Fanning the Flame (3 page)

For a moment they paused and she fought to catch her breath. As they hurried from the rear of the building to the opposite side, the magnificent black stallion the earl had been riding in the park poked its head above the top of its stall and nickered at him softly.

Blackwood glanced at the horse and for an in instant, his hard features softened. Then he clamped his scarred, hard jaw, and kept walking, tugging her along in his wake. He led her through a manicured garden with a fountain in the center and they entered what appeared to be his town house, a two story brick building with white-painted shutters and little iron-enclosed balconies opening off rooms or the second floor.

He closed the door behind them but even the warmth of the house couldn't keep her from shivering. Blackwood tugged her down the hall to his study, hauled her in, and slammed the door.

Her head was spinning. She took a moment to collect herself, to assess her surroundings: a wood-paneled room with a fire in the marble-mantled hearth, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves overflowing with books, and French doors leading out to a manicured garden. A fine, masculine room, she thought in some obscure part of her mind.

For several moments Blackwood said nothing. just stood there staring down at her with those hard, nearly black eyes. He was standing so close she could feel the heat of his lean, powerful body.

"I must be insane," were the first words out of his mouth, and Jillian thought that perhaps they had both gone mad.

She couldn’t really be a fugitive, running through dirty back alleys like a rat in a maze, trusting her life to a man she knew nothing about.

"This can't be happening," she whispered, beginning to tremble again. "Tell me this is all some incredibly horrible dream."

Blackwood eyed her a moment, then crossed the room to the sideboard and poured liberal shots of brandy into twin crystal snifters. "You can be certain this is real. Believe me, I know the difference."

She had no idea what he meant, but this was far worse than any nightmare she had ever had. As she watched him striding toward her, cradling a glass in each of his long-fingered hands, she moistened her lips, which felt as parched as sand.

"Perhaps . . . perhaps the earl was only wounded. I shouldn't have run. I should have stayed and—"

"I think we can assume your instincts were correct." He pressed the crystal snifter into her palm and wrapped her icy fingers around the bowl. "From the way the servants were behaving, I'd say there's every chance the Earl of Fenwick is dead."

"Oh, God." She started crying then. She couldn't help it. She turned away, fighting to stop the tears, but they ran in rivulets down her cheeks. Blackwood forced her down in a nearby chair and his handkerchief appeared at the edge of her vision. She accepted it without looking up, blew her nose, and wiped the moisture away.

She dragged in a shaky breath of air. "I know he could be gruff and overbearing at times, but he was terribly good to me and I . . . I cared for him greatly. I don't know what I'm going to do without him."

At her reference to the earl, Blackwood's already erect bearing seemed to straighten even more. "At present, your biggest concern is proving you didn't kill him."

Her eyes slid closed. How could she possibly do that? "What am I going to do?"

The earl reached down and caught the hand limply holding the brandy snifter. He lifted the glass and pressed it against her lips, forcing her to take a swallow. She coughed and sputtered, tried to push the glass away, but he merely tipped it up again, making her take another drink.

"You'll feel better in a minute."

As much as she disapproved his technique, she had to admit she was beginning to feel better. The warmth of the liquid began to spread into her stomach and the trembling in her limbs began to ease.

When she looked up at him, he was staring at her skirt. Jillian followed his gaze to a red stain near the hem. "Oh, my God."

"I believe that is blood on your gown, madam. Perhaps you would care to explain how it got there."

At the chill in his voice, the trembling began again. Jillian swallowed, tried not to think of the surprised look frozen on poor Lord Fenwick's face. "When . . . when I saw him lying there on the carpet, I knelt beside him to see if there was anything I could do. I must have got . . . got the blood on my skirt when I did."

His hard gaze never softened. "So you heard the gunshot, ran into the study, found his lordship lying on the floor, and tried to determine whether or not he still lived?"

"Yes." Her mind felt so fuzzy it was hard to think. And she really didn't want to remember.

"Is there anything else, something you might have forgotten?"

She shook her head. She wasn't sure how far she could trust him and anything else she said might make her sound guilty. It occurred to her, perhaps for the very first time, how desperately she needed this man's help. She had to convince him to believe her.

"You can spend the night here," he said. "In the morning, I'll pay a visit to Lord Fenwick's home, find out as much as I can about what happened. If you're lucky, perhaps the constable will already have apprehended the man who committed the crime. If not . . ."

He didn't have to say what would happen. He would turn her over to the authorities and she would be locked away. "I-I can't possibly stay here."

A slashing black eyebrow arched up. "You would rather go back? Face the constable and his men?"

Her stomach knotted. "I-I can't go back. If I do, they'll put me in prison."

"Then it appears you have no choice."

She didn't want to stay, not with him. She didn't know anything about him, didn't know if she could trust him. Even if she could, she had endured enough censure living unchaperoned with poor, harmless Lord Fenwick. Imagine what would happen should she be discovered in a house belonging to the rakish Earl of Blackwood?

And yet, as he had said, with no money and no place to hide, she had no other choice.

Jillian forced herself to her feet "I don't know why you've decided to help me. Whatever the reason, I am more than grateful."

A dark, sweeping glance assessed her from head to foot and her stomach twisted in an uneasy knot. She wasn't sure what that look meant and her mind was too foggy to speculate, but it didn't bode well.

"There's a room you may use at the top of the stairs," he said. "As the servants are all abed, I'll show you up myself."

She swallowed nervously and nodded, allowed him to pass in front of her to open the study door, then followed him down the hall and up the stairs to the second floor.

