Lady Hawk's Folly (31 page)

They had ridden for some fifteen minutes before they saw the glow of torches on the road ahead of them. Hawk swerved his mount to the left, and Mollie followed, quickly drawing off the highroad and into the woods alongside. Several moments later a group of horsemen thundered past them on the road. Hawk waited until they were well past before he led the way back onto the road.

“That was Sir James?” Mollie was surprised to note that her voice was perfectly steady.

“It was. Come. I want you safely back before dawn, and we’ve only a couple of hours.”

“Is it so late?”

“It is.” His voice was still grim, so she attempted no further conversation until they has passed through Salehurst to the valley road. At last Hawk slowed his pace to a walk to rest the horses.

Mollie took her courage in hand. “No one would listen to me, sir, when I said the prince was responsible for your disappearance. It wasn’t until Ramsay saw him in the courtyard, keeping out of sight of the others, that he realized I was right.”

“You might have put one of the others on to follow him, or let Ramsay and Bill handle it, instead of placing yourself in jeopardy,” Hawk pointed out.

She was silent for a moment, thinking about his words. No doubt he was right. That would have been the most logical course for her to follow. But even thinking about what might have happened had she not been on the scene in that little clearing made her stomach clench. “I could not do that,” she said almost fiercely. “I could not bear the thought that you might leave me again.”

“Leave you?” He sounded astonished. “I had no intention of leaving you, Mollie.”

She hunched one shoulder in a small, defensive gesture. “You might have been killed,” she said, nearly choking on the words. “In fact, you very well would have been if I had not—” She broke off with a little gasp. “Is he dead, Gavin? Prince Nicolai?”

“No, sweetheart.” His voice had gentled considerably. “He will live long enough for his majesty’s loyal hangman to attend to the matter. You did not kill him.”

She sighed in relief. “I’m glad. I think my hands must have been shaking. My first shot was true, but I was so afraid he would shoot you before I could wing him. The knife…Is Lord Breckin going to be all right?”

“Right as rain. You must have heard him. He’s a good deal more offended by the fact that the fellow ruined his coat than by anything else. I left him and Ramsay watching that lot till Jamie gets to them.” He said nothing for a moment. Then, “You very likely saved our lives, Mollie, but you still had no business to be there.”

“I could not leave it to others, sir,” she said quietly.

“Do you care so much, then?”

“You must know I do. How would you have felt if our positions had been reversed?”

“That is a different matter altogether.”

“Only in that you are a man, sir. I think the feelings are the same.” She turned toward him, staring hard at that stern profile outlined in silver by the moon still hovering over the trees to her right. When he did not reply immediately, she added softly, “Or am I mistaken in believing that you love me as fiercely as I love you?”

M
OLLIE FOUND THAT HER
breath had caught in her throat as she waited for a response from him. Would he deny it? Or would he admit that he loved her, admit that he would have moved heaven and earth to save her if she had been Prince Nicolai’s victim?

She had not taken her eyes from his face, and when Hawk turned his head to look at her, she could see, even in the moonlight, the depth of his feelings for her reflected in his expression.

“Of course I love you,” he said simply. “I believed it four years ago and knew it for a fact the moment I saw you coming down the grand staircase the day of my homecoming, looking so soft and sweet and beautiful.”

“You never said so,” she pointed out, muttering.

“Neither did you, come to that. Not till now.” He smiled, and there was a rueful note in his voice when next he spoke. “We were not raised to give voice to such emotions. Shows a shocking want of breeding in both of us that we have succumbed to such lower-class stuff, does it not?”

He was not making a joke. Indeed, he sounded bitter, Mollie thought, but she had her own feelings to contend with, and there was a spurt of resentment deep within her that was struggling to make itself felt. “If you loved me four years ago,” she said slowly, wishing she were strong enough not to need an answer to the question, “why did you leave?”

“I told you before. I was young,” he said quickly, glibly. “Too young, I suppose, for the responsibility of a wife. I sought adventure, sweetheart. Adventure and challenge. And,” he added on a sour but, to her ears, more believable note, “I hated my father and wanted to put as much distance as possible between us. I knew he’d never stomach letting me set up a household of my own away from his watchful eye. That’s why I moved so quickly. Had I given him time, he’d have thought of a way to stop me from going.”

