They tiptoed around one another at breakfast the next morning with polite smiles and bland words.
‘Is the food to your satisfaction?’
‘Would you mind passing the strawberry jam?’
And beneath it all ran an undercurrent of mounting desperation.
Emerald was glad Taris and Lucy were both at the table.
‘I saw Malcolm Howard yesterday at the Red Lion. He said you had been swimming, Asher, down in Charlton Bay.’
‘I took Artemis for a jog along the sand. Perhaps it was that he meant.’ His voice and eyes gave absolutely nothing away as he reached across the table to help himself to some toast.
Taris changed his tack. ‘Do you swim, Emma?’
‘She does,’ Asher answered for her, brown eyes flinting a warning, and Lucy, who caught neither the amusement of one brother nor the irritation of the other, jumped into the fray.
‘Then you absolutely must teach me, for I have always longed to swim. What do you wear in the water?’
Emerald flushed deep red at the question and bent to cut up the omelette on her plate. ‘The temperature of the water in England is a lot colder than that of Jamaica. If I were to venture in here, it would be merely a case of testing the water to the ankles,’ she said finally when she had her heartbeat in some sort of check. She did not dare to chance a look at Asher.
Lies were one thing when the recipient had no notion of their falseness or otherwise. But Asher had been there. He had seen her, touched her, run his fingers across the bare skin at her shoulder…The heat in her cheeks did not abate and she took in several breaths to at least try to calm herself.
Damn it. She barely recognised this shrinking violet she had suddenly become and Lucy’s puzzled frown only added to her discomfort. Suddenly the day stretching before her seemed indeterminably long. When Asher rose from the table and pushed his chair back, she was glad for it.
‘I will be in Rochcliffe till the evening, Taris, and if I stay the night I will send word. Ladies.’ His glance barely encompassed her and then he was gone, striding darkly through the dining-room portal. The sun slanting in from a nearby window gave the black of his hair a bluish light and highlighted the hard planes of his face.
She was in her bed by the window by ten o’clock that evening after spending an hour or so in the library with Taris, playing chess. Asher’s absence had been a godsend, for under the simple pretext of exploring Falder further she had used the afternoon to search for any sign of her father’s cane. And come away with nothing. Lord, she muttered to herself as she lay on her blankets and looked up at the sky, her time here was running out and, if she did not find the map soon, she had little chance of being invited back.
Where could he have hidden it? Where would she have hidden it?
If Falder had been a smaller home, everything would have been immeasurably less difficult, but with its numerous salons and bedchambers and nooks and crannies it was like a labyrinth, much of it joined through a series of inner passageways that defied reason.
Bolstering the pillows behind her back, she plucked her harmonica from beneath them and began to play, the gentle melody relaxing the strain of the day, and the tunes of Jamaica strangely comforting in the colder climes of Fleetness. Azziz had taught her the ways and whys of the instrument ten years ago on the slow watches of the Mariposa and ever since she had added songs to her repertoire that she could play by heart. Ruby had often sung along and danced to the music in the room they had shared off the Harbour Road in Kingston Town and the squalor of that time still haunted her: the danger, the lack of money, the dreadful yearning for the sea.
Here at Falder everything was easy and beautiful: the house, the furniture, the food and the people. A little money softened the rawness of life and a lot removed it completely. She smiled at her musings and then tensed as she heard footsteps in the corridor outside her room and a knock.
Tucking her hair back behind her ears and donning a nightrobe left in the wardrobe, she opened the door.
Asher stood there, wind-blown hair and drink-bruised eyes, the shadow of a twelve-hour stubble on his jaw. Carefully she edged the material of the sleeves down across her hands.
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Here? Now?’
‘It should only take a moment.’
‘Very well.’ She was not certain whether to invite him in or not. Granted, she knew enough about the social mores in England to also know that asking an unmarried man into your bedroom was unheard of. But did the rules apply when the same man was also the owner of the house? A refusal might look as if she imagined herself as feminine game or as if she suspected his intentions to be less than honourable. He solved the worry for her by staying on the threshold even as she gestured him to enter.
‘No. I should not come in—’ He stopped, clearly perturbed.
‘Where did you get the tattoo? The butterfly.’
‘Jamaica.’
‘Is it normal there? Normal for the daughter of a devout father?’
‘I think we both know the answer to that question,’ she replied.
‘I would like to hear it from you.’
‘My father was not quite as you may imagine.’
‘What exactly was he like, then?’ His golden gaze flared in the candlelight.
‘He was a man whom life had disappointed.’ Pride kept her from saying more, and she was pleased when he changed the subject.
‘Taris said that you are a fine chess player. It is not often that he loses. To anyone. Where did you learn?
‘On the—’ She stopped, horrified, as she realised what she had been about to say. On the Mariposa. Just like that.
‘An uncle taught me,’ she amended and held her breath as the awkwardness of the moment passed.
‘I thought I heard music before, in here?’
‘You did.’ She brought the harmonica from her pocket and watched a range of emotions play across his face.
Puzzlement. Amusement. Interest.
‘My family likes you, Lady Emma. Every time your name is mentioned, Taris and Lucinda sing your praises and it is not often that my brother waxes lyrical about anyone. Especially these days.’
‘How did he lose his sight?’ She asked the question quietly and was surprised by his sharp expression.
‘An accident that should never have happened. If I hadn’t been—’ He stopped and caught at control, the muscles on the line of his jaw quivering.
‘I do not think he blames you, your Grace.’
He smiled at that and moved back. ‘No, he doesn’t.’ Tight words rising from the depths of despair.
‘But you blame yourself?’
Suddenly everything was crystal clear. His lack of help for Taris on the road to Thornfield. It was not anger at his affliction that held him back, but guilt. Guilt. The sheer knowledge of it made her insides weaken.
Such a complex man and so masculinely vulnerable. She swallowed back her pity, knowing that at this moment he would not want it, and, as if he could read her mind, he stepped away.
‘We are due over at Longacres tomorrow for dinner with the Gravesons. After yesterday, if you would rather cancel, I would quite understand.’
‘No, I would like to go.’
‘If you could be ready at five, then we would be back before midnight.’
The noise of voices from the stairs that joined this floor to the next had him turning, and, drawing his coat against the draughts of cold in the passageway, he was gone.
She had nothing to wear and two hours to be ready to leave for the Gravesons. Grimacing she pulled the last of her dresses from its hanger. She had never been bothered before about the state of her clothes, but this gown was hardly salubrious wear for any occasion, let alone a dinner date with a duke. She would give anything for a dress that actually fitted her and had a colour in it that was neither pastel nor brown.