He paused beside an ornately carved door. "We'll speak again on the morrow. Good night, Miss Whitney."

She swallowed. "Good night, my lord." Turning away from him, she went in and closed the door.

The room was elegantly furnished, with pale rose Aubusson carpets and draperies in cream and rose. As tired as she was, the big four-poster bed with its deep feather mattress looked incredibly appealing. Then she noticed the door connecting the room to the one next door, and her heart sank with despair. She knew the door led into the master's suite, occupied by the dark, forbidding earl.

She also knew without the slightest doubt that she wasn't going to get an hour's sleep.

The night dragged for Adam, endless hours of restless slumber marred not by visions of war, but dreams of a woman with dark copper hair and soft lips, her slender body spread like an offering beneath him. Knowing Jillian Whitney slept in the room next to his, Adam awakened hard and throbbing.

As he often did, he dressed without the help of his valet, Harley Smythe, but instead of his early morning ride, as soon as the sun was up, he climbed aboard his carriage and ordered the driver to head for Rathmore Hall.

He arrived not long after, dragging his friend from a warm bed and a pretty, accommodating wife with only a grumble or two. Adam hated to involve Clay in the sordid business of murder, but he trusted the duke, and he needed a way to get into Lord Fenwick's study.

He wanted to speak to the servants, find out as much as he could about what had happened last night, and asking for Clay's help was the only way he could think of to do it.

Why he was involving himself in Jillian Whitney's troubles was another matter entirely, one he hadn't completely sorted out. He wanted her. Jillian was a beautiful woman and that undoubtedly was the root of it. And yet there was something more.

An image arose of her perched on the edge of the chair in his study last night, her auburn hair disheveled, her eyes, more blue than he had imagined, wide and frightened, making her look like a terrified child. He remembered their encounter in the alley just moments before, remembered the feel of her soft curves trembling against him.

Perhaps she had overstated her case and there had been no necessity for her to run. A simple explanation might have satisfied the authorities and led them in pursuit of someone else.

But Adam wasn't convinced.

His mind veered to Gordon Rimfield, a sergeant in his regiment, a man he had always respected. The sergeant had been accused of being a highwayman, a member of the Bart Robbins gang. In truth, the man had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unable to prove his innocence, Gordon had been sentenced to the gallows. Adam had watched him hang, along with three other men, for a crime he didn't commit.

Justice, Adam knew, wasn't always just.

And of course, there was Maria.

Unconsciously, he rubbed the scar along his jaw. The story of rape she had invented had followed him even after he had sold his commission and left the army. Fortunately, his newly inherited title and fortune had kept the gossip at bay, but still there were whispers. To some he would always be guilty.

Was Jillian Whitney an innocent victim as well? Perhaps for Gordon, or maybe for himself, he intended to find out. And of course there were other, more personal advantages to having her in his house.

"We're nearly there." Rathmore's deep voice rumbled toward him from the opposite side of the carriage. Clay lounged against the squabs with casual grace, his golden eyes fixed on the passing landscape. "You say you need to get into Fenwick's study?"

"If it's possible."

"We'll make it possible." Clay had only inherited the dukedom last year, but he had taken to the role as if he had been born to the part, which, as the former duke's bastard son, he definitely had not been.

Adam sat forward on the seat as the conveyance rolled to a halt in front of Fenwick's mansion in Grosvenor Square. A footman opened the carriage door and Adam stepped down to the paving stones leading up to the towering four-story structure. Clay followed and they climbed the front stairs to a broad stone porch stretching beneath a row of white Corinthian columns. Adam used the lion-head knocker, and a few minutes later, the butler opened one of the carved double doors.

Rathmore stepped forward, his smile only slight.

"Good morning, Atwater. I just heard the news about his lordship." Clay and Fenwick had been business associates, as well as friends, which was the reason Adam had sought him out.

"Yes, yes, terrible thing. Gossip already about, I suppose."

"Yes, I'm afraid it is."

"He was murdered, you know. I was the one who found him."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, yes, quite so."

"Lord Blackwood and I have come to see if there is anything we might do to help." Clay shouldered his way past the thin, beak-nosed man at the door. As large as Clay was, the butler stepped quickly out of his way.

"I don't know what you might be able to—"

But Rathmore was already walking down the hall toward the study. "Justice must be served, Atwater. Lord Blackwood was a major in His Majesty's Army. He has some very good sources of information. I take it you summoned the proper authorities last night."

Atwater raced along in Rathmore's wake, and Adam almost smiled as he followed the two of them into the study. "Yes, yes, of course. And his nephew and daughter-in-law were told as well."

Clay merely nodded. He swung his attention to the bloodstain on the carpet in front of the earl's rosewood desk. The room was stuffy and smelled of tobacco. A meerschaum pipe, the end darkened and dented with tooth marks from years of use, sat in a crystal dish on the desk.

"The constable asked that we not clean or move anything for a few days yet," the butler said. Now that they were inside the study, Atwater seemed to accept the inevitable, that he wasn't getting rid of them until he had told them whatever it was they wanted to know. "One of the night watch took the gun--"

"Gun?" Adam's head came up. "You found the gun that was used to kill him?"

"Yes, my lord. The pistol was lying on the floor next to his lordship. She must have dropped it there before she ran."

Adam's gaze sharpened on the butler. "By
she,
you're referring to Miss Whitney, the woman who presumably shot him?"

"That is correct. I assumed you had heard that as well. Miss Whitney, she was his . . . I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but the earl, he kept Miss Whitney right here in this house. She was his doxy."