Seduction Becomes Her (6 page)

Miss Kettle’s arrival made their transition complete, and by the time late January rolled around, with Miss Ketty firmly settled in the household, scolding and fussing over them, they were comfortable in their new life. Staring out the window of the library one sunny January morning, it seemed to Daphne as if they had always lived at Beaumont Place. The past seemed like a dream, she thought as she sipped a cup of freshly poured tea. No more worries. No more cares.

The day was so fine, in fact, that Daphne gave into Adrian’s pleas for a picnic on the beach. In addition to the farms found in the long coombes and valleys that descended from the upper moorland, his estate ran down to the wave-tossed English Channel. The cliff sides leading down to the shore were pocketed with caves and indentations, and they’d already heard stories of smugglers and the like. The beaches were narrow, curving like snakes around the base of the cliffs, their lengths broken here and there by huge rocks and boulders that tumbled into the frothy, turbulent water. It was a wild, dangerous place, yet it held an irresistible appeal.

There was a thin, winding path, more like a goat path, Adrian complained, that led to the beach, but the climb down was worth it. Wearing their oldest clothes, their backs against the rocky cliff, they’d spread a blanket on the ground and enjoyed the feast that Cook had packed for them. As they ate, they’d stared mesmerized by the writhing seas, the bright sunshine making the water gleam and glitter as the waves broke on the shore. Later, they ambled along the rocky beach, exploring and chattering as they went.

They lost all sense of time as their explorations took them further and further along the beach. Coming to a long arm of rocks that stretched out into the water, they clambered over it. Reaching the other side, breathless and laughing, they stopped in surprise at the sight of two men, strangers, standing near the base of the cliffs.

From their clothing, it was obvious that the men were not fishermen or common laborers, and from their expressions, it was equally obvious that they were not pleased to see them. With all the innocence of a friendly puppy, Adrian smiled and walked up to the pair. “Hullo,” he said. “I am Sir Adrian Beaumont. May I help you? Are you lost?”

The shorter of the two men raked Adrian with a glance. “No,” he said curtly. “But you obviously are. I regret to inform you”—and there was sneer in his voice that made Daphne’s hackles rise—“that you are trespassing on my land.”

Adrian heard the sneer, too, and his smile faded. “Are you certain?” he asked, determined to be polite. “It is my understanding that all of this is Beaumont land.”

“Your understanding is wrong,” the man snapped, his dark eyes hard. He pointed to the rocks they had just climbed over. “Beaumont land ends at those rocks. You are on
my
land.”

Heedless of propriety, Daphne stepped up beside her brother. “And you are?” she asked bluntly, already having a fair notion of his identity.

He looked her up and down, and Daphne was humiliatingly aware of her old gown and tangled hair. “You must be the sister, the spinster,” he said with a dismissive glance.

Daphne’s eyes narrowed, and her chin lifted. “Yes, I am his sister, and by your rudeness and arrogance, I must conclude that you are none other than Lord Trevillyan.”

“She has you there, Dorian,” the other man said, his amusement obvious. Grinning, he added, “Definitely a facer.”

Daphne’s gaze swung to the taller of the two men. Her nose went up, and she asked haughtily, “And you are?”

He smiled a singularly charming smile. Sweeping off his curly-brimmed hat, he bowed and murmured, “Charles Weston. At your service.”

D
aphne’s first assessment of Charles Weston was not favorable, and she assumed that he was as rude and arrogant as the viscount—certainly, he was no one that she wanted to know. He was handsome enough in a dark, bold sort of way, but she was not impressed by his easy smile, and those watchful green eyes did nothing to improve her initial opinion of him. But there was something about him…something in the wicked curve of that full mouth…. A prickle of awareness, some faint stirring of basic female interest in a powerful male, whispered through her. Mentally, she shook herself. Nonsense. She was past all that sort of silliness. Her sole interest these days was the establishment of her brother and sister.

Dismissing Charles Weston with a cool glance, she turned her attention back to the viscount. “We apologize for our mistake,” she said stiffly to Lord Trevillyan. “Now that we know the boundary line, you should have no fear that we shall
ever
tread on your property again. Good day.”