And her gloves? The grey silk pair she wore constantly was fraying not only at the wrist but at the base of one thumb now, and the seam was so narrow that she could not reunite the cloth without also altering the fit.
A knock at the door and Lucinda was in the room, her face falling as she glanced at the gown.
‘Is this what you were planning to wear tonight? Perhaps I should warn you that Annabelle puts much stock in the dress sense of others.’
‘Then she will be sorely disappointed with me, I fear.’
Lucy laughed. ‘You do not enjoy fashion?’ she asked at length.
‘You sound like your brother.’
‘Asher asked you about your gowns?’
‘He did. And I told him that I would rather buy books.’
‘And is that true?’
Emerald’s telling hesitation brought Lucinda to her side. ‘I knew that of course it would not be true.’ She walked across to the wardrobe and firmly shut the door. ‘Nothing in there will do, Emma. May I call you that?’
‘My friends call me Emmie.’
‘Then Emmie it is, and I have just the gown for you. It’s in my room and it was one that my cousin left at Falder last year and she is about your size and colouring.’
‘She wouldn’t mind me using it?’
‘No, not at all. She’s the least fussy person I know and one of the nicest.’
An hour later Emerald barely recognised herself. She stood in front of a full-length mirror in Lucy’s room and stared. This dress was the first one she had ever worn that actually nearly fitted her. Gone were the sagging bodices and the false hems. Gone were the short not-quite-fit-me sleeves and the hideously high or dangerously low necks.
But it was the colour that owed the most to the transformation. Deep midnight blue with a hint of silky grey on its edge, the fabric showed up the line of her body and the gold of her skin. In this she did not look insipid or washed out. In this her eyes were bright and her hair, carefully combed by a maid, was for the first time placed in some semblance of order. Even her ears looked different, for Lucy had found some topaz drops that had been her grandmother’s.
‘You look wonderful,’ she said as she hooked the earrings in place. ‘But you have more than one pierced hole?’
Emerald took in breath. ‘It is the way in Jamaica.’
‘And your gloves? Is it the way there to wear gloves all the time?’
Perfect blue eyes met her own.
‘No. That is my choice. I like to wear them.’
‘Then you should make it into a fashion statement.’ Rattling around in her cupboard, Lucinda came up with some fine white lace elbow-length gloves, looking enquiringly at her when she did not remove her old ones.
There was little else to do but to peel off the grey pair. Quickly. She turned her palms upwards as she pulled the new ones on and took a peek at Asher’s sister.
She had seen.
She knew it as soon as she looked.
‘I burnt myself once.’ It was all that she would admit. She was pleased to see the lace was lined in fine cream silk and that no trace of the reddened scar tissue could be seen. Flame left the sort of mark with its bone-deep ravages that made people turn their eyes away. And her hands had been on fire for all of a minute before she hit the sea.
‘I would prefer that you said nothing of my scars to anyone.’
‘I promise you I won’t.’ Lucy made much of folding away the discarded petticoats and chemises before asking quietly, ‘Do they hurt?’
‘No.’
Her mind ran backwards to a battle in the waters off Jamaica about a year after her first meeting with Asher Wellingham. Azziz had been behind her and Solly Connors out further under the yardarm. Morning fog had engulfed the Mariposa and the flash that came from nowhere was strangely magnified by the closeness. She remembered Solly’s head flying past her, his body curled around the footrope as if his fingers had a mind of their own, the last ingrained act of survival imprinted in their being. And shouts from below as a fireball whirled up the mast and hit them, the main-course sheets soggy from the night-time rain sheltering them from the sheer force of it. She had reached out for the shroud and shifted her weight. But her fingers did not grip, could not grip, and she had fallen, fallen, fallen into the ocean.
When she woke up all hell had claimed her.
Thornfield came into view after a good fifteen minutes in the carriage and Emerald was glad to see it. Asher had hardly spoken to her and certainly had not complimented her on the gown or her hair. Chagrin was a strange emotion, she decided, a feminine art form of guilt that she had always despised. But here in the folding darkness of Fleetness Point she found herself pouting at his negligence.
With a sigh she shifted position, bringing the fullness of the skirt out from beneath her. Lucy had told her to do so for the material was heavy silk and liable to crush. In the dusk its silver shimmer was more noticeable, like a living moonbeam come to rest in her dress. She absently shaded her fingers over the lightness and glanced at Asher Wellingham from the corner of her eye.
He sat as far away from her as he could manage, his hands tightly bound on his lap. Tonight he had barely looked at her.
‘I need to make a small detour to the harbour, for my draughtsman in London is in need of some plans.’
Irritation dropped away to sheer delight.
‘We will go aboard your ship?’ She tried to make her voice as indifferent as she could. But it was hard work.
‘You can wait in the carriage, if you would rather. I will take just a moment to find the drawings and then we’ll be on our way. Annabelle said six and it is not yet half past five, so there is still plenty of time.’
‘I would be interested to go aboard.’ She could not quite hide the excitement.
‘Very well. Though I must warn you it is cramped and difficult to negotiate.’
‘Difficult?’ She opened her fan and hid a smile. ‘I am sure I shall be able to manage, though I should not wish to be a nuisance…’
He did not answer as the carriage veered towards the harbour.
He helped her across the gangplank and the swell and ebb of the sea beneath her feet was like a caress.
Closing her eyes she savoured it, breathed it in.
‘Are you all right?’ There was urgency in his voice, and for the first time that night he touched her, his hand cupping her elbow as if to hold her up. She swayed into him, her body reacting before her mind warned her away.
‘All right?’ She was disorientated by sheer longing.
‘Seasickness,’ he clarified. ‘It can sometimes hit quickly.’
‘No, I am in good health.’ With the greatest of will she broke the link between them and looked around, glad to feel her heart settling down to a more normal pace. ‘It’s a beautiful ship.’ Her fingers reached out to the belayed halyard that led to the main lower topsail, so familiar she could have trimmed the sheet with her eyes closed.
‘That’s the rope that lets the sail drop. Without that we can’t furl it.’
She smiled at his explanation, given to her in such simple terms. ‘You have sailed a lot?’
‘I used to.’
‘But you don’t any more?’
‘I lost the taste for it,’ he returned shortly and bade her follow him down the companionway. ‘The chartroom is this way. Mind your step.’
