Lord of Ice (29 page)

Seated across from the fair Miranda, Crispin was at his most charming. He even had the duchess laughing. Only Winterley seemed unimpressed by the lad’s wit. Stern and unsmiling, sitting at attention beside Miranda, his huge shoulders rigid, the earl was a dark, brooding presence at the table. Recalling the sorry state Jason had been in before he had left this world, Algernon was not altogether surprised.

It was a bad business, soldiering, he thought, then ignored the gloom that surrounded the colonel and stole another surreptitious glance at Miranda.

Perhaps she felt his study, for her glance crept toward him—inch by shy, virginal inch—meeting his nervously from down the table. Ah, she enchanted him. Such pink cheeks, such green eyes. Her skin was as succulent as the petals of a lily. His heart beat faster with exhilaration. Though he was certain no one noticed, he held her stare for one second longer than perhaps was proper, then flicked his tongue over his dry lips and, ever so patiently, took a sip of his wine.

Early the next day, Damien stood in the drive, conversing with the head groom, a diminutive ex-jockey, who sat perched atop Zeus, having just come back from taking the stallion out for a gallop in Hyde Park. It was a brilliant December day, winter sunlight sparkling on the snow, the sky azure.

“Aye, he’s in fine wind, my lord,” the little man reported, giving the stallion’s flexed neck a sound pat.

“I am glad to hear it,” Damien answered, pleased with his stallion’s high humor.

He would have liked to have taken Zeus out himself, but he was reluctant to leave Miranda unprotected even for a moment. Fortunately, there had been no accidents and no mishaps since Fancy had bolted on her four days ago. Either his vigilance in watching over his ward was paying off, or the danger was all in his head.

He had allowed Miranda to attend the dinner last night because it was important to know one’s kin, however objectionable, but he knew she was too clever to be fooled about the Huberts’ motives. If she had not received his family’s support, or if she had not made such a good impression on the ton, her aunt and uncle would have upheld their policy of pretending she didn’t exist. They were social climbers, plain and simple. As for her cousins, the two haughty girls had stared at her the whole night in withering jealousy—when they had not been staring at Robert and him, that was. Crispin was the only one who seemed to feel a genuine liking for Miranda, Damien thought just as a ruckus arose at the tall, wrought-iron gates of Knight House.

“Keep moving! You’ve got no business 'ere,” the gatekeepers were saying.

Instantly on alert, Damien looked over. He could not see their would-be visitor, for the servants stood in the way. He glanced at the groom, nodding his dismissal. The weathered jockey turned Zeus and rode him at a walk around the house toward the stable as a piercing whistle split the air.

“ 'Ay! Lordship!” somebody yelled from the gates. “Do you want to let me in or not?”

Damien marched over, curling his lip in disdain. It was that hell-born babe, Billy Blade. He had grasped the wrought-iron bars above his head and was leaning idly against the gate, his mouth stretched in a jaded, satyric smirk that was possibly the most insolent sight Damien had ever beheld.

Here was a young man who could have done with a few weeks of army discipline, Damien thought with a stern frown. “Let him in,” he ordered the gatekeepers.

“Sir?” They turned to him, looking startled.

He gave a curt nod. “Do it.”

“Ay, ye got some sense, after all.” Blade pushed away from the gate, hitched up his black leather breeches as he waited, then swaggered in grandly through the gates. He tipped his cockade hat to the gatekeepers, who eyed him dubiously.

“You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve coming here,” Damien growled.

“Wot, should I have come scratching at the servant’s gate?” he retorted.

“You should’ve gone to Lucien's. You are his acquaintance. Not mine.”

“I tried. He wasn’t 'ome. You’re the one that came to me for help. I’m here to give it, but if you ain’t gonna be gentlemanlike, I’ll take my information elsewhere.”

“This way, you detestable creature,” Damien muttered under his breath.

Blade laughed in amusement and followed him in through the front door. At least he had the couth to doff his hat. “Not bad, not bad a'tall,” he remarked, glancing around at the gleaming marble entrance hall of Knight House, but he did not look overly impressed. “This your house?”

The coxcomb was probably eyeing up the place for the prospect of a future burglary, he thought. “No, my brother's. This way, Mr. Blade.”

He led him to the small utilitarian office on the back of the first floor. It was used by the butler and housekeeper for the management of the household. He offered Blade a wooden chair well away from the butler’s silver-safe. Rather than sitting, the lad planted his foot on the chair and draped his arm over his bent knee. His expression hardened.

“I’d say you’ve got trouble, gov.”

“What did you learn?”

“Let me ask you somethin' first. You kill all four of them bleeders yourself up in Brum?”

Damien deemed it best not to answer.

Blade grinned. “That didn’t sound like a 'no.' How'd you do it? I’ve killed me two at once, but never four.”

Damien could not resist an oblique smile. “It’s all a matter of rhythm.”

“Rhythm. Right. I. Well, then.” The lad’s shrewd eyes turned grim. “Here’s what I’ve got. Those four sows you skewered up north were hired in London by a rich man about three weeks ago. Nobody knows the chap’s name, but there’s a rumor going around he’s a landlord that owns a few of the tenement houses in Seven Dials.”

