A Dark and Brooding Gentleman (6 page)

Phoebe spent the next hour trying to pacify her employer in the lady’s rooms.

‘Come, cease your pacing, Mrs Hunter. You will make yourself ill.’ Already the older woman’s face was pale and pinched. She ignored Phoebe and continued her movement about the room.

‘How dare he?’ she mumbled to herself.

‘Mr Hunter has upset you,’ Phoebe said with concern.

‘My son’s very existence upsets me,’ muttered Mrs Hunter in a harsh voice. ‘I rue the day he was born.’

Phoebe masked her shock before it showed. ‘I am
sure you do not mean that, ma’am. Let me ring for some tea. It will make you feel better.’

‘I do not want yet another cup of tea, Phoebe,’ she snapped. ‘And, yes, when it comes to Sebastian, I mean every word that I say.’ She stopped by the window, leaning her hands upon the sill to stare out of the front of the house across the moor. ‘I hate my son,’ she said more quietly in a tone like ice. ‘It is an admission that no mother should make, but it is the truth.’ She glanced round at Phoebe. ‘I have shocked you, have I not?’

‘A little,’ admitted Phoebe.

She turned to face her fully. ‘If you knew what he has done, you would understand.’

Phoebe felt her blood run cold at the words.
Tell me,
she wanted to say.

Mrs Hunter looked at Phoebe for a moment as if she had heard the silent plea, then the anger drained away. In its place was exhaustion and a fragility that Phoebe had never before seen there. Her face was pale and peaked and as Phoebe looked she realised Mrs Hunter looked old and ill.

‘Do you wish to speak of it?’

There was silence and for a moment, a very small moment, Phoebe thought she would. And then Mrs Hunter shook her head and closed her eyes. ‘I cannot.’ And then she pressed a hand to her forehead, half-shielding one eye as if she might weep.

Phoebe moved to take Mrs Hunter’s arm and guided her to sit in an armchair. She knelt by her side and took one of the lady’s hands within her own. ‘Is there anything that I might do to help?’

Mrs Hunter gave a little shake of the head and a weak smile. ‘You are a good and honest girl, Phoebe.’

Phoebe felt the guilt stain her cheeks. She glanced down uneasily, knowing that she had been less than honest and that thieving made her very bad.

Mrs Hunter sighed as her hand moved to her breastbone and she rubbed her fingers against the silk of her dress, feeling the golden locket that Phoebe knew lay hidden beneath. ‘My head aches almost as much as my heart.’ Her voice was unsteady and there was such an underlying pain there that Phoebe felt the ache of it in her own chest.

‘I could make you a feverfew tisane. It should relieve the pain a little.’

‘Yes. I would like that.’ Mrs Hunter patted Phoebe’s hand, then she rose and walked from the little sitting room towards her bedchamber. ‘And send Polly up. I wish to lie down for a while.’

Phoebe nodded and quietly left. Yet she could not stop wondering at the terrible deed in Hunter’s past that had made his mother hate him so.

McEwan came to him that evening with the information he had discovered.

‘Are you certain?’ Hunter demanded.

McEwan glanced up at him. ‘Absolutely. Sir Henry Allardyce was sent to gaol for an unpaid debt of fifteen hundred pounds some six months ago. He has been imprisoned in the Tolbooth ever since.’ McEwan tasted the brandy. ‘It seems that your instincts concerning Miss Allardyce were right, Hunter.’

Hunter said nothing, just toyed with the glass of brandy in his hand.

McEwan lounged back in the wing chair by the unlit fire. ‘I suppose it is understandable that she would lie
over the matter. She is unlikely to have found a decent position otherwise.’

‘Indeed.’ Hunter took a small sip of brandy.

‘Will you tell Mrs Hunter?’

‘My mother will not thank me for the knowledge.’

‘Then we will leave Miss Allardyce to her secret.’

‘Not quite,’ said Hunter and set his glass down on the drum table between him and McEwan. He thought of Miss Allardyce in his study and of the lies she had spun, and he could not rid himself of the notion that there was more to the mystery surrounding the girl than simply hiding her father’s fate.

