Dreamspinner (6 page)

Spying him, she waved and walked faster. Her fresh young face and lush, lithe body awakened an absurd longing in him. Desire, pure and simple, he assured himself. She aroused nothing more than physical passion in him, a passion that would play an integral role in executing his plot. Any capacity in him for affection had died forever nearly three years earlier, on the rocky slope below Castle Radcliffe.

So why did shame sour his soul? He’d half expected Juliet Carleton to change her mind; he’d prayed she would foil his plan. It was as if he wanted her to stop him from committing this coldblooded act. Yet here she came, her eyes the gold edged green of a forest and her smile as soft as a dream.

Dreamspinner.
The name scourged his mind and fortified his resolve. Today he would make no more mistakes; today he would permit no more slips of temper to spark her suspicions. But God! Who could have blamed him for forgetting himself when she’d uttered that cursed name? Who could condemn him for feeling bitter fury that Emmett Carleton had had the temerity to dub his daughter Dreamspinner?

Forcing an amiable smile, Kent repressed the events that had driven him to this reckless stratagem. Juliet Carleton was his best weapon, his only weapon. Principle had no place in his scheme. Honor would bring no victory in this fight, not when he battled a man as ruthless as Emmett Carleton.

With gentlemanly courtesy, he straightened as the two women stopped before him.

“Good morning, Your Grace,” Juliet said, and sank into the obligatory curtsy, one hand balanced on her folded yellow parasol.

The sight of a Carleton paying homage to a Deverell should have pleased him; instead, he felt vaguely irritated. “Please,” he said, keeping his voice congenial, “there’s no need for such formality between friends.”

“I’d like you to meet the Lady Maud Peabody,” she said. “Maud, His Grace, the Duke of Radcliffe.”

Kent dragged his gaze from her pretty smile and over to her companion. Clad in a gauzy pink gown, Lady Maud reminded him of an elegant iced confection.

“I’m honored.” His ladyship dipped a curtsy, but she was squinting at him so avidly, she almost tripped on her voluminous skirts.

He reached out to steady her arm. Her myopic regard told him she’d heard the scandalous rumors and hoped to find out more. He had no intention of having her tag along as chaperone.

“Peabody,” he said. “Would your father be Lord Arthur Peabody?”

“Yes, Your Grace. Are you acquainted with him?”

“We’re both longtime members of Brooks’s Club. Although I’ve been away from London for some years, I’m sure he’d be more than happy to vouch for my character.”

She nodded with a shade too much vigor. “Oh, yes. Yes, I’m sure he would.”

“Then perhaps you won’t mind leaving Miss Carleton and me– .”

“Gracious, will you look at that!” One hand supporting her ostrich plumed hat, Lady Maud tilted her head back and gazed up the colossal length of the obelisk, the tip shrouded in fog. “Egad, it’s tall, isn’t it? Do you suppose it really belonged to Cleopatra?”

“The Pharoah Thothmes the Third,” Juliet read from the plaque on the granite pedestal.

Lady Maud bent closer, her nose nearly brushing the bronze tablet as she peered at the inscription. “Fashioned in five hundred B.C.,” she gushed. “Or is that fifteen hundred? Ah, well, no matter, it’s all so terribly ancient. Imagine, Cleopatra’s Needle once baked beneath the hot sun of Egypt. Isn’t that fascinating, Your Grace?”

Kent repressed a grin at her transparent attempt to distract him. “Quite. However, I’d far prefer to take a stroll with Miss Carleton than suffer a history lesson.”

“In a moment,” Lady Maud said. “I haven’t yet examined either of the sphinxes—”

“Then please feel free to remain here.” He offered his arm to Juliet, whose eyes danced with laughter. An answering humor quirked the corners of his mouth. “Shall we, Miss Carleton?”

She tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. “As you wish, Your Grace.”

Lady Maud sucked in a dramatically deep breath of pungent river air. “Ah, it’s such an invigorating morning. I do believe I shall take my constitutional with you.”

“I’d like a
private
chat with Miss Carleton. Might we escort you back to your carriage?”

Even her ladyship couldn’t ignore such a blatant directive; she looked as woebegone as a child denied a sweet. “Oh, fiddle. No need to bother yourselves. Digby’ s waiting right over there.” She made a vague gesture toward the roadway beyond the gardens. “But is this quite proper, Your Grace?”