“What exactly did he hire them to do?”

Blade shook his head. “The rest of the gang don’t know. All the man said was that he needed them to 'do a job' for him up north. He was to pay them a hundred guineas each.”

“No mean sum,” he murmured, a chill running down his spine to realize that, indeed, those four men had been deliberately sent to get Miranda—whether to abduct or kill her, he did not know. He shuddered at the realization of what a near thing it had been. If his instincts had not warned him to turn around one last time to look at her, he wouldn’t have been there to save her. They must have been watching the school, waiting for their chance. No doubt they had been perplexed about how to grab her, with the tight rein that Miss Brocklehurst had kept over the girls at Yardley. By dashing out that night to the theater, she must have taken them off guard.

Undoubtedly the enemy had more of his underlings watching Knight House even now, he thought darkly. His first thought was to remove her to one of the family’s remote country estates, but he brushed off the idea. She would be safest right here in Knight House in the heart of London, where there were plenty of loyal eyes and ears to keep watch. Here the defenses were already in place, his brothers and his officers from the regiment on hand to assist, if need be.

He stroked his jaw broodingly. “So, how can I find out who this man is?” he mused aloud.

“Lucien should have better luck than I, on that point,” Blade replied. “Most of those miserable buildings are owned by men with great names and titles, but they hide behind their gentlemen of business, who are under orders not to reveal their employers’ identities. Secrecy’s a virtue in my part o' Town.”

“Did you hear anything about the man returning to hire more of the gang members to finish this 'job'?”

Blade shook his head firmly. “No. Would be too risky for him, wouldn’t it? Besides, if the first batch failed, why would he go back to them? If I were him, I reckon I’d change tactics.”

“He already has. He’s a bloody coward, too, trying to run down a young girl with a carriage,” he murmured, thinking aloud.

Blade let out a low whistle. “That’s low. I do not envy you, Colonel. Nothing worse than an enemy who refuses to show himself. Call on me again if I can be of help.”

At his words, Damien’s stare homed in on Blade’s face, because, for the slightest moment, it seemed as though his thick Cockney accent had fallen away, a more cultured tone showing through underneath. Clearly, the young man did not realize he had betrayed this odd quirk. Come to think of it, Damien mused, he noticed a certain mark of high birth in the lad’s knife-hilt cheekbones and sulky mouth.

“Have you always lived in Seven Dials, Mr. Blade?”

Blade’s guarded smirk returned in the blink of an eye. He lowered his foot from the chair just as a trio of high-pitched voices floated back to them from the entrance hall.

Damien heard his little sister’s crisp voice.

“Mr. Walsh, please tell Her Grace we shall be back in an hour. We are going walking in the park.”

Damien jumped up out of his chair and strode out of the office to stop them. “Miranda!” he called sharply. Wrapped in her fur-lined pelisse, she turned around. “You may not go out.”

“My lord?” she asked through gritted teeth, lifting her chin.

“I did not give you permission to leave the property.”

“Damien, you brute, leave her alone,” Jacinda scoffed, putting her arm around Miranda. “Look how sunny it is out. Enough of your arbitrary orders. We are not going to waste this day. Come, Miranda, Lizzie—”

“No,” he growled, seizing his ward’s wrist, but he instantly let go when Miranda muttered, “Ow.”

“Leave her alone!” Jacinda tugged Miranda back to her side.

“I’d do as he says, if I were you, my lady.”

They all turned as Billy Blade sauntered into the entrance hall, a wicked smile curving his lips.

Jacinda glanced over at him and blinked, wide-eyed. A look of withering hauteur crept over her elfin face. “I beg your pardon,” she uttered, drawing herself up and looking every inch the blue-blooded daughter of a duke.

“Blade,” Damien warned.

His glance flicked insolently over Jacinda. “I’m leavin',” he drawled, swaggering toward the front door.

Mr. Walsh opened it for him automatically, staring at the flamboyant, ragged creature with a quite shocked expression.

“Who—no, what—was that?” Jacinda demanded, spinning around to face at Damien the moment the door closed.

“Never you mind,” he started, but before he could say another word, Jacinda grabbed Lizzie and Miranda’s hands and rushed up the stairs, dragging them after her.

“Er, girls?” He promptly found himself left alone at the foot of the stairs, scratching his head, but at least he had managed to keep them indoors.

“Jacinda? What on earth?” Miranda and Lizzie protested, laughing, as the girl raced down the corridor, half dragging them each by the hand. She flung into the music room that overlooked the drive and ran over to the window, planting her hands against the glass.

“Oh, look at him, he’s
soooo
horrid,” Jacinda whispered, staring in fascinated revulsion out the window as the gatekeepers opened the gates before the odd young man. “What did Damien call him? Blade?”

“I think so. What sort of name is that?” Lizzie asked as the girls huddled in the window.

“A perfect ruffian and just as bold as you please. Did you see how he looked at me?” Jacinda breathed. “
What
is he?”