It was the skirt, she thought later. In her haste she forgot to raise it properly and the toe of her shoe caught in the thick folds of silk and simply tipped her up. Asher caught her. Closer this time. The whisper of his breath touched her cheek and his hand fell across the swell of her bottom as he guided her to the master’s cabin where they were cocooned in the quiet lap of the ocean, the smell of oil lamps mixing with the stronger scent of teak.
She felt the hard wooden ribs of the hull behind her back and the warm planes of his body at her front, pressing against her, closer. In the half-light only the snowy white of his cravat was plain. Everything else was melded into shadow.
‘How do you do this?’ he asked softly. ‘How do you make me want you?’ He raised her hand and the wet warmth of his tongue explored the space above the hem of her glove. And left her breathless.
‘Asher.’ She could barely say his name as her fingers threaded through the length of his night-dark hair. She knew exactly what it was he spoke of, this want that defied all rationality and sense and delivered her to a place where nothing else mattered.
Just him. Her. Them.
With lips edged in anger his mouth took hers; when the hand that rested on her bottom firmed and guided her to the place between his legs, she groaned. It was the residue of yesterday’s suggested dalliance, she was to think later and the conjured imaginings that she had dealt with as a result all through the previous night. She could not find it in her to say no, to place her hand on his and call a halt. No, rather she leaned into his embrace, pressed against his solidity as his fingers slid around the edge of her breast.
Here in the dark of the hold of his ship with the gentle sound of water on wood she had no words to stop him. Oh! Love came easy without the stinging drudge of memory, and the girl she had been in Jamaica was the woman who responded here.
Tell me.
Show me.
Take me.
‘Emma, I want you.’
Emerald.
For the first time his use of a name not quite her own bothered her. His eyes were dark twin pools of intensity, the brown in them ringed with a harsher colour as he slipped the strap of her low-cut dress from her shoulder and bent his head. Flipping his tongue against her nipple once, he pulled back, watching the skin pucker and crinkle.
‘At the dinner with the Bishop of Kingseat you did not wear undergarments and when you bent over…’He stopped, giving her the impression of a man only just holding on to some semblance of control. ‘Suffice it to say that I have wanted to touch you here ever since then.’ His thumb lightly skimmed the wet coldness of her nipple. ‘And kiss you here.’ His lips were warm against the small patch of freckles lying in her cleavage. ‘I have wanted to know the taste of your sun-warmed skin and find the line where clothes have shielded you. His hand dipped lower. ‘Have they, Emma? Shielded you? Here?’
She could not speak. She could only feel as hot drifts of longing assailed her and the rhythm of his breathing changed. Her eyes fell upon his lips. He had beautiful lips. Full and defined. The stubble on his jaw was light as her palm brushed against it and when he tipped her lips to his, the slick shattering passion spun her wild and heat took over.
Away. From everything. She was all woman. Open, alive, free. And he was the sun and the ocean and the warm solid earth.
Again.
For ever. Cast as she was from a storm into the safe harbour of his body. And needing refuge.
The heavy footfall of boots were suddenly heard above them on the deck.
‘Hell.’ He pulled away and helped her straighten herself, as a man came down the stairs.
‘Duke, I thought I heard you…’ The words petered out and stopped, uncertainty replacing the earlier hurry. ‘I’m sorry.’ The newcomer’s voice held a strange quiver. Not sorry at all, she determined, but amused.
‘This is Peter Drummond, an old friend of mine who is also the ship’s captain. Peter, meet Lady Emma Seaton.’
‘It is my pleasure,’ he said softly, his glance falling to the crushed silk of her skirt. A definite question was in his eyes and the tone in his voice was puzzled.
‘You got my note, then?’
‘Note?’ Asher shook his head.
‘To meet here. I thought that was why…’
‘I came for the plans to take up to London. Is there a problem?’
‘There might be.’
Emerald could tell the man did not wish to say more in front of her, so excusing herself, she walked back up the steps and on to the moonlit deck. The quiet burr of voices from below was a backdrop to the frantic beat of her heart.
What had just happened? Again? If Peter Drummond had not come…?
She could not think of it. Did not want to think of it.
‘I am the pirate’s daughter,’ she whispered to herself.
‘The pirate’s daughter. The pirate’s daughter.’
She remembered the taunts of the children on the dockside at Kingston Town, when the Mariposa had come into port, and the slanted glances of their parents.
Her father was a man who used fear to distance himself from everyone. And he had never been honest. Just as she was not being honest. Here.
With Asher.
The realisation made her sick and when he rejoined her she was hard-pressed to smile. He seemed preoccupied and angry and threatening in a way he had not been ten minutes earlier. The evening sun made his hair darker, the tan of his face showing up his teeth and the velvet of his eyes.
He was beautiful.
She admitted this simple fact to herself. And smiled.
They had gone a good mile before he spoke and in a voice that sounded nothing like the one she had last heard him use.
‘Who are the men camped in the wood?’
‘I am not certain what you mean—’ she began, but he interrupted her.
‘The men you brought with you from Jamaica. Does that make my query any clearer?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Peter Drummond just now and Tony Formison a few days ago. His father owns the ship you came on and he remembers you disembarking with a black man and an Arab, four chests of books and your hair a damn lot longer than it appears to be now.’
‘I see.’ There was no point in denying it, so she regrouped her defences and tried to look contrite. ‘They are here to see that I am protected.’
‘Protected against whom?’ He had the answer even as he asked it. She could see the flint of disbelief on his face.
‘And if they caught us like now, alone? What would happen then?’
‘I suppose they would have to kill you.’
He laughed and then cursed. ‘What makes you so certain that they could?’
‘You strike me as a man who could easily protect himself, but if there were two of them, then, perhaps—’
He didn’t let her finish.
‘Who exactly are they?’
‘My servants,’ she ventured. ‘When I left Jamaica for England it would have been dangerous to travel alone. They offered to accompany me to London.’
‘And then they offered to follow you up here?’
‘Yes.’ Even to her ears the explanation sounded implausible.
‘And you did not think to ask me to house them at Falder, in the servants’ quarters?’
‘They like their independence. Once they saw I was safely at your house and that you were a gentleman—’
He interrupted her. ‘How do you contact them?’
‘By the signal of a candle at night.’ She was honest in her answer, for he looked as if another lie might well incite his anger.
‘Through the window of your room?’
‘Yes.’
‘And should I worry that they may frisk Falder with even more competence than you have?’
