Wedding Night Revenge (30 page)

'Choose one,' he said with a menacing softness which killed her empathy.

'Choose one thing I can have or I'll choose. Come, sweet, tell me what I am allowed...'

'I'm not speaking to you when you're drunk,' Rachel quavered.

He smiled a devilishly contented smile. 'My choice too. Something we can do that needs no conversation.' The decanter and glass were returned to the table and his jacket, still slung over a shoulder, was abruptly discarded on to a chair. He turned and walked towards her with slow deliberation.

Rachel backed into the demi-lune table, and felt the forgotten pistol within her reticule bump against her' leg. She brought the bulky bag closer to her where it was easily accessible. 'You're being silly, Connor.' She had meant the reprimand to sound authoritative but it burst out through chattering teeth.

She carefully positioned herself behind the dainty chair she'd sat on earlier.

'Stay where you are or I'll scream. If I do scream, Joseph Walsh will come to my assistance. It will simply cause more upset tonight and you will not want that,' she sensibly explained as though talking to a fractious child.

'Scream, then. After tonight's escapade, Joseph will be as deaf as the rest of the household. You deserve punishment and they all know it.'

Rachel stepped sideways, put a pink-and-cream striped sofa between them.

She lifted her chin, her anger dominating her fright. 'Well, think of your dignity and sophistication then, sir,' she whipped at him icily. 'Did you not once tell me how bored you had become with fornicating against chairs and walls?' That did bring him to a halt. Rachel watched his raven head tip back, his white teeth displayed in a velvety laugh. His deep blue eyes levelled at her from between a mesh of dusky lashes. 'We'll use the table. I've no objection to that. Besides, I'm drunk, Rachel, as you rightly perceived. My dignity and sophistication have suffered already tonight. Why worry now?'

he taunted softly.

Rachel pivoted away from him so fast that her golden hair flagged out behind her. Slowly she turned to face him, her lovely face flushed as she raised the gun in two white, unsteady hands and levelled it at his head.

Are you going to shoot me, Rachel?'

His easy drawl let Rachel know he deemed it highly unlikely she'd find the courage.

Her tongue tip darted to moisten her lips and her shaking hands tightened on the silver-inlaid grip. 'Are you going to force me to it? If you're sensible and let me go now, I shall meet you tomorrow, when you are lucid and more yourself. I realise there is much that is vital and needs to be aired...much that I must say to you. I
will
apologise then...I swear.'

'Something vital occurs to me that ought to be aired now. May I say it?'

Rachel nodded jerkily, trying to ignore his amused, mocking tone.

'Is it loaded?'

A jerk of his dark head indicated the gun and startled, she looked at it too. 'I don't know,' she admitted, too honest. 'It's your weapon. I found it in your desk drawer. Don't
you
know if it's loaded?'

'I confess I ought to. I'll guess it's not. There, if you shoot me, it'll be my fault,' he reasoned softly as he approached.

Rachel steadied the pistol with both hands, bringing it up and extending it threateningly. She backed away to the wall, two fingers crossed in position, hovering on the trigger.

'You think my memory is suspect along with my character, Rachel? Pull the trigger, then. It's the only sure way to find out.' The flimsy cabriole-legged settee was sent skidding sideways on its castors by a booted foot. Her protection was reduced to the slender barrel of the flintlock and the slow tears that dripped down her cheeks.

Connor put up dark fingers, curled them about the wavering muzzle, stabilising it as easily as once he had steadied crockery she couldn't control.

Rachel removed her hands, relinquishing the weapon to him, and covered her wet face. 'It isn't loaded...is it?'

'Let's find out...'

The deafening report had her muffling a shriek and jerking against the wall.

Her fingers slid from her face to cover her ringing ears. Cordite clung acridly in her nostrils. Stupefied, her wide eyes flicked to Connor's critical gaze, followed it to the magnificent chandelier. One candle had been reduced to a smoking stump. The rainbow light was pendulating entrancingly and thus dodged danger as a clump of ornate plaster suddenly detached itself from the ceiling and landed with a dusty thud on the carpet.

