’s wife would be thinking about.
‘Can you sing?’
‘No.’ God forbid that she should have to stand in front of this crowd and croon a bawdy number learnt at the knees of sailors who had never so much as graced a salon even a quarter as reputable as this one. ‘My father was a man who believed music to be a facet of the Devil’s mind. A religious man, you understand, of strong beliefs and an utter conviction in the rightness of them.’
‘Not an easy man to live with, then.’ Asher joined in the conversation and an undercurrent threaded his words. ‘What is it that you are well versed in?’
Emerald struggled to think up accomplishments that would be acceptable to this company. ‘I am a proficient rider and excellent in the preparation of meals.’
The heavy silence around the table lengthened as she realised the extent of her mistake.
‘Surely you mean the planning of menus, Lady Emma? A most salutatory undertaking. Why, I remember my mother enjoyed the art of putting together meat and wine. It quite took up much of her time before a grand meal. Was it that sort of thing you meant, my dear?’ The kind and gracious Lady Flora gave her an easy way out and she gladly took it.
‘Yes. Just exactly that.’
Lady Charlotte leaned forward and laid her fingers along the line of Asher Wellingham’s arm. ‘Your brother Taris was always a connoisseur of fine wines, your Grace. How is he? Has his sight improved?’
‘Markedly.’
‘Well, that is the most pleasing news I have heard in a while. Tell him I was asking after him, and if he is down in London in the near future …’
‘I will.’
Emerald felt that something was not quite as it should be. She knew that Taris was Asher’s brother, for Miriam had given her a vague outline of his immediate family. But the fact that he had some problem with his sight had not been mentioned at all and the mask that shuttered any trace of emotion on the Duke of Carisbrook’s face was intriguing.
A brother with a sight problem and a woman named Melanie who, apart from being beautiful, was also absent from his life. He had many secrets and held every emotion beneath a rigid self-control.
Discipline and governance had etched a hard line between his eyes, puncturing a face of pure masculine beauty into something less easy—whenever she was near him she felt a pull of sadness, the world stretched out of shape. Even here in the bland world of London society he did not relax as the others did, but looked around.
A constant check on safety.
She was certain that if someone had come up unexpectedly behind him he would have used the small knife hidden in the folds of his jacket. And used it well. She smiled. It was intriguing, this mix of mannerisms. The crest of ducal importance counterpoised by a dangerous fighting ability.
She had seen it, after all, and knew what he was capable of. Knew too that these people who fawned over his title and wealth had absolutely no idea: the wash of blood and guts across the deck on the high seas and the wailing agony of hurt.
Her life.
His life for a time.
For the time it had taken her to extinguish honour and send him hurtling downwards into the boiling anger of the ocean.
Asher instructed his driver to go fast through the dark London streets and, opening a window, enjoyed the breeze on his face and the sky above his head. Dotted with stars tonight, he mused. A small respite in a month of rain. His brother would be pleased, for watching the heavens through the telescope he had had shipped over especially from China was a passion he could still enjoy. He grimaced. But for how long?
Taris’s sight was worse. He admitted it to himself and cursed Charlotte Withers for asking. Emma Seaton would be at Falder the day after tomorrow and he did not want her to know the extent of the problem.
He wanted no one to know.
He wanted to keep the world away from his brother until he could fashion a solution. Until he knew for certain what it was they were facing. Total loss of sight? Partial vision?
If only Taris had not come out to the Caribbean to find him after the ransom note had been sent. If only he had stayed here in England and left the danger of rescue to others. No, he could not think like that. Taris had come and he had been saved. The high price of his brother’s sacrifice paid ever since with his own crippling guilt over his brother’s blindness.
‘God, help me,’ he whispered to a deity that tonight felt close, though the vision of Emma Seaton’s lack of underclothing juxtaposed strangely against his request, and for a second amusement filled the more familiar void of loneliness.
Her soft skin on her right breast had been marked with an indigo tattoo. A butterfly. Tiny. Delicate. Unexpected.
Curiosity welled. An emotion he had not felt in years. It was a relief to laugh. Even to himself out here in the night.
Emma Seaton.
Her hair was curly when it was loosened from the pins that tightly bound it. Stray tendrils had worked themselves free at her nape and the ringlets that hung only to her collar were tightly coiled. Red-blonde hair and turquoise eyes. And a body well endowed with the curves of womanhood.
He shook his head and rubbed at the stiff muscles on the back of his neck. He had enjoyed tonight. Enjoyed her humour and her candidness. Enjoyed the view of sun-warmed skin that lay beneath her loose bodice and the feel of her in his arms as they had danced.
What would she look like in silks and satins and with her hair dressed by the best of London’s hair salons?