Because his summation of the situation was so close to what she had just been thinking she blushed, giving him his answer.
‘I see.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. Or what was left of his fingers, she amended.
‘It is not as you think,’ she began.
‘Then how is it, Emma? Explain to me exactly how it is.’
‘I cannot,’ she said simply and turned away. In the shimmering glass her reflection was barely visible, a thin reminder of the person she purported not to be.
‘You cannot because the truth is that you are a liar, Lady Emma Seaton. A beautiful liar, but a liar none the less.’
‘Yes.’ She faced him directly and left it at that. Tonight the untruths just would not come and his kisses still burned on her lips and hands and neck.
Lady Liar.
Pirate’s daughter.
There was some sort of symmetry of verse in the expressions and both left her with a completely groundless counter-argument.
She was a liar. And would be a thief if she could only find the damn map. Regret swamped her. All she wanted to feel again was the warmth of his lips against her own.
And know again the safety he offered.
She could not remember ever being truly safe. Not since her mother had left and not for a while before then too.
Blood.
And screaming.
The sounds of cold arguments on the warm winds of Jamaica. She tilted her head and tried to catch the glimpse of something elusive. But she couldn’t, and when the Gravesons’ house came into view she was pleased, for it released her from the close confines of the carriage.
Dinner was horrible.
Oh, granted, Annabelle Graveson had gone to an enormous amount of trouble and was the most gracious of hostesses, just as her son Rodney was the very epitome of excellent manners and careful conversation.
But Asher barely looked at Emerald and when he did she could see only a veneer of distrust in his eyes and a good amount of distance. She missed his banter. She missed his smile. She missed the breathless possibility that he might lean across and touch her and she would feel again the slow rise of passion and the quick burn of excitement.
What was she coming to? She was at dinner, for goodness’ sake, with a widow woman and her son. With an effort she tried to listen to what it was that Rodney was talking to her about.
Guns. She’d never liked them.
‘I can now hit a target at thirty feet. Sometimes more. We often hunt in the grounds of Falder.’
‘We.’
‘Carisbrook and I. He’s teaching me.’
‘The Duke of Carisbrook is teaching you?’
His eyes swivelled around at the mention of his name.
‘Is there a problem with that, Lady Emma?’ he asked in his frostiest voice. A voice that implied she thought he could barely hold a gun, let alone shoot it.
‘Certainly not.’
‘I am pleased to hear it,’ he returned and his smile was strained.
Annabelle Graveson seemed oblivious to everything as she leaned forward and placed her hand on Emerald’s. On the third finger of her left hand was a ring bearing a diamond the size of a large rock. The house. The jewellery. The clothes she wore. Annabelle Graveson had become a rich woman on the death of her husband.
‘I would like to make you a gift of some gowns, Emma. Would you accept that from me?’ Her voice quivered.
‘Gowns?’ She did not umderstand the reason for such an offer.
‘For your Season in London.’
‘Oh, no, Lady Annabelle.’ She went to say more, but could not.
‘Is it because I am a stranger to you? I am hoping we may change that.’ The fingers on her forearm tightened.
He looked as puzzled as she felt.
‘Lady Emma is staying with the Countess of Haversham, Annabelle, and is well looked after.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she replied, a semblance of calm once again in place. ‘Of course she is. When is your birthday, my dear?’
The question was so unexpected it took Emerald by surprise. ‘My birthday?’
Annabelle Graveson nodded.
‘It’s on the third of November.’
Tears filled Annabelle’s eyes and she dabbed at them with her handkerchief and waved the attention of her son away. ‘No, Rodney,’ she said. ‘I am quite all right. In fact I have never felt better.’ And with that cryptic remark she bent over the pudding she had before her and demolished the lot.
‘They are unusual people,’ Emerald chanced into the silence as they wended their way home a few hours later. When she got no reply, she amended her observation. ‘Nice and unusual, I meant.’
Still no reply. She was not daunted.
‘Annabelle seems rather a nervous woman,’ she continued.
‘Whereas you, on the other hand, are not.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘Name one thing that you afraid of.’
She was silent and unexpectedly he laughed. ‘Thank you, at least, for not lying to me.’
‘I did not lie about James.’
‘I know.’
She held her breath and looked out of the window. The clouds against the moon reminded her of her little brother’s curls as he had lain there asleep while she watched him.
Tonight he seemed close. Perhaps that was because it had been so long since she had spoken to anyone about him. And Asher Wellingham had been a good listener.
What else had he been? A would-be lover, a man whom she could trust and respect and like.
Like? Too tame for what now raced inside her and yet with the ghost of her father hanging so baldly between them nothing else could be possible.
Nothing.
She saw he kneaded his thigh with the fingers on his left hand and chanced the opening.
‘Do you have a cane, your Grace?’
‘A cane?’
‘For your leg. Perhaps if you took your weight off it…’
He stopped rubbing immediately.
‘My uncle had a cane once. A fine one, carved in ebony. He had hurt his knee at Waterloo and found the stick to be invaluable.’
God, how many more clues could she safely give him?
One more.
She took in a deep breath and spoke.
‘Walking sticks are actually quite a passion of mine. I collect them, you know.’
She did not let the pained look on his face dissuade her.
‘I have twenty from all parts of the world.’
‘Fascinating.’ The tone he used intimated that he found the subject anything but.
‘Indeed, your Grace, it is.’ She was grateful for the dark and for the movement of the coach. ‘If you had any at Falder, I would be pleased to look at them for you to give you some idea of their value.’ She felt the thick beat of duplicity in her throat when he did not answer and the look in his eyes was one of singular calculation.
She should not have gambled on his intellect. Already she could see the wheels of his brain turning and so she was not surprised by his next question.
‘Would it be a cane by chance that you are looking for at Falder?’
‘No.’ She met his question directly as the lights of his home came into view. As the carriage began to slow he lifted her gloved fingers into his.
‘What happened to your hands? Are they also a part of the mystery of Emma Seaton?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Do you not?’ he chided, the soft light in his eyes hard and flat. ‘If I looked into the records of the Haversham family, where exactly would you be placed in relation to Miriam?’
Taking a breath, she pulled her hand away and tried to rally. Lord, if he was to do that…
‘I am her niece, as I believe you already know.’
‘I see,’ he returned as the lights of Falder flooded the carriage. All around there now stood servants, waiting. Emerald was pleased when the first footman seemed to take her smile as a signal and moved forward to open the door.
An escape.
