Fascination -and- Charmed (85 page)

“Good. Lady Philipa has misused you. Now
we
shall use her. It must be as I have always told you. The two of them will die together.”

The idea found new merit with Etienne. He had already made a private pact to marry Philipa rapidly and in secret to ensure there could be no impediment to his gaining Cloudsmoor. Perhaps Anabel’s plan would be preferable after all.

“Do you understand me?” she asked.

He nodded slowly.

“Answer me,” she shouted.

He detested her common, strident voice—a legacy from her coarse mother. “Yes,” he agreed. “We must be cautious.”

“We must do what I say we must do.” With that she smashed the priceless Ravenscroft dish against the hearth. “Listen well. And do as you are told.”

Pippa, her throat so raw she felt she might never swallow again, entered the castle by a little-used door in the west wing. Almost no one came this way, and she had learned how to come and go to her apartments in relative privacy.

He had told her to leave him—to leave him forever.

Calum did not want them to part, she was certain he did not. But he was afraid of something and he would not let her help him. She smiled bitterly. He was a man. It would never occur to him that she
could
help him.

“Pippa.” She heard her name and saw the duke at the same moment. “I have been desperately searching for you, my dear. Please, we must talk.”

She opened her mouth to tell him she never, ever wanted to talk to him about anything. Some shred of prudence stilled her tongue. “Good morning, Franchot. I trust you enjoyed the fair last night.”

Some odd expression…
sadness?...
entered his face. “I have been very remiss in my treatment of you. I see that now and I hope you will allow me to make amends before we become husband and wife.”

Pippa felt her eyes widen.

“I can see you are not moved to take my declaration seriously,” he continued. “And I cannot blame you. But I throw myself upon your charitable spirit—and my dear sister has told me how very charitable you are. Please, may we be friends, my dearest?”

Pippa’s stomach rolled unpleasantly. “Friendship is always so much more agreeable than the alternative,” she told him, making to pass by. “It is a pleasant morning, Your Grace. I’m certain you would enjoy a stroll.”

“I do not want a stroll,” he snapped, before his smile spread once more. “Forgive me. This is not easy, this confession. I am a proud man and it has been a fault that has not served me well. Will you come and sit with me on the window seat here? We can look out at your pleasant morning while I tell you what concerns me.”

There seemed no choice but to do as he asked. The window he indicated made a half circle. Worn tapestry covered the seat cushions.

When she was settled, Franchot sat also—facing her and closer than made her comfortable. In the harsh light of morning, she saw the web of red veins that held the whites of his eyes and she could not help but smell stale drink on his breath.

He cleared his throat and smiled engagingly. “We have not at all had a good beginning. Perhaps it did not help that so much was assumed from the very time of your birth. A man needs something to conquer, and you were already mine. No chase, don’t you see?”

She breathed in slowly through her nose.

“My loss, of course. Should have noticed what a prize you were. I’d like to make amends, er, Philipa. Could we begin by having you call me Etienne?”

Something was wrong here. She was not such a fool as to believe he’d had so great a change of heart.

“Want to apologize for that little…Well, there was the time I pushed you somewhat. Poor form. Regret it. Can we put it behind us?”

“We can try,” she said, longing to escape.

“Good, good!” He positively grinned and reached to pat her hands in her lap. “Now to the part that’s not so pleasant. I’ve heard something very troublesome about our friend Innes.”

Pippa swallowed.

“I can see that troubles you. You like him. Don’t blame you for that. I do myself. Or I did. He’s a bounder, Philipa. Word has it he boasted in London about hating me and intending to cripple me financially.”

She found her tongue. “That’s outrageous. How would he do such a thing?”

Franchot pursed his lips and spread his hands on his thighs. “At first it was thought he intended to trick you into marriage to get his hands on Cloudsmoor. Would mean he’d be able to charge me anything he liked to get Franchot tin to market. Did he suggest anything like that? Trust me now and be honest. I shan’t hold it against you.”

“No,” she said automatically. “Of course not.” That Franchot needed her dowry was no mystery. He’d be bound to feel threatened by any competition for her hand.