He shot her a quick look, and Mollie was sure that he was measuring her reaction to his words. More than ever she knew that although his dislike of the old marquess might be part of the answer, it was not the whole of it. She wanted to tell him in words of one syllable precisely what she had thought of him for leaving her in the care of a man he detested, but even more than that did she wish to get to the heart of the reason for his leaving. Nevertheless, she could not think how to begin, so they rode for some time in silence before she gathered her courage and put the matter in the simplest terms.

“I thought I could accept those reasons,” she said quietly, “but there must be more to it, or you would have come back when your father died.”

“Life was pretty hectic over there.”

Suddenly, it was too much. Mollie gripped her lower lip between her teeth, biting hard to stop the tears from coming, but the stress of the past twenty-four hours, added to the anger and resentment swelling within her, was more than she could stand. The tears spilled over and a sob was wrenched from her despite her efforts to stop it.

“My God, Mollie! I’m sorry I went and sorrier that I stayed so long. You must know that!”

“Damn you!” Ignoring the tears spilling down her cheeks, she flung the words at him, then spurred her horse to a gallop as anger outweighed every other emotion warring in her breast.

Hawk followed immediately but made no attempt to stop her until they had reached the road leading up to the lake. Then, riding up beside her, he reached out to grab Baron’s bridle.

Mollie waited until the horses had slowed to a walk again before she turned on him. “How dare you continue to play this game with me?” she demanded, swallowing her tears. “Am I supposed to accept your glib words because you are a man and my lord? How can I know what I did to send you away if you will not tell me, if you persist in ridiculous excuses? How can I be certain I will not do something to make you leave me again if I do not know why you left in the first place? And why do you, who have such a regard for the truth that you condemn half-truths in others…why do you persist in offering half-truths to me in such a case as this? It is not fair, Gavin. It is damnably
un
fair!”

“Oh, Mollie.” The words were barely intelligible. He said nothing further until they emerged from the woods and the great castle loomed ahead of them, a dense shadow now, for the moon had set. But the stars were reflected in the lake, making it look like a glittering carpet surrounding the huge bulk in the center. Hawk reined in and reached for her horse’s bridle at the same time. “If Prinny is not waiting for me in there, Bathurst will be,” he said. “But this is a great deal more important to me right now.” He slid from the saddle and lifted her down, his arms going around her in a tight hug. “I’d no idea you blamed yourself,” he said quietly.

“What else was I to think?” she asked, her words muffled against his chest. “I thought I’d failed you as a wife. Most likely,” she added bitterly, “in bed.”

Instead of denying it, he let out a long breath, guiding her gently toward the low wall of the main causeway. “Sit down, sweetheart. It was not you who failed me, but rather the reverse, I fear.”

Obeying the pressure of his hand on her shoulder, Mollie sat down, feeling the chill of the stone wall even through the thickness of her cloak and breeches. Hawk sat beside her, drawing her into the shelter of his arm. As he talked, his voice began to take on the caressing tone that was so dear to her, and she snuggled against him.

“You fascinated me from the outset, you know,” he said.

“I was a challenge to you.”

“True. So many men wanted you. But I meant to have you for my own. I was very young, Mollie. That much of what I said before was true. In fact, all of what I said before was true. But only a half-truth, as you said. I didn’t think I could make you understand the whole. In fact, until a short time ago, I didn’t understand it myself. But since I’m going to tell you the whole now, I may as well begin by telling you that you owe some of my understanding to Harriette.”

“Harriette Wilson!” She stiffened against him but relaxed again when he chuckled.

“It’s so easy to get a rise from you, sweetheart.”

“Then it is not true?”