Gathering the skirts of her gown, she hurried from the coach. The ruse was up. She knew it. When Asher backtracked into the depths of her family history, he would have his suspicions confirmed that there was no cousin called Liam Kingston. And he would also know that Miriam’s only brother was Beauvedere Sandford Louden. It would take him but a moment to work out the rest.
She would have to forgo her searching and be gone from Falder at the first possible opportunity. The map offered riches, but discovery could mean prison. She had failed in her quest and now there was little else to do but return home.
A tight feeling of absolute uncertainty engulfed her.
Ruby and Miriam.
How on earth could she protect them?
Asher roamed the hills above the ocean, cursing the note in his pocket, the note he had found beneath his door when he had returned to his room in the hours after dawn. Emma Seaton was gone.
Back to London.
Back to Jamaica.
Back to God knew where.
The horse beneath him whickered and pranced and he stilled her with a quiet whisper, hating the way his mind kept replaying the feel of Emma’s skin beneath his hands.
He wanted her. That much was plain. He wanted her like he had never wanted any woman before. Even with Melanie he had not experienced this white-hot flash of passion, this desperate uneasiness. And the way she responded to him…
‘Stop it.’ He said the words out loud, surprised by the gut-tearing anger in them. Emma Seaton was a thief and a liar and a threat to his family. He had given her a chance to trust him, after all. More than a chance. If it had been anyone else, she would have been thrown out after the night he had seen her dressed in the lad’s clothes in front of his dead wife’s picture.
Why had he not, then?
He knew the answer even as he posed the question.
Because he admired her. She was so unlike any other woman who had ever made his acquaintance that she threw him somewhat and he doused down the urge to place his hands around her neck and strangle the truth out of her.
Why would she not trust him?
What had she to hide?
He swore into the gathering wind and turned his horse for home.
Lucinda met him in the front portico and she did not look pleased.
‘Emmie is gone.’
‘Emmie?’ He had not heard her called that before.
‘She was my friend. She told me her friends called her Emmie. She said that I could too and now she has gone.’
‘Did she tell you why she went?’ He could barely keep the irritation from his voice.
‘No, she did not have time, though she did leave this note for me.’ She handed him a small piece of paper to read.
Miriam and I need to return to London. Thank you for letting me borrow the clothes and jewellery.
‘I do not think she went of her own free will, Asher. I think you were cross with her. I think she reminds you of a time when you used to laugh and enjoy life and so you frightened her off somehow…’
‘That’s enough.’ The whiplash of his words shook Lucinda visibly and she turned towards the stairs, but not before snatching her note back.
‘She may be gone from Falder, Asher, but you can’t forbid me to see her in London, for I like her, even though you are determined not to.’
He watched her as she flounced up the stairs, the letter tightly held in her hand and the promise of rebellion in the staunch set of her shoulders. Life had not burdened her yet, he thought as he made for the library, all her hopes and dreams still intact and possible.
So unlike his own.
Taris sat in the armchair by the window. Today he looked tired, and when he removed his glasses to clean them Asher saw that his right eye was strangely opaque.
‘Emma Seaton has gone?’ His brother’s tone had the same ring to it as Lucinda’s. Tired of defending his actions, Asher reached down and took a cigar from a box on the desk near the fireplace. Cutting it, he breathed in deeply before sitting on the leather sofa opposite his brother.
‘When Father died he made me promise on his death bed that I should never compromise Falder because a thousand years after our demise this pile of stones and mortar will still be here, and a thousand years past that thousand too. Custody. Tradition. Responsibility. Call it what you will, but I listened.’
‘Lord, you actually believe that she would compromise Falder? In what way?’
‘Rifling through the silverware at midnight would be one way I could mention.’
‘And did she steal anything?’
Asher shook his head. ‘Nothing I could determine, but I think there was something specific that she was after and she has not yet found it.’
‘Specific. Like what?’
‘God knows, for I don’t. Money, perhaps. Jewels. The combination lock on my safe had been tampered with.’
‘She had the skills to try to break open your safe? Who sent her, do you think?’
‘She wouldn’t say. I did ask.’
A moment went by as he watched Taris play with the tassel of a burgundy bookmark left on an open copy of Webster’s Duchess of Malfi.
‘She’s in trouble, Asher. You said as much yourself.’
‘And you think that it concerns me?’
‘I can hear it in your voice that you admire her, which leads me to conclude that, if you have any hopes of an heir to enjoy these hallowed halls, now might be the time to take action.’
Asher swore to himself and did not answer. Could not answer. Whatever it was that Emma Seaton inspired in him was irrelevant. Lust? Like? Love?
‘You would not think of providing heirs yourself, of course?’ His query after a moment or so was cynical.
‘Hard to catch a woman when you can barely make out their form.’
‘The Caribbean was kind to neither of us, Taris.’ He hated the way his brother’s face stiffened as the air around them creaked under the dead weight of regret, and the scars on his back smarted under memory as the shifting frames of time and place took him back to the pirates’ compound. The jangle of his broken chains in the run between sand and water. The silent ricochet of lead that ripped across Taris’s temple and dashed his sight into splinters: a bitter reward for the rescue he had orchestrated. The red of the froth on the waves and aching arms as Asher had dragged them out, out into the greenness of the deep with its blue-edged sky and its uncountable miles of nothingness. Out where the ocean currents were like a river and where letting go of fear was the only way to survive.
And survive they had. Barely. He looked down at his fingers and across at the glazed eyes of his brother.
And knew.
Knew that if he let go of Emma Seaton, even more of him would be lost.
‘I will leave for London tomorrow to see how Lady Emma fares.’ He frowned as he saw his brother’s smile and refilled his glass. With water. ‘Don’t read too much into the change of plan. It’s for peace of mind, that’s all.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You haven’t been to town in years.’
‘Then it’s past time I was back there, isn’t it?’
‘You’re doing this for her?’
‘I am.’
Asher was astonished at Taris’s capitulation. And worried by it too. If the gossip about his sight was not kind, he wondered how it would affect his brother. Another problem, he thought, but one that could be minimised by a careful campaign. It would not be too hard, after all, to mingle in a crowded ballroom, especially if he stayed at Taris’s side to smooth any problems.
He was pulled from his reverie as the housekeeper bustled into the room.
‘I heard that Lady Emma left, sir, this morning while I was at Thornfield. I wonder if I might have a word.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Ignoring Taris’s obvious interest, he led her out of the library and into his office. The normally ebullient Mrs Wilson seemed almost embarrassed by what it was she next wished to relate to him.