He swore roundly. He had seldom kept a mistress in the way other men of the ton did. Oh, granted he had occasionally used the services of select women who could be relied on for their discretion, yet tonight, with the dull ache of sexual frustration seeping through his bones, he wanted more.
The image of two rosy-tipped breasts came to mind as the bells of Westminster rang out the hour of one across the slumbering city, and he smiled into the darkness as his horses slowed at the corner between Pall Mall and St James’s Square.
Opening Lucy’s letter on her return home, Emerald found the missive to be full of the adolescent adulation Asher Wellingham had spoken of. After memorising the note for future reference and consigning it to the fire, she walked across to the window to watch the sky.
Tonight the heavens were clear, a half-formed moon low in the eastern horizon and climbing. It would rain tomorrow, she suspected, for a cloud of mist encircled the glowing crescent and the air had a tang of moisture in it.
She wondered where the Duke of Carisbrook was now. Entwined in the arms of the green-eyed woman, she guessed, and wondered why she found the thought so irritating.
Asher Wellingham was nothing to her.
She would be in and out of Falder in a matter of days, hours even, if her searching went to plan. And then she would be gone. Away from here. Away from him.
Her mind wandered to the feel of his arms around her waist as they had danced tonight, the soft music between them. She had leant her head against the superfine of his jacket and breathed in.
‘Lord,’ she said aloud and swore roundly. Is this what England was making her? Soft? Needy? Dependent?
She was her father’s daughter with years of fighting imbued in her blood and drawn upon her skin. Her finger went to the mark that intersected her right eyebrow and travelled beneath her fringe into her scalp. Black Jack Porrit and his men off the coast of Barranquilla in the winter of 1819. She would never fit in here and before the first whisper of her parentage surfaced in London town she would need to be gone.
With resolve she stripped off the gown and arranged her blankets beside the window overlooking the street.
Across the city the bells peeled in the night. Two o’clock. Burrowing down, she whispered the name of her sister into the darkness.
‘Soon, Ruby. I will be home soon. I promise.’
Chapter Five
Miriam and Emerald arrived at Falder just as a rain shower departed and the sun tinged the clouds off the wild coast of Fleetness Point.
Falder.
To Emerald it was the most beautiful land she had ever seen, soft green hills with glades of trees colouring the lay of the fields. Everything about it was appealing. The isolation. The strength. The way the valleys dipped to a sea that was cold and free and deep. She could smell the sharp taste of salt on the wind and hear the lonely voices of the gulls.
Home. Home. Home.
Falder beckoned to her in a doleful wailing chant. Breathing in, she caught her reflection in the window of the coach and screwed up her nose. Would she ever get used to the shortness of her hair?
‘If the master of Falder discovers any more about us we will be tossed out in a minute.’ Miriam fidgeted with the thin silk strap of the little reticule she carried. ‘And if you think to dress in your lad’s clothes and scour the house at night, I should warn you of the dangers in it.’
Taking a deep breath, Emerald rubbed her palms against the rough wool of her cape. ‘Would you rather I took a knife to his throat, Aunt?’ Today, in the light of what she had to pretend, she could not find it in herself to be kind.
‘You would kill him?’
‘No, of course not,’ she answered back and swallowed down chagrin. Lord, did Miriam truly think that she was capable of slitting the jugular of an unarmed man?
‘Beau made some stupid mistakes, Emerald. And I would say his biggest one was not dispatching you to England the moment your mother left.’
‘I think sometimes you are too hard on my father—’ she began, but Miriam would have none of it.
‘You were six and he was away as often as he was not.’
‘I had Azziz and St Clair.’
‘Pah! That huge house and a boy who barely spoke the English language. You think that was a suitable home?’
‘It was my home.’ How often before had they had this very same conversation?
‘Your home? With a bevy of Beau’s good-time girls and barely a night without some drunken orgy?’
‘He missed my mother.’
‘Missed her money more like.’
Emerald frowned. This was a tangent she had not heard before. ‘Money. My mother had money?’
Miriam paled. ‘I promised my brother that I would never talk of that time. He wanted you to be free of the restraints and vagaries of society and I promised him my silence.’ Shifting in her seat, she crossed herself and Emerald saw the glimpse of a tear. ‘He was a man who demanded too much sometimes. Even of me.’
‘I do not even have a name to remember her by, Miriam. Can you not give me just that?’
‘Evangeline.’
When the dark eyes of her aunt met her own she felt a heady dizzy sense of shock.
‘Evangeline.’ She whispered it, turning the word on her tongue. Savouring it. At last a name. ‘Like an angel?’
Miriam’s deep frown was not quite what she had expected. ‘Your mother found life away from England difficult, and my brother would not have been the easiest of husbands. But he was your father and my brother and one should never speak ill of the dead, God bless them all.’
As the silence lengthened Emerald knew that she would hear no more.
