Dark Obsession (29 page)

He trailed off and again Nora wanted to grip him and shake him—shake loose all the truths he seemed to fear so desperately. That he cared for her, for one; that he cared deeply about so many things in this life. And that he was no killer, neither directly nor indirectly.

It would not have done any good. For now he insisted on shouldering the blame. . . . And Nora realized with a jolt that it must be as her lavender lady had told her. They must discover the truth and see it with their own eyes, their own hearts, in order to believe it.

Could Grayson ever be made to see the truth and believe in it? Dare she hope this discovery of his might be the first step?

‘‘I’ll leave with Jonny on one condition,’’ she said evenly. ‘‘That you accompany us.’’

‘‘Don’t be stubborn, Nora.’’ His voice rose, tinged with anger, and with the ever-present fear that now seemed so obvious to her, so pervasive. ‘‘I want you and Jonny safe, but I must stay and see this through. I owe that much to Tom.’’

She shrugged. ‘‘Then I am going nowhere.’’

‘‘Don’t be foolish,’’ Chad blurted. ‘‘Gray, you’re her husband. Persuade her.’’

It wouldn’t be the first time Grayson had ordered her gone. Nor the first time she’d refused. But today, the urgency seemed far more on the part of the Earl of Wycliffe. Perhaps, in his heart of hearts, Grayson desired her to stay here with him, and be the wife she so wished to be.

With a decisive heft of her chin, she spoke before he could. ‘‘This is our home and I’m not about to let anyone run us off. I daresay it is highly doubtful any pirates will go to all the trouble of sneaking up to the house to murder us in our beds, but to ensure our safety we can hire local men to keep watch. I’m quite certain a coastal village the likes of this one will yield any number of young ruffians eager to wrangle with anyone threatening their own. If not, a letter to my father would certainly—’’

Grayson held up a hand. ‘‘I’ve already instructed Gibbs to post a guard over the beach. I’ll extend that to include the grounds around the house.’’

‘‘You could be making a terrible mistake,’’ Chad said.

‘‘But it is my mistake to make.’’ Nora lifted her teacup and pretended to ignore their resigned expressions.

Soon afterward Chad excused himself to seek an hour’s rest in the bedchamber always reserved for his visits. As his footsteps receded, Nora met Grayson’s gaze. ‘‘You aren’t at all convinced about these pirates, are you? Or you wouldn’t have given in to me so easily.’’

‘‘Smugglers, and what difference does it make what I believe?’’ He made a crooked attempt at a grin, not much more than a twist of his lips, but the sight produced a tiny thrill inside her just the same. ‘‘As you so recently pointed out, you are Zachariah Thorngoode’s daughter, and you follow orders about as easily as you frighten or become discouraged.’’

‘‘Would you prefer a biddable wife?’’ she could not help asking.

He hesitated, jaw going rigid and lips tightening around unspoken thoughts. ‘‘No.’’

‘‘A different wife?’’ Why she felt the need to test him, almost taunt him, she didn’t know. Perhaps to push him to his limit, from where he must either flee from her or turn and embrace her.

He did neither, but sat brooding.

Frustration propelled her out of her chair, sent her to stare out the rain-streaked windows facing the front park, silvered by a layer of mist. Feeling Gray’s scrutiny on her back, his melancholy filling the room, she bent to rearrange a vase of flowers on a table beneath the window. Almost angrily she tugged the stems free and speared them back into the crystal vase, finding the delicate petals all too reminiscent of fingertips on flesh. . . . Of Grayson’s fingers on her.

She slid a rose from the vase. Its sweet fragrance danced beneath her nose while the petals, glistening with dew, sent droplets trickling down her forearm. Lightly she brushed the rich red blossom across her lips, conjuring Grayson’s kisses until she ached for them.

‘‘No.’’ The whisper grazed her nape and startled her. The heat of Grayson’s length followed as his torso cradled her back and his hips nestled against her bottom. The feel of him set her body on fire. His lips moved against her hair; his voice smoldered in her ear. ‘‘If you must press for the truth of it, no, I do not wish another wife. I wish you another husband.’’

She longed to turn, to wrap her arms around him, but his unyielding stance held her pressed to the table’s edge and would not allow it. Her gaze searched the clouds outside while her other senses reeled with desire. ‘‘And if I wish no other husband but you?’’

