Secrets of Surrender (20 page)

“To hell with that.” He cast aside the towel and grabbed her. Desire cracked through him with unholy fury and he claimed her mouth with a hard kiss. That was the anger having its way, even if it was not directed at her.

He needed to have her. Now. He needed to bury himself in her warmth and softness. He turned her to the plaster wall and lifted her nightdress so her legs and bottom were bare.

He kissed her neck and nape and stepped closely so he covered her. He slid his cock between her legs until it nestled in her damp warmth. The feel of her only made him harder, more impatient. He pressed so the pressure caressed her, and reached around her body to tease her breasts. She began caressing him too, through the subtle sway of her hips and the pulses of her lower lips.

Madness descended. Fire and desire owned him. He turned her and lifted her even as he thrust into her. She wrapped her legs around his hips and clung to him and absorbed his reckless hunger.

Kyle scratched out the third copy of his report. There would be four in all, lengthy and detailed and complete, with drawings to show how to make that tunnel safe. He intended to give one to the manager and one to the workers, but he would also send one each to Cottington and to the owners. The original would return to London with him, to be copied yet again if he thought it needed to be.

Rose slept above. He checked his pocket watch. Dawn would come soon. He would deliver these documents, and he and Rose would start for London by noon.

Five days he had descended into that mine, often enough for it to become familiar again. He would not even need the lamps to know his way today. And while he had studied cracks and supports near the tunnel, the sound of pickaxes chipping away earth and lives had echoed toward him.

“Have you been up all night, Kyle? That is not healthy.”

He looked to the doorway. Prudence stood there, wrapping on an apron.

“I am almost finished. I can sleep in the carriage.”

She came over and stood near him, gazing down at the stacks of papers. “Thank you for doing this. They are all grateful. I am too.”

She lifted a bucket and went outside to draw water at the well he’d had dug in the garden. He finished the last page and set aside his pen.

Pru returned and began moving pots near the hearth. She did not have to begin her day so early now, but the habit of a lifetime was not easily set aside.

“Aunt Pru, before I leave I want to talk to you about something. Since no one else is about, now would be a good time.”

Her hand stilled on a pot handle. Perhaps it had been his tone. Maybe she just knew, the way some people can sense a summer storm approaching.

She continued her work. “Of course, Kyle.”

“Ellie told Rose that you explained to some women the truth about Norbury. I would like to know that truth as well.”

“I would say that you know the truth about him better than most.”

“But not better than you, Pru. I am almost sure of it.”

She knelt and built up the fire. She remained so impassive she might not have heard him.

“What did you tell Ellie and the other women, Pru?”

“If it was something for your ears, I would have told you too,” she snapped. Her face flushed. “Ellie is an old gossip and I will burn her ears when I see her next. To tell your wife—”

“She told Rose very little, and only to reassure her about the village’s view of Rose’s own history with Norbury. Another woman would have taken the kindness at face worth, but Rose is…curious.” Oddly so. She had been picking through the details of his life here.

“I said he is a scoundrel and not to be trusted around women. No news there, to you or Rose.” She spoke with finality.

He did not blame her for not wanting to speak of it. He debated leaving it alone. Leaving her alone too.

He walked over to the fireplace. He leaned against the hearth wall so he could see her while she worked. She acknowledged him with a quick glance but kept her gaze on the water she had set to boil.

“I have been thinking about that day, Pru, when I found you with him and his two friends, in the trees near the road to Kirtonlow Hall. I have been thinking about the cries and jeers that led me there, and what I saw. I was a boy, and I wonder if I misunderstood. Maybe I wanted to misunderstand.”

She looked at him with sad eyes. Angry eyes. She glanced above her, to the chamber where Harold slept. Abruptly she walked to the door and out to the garden.

He followed. She strode through the barren fruit trees to the far edge of the orchard. She faced him with her arms crossed.

“Why do you speak of this now, after all these years?”

“I do not know. Maybe what happened to Rose caused me to start wondering.”

“Better if you did not wonder, Kyle. It was long ago. The father will be dead soon, and you’ll be dealing with the son.”

“Let me worry about the dealing. Am I right? Did I get there too late, Pru?”

“What’s the good of knowing? There’s nothing to be done now.”

“I’ll know what I have in him in that dealing. If you broke your silence so the women would know, you can understand why I might need to as well.”

She gazed at the fruit trees now taking form in the gray light seeping through the air. He barely saw her nod.