‘It’s just that I wondered what you wanted me to do with the bed coverings, your Grace? Miss Emma never used the bed while she was here, and if she is coming back—’
‘She what?’
‘She did not favour the mattress, your Grace. Nay indeed, she always slept near the balcony with the doors open.’ Her face reddened as he frowned. ‘Perhaps she liked the fresh air, your Grace, and indeed I have heard it is said to be good for one.’
Another convert to the cause of Emma Seaton, Asher thought. Lucy. Taris. And now Mrs Wilson.
He took a breath and addressed his housekeeper. ‘Lady Emma Seaton will not be back.’
‘Oh, dear, your Grace. Well, all as I can say is that it’s a shame, it is, for a nicer guest we have not had, or a tidier one. And what should I do with all the shells that she collected?’
Asher began to laugh even as he stood.
Five minutes later he took to the stairs leading to Emma’s room and opened the wide oak door.
A nest of blankets sat near the French doors, the sheets folded on the bed in a neat pile. And unused, as was the thick felted quilt.
Emma Seaton travelled light and rough, he thought and crossed to the balcony. Two heavy chairs had been moved and placed together to form a platform that one might stand upon. With care he mounted them and before him, through the green fold of a hillock, lay the sea.
The sea.
If he closed his eyes, he could hear it, as she must have done. My God, every single thing he ever found out about her confused him. She was not used to sleeping in a bed and she liked the sea. And the only thing in this room that had been used while she inhabited it was a candle.
A candle used to signal her men in the wood in the very dead of night. A candle used to search his home. He ran his fingers through his hair and wished she were still here.
Near him. Safe. And then he cursed himself for thinking it.
It was late when Asher and Taris and Lucinda arrived back in London, and Jack Henshaw, who had been waiting for them at Carisbrook House, had worrying news.
‘The Countess of Haversham is ill and Lady Emma has sent away the doctor and taken full charge of the situation herself. Unusual, but dutiful,’ he added and leant forward to his drink. ‘Gregory Thomas, the physician, is an acquaintance of mine. He said he saw the Countess last in the company of a burly black man lighting a sweet-smelling fire of oil in a copper basin while the niece pushed hot pins into the side of her aunt’s neck. Many are saying it to be witchcraft.’
Asher swore. Lord, if that was the case, Emma was going to be sore pressed to re-enter the narrow world of society. Clothes a little odd or outdated were one thing, but it was quite another to be accused of practising sorcery. And so blatantly. ‘Why the devil would she have done that? Why would she be negligent with her reputation?’ The answer came to him immediately.
Because Emma Seaton did not mean to stay in England at all. Because the search of Falder was a means to an end and that end was to be once again ensconced in the place she called home. Jamaica.
When Jack left Taris lingered and Asher could tell that he was disturbed by something, though as his brother began speaking the subject was very different from that which he had expected.
‘If you have an Achilles’ heel, Asher, it is your love of control.’
‘You’re speaking of Emma Seaton, I presume?’ he bit back. Tonight he was tired.
‘She is not like the other women here. She is strong and independent and would not thank you, I think, for seeing to her reputation.’
‘You do not think I should help her?’ Real anger reverberated in his question.
‘I do not think that you should judge her by the standards of society.’
‘Because she so obviously is from somewhere else?’
‘No. Because she is very much her own person. Like I am mine. Sometimes, even despite my lack of sight, I can feel you watching me and worrying about the next person with too loud a voice who will inadvertently hurt my feelings.’ He laughed and softened his tone. ‘What will you do, Asher? Fight them all because you feel responsible? Don’t you see? I came to the Caribbean to find you on my own accord and Emma Seaton has come to London on her own accord. It is not you who needs to calm the waters to make sure that she fits. She doesn’t and she probably doesn’t want to either.’
Asher slapped his hand against the wood in the wall. Hard. ‘And where will she fit, then? Jamaica has hardly nurtured and protected her.’
Taris laughed. ‘Lord, Asher. It’s more than a feeling of responsibility for her, isn’t it?’
Turning away, he mulled over his brother’s last question and was glad when he did not demand an answer, but left the room in that particular way he had of moving around objects.
More than responsibility?
More than friendship?
For a moment Asher imagined Emma Seaton as the Duchess of Carisbrook, immune against all criticism just because of who he was. He could protect her. From everyone.
But would she want him to?
Without a doubt he knew that she wouldn’t.
‘Lord help me,’ he muttered and was wondering what the hell he was going to do when his eyes fell on a cane near the door. Uneasy conjecture caught as he remembered the conversation in the coach on the way home from Longacres. Canes. Questions. The quick flare of interest.
In the corner of a room off the blue salon was a stand set in the wall, hidden behind the thick fold of a velvet curtain. Two canes sat inside it and, as his fingers reached for the black-and-ivory stick studded in jewels, memory turned.
He’d taken this from the Mariposa after he’d returned to the Caribbean and killed Sandford. A crutch to aid his damaged leg. Could this be what Emma was after? The stones were valuable after all, and it was a fine piece of carving. Intrigued, he examined it closely and noticed that the handle was not quite round, the ornate twists of wood hiding a catch beneath the lip of ebony stones. Perhaps she had been interested in this particular cane not for its value, but for something else! Something hidden. Swearing, he ran his nail across a ridge and shaved off parings of wax, the sealant hindering the downward motion of the clasp. A dull click and the handle parted company with the body of the wood, a hollowed compartment inside becoming plainly visible.
He smiled at the ridiculous ease of it all as he ironed out a parchment under the light.
A map, he determined. An old map of the Eleutheran inlets and with much more than the gauge of depth shown. A map delineating caves of gold! Contemplation sparked discomfort. What would a woman like Lady Emma Seaton want with such a map and how could she have known about it?
Slipping the parchment into a secret drawer in his desk he sat down to write a note.
The noise came later, much later, as he sat in the darkened library before the embers of a dying fire. A small scratching at first and then a larger bang. Someone was in his office down the hall.
Emma? His heartbeat surged as he moved forward into the passageway that divided the rooms. When the heavy wood of a baton hit him square across his shoulders and sent him to the floor, the parquet was cold beneath his cheek. For a moment he felt winded by shock and disorientated.