‘‘Then perhaps you are foolishly brave.’’ She felt a gentling of his posture, an easing of the muscles pressing into her. An arm came up around her waist, his large hand splayed against her belly. ‘‘Or merely foolish.’’

"Grayson ..."

A knock at the open door stilled the words on her tongue, words that eluded her, in any case. Beyond breathing heat into his name with the passion building inside her, she hadn’t the slightest notion what she might have uttered next. Grayson stepped away, and she turned to see Kat entering the room.

‘‘Sir. Ma’am.’’ She curtsied twice. ‘‘Beg pardon for interrupting. There’s a small matter in the art studio that requires my lady’s attention.’’

‘‘Is it Jonny? Is he all right?’’ Nora was already halfway to the door, her own concerns fading beneath burgeoning alarm.

‘‘No, ma’am. Nothing to worry about. Lord Clarington is still at his books in the schoolroom. It’s about his new canvas. He’s painted something rather curious.’’

‘‘I see.’’ She stopped and turned back to Grayson.

‘‘Go,’’ he said. ‘‘He needs you.’’

As do you,
she thought as she followed Kat up the stairs.

Grayson stood alone in the conservatory, ears pricked, senses alert, the hair on his nape bristling. Nora and Jonny were outside on the garden terrace, and Chad would be joining them shortly. In twenty minutes, Mrs. Dorn would serve an informal supper here at the wrought-iron garden table, a treat for Jonny on the special occasion of Chad’s arrival.

Minutes earlier, he had tried asking Nora about what she had discovered upon entering her studio with Kat, but Jonny had been close by, and in a hushed tone she had promised to enlighten him later. Then she and the boy had taken one of the baskets used to collect clippings, and gone out to the terrace.

Now an odd sound had him staring down the dusky aisles between the potted plants and trees. Though the rain had stopped, steely clouds darkened the skies to an early twilight. Intermittent winds raised the creaking complaint of the oak trees beyond the terrace, and sent leaves and twigs tumbling through the air to stick to the conservatory’s glass walls.

Inside all was quiet and still, or should have been. Grayson’s nerves hummed with tension. Without moving he shifted his gaze once more to the terrace door.

It was shut tight, but as they had done moments ago, the potted dwarf maple trees beyond the bourbon roses stirred. Rustled. A hissing sifted through their leaves.

Grayson’s heart thumped, sending the blood to rush in his ears and pound at his temples. He took a step, then another. Stopped to listen . . .

His lungs emptied; a murky haze swam before his eyes. Blinking, he gasped for breath and forced his feet to move. He held out his hands, feeling his way past the hothouse foliage. ‘‘Where are you? Show yourself, damn it.’’

The words filtered into his brain through the roaring in his ears, yet were they words, truly, or merely wisps of the breeze forcing its way past gaps in the casements?

He stood beside the roses now, straining his eyes. Not a breath stirred through the dwarf maples, yet as he stood waiting, a sharp, citrus scent drifted around him, so strong it could not have come from the potted orange and lemon trees on the opposite side of the conservatory.

‘‘Charlotte? It’s you, isn’t it? I know you blame me for Tom. I blame myself. I’m so damned sorry. I never meant—’’

Grayson’s heart went still. ‘‘What about Jonathan?’’

‘‘I’m trying. I swear to you, everything I’m doing now is for him.’’

‘‘No. Save him . . . danger . . .’’
The whisper thinned, dissipated, but even as it did, the note of urgency, of bleak desperation, shimmied through the air to buffet him with physical force.

He bolted forward, standing now in the midst of the shoulder-high maple trees. ‘‘What danger? Me? Is that what you’re afraid of? That I’m a danger to your son? Charlotte, wait. Please. Don’t leave yet.’’

The citrus scent—the fragrance she had always worn in life—dulled to a vague tang. Then it too dispersed on the air. Grayson gripped the nearest branch, fisting his hand painfully around the bark as if to hold his sister-in-law’s spirit a moment longer. ‘‘I swear to you on my life that I’d never hurt Jonny.’’

‘‘Gray?’’

He jolted at the sound of his name, spoken in a masculine voice and filled with puzzlement. Pivoting, he beheld his friend’s figure silhouetted in the conservatory’s wide archway. Quickly he put space between himself and the maple trees.

‘‘Were you talking to someone?’’ Chad directed a glance around the conservatory. His booted footsteps raised an echo from the flagstone floor as Grayson’s heartbeat pounded down to its natural rhythm.

