“What the devil happened to the light?”
Will jolted at the shockingly loud voice of Colin Ramsey, one of his closest friends in the world, as the man spoke to him from the doorway.
“What time is it?” he asked gruffly to the shadowy figure that moved into the piano room in search of a lamp.
“Nearly midnight.”
God, how long had he been standing here? “Oh.”
Colin chuckled. “Oh? That’s all you have to say?”
Irritated by his friend’s jovial mood under such strained circumstances, Will fairly snorted. “Wilson just let you in here?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Colin replied at once. “I woke him, I’m assuming, as he was none too pleased with the interruption.”
“No doubt.”
Colin nearly knocked over an empty ceramic vase as his hand searched for the lamp on the end table. “Dammit.” He found the switch and turned it on, then righted the vase beside it.
The sudden bright light made him squint, his head begin to pound. He needed a drink.
“Want a brandy?” Will asked, his manner brusque as he turned toward a sidebar.
“Of course—God, you look a mess.”
Will said nothing to that as he watched his friend sit comfortably on the sofa, in the same spot where Hastings had been roughly an hour ago, or perhaps it had been two? He couldn’t remember.
“So answer my questions,” Colin maintained. “Why are you standing here in the dark and what happened to the elusive woman you’re after?”
The woman I’m after. Jesus.
Colin removed his frock coat, tossed it over the back of the sofa, then rolled up the sleeves of his linen shirt. “And where’s Sam? I thought he would be here with you.”
Will turned the unnecessary lock in the oakwood door of the sidebar and cracked it open, reaching for a decanter of dark amber liquid and two crystal snifters. After blowing out what little dust might be inside, he poured for two, filling Colin’s glass to a respectable half, his nearly to the brim. He needed more than anyone tonight.
“Sam’s chasing her down, no doubt,” he replied wryly as he set the decanter on top of an embroidered doily. “Probably lost.”
“Chasing her down?” Colin took the snifter he was offered, though his eyes remained keenly on his friend. “What happened?”
Will shrugged and took a long swallow of expensive whiskey. “It’s not brandy. Sorry.”
“What happened?” Colin repeated, his tone sobering as he began to realize something was very likely wrong.
Will raked his fingers through his hair, sitting hard in the padded yellow rocker that faced the sofa. “I discovered how stupid I’ve been, that’s what happened. And how every woman I’ve grown…fond of, shall we say, has tricked me with her lies of undying affection.”
Colin’s eyes narrowed as he took a sip from his glass. “Women tend to do that, which of course is why I don’t enjoy the danger of becoming personally…involved with any. On a general basis, that is.”
Will began to rock without thought, staring into his drink as he swirled the contents around in the snifter. “It was all a setup, you know,” he said very quietly.
After a second or two, Colin asked, “What was a setup?”
He shook his head fractionally. “Everything. From the day she walked into my life.”
Exasperated, Colin placed his whiskey on the tea table before him. “I don’t follow. What the devil are you talking about?”
Will raised his glass and quickly took two large swallows, downing half of what remained. It burned his mouth and throat terribly, which felt oddly comforting at the moment. “The good Mrs. Rael-Lamont, or as she’s secretly known, the beautiful Lady Vivian, married but willing.”
“That’s rather crass, don’t you think?” Colin remarked dryly. “I thought you cared for her.”
Her eyes, her sensuality, her laughter, her thoughts…
“She certainly had a way with flowers,” he returned nonchalantly, hoping that clipped answer would satisfy.
Colin placed his elbows on his knees and tented his fingers and thumbs together in front of him. “We’ve been friends for years, Will, and I’ve never seen you like this, so—shaken. Or something. You’re not giving me an explanation as to why you asked me to watch her covertly, for her safety, and now that I arrive here, you’ve taken a sudden dislike to the woman. Does this have anything to do with the fact that she wasn’t at the pub tonight where I waited for her?”
Unsure where to start in explanation, and suddenly feeling quite embarrassed about involving both of his friends in a scheme that had completely duped him, Will practically jumped from the rocker and stretched his neck in both directions before walking again to the French doors, his hands crossed over his chest.
