Drake's Lair (27 page)

The pounding came again, along with the echo of two voices attempting to drown out a string of obscenities that caused her breath to catch. And she unlocked the door, trusting Griggs’s plea, for fear he would be the one to come to harm.

“What do the lot of you mean, making such a racket at this hour?” she cried.

“I couldn’t prevent him, Miss Melly,” Griggs panted. His arm was looped through the earl’s despite the bandages. Smithers tethered him on the opposite side with both hands, while two other liveried footmen danced attendance. “I told Hale we should have dosed him. You heard me,” the valet complained.

“You promised you’d stay,” the earl said to her.

“And I have, but I shan’t if you don’t go back and get into bed at once, my lord. You have a cracked skull! If you should fall—”

“I shan’t fall unless these fools trip me up. Unhand me—the pair of you! The rest of you, get back. I can stand on my own.”

They obliged, and when he swayed, Melly cried out as he steadied himself against the doorjamb.

“I want a word with you alone,” he said, pushing past her into the room.

She glanced at Griggs, then at Smithers, who both tried to enter behind him, only to find themselves promptly ejected and the door slammed shut in their faces.

“Stay out there, or go. I don’t care,” he shouted through the door. “I mean to have a word with Lady Ahern alone. She is perfectly safe. If she wants rescuing, she has only to scream; it’s not locked. But if you dare open it before she does so, you’re all sacked. I mean it, Griggs. Don’t put me to the test.”

A hushed mumbling sound replied, and he turned back to face Melly where she stood staring at him, her hand over her lips. Another breath caught in her throat as he took a ragged step nearer.

“Say your piece and leave, sir,” she demanded, backing away. “This is most improper. I am exhausted from tending you, and I do not take it kindly that you do your best to render all of my hard work for naught.”

“May I sit?” he said, sweeping his arm toward the wing chair.

“I’d rather you sit in your own chamber, my lord.”

He sank into the wing chair nonetheless. He was wearing a burgundy brocade dressing gown, which he shouldn’t have put on over his burned shoulder. His hooded eyes and tight lips attested to the bad judgment of that. The robe gapped as he sat, showing a broad, well-muscled chest, but the skirt gapped as well, exposing a lean, corded leg to the hip. She gasped in spite of herself. He was naked underneath it.

“Please state your business and leave before the laudanum wears off and they have to carry you,” she murmured, trying to keep her gaze from returning to that well-turned thigh.

“What the deuce are you wearing?” he said, frowning toward her costume, and she shifted the carriage robe to cover more of her shoulders.

“Mrs. Laity’s nightgown,” she said, her voice breaking into falsetto.

“Didn’t I provide you with nightgowns?”

“You did, my lord. I prefer to wear this.”

“Why?”

“I’d rather not say, my lord. You didn’t come here to critique my attire. Please state your business, and leave.”

“You’re beautiful even in that ridiculous rig,” he said genuinely.

“My lord,
please
.”

“I forced my way in on you just now, because I awoke to find you gone, and I thought you’d broken your promise.”

“I’m not in the habit of breaking promises, my lord.”

“I see that now, and I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. May I now go to bed?”

“Not quite yet,” he returned. “Since I’m here, there is something I need to say to you. I greatly misjudged you, Demelza, and drove you from this house. I shan’t tell you what I thought—”

“I know what you thought,” she interrupted, tossing her ringlets haughtily. “How you could possibly think it is beyond me.”

“Circumstantial evidence,” he replied.

“Yes, well, that has condemned more than one innocent soul to the gallows I daresay. It doesn’t matter. It’s over and done with. I should like to forget it. Believe me, it isn’t important.”

“It’s important to me. In driving you away, I put you in danger. The threat still exists, more so now, outside of my protection. Jim Ellery has extorted thousands of pounds from me over the past five years, siphoning off blunt for repairs that were never made on my properties, and paying non-existent employees. The Terrill croft was among them. Six months ago, he debited my accounts for a new roof on that house. The repairs were never made. The roof was rotted through. Young Will Terrill died unnecessarily. A new roof would have held when that rotted tree fell. That’s why I went to help the work crew with the repairs, why I was in the area when your cottage burned. I wanted to see for myself. I needed to be sure.”