With a regal nod of her head, she spun around and marched toward the rocks that separated the two properties, April scurrying after her. His young face set, Adrian bowed curtly to the two men and strode after his sisters, his long legs making short work of catching up with them.

Charles watched as they reached the rocks and scrambled over them, appreciating the way a sudden gust of wind lifted the spinster’s skirts, giving him a glimpse of a well-shaped length of calf before she grabbed her dress and clamped it down. Pity—it had been a very nice calf, and he wouldn’t have minded seeing more of it…and her. In fact, her arrival on the scene gave him hope that his visit to Trevillyan’s might not be as dull, dead bodies aside, as it appeared it would be. Only when she disappeared over the mound of boulders did he turn his attention to Lord Trevillyan.

“She was right, you know,” Charles said idly. “You were rude and arrogant.”

“Oh, what the devil do I care what some upstart old maid thinks?” Trevillyan muttered, his gaze also on the rapidly disappearing trio. “To think that Huxley’s fortune went to that boy! A nobody. And that sister of his! Bold as brass. How dare she speak to me in that manner!”

“Well, you weren’t very polite to them, were you?”

Trevillyan glared at him. “No, and I don’t have to be to a set of mushrooms like that.”

Charles shrugged, bored with the subject. He had not been able to keep to his original plan for leaving for Cornwall right after receiving Trevillyan’s letter. Julian and Nell had raised a devil of a dust about his sudden plans for departure, and he ended up spending Christmas and Boxing Day with them. He grinned. Quite enjoyably, too, remembering a particularly dashing young widow visiting in the vicinity of Stonegate who had enjoyed his attentions for a few weeks. The holidays behind him, he’d set his sights once more on Cornwall. He’d been Trevillyan’s guest for nearly a week now, and he knew all about the Beaumont fortune being snatched out of Trevillyan’s hands by some distant cousin no one had ever heard of. When in his cups, which seemed to happen frequently, Trevillyan never tired of repeating how cut up his hopes were and how bloody unfair it was that some social climbing nobody, one who hadn’t even known Sir Huxley, had inherited the fortune that should have been his. Since there had been little love lost between Trevillyan and Huxley, Charles rather thought it an amusing little twist of fate that Trevillyan hadn’t inherited after all.

Charles turned his eyes to the cliff face they’d been studying before they had been interrupted.

“The last body was found here?” Charles asked, his gaze dropping to a spot Trevillyan had indicated earlier.

“Yes. One of our local smugglers, a fellow by the name of Furness, found her, or what was left of her, a few days before you arrived.” Trevillyan frowned. “And I’ve paid him a dashed fortune to keep his mouth shut. Of course, Squire Renwick had to be told, and our local magistrate, Mr. Houghton. They agreed with me about keeping the business secret. As I wrote you in November, the entire area was in a furor over the previous body, and we thought it best to keep quiet about this one.” He sighed. “If it’s learned there is another….”

Trevillyan’s earlier glee, Charles observed, at the uproar in the neighborhood seemed to have dissipated once a body was found on
his
land. Well, he couldn’t blame him for that.

“Hmm. In your letter, you mentioned something about a previous body, an even earlier one, didn’t you?”

Trevillyan nodded. “When I first arrived home, I heard some gossip that another woman had been killed—before Farmer Brierly, one of Sir Adrian’s tenants, by the way, found the one I wrote you about.” He frowned. “I was never able to confirm that one, but if there was another body, then this makes the third in the past five or six months. This sort of violence in our area is unheard of…and troublesome.”

Charles hadn’t learned of this latest body until he’d arrived at Lanyon Hall, Trevillyan’s country estate, the previous Wednesday. He’d been impatient to view the site for clues, but today had been the first opportunity for him to inspect the scene.

“Isn’t that a cave up there?” he asked, his gaze having stopped at an irregular, yawning hole in the cliff face.

