A Lady Never Surrenders (26 page)

John entered just then. “My lord, you wanted to see me?”

“Do you know where Mr. Pinter was headed today?”

“No, sir. He requested a list of former servants and their addresses a few days ago, and I got him confirmed information last night. He didn’t say which servant he planned on visiting, though.”

“But he did say he was visiting one today?” Gran prodded.

“Actually, no. He just took the list and thanked me.” John brightened. “But perhaps one of the stable boys will know.”

“Even if he told them, he could have lied,” Gran pointed out. “Especially if he had designs on…” She cast a furtive glance at John. “Especially if he wanted to hide his true purpose.”

With a roll of his eyes, Oliver dismissed John, then turned to Hetty. “You credit Pinter with more deviousness than I. Let’s assume, for the moment, that he told the truth. If we can’t learn from the servants where he headed, Giles and I will go to town and talk to Pinter’s clerk and his aunt. One of them might know. He might even have returned home by now.”

“Wouldn’t he have come here first?” Gran pointed out.

“Not if he was hot on the heels of a lead in the case,” Oliver drawled. “But now you’ve got me curious—what exactly do you have against Pinter that makes you so dead set against him for Celia?”

The sudden shift in subject took her off guard. “Nothing, I swear!” As Oliver continued to stare skeptically at her, she said, “I happen to know a bit about the man, that’s all. And I’ve seen many of his kind through the years try to better themselves by—”

“Marrying above themselves?” Oliver said in a hard voice. “Like Mother?”

Hetty colored. “Your mother loved your father, no matter what else you might think about her. And though she was beneath him in rank, I made sure she was well-educated and had every advantage to make her a suitable wife to a marquess. While Mr. Pinter, until he was ten—”

“I know his history as well as you apparently do, Gran,” Oliver broke in. “Did you think I hired the man without finding out everything about him first?”

She blinked. She had indeed thought that.

“No matter what his childhood,” Oliver went on, “he has spent twenty-odd years making something of himself while we five sat on our arses mourning our parents. He had more to mourn than any of us, yet he worked hard to get where he is today.” He stared her down. “I admire that. And I think that Celia could do a great deal worse than to marry Jackson Pinter.”

Gran sniffed. “Well then, I only hope you are right about his character.”

Oliver gave her a pitying smile. “And I hope one day you can see it as clearly as I.” He came over to pat her on the shoulder. “Truthfully, I’m more worried about Pinter right now than I am about Celia. If they did decide to elope, it was probably at
her
instigation. Knowing my sister, they’re already halfway to Gretna Green, and the poor man is beginning to regret he ever saw her.”

Though his words were joking, Gran could hear the worry underlying his light tone.

Well, at least he was taking this seriously. And if anyone could find two runaway lovers and stop them before they did anything drastic, it was her grandson.

J
ACKSON LAY NEXT
to Celia, perfectly content. With his body wrapped about hers, he scarcely noticed the chill in the room. He scarcely noticed anything but the fact that she was in his arms, naked, and that he’d finally made her his.

She was dozing now, but he didn’t mind. In repose she lowered her guard and truly became the sprite he sometimes imagined her to be—with a half smile on her lips and her hair pouring over her shoulders like night rivers of gossamer silk.

With a soft sigh, she cuddled against him, and his heart flipped over in his chest.

The visceral response alarmed him. She might have agreed to become his wife, but matters were by no means settled. People did and said things in the heat of desire that they regretted on the morn, especially people whose lives were tied to great fortunes and age-old family connections.

She doesn’t care about any of that.

Perhaps not. And perhaps if he and Celia could stay here forever, just the two of them in this cottage alone, making love and lying in each other’s arms, they could make the rest of the world disappear. But they couldn’t stay here. Aside from the murderers lurking about, there was her family to consider. They must be frantic, wondering what had happened to her, not realizing she was with him.

Once they did, would they be grateful that he meant to marry her? Or would they refuse to allow it? He had no idea what to expect. If he’d learned anything from his mother’s tragic life, it was that the aristocracy had its own rules.

