My Reckless Surrender (27 page)

“So once you saw my brand, I was ready for breeding.” His tone was abrasive.

“Don't.” Her voice cracked, and she tensed brittle as dried grass. She seemed to have reached a state of anguish beyond mere tears.

“Mrs. Carrick, I believe it's time for Lord Ashcroft to leave.” Burnley sounded as though he owned everything in sight. He did. This was his estate, and clearly he'd bought Diana long ago.

She drew herself up and fought for composure. She didn't shift her gaze from Ashcroft's face. Her voice grated with despair. “I did you wrong, and I sincerely beg your pardon. Even though I know you'll never grant it. I don't deserve your forgiveness.”

Ashcroft wondered how they'd come to this. Hell, he shouldn't care. After all, he'd had a right rollicking time with her. He usually asked no more of his affairs.

From the start, Diana was different.

Yes, the cunning strumpet duped you,
his cynical side said snidely.

She said the words he'd already heard, but this time, the parting was final. “Good-bye, Tarquin. God keep you.”

She sounded genuine. But she'd sounded genuine when she quivered with pleasure in his arms. He now knew that wasn't true.

Well, the pleasure was true. It was the friendship and the affection and the laughter that were lies. And those were the greatest betrayals. She could have used his body without doing this mortal harm. She'd touched his soul, and he'd never forgive her for that.

Even so, he couldn't let her go like this. Not carrying his baby. Not when he still wanted her, curse her enduring allure.

He caught her wrist, feeling the wild race of her pulse.
“No, Diana. Wait. You can't mean to hand my child over to that cur.”

Burnley straightened and stepped toward them. “Have you no pride, man? She's made an utter fool of you. Cut your losses and scuttle back to London.”

Ashcroft ignored him. “Diana?”

“I promised,” she said in a toneless voice. She refused to look at him.

“Break the promise.”

“I can't.”

“Why? You don't love him.”

Her head jerked up, and she stared at Ashcroft with wide, astonished eyes. For one explosive second, the unspoken question lay between them as to whether she loved Ashcroft.

She'd never said so. She was a lying trollop, but if she told him right now she loved him, he'd accept that was true.

The moment evaporated, and dull misery returned to her face. “Love isn't the issue. If I marry Lord Burnley, I'll have control of the estate until my child reaches his majority.”

How strange to realize that Ashcroft had always had an invincible rival for her. This house. Not the living husband he'd conjured up in his imagination. Not her beloved William. Not Burnley. “Only if it's a boy.”

“It's a boy.”

How could she be so certain? It was lunatic. Although he believed her. And damned her for her ambition and her cupidity. And for not throwing everything she wanted over the windmill to come back to him.

“In that case, I wish you joy, Mrs. Carrick,” he said with such coldness, she flinched.

He turned on his heel and bowed to Burnley with a sarcastic depth he knew the older man didn't miss. “My felicitations, Papa.”

Without a backward glance, he stalked toward the gates.
His heart brimmed with a foul brew of hatred and anger and pain. And longing. In spite of everything, the longing was paramount, so stabbing it almost crippled him.

He heard a sharp whistle behind him but scarcely paid attention. Until four brawny men in livery surrounded him.

“Ah, my audience grows,” he said dryly, lifting his stick with a show of bravado. “Perhaps Lord Burnley should consider selling tickets.”

He might be in turmoil, but not to such an extent he couldn't read the threat these big, powerful brutes posed. Burnley must put a height requirement on his footmen. These fellows looked him straight in the eye, and very few men, even of his own class, did that.

Part of him, the part that itched to tear down the world and fling it into space just because Diana didn't want him, welcomed the looming fight. Physical pain might distract him from the lancing emotional agony.

One heavily muscled fellow stepped forward. “His lordship wants us to escort you off the estate, Lord Ashcroft. Come quietly, and there won't be any trouble.”

Ashcroft knew better. These men were tuned for violence. He could smell it in the air as sharp as smoke from a fire.

