Jo Goodman (32 page)

Not so long that he had become indifferent, Mercedes thought. A shutter closed over his expression and his polished obsidian eyes were once again unreadable. "I'm sorry," she said. And she was.

Colin looked down at the boy sleeping beside him, then the one in his lap. "So am I," he said softly.

Mercedes watched him turn his attention to the window and understood the subject was closed. This glimpse of his past was the most personal information he had ever offered and already it appeared he was regretting it. What did he imagine she would do with it? She wanted to ask him about his parents and how he had come to be separated from his brothers, but he obviously had no intention of sharing it. Perhaps the real surprise was that he told her as much as he had.

Mercedes unfastened her bonnet and laid it on her lap, smoothing out the pale pink ribbons between her thumb and forefinger. "I saw Severn at Tattersall's today," she said.

Colin's eyes remained remote. "I know. He came up to me during the bidding and made a point of telling me."

Her fingers stilled on the ribbons. "Why didn't you say anything before now?"

"Why didn't you?"

"It would have spoiled the day," she said. "The boys didn't deserve that."

A single brow arched skeptically. "Is that the only reason?"

"I didn't know what you would do."

"Do?" he asked. "Why would I be moved to do anything?" His eyes fell deliberately on her throat, and he watched her hand come up slowly to cover her neck. "Oh, you mean because Severn tried to throttle you. Did you tell him I'd call him out for that? Is that why you let him do it?" He smiled narrowly. "I'm aware of Severn's reputation with a pistol. I have been since Weybourne named him as his second. There are easier ways for you to get rid of me, Mercedes. You know where I keep my dagger. Feel free to use it, unless you've lost your stomach for it."

Mercedes frowned and her gray eyes clouded. "What are you saying?" she asked. Her voice rose in proportion to her incredulity. "You actually believe that I concocted some scheme with Severn to force you to issue a challenge?"

"Didn't you?"

Silence settled between them as Mercedes considered what she might say. If she could make Colin believe her, what purpose would then be served by the truth? It could indeed bring about the exact end that Severn wanted, the very end that she wanted to avoid. At last she sighed, her decision made. Her eyes darted away guiltily.

Beyond the carriage dusk was settling over the countryside. Blue-gray light brought the rows of larch and copper beech along the road into dark relief. Cottages set back among the trees were visible by the lanterns marking their windows. Mercedes wondered what it might be like to live in one of them, what problems might face her if she were not the daughter of an earl and trying to hold onto a birthright that no person or law recognized.

"It seems your cynicism is justified again," she said finally. She darted a glance in his direction but did not meet his eyes. "Was I so easy to read?"

"No more than usual." Colin's tone held no boast, rather it was marked by a weary flatness. "I know you have no liking for Severn. That you were willing to join forces with him speaks to your eagerness to be rid of me." He raked back his hair. "I've seen you with Severn. If he was close enough to you to put his hands around your neck, then it's because you allowed it. I know you're capable of defending yourself or at least calling out for help."

"Severn told you what he did?" she asked.

"He hinted that something occurred between the two of you. He would have had me believe it was sexual." His eyes lowered to the bruises on Mercedes's throat. "Perhaps it was. I've heard that choking heightens the moment of pleasure." Colin looked at her frankly. "Does it?"

Mercedes ducked her head and stared at her hands. Her fingers twisted her bonnet ribbons.

"Does it?" he asked again.

There was an ache behind her eyes that blinking could not ease. "Go to hell," she said quietly.

"I probably will."

Mercedes stopped fingering the ribbons. "I didn't suspect Severn's idea would work."

"Severn's idea?" Colin asked. "I thought it had more of your stamp."

"I would have planned it. With Severn it was born of opportunity. He miscalculated badly."

"Oh?"

"It could only have worked if you cared what was done to me. It didn't seem likely that you would."

"Yet you went along with it."

Mercedes shrugged. The pressure in her chest was easing slightly. It shouldn't have mattered what he thought of her, yet she knew the pressure was there because it did. "As you pointed out," she said, meeting his gaze for the first time, "I'm desperate to be rid of you."

* * *

Colin carried both boys up the stairs and helped Mercedes get them ready for bed. Between them they thanked him a dozen times for their London adventure before finally nodding off. Mrs. Hennepin caught Mercedes and Colin in the hallway between rooms and offered a light repast. They both refused. After the twins were tucked in their separate beds, Colin escorted Mercedes to Sylvia's room. He poked his head in long enough to bid her good evening, then ushered Mercedes inside.

The library had a selection of brandy, whisky, and port in crystal decanters. Colin poured three fingers of each into separate tumblers and lined them up on the desk. Easing himself into Weybourne's leather chair, he swept up the first tumbler in his palm and raised it in a mocking salute as if Mercedes were present. "Next time," he said softly, "use the goddamn dagger."

Upstairs, Mercedes finished her
tête a tête
with Sylvia and slipped quietly into her own bedchamber. The only good thing to come of Severn's interference was that she wouldn't be expected to share Colin's bed. At least it seemed like a good thing until Mercedes crawled into hers alone. When had her four-poster ever seemed so enormous?

She stretched out under the covers, first on her left side, then the right. She tried drawing her knees toward her chest, with and without hugging a pillow. Lying on her back, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, then looked for recognizable shapes in the shadows on her ceiling. Turning over, she buried her face in a pillow and dug her toes into the mattress. Finally admitting defeat, Mercedes sat up, lighted the lamp beside her bed, and picked up the book that had bored her to sleep on any number of nights. It was only when she had doggedly read the same page three times with no accompaniment of yawns or comprehension that she tossed the volume down.

Mercedes shrugged into her robe, cinched it at the waist, and padded softly to her door. Hot milk was the answer. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of it right off.

