The Saint (19 page)

“You astonish me, Laclere. This is very vulgar, and not at all like you,” Bianca said.

“It is not the Viscount Laclere who contemplates your future. It is Mr. Clark. It is said that he is a strange man, not much given to society and friendships. Whoever would have expected an intelligent woman like yourself to put herself in the power of a man whom she knows nothing about? Yes, Morton, I think that she will do very well. She will need a bit of taming, of course.”

“I hope that you are both enjoying yourselves. The potential danger in what I have done has been amply communicated. I am not amused by your insinuations, Laclere, nor the least bit frightened.”

“Aren't you? You have more faith in my honor than I do, then.”

He said the last in a thoughtful, musing tone. The rest had been a teasing scold, but that had not.

The silence of the manor suddenly pressed on her.

He stepped behind her. His hands settled on her shoulders and the skin from her neck to her waist prickled. His touch briefly lingered before he lifted the coat off her shoulders. “Go sit by the fire and get warm. Morton, would you prepare a hot bath for Miss Kenwood? It will be the only way to get the chill out of her. See about some other garments too. Her gown is holding the damp.”

“No things here but yours and mine, my lord.”

“Something of mine, then. Miss Kenwood is no stranger to breeches. And do whatever one does to prepare a chamber for a lady. It will have to be mine. None of the others are suitable.”

His last order made her trip on her way to the hearth. He certainly did not expect her to remain here tonight, in his chamber.

She sat and unfastened the neck of her cloak.

He threw himself into another chair nearby. “You are warm enough? Morton will fix supper soon, but I could find something if you are hungry.”

“I will wait.” She pulled off her gloves and smoothed them together on her lap. “There is no mistress, is there? All of the journeys were because of the mill.”

He just looked at her in that considering way he had used in the coach. Finally he shook his head with an exasperated sigh. “What am I going to do with you?”

“The first thing you are going to do, is instruct Morton to drive me to an inn.”

“I do not think so. Rain is falling, there is no moon, and the closest inn is miles away.”

“I hardly need to remind
you
that it is unacceptable for me to remain in this house tonight. There are not even any servants here.”

“Which means no one will ever know. Now, if you were some blushing innocent, I might be concerned for your delicate sensibilities. However, since you are so
experienced, wicked,
and, some in Baltimore even say,
dangerous,
we can dispense with inconvenient gallantry. I will not risk either Morton or my horses to cater to any concerns about propriety that you have suddenly discovered this evening. Besides, a woman who admits to having
hundreds
of lovers can hardly be reduced to the vapors by the notion of being alone with a man for a few days.”

“A few
days
?”

“I cannot let you leave until we have come to some understanding.”

“That should not take long at all. I promise to tell no one about your secret. See? All settled.”

“Hardly all settled, as you and I both know.”

His meaningful glance stunned her into silence. He was not only talking about his management of the mill.

The hall grew very quiet. His implications hung in the air, filling the gap between them with connections and memories, forcing the attraction to quiver more insistently than it ever had before.

The fire crackled, illuminating the two of them in a cozy glow. It created a little world of protection and warmth in the cold cavern of the hall. No, it was not the fire doing that. It was the presence of the man sitting a few feet away. She had always experienced an alluring security with him. Especially when he held her. He offered for a short while, just a little, that she could let someone else make the decisions and do the worrying. Not since she had been a young child had she been allowed that respite.

She nervously smoothed her gloves some more. She felt as though his silent contemplation was deliberately stripping away layers of camouflage, revealing something carefully hidden behind anger and resentment and clever sparring. It was leaving her terribly exposed to an intimacy that spread like the fire's warmth, circling their chairs, subjugating the adversarial postures they took with each other as surely as the hearth did the chill.

Did he sense it too? She snuck a look at him. He gazed into the fire with a face subtly expressive, its stern planes reflecting annoyance, but also something else. It was as if a transparent mask had been removed.

He turned to her. His eyes glimmered with anger and warmth and a flicker of vulnerability. Not a guardian's eyes. Not a saint's, either. Just a man's. The man who had kissed her at the ruins and held her in the study. Every piece of her remaining armor dropped and every ounce of defense disappeared under the honesty of that gaze.