“Mrs. Carrick, let us return to the house.” Burnley's voice, smooth, confident, powerful, flowed over Ashcroft like acid. “I want to discuss the drainage of the west marsh.”

That put Ashcroft in his place. Less important than an acre of soggy pasture.

He didn't turn to look at Burnley and his future marchioness. He couldn't bear to see Diana again. It hurt too much. “Don't wait on my account,” he called over his shoulder.

“Lord Ashcroft,” Diana said softly but clearly. “I did you wrong, and I deeply regret it.”

“Too late for that, my dear,” Burnley said imperiously. “Coming?”

“Yes, my lord,” she said, subdued.

“Ashcroft, don't let us detain you,” Burnley said.

The dog whimpered. Ashcroft guessed the animal wasn't particularly fond of the lord of the manor. Clever beast. He wasn't too fond of the wretch either. Odd to think all his life he'd missed his father, yet now he'd found his real father, and he felt less emotional connection than he did to his scullery maid.

“Shh, Rex, it's all right.” Diana's voice sounded thick as if she cried.

I will not care. I will not care.

“If you'll follow us, my lord.” The burly footman gestured with spurious politeness toward the exit.

“I'm at your disposal, gentlemen,” Ashcroft drawled and stepped between them, every nerve on alert. Burnley had no reason to rough him up, except that a beating scored a final point over his defeated rival.

Such was the reality of his dear, fond Papa.

Ashcroft strode ahead of Burnley's henchmen along the faint path under the overarching trees. Then, like a shout, he felt the change in the air.

He whirled, raising his fists. It was inevitable he'd go down. When he did, he intended to take a few of these thugs with him.

L
ord Ashcroft! Lord Ashcroft, can you hear me?”

The strident voice that made Ashcroft's ears ring emerged from a distant world. Ashcroft struggled to escape it, but he couldn't move.

Vaguely, he wondered why that was. Then pain struck like a thousand red-hot hammers. He'd been split into jagged pieces and nailed together again without much care.

“Lord Ashcroft?” The voice persisted, making his skull vibrate in agony.

Rough hands on his head provoked another clanging blast. Like cymbals with gunpowder. When he groaned, only a weak, mewling sound escaped. He battled to open his eyes, but the lids weighed more than bricks.

“Let's get him inside.” The disembodied voice came in and out of focus in a bewildering fashion.

He wanted to protest the order. Tell the grating voice he was perfectly capable of walking. That he resented the implication he couldn't make his own way.

Hell, he must have had a skinful last night. His head pounded fit to explode. When he tried to point out he needed no help, he couldn't force the words out.

The voice droned on. It was damnably familiar although
right now, he couldn't place it. Thoughts flitted through his mind, but before he caught them, they darted away like moths fluttering around a lamp.

Nor did he know where he was. Some vague recollection insisted he should be lying on grass, and it should be morning. Even behind closed eyes, he knew it was dark, and something hard and cold and solid under his aching ribs jabbed him.

Steps?

“Careful with his lordship, boys. Heaven knows what's happened.”

The voice briefly made sense again. It continued while Ashcroft faded away into a nightmare world crammed with fiery agony. What the devil had he been drinking?

“Charles, grab his shoulders. I'll take his legs.”

Ashcroft mustered an objection but only managed another pathetic whimper before he drifted off again.

He endured a painful earthquake as his torturers picked him up. Good God, did they think he was a sack of potatoes? He tried to summon a demand to be gentle, but no sound emerged.

Merciful blackness descended.

When he surfaced, he managed to unglue his eyelids. At least he knew where he was now. He lay on his library sofa in London. Apart from a fire and one lamp, the room was dark.

How had he got here? He'd been…

Memory crashed over him like a huge wave of cold, filthy water. He recalled everything in exact detail. He'd been in Surrey discovering just what a fool Diana had made of him. He'd learned his parentage and heartily wished he hadn't. He'd fought off an army of Samson-like domestics.

Which explained his current agony. If not his current location.

A face swam toward him out of the gloom. “My lord, can you speak? What happened? We thought you were in the country.”