McEwan listened while Hunter told him his plan and then left to rush back to his Mairi. Hunter lifted his glass and stood by the window, looking out over the moor. In all these months not once had he even looked at a woman. He was the man his father had wanted him to be. And yet it was all too little, too late. The past could not be undone. Some sins could never be washed clean. And Hunter would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of his life. All he had were the vows he had sworn and his determination to honour them. And now it seemed even they were to be tried.

Fate was taunting him, testing him. Throwing temptation in his path, and such a temptation that Hunter could never have imagined, wrapped in the guise of a plain and ordinary girl, except there was nothing plain or ordinary about Phoebe Allardyce. For the sake of his mother there could be no more thought of avoiding Miss Allardyce. He sipped at the brandy and knew he would have to take an interest in the girl, whether he liked it or not. And in him burned a cold steady anger and a determination to honour the promises he had sworn.

Mrs Hunter was still in bed as Phoebe hurried down the main staircase two mornings later, reticule in hand, shawl around her shoulders. Through the window she could see the sky was an expanse of dull grey filled with the promise of rain, and all around her the air held a nip that boded of the end of summer. Phoebe’s normally bright spirits on a Tuesday morning were clouded by the prospect of meeting the Messenger empty-handed. Ahead of her the front door of Blackloch lay open, rendering the house all the more chilled for the cold seeping breeze. But Phoebe barely noticed; her mind was filled with thoughts of her father as she crossed the smooth grey flags of the hallway.

She was through the doorway, down the stone steps and out onto the driveway before she realised that Jamie was not wearing his normal clothes, but a smart black-and-silver livery. Where the gig should have stood was a sleek and glossy black coach complete with coachman in a uniform to match Jamie’s.

‘Miss Allardyce.’ The voice sounded behind her; his booted footsteps came down the steps, then crunched upon the gravel. And she did not need to turn to know who it was that had spoken for the whole of her body seemed to tingle and her heart gave a flutter.

She turned, showing not one hint of her reaction to him. ‘Mr Hunter.’

‘Forgive me for borrowing Jamie when you had asked him to drive you to Kingswell, but I have a meeting in Glasgow and as we are both travelling the same way I thought we might travel together.’

For just one awful moment Phoebe felt the mask slip and something of her horror show. They could not
possibly travel together, not when she was going to the Tolbooth gaol. But she could think of not a single excuse to extricate herself from the situation. She forced the smile to her face and looked at him perhaps a little too brightly so that he would not fathom anything of her real thoughts on the matter.

‘I thank you for your offer, sir, but I could not possibly put you to such inconvenience.’

‘It is no inconvenience, Miss Allardyce.’ He was standing close to her, looking down into her face with the same brooding intensity he always wore. Those stark ice-green eyes, the gaze that seemed to see too much. She glanced away, feeling uncommonly hot and flustered, and pretended to fix the handle on her reticule.

‘Indeed, I insist upon it, the roads being as unsafe as they are these days.’ ‘I …’

But he was already walking the few steps to the coach.

Jamie had already opened the door and pulled down the step.

Hunter reached the door and turned to her. ‘After you, Miss Allardyce.’

She stared at the coach, consternation filling her every pore, for she knew there was no means to escape this. Phoebe took a deep breath, thought of her father and climbed into the coach.

The interior was as dark as the outside. Black-velvet squabs upon black-leather upholstery. And at each window matching thick black-velvet curtains tied back to let in the daylight.

The ride was comfortable and smooth, but Phoebe
could not relax, not with Hunter sitting opposite, his long black pantalooned legs stretched out by her side, so that his booted feet were close to the hem of her skirt; too close, she thought and she remembered the feel of him standing so near when she was half-naked, clutching the pile of clothes to her breast. She blushed and pushed the memory away.

His boots looked as if they were new, as black and gleaming as the horses that pulled the coach. Her eyes travelled up to his thighs, noting that the pantaloons did little to disguise the muscles beneath. Phoebe realised what she was doing, blushed again and averted her eyes to look out of the window at the passing moorland. But even then she was too conscious of him, of the sheer size of him, of his strength and his very presence. The coach seemed too small a space and the atmosphere held a strain. Her hands clasped tighter together.