She barely twitched. 'Were you aiming for that particular candle?' she asked almost normally, but for a hoarseness stealing volume from her voice.

'No. Just its flame.'

Rachel looked at him and he looked back. He smiled at her, really smiled at her, and with a lazy lob the gun bounced on to the seat of the striped settee. 'I could do it clear-headed,' he boasted impishly. A dark hand rose to cradle her chin, slid to a cold shivering cheek, stroking away the wet with infinite tenderness. 'I'm permanently afflicted with the vices of a misspent youth, I fear. It's one of the reasons I never introduced you to my too-truthful grandfather. He would have felt it his duty to tell you so. And I was scared you'd leave me...'

The door opened and Joseph, eyes wide and swivelling, hovered uncertainly in the doorway. Connor moved away from Rachel and elevated enquiring eyebrows at his startled butler.

'Pardon me, my lord; I thought I heard an explosion. Like a gunshot...'

'Yes, you did. Miss Meredith finds the rose salon a mite too feminine in style. We're adding a few masculine touches... Have the carriage brought round,' he tacked incongruously on to the end as he collected his jacket from the chair and shrugged, superbly nonchalant, into it.

After a comically aghast look, Joseph roused himself enough to scoot away to do his master's bidding.

Connor stared at the vacant doorway before sending Rachel a sideways look.

'If I've terrified you, I'm sorry. I was about to add I didn't mean to...but that would be a lie. I think I did, at first...' He gave a wry, private smile. 'But you'll be relieved to know I'm more myself now.' He paused, looked up at the ceiling as though contemplating the damage.

'You seem to have sobered up somewhat;' Rachel ventured softly.

'Army training. The sight of a weapon pointing one's way, the sound of gunshot, can usually be relied on to restore the faculties to a soldier.'

He started to speak, stopped, and his dark fingers pinched at the tension between his eyes. 'Come, I'll take you home,' he stated quietly.

Several times on the short journey through the streets to Beaulieu Gardens, Rachel had glanced at Connor, hoping to engage him in conversation. He had seemed to deliberately avoid her eye. He lounged in the corner opposite, gazing impassively out into the dusk. She guessed it to be approaching midnight and the streets seemed unusually quiet. No night watchman shouting, no vagabonds darting to the coach to cling on and beg for pennies, few other vehicles rattling alongside to convey revellers home.

She lifted a corner of the leather blind that blocked her view from her side of the coach and glimpsed familiar landmarks. Within a minute or two she would be home. He would stop the coach and set her down and she knew she would never see him again.

She had meant what she'd said about meeting him tomorrow so she could properly apologise and thank him and so many other things, but he would avoid doing so. She knew that as simply as she had known Sam Smith had risked his life to protect her and to safeguard her family's reputation.

The "carriage was slowing; Connor seemed to stir himself as though just realising they had reached their destination.

Rachel folded her hands on her lap, looked at his beautiful, carved profile through the sombre interior. 'Shall I see you tomorrow?' she asked, although she already knew the answer.

'No.'

She nodded, bit down on her lip. Despite knowing what she proposed was highly improper, she said huskily, 'Would you come in with me so I might say what I must?'

'No.'

She swallowed, blinked at her fingers straining awkwardly in her lap. 'May I delay you a few moments then and say it now? Please?'

Connor looked at her at last, but she couldn't see his eyes and she wanted to.

She so wanted to see the look in his eyes, but his face was hidden in shadow.

'What do you want to tell me, Rachel? That you're sorry and ashamed and grateful? I know that.' He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and speared five fingers through his raven's-wing hair. 'If it helps salve your conscience, I feel that way too. I'm sorry I once wanted to hide from you my past. I'm ashamed I wanted to coerce you to sleep with me, and I'm grateful you brought me to my senses by pulling a gun on me before I did something neither of us would have ever got over. Go home. Go home tomorrow to Windrush and your parents...'

'Windrush belongs to you.'

'I gave it to you. I gave you the deeds in front of witnesses. I don't want it.'

