Games of Pleasure (34 page)

“I think it very likely that she won't forgive either of us.”

They turned and began walking again with a new sense of companionship.

“She insisted that she wasn't any good for me, anyway,” Guy said. “She was wiser than I was, of course. I'd like to be able to offer a whole heart to a wife one day.”

The words sank into Ryder's heart like a death knell. Miracle was the kind of female that gentlemen enjoyed, but never married. Each lover had taken her another irrevocable step away from the possibility of a home and children.

“Yet you still see her?”

“She's an extraordinary woman. Occasionally we get the chance to meet and talk. The only limit she's ever put on our friendship is that she won't take a penny from me, not even a Christmas gift.”

“Nor did she take your most recent advice.”

“Why should she? She's created a brilliant career. In a world where mistresses are discarded with each season's new fashions, Miracle has made herself rare and sought after. Not every relationship she's agreed to has been heartless—”

Ryder struck one palm with a fist. “Then why the hell did she pick Hanley?”

“He pledged to give her enough to retire. She's only twenty-five, but what the devil will the future offer? Can you honestly say that you can sit in judgment of her taking that chance when it was offered?”

The plaster glimmered with gilt. Red silk velvet draped the windows. In a portrait over the central fireplace, his great grandmother wore emeralds and pearls, only a small part of the fortune of the St. Georges.

“No,” Ryder said. “I don't sit in judgment, just in grief that she thought it necessary. Tell me about this brother, Dillard Heather. Did she talk much about him?”

“He's her one stable anchor in life, I think. At least, that's the impression she gave me. A year after she came to London, Dillard married and opened his own shop.”

“Did she ever visit?”

“I don't think so. Dillard and his wife started a family right away. It was essential to his success in business that he maintain absolute respectability. Miracle thought that a visit from a London courtesan would do him more harm than good. Yet they wrote and exchanged gifts.”

“Gifts?”

Guy ran his fingers over the rails of a set of ranked chairs as they walked. “Dillard would send her little pots of honey, and once a purse made out of leather scraps. She treasured it, even though her protector at the time had given her a reticule of black velvet, trimmed with pearls and gold wire.”

“I imagine that Miracle was even more generous to her brother?”

“Yes, of course. After all, he had a burgeoning family to support. I don't think she ever received a gift from an admirer without sending something to Derbyshire.”

“Dillard's also invested her savings for her.”

Guy stopped and raised a brow. “Has he? I didn't know that. What else don't I know?”

Ryder met his cousin's dark gaze and smiled. “You suggest that it's my turn now to spill my guts?”

“Merely the strictly essential information,” Guy said. “Whatever's relevant to this problem with Hanley.”

“That,” Ryder replied dryly, “is all you're going to get, however grateful I am for what you've just shared.”

The men strode on down the gallery. Picking his words with care, Ryder gave Guy a broad outline of events since he had rescued Miracle from the dinghy. All the rest—the glorious, painful tumult of emotions that cascaded through his heart as he recalled every moment of their time together—he kept to himself.

Guy listened in silence, then turned into the embrasure of a large bay window in the center of the north wall. The landscape was flooding with color as the sun rose behind the distant hills.

“But other than the lure of her obvious charms,” Guy asked, “what the devil made you want to accompany her on such a journey to start with?”

Ryder folded his arms and leaned one shoulder against a life-sized marble sculpture of Hercules and the Hydra. “I think I wanted the adventure of traveling off into the unknown without any particular goal or destination.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps because I've never really been tested. Not as Jack has been. Not in circumstances where one's life is forfeit on a daily basis.”

Guy sat down on the window seat and stretched his legs out in front of him. Light poured in through the glass to rim his dark hair. “You envy Jack that?”

The Hydra's head beside his knee grinned at him with ghastly stone teeth. Ryder laughed.

“God! It seems that everyone wants to know whether I'm jealous of my own brother. The answer is no. One can yearn to comprehend the experience of a loved one, without being envious of it. I've no desire to suffer through the deserts of China, nor face a slow death in the snows of the Himalayas. Yet perhaps I wanted to taste something of the freedom that Jack found on his travels.”

“To discover what forged the pure steel at the center of his being? And did you?”

“No, of course not! There's never a real path into another man's soul, not even when that soul belongs to one's own brother. Anyway, my adventure was just a Sunday excursion. The lanes of England are not the high passes of the Karakoram Mountains, and the eldest son of the Duke of Blackdown always has a safety net available, whether he likes it or not.”

“Except when His Lordship is unarmed at night on a lonely road and facing three footpads bent on robbery, if not murder.” Guy pushed one hand back through his hair. “That was as real as any threat I'd ever want to face.”

Ryder shrugged and paced back into the center of the long gallery. “I was essentially helpless. It was just luck that we escaped with our lives.”

“Even good luck prefers a cool head, and bad luck demands it. Don't underestimate yourself, Ryder. Jack and I admire you for a great deal more than any advantage of position. That steel you so admire in your brother's heart shines just as brightly in your own.”

“Thank you,” Ryder said. “I wish I could be as sure of it as you seem to be.”

“God, a certain sterling quality has been obvious for years in both of you, though I rather think that my aunt might have more to do with that than any adventures on the road.”

He swallowed a surge of genuine mirth. “Mother certainly believes in holding her sons' feet to the fire on a regular basis. However, the lessons I've learned so far have been mostly those of humility and Christian repentance. Miracle calls me her Sir Galahad, even though I've failed miserably in every test of becoming the perfect, gentle knight.”

“You're in love with her, aren't you?”

Ryder shrugged, unwilling to voice it: the painful, impossible state of his heart. “Let's just say that if we can win through this business with Hanley, she'll never have to fear poverty again.”