‘Where’s the bloody map?’ the larger one of the two men demanded, his accent somewhat similar to Emma’s. The lilt of an island cadence. Lord, were these her men, tired of the more gentle persuasion? Dizziness dissipated under the larger threat to his life and, surging forward, he knocked the man nearest to him off his feet. The sharp blade of a knife nicked the flesh of his upper arm, and, swearing, Asher lurched to standing and eyed them both warily, the circling distance between adversaries lessening.
‘Who the hell are you?’ He looked down at his hand. A red tide of blood dripped from his fingers. The damned blade had got an artery, he thought, suddenly light-headed, though he shook his head to dispel the gathering haze and held his wounded arm tight against his body, balancing as he calculated the seconds left before they rushed him.
They came together and the remembered moves of fighting learned in the hot compound of the Caribbean returned to him. Effortlessly. The sharp clean noise of a broken bone and a knife falling to the floor, to a quick curse of anger as his assailant’s heads met.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he bellowed again as the second thief rose uncertainly up. He had no more energy to fight, though already he could hear the running footsteps of those in the house. Evidently the other man heard it too. He grabbed his accomplice around the shoulders and they crossed to the window and were outside even as he slid to the floor.
Asher looked up as Taris, Lucinda and four servants entered the room. ‘Get a doctor,’ he said as spurts of his blood rose into the air before him.
He came to in his bed. His sister sat beside him and he could see that she had been weeping. Taris watched him from the window and for a moment the world lightened and his ears hummed. Then it refocused, but strangely. He had never felt so tired in all of his life.
‘What happened?’ Even words were hard to say.
‘You nearly bled to death, Asher, and would have done so had not Lady Emma turned up at the exact same moment that this all happened.’ Taris spoke carefully.
‘Emma?’
‘She arrived just as Lucinda and I came downstairs to see what all the noise was about and she almost certainly and single-handedly saved your life.’
‘How?’ Nothing made sense.
Lucinda carried on the narrative. ‘She stripped off your sleeve with a knife she kept and wound the ties of the curtains tightly around your upper arm and kept it raised. I think she pressed down on the wound as well and when the bleeding had slowed she took the blade to the fire and heated it before searing your flesh. All in the space of a few moments. When Dr MacLaren arrived, everything was over. All he did was to bandage the wound.’
‘Is she here?’
‘No. She left. Without a word to us. Grabbed the two knives on the floor and left.’
‘I want her here.’
‘She has gone from the Haversham town house.’ Taris walked forward and sat on the bed. ‘I had the only servant the place boasted brought here and she intimated that Emma and Miriam were with other friends in London. She had no idea where.’
Asher tried to rise and fell backwards, the pain in his arm radiating around his whole body and making him feel dizzy.
‘Doctor MacLaren said to warn you that if you move too much you will rupture the artery and bleed to death. He also said you were to have this.’ Lucy emptied the contents of a sachet of powder into a glass of water and handed it to him.
‘To stop it hurting,’ she explained as he hesitated, and then smiled as he finished the lot.
‘Stand guards around the house, Taris, and if you find Emma keep her here. Safe.’ Asher felt the floating dizziness reach out and already the day was fading but he had to be certain his brother had heard. ‘It is dangerous here. Everything is dangerous.’
He was pleased when Taris nodded, the tight anger on his face suggesting that the house would be watched over.
It was midnight when he woke again.
Emma sat in lad’s clothes at the side of his bed, the tight line of her trousers emphasising the curves of her body. She held an assortment of sharp pins in her hand. Ungloved, he noticed. The searing red of the scars caught his attention, but tonight she did not seem to care.
‘Stay still,’ she whispered and placed a pin into his skin below the elbow, twirling it this way and that. A small dull pain radiated up into his armpit.
‘It will take away any infection,’ she explained when she saw him looking. A dozen other such needles graced his arm and chest, catching the quiet dance of lamplight in their shivering thinness.
He tried to raise his hand to touch her, but he couldn’t.
‘Why…?’ At least his voice still worked. She moved back, the frown on her brow deepening, but he was too tired to try to patch the story together tonight. All he wanted to know was Emma’s part in it. He could not quite bring himself to say what he was thinking.
Why did you want me dead?
His eyes flickered uncertainly to the needles.
‘They were island men,’ she said quietly, anger resonating in every word.
‘Are there more of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘They wanted to kill me.’
She was silent, though he could see the quick flash of temper that stormed through turquoise eyes. The unusual shade was muted tonight. Smoky. Distant.
‘I will not let them.’
The absurdity of her vow almost made him laugh. He had no idea of how much time had passed since he had been hurt. One day? Two days? A week? Everything was blurred and difficult and when she bent down he tried to summon up his last reserve of energy.
‘Look under the bed, Emma,’ he instructed, pleased when she did not question him, but leant down. ‘Is that what they were after?’
A sharp spike of adrenalin raced through Emerald. Her father’s ebony cane lay before her. Confused she laid it on the quilt. If Asher did not know of the secret compartment, she could slip the map out once he fell asleep. When she looked at him, however, she knew that the game was up.
‘It was easy to open.’
‘Open?’ She tried to inject a great sense of surprise into the word.
‘Move the catch and turn the body of wood to the right.’ Said flatly as though he was running out of patience with the whole pretence. With trepidation she did as he instructed.
Nothing was inside save a sheet of paper twisted strangely to stop it from disappearing down into the sharp end of the cane. Removing it, she ironed it flat with the palm of her hand.
If you want what was in here you will need to trust me.
The ornate Carisbrook baronial seal was stamped on to the bottom in red wax and her shock was compounded by the wariness on Asher’s face. It was all she could do to stop her voice from shaking.
‘Where is the map?’
‘I want a promise first.’
She stayed silent, not trusting her voice enough to speak. Where the hell would he have hidden it? Her eyes flashed around his room in a quick survey of possible places.
‘Not here,’ he continued. ‘Falder is the only place I will return it to you and I want your promise to come there with me.
‘I cannot—’ He didn’t let her finish.
‘Where are your men?’
‘Outside.’
‘Bring them in.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’ The lighter webbing in his eyes was easily seen, giving him a dangerous and predatory look. Not willing to chance a denial, she walked across to the window and lifted a candle, waving it twice.
He noticed the sash had been raised. For her entrance, he supposed. And her exit. Lord, if he felt stronger this would have all been so much easier.
A man came through the window with a knife in his teeth and two pistols tucked into his belt and he was closely followed by a second.
Not servants at all, Asher thought, but pirates. He had had enough dealings with the likes of Beau Sandford to recognise those who scoured out a living on the open oceans. Lord, his ordered and controlled world was tipping up into more chaos by the second and he was angered anew by the silent questioning message that passed between the men and Emma.
