Dangerous to Love (5 page)

“Serena Ward,” she got out quickly, when he would have shaken her again. “My name is Serena Ward.”

The silence that greeted her words was long and profoundly chilling.

“Sir Robert Ward’s daughter?”

She nodded in the affirmative, her mind frantically at work as she waited for the spate of questions that was bound to follow. What was she doing here? Why had she allowed him to think that she was a woman of easy virtue? Why had she not put a stop to it sooner?

She saw the fury in his eyes. She heard the sharp intake of breath, then he released her and began to dress himself with swift competence. His silence made her so uneasy that she stood there like a petrified rabbit, afraid to make any move that might draw attention to herself.

Once dressed, he strode through the door to the little parlor. As he shrugged into his coat and belted on his smallsword, Serena, as wordless as he, picked up her cape and arranged it over her shoulders.

Events moved quickly after this. He hustled her down the stairs and out of the tavern. At the first blast of cold air, her skin came out in goose pimples. There were no trees in this stretch of road, no flower boxes, no birds singing, nothing to show that summer was just around the corner. It was April, but to Serena, it felt like the dead of winter.

Not a militiaman was in sight. After summoning a chair, he opened the door and practically flung her inside. When she turned on him, ready to do battle, he captured her hand and bowed over it with exaggerated, insulting gallantry.

“Never say that Julian Raynor does not pay his debts,” he said, and to the chairman, “The lady will give you her direction.” With that, he turned on his heel and returned to the tavern.

Serena unclenched her hand and gazed down at the object Julian Raynor had pressed into it. It was a note, drawn on the Bank of England, made out to the bearer in
the sum of fifty pounds. She looked up and caught one of the chairmen grinning at her. Glaring at him, she returned her attention to Raynor’s note. This, she thought, was the final humiliation, and her eyes narrowed to fiery slits as she stared at it.

S
erena’s fury with Julian Raynor was momentarily forgotten when her sedan turned the corner of the Strand into Buckingham Street. A new thought had taken possession of her mind. If anyone were to see her arriving home in such a state and at such an hour, it would be extremely awkward. As far as her elder brother, Jeremy, knew, she had gone with friends to Ranelagh pleasure gardens with the very proper escort of Clive.

If Jeremy were to see her now, not only would she be in trouble, but Flynn and Clive also. Jeremy knew nothing of their clandestine activities, and Serena hoped he never would. He would feel betrayed, and accuse them of jeopardizing the security of the whole family for the sake of a dead cause. But it wasn’t like that, not really. They were only trying to help a few men who had lost everything, men whose only crime was that they had fought for the wrong side. They would do as much for anyone.

It was something they had drifted into. Clive was the one who had reluctantly recruited Serena when she had surprised him in his rooms in Charles Street when he was sheltering a young Jacobite, a friend from Oxford, whose departure for France had been delayed because of the fog. There were more like him, Clive’s friend had told them, many more who could be saved if only there was someone willing to brave the risks. He had given Clive the name of a connection in Oxford, and that had been the start of it. Over time, they had developed an almost infallible strategy. After their connection, whose identity was known only to Clive, delivered their “passenger,” it was
up to them to shelter him until he could be got safely away. Last night, while she and Flynn were in The Thatched Tavern taking delivery, Clive had waited for them in a safe house close to the docks. The docks were well patrolled. When the coast was clear, Clive would signal that it was safe for them to proceed. After delivering their “passenger,” they would enjoy a glass of wine. Then she and Flynn would return to Buckingham Street under cover of darkness.

It was not dark now.

When her chair approached the last house on the street, a corner house that was closest to the riverbank, she called out to the chairmen to let her out at the side gate. There were no windows looking out on this stretch of road.

The moment she stepped down Flynn pounced on her. He had discarded the disguise, and the sparks in his green eyes matched the glitter of the tiny emerald attached to his left ear.

“I’ll pay off the chairmen,” he said, giving her a look that said far more than she wanted to hear. Then in a carrying voice to the chairmen, “When I get ’er inside, I shall box ’er ears. Where did you find ’er?”

“Who is she?” asked one of the chairmen.

“The girl I thought I wanted to marry,” said Flynn, glancing in Serena’s direction, noting with approval that she had slipped inside the wrought-iron gate and was hovering on the other side of the garden wall.

The chairmen exchanged a look, then one of them let out a bellow of laughter. “If I was you,” he said, “I’d ask ’er where she got that fifty-pound note,” and with a cheery wave, he motioned his partner to move on.

“What was that all about?” asked Serena when Flynn caught up to her.

He grasped her by the elbow and hurried her round the side of the house. “ ’Ave you lost your senses? You should
’ave sent someone to fetch me. What’s the world going to think when they see Serena Ward arriving ’ome at this time of the morning without a proper escort? You don’t look as though you ’ave been out to a fancy do. If you wants my opinion, you looks as though you’d taken a tumble in the ’ay. Let’s just ’ope that anyone who caught that little scene out there took you for one of the maids.”

In an effort to head him off, Serena said, “Where is Jeremy .  .  . and Catherine and Letty?” The night before, Jeremy had escorted his wife, Catherine, and his young sister, Letty, to Lady Noyes’s rout. These affairs were in the habit of breaking up in the wee hours of the morning.

“Where do you think? In their beds where all decent aristocrats ought to be after gallivanting all night.”

“They .  .  . they didn’t miss me?”

“Not as far as I know. When I got in late last night, they was all sleeping like babies. Do you know, can you imagine what I went through when I discovered you was not in your bed? I’ve spent ’alf the night looking for you. If you ’adn’t come ’ome when you did, I was going to wake Mr. Jeremy and confess all.”

“I’m glad it didn’t come to that.”