“You might have been harmed. If that coach had gone into a river, I would have never known what happened, just that you disappeared one day,” he said resentfully.

It was the first indication, the first admission, that he cared about her.

“Is that why you are so angry? I thought it was because I had discovered your secret.”

“Give me some time and I will work up some ire over that too.”

“I should have been more considerate of the worry I might have caused Pen and you. I am sorry. It's just …” To explain it would leave her even more vulnerable to the seductive familiarity she suddenly felt with him. In an indefinable way, she understood him much better than she had ever realized. In front of this hearth, with her protections peeled away and his mask shattered, she knew the important part of him as well as she knew herself.

“It's just that you saw a way around your interfering guardian and back to the pursuit of your dream,” he finished.

“Yes. There was that.”

“It's just that you saw a way to escape the hypocrite and fraud who forced his attentions on you when he was supposed to be protecting you.” He voiced her thoughts in a frank way that suggested he intended to clear the air. “Perhaps that is why I am so angry. It is really directed at myself, and it is unfair to lash out at you instead. I cannot escape the conclusion that if anything had happened to you, it would have been my fault.”

“Not entirely. Nor did you really force your attentions on me. I have never lied to myself about that. But, as I said in the study, I decided it best if I left.”

“As any sensible woman would have. Now you have discovered that your brave plan has only led you directly back to me. You must be dismayed.”

“Not so dismayed. Better you than Mr. Clark, whom people say is a bit odd.”

He laughed quietly at that. “So you came to Manchester to chat with Mr. Clark. Did you plan to threaten him?”

“Certainly not.”

“Negotiate, then, if you prefer that term. Let me guess. You would promise not to sell the mill when you came of age if he gave you some money. The implication being that if he did not hand over the blunt, you would promptly throw in with Nigel once you turned twenty-one and sell out. Am I correct?”

“You do not have to make it sound like highway robbery. The money I wanted was mine anyway. Some of the profits, to be diverted to me and not sent to …”

“To your unreasonable guardian. Your solicitor did well by you, getting the information you needed. A brilliant plan, Miss Kenwood. You have my admiration.”

“Would it have worked? I mean, if you hadn't been Mr. Clark, that is.”

He smiled with stunning warmth. “It is charming of you to think that it makes a difference that I am he. You have me at a distinct disadvantage. I do not hurt myself by pointing it out, since it was only a matter of time before you realized it.”

She had already realized it, as soon as she saw him in the office.

“Once you procured your funds from Mr. Clark, what then? Off to Italy, I expect. Immediately? With no baggage and no Jane?”

“I had intended to go back to Laclere Park, to fetch Jane.”

“I suppose you would have had to leave without saying so. A letter propped on your writing table for Penelope is the best I could have hoped for.” He pressed the fingertips of his hands to each other and studied her over the peak they made. “I am a little insulted at how this plan of yours did not take me into account at all.”

“It certainly did not take into account that you might be Mr. Clark.”

“I do not mean that. Perhaps I foresaw your scheme. Maybe I fed Mr. Peterson the information in order to lure you up here. Has it not yet occurred to you that the man whom you castigated in the coach that day might be that nefarious? Perhaps you do not think me clever enough to have plotted it.”

It had occurred to her, poking into her mind with a momentary, silly caution. “Clever enough, but not nefarious enough.”

Her judgment seemed to please him. “If this had played out as you intended, what did you expect me to do?”

“I expected you to be relieved, and to recognize it was for the best.”

“Of course. The saint could return to his courtship of the lovely Fleur, and the fraud could return to debauchery with his mistress. A comfortable life again, with the troublesome, provoking Miss Kenwood out of the way.”

“Something like that.”

He angled toward her. “Shall I tell you that I anticipated some new attempt on your part to leave? I even warned Catalani of dire consequences if she should aid you. I have St. John checking the passenger lists at the shipping companies to see if you tried to arrange for berths.”

“I planned to take the packet to France and travel overland, so you would not have been able to stop me that way.”