‘‘I was . . . calling to Nora and Jonny. They’re outside.’’ He wondered how long the other man had been standing there, how much he’d heard. And whether his attempt to act naturally could fool his old friend. He forced a chuckle. ‘‘I don’t suppose they heard me through the glass.’’

‘‘You sounded upset.’’ Chad reached him and stopped. His brow creased as he studied Grayson’s features. ‘‘You look upset as well.’’

‘‘It’s nothing.’’ Grayson put a hand on Chad’s shoulder, then dropped it to his side when he realized his fingers were trembling. ‘‘Come, let’s sit.’’ He led the way to the garden table. ‘‘I merely thought it time they came in. It’s growing chilly, and . . . with this wind, falling limbs could be a danger.’’

As he took a seat opposite Grayson, Chad nodded, though doubt hovered in his expression. ‘‘What the devil are they doing outside in this weather?’’

Grayson shrugged. ‘‘Something about finding flowers worthy of being painted.’’

‘‘Humph. I always say if one can’t be racing headlong across the countryside, one might as well be indoors.’’

‘‘Yes, I’m quite familiar with how you enjoy risking life and limb . . . and those of your friends and those of your horse. . . .’’

He’d meant to make a joke of it, but his earlier irritation with Chad returned. This time, however, it wasn’t about horses or taking foolish risks. Charlotte’s fears for her son—good God, enough to raise her spirit from the grave—drove home his need to find answers. He should have spent all of today searching for those answers, but Chad’s surprise arrival had distracted him from his task. Even now, he couldn’t decide if his friend would prove a help or a hindrance.

In the days following Tom’s death, Chad had been here, helping sift through Tom’s effects and the estate records, poring over the unpaid bills and guiding Grayson in all the necessary financial decisions. Grayson’s state of mind at the time had been less than dependable, but he should have been more involved in untangling the mess the estate had become—and uncovering the truth of Tom’s death. Without meaning to, Chad may well have shielded Grayson from pertinent details, ones that might have determined a far different future for him.

And for Jonny and Nora.

‘‘You were itching to jump that stream and you know it.’’ Chad’s flippant words roused him from his musings and scraped his anger raw.

‘‘I itched to do many things today,’’ he snapped, ‘‘but that most assuredly wasn’t on top of my list.’’ He shoved back his chair, the metal legs screeching on the stone floor. Once on his feet he turned his back on his friend. What he suddenly itched for now was to grasp the nearest potted palm and hurl it over sideways.

He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him, then the sounds of Chad gaining his feet. A heavy pause ensued, fraught with tension. Chad cleared his throat and said quietly, ‘‘You are upset, and perhaps I know the reason why. I believe I am intruding here. I’m sorry. I shall make my excuses to Nora after supper and be on my way. Sooner, if you wish.’’

Grayson released a breath, and with it his burst of temper. He raked his fingers through his hair and turned to face his oldest and closest friend. ‘‘No, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me just then. Don’t leave.’’

Chad stood studying him, his expression etched with concern. The terrace door opened. A gusty breeze whooshed through the oak saplings and dwarf maples, wispy palms and budding citrus trees. Grayson’s back went rigid, his skin cold, but the only presence to seize the room was Jonny’s. The boy bounded in and without the least hesitation hurled himself into Chad’s open arms.

‘‘Egad, it’s good to see you, boy. Good heavens, you’ve grown nearly as tall as I am and twice as handsome.’’ He held the child at arm’s length and continued with forced jollity and an overly bright smile. ‘‘With you about, Jonny, a crusty old bachelor like me won’t stand a chance with the ladies.’’

Nora entered from the terrace at a more sedate pace, a basket hooked over her arm. She stopped to force the door closed against the protesting winds. Seeing that her slender figure was no match, Grayson joined her in leaning his weight against the door, closing it with a thud and a click of the latch. The delicate trees inside stopped swaying, and an unnatural calm gripped the conservatory.

Desire, stark and startling, shivered through him. With strands of hair whipped free around softly flushed cheeks and her lamb’s wool shawl blown half off her shoulders, she looked wind tossed and rumpled, as sensual as the flowers in her basket. The scents of rain and blossoms clung to her, emanating from the warmth of her skin. He found he could not step away from her, indeed, could barely remember the many reasons why he should.