There was a muted band of light slipping out from under the library doors that drew Mercedes's attention. She paused, wondering if it was indeed Colin inside the room, or if the lamps had been left burning unattended. Mercedes laid her hand on the door, then retracted it, and continued on her way to the kitchen, telling herself she didn't care for the answer one way or the other.

The kitchen was deserted. Mercedes poured milk into a saucepan and fired up the kindling in the brick stove. She sat on the edge of the old oak table, her bare feet resting on the seat of one of the chairs, and waited for the familiar fragrance of warming milk to rise from the pan.

"Do you think I might have some of that?"

Mercedes swiveled around so quickly that she almost was unseated. She grabbed the edge of the table with one hand to steady herself, while the other was raised to her heart as if to keep it in place.

Colin was standing just inside the doorway. He was leaning against the wall but the pose was not precisely casual. It took Mercedes a second glance to understand that her visitor was in need of some physical support to remain upright. His bright hair was raked back, but not neatly. It was a cross thatch of indecision where he had first pushed it one way, then another, then yet another. The sharp, usually impenetrable black eyes were a little flat now, a little dull. The narrow smile was no longer in evidence as the effort would have been too much. Instead, the corners of his mouth were turned faintly downward. He looked rather disconcerted as he glanced around the kitchen. When his glance alighted on her again, he seemed both hopeful and apologetic.

Mercedes wasn't moved. "You're drunk," she said flatly.

Colin considered her observation. His head was muzzy, the floor was listing, and his tongue was thick in his mouth. "I believe you're right," he said pleasantly.

"I know I am," Mercedes said. "I've seen enough of it." She eased herself off the table and pushed a chair toward him. "Sit here, before you fall."

Colin made a point of studying the wall that was supporting his lean frame. "This seems sturdy enough."

Mercedes gave the chair a little shake. "Sit!"

Weaving forward on unsteady legs, Colin twisted the chair around and straddled it, dropping like a stone at the last moment. His salute was clumsier than it was smart.

"You don't need any warm milk," she said, moving to stand at the hearth. "Like as not, it will make you sick. How much did you drink?"

Colin held up three fingers.

"Three fingers?" It wasn't so much, Mercedes thought. The earl could easily finish a decanter with less effect to himself than Colin showed from a single tumbler. Sighing, she shook the saucepan. Milk sizzled against the hot edge. "Perhaps a better question is
what
did you drink?"

"I believe the first was brandy."

"The first?"

"Then whisky."

Mercedes began to understand the problem. "You had three fingers of whisky as well?"

"And port for a chaser."

"Port?" She pulled a face. "With the brandy and whisky? You followed them with port?"

Colin's arms were folded across the top rung of the ladder-back chair. He rested his chin against them and nodded. His smile was sheepish. "You think it was foolish?"

"You're too drunk to know how foolish," she said. Mercedes could not quite hide her own sly smile. "But on the morrow you'll learn it well enough. A sore head will be the least of your worries." She took the saucepan off the stove and poured the scalded milk into a mug. Sipping it gingerly, Mercedes watched Colin over the rim of rising steam. His lids were lowering and his handsome features contorted comically as he tried to stifle a yawn. She should leave him here, she thought. He would be able to add a stiff neck and aching back to the pounding that would visit his head in the morning.

Mercedes sighed. "Come along," she said. "I'll help you find your way to your room."

It wasn't as easy as she might have hoped. Colin's arm lay around her shoulders heavily, and she had to thrust her hip against his thigh to support him. Their graceless gait got them down the hall in fits and starts but the grand staircase loomed before them as their biggest challenge. Halfway to the top Colin decided he wanted to sit down. This was communicated to Mercedes in the most elemental way: Colin simply twisted beneath her arm and let his long legs collapse like a house of cards. Mercedes counted herself fortunate not to be under him or across his lap.

"Oh, no," she said, looking down on the ruffled crown of his bright hair. "There's no resting."

Colin glanced up. His mouth was shaped by an impish, youthful smile. He clasped her outstretched hand and tugged once. There was only the faintest resistance before Mercedes's legs folded and she was sharing the step with him. "No resting," he said confidentially. "Sometimes I just sit."

Mercedes let it pass. She supposed it made sense to him. Neither did she object when he looped his arm through the crook of hers. It took her a moment to realize that she was no longer supporting him, but that her shoulder lay lightly against his and she was leaning into him. Out of habit she started to pull away.

Colin exerted the smallest pressure to bring her back to him. "If I can sit," he said, "you can lean."

"All right," she said after a moment. "Just as long as there's no resting."

His smile was a trifle crooked as he accepted her concession. It faded slowly when he turned away and other thoughts occupied him. He was quite comfortable with the silence and it was a pleasure to him that Mercedes felt no need to fill it with chatter. They could have been on the river bank, he with his line in the water, she with a book in her lap. There was a note of quiet resignation in his voice when he finally spoke. "I'm going to have a very sore head in the morning, aren't I?"

Mercedes couldn't help smiling to herself. So much for supposing Colin's thoughts had been running a deep course. "Yes," she said. "I think I mentioned that earlier."

"Must be where I heard it."

Her grin deepened. "You don't drink often, do you?"

"No. Not like tonight. Never seems like a good idea."

"Then why tonight?"

"Seemed like a good idea."

"Oh." To hide her unease, Mercedes smoothed the material of her gown over her knees. She looked back over her shoulder at the steps left to climb. "Perhaps we should go." When she turned again it was to find Colin's mouth very near her own. He was watching her closely, his dark eyes holding her as steadily as he might have with his hands. If she spoke now her lips would brush his. Mercedes's lungs ached with the breath she was holding. In her lap her fingers clenched.