“Then I would have followed.”

“I see. You would not have wanted the mill's future depending upon someone you could not control, and you still had nine months to convince me to wed your brother.”

He looked to the fire with renewed irritation. “Fetching you back would have had nothing to do with Dante, and very little to do with the mill. Furthermore, my legal rights as your guardian would have only provided the excuse.”

His words and expression insinuated more than responsibilities and manipulations, although he appeared less than happy with the notion. The new Bianca flushed with delight at this evidence that she had been right about him and the old Bianca wrong.

A cough drew their attention to Morton on the landing halfway up the stairs, holding a candelabra.

“I have the chamber and bath prepared, my lord. If Miss Kenwood is ready, I will show her the way.” He turned and retreated upward.

She rose and Vergil did too. She regretted having to relinquish the fresh honesty that had begun between them. They would probably resume to their old poses when she returned.

She mounted the stairs, sensing his attention on her. At the landing she glanced down to see him watching her.

“No.”

She paused at the simple negative, even though it had not been a command for her to stop.

“No,” he repeated. “To your question earlier. You were correct. There is no mistress. No mistress and no fiancée.” He paused. “There is only you.”

She thought that her legs would give way. The new Bianca wanted to climb over the banister and jump down into his arms.

“Since we are being honest, I should admit that you were correct too. There were not
hundreds,
or even
dozens.
Not even several, I'm bound to say. Only you.”

He turned away with a wry smile. “Go to your bath, Miss Kenwood. Since I had intended to seduce you, I will need some time to decide if I am glad to hear that.”

chapter
13

V
ergil crossed his arms and stared out the dining-room window into the wet, black night.

If Bianca had any sense at all, she would never leave that chamber upstairs.

She was a virgin. Of course she was. He had known that almost for certain. However, the simmer had encouraged enough doubt so that he could ignore his better judgment and speculate on the possibilities that her arrival presented. Maybe she wasn't and then what he contemplated would be a bit less unconscionable. Perhaps, if he were to make love to her and do it well enough, then hopefully she …

Only you.

Two words had demolished all the “maybes” and “possiblys” and probably any “hopefullys.”

He shook his head with a quiet laugh. Just his luck, and wonderfully ironic. He never thought he'd see the day when he regretted learning that the woman he had decided to marry was an innocent.

She would make a splendid wife. Bright and interesting and, in her exasperating way, unpredictable. The kind of wife one looked forward to spending time with and did not merely tolerate. The sort of woman who enlivened one's existence beyond the bed where you joined her for pleasure and procreation, although his determination to have her there played no small part in his attraction.

A perfect wife for him in other ways too. Not only because she would bring forty-five percent of the mill with her, although that would be convenient. The best part was that he would not have to hide his double life. She came from a country where men of business were not scorned. She already knew his secret and there would be no need to keep it from her.

That the woman whom he wanted should also be the only woman he could risk marrying struck him as a generous gift from Fate. It was during the coach ride that he had realized how her discovery had freed him to pursue her.

The Rossini aria that she had sung in the ruins began filling his head. He imagined the body that he knew better than he should, stretched out naked on that bed upstairs. She rested on her stomach, shoulders raised and weight propped on her forearms. The sheet hid her lower body to the middle of her bottom, the way the lake's water had. She watched his approach with teasing blue eyes that managed to combine worldliness with innocence. His hand caressed down her soft skin and his mouth found her lips …

Only you.
After playing out such a long and elaborate act of worldly experience, she
had
to go and admit that tonight.

“You are already grinning and you haven't even seen me yet,” her voice said. “Did you catch my reflection in the window?”

He turned and choked down a laugh.

The frock coat dropped off her shoulders and its sleeves buried her hands. The trousers were so long that she had rolled up their bottoms into thick, clumsy cuffs. The whole ensemble immersed her in an ocean of cloth out of which her head bobbed and in which her body swam.

She stretched out her arms and flapped the coat's sleeves. “I feel like a little child dressed in my father's clothes. I must look bizarre.”

He thought that she looked adorable. “The blue of the coat becomes you.”