“It’s all about money,” he said after a moment or two, staring out the doors, feet spread wide.
Colin groaned. “Isn’t it always, where women are concerned?”
He snickered at that, but didn’t add anything in disagreement.
Seconds ticked by in silence, then Colin said, “Uh…are you going to explain all of this to me or are we waiting for a late supper to be served?”
Will found no humor in his friend’s attempt at lightening the tone of this most serious conversation. He closed his eyes and bit down hard before expounding, “I have to decide if I want to have her charged with a crime.”
Colin let out a slow breath through his teeth.
It took a long time, it seemed, for that notion to sink in and penetrate the corners of his mind, and yet he’d been the one to say it. It just seemed a more realistic possibility when verbally posed, and he felt his hands fist beneath his arms of their own accord, a cringing inside that left him numb.
The latch clicked on the door before Colin could form a reply. Will didn’t turn around. He knew who it was.
“Your grace—”
“What the blazes is going on?” came the unsettled and exasperated voice of Samson Carlisle as he brushed by the butler. “I’ve been sitting on an iron fence railing, staring at a dark building, for three bloody hours.”
“Will that be all tonight, your grace?” Wilson asked succinctly.
“Yes, thank you, Wilson,” he replied matter-of-factly, as if it were a common occurrence to have three of the wealthiest noblemen in all of Britain in deep discussion in his seldom-used music room at midnight.
Will turned to face his friends just as Wilson closed the door on them with a loud thud.
“Well, how marvelous,” he said wryly. “Something like a party, isn’t it?”
Sam stared hard at him. He’d already removed his coat, loosened the neckcloth that hung low around his collar, and now confronted him with a none-too-pleasant attitude conveyed in his solid stance, hands on hips. “What kind of ridiculous errand was this? The only action I saw all evening was a streetwalker who offered me a match.”
“Probably the best proposal you’ve received all week,” Colin cut in. “And here you don’t even use tobacco. Pity.”
Sam completely ignored that remark and continued to look grimly at Will. “Now you send for me, and for what? It’s bloody midnight.”
His voice had a certain deep sharpness to it that the other men recognized, and understood. Sam remained a serious man, in all his affairs, due to a past to which even his closest friends weren’t privy. Seldom did he have the patience for joviality, or sitting still, especially at a time like this, when Will had asked for his help in friendship and had forced him to endure several hours of absolute boredom.
“I suppose you didn’t take her up on the offer then?” Will asked dryly, moving back to the tea table where he’d left his nearly finished drink. “Not a very exciting end to an evening.”
Sam’s dark brows crinkled in puzzlement. “Her offer?”
“The match.”
“What the devil is going on?” Sam demanded again, this time a little more insistently.
“I wonder how many times that question has popped up in the last ten minutes,” Colin interjected from the sofa before finishing off his whiskey. “I, for one, am getting tired of asking it.”
“Care for a drink, Sam?” Will offered.
“No.” Sam continued to stare at him, then asked bluntly, “Who in hell is Vivian Rael-Lamont, and why did you ask me to watch a darkened theater in the now apparently unlikely event that she might appear?”
Will carried his empty glass back to the sideboard and lifted the decanter to pour another.
“You’re drinking whiskey from a snifter?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “How do you know it’s whiskey?”
Sam finally took a stride or two farther inside the room. “By the color. Why am I here?”
Will frowned and lifted the decanter to examine the liquid in the light.
“Yes, do tell,” Colin interjected with a casual lift of his hand, sitting back comfortably on the cushion and raising an ankle to rest on the opposite knee.
Will poured. “Looks like brandy to me—”
“Goddamnit, Will, my ass is sore from sitting on metal, I’m tired, starved, and I still have no idea why I’m standing in your—” He took in his surroundings for the first time. “Is this the music room?”
“Did the large piano give it away?” Colin asked, reaching for his drink again before realizing he’d finished it.