‘To which hospital do I deliver you?’

She ignored his question. ‘Mrs Hunter has then told you something of my situation?’ she said carefully.

‘She has. If it is not too delicate a matter, may I enquire as to your father’s ailment?’

‘The doctors are not sure yet. Until they are, he must be confined.’ She stuck to the story her father had devised.

‘Confined, you say?’

She glanced up to find Hunter’s gaze upon her. And it did not matter how many times she had told the story previously without the slightest betrayal, sitting there in the coach before him, Phoebe felt guilt scald her cheeks. ‘Indeed. It is a most worrying situation.’ At least that was truthful. ‘I fear for him.’ She glanced away out of the window, thinking of her father’s poor swollen face
the last time she had seen him and the threats so vilely uttered against him. ‘More than you can imagine. Without these visits I do not know how either of us would survive the time.’ Her words halted as she realised just how much of the truth she had revealed and when she looked back she found Hunter was watching her with a strange expression upon his face.

‘What of your mother?’

‘She died when I was a child.’

‘And you have no other family?’

‘My sister died almost two years past.’ Phoebe could almost speak of Elspeth now, but it had taken such a long time.

‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said and something of the chill had thawed from his voice.

She glanced round at the change in his voice, met his eyes once more. And something unspoken seemed to pass between them, some kind of shared experience that bound them together.

‘And you, sir?’ she asked. ‘Do you have any other family?’

‘None.’

‘Your father, he—?’

‘I do not speak of my father, Miss Allardyce.’ And the coldness was back again just as if it had never gone.

‘Please forgive me. I did not intend to stir painful memories.’ Phoebe understood what grief felt like, how, just when you were not even thinking upon it, the smallest, most unexpected thing could trigger a rush of emotion so intense you were plunged into the depths all over again and the ache in your heart caught the breath from your lungs and made you weep. And she did not imagine a man like Hunter would wish to reveal
such emotion. It was only nine months since his father had died.

She watched the blur of earthy colours through the carriage window, content to let the silence grow between them. And even though her focus was on the passing moorland she could feel the weight of Hunter’s gaze heavy upon her. She did not look round. She wanted no more questions about her father.

The minutes passed.

‘You do not know, do you?’ he said at last, his voice softer than normal. And when she looked round at him there was almost disbelief on his face. And then as if to himself, ‘She has not told you. I did not think—’ He stopped himself.

Phoebe shook her head. ‘I do not know of what you are talking, sir.’

He smiled; it was a cold smile, a mirthless smile and in his eyes there was an anguish he could not quite hide. ‘I suppose that at least is something.’ Their gazes held and for that brief moment there was such pain in his eyes that Phoebe could not help herself from reaching her hand towards him.

Hunter’s gaze dropped to her hand and then slid back up to meet her eyes and the same stony control had slotted into place.

She froze, suddenly conscious of what she was doing, and pulled her hand back as if it had been bitten.

‘You did not answer my question, Miss Allardyce—in which hospital is your father being treated?’

Only then did she realise that he was the only person since she had started as Mrs Hunter’s companion to ask her that question.

‘The Royal Infirmary.’ It was the closest hospital
to the Tolbooth. She dreaded what more he would ask and where his questions would lead. Her nervousness around him made it hard to think straight and she feared what she might be tricked into revealing. But to her relief Hunter made no further comment and the journey continued in silence. Part of her was willing the journey to be over, longing only for safety and to see her papa. And another part, a small perverse part that Phoebe did not understand, did not want it to end. Paradoxically, the minutes were both too long and too short until they reached Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary.

She thanked Hunter and bade him good day as if she felt nothing of the roaring attraction to a man against whom she had been warned, a man she knew to be thoroughly wicked.

Phoebe stood and waited until the black luxurious carriage disappeared out of sight and only then did she release the breath she had been holding. Hunter was gone. Her secret was safe.
She
was safe.

She watched for a moment longer, thinking of the dark man in that dark carriage, then she turned and hurried off down Castle Street towards the gaol.

T
he Messenger arrived at the Tolbooth’s steps five minutes after Phoebe. He glanced around nervously before placing his hand on her arm and pulling her into the shadowed arches of the adjoining coffee rooms.