She held up her arm and tried to scrunch down the sleeve so her hand could emerge. “It may be impossible to eat supper, and I am very hungry.”

“Then I will have to feed you.” A delightful thought. “Or, we could build up the fire and you could remove the coat.” That was an alluring notion as well.

“Would you? The fire, that is.”

He got it to a high inferno just as Morton arrived with some soup.

“This should help warm you, Miss Kenwood, but I am sorry that the rest of the meal is a cold platter. We eat plainly here in the evenings. I will do better tomorrow night,” Morton explained.

“I would not lay in stores, Morton. I expect to be on the road tomorrow night.”

Morton shot him a look such as an officer would give a soldier who was shirking his duty.

“Why don't you bring the rest now, Morton. Miss Kenwood will forgive our informality.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Bianca shrugged off the frock coat and laid it on a chair. Her dark gray waistcoat also hung loosely, but its lines and fabric could not totally obscure her form. Vergil beckoned her to a place set at a right angle to his own at the end of the banquet table. Morton had made her place as close as possible without appearing too obvious. Certainly within easy reach.

She looked around at the mirrors and inset paintings and gold leaf that glimmered in the light of hearth and candles. “This is an odd room to find in such a manor.”

“My maternal great-grandmother loathed this house for the primitive place it was, but her husband insisted on coming here. She decided that they would at least eat as civilized people, and she had this room done in the current fashion. He permitted it, but only for this chamber and her own.”

She dug into her soup. Her full lips parted delicately to accept the warm broth, and the tip of her tongue swiped an errant drip. Her mouth mesmerized him, spoonful after spoonful.

This was going to be a very long night. A paragon's purgatory.

He guessed that she hadn't eaten a decent meal since leaving London. Rectifying the problem absorbed her attention for a while. When Morton brought the ham, she methodically tucked hers away. Vergil speared another slice and placed it on her plate.

She flushed a color that looked incredibly lovely in the candle glow. “I am being rude.”

“You are being human. We should have fed you before you went upstairs.”

She looked down at her garments and grinned. “Do I get port when we are done?”

“You do not drink strong spirits, and tonight is not the time to start.”

“If I am dressed like this, I think that one glass of port is almost obligatory.”

“If you insist, but only one very small glass. I do not want you accusing me of getting you inebriated.”

She looked to her ham with a peculiar smile. “I am sure that you would never do that.”

Oh, wouldn't he?

A small roll and a slice of ham later, she finally stalled. He practically saw her mind snap back to attention regarding the matter at hand.

“How did it happen? You and the mill?”

“It was another responsibility that I inherited from my brother. He, in turn, got involved in response to a dare.”

“A dare?”

“From your grandfather. Adam Kenwood and Milton formed a strong friendship, despite their disparate ages, backgrounds, and politics. Milton found him an interesting man with a mind as sharp as a honed sword. Very ambitious and very clever. You have a lot of him in you, by the way. Milton once said he found Adam a wonderful contrast to the philosophical abstractions that had filled his own life.”

“So Milton left the manor to work in the factory?”

“Four years ago there was a demonstration in Manchester that turned bloody, one that has been dubbed Peterloo. The deaths of those people shook my brother badly. Milton was not so much of the tower that he could not see that the country was changing profoundly. Adam and he got into terrific rows about the moralities of what was happening in the new industries. Milton believed that the problem was the character of the men running them. Better men, less absorbed by greed, would mean better conditions and less unrest among the people. Adam challenged him to face the same risks and choices and see what he would do. He dared Milton to throw in with him on a new mill.”

“It sounds like a very sly, and very expensive dare. However, I can almost picture the two of them, worlds apart, sparring over such things, and others as well. The influence went both ways, I think. Your brother convinced my grandfather of the error of his early trade, and Adam made your brother see how impractical some of his ideas were.”

Her expression softened as she referred to her grandfather's slave trade. The way she looked in his eyes conveyed her gratitude for being informed that Adam had expiated that sin, and that her inheritance could be kept.

