Games of Pleasure (9 page)

“I'm amazed. I thought you loved Jack better than me simply because he blazed such a brilliant path through all of our hearts.”

She set her hand on the jamb, the elegant fingers glimmering with rings. Her knuckles shone white. “There is that, too, of course. The whole world is in love with him. But you are my eldest son and the heir to one of the greatest estates in England. Whatever Jonathan's gifts, you will make a better duke. You must wed wisely and it were better if it were soon. Go to London! Take up an invitation to visit some of the right families at their country homes this summer. Find a child who's so impressed with your prospects that she forgets to be afraid of you.”

The idea repelled him. Yet he had offered for Lady Belinda Carhart. What the hell would he have done if she had accepted his suit?

“I cannot spare the time right now to leave Wyldshay. Unlike Jack and my little sisters, I have responsibilities here.”

“Nonsense! What you call duty, my dear boy, is only a way to escape the other half of your destiny.”

“To marry wisely?”

“To dazzle society—in a wave of scandal and disrepute, if need be. Then you must marry your future duchess, of course. But why not try a little rebellion and outrage first?”

“I cannot become Jack, Mother,” he said. “I'll never match him.”

“No, of course not.” She smiled, almost as if she loved him, too. “Your brother is unique. So, of course, are you. However, if you have trained the staff as you should, there is nothing to keep you here that cannot be delegated. And now, if you would be kind enough to dress for dinner to join the duke and myself in the dining room, we may all pretend once again to be civilized.”

 

 

THE horse shook and sweated beneath her. Miracle allowed it to drop to a walk, then she dismounted and led the tired animal by the reins. She had outrun them, whoever it was. Perhaps just a farmer with a couple of dogs. Perhaps just the local Master of Foxhounds exercising the pack, or even a foxhunt in full cry. She could not remember clearly enough now to interpret what she had heard with any certainty. She had just fled along lane after lane into a maze of unknown countryside.

The track ahead of her cut up through a miniature gorge. High above, trees overhung the banks, shutting out almost all of the remaining daylight. The surface underfoot was as wet as a streambed. She had no idea where she was, but she struggled on, her boots sliding in the mud. At the top of the gorge the lane broke out into open fields. A thick wood lay a small distance away to the right.

Fighting exhaustion, Miracle opened a gate and led the horse along a dirt path toward the trees. At the edge of the wood she found a small hut, the roof half fallen, the clamber of ivy over the ruined walls rustling with mice and small birds. A pile of old straw lay heaped in one corner.

She crouched to put the rope hobbles about the horse's pasterns, then unbuckled the girth and pulled off both saddle and bridle. The faithful animal dropped its head to crop at the turf as she rubbed it down with a twist of the straw. Still grazing, the horse moved away with constricted little strides, and Miracle entered the hut.

Some leaf litter in the outer corner was cleaner than the straw. She propped the saddle there so that the leather skirts and the pad made a nest. Leaning back against it, she ate some cheese and bread, then chewed an apple down to the core. Every muscle ached, not only from riding and walking, but from the blows that Willcott had given her. A small shiver ran down her spine.

Miracle tossed the apple core to the horse and blinked back the foolish sting of tears. Whatever happened now, she was determined to regret nothing—not even last night!

The darkness deepened. She took off the brown habit to hang it from a nail and slipped on the ivory silk dress—without the black net overdress—to use as a nightgown. Whisper-soft fabric caressed. Oranges and lavender.

Dismissing the images, she wrapped herself in his cloak and curled up to sleep. The scent of man and sea enveloped her: another heartbreaking reminder of that heady encounter with a duke's son.

Somewhere not too far away running water trickled over stones. An owl hooted softly in the woods. Its long, mournful cry mingled with the gurgling brook, as if the bird called the name that would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life:
Lord Ryderbourne. Lord Ryderbourne.

 

 

THE Whitchurch Wing had been remodeled some fifty years before. Nothing much remained of the stark reality of ancient stone beneath the smooth plaster walls. Yet Ryder stood now in his bedroom—surrounded by the elegant simplicity of cool green, warm tan, and white—and stared from the window. Wyldshay lay enveloped in darkness.

His younger brother, Jack, in stark contrast, had chosen one of the oldest parts of the castle for his own. The round rooms of the Docent Tower stamped their unmistakable mark that Wyldshay was still a medieval fortress at heart.

Even as a child, Jack had been a romantic. As a younger son, he'd had few responsibilities other than his own amusement. So Jack—Lord Jonathan Devoran St. George—had cut a brilliant swath through both society and the world, then wed with stunning disregard for family tradition.

Anne Marsh—the new Lady Jonathan Devoran St. George—was a commoner, a dissenting minister's clever, generous daughter. Jack had married her in the beginning from necessity, but in the end he had whisked her off to India with him simply because they loved each other so profoundly.

Ryder turned from the window and began to shed the evening clothes he had worn for dinner. The garments he had ridden home in earlier had been taken away to be cleaned and pressed once again. The contents of his pockets were arrayed neatly on a table.

He tugged open his cravat as he looked at them: his watch, some coins, her silver slipper. Her still-folded note had been ironed.

Ryder smiled a little grimly to himself. The fire beckoned. Yet he picked up the slipper and set it in a drawer before he took the note and held it to his nostrils for a moment.

Would it carry her scent?

Nothing, of course. Just paper and ink.

It took only the flick of his thumb to open it.