His brain sluggishly sifted the words, slowly made sense of them. Identified the speaker. His butler bent over him with a troubled frown on his distinguished face. Behind him hovered two footmen.

Burnley must have given his brutal minions orders to dump Ashcroft on his own doorstep. A message in itself. Clearly he wanted his son well away from Cranston Abbey.

And Diana Carrick.

Ashcroft winced and closed his eyes again. Against all logic, losing Diana hurt worse than his physical injuries. Deliberately, he concentrated on his aches instead of his disastrous amours. He dreaded to think what a mess he was in. The violent pain when the men had lifted him indicated it was more than bruising. He guessed something was broken. Perhaps several somethings.

His recollection of the brawl was painfully vivid. For a while, he'd been angry and heartsick enough to give as good as he got. But eventually numbers had prevailed. Dear Papa's henchmen packed a hell of a punch. Nor had rules of gentlemanly conduct restrained them.

He recalled brief flashes of consciousness through the ensuing hours. He remembered Burnley's thugs slinging him into a cart. He'd surfaced in snatches to indescribable agony as the cart trundled to its destination.

Ashcroft House in London, hours away from Cranston Abbey. He must have been out of it for a considerable period of time. Was it even the same day?

“My lord? Can you hear me?”

Devil take his butler, there was no need to shout. He tried to speak but only managed an inarticulate grunt. He was alert enough to hear the consternation in the man's voice when he turned to the footmen.

“Hurry. Fetch the doctor. His lordship's been set upon by footpads and looks likely to die.”

Likely to die?

Hell's bells, he refused to turn up his toes. His demise
would make things far too convenient for his papa and that treacherous jade.

In spite of the pain, in spite of the beckoning blackness, he cracked open his eyes. This time, he squeezed out something approximating a sentence.

“Won't…die.”

Damn Diana Carrick and Edgar Fanshawe. Damn them to hell. They thought they'd vanquished Tarquin Vale. He'd show them how wrong they were.

He was going to live. He was going to make their lives a misery. Dying was too easy. He meant to trouble that vile duo for years yet.

 

Diana stood in Burnley's rose garden, surrounded by the flush of late blooms. The south façade of Cranston Abbey stretched before her, golden and glowing in the sunset. Ostensibly, she was here to decide when the roses were due to be prepared for winter. But as usual these days, her mind wasn't on the task.

Two months had passed since that horrific day when Ashcroft discovered her perfidy and marched away, his green eyes glazed with hurt and anger. She thought her heart had broken then.

In the endless days since, she'd learned a heart could break over and over.

He hadn't contacted her. How could she expect he would? He must hate the mere sound of her name.

For her sanity's sake, she tried not to dwell on those weeks in London. But she couldn't help remembering the touch of Ashcroft's hand and the sound of his voice. The expression in his eyes when he looked at her, as though she were the most glorious creature he'd ever beheld. The desperation in his body when he'd thundered into her. The naked emotion on his face when he lost himself to passion.

She was strong, she didn't think of him often.

Only at sunset.

Sunrise. Morning. Noon. Afternoon. Evening…

She bit her lip and battled futile tears. Lately, she'd been ridiculously weepy. These days it took little to turn her into a complete watering pot. And something about the house's elaborate, symmetrical façade as the sun sank and the last roses released their heady perfume struck her as unbearably poignant.

Perhaps because since London, the fragrance of roses was a piercing reminder of those days and nights at Lord Peregrine Montjoy's improbable mishmash of a house. She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief.

“Here you are. I've searched the estate for you.”

She turned slowly, blinking the moisture from her eyes. Lord Burnley stood at the end of the path. These days he leaned more heavily on his stick. The last months hadn't been kind. The disease eroding his remaining hours bit deep. It was as if he'd expended his final vitality vanquishing Ashcroft.

He'd lost so much weight, his clothes hung loose. Once he'd stood ramrod straight. Now he stooped, and his shoulders hunched against pain. Skin stretched tight against the bones of his face, and his eyes were sunken and dull.