Sam looked down at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Funny.”
Colin smiled. “This conversation is going nowhere. I was just getting ready to start playing—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, sit down,” Will ordered, lifting his half-filled snifter with one hand while he unbuttoned the top of his shirt with the other. “I’m still trying to figure out how that woman took me for everything. When I’ve discovered the answer to that enormous question, you two will be the first to know.”
Instead of sitting on the sofa next to Colin, Sam looked to his left, then walked three feet to the piano where he proceeded to pull out the padded bench and straddle it, facing the other two men. He placed his palms on his knees and waited.
“Cozy,” Colin said through a yawn. “Now why don’t you start at the beginning.”
A jumble of thoughts ran through his mind, from their first meeting in his library, when she came to him offering to buy a manuscript she knew would never be for sale, to their first touch, first kiss, first intimate encounter. To imagine it all to be an act on her part left him cold with rage even as he continued to feel the heated lust that raced through his veins when he thought of her.
Once more, Will sat down fast and hard in the rocker, forcing the wooden legs to creak as they moved on the marble floor.
“Mrs. Rael-Lamont came to me several weeks ago with a proposition. She wanted to buy my sonnet.”
“Good God,” Colin blurted as his head jerked back, his features contorted in disbelief. “This is why you needed the copy?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Why would she want it?” Sam asked through something that sounded like a snort. “She can’t very well sell it.”
“You know,” he replied with a shake of his head, “even after asking her that very question, I never received an answer that made much sense. At the time I’d found her so…intriguing it didn’t much matter to me.”
“Ah.”
That from Colin. Will ignored it.
“And?” Sam urged.
“And I told her that for me to consider such an idea, she had to agree to be my companion—”
“Oh, my God,” Sam muttered very slowly.
Colin burst out laughing, standing quickly, his empty snifter in hand. “I’m going to try that one some day, I really am,” he said between chuckles, walking around the sofa toward the sideboard. “You’re a goddamn genius.”
Will cursed under his breath and sat forward with feet flat on the floor, leaning over so that his forehead rested in his palms. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Of course not,” Sam said sarcastically. “Knowing your taste in the female sex, I’m sure she’s quite ugly—”
“I assumed as much myself,” Colin cut in with a raising of his refilled snifter. “And if she wanted my sonnet, I’d simply require her to read it while she sat—”
“I wanted her companionship,” he stressed again, raising his head and looking at one after the other. “And in point of fact, she’s lovely, though that’s irrelevant.”
Sam almost smiled. “Of course it is.”
“Yes, indeed,” Colin agreed flatly. “I’m thoroughly stunned.” Sipping his whiskey, he returned to the sofa, relaxing into the cushions, legs spread wide under the tea table, one arm splayed across the generously padded back. “So why don’t you tell us exactly what happened.”
Will wanted to punch the knowing grin right off his face.
“Mrs. Rael-Lamont is also the Lady Vivian, eldest daughter of the Earl of Werrick, a fact she’s kept from the community for the ten years she’s lived here.”
Colin let out a low whistle. “Fascinating, though I was hoping for something a little bawdier.”
Sam brushed over that as he immediately asked, “Why is she living alone in a tiny house in Penzance?”
Will felt that certain tenseness returning. “Her husband was an opium addict. Their marriage was never consummated and he refused to agree to an annulment in the fear that someone would learn of his…affliction, shall we say. It was her word against his, I suppose, and so she sought a separation agreement as the best that she could do under the circumstances. He returned to France, the place of his birth, while she decided to begin a new life here, away from family thereby saving them disgrace.”
For the first time since they arrived at his home, both men stared at him with completely blank expressions.
“You seem quite certain of these facts,” Sam asserted at last. “Yet how do you know she didn’t lie about everything?”
“Because I took her virginity.”
Mouths dropped open in unison. For a lengthy moment, nobody managed to reply, and it occurred to Will that it had been a long time since he’d rendered Colin speechless.
He sat back once more against the yellow cushion and began to rock.