“My lord,” she said in a softer voice, “mightn’t we have this conversation tomorrow… when you’ve rested. You look ghastly… your color—”

“No. I’ll have this said tonight if you please. I’d rather die right here as I am than take the chance you might run from me again before it’s told. Old Hale wants me awake, does he not—jostling me every hour lest I lapse into coma? I know how badly I’m hurt. If I should die with this unsaid, and you came to harm…”

Melly sank down on the edge of the bed. Her legs would no longer support her. Would the man never cover his leg? An inch or two to the right, and…

“T-then, please be brief,” she murmured, “or I
will
scream for Griggs. I won’t have your death on my conscience.”

“I didn’t run off insensitive to your situation and leave you here with no thought to our bargain,” he went on. “I took Griggs with me on a tour of my crofts. It couldn’t wait. What I found there was quite shocking, but not unexpected. The evidence we uncovered was all in the ledgers, most of which were destroyed in that fire. But I still have enough proof in the ones in the valuables chest to put Jim Ellery away for a good long time. My bankers, Bradshaw and Mills, reviewed them all before I left with Griggs.”

“And all the while, you thought—”

“That you and Jim were lovers? Yes. I hardly knew you, but I did know Jim, and unfortunately, I tarred you with the same brush. I knew he would never let someone like you slip through his fingers. And he did have the advantage. He’d known you longer.”

“But, why would that be of interest to you? I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t either, until you left Drake’s Lair, and then, the night of the fire, after I’d put Jim out, and Mrs. Laity told me what really happened here in your rooms… I’m not mad, Demelza, I’ve fallen in love with you. I was so happy that I was wrong, I behaved like a giddy schoolboy and frightened the poor woman half to death. I don’t blame her for labeling me a Bedlamite.

“I was coming to find you—to warn you about Jim. I knew he’d come after you. He’s desperate. He’s rolled up. Two men came here after him with a handful of vowels just before I tossed him out of here. He knows that you have money now, and unless I miss my guess, he’s going to try to get his hands on it one way or another.”

Melly’s breath caught, and she stiffened.

“I went upstairs to collect my cloak, and saw a shadow on the lawn from my chamber window,” he went on. “The rest is still hazy. I know I went to investigate. I think I had my pistol, it’s missing from my chiffonier, and I know I was struck from behind. I believe it was Jim. I also believe it was Jim I saw running away from your burning cottage that night.”

“But, why would he?” she cried, vaulting off the bed.

“I’ve no idea, but I’d bet what’s left of my blunt it was him, and I’d bet he started the fire downstairs in that study as well trying to get rid of me before I could expose him.”

“My God!” she breathed.

“Demelza,” he murmured, struggling to his feet. When he swayed, she reached to support him, and he pulled her close in his arms. “I wouldn’t blame you if you never spoke to me again, but I can prove everything I’ve just said. Bradshaw and Mills will back me up. If you’ll only consent to stay until they arrive. They’re coming from Truro… the storm must have delayed them.”

She gave it thought, but not for long.

“
Zeus
!” he cried suddenly. “The
will
.”

“What will?” she murmured.

“My will. After I’d warned you, I was going up to Truro to my solicitor there. Jim stands to inherit a goodly sum if I should die. I need to cancel that at once.”

He was clearly disoriented. His eyes flashed about the room, as though he were trying to conjure memory from the shadows. Melly’s head was reeling. She didn’t know what to believe. He seemed to be making sense, but, while her heart said one thing, her head was saying something else entirely, and she strained against his embrace.

“You need to go back to your bed,” she murmured. “Your burns… I can see that you’re in pain.”

“I’m in pain, Demelza, but not from the burns,” he said, stripping the carriage robe away. His hand was trembling as he reached to fondle her shoulder.

“We have differences,” she said. “I don’t think we can resolve them, my lord.”

“Will you at least call me Drake?”

“If you wish, but I doubt that will solve anything.”

“You are such a mystery,” he whispered against her hair. “Why won’t you wear the nightgowns I gave you?”

“Because they belonged to Eva,” she said honestly, “because I’m not… elegant like she was… because I feel ridiculous in them… because I know how much you loved her… because—”

“Who told you I loved her?” he snapped, holding her at arm’s length.