“The earl knew,” she said. “The son lied to him, but the friends were too afraid to lie too. So the earl knew. Offered me good money, he did. I refused. I said I would see his son in the dock and even if he went free the whole world would learn he was only a well-born pig.”

“When did he make this offer?”

“The day before he sent for you. I knew while I scrubbed you that day how it would be. That he’d thought of another way to make it worth my while to keep silent. He never said a word about it. Never threatened to send you back to the mine if I spoke, but I knew.”

And Cottington had known she would know. The earl had seen this angry woman and recognized her intelligence and realized he would never have to mention his motives for her to see the largesse in those terms.

So there was probably one more why, other than the ones the earl had given. On the other hand, Cottington was not stupid. He knew that for some crimes there could be no restitution, no making whole again.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “He’d’a never been convicted, of course. Better this way, and that you became the man you are. I imagine he sees you in London, and he knows you are only there because of that day. He sees that his father made a better man out of a boy from Teeslow than he himself will ever be. There’s some satisfaction in that. A lot more than pointing at him in court, I tell myself.”

“I am sorry that you never had the satisfaction of pointing to him in court, Pru.”

“It is not an easy thing for a woman to do. There’s always them that will say she asked for it, isn’t there? It is what he would of said, and many would of believed it. Women know how it will be if they accuse a man of that.” She reached up and patted his face like he was a boy. “So now you know, for all the good it will do. Better if you just wondered, seems to me.”

“Does Harold know?”

“He never asked outright and I never said. But he guessed; I could tell. It took a few years to put it behind us. If I had told him he would of had to kill Norbury, wouldn’t he? Then he would have swung. So I held my tongue in the end. But now, with the earl dying—Norbury will be in these parts more. He hasn’t changed, as you know. So I told some of the older women in the village, so they could keep an eye on things and warn off the young ones.”

She began walking to the house and he fell in step with her. “As I know? If you mean Rose, it was not the same.”

“From what I hear, it was close enough except that you interfered.” Pru shook her head. “Poor thing, to believe he loved her only to find he just wanted his way with her. Then she refuses him and what happens? He tries to sell her to another, who would of only taken her against her will instead of him. All of a piece, most of those highborn men are.”

He almost corrected her. Against all odds, amazingly enough, Easterbrook’s staging and new denouement of that auction had made its way all the way to Teeslow and circulated in the village after Norbury’s version.

Kyle followed his aunt back into the kitchen. He had wondered, and now he knew. Hopefully the spiking impulse to find Norbury and kill him would pass in a day or so.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

T
hey have all accepted. The dinner party promises to be a success.” Alexia shared the news while she and Rose left her house on Hill Street. “You will look perfect in that geranium dinner dress you ordered. We are on our way to another small but important victory.”

Rose squeezed Alexia’s hand in a gesture of gratitude. Glove in glove they strolled toward Hyde Park.

The prospect of another pending social advance could not raise Rose’s spirits. She had been back in London for three days now. Three happy days and three glorious nights.

Her fear that the new warmth in her marriage might end with the return to town had not been justified. The first night back, she and Kyle had been so eager to continue the explorations that they had each gone to the other and bumped into each other in her dark dressing room.

She would never open her wardrobe again without thinking of how he made her embrace it, naked and spread-legged, while he covered her body with his and took her from behind.

Unfortunately, this morning a cloud had marred the sated, joyful aftermath of the night. A letter had arrived from the family solicitor, asking for a meeting about the property in Oxfordshire.

She had not thought about Timothy’s plight at all while she was up north. There had been freedom in the absence of worry over her brother. Now his demands harped on her conscience again.

The pending meeting with the solicitor unsettled her. She had drawn Alexia out on this walk in part to delay it a few hours at least.

“You were up north longer than I expected,” Alexia said. “I feared Mrs. Vaughn would think I had decided not to go forward with the dinner, or had chosen not to invite her. Such a misunderstanding would have been unfortunate. Is all well with your husband’s family?”

“Well enough. I liked them, Alexia. They are both honest, good people. I would like to think that they think better of me now too.”

“No one who meets you would think badly of you. That is why we are seeing such progress in our plans. That and the evidence that a revised interpretation of that scandalous auction is being whispered. One in which you are an innocent damsel and Norbury is the worst rake. I confess that I have not felt obligated to disabuse anyone of this other version of events.”

“Normally people are inclined to think the worst, not stretch their minds to find excuses for a woman in such a scandal.”