“I’m not so sure it wouldn’t ’ave been the best thing that could ’ave ’appened. The master wouldn’t take too kindly to a member of ’is ’ousehold aiding and abetting Jacobites. He’d soon make you fall into line, my girl.”

Serena was silent. Flynn’s words had pricked her conscience, not only because she was deceiving her family, but also because Flynn was a reluctant accomplice. It was only his devotion to her that had persuaded Flynn to help them. Oh, he was sympathetic enough to any man who found himself a fugitive and on the wrong side of the law, but he would never have committed a treasonable offense if it were not for her. Though she knew that Flynn, with
his knowledge of London and its labyrinth of underground passages, was far more essential to the escape route than she was, she had tried to leave him out of it. But Flynn would not hear of it, not so long as she was involved. She did not know what she had ever done to inspire such devotion. At one and the same time, it humbled her, and made her feel horribly, horribly guilty.

It could not be for much longer, she consoled herself. The flow of fugitives was inevitably drying up. A year had come and gone since Culloden, and it had been more than three months since the last Jacobite had passed through their hands. They had done their part and she did not regret it. At the same time, she never,
never
wanted to endure another night like the one she had just lived through.

They had come to a small brick building, the wash-house, which adjoined the coal cellar at the back of the house. Flynn motioned her inside, then went to check on the whereabouts of the other servants. Within minutes, he had returned and was beckoning her to follow him. After entering the house, Flynn led the way along a short dark corridor to the door to the servants’ staircase.

“I take it,” said Serena as soon as they had entered her bedchamber, “that everything went off well?”

“You take it correctly, if you calls ‘well’ evading the militia by the skin of our teeth, not to mention going ’alf out of my mind when I arrived ome to find your bed empty. I was under the missapre’ension, you see, that you’d found a chair or an ’ackney to take you ’ome.”

“What made you think that?”

“Because I went back to fetch you, just as soon as I deposited our mutual friend in the underground drain. You wasn’t in the tavern, so where the devil was you?”

“You went back to the tavern when the militia were still there?”

“Why shouldn’t I? They wasn’t looking for me or you. They was looking for Jacobites. Now, I’ll ’ave the ’ole story, and mind you, no evasions or ’alf-truths. Where ’ave you been? And what’s all this about a fifty-pound note?”

Serena’s relationship with her footman was an odd one, to say the least. Though Flynn was only twenty, he had the longest tenure of any of the Wards’ servants. He was indulged to a degree. At the same time, he was Serena’s most ardent protector, having attached himself to her from the first day he had joined Sir Robert’s household, at six years old, as a page.

At twenty, Flynn had matured into a broad-shouldered, strong-limbed, good-looking young man. His features were refined. His fair hair had a tendency to curl. A smile was forever lurking at the back of his intelligent green eyes. Though he was a footman, and wore the plain gray livery of the Ward household, with his powdered hair, and the emerald winking in his ear, he had the look of a dandy. Clive Ward, who was younger than Flynn by a year, tended to follow Flynn’s modes rather than those of his own set.

As Flynn plumped himself down on the bed, Serena sank onto her dressing-table stool, and folded her hands together. She really wasn’t up to this. What she wanted was to rant and rave and break dishes and annihilate the character of Julian Raynor. Then, after a bout of weeping, she would start on herself.

She was twenty-three years old, and not once since she had entered society had any man succeeded in taking advantage of her, though some had tried. Putting men in their places was one of the things she did really well. Last night and this morning she had not put Julian Raynor in his place. In thinking that she could control him, she had
committed a fatal error. He had used her and then abased her, and he had earned her undying hatred.

“Well?” said Flynn at length. “Shall we begin with the fifty-pound note? ’Ow did you come by it?”

She dared not tell him the whole truth. That was the trouble with ardent protectors. They could not be relied upon to keep a cool head. If Flynn were to discover what she had suffered at Raynor’s hands, there was no saying what he would do. She didn’t care what happened to Julian Raynor, but she had no wish to see Flynn hanged for murder. As for her brothers, if they got to hear of it, they would challenge Raynor to a duel, and from what she had heard of Raynor’s skill with smallsword and pistol, that idea was not to be entertained either.

“It was like this,” she said, and began on a carefully expurgated account of the night’s events. When she came to the conclusion of her tale, she looked at Flynn hopefully.

Arms akimbo, he stared at her. “Are you saying,” he asked with insulting incredulity, “that the major fell asleep without laying a ’and on you?”

“It was the wine. I told you he had too much to drink. And I encouraged it.”

“And that when you both wakened in the morning, you told ’im your name, just like that, and ’e gave you a fifty-pound note to pay off the chairmen?”

“I think he recognized me, that’s why I told him my name.”

“Serena, your cheeks are bloomin’ and we both know what that means.”

Serena had a trick of composing her features that would have done credit to the queen of England. “Flynn,” she said gently, “it is not for you to question your employer.”

“So, there
is
more to it than you are telling me.”

Serena pressed her lips together.

Murder kindled in his eyes. “Never say that Raynor ravished you!”

This was intolerable. She wasn’t ready to think, much less speak about Julian Raynor and what had happened between them. “Of course he didn’t ravish me!” she snapped. “I told you what happened.”

“Yes, well, that may do very well for a judge and jury, but it won’t wash with me. Serena, this is Flynn you are talking to.” He flung his arms wide. “And I knows you.” Head cocked to one side, he said musingly, “So, ’e didn’t ravish you. That means ’e seduced you. Am I right?”

Her smile was tight and not very encouraging.

Flynn scratched his chin, taking in her crumpled frock, and the ruffled feathers on her cape. “If you played your cards right, my girl, you could snare the major,” he said.