He sighed and shook his head. “Almost wish you’d said yes.”

She frowned at him. “Why?”

“Because that would make the worse charge less likely.”

“The worse charge?”

“Fantastic, my dear,” Franchot said. “Absolutely fantastic, but I fear it’s true. Innes is deluded. He plans to have you because he thinks you belong to him by right.”

“But—” No, she must not be tricked. “That is more ridiculous than fantastic, Franchot.”

“Call me Etienne, I beg you. It is absolutely factual. I’m now convinced that what I’ve been told is the truth.”

Pippa edged away a little. “Then please don’t keep me in suspense a moment longer. Share this truth with me.”

“He believes that he is the rightful Duke of Franchot.”

“Women were contrary.

They were a damnable nuisance.

A man should avoid, at all costs, allowing a woman to ensnare any part of his body or mind.

“Damn it all,” Calum said, hovering in the entrance to the minstrel’s gallery Pippa would have to pass when she left her apartments. “Did she have to take me so literally?”

A door opened and he drew back into the gallery. Holding his breath, he waited for the sound of footsteps. They came and he timed his appearance with their approach to the gallery.

“Good afternoon…” Nelly Bumstead came to a halt, a heavy water jug in her hands, a startled expression in her open face. “Good afternoon, Nelly,” Calum said, smiling and clasping his hands behind him as he turned to walk further into the gallery and look down over the elegantly proportioned vestibule below.

He heard Nelly’s muttered “Good afternoon, sir” before she bustled away.

That female who had wormed a way into his brain was making a damn fool of him. And he needed her. He needed her at once. Well, Justine was playing the piano in one of the rooms on the floor below. Pippa would be alone now, so he’d just play her silly game and go groveling to her. Well…not that, exactly.

He left the gallery and clamped a hand over his heart. Pippa, dressed in a russet-colored riding habit and a beguiling brown velvet bonnet, was closing her door. She saw him and for an instant seemed about to return to her apartments.

“Pippa,” he whispered urgently. “I must talk to you.”

She let her hand fall from the door handle and walked slowly toward him. “I thought you told me to stay away from you. Wasn’t the word ‘destroy’ used? Or did I imagine that?”

“Please. This is no time for recriminations. I was deeply troubled.”

“And you aren’t deeply troubled anymore.”

“I’ve been deeply troubled for five days,” he said before caution could stop him. “That is the length of time during which you have avoided me.”

“As I’ve just told you, I felt I had to abide by your wishes.”

“Well, I’ve changed my mind. Remember I told you I might need your hideaway?”

She grimaced. “My hideaway where I get no chance to hide?”

“The same. How far is it?”

“Not so far. An hour on a good horse.”

Relief made him sag. “Exactly what I need. Will you come with me to meet Struan? I believe it’s important that I have help near at hand, but not too near. I should like you to allow me to take him to your cabin. Will you agree?”

“Why?”

“There is no time to explain. Only believe that I would never do anything to harm you.”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and he saw her struggle with her decision before she said, “I do believe you cast some spell over me, Calum Innes. You keep casting that spell. Come, you say, and I come. Go, and I go. And now it is come again. And,
yes—
I will come.”

They left the stables separately and by the back path Calum had used on the morning the fair had arrived. Once past the castle walls, the route agreed upon took them north, toward the highway winding between Chauncey and Franchot lands.

Pippa, after managing to gather some food, had left last but easily found Calum in the appointed copse of birches on a knoll where they could see the highway without being seen from any direction.

Already the light had begun to fail.

“You will have to stay close behind me,” Pippa told Calum, who held a second horse by a leading rein. “I know the way well, but it is narrow in places.”

“We’ll follow well enough,” he said.

Hatless and minus a neckcloth, he wore the collar of his shirt open beneath a dark coat. Pippa found herself fascinated by the black hair that showed on his chest.

“What holds your attention?” Calum asked. “Are you shocked that I’d come to you without a neckcloth?”

“I wish you need never wear a neckcloth.”

Silence swelled between them.