“The world knows the viscount, and does not like him much. He is not a very pleasant man, and there have been rumors about his excesses for years. You, in turn, have led an exemplary life. Let the error stand. Norbury’s behavior toward you was vile enough to deserve this misunderstanding.”

They entered the park, barren now of fresh growth and people. A few bodies dotted the walks, but the weather, the month, and the time of day ensured vast privacy.

“I appreciate all that you are doing for me, Alexia. And yet I wish that Kyle could attend this party too. He says that you should not fight a war on two fronts at once. I just think it odd that Mrs. Vaughn and her husband are willing to overlook that I have been labeled a whore, but not that my husband was born in a mining village.”

“That you chafe at the injustice speaks well for your marriage. It shows that a mutual sympathy is growing.”

Rose doubted Alexia guessed the half of it. She wanted to tell her cousin about this man she had married. She sought the words to describe how safe and alive and defenseless she felt in his embrace.

In the least she would announce that the world be damned, she would not attend any dinner parties from which he was deliberately excluded.

Alexia spoke first. “Now, about Irene, I have a proposal to suggest. A most astonishing one.”

The mention of Irene stopped the words forming on Rose’s tongue. This war was about her sister more than herself. Even her marriage had mostly been for Irene’s sake.

“I think this season will be too early for her,” Rose said. “You are too optimistic if you believe otherwise.”

“Hear me out before you discard the notion. I have been aware all along that this child will interfere as surely as your scandal.” Alexia instinctively placed her hand on the large swell beneath her aurora blue pelisse. “I mentioned that when Hayden and I were dining over at his brother’s house a fortnight ago. Hayden is sympathetic to Irene’s plight, but he has been most firm that I not take on more than he thinks my frail strength can endure.”

“Your husband is correct. The timing of your child’s pending arrival is the strongest argument. Irene can wait one more year.”

“That appears to be the thinking, and after that dinner I was swayed myself. Imagine my surprise when Henrietta came to me a few days ago and proposed that she hold a ball in April and that it be the event at which Irene comes out.”

“Henrietta? You amaze me.”

“I amaze myself. She amazes me even more. If a love affair can bring about such a change in a woman, I pray that every harpy in society finds a lover before the season.”

“Perhaps arranging such affairs should be our real strategy. Happiness in that area of life tends to influence one’s view of most things.”

Alexia arched an eyebrow. “And what is your view of most things these days, Roselyn? You proposed this turn in the park despite the bite in the air and the heavy clouds overhead. Perchance you did not notice the weather this morning, but saw a fair day despite winter’s chill.”

Rose felt her face warming. Alexia laughed, leaned over, and kissed her hot cheek. “Since I argued for you to make this match, I am relieved if one part of it suits you. I think there would be nothing more tiresome than viewing the marriage bed as a place for nothing but duty.”

Not duty. Never just that. Kyle had always been a considerate lover, one who knew that their marriage would be more contented if she experienced pleasure too.

And now, since that night in Teeslow, their time together in bed was the best time. In some ways it was the only time when she was completely at ease with him, and sure that she had not made a mistake.

It could be enough. His words in her ear, his breath on her hair and breast, even the masterful way he moved her body and demanded surrenders that she never questioned. The pleasure alone could make it enough, but the scorching brands he left on her spirit made her more his and less her own with every encounter.

Like a good meal, that was how he described carnal pleasure that day she accepted his proposal. They were dining very well of late. Most likely that was all it remained to him. A varied menu with many delights.

So why was she feeling less practical every day in this practical marriage? Kyle would probably say that she was making the same mistake in pleasure that she had made in the lack of it, confusing the physical side of life with the emotional. The new familiarity that came with these explorations was inevitable, most likely. Men probably reacted the same way to the sensual artists in brothels.

All the same, ties were forming that complicated certain things. Like this meeting that she would have today with that solicitor.

“Alexia, have you ever deceived Hayden? Disobeyed him?”

Alexia paced on while she contemplated the question. “Once or twice. I told myself I did not, but of course that was only so I could justify doing it.” She smiled to herself while a private memory seemed to play out in her head. “He caught me in the worst deception. I doubt that I will try another one soon, or need to.”

“Did you feel guilty?”

“In passing I did. However, there are some things husbands do not need to know. I committed a few sins of omission in the tally of total honesty because the matter was important to me in ways he would never have understood at the time.” She considered her own answer. “He would understand now, but such comprehension takes a good while to achieve in a marriage made even under the best of circumstances, which ours was not.”