‘You have it?’ She could see the eagerness in his narrow grey eyes and felt a wave of revulsion and anger for him and the threat he posed to her father.

She had not time for preamble, and this man, whoever he was, deserved nothing of politeness. ‘It was not where you said it would be.’

‘You are lying.’ His face hardened.

‘It is the truth.’ She stepped closer to him, the fury blazing in her eyes. ‘Do you honestly think I would jeopardise my father’s safety any more than it is already?’ she demanded. ‘I searched the whole of the study—every place I could find. Your information is wrong, sir. The item is not there.’

‘You’d better be telling the truth, lady.’ His voice was ugly.

‘I assure you I am.’

They faced each other, Phoebe defiant and glaring, the Messenger suspicious and thinking. The drone of voices and traffic went on around them as if nothing was wrong.

‘Everything all right, Miss Allardyce?’ It was the one of the turnkeys who looked after her papa’s cell, on his way home having finished his shift. His eyes flitted to the Messenger.

The Messenger’s gaze met Phoebe’s and it was filled with unspoken warning; not that she needed any reminders of what was at stake.

‘Everything is fine, thank you, Mr Murray. I will be in to see my papa shortly.’

The turnkey gave a nod and was on his way, leaving them alone again.

‘Good girl,’ said the Messenger and smiled.

Phoebe narrowed her eyes and made no effort to hide her contempt. ‘I have done as you asked and I trust that my father will be safe.’

‘Old pop’s safety can’t be guaranteed till you deliver the goods, Miss Allardyce.’

‘But—’

‘Where else would a man keep such a thing?’ When Phoebe did not respond the man answered his own question. ‘In his bedchamber, perhaps?’ The Messenger raised his eyebrows and looked at her expectantly. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You cannot expect me to—’ ‘If you care about your
dear papa,’
he emphasised the words horribly, ‘then you will be as thorough with Hunter’s bedchamber as you were with the study. The item is somewhere in that house, Miss Allardyce. And
until you have found it and it is safely in my pocket then who knows when it comes to Sir Henry …?’

‘You are a villain, sir!’ she said quietly through gritted teeth. ‘A rogue of the worst degree!’

He smiled. ‘I’ve been called worse.’

‘I cannot search the entirety of the house unseen in a week. I will have to wait until no one will catch me and that will take time.’

He looked at her, weighing up her words. ‘At the start of September Mrs Hunter’ll be travelling down to London to visit a friend, no doubt taking her trusty companion with her.’

‘She has no such plans. I would know—’

But he cut her off. ‘Bring the item with you to London. I will contact you there. And remember, Miss Allardyce, I’ll hear if you’ve talked. One word to Hunter or his mother and you know what’ll happen …’ His eyes narrowed in threat and glanced meaningfully at the prison building behind her. ‘Best go and see how your pa is farin’.’ He smiled and then turned and walked away, leaving Phoebe standing there looking after him. The Tolbooth clock struck eleven.

‘I thought you were planning to confront her at the prison?’ McEwan lounged back in his chair across the desk from Hunter.

‘There was a change of plan.’

McEwan arched an eyebrow and transferred the calendar of appointments and notebook from his knee to the desk’s surface so that he might concentrate on what Hunter was saying all the better.

‘Miss Allardyce met with a man outside the gaol. It
was a planned meeting. She waited for him before he showed.’

‘An accomplice?’ asked McEwan. ‘Possibly.’ Hunter’s jaw tightened as he remembered the man’s proprietorial grip on Miss Allardyce’s arm. ‘Miss Allardyce went with him readily enough to hide beneath the arches and sent the turnkey away when he ventured near them.’ He wished he had been able to see her face or hear something of their words. ‘Accomplice or not, I suspect there may be more to Miss Allardyce’s deception than meets the eye.’

‘You mean more than her guise to hide the truth of her father?’ ‘I believe so.’

‘You do not think she means to harm Mrs Hunter, do you?’ McEwan’s eyes were serious with concern, his voice quiet.