'I can't take them,' she gasped on a suppressed sob. 'I left them behind on your table.' She fumbled for the door handle, wanting to be gone before she was dismissed.

'You wanted Windrush so badly you were prepared to risk gaol. Now you've suddenly given up on it? What about Isabel and her son?'

Rachel swivelled back on the seat, a frantic hand swiping tears from her eyes. 'What? What did you say?'

'You heard what I said, Rachel. I think you wanted Windrush as a refuge for Isabel and her son. Did you?'

Rachel felt her heart slowly pounding in dread. Nevertheless she answered simply, 'Yes. After June and then Sylvie were married, some time in the future, when there was no more need to bow and scrape to society's idea of etiquette, when my parents were lost to me and no one left but me to please...I thought it would be so nice to have Isabel home...and my nephew.

I know it might never be, but still I dream of it sometimes...' The silence lengthened and she added softly, 'My aunt Florence is not in good health, she is quite old now and almost blind and Isabel has no one else in York. She's twenty-four and lives almost as a recluse, but never complains.' Her golden head bowed beneath the pain. 'She never complains. Who told you? My father?'

'No. William Pemberton came to see me today, having just returned from visiting your sister in Hertfordshire. He thought I should know.'

Rachel's head dropped further towards her hands. 'June
told
William? She should not have. Not yet.'

'She should
not
have? They're soon to be man and wife but she should
not
have? She should have kept her secrets and risked letting lies and deceit taint their lives as I let it ruin ours?'

Rachel snapped her head up to look at him, barely seeing his face behind the blur. 'It...it was a private matter. Just for family. And we've not lied; we've let others draw their own conclusions about Isabel's absence. We're guilty of failing to correct conjecture, nothing more.'

'I thought my past was just for the family to know. It was to be kept private that I'd been a wild hedonist who'd challenged an elderly man to a duel over his wife: a woman I lusted after but had no right to. You sensed that something about me was bad. You were right to be wary and reject me. And you couldn't have foreseen your sister being violated in York.'

'She says she was willing. Had she been forced, I think my parents might have been more able to bear the shame.' She shook her head in despair at that. 'As it is they would rather join strangers in believing her dead. There

was
an outbreak of scarletina in York; neither of us was ill but we remained quarantined for some time to be sure we would not bring the infection home.

By the time it seemed safe to travel Isabel knew she was pregnant, although she would divulge none of the circumstances, even to me, and we were always close. It was assumed she'd not returned with me to Hertfordshire because she'd succumbed to the disease. When the months passed and still no sign of her, and her pictures were put away, and people saw how mention of her made us all cry...' Rachel's voice trembled into silence. She stared at her clasped fingers, knowing she must alight and go in now, for she'd said far too much. But what was she betraying? He knew the essence of their secret. Why shouldn't she tell all to this man who'd been a catalyst to the disaster? The temptation to share those six years burdened with Isabel's shame and isolation was overwhelming.

'Sylvie thinks that her sister is dead. She was only six then, too young to understand; now she's twelve but my mother won't tell her. She fears she is too immature, too forthright to be trusted to keep the confidence. She might jeopardise her future happiness and security with an unguarded word. The Saunders don't know either. June and I were forbidden by my parents to speak of it, even to close friends. The deception is now too well entrenched in history to be remedied. My parents are in an awful predicament. They love Isabel still, but with three other girls to settle, what are they to do but discreetly give her financial help? If our disgrace became public knowledge, there would be no weddings and no respite from supporting four spinster daughters. Isabel understands all that and refuses even to move closer to Hertfordshire in case the scandal is uncovered and she blights us all. Yet it was I who did that. My selfish folly at nineteen has caused untold suffering to so many.' Rachel blinked rapidly at the leather blind at the window, lifted a corner to stare blearily at her home. 'I...I don't know why William has told you,' she suddenly said. 'I pray he tells no one else. Should his mother hear a whisper of it...' Rachel's voice cracked on imagining the chaos that would ensue. 'I trust I can count on your...on your—'