“I give you my solemn vow not to ravish Miss Carleton on the Embankment.” He regarded the tip of Juliet’s parasol. “Besides, she’s undoubtedly quite capable of defending her own virtue.”

Maud uttered a sound halfway between a gasp and a giggle. “How boldly you speak! Surely Juliet would prefer me to stay.” A hopeful light gleamed in her eyes.

Smiling, Juliet shook her head. “I shan’t be long, I promise.”

Feet dragging, Maud walked off, casting an occasional disappointed glance over her shoulder.

“She’s quite the determined character,” Kent said as they started down the broad walkway that hugged the curving north bank of the Thames. “Is she always so difficult to dislodge?”

“Only when she thinks she’s missing out on the excitement.”

“Do
you
find me exciting, Miss Carleton?”

The quiet question shook Juliet. Despite the barrier of his gray morning coat and her gloves, she could detect the powerful muscles of his arm beneath her fingers, and the sensation made her blood surge with unnerving heat. She could gaze for an eternity into the jet black mystery of his eyes, listen for eons to the husky cadence of his voice, inhale forever the heady spice of his scent.

“Yes, I do,” she admitted.

He stared. “May I presume, then, you’re not afraid of me?”

An ironic smile touched her lips. “The only thing I’m afraid of is what my father will do should he learn I’ve come to meet you.”

“He didn’t raise a hand to you last night, did he?” Kent stopped and gripped her arms; as it searching for bruises, his gaze raked her face. “How can I make peace with a man who mistreats you?”

The protective menace he radiated both gratified and dismayed Juliet. “He’s never mistreated me,” she hastened to say. “He’s no monster, despite what your father might have told you. Papa forbade me to see you, that’s all.”

“Yet you’re here.”

Replete with dark satisfaction, his eyes glittered down at her. His hands rubbed gently over her thin sleeves. She stood paralyzed by the warmth flowing through her, sluggish as honey, pooling deep inside her belly. Even as he let her go, the phantom feel of his touch lingered on her skin.

Somehow with Maud along, this meeting had seemed less like an act of disobedience, less like a clandestine tryst. Juliet suddenly worried that the duke might misread her unladylike eagerness to see him again.

“Papa harbors a great dislike for you,” she said. “But I prefer to form my own opinions.”

“Where did you tell him you went today?”

“I didn’t... I told Mama that Maud and I were going to the glover’s shop.”

“I’ve no wish to cause trouble between you and your parents. Yet I can’t bear to think I might never see you again.” Again he touched her, his fingertips brushing her cheek m a feathery caress. “You’re like a hothouse rose, sealed off from me.”

His low pitched words burned into her heart. To cover her confusion, she walked to the border of the path, where a sapling stood, its trunk encircled by a wrought iron fence in figured arabesques. “Sometimes I feel like this elm,” she murmured, reaching up to finger a leaf. “Allowed to thrive, yet confined to a pretty cage.”

“Except today,” he said, close beside her. “Today no one is fencing you in.”

Was it only her wild fancies that imbued his voice with a suggestive undertone? Uncertain, she studied the sun bronzed angles of his face; he seemed so much older and more experienced. Did Kent Deverell understand the reckless needs churning inside her, the ache for adventure that drew her to him?

“A lady isn’t supposed to have independent ideas,” she said. “What do you think of a woman pursuing an interest in botany?”

“I think it’s no sin to be young and full of ideas. Do you see that statue over there?” He pointed to a sculpture of Prince Albert, standing in romantic elegance on a gray granite pedestal beyond the row of elms. “It was done by Elizabeth Ware, the Countess of Hawkesford. She’s managed to succeed in both pursuing her dream and being a lady, all at the same time.”

Intrigued, Juliet stepped closer, leaning on her parasol as she examined the fine detailing on the bronze statue. A tiny swan imprint was stamped into the base. “I read about her latest gallery showing, though I don’t believe she socializes much. She was raised in America, wasn’t she?”

Kent nodded, bending to pluck a blade of grass. “I’ve a passing acquaintance with Nicholas Ware, enough to know he encourages his wife’s desire to pursue art.”

“I wish I could convince my parents that a woman can do more with her life than make a brilliant match.”

“Perhaps,” he said, idly feathering the grass blade along her jaw, “my Lady Botanist should try to find a man as tolerant as Lord Hawkesford.”