Sam recovered first, bewilderment now played out across his typically stoic features as he rubbed his palms along his thighs. “So,” he extrapolated aloud, “the daughter of an earl is passing herself off as a common but comfortable widow, when in actuality she’s a…what? A married but legally separated lady…maiden?”
“That’s an adequate assessment, I suppose,” Will agreed, taking another full swallow of his whiskey.
“Well, no,” Colin corrected. “Technically she’s no longer a maiden, but I don’t think that’s illegal.”
Will shot from the chair again, suddenly agitated. Head down, he walked behind the sofa and began to pace, arms behind his back. “This is all beside the bloody point.”
Sam drew in a long breath and exhaled loudly, leaning over to rest his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together in front of him. Quietly, pensively, he charged, “Then what is the point? Tell us why you sent for us and what’s got you drinking whiskey like cold tea in July?”
Will began to feel his heart hammering away in his chest as the memory of how betrayed he had felt when he’d seen her leaving her home earlier this evening came flooding back in waves of additional shock and acute anger. How could he put that feeling of disillusionment into words? Neither Colin nor Sam had ever cared for a woman as he had cared for Vivian. Of that he was positive.
Masking his complex and confusing emotions as well as he could, he stopped pacing when he reached the end of the sofa, staring straight ahead at the intricate daffodil-and-ivy-patterned wallpaper.
Softly, he explained, “After Vivian and I became…”
“Companionable?”
“Get over it, Colin,” Sam ordered irritably.
“Intimate,” he enunciated as he shot them a quick glance, “she told me she needed the manuscript because she was being blackmailed into acquiring it by a man called Gilbert Montague, a rather famous Shakespearean actor.”
Sam chuckled for the first time that night. “I beg your pardon?”
“A famous actor?” Colin repeated, incredulous.
Will rubbed his eyes with the fingers of one hand and pivoted once more to face them. “I know. It sounds unbelievable.”
“Rather like a very bad play,” Colin amended, taking another sip from his snifter.
“So, go on,” Sam urged with a fast lift of his arm. “What could an actor possibly use to coerce her into blackmail of all things?”
Agitated, Will began to pace again, moving behind and around the sofa toward the rocking chair. After reaching for his snifter and what drops remained of his drink, he continued to walk to the closed French doors, rubbing the knots in his neck with the fingers of one hand as he noticed how the night had faded to a solid, eerie black, made worse by a low, haunting fog.
He looked down at the fine crystal in his hand, desperate for another shot, then deciding suddenly that he’d had enough. In what seemed to him a childish act he felt compelled to commit, he turned away from the darkness of night and set his glass on top of the piano, knowing that if Elizabeth were still alive, she would haughtily scold him with the worst words imaginable for such a simple act of carelessness. He did it deliberately now, enjoying the fact that this was his home, his piano, his drink, and, at this second in time, his greatest desire.
“I said Vivian is separated from her husband,” he finally managed to answer, eyeing his friends over the top of the piano. “She had it legally done, through a London solicitor and on paper. According to her, this actor somehow managed to obtain a copy of her signed separation decree, then threatened to expose her socially should she not do as he asked.”
“Copies, copies everywhere,” Colin interjected, pressing his fingertips against his brows. “Who did the work?”
“How the devil should I know?”
“Did you ever see this copy?” Sam asked thoughtfully.
He shook his head. “No, but I believed her.”
“Why?”
That made him squirm in his shoes a little. “Because it made no sense for her to have devised such a scheme all by herself. She would have had nothing to gain by lying about her marriage, and besides, she’s lived in Penzance for ten years. She has a life here, social acquaintances, a business—”
“A business?” Sam cut in.
He leaned over and placed his forearms atop the cold wooden surface of the piano, palms together. “She’s a florist, supplies plants and flowers to the community.”
Colin grinned widely. “A noblewoman posing as a flower girl? Incredible.”
“I didn’t say she sold carnations on the street for a few measly coins,” he shot back testily. “She runs a business and is thoroughly respected by everyone in town; she has some of the best cultured orchids in Cornwall, though it’s my opinion she sells them at a ridiculously high price.”