Typical of Alexia, it was a forthright, measured answer to a difficult and intrusive question. Rose guessed what her cousin did not explain. Those important deceptions had been about Rose herself, and Irene and Tim, and about Alexia’s determination to preserve the family that hated the man she had married.

“Why do you ask, Rose? Circumstances left me alone while I made my choice, but you need not be.”

Rose considered confiding. Alexia would be discreet. She would not even tell Hayden if asked to keep a secret.

However, Alexia had not been agreeable that Tim needed help. She had argued firmly against that idea of joining him.

Tim was dead to Alexia. She had learned the worst firsthand. She had watched Tim flee and leave Hayden to risk his own fortune to save the remnants of the Longworth family and reputation. And Alexia had probably known for a long time just how much money had been stolen.

Alexia would never condone the small deception that Rose now faced. Not for Tim’s benefit. Nor would it be fair to distress her again by the sordid consequences of the Longworths’ bad behavior.

“I love you, Alexia, and I am grateful for the offer of a sympathetic ear. I fear that circumstances leave me to decide on my own, just as you did.”

Mr. Yardley managed to communicate precise professionalism in every way possible. He greeted Rose in his law chambers near Lincoln’s Inn with the sort of bland, polite words that a business meeting called for. He settled her into a chair and faced her with his stack of documents. He smiled to put her at ease. A clerk sat at a desk nearby, silent and inconspicuous, pen poised to make notes.

Mr. Yardley’s high collar points squeezed his pudgy jaws and his cravat hugged his double chin. His fashionably cut locks did not tousle much because his graying hair had thinned too much to allow it. An experienced solicitor who had long served the Longworth family, first their father and then the sons, he had not seen any respectable business from them for a year now.

Rose waited for her inquiry to be addressed. The solicitor appeared cautious. No doubt his own reputation had been stained by her brother’s spectacular ruin. To now serve Timothy might be so distasteful that Mr. Yardley had concluded that he wanted no part of the disposal of the property. This meeting could be a dismissal and final farewell.

He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Bradwell, I researched the law and concluded that your brother’s proxy would withstand scrutiny. On the basis of this letter, I could sell the property in his name.”

“That is good news, sir. When can we do this? How long will it take to effect such a sale?”

He cleared his throat again. “There is a complication. I regret to say that the property cannot be sold.”

She cocked her head in question. “You are confusing me. Please explain why it cannot be sold.”

“Perhaps if I met with your husband…”

“The property is not mine, but my brother’s, and my husband has no authority in the matter. I think that I can understand the situation if you endeavor to make it comprehensible.”

His mouth puffed. Mr. Yardley was not comfortable explaining financial matters to women, it appeared.

“Mrs. Bradwell, when your brother fled his debts the property became vulnerable to his debtors.” He put a meaningful emphasis on the word debts, indicating that he was one person at least who knew about the crimes behind those debts. “Lord Hayden Rothwell placed a lien on the property at that time. I have the document here. It was only that lien that kept other creditors from taking it in payment for their own losses.”

“I was aware that Lord Hayden had done something to protect the property. I am grateful that he did. I did not realize that his lien was still on it.”

She should have anticipated this. She could hardly blame Lord Hayden if the lien remained now, even after all those debtors had been repaid. He had been the one to repay them, after all. Even if he took the property in return, she could not object.

“Actually, his lien was removed late last summer.”

“If this lien was removed and the property is a freehold and the proxy will stand, what stops the sale?”

“Another lien.”

“So there were two? I do not believe that Lord Hayden would remove his, which was intended to protect our family estate, and leave it vulnerable to a second creditor.”

“This second one was not on it when Lord Hayden removed his. It is newer. It was entered against the property just a few months ago.”

“This is most alarming, Mr. Yardley. Why did you not inform me when it happened?”

“My service was to your brother, who appeared to no longer need it, considering the developments in the last year regarding his fortune, his debts, and his new residence abroad. In short, Madam, I assumed that our relationship had ended so I no longer addressed matters of your family’s concern. Your inquiry regarding this proxy surprised me as much as my report today surprises you.”

She stood and paced away. The chamber window overlooked the street where a fine rain drizzled down on people and carriages. Her own coachman was leading her carriage out so as to walk and warm the pair that drew it.

A new lien. It appeared that Lord Hayden has missed one or two of those debts. Finding all of the victims might have been impossible within the tangled web that fraud had made.