“E-everyone,” she stammered, trying to wrench free of his grip.

“Did Jim tell you that?”

“Please, you’re frightening me!”

“Answer me! Who told you that?”

“E-everyone says that you nearly went mad when she died.”

“I thought I loved her once,” he admitted, “when we were courting. She was beautiful, yes, and sought after by every buck in Town. Maybe I would have married her if she hadn’t tricked me into it telling me she was pregnant with my child. I don’t honestly know. At any rate, she wasn’t pregnant, and our life together was… a disaster. Whatever I felt for her early on, I despised her when she died.”

“But you were so distraught, you—”

“Because of my
son
, not because of Eva. God help me if she hadn’t died, I believe I would have killed her. Love her?
Zeus
, Demelza! You don’t know.”

“But I do, Drake—” she said bravely, “—all of it.”

His dark stare held her relentlessly. She had never seen such a look in the eyes of any living creature in all her life, and she twisted frantically in his grip in a desperate attempt to distance herself from it.

“W-who told you?” he demanded. “I know it wasn’t Hale. Was it Griggs? Mrs. Laity?
Who
?”

“Let me go, Drake, you’re hurting me,” she shrilled.

“
Jim
! It was Jim wasn’t it? When? When, Demelza?”

“Two days ago, I went up to Truro on the mail coach to replace my wardrobe,” she said guardedly.

“You were alone with him?”

“O-only on the post chaise returning. That’s when he told me.”

“That tale wasn’t fit for your ears. That’s why
I
never told you.”

“I asked him to tell me, Drake.”

“Why?”

“I’d rather not say. I think you need to go back to bed now. You’re in pain, and there’s no point to this.”

“I’ll ask you again. Why did you want him to tell you?”

She braved a look in his eyes. They were wild with rage, reminding her of that day at the edge of the wood, when she was so certain he was about to strike her, and tears threatened again. Was he lapsing back into madness? What would calm him? The truth? She wouldn’t lie.

“I asked him because I knew I was falling in love with you,” she murmured, “but I also love what I do, what I believe I was born to do. I told you that day in the meadow, when you grabbed me, and shook me, and hurt me like you’re doing now, when you nearly struck me down… This is who I am… this is what I do, and it helps people. That gives me purpose, and joy. I’m good at it, and I cannot—will not—give it up… not even for you. You may as well know that my herbal salve is what took the fire out of your burns… what’s healing Griggs’s hands—”

“Demelza—”

“No! It’s just as well we’ve had this conversation after all, because it’s shown me that exactly what I feared is true. Our differences are too great to resolve. Because of what happened five years ago, you would never be able to trust me.”

“You’re going to think for me now are you?” he snapped. Crushing her close, he cupped her face in his hand and raised it until their eyes met. “I smelled your lilacs last night,” he murmured, speaking between feather-light kisses on her face, her throat, her shoulder, “I saw your bluebells, I listened to the rustling of the rowan leaves in the spring breeze. I felt your love of the land, of the things that come from the earth. I knew that balm you stroked on my shoulder was one of your deuced concoctions—”

“You heard me… felt that?” she marveled. “You shouldn’t have put on the dressing gown. You’ve probably undone all the good it did.”

“I could take it off,” he murmured, his voice husky with desire.

“You
are
mad! Don’t you
dare
!” she breathed, pulling away from the pressure of his turgid body pressed against her with precious little in between.

“Being in love is a kind of madness,” he observed, “the worst kind of madness… the severest pain. I’ve never felt this way in my life. If this is love, then I have never been in love before, and quite frankly, I don’t know how to act. I know I’ve overwhelmed you, and I never meant to hurt you… not that day by the wood… not now. That you could love me is totally beyond my imagining, but what I felt in your arms in that wine cellar gave me hope. I shan’t ask for a commitment. I know it’s too soon. Please don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to force myself upon you, Demelza. Regardless of what Jim has doubtless told you, I have never forced myself upon a woman in my life; believe me, I’ve never had to. There isn’t a lady or ladybird in the realm that could say I ever conducted myself like anything other than a gentleman. Now then, I’ll go back to my room and behave myself if you’ll promise me one thing…”