“Did—did you say orchids?” Sam asked, deadpan.
“Yes, from the common varieties to the rare. Some of them are quite rare.” He felt his face flush suddenly, and he thinned his lips with his building aggravation. “I buy arrangements from her frequently and have done so for nearly a year now. She’s very good at what she does.”
They both stared at him as if he’d said he planned to have his stables painted pink.
Now highly uncomfortable, Will shifted from one foot to the other, finally accepting the inevitable of having to admit what they probably already knew. “So I don’t give a damn about the flowers. I never did. I’d seen her twice before, at a distance, and admired her. Buying her merchandise was…practical.” He sighed. “And as it happens, it was the only way I could think of to get to meet her without raising suspicion.”
“Good God,” Colin spouted. “He’s in love.”
Will shot him a look of heated fury, which only made Sam snort forcefully as he attempted to conceal a crooked smile.
Nodding very slowly, Will maintained, “Of course it’s all very amusing now, isn’t it, gentlemen?”
“A regular comedy of errors,” Colin agreed, trying in vain to subdue his mirth for the sake of a friend.
Will slammed his fist on the piano top. “I cared for her and she used me!”
That outburst sobered them at once.
“Sorry,” Colin said meekly, lifting his snifter to finish off his whiskey.
Silence droned. Sam tapped his fingers together for a moment, then sat up straight and rubbed the heel of his shoe into the Oriental rug beneath his feet.
Will closed his eyes and placed his face in his hands. They didn’t understand, and for some reason the easiness with which he should be able to explain the events of the last few hours evaded him. He decided to swallow his pride completely and tell them everything forthrightly.
Quietly, he revealed, “I’d arranged to have Sam wait for her at the theater, in the unlikely event she was taken there against her will, and you, Colin, to keep watch for her as she arrived at the pub. She didn’t know who the two of you were, and neither would anyone else from Penzance, at least not from a distance and in common surroundings. Neither of you looks like a policeman or an agent of inquiry, either, so you’d blend in better than Hastings’s men.”
Lifting his head, he eyed them frankly again. “I arranged this not because I didn’t trust her, but because I thought she might…I don’t know…give herself away when she handed over the forged manuscript, might need the added protection. It just seemed a good idea, and I knew the two of you would help without questions, which I wasn’t prepared to answer. Of course that point is now moot.”
Standing tall, he started to walk very slowly around the perimeter of the piano, arms crossed over his chest.
“Approximately two hours before her scheduled meeting with Gilbert Montague at the pub, I was at her home, handing over the copy of the sonnet. Everything seemed fine, except she was quite forthcoming about her identity, which she finally confessed to me after a bit of nudging. I guess I was taken aback by her very well-kept secrets. I didn’t see or sense any of this betrayal coming when I left there before she was supposed to depart for their rendezvous. In fact, she seemed rather nervous about meeting the man.”
“The actor,” Colin clarified.
“Yes,” Will continued, his thoughts beginning to take coherent form for the first time all night as he pieced together the details for his friends. “My intention was to watch her house and then follow her when she left for the pub. I didn’t tell her I’d be so close because I didn’t want her to give my presence away by looking over her shoulder for me, or seeming too confident at the exchange. She had to be nervous, even scared, to pull this off. I knew she needed me, but I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to arrest the man.”
His stomach churned when he said it, causing a burning in his chest. He never should have had a second drink.
“That was noble of you,” Sam asserted, his tone suggesting he remained quite serious, not at all mocking.
Will continued to pace stiffly, shoulders tense, throat tight. “Yes, well, as it happens she didn’t need me.”
“Ah,” Colin broke in. “We’ve finally reached the juncture in the conversation where you inform us what actually transpired tonight and got you wound so tightly.”
He ignored that. Inhaling a slow, purposeful breath, Will stopped moving as he neared Sam, who continued to sit on the bench at the front of the closed keyboard.
