Games of Pleasure (29 page)

He tried to force himself to see reality.

Miracle had purchased not only a horse and saddle with her body that first night in Brockton. She had also purchased his silence and his cooperation. Why else had she seduced him with such stunning expertise? She had known that once he had shared her bed, he could never allow himself to become the agent of her destruction.

How seriously, even now, was he fooling himself? After all, as soon as she'd no longer needed him, she'd only wanted him to leave.

“Cousins,” Mr. Robert Faber said, his eyes twinkling. “It's none of my business, Mr. Devon. But cousins?”

Ryder looked up.
Lord Hamlet is a prince out of thy sphere. This must not be.

“Ho hum!” Mr. Faber scratched at his chin. “I've seen much of the world in my day, sir, and I know when a man is in love with a woman. Yet he doesn't usually pretend that they're cousins.”

Ryder closed the copy of
Hamlet.
“You wish to offer any other observations, Mr. Faber?”

“Ha! You won't browbeat me with that haughty air, sir! You're no more Mr. Devon than I'm the King of England. In fact, I'd say you're the kind of man who could normally crack open the world like a nut to take whatever he wants. And so I ask myself: Why not this time—and with a woman as lovely as Aphrodite? But then, I suppose—if she can slay the audience tonight as well as she's slain you—it's not my concern.”

“Exactly,” Ryder said. “Though I shake in my boots at your perspicacity, sir.”

Mr. Faber winked and whipped up his team. “You never shake in your boots at anything, if I read you aright, Mr. Devon. But whatever your secrets, they're safe enough with this company.”

The horses broke into a ponderous trot. Ryder laughed and returned to his study of the play.

 

 

BY late afternoon the wagons had begun the climb up toward the heart of Derbyshire. A small drizzle eased away across the hills. A watery sun sparked gilt highlights in the rattle of shields and pikes and helmets. As the horses leaned into their collars, most of the younger players jumped down from the wagons and started to walk.

Ryder strode back to find Miracle. She glanced up from her conversation with Sam. They were talking about the play. The actor smiled at Ryder as he joined them.

“There's a shortcut,” Sam said, pointing. “That path over the hill up there cuts off a couple of miles. We'll rejoin the wagons on the other side at an inn called the Jolly Farmer. See you there!”

He ran off after Rosencrantz, who had already set off up the path. Miracle and Ryder dropped behind the rest of the troupe, where they could be private.

“You want to know about Dorset,” she said after a moment.

“After what we discussed last night, I think I have to know now.” He took a deep breath and looked away, before he should be tempted to touch her.

Damp had soaked into her hair, tied back carelessly in a ribbon, so that small wisps rioted about her face. Sunlight smoothed over her cheek, where the bruises had faded to a soft shade of ocher. Though her sensual loveliness fired his most primitive cravings, something in the depths of her eyes radiated an extraordinary compassion and serenity. Was that the source of his deepest yearnings? That she seemed to know exactly who she was and accepted it?

“Why have you refused to tell me before?” he asked.

“Because whatever you think you understand about me, what I'm going to tell you now will only further upset it.”

“No, it won't,” he said. “Try me. Just begin at the beginning and don't stop until you get to the end.”

She stopped for a moment, gazing up the path. The dull shadow of distress darkened her eyes and settled at the corners of her mouth. A distress that kisses would not cure.

“Lord Hanley had been my protector for some months when I agreed to accompany him to Exeter. He'd bought a new yacht there. Not just a small sailing boat, but a seagoing craft that was fitted out to rival the King's. We were to sail together to the Isle of Wight, where he'd promised me a house for the summer. Yet when we reached Exeter, we were joined by Philip Willcott.”

He tried to keep his voice dispassionate. “You'd met Willcott before?”

Picking up her skirts, she started back up the path. “Occasionally. Lord Hanley sometimes brought him to my house in London, though I made no secret of my dislike of the man. Something about him made my blood run cold.”