The four sentences burned into his heart as if she had written them in flame:

BLACKBIRDS WOKE HER. MIRACLE OPENED HER EYES. IT WAS barely light. Dried leaves rustled in her hair. She sat up and brushed them out with her fingers, then sorted through her saddlebags for a comb and some food. Running water burbled beneath the birdsong, laughing as it rippled over stones.

She put on her boots, then—still wrapped in Lord Ryderbourne's cloak—she followed the sounds to a stream that cascaded through the woods. She crouched to splash cold water over her face and arms.

A blackbird eyed her as she sat on the bank to comb out the night's tangles and pin up her hair. Miracle winked at the bird and unwrapped a little bread and some cheese. When she rinsed her fingers again in the stream, the bird flew away.

Miracle froze. Drops splashed into the brook from her fingers, but the tumble of water swallowed the sounds. The voice had drifted down through the woods from the direction of the hut: a man's voice with a hint of nastiness beneath the rough accent.

“Well, well, you old dog,” a second man said. “When a nag droops about like a lobcock waiting for the next likely coves to'appen along, I say ask no questions and you won't get no wrong answers.”

“There's a moll about,” the first man said. “Lookee, here! A mort's saddle and dress!”

“A bracket-faced hedge whore, most like! No bother to us—”

For several painful moments, silence invaded. Miracle strained to listen above the thump of her heart.

“Heave ho, then, m' lad! A nacky setup, right enough! Worth the risk of a morning drop with Jack Ketch!”

Hooves struck hard as if a horse circled nervously. Rage instantly conquered fear. As if freed from a trance, Miracle raced up the slope. She broke free of the trees just as her gelding cantered away. The two thieves clung together riding double, perched absurdly on her sidesaddle and bouncing like ducklings on a pond.

As they disappeared from view, it started to rain.

 

 

LONDON was dirty and loud. Even the most fashionable houses wept streaks of soot down their faces. Ryder stepped from his carriage and glanced up at the facade of his townhouse. The duchy also owned a mansion—the duke's official town residence—overlooking Green Park, but Ryder preferred the simplicity of this terraced set of rooms in Duke Street. No one in the family used them but himself.

Rain splashed and puddled. A footman ran out with an open umbrella.

“Ryderbourne?” some newcomer said in his ear. “By Jove! Didn't expect to see you in town, my lord!”

The footman jerked to silent attention beneath the umbrella as Ryder turned to face the interloper. Hurrying head down against the rain, a bedraggled young gentleman in a wet greatcoat had almost bumped into him.

With a flick of the wrist Ryder raised his quizzing glass, pinning the fellow in place.

The man flushed scarlet. “Ah, my lord! I was just—Well, I—”

The footman tipped the umbrella to better protect His Lordship. Small waterfalls ran straight from the ferrules onto the head of the impertinent young gentleman.

“We have met before, sir?” Ryder asked. “Over a practice blade, perhaps? Mr. Lindsay Smith, I believe.”

Mr. Smith tried and failed to swallow his grin. His faced glowed like a gas lamp. A cascade now splashed straight onto his nose, but he seemed glued to the pavement.

“Honored to fence a few times with Your Lordship. Flattered Your Lordship would remember. Trounced, of course. But, well—Best be on my way! Your Lordship will forgive—Didn't mean to offer any disrespect—”

“Not at all,” Ryder said. “I've just returned to town for a few days and would welcome a little convivial company. Later this evening, perhaps? A glass of wine and a hand of cards with a few other gentlemen?”

Lindsay Smith's face shone like a polished apple above his drenched collar. Speechless, he managed to nod.

“Then that's settled.” Ryder lowered the quizzing glass and turned toward his front door. “Ten o'clock?”

With the footman trotting beside him Ryder strode up the steps, leaving Mr. Smith beaming in the rain.

There were many compensations to being a duke's heir. The ability to command lesser men was one of them. Lord Ryderbourne had remembered a plain Mr. Smith and had not cut him dead, even when that foolhardy young man had shown the temerity to accost His Lordship so rudely on the street. Lindsay Smith would be talking about this coup for days. If he had had any other plans for the evening, he would cancel them.

Ryder tossed his outer garments to the footman and walked into his study. A fire glowed in the grate. His preferred brandy sat waiting. His favorite armchair offered its respectful embrace. The room gleamed an immaculate welcome, as if His Lordship had just stepped out for a moment, though he had not been in town since the end of the Season.

In the hallway behind him, menservants thumped his luggage upstairs. The kitchen would produce any meal he desired, but they already knew his tastes so well that no one need ask. The smooth machinery of his life, where his every desire was anticipated and fulfilled.

He had always taken it for granted, as if an army of invisible elves existed only to wait on him.

Ryder filled a glass and sipped the rich liquor, frowning thoughtfully into the flames.

Where the devil was she now?

Like a madman he had brought her white slipper to London with him. He took it from his pocket and stared at the delicate satin, slowly pulling the ribbon through his fingers. Should he go from whorehouse to whorehouse, looking for the slender ankle and foot that belonged to the one woman it would fit? God! Such footwear might fit any of a thousand!

With a curse Ryder threw the slipper onto a table. Of course, she was not any of a thousand. She was—What? His obsession? And, now that he had read her note, his responsibility?

Since arriving back at Wyldshay, he had barely slept. He had even found himself striding up the spiral stair to the roof of the Fortune Tower to stare like a mooncalf at the stars. Jupiter hung caught in the net of constellations, staring back at him with a jeering yellow eye.