Complicity and knowledge. They had seen the cane and it was impossible not to feel the flare of anticipation. Nothing quite made sense and the ache in his head blurred a nagging connection that he knew he should be making.
The burly Arab stationed himself at the door and Asher hoped that his sister would not take it on herself to grace him with one of her midnight visits. Taking a breath, he steeled himself to the task.
‘I would like Lady Emma to stay here. With her aunt,’ he added when he saw that she was about to argue.
‘You what…?’
He ignored the smaller man’s outburst completely and carried on in a measured tone. ‘She will be chaperoned and protected.’
A slice of steel was the only answer. The knife at his throat pressed in before he could utter another word. He made himself relax.
‘No, you will not hurt him.’ Emma’s voice shook and the knife melted away to be replaced by the angry dark visage of its owner.
‘If you cross us, your Grace, the last thing you feel on this earth will be my blade.’
Asher laid back against the pillow. His head throbbed and the steady beat of blood in his ears made the world echo. Why did he not just give them the damn map and get them out of his life once and for all? Let them go back to Jamaica with the hard-won spoils of greed.
He knew the answer as he looked at Emma. Because, like it or not, they were connected somehow. He could almost feel the tie that bound them, and see in the turquoise depths of her eyes the same loneliness that was inside him. He’d felt it from the very first moment of seeing her at Jack’s ball. Affinity. Alliance. Knowledge.
And the realisation that her prime motivation for being in England was greed had not bent him from his purpose.
A treasure map!
He noticed she had replaced her gloves before calling in her men. And yet she would show him the angry scars upon her hands. Nothing made sense.
‘What did you want us here for?’ The man at the door spoke for the first time. ‘She could have told us what you have so far.’
‘I want you to stand guard on the trip back to Falder. I will pay good clean gold for you to find the safest way back.’
The slur was not unheeded. ‘And what do you get in return for all this?’
‘The absolution of a debt.’
Emerald started at the words. Had he remembered her from the Mariposa or was it the incident after the Henshaw ball that he spoke of? Nothing showed in his face save exhaustion, the tinge of red around his irises giving him the look of someone who had ingested too much bad liquor.
Asher.
He had been as near death as she had seen anyone, the blood from the wound on his arm coursing across the floor in a red river, taking away consciousness and making him clammy. She put the image from her mind and walked to the window, raising her hand against the moon. Her fingers shook when she thought of it. Still.
Lord. The options closed in on her because she also knew enough about medicine to realise that for the next few days at least he should not be moved. And though his offer of a place here was appreciated, she could barely contemplate what his family must think of her.
The absolution of a debt.
The words floated in between the cracks of uneasiness and she felt both the power and the impossibility of them, for when she had torn off his shirt to tend to his wound she saw what she had not before.
Scars. Rows of them cut across his back, ribboned flesh silvered and sliced diagonally. She imagined the pain he must have felt and the sheer raw fury of powerlessness. She turned back to face the room, and when Azziz nodded she let out the breath she had not realised that she had been holding.
They would follow his instructions? They would take orders from a man who lay pale faced in a bed with a quarter of the blood that should have been flowing through his veins and the marks of slavery on his back?
Yes, they would, because, even given his wounds, leadership and authority stamped itself easily into the lines of Asher Wellingham’s body and into the cadence of his words. A raw untamed wildness, all the more startling for the setting she had found it in. England. With its manners and protocols and ludicrous comportments.
For a moment she was disorientated with the sheer longing of reaching out and just holding on. He could protect her as he protected his brother and mother and sister. And the tenants on his land at Falder and the servants in all of his homes.
But she was Emerald Sandford and these dreams of safety were not for her. When she got the map, she would take ship for Jamaica, find the treasure and clear the debts that hung over her father’s name. And then she would rebuild St Clair.
St Clair. Even the name was hard to say. She remembered crouching in the shadow of the trees with Ruby and watching the place burn, the flames lighting up the night sky for miles around, small pieces of ash floating into her sister’s outstretched hand. Ruby had laughed as she had wept, waiting in the glade against the red, red sky; when the morning had finally come, leaving the skeleton of one remaining wall, they had picked through the rubble and salvaged three pots and a half-burned spade. And her jewellery box, slung beneath a beam that had not quite caught fire, a small buffer against impending poverty.
She shook her head and gestured to Azziz and Toro to wait outside. Using the moment of their departure to take the acupuncture needles from his arm, she found the darkness about his eyes worrying.
‘A worthy art in the East, Emma, but here in England the pins may be misinterpreted for something else entirely.’
‘What?’
‘Witchcraft.’
She laughed at the absurdity of it, thinking of Wing-Jin and his patient teachings aboard the Mariposa.
‘A society without rules is more dangerous then a society with too many. Have you ever heard of the pirate Beau Sandford?’
The colour drained right out of her face. ‘He was an acquaintance of my father’s.’
‘The devout and honourable Reverend?”
‘The very religious treat each man as redeemable.’
She could barely utter the words said next. ‘It is said that you killed this man?’
She expected him to brag about doing just that. But he didn’t, and the pain in his eyes held her rooted to the spot, neither moving nor speaking.
My God, what had she done to him? His words from the night in the gardens at Falder came back to her. ‘I was not at home for Melanie’s funeral. I should have been home.’
She had given his statement little notice before, imagining that perhaps he was on one of his ships plying the coast of foreign lands for cargo. Could there have been a more sinister reason for his absence and for his injuries and for the sleepless midnights when he wandered his library drink in hand and waited for the dawn? She turned to leave.
‘No.’ Asher’s voice was tired, but he fought for consciousness with the same one-tracked determination as he seemed to fight everything else. ‘You will stay, Emma. The deal. Promise me that you will.’
‘I need to talk to Miriam.’
‘No. It is not safe to leave.’
‘My aunt will not understand what is happening.’
‘Taris will speak with her.’
The lines between his nose and mouth were pronounced. He was exhausted, yet he still fought to have her stay. With him.
‘This cannot be proper—’ she began, but he broke across her words and smiled.
‘Proper? When was anything proper between us?’
When she did not answer he rang the bell on his bedside table. Sweat beaded his upper lip.
‘If you are in pain, I could help you.’
‘No. Just…want your promise to stay.’ His voice shook with exhaustion and his hair was dark and damp against the white of the sheets as he instructed his servant to see her to a room.