“Yes, it is—one of many. The whole coastline is pockmarked with them,” Trevillyan replied. “Part of the allure for smugglers and the like.”

“Has anybody examined the interior of the cave?”

Trevillyan shook his head. “No. All I wanted was for the body to be gone and the incident forgotten.” When Charles simply looked at him, he muttered, “Squire Renwick and Houghton agreed with me. We didn’t want the populace to become hysterical and have pandemonium on our hands. Between us, and well, Furness, we determined that she wasn’t a local woman. The Squire, Houghton, and I concluded privately that she was some poor, unfortunate stranger from God knew where and that the sooner she was put underground, the sooner we could put this unpleasant event behind us. The Squire especially felt that the less said about the subject, the better. She was buried that night in the pauper’s field.”

“And how,” Charles asked, having trouble imagining the viscount digging a grave, “did you accomplish that? Wanting as you did to keep it secret?”

“I paid a pair of gravediggers handsomely to do it on the sly,” he said. “And the Squire warned them to keep their mouths shut.”

“So let me see if I understand you,” Charles said. “You, the Squire, the magistrate, this Furness fellow who found her, and the two gravediggers who buried her are all privy to this, er, secret? Is that correct?”

Trevillyan flushed and nodded.

In a silky voice, Charles added, “And now I am added to the list. Are you sure you have not forgotten someone else, such as your valet or butler, perhaps a traveling peddler, who shares this ‘secret’? Besides the murderer, of course.”

“There’s no need to take that tone with me,” Trevillyan muttered. “I could do nothing about Furness, and it was my duty to tell the proper authorities! As for the gravediggers, what did you expect us to do—bury her ourselves?”

“I would have,” Charles said coolly. “And I wouldn’t have brought in the Squire and the magistrate, especially if I wanted as few people as possible to know about it.”

Turning his back on the viscount, Charles scrambled up a sliver of a path that was half hidden by the rocks. It wasn’t an arduous climb, and Charles accomplished it easily. The track ended at the cave entrance, and gingerly Charles stepped inside. The cave had little to recommend it. It was dark, dank, and not very big, and within ten feet, ended in a solid rock wall. In the murky light, Charles made a brief examination of the place, but there was no sign that it had ever been used for anything other than perhaps, a handy place to hide some smuggled goods. He hadn’t expected any less and quickly rejoined Trevillyan on the beach.

“She wasn’t killed there,” he said. “I suspect she was simply thrown off the top of the cliff, her killer, no doubt, hoping that the tide would take the body out in the Channel where it might never have been found…and if found, any damage could be blamed on the water.”

Trevillyan looked at the ceaseless waves and shuddered. “A horrible fate.”

“But from what you’ve told me about the condition of the body, none worse than what she suffered before she died.”

Trevillyan couldn’t argue with that, and the two men began to walk swiftly toward the main path that they had taken down from the top of the cliff. The day was waning, and there were only a few hours of light left, and they had several miles to ride before dark.

They had just reached the base of the path when a frantic voice rang out behind them.

“Lord Trevillyan! Wait! I beg you! We need your help,” Adrian shouted as he ran up to them. “It’s my sister, Daphne. She has gotten her foot trapped in the rocks in one of the caves we were exploring. April and I cannot free her.”

“I hardly see what you expect me to do about it,” Trevillyan complained. “But since I am not without a heart,” he said reluctantly, “I shall stop by Beaumont Place on my way home and inform your servants of your dilemma.” He sent Adrian a chilly smile. “I’m sure that your people can effect a rescue without my help.” And turning his back on Adrian, he continued on his way.

Adrian’s face paled with fury, and he lunged for Trevillyan, murder in his blue eyes. Charles neatly intercepted the boy and catching him by the shoulders, said softly, “Have done! It is your sister we must consider at the moment, not your pride.”

His eyes locked on Adrian’s, Charles called out, “That’s an excellent plan, Trevillyan. Meanwhile, I shall go with Sir Adrian and see if I can be of assistance.”

Trevillyan spun around so fast he nearly fell over. “Have you gone mad?” he demanded. “It’ll be dark in a few hours.”