“God, I’m such an idiot,” he whispered hoarsely, squeezing his eyes tightly shut in an attempt to ward off the vision of the two of them stepping into that nondescript carriage, so close together she snuggled under his great coat, the sound of his genuine laughter at something she said as she looked into his eyes.
“I waited as I’d planned,” he went on, his jaw so taut from outrage he could hardly move it. “But I quickly discovered she never had any intention of leaving for a rendezvous at the pub at seven. No sooner had I wedged my rain-soaked body between a stone well and a hedge across the street, than she and one of the great actors in this despicable play walked from her nursery, his arm around her waist, his coat protectively covering her shoulders.” He swallowed. “That’s when I finally understood. They’d worked out a scheme to acquire the manuscript, and when that didn’t work, when they discovered I’d be giving them nothing more than a forged copy, they changed the plan.”
“Changed the plan to what?” Colin asked, utterly confounded.
Will suddenly felt like smashing something. With clenched teeth, he replied, “To kidnapping.”
“What?”
Gruffly, Sam argued, “This is getting far too complicated for my understanding.”
Irritably, Will exhaled a fast breath through his nostrils, then reached into his breast pocket to remove a small, lavender invitation card. Handwritten on one side, he read it aloud.
“We have Lady Vivian. In three days you will be contacted with instruction on payment for her safe return. Tell nobody or I will slice her throat and do it with pleasure.”
Sam reached up and grabbed it out of his hands.
Colin’s mouth dropped open an inch. “What is that all about?”
Will slapped his palm on the piano top so hard the strings inside rattled. “It’s about a well-planned attempt to extort money from me!”
The fierceness in his voice was unmistakable, the tension within coiled and ready to explode. Colin and Sam stared at him, astounded. He had never before exhibited such raw fury in front of them. In front of anyone.
A minute or two ticked by in strained silence. Then Sam murmured, “When did you get this?”
His friend’s concern flowed through his words unmistakably, and Will felt a brief second of regret for his uncalled-for outburst. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t apologize, for Christ’s sake. Just answer the damn question,” Colin interrupted, exasperated.
He rubbed his eyebrows roughly with his palm. “It was here, waiting for me, when I returned from town.”
“Who delivered it?”
“It came by post.”
“So somebody knew you’d see the two of them,” Colin speculated, “and knew with enough time to send this.”
“Not necessarily,” he countered, though he could think of nothing more deductive to add. He hadn’t thought of it rationally like that, not with his feelings so tangled.
Sam tapped the invitation against his fingertips, staring at it. “Did they see you?”
He couldn’t stand still any longer, and so began to pace again, rounding the rocker, gazing up to the enormous portrait of his grandmother—tight-lipped, determined, and dressed in yellow silk—hanging on the far north wall.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I sincerely doubt it. It was raining steadily by then and I never gave her any indication beforehand that I’d be waiting close by.”
“But when you noticed the two of them leaving her home,” Colin maintained, “she didn’t look in your direction, or signal to you in any way?”
Will snickered bitterly. “No. She looked around briefly, then straight up to his face.”
“Ah. She glanced around…searching?”
“Or perhaps just to see if I was watching,” he rebutted.
“But you said you didn’t think she could see you, and she had no idea you’d be there,” Colin repeated as if trying to stress a point.
Will frowned, pivoting to face the men again.
Colin’s cool and cautious surmising surprised him. Always the one to joke, to lift the moment between the three of them by interjecting some bit of dry humor, they expected nothing less from him. He was ever the reprieve from the gravest of situations; Sam the thinker; Will the one with the problems—or so it had seemed in recent years. Colin, though, had been Will’s greatest strength when he’d been on trial for murder, simply because his friend’s keen wit had kept him from sinking into a depression to rival Elizabeth’s before her death.
But now, in a manner unlike him, Colin grew pensive, sitting forward once more on the edge of the sofa and staring at the tea table, tapping the top of it softly with his two index fingers.
“What are you thinking?” Will asked him very slowly.