“You are impetuous, lady.”

“I know.”

“Your mama should have taught you not to say the first thing you think.”

“I had no mama to teach me anything.”

“Forgive me. I’d forgotten.”

“Yes.” She did find his chest…spellbinding. “Men are so differently made from women. But I expect you’d noticed that.”

“Possibly.” He shifted in his saddle.

His legs were powerfully elegant. Lithe. The long, large muscles shifted beneath buff-colored breeches in a manner that mesmerized Pippa.

“Is there now something remarkable about my breeches, my lady?”

“Only because
you
are wearing them.”

He laughed shortly. “You are incorrigible. Beyond help where propriety is concerned.”

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Probably long past any help at all. I should like to touch your legs. They are very hard, I imagine. They would feel—”

“God, give me strength!”

“Oh, He always does if we ask.”

“Watch for the carriage, Pippa.”

“We shall hear it. I would rather watch you.”

Calum brought his mount closer and leaned over its neck to narrow his eyes at Pippa. “If I did not know better, I would think you were trying to woo me, my lady.”

“Would you? Well, in that case, I should consider you a most perceptive man. Generally, I do not find men perceptive, and it’s a quality I admire.” Fie, she was beyond discretion. Ever since Franchot’s mad suggestion about Calum, she’d struggled to decide what she thought of it. The answer, when she’d settled upon it, was obvious. Franchot was a desperate man trying to rid himself of a potential rival. Calum no more considered himself the Duke of Franchot than did Nelly Bumstead.

Calum still regarded her as if she were an interesting butterfly.

“I
am
wooing you,” she said, lest he’d missed her meaning. “Mad I may be. Possibly a wanton. I have been investigating that word and I find it appears quite appropriate to—”

“Young ladies would do well to keep their noses out of books.”

“Piffle. I have a mind, as do most young ladies—most people of all kinds, in fact. And as I was saying, wanton seems—”

“You are
not
wanton.”

“How do you know?”

Calum pounded his brow. “You torture me. I
know
you are no wanton. Do not pester the subject further.”

“Very well. Do you suppose you could manage to kiss me without our dismounting?”

His face assumed the intensely dark quality she’d seen before and found so very exciting. “I should find kissing you whilst mounted the most desirable thing in life,” he said.

“Oh.” How odd he could sound sometimes. And how he could make ordinary comments sound quite uncommon. “Thank you.” She closed her eyes and put her face as far forward as her seat would allow.

Calum muttered something that sounded like, “Damnation,” and contrived to pull her from her sidesaddle and into his lap.

Pippa threaded her gloved fingers into his thick hair and smiled at him. “I love looking at your face. You’re far too handsome, you know.”

“They say love makes a face dear.”

Her heart turned and didn’t feel in quite the right place afterward. “And love makes my face dear to you?”

He kissed her softly, teasingly, and looked at her again. “It was you who said you found my face pleasing.”

“Men.”

“Women,”
he responded, bending to kiss her once more and with unmistakable ardor. “I find your face the dearest I have ever seen.”

“Oh,” she murmured. Had he just told her he loved her?

His hand was on her breast and Pippa was digging her fingertips into a steel-tough thigh when she heard the sound of carriage wheels—and the sound of Calum’s soft curse.

Watching Calum and Struan together, Pippa saw how each man knew the other’s mind without need of words.

Calum had left Pippa in the beeches while he rode out to intercept Struan’s hired carriage. With hardly an exchange of words, Struan had mounted the horse Calum provided and dispatched the carriage back the way it had come.

The old friends had not hovered on the highway to talk out of her hearing. Instead, they joined her at once and, after Struan nodded a greeting and kissed her hand, Pippa knew she was to lead the way to the cabin without further delay.

The abandoned hunters’ cabin lay deep in heavily forested land well south of Cloudsmoor Hall itself. Once beside the tiny yellow stone building, Calum quickly dismounted and helped Pippa down. Struan had already leaped from his gray, a single piece of baggage in hand. He’d taken very little with him when he departed Franchot and must have expected to use again what he’d left behind.