He wanted to think that the Sharpes were different, that they would support a marriage between him and Celia, but how could he be sure? He hadn’t thought Mrs. Plumtree would oppose it, yet she had.

He sighed. Should he tell Celia that she might be cut off if she married him? That she might have to give up her comfortable life entirely?

No, how could he? It might prove an idle threat, and he would have caused a rift between her and her grandmother for nothing. If Mrs. Plumtree meant to cut Celia off, let her tell Celia herself. Then it wouldn’t be on his head to explain to Celia why she was about to lose her fortune by marrying him.

Still, he needed to make sure she understood what marrying so far beneath her station might mean, fortune or no fortune. Her friends might abandon her. Her
family
might do so.

Celia might not want to endure that simply because he hadn’t been able to keep his prick in his trousers for one night.

He gazed down at her. Ah, but he hoped she would. Marriage to Celia would be …

But he mustn’t let himself hope for it too much. Not yet. He’d spent his childhood hoping for his father to return to save Mother and him and to claim him as a son, and all he’d gained was a childhood of private pain.

He was never putting himself through that again. Better to protect his heart. There would be plenty of time to lay it open for her when—
if—
he and Celia were married and joined for life.

But no matter what happened on the morrow, he would
never
regret having had this night with her.

She shivered in her sleep, and he realized that he, too, was growing colder. He left the bed to fetch her cloak and his surtout. When he returned, she was awake and watching him with a sleepy gaze.

“Did I doze off?” she asked as he climbed back in the bed.

“Yes.” He spread the warm garments over them. “I imagine you got about as little sleep as I did last night.”

“Less, probably. You left the ball early. I stayed up late talking to Minerva.”

As she turned over to face him, the surtout slipped a little. He pulled it back into place, and the brandy flask in his pocket bumped his hand. After retrieving it, he offered her some.

She sipped the liquor, then smiled up at him and handed him the flask. “Do you know I’ve never had brandy before today?”

“I should hope not.” He took a long swig. “Fine ladies do not drink brandy.” Or share the beds of unrepentant bastards.

“That’s a pity, if you ask me,” she said cheerily as she snagged the flask and swallowed more. “I’m finding it most warming.” She gulped more still. “Invigorating, even.”

Her eyes were brighter now, and her cheeks flushed. Uh oh. Bad enough that he’d ruined her. He was not going to get her drunk, too.

He took the flask from her. “That’s enough brandy for you.”

“Why?” She snuggled up close to him with a fetching pout. “No one will know.”

“I will. And trust me, you’ll regret it in the morning if you drink too much tonight.”

She made a face at him. “I see that Proper Pinter has returned.”

“Beg pardon?”

Mischief shone in her eyes. “That’s how I thought of you whenever you lectured me. Proper Pinter, hoity-toity and high in the instep.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You can call me that after what we just did?”

“Why not?” She stretched and spread her arms in a wide arc above her head. “I feel quite delightful, and you’re trying to spoil it.”

With her breasts peeking out from beneath their improvised blanket, she looked like a goddess, inciting her subjects to riot in wild debauchery.

He shook his head ruefully. “I suppose I am.”

Which is why he would save their serious discussion about marriage for the morrow. Besides, he didn’t like being thought of as “Proper Pinter.” He supported his head on one hand to gaze down into her lovely face. “Have you always called me ‘Proper Pinter’? Or is this recent?”

“Ever since we met. Though not so much anymore.” She flashed him a coquettish smile. “After you kissed me, I realized just how improper you could be.”

“I can be downright scandalous when I want,” he murmured, bending to give her a long, thorough kiss.

When he drew back, she looked pensive. “I don’t suppose this was your first … well … intimate encounter.”

“No. But neither have I had a hundred, like your brothers.”

“A hundred!” She looked horrified. “So many?”

He shouldn’t have said that. “I’m probably exaggerating.”

She thought a moment, then sighed. “Probably not. They were awful rogues until they married.” She gazed up at him with an earnest expression. “Perhaps ‘proper’ isn’t so bad after all.”