“Oh, it’s true enough, but it’s not what you think. I’d best begin with my homecoming. I told you the truth about that, or as much of it as I was able to tell you. Wellington sent me, but he sent me because Prinny demanded that he send someone who could help flush out the spy who had been making mischief with the British plans of attack. Wellington was only too happy to do so, because the French had been playing us for fools for months, and it was only too clear to him that somehow word was getting to them of his plans. Since all communication between the Peninsula and London is conducted through the dispatches, which never leave the courier’s hands, it was fairly clear that the leak had to be in London, and that meant someone in the upper echelons of either Bathurst’s staff or one of our ally’s. So Wellington chose me, because I had the entrée to such circles socially as well as because of my military experience. Also, he informed me in no uncertain terms that it was time and more I was returning to take up my family duties.”

“Tell me about Harriette Wilson,” Mollie demanded, not caring a straw for the political details.

“Patience, sweetheart. Let me tell this in the order it happened or I’ll get tangled, and you won’t understand her part in it. I brought the true plans for Vitoria with me, and Bathurst himself met me at Hastings when we landed. He kept all the information under his hat, not even telling Prinny. The victory told us all we needed to know. Then Bathurst let the word get about that I had brought more information, including Wellington’s specific plans for the summer and fall campaigns. We hoped to stir some action that way, but I can promise you I never expected or wanted Ramsay to become involved. I’d no notion he even knew that rascal d’Épier.”

“He told me you gave him information to pass along to d’Épier.”

“Indeed. They hoped at first that I’d have something in the house, copies of maps or even copies of the plans themselves. Failing in that, they wanted Ramsay to pump me for information. We played a few games with them, in that I gave the lad certain bits to pass along, hoping we might flush out something in that fashion. And we did.”

“Whatever it was that Prince Nicolai said last night,” Mollie put in excitedly.

“Yes,” he agreed. “That, added to your information about his French mother. His motive in all this has no doubt been to retrieve the family estate in France.”

“So that was why you found that information so interesting!”

He nodded. “Unfortunately for myself and for Breck, neither a French mother nor the slip Nicolai made last night was sufficient evidence to confront the man or even to suggest his complicity to de Lieven, who was bound to support his own man against anything but unarguable fact. Breck, Jamie, and I didn’t even have a good opportunity to discuss the matter. We meant to have it out as soon as Prinny arrived, but d’Épier and his men were waiting for us when we left to meet him.”

“But no one left the castle,” Mollie objected. “That was why Ramsay wouldn’t believe Nicolai was involved.”

“Jamie probably followed the same reasoning,” Hawk replied. “We thought d’Épier was being watched in London, but he must have given them the slip. I think our capture—or mine, at any rate—was intended from the moment they knew we were coming down here. It would give them a chance to discover not only what information I had brought back but what instructions were being relayed to Wellington.”

“But surely they must have known the plans would be changed once you were captured?”

“Why? As far as they knew no one suspected who the spy was, and my disappearance might just as well be attributed to footpads as to any other cause. I daresay after a decent period of time, Breck’s body and mine would simply have been discovered in the woods near the valley road where we were taken.”

Mollie shuddered. But when he remained silent for a moment longer, she remembered Harriette Wilson. “And?” she prompted. “Where does Miss Wilson enter into all this, my lord, and how is it that I am in her debt?”

He chuckled again. “I spent my time in London talking to anyone and everyone who might point us in the right direction, and Harriette Wilson has more connections in the
beau monde
than anyone, sweetheart. She was one of the first people I went to in my search for the most likely person to be our quarry. I confess I met her during my first Season and even went to a few parties at her house. We became friends of a sort, but because I knew perfectly well that she was also friendly with my father, the connection never became an intimate one. Nonetheless, during one of our meetings last month, she asked me how my marriage was faring after so long a separation. What with one thing and another, we got to discussing certain matters, and she made me see one or two things more clearly.”

Resentment struggled with curiosity, and curiosity won. “How so?”

“Do you remember our wedding night, sweetheart?”

Mollie nodded, biting her lip. His hand moved idly up and down her upper arm. “I was terrified,” she said. “Fascinated, but terrified. It was wonderful at first, and I thought everything would be fine, but then something happened, and suddenly it wasn’t fine. I thought I must have done something wrong.”