‘I hope for Miss Allardyce’s sake that she does not,’ said Hunter in such a steely voice that McEwan actually flinched. He softened his tone. ‘But I doubt that is her intent.’ He thought of her visits to his study and the insistent notion that she was looking for something. ‘I think Miss Allardyce may have another purpose altogether.’ ‘Such as?’

‘Theft, perhaps.’ He looked at McEwan. ‘I believe she has searched this study.’ He made no mention of when he had found her here, or of what had so nearly passed between them.

McEwan gave a small shake of the head and a low whistle. ‘Who would have thought it of Miss Allardyce? She seems so …’

Hunter raised a brow. ‘So …?’

‘So upstanding, so innocent, so honest,’ finished McEwan.

‘I think we have already established that whatever Miss Allardyce is, it is not honest. And as for the rest …’

‘We should warn Mrs Hunter about the girl.’

Hunter thought of his mother’s reaction to his enquiries over Miss Allardyce. ‘Such an action would only make my mother all the more determined to keep Miss Allardyce.’

‘What, then, can we do?’

‘We must find another way to discover the nature of Miss Allardyce’s game.’ Hunter’s face was grim. ‘And in the meantime when she next visits the Tolbooth we will follow the man she meets with. Find out where he goes, who he is.’

McEwan gave a nod. Then the two men moved to discuss matters relating to the estate.

The door had not even closed behind McEwan when Hunter turned his chair round to face the moor once more. He left his brandy untouched, and as he looked over the windswept heather he brooded not upon his father, but upon Miss Phoebe Allardyce.

The window of the green guest bedchamber overlooked a garden that had been walled to gentle the harshness of the moor’s wind and allow Blackloch to grow some of its own fruit and vegetables. To the right-hand side stood the stables and to the left, the still water of the loch where Phoebe had swum in the heat of the summer’s day. She knew all that was there even though the darkness rendered it invisible. Dark shadows in a dark landscape beneath a sky of charcoal cloud. There was no moon to light the night, no stars to pretty
the sky. Phoebe wrapped the shawl more tightly over her nightdress and stared out at the darkness, worrying about her father. Her eyes squeezed closed at the memory of what the Messenger had done to him and in her stomach was the familiar twist of horror.

Poor Papa who was gentle and kind and had never hurt so much as a fly, who was so lost in his science he barely knew the day of the week, and who could not even look after himself let alone offer a defence against such a savage assault. And she felt angry and frustrated and helpless, knowing there was nothing she could do to protect him from the Messenger’s men if they chose to make good on their threats. Nothing save steal from Hunter just as the Messenger wanted. Steal from a man whose reputation was dark and dangerous as the devil’s, and who, with one glance from those cool green eyes, could unnerve Phoebe completely.

It was that simple … and that difficult.

By midnight Blackloch was all silence. There was only the hush of the wind whispering against the glass of her window and the soft ripple of water. Everyone would be in bed, all save one. She shrugged off her shawl and, taking up her candle, Phoebe crept halfway down the staircase and peered over the banister at the darkened hallway below. A faint glow of light showed beneath the door to Hunter’s study. She sighed with relief and made her way back up the stairs.

Hunter’s bedchamber was opposite Phoebe’s, but twice the size and with the door positioned as if it were one room up. She crept quietly past Mrs Hunter’s room and stopped outside the bedchamber of the master of Blackloch.

McCabe would not be there. She had been careful to make her enquiries as to Hunter’s valet. She supposed the man was too used to a master who, it seemed, did not sleep. Taking a deep breath, Phoebe opened the door and slipped into Hunter’s bedchamber.

The room was lit only by the glow of coals upon the hearth. She closed the door softly behind her; even though she knew Hunter was downstairs in his study drinking alone through the night, her heart was racing as she held the candle aloft and scanned her surroundings.

It was undoubtedly a masculine room, as dark and sombre as Hunter himself. Dark curtains, dark covers, dark pillows. Every piece of furniture had been carved in ebony or deep mahogany or blackened oak. A huge four-poster bed, both wide and high, too luxuriant for a man who barely slept, sat between the two arched windows, facing into the room. The curtains framing the windows were thick and long, their hems just brushing against the polished floorboards. There was a large rectangular rug on the near side of the bed, the pattern a jumble of dark colours beneath the light of her candle. Her gaze swept around the bed, taking in the unlit wall sconces nearby, the matching chests of drawers on either flank and the large heavy studded chest at the foot. She moved her attention back to the room, her gaze moving over the large solid dark furniture and the internal doors on opposing walls. One she knew led to the bedchamber of the lady of the house, in which Mrs Hunter was currently sleeping. The other she guessed would be a bathroom.