“I can think of worse nicknames,” he said, remembering the wide variety of epithets flung at him in his youth.

“At least nobody ever called you Elf.”

She looked so delightfully put out that he couldn’t help but chuckle. “How on earth did that come about, anyway?”

“I honestly don’t know.” She rested her head on her hand. “Papa said it was because I had pointy ears, which is nonsense, of course. And Nurse said it was because I was small. But all children are small.”

He gazed down at her pixie nose and the pensive expression on her heart-shaped face. “I have a theory.”

“Oh?”

“Sometimes, when you’re deep in thought, you have an otherworldly look about you that makes one think of creatures from another realm—sprites and dryads and nymphs. I imagine it did make you look a bit like an elf when you were small.”

She eyed him skeptically. “I don’t look like an elf now, do I? Because I should warn you that no one in my family has been allowed to call me Elf in many years, upon pain of death. And I’m not rescinding that for you.”

“Then I’ll call you Fairy Queen. That’s what you look like to me.”

She cast him a dazzling smile. “You do give excellent compliments, Jackson. It quite redeems your other sins.”

“And what sins are those?” he drawled.

“Being condescending. Hiding your true feelings.” Eyes sparkling, she pulled his head down to hers. “Taking months and months in getting around to kissing me.”

“I must have been mad,” he murmured before kissing her again.

This time it led to more kisses, then caresses … the hot, sweet sort that set his blood aflame. Though he protested that she must be too sore to make love, she ignored him and did her best to rouse him to madness.

So he ensured she was rapt with enjoyment beneath him before he entered her again, plunging so deeply into her warmth that he thought he might perish of the pleasure.

It was only long afterward, as she lay asleep in his arms, that he realized he’d already stopped protecting his heart.

And that wouldn’t do. Because if he weren’t careful, he could easily find it trampled beneath the boots of the Sharpe family fortune.

C
elia was freezing. She pulled the oddly thick blanket over her bare shoulders just as she heard someone stoking up a fire nearby.

“Gillie,” she muttered. “Put an extra log on, will you?”

“Not Gillie,” said a man’s voice, sounding vaguely irritated. “No servants here, I’m afraid. You’ll have to settle for me.”

She bolted upright, jerking the blanket to her chest as several things hit her at once. She wasn’t in her own bed. She was naked. And Jackson stood a few feet away, wearing only a pair of drawers, an unbuttoned shirt, and a frown.

Everything from the night before came back to her—the race through the woods, the discovery of the cottage … the lovemaking.

Heat flooded her cheeks at that last memory.

He seemed to notice, for his expression softened before he picked up his pistol and began to clean it. The last time she’d seen it, it was loaded. When had he emptied it? And how long had he been up, anyway?

“Go back to sleep,” he murmured. “There’s still an hour before dawn. I’ll wake you when it’s closer to time to leave.”

Was the man daft? Did he really think she could sleep while he walked about the cottage preparing for their escape from unknown assailants?

Apparently, he did. But since she couldn’t oblige him, she shifted to her side to watch him work.

He was swift and efficient, rather like a soldier must be. In minutes, he had the pistol cleaned and shining before he loaded it with fresh, dry powder and a patch-wrapped ball. Then he packed up his gun kit and tucked it into one saddlebag before pulling out a stiff brush.

In the process, something fell from the bag, which he picked up, opening it to stare at it. From where she lay, it looked like a watch, but he was gazing at it too long for that.

Curiosity got the better of her. “What is it?”

He started, then carried the object over. She sat up, keeping his surtout tucked up around her breasts as he handed it to her. It was a rather large locket on a fob. When she opened it, she found three portrait miniatures, one of which was affixed to a metal leaf in the middle so that the first portrait sat alone and the second sat opposite the third.

“Uncle had them done by an artist friend of his after Mother and I went to live with him and Aunt Ada in London twenty-two years ago.” Jackson pointed to the first image, of a pale and fragile young woman with dark hair and a wan smile. “That’s Mother.”

She stared at it, her heart in her throat. “She was beautiful.”