Ryder followed, staying one step behind her. Her neck seemed very fragile beneath the weight of bundled hair.

“I've never heard of him. What kind of person was he?”

“Not the kind one would expect to be the bosom friend of an earl, certainly.” She stepped around a small puddle. “A lump of coal trying to be mistaken for a diamond, and filled with resentment that his fate was always to be fuel for someone else's fire, when he longed to decorate tiaras, instead. Perhaps he hoped that intimacy with Lord Hanley would give him enough superficial shine to impress, though he would always remain black at the core.”

“I know the type. Why did he come to Exeter?”

“I don't know. I was barely civil to him. I went up to bed. He and the earl sat up late in a private parlor in the inn, drinking together.”

“You've no idea what they were talking about?”

She glanced back at him with a kind of wry bravado. “Only that in the depths of some wine-soaked discourse, Lord Hanley promised Willcott that they would share my favors later that night. The earl sent me up a message to that effect, so that I could make myself ready.”

“To
share
your favors?” His step faltered. “For God's sake!”

Her lips curved in a kind of painful, ironic mirth. “It's never been your fantasy to share a lady's bed with a friend?”

“No!”

Her head turned away as if she swallowed laughter. “Ah, Sir Galahad! The innocent abroad! Perhaps you prefer the idea of two ladies sharing your bed, instead?”

Heat flooded his body, as much discomfort as outrage. “Is this what it means—?”

“To be a courtesan to the English aristocracy?” She marched ahead, her skirts lifted in both hands. “It often enough means things that you obviously can barely imagine.”

“I'm not quite such an innocent,” he said. “Much to my regret, my imagination is in perfect working order.”

She shaded her eyes with one hand as she turned to look back at him. He couldn't read her expression, but her stance was defiant.

“Then don't imagine too much. Within certain obvious limits, I've always dictated my own terms. I'd already made it clear to Lord Hanley that Willcott was never to be part of our bargain. When I received the earl's message, I dressed, came down, and said so.”

Relief
was too mild a word. Something very close to elation surged in Ryder's blood. In three strides he had joined her, and they started up the path again.

“I can certainly imagine that Hanley was . . . annoyed?”

“I felt some annoyance of my own.”

“In fact, you were furious?”

Miracle nodded. “A little righteous anger always helps one to be brave. Yet Lord Hanley simply shrugged and told his friend to leave. Willcott bowed and called for his horse. The earl and I went up to bed. That should have been an end of it. Yet I felt—I don't know—this bizarre intensity in their exchange. I was unnerved. Then when we reached our room, I thought the earl seemed—”

He kept his tone as gentle as he could. “You were afraid of him?”

She shivered and hugged herself. “At that moment I was terrified. Though he'd pretended not to care when I rejected Willcott, Lord Hanley was very deeply angry about it. I was afraid of what he might do in the grip of that rage, so that night I pretended that nothing was wrong.” His fists closed involuntarily. Ryder felt as haunted as any man facing martyrdom. “You made love?”

“What we did in bed together isn't relevant.”

“But Hanley was still your protector.”

“Yes, of course. However, I never share with other gentlemen what happens in the bedroom.”

He felt as if he had been kicked in the belly: wretched that he wanted to know, wretched that he had been cad enough to ask, wretched that she was having to relive this.

The path just ahead led past a cluster of ruins: the remains of a small keep, abandoned hundreds of years earlier. The stone walls perched on a rocky outcrop, where water coursed down through a deep gorge from the sudden swell of the Peaks just ahead. Miracle spun aside from the path to run under an arched doorway into the grassy inner bailey. A spiral stair led up to the top of the ruin. She raced up to the crumbling battlements.

Ryder stared up at her for a moment, her slim figure silhouetted against the wash of clouds and blue sky. She shook as if she were being buffeted by a strong wind. He took the steps two at a time.