“I was wondering the same thing,” Sam remarked, shifting his body so that he no longer straddled the piano bench, but sat facing the two of them, leaning back to rest his elbows on the wooden keyboard cover.
Colin remained quiet for a moment, then said, “I was thinking that all of this seems too clever, too…contrived. Too well-acted.”
“I don’t follow,” Sam admitted, crossing one leg over the other.
Colin glanced to the French doors, then stood abruptly, scratching his temple before clasping his hands behind his back and striding to the sideboard. He didn’t fix another drink, just stared down at it.
“First, she didn’t know you’d be there. She couldn’t have, not for certain,” he began, laying out his thoughts as if piecing together a puzzle.
“She had to know I’d be nearby. I told her as much,” Will maintained, resting his hip on the back of the sofa, arms crossed over his chest.
“But not when and in what manner—dashing nobleman to her rescue, or clandestinely, to observe from the shadows.” Colin jerked his head around and looked at him directly. “And she couldn’t have known what you’d do when you saw the two of them together.”
That, Will had to admit, was a fact he hadn’t thought of logically until now.
“But they looked like lovers,” he said almost defensively.
Sam cocked his head to one side to assert wryly, “You just said you took her virginity. In all her years of marriage and separation, you’re her first lover, and suddenly, in a matter of what—weeks? days?—you think she’s taken a second? That’s not even plausible.”
For the first time in hours, Will felt a quick thrust of uncertainty course through him. “So maybe they aren’t lovers, but…co-conspirators. You just said you thought her actions, their actions, were too contrived.”
“His actions, Will, not hers,” Colin charged, brows furrowed. “She sells flowers and has lived in Penzance for years, your words. He’s the one who’s suddenly entered her life.”
For half the night, after seeing her and until his friends arrived less than thirty minutes earlier, he’d stood in this dark music room, feeling rejected beyond belief, consumed by a form of jealousy unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his life. He could think of nothing but the two of them together, his arm wrapped around her, his grin and her…what? He’d thought it looked like cheerful intimacy at the time, but now that they were analyzing it, he just couldn’t be that positive.
“She certainly didn’t appear very frightened,” he said cautiously.
“Well then, let’s define exactly what you did and did not see.” Sam cleared his throat. “It sounds to me as if you saw Vivian snuggled up to the man under the partial cover of his overcoat. Correct?”
Will’s stomach gnawed at him; he couldn’t move, focused so intently as he was on his friend. “Yes.”
Sam rubbed his jaw with his palm, staring at the floor as he continued with his line of thought. “He held her closely against him, and then the two of them got into his carriage. You didn’t find them in bed together, you didn’t see them embracing, or kissing, or hear them sharing words of love. You saw them, from a distance, walk from the rear of her house and get into a carriage. That’s it.” He glanced up. “And let’s not forget it was raining and you were across the street. How clearly could you see them anyway?”
How clearly could you see…
A dark, foreboding coldness began to descend upon him, blanketing him, pressing into his chest as each second ticked by. The uneasiness that had engulfed him only moments ago now began to feel like panic—deep and terrifying and making his legs weak. With a tremor of unsteadiness, Will slowly grabbed on to the back of the rocker, gripping the wood tightly with both hands.
“Just tell me this,” Colin said a minute later, his baritone voice slicing the stillness. “Why would a well-bred lady, who takes a romantic and sexual interest in you, a duke of your wealth and means, be even remotely interested in an actor? What would she have to gain from such a relationship? Where would they have met to plan a blackmail? And why, above all else, would she wait all these years to give you her virginity if she didn’t truly care about you?” Colin shook his head and faced him with a candid gaze. “I’m not in any way dismissing what you witnessed, but frankly, these questions alone make nefarious involvement on her part seem preposterous.”
Without pause or argument, Sam interjected, “I agree.”