Ignoring him, Charles quietly asked Adrian, “How far away is she?”

“A-a-about two miles further down the beach past the rocks,” Adrian stammered.

“Not so far,” Charles said, more to himself than anyone else. Glancing at Trevillyan, he said, “We shall leave it in your capable hands to see to it that Sir Adrian’s people bring some blankets and hot broth and something that we can fashion into a sling to carry the young woman back to her home, if need be. Give them the directions to find us.” When Trevillyan simply gawked at him, Charles added, “Run along now—we haven’t much time before dark.” He smiled sweetly at Trevillyan. “Don’t worry about me, my lord. I’m sure that Sir Adrian will find me a place to sleep tonight. I shall see you sometime tomorrow at Lanyon Hall.”

Not waiting for a reply, with a firm hand on Adrian’s upper arm, Charles goose-stepped him away from Trevillyan and toward the rocks. When he felt it was safe to loosen his grip on Adrian’s arm, he did so.

“Is she hurt?” Charles asked Adrian as they crested the ridge of the rocks.

Adrian grimaced. “I don’t think she’s hurt so much as mad as fire that she got her foot caught in this silly way.”

“Have your temper, your sister?”

“Sometimes,” Adrian answered with a smile. “But mostly, Daffy is a great gun, and when she does get angry, there’s usually a good reason for it.”

“Daffy?” Charles asked, a twinkle in his eyes.

Adrian grinned. “Daphne is her proper name, but April and I have always called her Daff or Daffy.”

“And April would be your younger sister?”

Unaware that he was being deliberately distracted and pumped for information, Adrian was happy to oblige him. In the face of Trevillyan’s callous attitude, Charles’s unexpected offer to help had raised him to hero status in Adrian’s eyes, and falling under the spell of Charles’s careless charm and encouraging manner, Adrian burbled away as if they were old friends. By the time they reached the entrance to the cave and a distraught April, Charles knew a great deal about the new baronet, his family, and of particular interest to Charles, Sir Adrian’s eldest sister, Daphne.

Seeing her brother approach, April left her post at the entrance of the cave and threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Adrian! I am so glad you are back.” She cast a fearful glance at the sky. “It is getting dark, and I am so afraid. And poor Daffy! She is in there all by herself.” She bit back a sob. “She sent me outside to watch for you. She said she was perfectly comfortable and would not let me stay with her.”

“That’s because she knows you’re afraid of the dark, you pea-goose,” said her brother impatiently. “Now buck up! Mr. Weston is here, and he will help us. Lord Trevillyan is on his way to the house, and he will be sending the servants here with blankets and whatnot.”

April raised glowing eyes to Charles’s face. Her hands clasped together against her bosom, she breathed reverently, “You are our hero, sir. We are most grateful.”

Charles smiled at her, aware for the first time of how very lovely she was. This one, he decided, was going to set the
ton
on its ear when she made her debut, and he didn’t doubt that she would marry well, mayhap even into the peerage, Adrian having filled Charles in on Daphne’s hopes for April.

“Let me see what we are up against,” he said easily. “Once I have your sister free, then you may call me a hero.” Glancing around, he noted the small fire they had lit earlier. “Why don’t you gather up more driftwood for the fire? I’m sure your sister will be chilled when we bring her out, and a cozy fire would be just the thing for her.”

“Oh! She has a small fire going in the cave. After Adrian left, she had me bring her some driftwood and a few sticks of burning wood from our fire out here to use to start it,” April said. “But we will need more”—she glanced at the sun hanging low in the sky—“especially since it will be dark before anyone gets here. A big fire will help them find us sooner. I shall begin immediately.”

“Excellent!” Charles said as he and Adrian ducked under the low overhang of the cave and carefully made their way inside.

The cave was huge, and if it was not for the pinprick of flickering light in the distance, pitch black. The cave floor was strewn with boulders and rocks, and their progress was not swift, but scrambling up a mound of boulders that half blocked the area, they soon reached Daphne.