Behind her was a heavy mahogany fireplace, above which hung a large painting of a dark-cowled man with
a pet dog guarding its master. A monk and his dog. Such a peculiar choice of painting for a bedchamber that Phoebe peered closer, and gave a small breathy gasp when she realised that the dog was not a dog at all, but a wolf watching her with warning in its eyes. There were so many wolves at Blackloch that they must hold some significance to the Hunter family. She shivered, the sensation rippling right through her as if someone had walked over her grave, and such was her sudden overwhelming fear that it was all she could do not to turn and flee. But Phoebe could not run away from this, no matter how much she wanted to. She knew what she had to steal. And she knew, too, that, for the sake of her papa, there could be no room for failure. She turned away from the painting and forced herself to begin a calm, methodical search.

The bathroom contained a large oval bath with a shower device fixed above it, a screened water closet, a looking glass and a shaving accoutrements, and a comfortable armchair. Nothing in which the object was likely to be hidden.

She carefully searched each piece of furniture, one by one, every shelf, every drawer, every cupboard. By half past midnight she had reached the second set of drawers closest to the main door. As she set her candle down upon the surface she looked up and the curtains swaying in the draught caught her attention; she saw the looking glass and her own pale reflection staring back at her. And in that moment it seemed she felt the cold breath of foreboding whisper against her cheek. Phoebe ignored it, telling herself it was just her imagination at work, and pulled open the top drawer. And there, at last, was Hunter’s jewellery casket.

He did not seem to be a man who favoured jewellery for there were few enough pieces. A diamond cravat pin, a gold-and-onyx signet ring engraved with the same crest that adorned the cushions of the dining-room chairs and the seats in the hall, a gold pocket watch and two silver snuff boxes, enamelled with such scandalous paintings of women upon their lids as to bring a blush to Phoebe’s cheeks. She ran her fingers against the velvet lining of the casket’s interior, searching insistently for something that was not there.

A sound whispered from the passageway, the soft tread of footsteps. Phoebe started and quickly piled all of the jewellery back into the casket, thrust the lid on and shoved the drawer shut. Last of all she grabbed her candle and turned to leave, just as the door to the bedchamber opened and in walked Sebastian Hunter.

He stilled, the intense gaze trained on her, the dark impassivity of his expression gone, replaced with surprise.

Phoebe could not move, could not speak, could not breathe. Everything in the world stopped. She stared at Hunter.

‘Miss Allardyce,’ he said quietly and his voice was smooth and cool as silk.

She dropped her gaze to take in the tall black riding boots, the tight buckskin breeches and the coat slung haphazardly over his shoulder. His waistcoat and cravat were unfastened and his shirt gaped open at the neck, revealing something of the pale muscled skin beneath. The door closed behind him without a sound. As Hunter walked slowly towards her, relieving himself of the coat and cravat upon the armchair on the way, Phoebe’s stomach dipped.

‘I was about to ask what you are doing here.’ He kept on walking until he was standing directly before her. ‘But I suppose that would be a foolish question, when the answer is so obvious.’

She knew she had failed and she knew, too, the cost of that failure for her papa; the thought of it made her want to weep. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do. She pressed her lips firm and waited for her dismissal.

‘For why else does a woman come to a man’s bedchamber in the night?’

Such was her anguish that it took a moment for his words to register. Phoebe blinked up at him in confusion. And as she looked up into his eyes she understood what it was he thought. Her heart skipped a beat and she felt the kindling of hope.

‘Unless I am mistaken and there is some other reason that you are here.?’ He waited, and everything about him seemed to still in that waiting.

She glanced down. Such a tiny second to make such a momentous decision, and yet, there was no decision to be made, not when her father’s life was at stake. Time slowed. All that had happened with her papa and the Messenger ran through her head as she stood there.