Guy stood and walked up to join his cousin. “Will that be enough?”

“I don't know! God, why ask me that?”

“Because it seems the obvious question.”

Ryder spun on his heel and paced back toward the west door. Guy fell into step beside him. The portraits passed in a blur, the dance of daylight picking out colors like jewels: emerald green, ruby red, sapphire blue.

“My greatest fear is that it won't be enough, that she'll accept nothing less now than complete independence. Though Hanley broke his word, she has her own savings, and she's sacrificed enough, devil take it, to earn them. She doesn't need my wealth and she certainly doesn't need me. Why the hell would she want me to set her up in London as my mistress, after living at the mercy of so many other worthless lords?”

“Right now she needs you to save her life,” Guy said.

“You don't think that awareness hasn't already burned a track in my brain?”

“Yet Hanley's not raised any public hue and cry about Willcott's death. Instead he's hunting her down himself. What the devil is he planning?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Will he set minions to watch Wrendale?”

“I imagine that he already has. However, we arrived in the dark and it was raining from blessedly black skies. He'll get a report that a carriage arrived during the night, but he can't know that Miracle and I were in it. It was, after all, yours.”

“Ah,” Guy said, walking up to another tall window to stare out. “I begin to understand your devious thinking. You would like me to make my lonely presence here known to all and sundry, while you secretly visit Dillard to recover whatever Miracle sent him?”

Ryder remained in the shadows, his hand on the door latch. Beyond the glass, daylight burnished the treetops. White sheep trailed across the high pastures to the north. He realized with painful acuity that he was tired enough to drop.

“Assuming the honest Mr. Melman didn't run off with it,” he said.

“Never!” Guy stifled a yawn. “He's a Derbyshire man.”

 

 

WRENDALE was radiant. With splendor. With paintings, vases, sculpture. With exotic furniture, dishes, carpets. Breathtaking landscapes jeweled the far distance from every window.

Miracle wandered slowly through room after room. This was only one of the duchy houses, usually occupied for just a few weeks every year later in the summer, when Her Grace the Duchess of Blackdown preferred these cooler northern skies. Wyldshay Castle could then be cleaned thoroughly from top to bottom.

The arrangement sounded positively medieval, conjuring visions of herb-strewn straw, and dogs snatching bones flung from the high table. It was, however, simply time to scrub ceilings, touch up paint, dismantle bedsteads, and turn carpets, without inconveniencing the family.

Miracle learned all this from the maid who had arrived to bring her breakfast, even though it was early afternoon. She had slept for twelve hours. The gentlemen, the girl said, were still asleep. They had finished a bottle of brandy together, then tumbled into their respective beds and asked not to be disturbed.

Yet before collapsing in an inebriated stupor, His Lordship had left very strict instructions: Miss Heather was not to allow herself to be seen by anyone outside the house. She must avoid windows and not step—not even for an instant—onto any of the patios or terraces. The staff were to pretend that she and Lord Ryderbourne had never arrived.

The maid's message sent a little shiver down Miracle's spine, and not only at the idea that Guy and Ryder had been talking together. Lord Hanley knew she was with Ryder.

She walked on through echoing rooms and hallways, then up flight after flight of stairs. The house circled a central atrium with a domed skylight. Sunlight sparkled on marble and rosewood and gilt, and an endless procession of paintings. Miracle had always maintained a certain style in her rooms in London. Elegance was essential when one entertained viscounts and earls. Yet she had never lived anywhere like this. Sir Benjamin's house had been modest in contrast.

A wide corridor led her at last to a set of closed doors. Curious, she opened one. A brown glass eye gazed at her beneath a long hank of horsehair. Painted red nostrils flared, as if the wooden horse breathed fire. She walked closer and touched the glossy gray-and-white dappled neck. The horse rocked gently, making the iron stirrups swing from the real leather saddle.

A nursery.

Miracle picked up a white shawl that had been flung across a wing chair by the empty grate and sat down. Had Ryder played in here as a child? Had he ridden that horse and laughed with glee as he drove it over imaginary fences, or across the Milky Way to the moon?

A new life alone in America seemed almost as cruel now as the scaffold. She closed her eyes and tried to think about the stars.

She had seen a famous comet once, not long after she had been apprenticed, though she hadn't known what it was at the time. Many years later Sir Benjamin had shown her a drawing of it, the tail stretching between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth stars of Ursa Majoris. Sir Benjamin had thought the tail must be twenty or thirty million miles long.

“Ah,” a voice said softly in her ear. “I've been looking for you.”

Miracle opened her eyes to gaze straight up into ocean-green depths. Her heart began to hammer, but she tried to smile lightly, as if nothing were wrong.

“My lord,” she said with a coy dip of her lashes. “You find me at a disadvantage.”

Ryder grinned, but he stepped back to perch one hip on the top of a dresser, his arms crossed over his chest. He was lovely like this: relaxed and easy in her company, though the fire of desire lay carefully banked beneath that dark gaze.

“I'm sorry to wake you. You sleep very charmingly.”

“I wasn't asleep. I was thinking about a comet I once saw.”

“The great comet of 1811? I watched it through an opera glass all that autumn from the roof of the Fortune Tower. But you can't have been much more than seven years old at the time. How did you see it, if you were already apprenticed at the mill?”

“I'd tried to run away. I thought if I could only get home, my father might want me back. I'd not made it more than a hundred yards, before I was caught. As a punishment, I was locked alone in a small room at the top of the apprentice house every night for a week. There were planks nailed over the window, but I was able to plaster my nose against a crack to gaze out at the night sky. A hazy new star had appeared in Charles's Wain.”

“You knew it was a comet?”

Still bemused, she spoke without thinking. “I thought it was my mother, looking down on me from heaven.”