Even without knowing of his illness, she'd guess he hadn't long to live.

Always the opportunist, he'd arrived at her father's house the day after Ashcroft's departure to press his suit. He'd been shocked when she refused him.

Shocked, but strangely not angry.

Which was unlike the marquess when his will was thwarted. He was like an overindulged child, and the sound of “no” drove him to distraction. Vengeful distraction. She remembered how he'd badgered a farmer who'd opposed his right of way over a property into bankruptcy just to prove nobody gainsaid Lord Burnley.

Nonetheless, she couldn't regret her decision to reject his offer. After what she'd shared with Ashcroft, she couldn't
marry Burnley. More, she couldn't benefit from the evil she'd done.

The Abbey was lost to her. And that was how it should be.

Her dream had hovered within reach. She only had to say one word of agreement, and Cranston Abbey came into her care. But the dream was irredeemably tarnished by the wickedness she'd perpetrated in striving to attain it.

After Burnley's proposal, days passed, on the surface each like every other day. She continued to work. Making decisions about the estate. Assigning tasks. Answering questions from the tenants. The thousand duties that tied her to Cranston Abbey as closely as roots bound an oak tree to the soil.

All the time she felt like a watch with a broken spring. The numbers remained on the dial, but the mechanism no longer worked.

Now, with the marquess's appearance, a distant warning clanged in her mind.

Perhaps Burnley had finally decided to throw the Deans off his estate. After all, he'd sought Diana out, and he hadn't done that since she refused his hand. She tried to summon fear, resentment, anxiety. The pall of bleakness that had settled over her like thick fog since London didn't shift.

She dipped into a curtsy. “My lord.”

“Are you well?”

Burnley was the most self-involved man she knew. He never inquired after anyone's health. Tightness at the back of her neck alerted her he was up to something. She summoned a conventional answer. “Yes, thank you.”

“Would you like to sit down?”

She guessed he wanted to rest. He might be a sorry excuse for a human being, but only a monster would expect a dying man to remain on his feet. This was turning into a very strange interview. Curiosity stirred but not strongly enough to pierce the perpetual throb of loss.

“Yes, thank you, my lord.” She waited for him to settle in an arbor massed with climbing white roses before she
reluctantly joined him. Usually she wouldn't risk such
lèsemajesté
, but he'd suggested sitting, and unless she plopped herself down on the grass like a farmhand, she had nowhere else to perch herself.

A silence fell. Again, not like him.

Usually he went straight to what he wanted—invariably he wanted something—then moved on to his next target. It struck Diana she knew Lord Burnley as well as she knew her father.

She wished familiarity meant esteem.

He was a spider sitting in his web, waiting for the hapless fly to collide with his sticky trap. Inevitably, when dealing with Burnley, Diana played the fly.

In a proprietary gesture, his hand curved over the top of his stick. “Have you heard from Lord Ashcroft?”

Diana gave a start. Ashcroft's name crashed through her haze, shattering it. Before she reminded herself it revealed her vulnerability, she bit her lip to stifle a whimper of misery.

Blindly, she stared at the beautiful house. The house that had brought her to this pass. Although she recognized the fault lay with her greed and arrogance. Cranston Abbey was bricks and mortar. She was flesh and blood. She possessed a heart and soul, and her sins had crushed both.

“I don't mean to cause distress,” Lord Burnley said in the kindest voice she'd ever heard him use.

Diana was tensed tighter than a thread on a bobbin. She strove to speak evenly. “No, Lord Ashcroft hasn't contacted me.”

“What about your future, Diana?” Burnley still sounded concerned.

She didn't trust this new version of her employer, but his question was fair. She stared down at where her hands twined in her lap. Her wedding ring hung loose on her left hand. She'd lost weight since she'd returned to Marsham.

“I haven't decided,” she said softly.

Burnley released an impatient sigh. That was much more like the man she knew. “You have more than yourself to think of,” he said in a critical tone.

Was that a threat? She was surprised he hadn't already used her family against her to gain her compliance. “There's my father and Laura, I know.”

“And the child.”