Will stood absolutely still, barely able to breathe. His heart thumped rapidly in his chest as the only sound to disrupt the quiet of the night. For a long moment he closed his eyes and tried to envision Vivian as he knew her. Really knew her. Either she was honest with him from the beginning, contacted him initially solely because she needed his help to keep the secrets of her past hidden and intact, and then nestled inside the coat of an attractive man as she got into his carriage because she was frightened, or even threatened, into doing as he wanted, or for weeks now she had lied and schemed so well that he did not detect one shred of pretense on her part. His mind immediately filled with the vivid vision of her sitting so beautifully on the grassy coastline, alone with him, letting him make love to her, hearing her whisper, “I like touching you…I like the way you look at me…” And that first perfect night they were together. “This will only end if you want it to…”
That was not an act. Suddenly it all became very clear and Will started to shake.
“You don’t understand the whole situation,” he said at once through a ragged exhale, opening his eyes again and rubbing his face with one of his palms to try and keep himself calm. “My investigator informed me this evening that Gilbert Montague, whose real name is Gilbert Herman, was a childhood friend of Elizabeth’s.”
“Jesus,” Sam blurted. “Why didn’t you tell us that before now?”
Will felt like jumping out of his skin. “Because I didn’t see the connection before now!”
His outburst didn’t faze them this time.
Colin leaned on the sideboard, both palms flat on the top surface. “Well what is the bloody connection?”
“Oh, God,” Will breathed as he became grossly aware of the incredible danger he had ignored.
“Will,” Sam repeated intently, slowly walking toward him, “what’s the connection?”
His blood turned to ice; his shaking became pronounced as he gazed from one friend to the other. In a tone a shade above a whisper, he replied, “Vivian got into that carriage with Steven Chester.”
The shock inside the music room grew to a tangible thing. For ages, it seemed, nobody moved a muscle, nobody uttered a sound.
Then at last, Sam stammered a simple, “What?”
Colin said nothing, transfixed.
Will’s legs gave out at last and he slid down into the rocker again. “I saw them together and I couldn’t believe it,” he gruffly explained, staring at the floor in a daze, clutching his hands in front of him as the fog in his mind gradually began to clear. “The second I laid eyes on the two of them I just assumed I’d been manipulated for money. Aside from Elizabeth’s manuscript, that’s all Steven and Elinor have ever wanted from me. So as I stood in the rain and watched Vivian step from the back of her house and into her front garden, held so protectively in the arms of Elizabeth’s handsome, titled brother, I just assumed they were lovers because then everything seemed to fall into place and make perfect sense, all arranged from the very beginning.”
Freezing inside, Will brushed beads of sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand. “But Steven, Elinor, and Gilbert Herman used Vivian to get to me, which now seems much more logical. She was always just an innocent pawn.” He paused and looked back at his friends. “They set her up to coerce me but when we became lovers and she told me everything, it spoiled their plan to get the manuscript returned to them. That’s when they realized how very much she’s worth to me and decided to alter their well-thought-out conspiracy. And I’ve been sitting here doing nothing for nearly six hours—” Suddenly he was so choked with fear for her he could not continue.
“Jesus Christ,” Sam said almost inaudibly.
Colin started walking toward him, his tone grave as he stated with conviction, “You cannot wait for them to contact you.”
“No,” he whispered in a sweeping, fierce determination, abruptly standing again and turning to face them both, rage replacing his fear in an instant of decision. “I don’t think Elinor is dangerous, but Steven will kill Vivian if he thinks he needs to. I’ve never been more certain of anything.”
“Which means—”
“Alone, she has no options. I must take her back.”
Deafening silence reigned once more. Standing in a semicircle, they stared at each other. Then Sam said, “We will take her back. You can’t do this alone.”
Colin groaned and stretched his neck to the ceiling. “I knew you were going to say that.”
Will’s nostrils flared, his lips thinned. Fisting his hands at his sides, he tried not to think about how desperately she needed him, how he had nearly betrayed her trust in him. How scared she had to be right now. He swallowed hard to keep from breaking down.
In a shaky voice, he said, “We’re wasting time. Let’s get out of here.”
“Where to?” Colin asked as they all began to move toward the door.
Over his shoulder, Will replied, “We’re riding to Truro tonight.”