The caress made her shiver, made her blurt out the thought that had hugged her heart since she’d drifted into a fretful sleep the night before;
“You
could court me.”

His fingers tensed; then methodically he began to shred the stalk of grass. “I believe I already am.”

A wild flurry of longing drove her breath away. “Then you’ll call on me?”

“You’re forgetting your father. After last night, I doubt Emmett Carleton will ever invite me to enter his house.”

“You mustn’t give up so easily. Give me time to work on him, and he’ll come around, you’ll see.”

“Will he?” Sounding cynical, he took her arm and guided her along the footpath curving toward the black iron expanse of the Charing Cross railway bridge. “I’ve no taste for dodging fist brawls.”

Her fingers tightened around the parasol handle. “I’ll speak to him again, try to make him see the senselessness of the feud—”

“No!” The word sliced through the misty air. Turning her to face him, Kent went on in a husky tone, “You’d only enrage him. He might send you away, and I couldn’t bear to lose you. Not now, Juliet, when I’ve only just found you.”

His callused fingertips grazed the soft skin below her ear in a way that left her giddy and breathless. A few passersby glanced curiously, and she tried to summon outrage that he should take such liberties, as if she were a parlor maid accustomed to open caresses. But she could find only exhilaration within herself and a shocking desire to feel his body pressed to hers.

“I don’t want to lose you, either,” she whispered.

“Then let’s not chance telling your father. We mustn’t allow the shadow of family rivalry to taint our precious time together.”

In her heart she knew he was right; she couldn’t be certain how Papa would react if she spoke in support of a Deverell. A thrill pulsated through her veins, the thrill of obeying her own instincts and learning all the secrets of this intriguing man.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll keep quiet—at least for now.”

The vow seemed to satisfy Kent. He shifted the conversation to the plantings of shrubs and flowers in the Embankment gardens, then to speculation on the people they passed.

“That one’s definitely a schoolmaster,” said Juliet, as a man scurried by, pince-nez glasses perched on his beak nose.

“Then why isn’t he in the classroom? I say he’s a detective from Scotland Yard.” Kent cocked a dark eyebrow. “In disguise.”

She laughed. “It’s just as likely he’s a musician going to rehearsal at the Savoy Theatre. His shoulders are stooped from bending over the piano.”

“He’s heading in the wrong direction, then. The Savoy’s behind us.” His expression sobered. “Excuse me a moment.”

Letting go of her arm, Kent veered toward a street sweeper. The white bearded man wore a turban and tattered robe as he wielded a broom, slowly and steadily cleaning the pathway beside the granite wall overlooking the river. Kent said something in a foreign tongue and pressed a coin into the sweeper’s palm. The man’s wizened brown face lit up. Chattering gratefully, he bowed.

The duke’s humane gesture struck Juliet with a mixture of admiration and chagrin. She’d walked right past the laborer without even noticing him.

The moment Kent returned, she said, “That was kind of you. What did you say to him?”

“Just a greeting in his native tongue.”

“What language is that?”

“Hindustani.”

“Where did you learn to speak it? In India?”

“Yes. I visited there as a boy.”

Juliet recalled what her father had said about the ruin of the Deverell business interests. “Have you ever been back?”

“No, never.”

As Kent gazed toward the fog veiled spires of Westminster, his face looked somber, his features drawn tight into an expression that verged on sadness. She had the impression his thoughts had drifted to somewhere far beyond this chilly gray morning, and she ached to share his musings and ease his troubles.

“Do you spend most of your time at Castle Radcliffe?”

As if he’d forgotten her presence, he stared at her. “Yes. I farm my lands there.”

“Do you live alone?”

“My cousin and his wife make their home with me.” In a distracted voice, he added, “The Embankment will be growing crowded soon, Miss Carleton. We mustn’t risk word getting back to your father, so I’ll return you to your carriage now.”

His sudden formality left Juliet hurt and disappointed. She sensed that any effort to probe into his confidential affairs would prove futile. If he wanted to court her, why did he shut her out the moment she asked questions about his life? Perhaps she was too impatient. Perhaps he only worried that this was too public a place for private conversations.

He held her arm as they walked through the gardens and toward the roadway. Was the brush of his leg against her skirt by accident or design? Her heart trembled, fragile as a new blooming violet. Kent Deverell was a riddle; she wanted to probe the depths of a man who had loved and lost, a proud man who had suffered such tragic misfortune...