“I shouldn't have asked,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

She shook her head and sat down on a chunk of stone, then wrapped her arms about both knees. Her profile was pure steel as she gazed out across the countryside. Filled with distress at his helplessness to change the past, or to save her from having to remember it, Ryder propped his hips on a broken merlon.

“The next morning the earl barely allowed me out of his sight,” she said. “His mood was very black. I'd never seen him like it before. I didn't dare to defy him openly. He was a man enraged, taking solace in a favorite possession, holding on to my arm with a death grip. To have tried to leave him then would have meant making a public scene in that grand inn in Exeter. I thought he'd never forgive me for that.”

“So you boarded the yacht together?”

“Yes. Before sailing to the Solent, we were to make a detour to spend a few days in Lyme Regis. I thought I would escape him more easily there.”

“After dulling his suspicions?”

“If you like. Yet before we reached Lyme, Willcott came aboard secretly in the middle of the night. I went up on deck to see the stars and discovered him there, drinking with Lord Hanley. I knew then that I should have walked out in Exeter, whatever the cost, but it was too late.”

Ryder dropped down beside her. Almost blindly she reached out to seize his hand. Her pulse echoed the broken rhythms of his, as if they weathered a storm together.

“Hanley was drunk?”

“I don't believe so. Yet Philip Willcott was, certainly. They'd already decided to go forward with their original bargain, whether I was willing or not.”

Fear and pain for her ached in every muscle. “I wish I didn't have to ask this, Miracle, but I must know what happened next.”

“Ah, don't worry! It's not so very bad.” She squeezed his fingers and turned to smile at him. Her dark eyes were filled with courage and defiance at the world. “Probably nowhere near as bad as you've been fearing. Willcott tried to rape me, but he didn't succeed.”

“You fought him?”

She released his fingers and rose to pace along the battlements. “Like a demon! He dragged me down to the cabin, but I was filled with cold fury and a blazing determination to outwit him, or at least to give as good as I got.”

“And Hanley?”

“Lounged in the doorway and watched. His eyes were as sharp as needles as Willcott tore away my dress, but he seemed otherwise turned to stone. I don't think he was even particularly aroused by it.”

“
Aroused
by it? For God's sake!”

Miracle spun about to face him. Revulsion marked every line of his face. Ryder was so fundamentally decent and honorable. Had he never—living next to the stars in his ancestral towers—known just how ugly the world could be? Yet now she had begun, she could no longer spare him—nor herself.

“The earl must have had some reason of his own for wishing to so gratify Willcott,” she said. “Though it may be an alien thought to you, there are plenty of men who find the idea of witnessing rape exciting, even though they might shy away from it themselves.”

He regained his icy control with an obvious effort. “You think that's true of Hanley?”

Memories crowded in. Swallowing her fear, she closed her eyes so that she could describe exactly what she recalled.

“No, not really. Yet his expression was . . . It was as if he wore a steel mask—a complete indifference. I despised him more at that moment than I hated Willcott. I managed to tear away—I'd lost my shoes by then, and my hair had come down—but I snatched a shoe from the floor and struck Lord Hanley in the crotch. He doubled over, retching. That's when Willcott began to hit me in the face. The earl simply turned and left the cabin.”

The voice seemed to come from very far away, but it was only the faint impression of an anguished concern that she'd perhaps once imagined, but never really experienced. Far more frantic emotions surged, threatening to overwhelm her in darkness. She pressed both hands over her closed lids and let the words pour out.

“Willcott bent me back over the table. He was leaning over me, biting my neck, but he had to use one hand to unfasten his trousers.” The fear and nausea began to swarm, buzzing behind her eyes. “I flailed out and my fingers closed on a knife handle. He fell to the floor. There was blood. Such a lot of blood!”

Firm hands caught her by the shoulders. She opened her eyes and the nightmare cleared. His dark lashes stark against his pale skin, Ryder stared down at her, his eyes desolate.