“It was foolhardy for my brother to agree to the dare. The family finances were already a disaster. Adam stood him to a large part of the financing, and offered to advise him, but it would be my brother's business. No doubt Milton saw it as a grand experiment, but also counted on Adam's business acumen to keep it from failing.”

“Perhaps Milton thought it was not foolhardy, but a way to save the family.”

“If so, he was correct. It turned out to be the only sensible decision about money that he ever made, and, with Adam's help, he made the mill profitable. He was the first Mr. Clark, you see. I think when he donned that identity, he literally became another man.”

“Then when Milton died, Mr. Clark's brother, which was you, inherited his share. Did your double life begin then? Have you been managing that mill ever since?”

“With my brother's death, I began traveling north, relying heavily on your grandfather's advice while I learned what to do. Eventually the decisions became mine. It was essential that I manage it closely. The income from the mill had kept us from financial ruin.”

It had also been useful to spend time in the north as Mr. Clark. Mr. Clark could go places and hear things that the Viscount Laclere never could. Mr. Clark could try to learn if the answer to Milton's suicide could be found somewhere in Manchester, where Milton also visited, and among the political radicals whose ideas Milton had supported.

He realized that he wanted to tell her about that, too, and regretted that he could not.

She inclined forward with her elbow propped on the table and her chin resting on her hand. He could see Adam Kenwood's shrewd mind working behind the thoughtful expression in her eyes.

“You said it scraped you through some bad years. Why don't you sell out now? The offer from Mr. Johnston and Mr. Kennedy is waiting. You could be free of this deception.”

“Johnston and Kennedy run the worst mill in Leeds. Ours is paradise by comparison, even if it is still a hard life. If I sell the mill, I also sell any chance for a halfway decent future for the people who work there.”

Morton had found some little cakes to present with the meal. She reached for one. Her small white teeth bit carefully, but some sugar topping smeared her lips anyway. Still thoughtful, she seemed unaware that her tongue snuck out to wipe up the sweet grains. She missed a few and they glistened against the pink swells, like an invitation for him to finish the job.

“You could sell to someone else. There must be other mill owners who are decent.”

“That is true. I could probably do that.”

“But you do not want to.”

Perceptive woman. Delightfully so. Dangerously so.

“No.”

She sat back and absorbed that. He wondered what the admission would cost him.

She smiled as if she had learned what she needed to know. “Can I have my port now?”

“I keep it in the library.”

She walked beside him through the hall to the library. He noticed that she had cinched the trousers to her waist with a cord from the bedchamber's drapes. The white sleeves of his shirt floated around her arms and the collarless neckline showed a fair amount of skin despite the waistcoat.

He pictured her in nothing at all but that shirt hanging loosely from her shoulders and breasts, skimming her body with soft fabric, revealing naked thighs and legs.

Morton had built up the library fire. She sank into a corner of the settee and accepted the port he offered her.

He sat in the chair across from her, wondering when she would get around to negotiations. It was why she had come down for supper, after all.

Not yet, it seemed. She popped up and began perusing the volumes in the bookcases flanking the hearth. Her brow puckered. She reached for a candlestick on the mantel, lit it off the hearth flames, and held the light to the bindings.

“There are some volumes here by Edmund Duclairc. Was that your father?”

“Yes. The fat red one is his epic about Alexander's march to the Indus River. The brown one is an Anglo-Saxon view of the Battle of Hastings. Milton's literary efforts are in that blue folio on the bottom shelf. Unpublished, since he did not have the chance to finish them. Not poems. He was writing a comparative analysis of your country's revolution and that of the French.”

She had pulled out the brown volume. “It all sounds very erudite. Do you also pen great works?”

“My interests have been in other things, to my father's dismay.”

“You were at odds with your father? Somehow I cannot picture you as less than dutiful.”

“Like all youths I had my own ideas about my future. I wanted to join the army. Not the cavalry, which would be acceptable, but the engineers. Machines, buildings, earthworks, those things fascinated me. As a child I loitered around the carriages, not the horses. My request to have a commission was soundly rejected by my father. Off to Oxford for me, to study the poets and philosophers.”