“A Nasty Man, that’s what,” Lizzie said flatly. “I’m sure Her Grace would not at all approve. Damien certainly didn’t. For heaven’s sake, Jacinda, stop staring before he sees you!”

Even as Lizzie said it, Jacinda’s white-gloved fingers flew to her lips as Blade turned back to look at the house and noticed her in the window. He flashed her a grin and swept off his hat, bowing to her with a flourish as though he were a French courtier at Versailles. Blade clapped his hat onto his head again, pivoted smoothly, and ambled away with slow, long-legged strides, as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

“What a silly, ridiculous fool!” Jacinda scoffed, her apple-cheeks flooding with color, but Lizzie and Miranda exchanged a bemused look, for her voice was breathless when she said it. Jacinda pressed her forehead against the glass, eagerly watching Blade through the window until he had disappeared down the street.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Miranda jerked awake at the sound of a distant explosion late the next night. As she scrambled up from her pillow, the book she had been reading before she drowsed off toppled off her chest. Whisked out of dreamland, she looked around in confusion. Her chamber was dim, the curtains drawn; the candle had burned down to a stub. She sat up, rubbing her eyes as the sounds continued like far-off thunder. When she glanced at the clock, she realized the reason for all the noise. The birth of the new year, 1815, was only twenty minutes away.

With a yawn, she threw off the coverlet and pushed up from the bed, padding across the cold floor to peer out the window. As she pulled the heavy damask curtain back and looked out, her lonely sigh misted the windowpane. Spending the holiday by herself was worse than spending it at Yardley, she thought as she stared at the fireworks painting the sky in flashes of colored light, illuminating the snowy rooftops of London.

So, this was what it was like to live in the regent’s capital. In Birmingham, they did not have fireworks very often. She watched them for a moment in drowsy pleasure, her eyes heavy-lidded. Earlier, Damien and Lucien had explained to her about the danger they suspected she might be in. They seemed to feel that some of the accidents that had happened to her might not have been accidents at all. She was not particularly alarmed, for she knew that they would protect her. They said it was nothing to worry about and that she was safe, and she believed them. She only felt rather glum that she had not been allowed to go to the New Year’s Eve party with the others.

Then again, she was not totally alone tonight, she thought. Somewhere in the house, her guardian was home, perhaps feeling every bit as lonely as she. Damien, too, had stayed in. Warily, she glanced over her shoulder at her chamber door, debating the notion of going to wish him a happy New Year. They had not spoken since that night in the stable, except for the practicalities, and even then, their conversations had been stilted and strained. That was no way to start a new year. She studied the door for a moment, gnawing her lip. She doubted he was sleeping at this hour. Who could sleep with all the noise—?

Her train of thought suddenly broke off. The fog of sleep fell away instantly as she remembered.

Fireworks!

She turned back to the window, her heart in her throat as the memory of his tortured confession in the stable flooded back into her now fully awake mind. Whirling away from the window, she grabbed her dressing gown from off its peg, pulled it on, and prayed he was all right as she picked up her taper and strode out into the hallway. Damien had specifically said that the noise of fireworks and festival cannons—like the ones that were firing even now—had triggered his terrifying experience on Guy Fawkes Night. He was probably fine, she told herself, but she had to check on him just to make sure.

Holding up her candle in the darkened hallway, she counted doors around the corner until she came to his bedchamber. Her courage wavered as she raised her fist to knock on the door. He had told her that he had not been aware of his own actions that night, that he had had a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. What if he
was
dangerous? She swallowed hard as the vision flashed through her mind of Damien on that moonlit ridge, fierce, bloodied, and wild, sword in hand. Oh, yes, she knew what he was capable of.

She also knew that that man would never hurt her. No matter how much he believed he was a threat, she knew to the very core of her being that he was not capable of losing himself in his pain so completely that he would ever hurt a woman. Not Damien Knight. Bracing herself, she lifted her chin and knocked bravely on the door.

There was no answer.

“Damien?” she called softly, knocking again. She waited for another moment or two, then hurried off to look for him downstairs. She peered over the edge of the banister, but there was no sign of the night butler or hall porter, no one to ask where Damien was. With the artillery and fireworks booming in the distance, the house was eerily still. She went in search of him, moving silently from one grand, empty salon to the next.

Moonlight filtered in through the great windows, sparkling like quicksilver over the dark, opulent halls, glittering along the gilt mirror frames. Her heart pounded with trepidation. As her candle began to gutter, burning down to the wax, she saw ghosts in every pool of shadows, imaginary goblins darting behind the airy scroll couches and the duke’s gleaming piano, but no Damien.

Perhaps he had gone out, she thought, when suddenly, she found a room with people in it. Two of his officer friends were playing cards in the library. She stepped into the doorway with her pewter candleholder in hand and gazed at them uncertainly.

“Pardon me.”

At her softly spoken words, they threw down their cards, jumped to their feet, and stood at attention. “Miss FitzHubert,” they greeted her, bowing stiffly.

They looked a bit nervous to find her in her dressing gown, but she smiled at them in embarrassment. She knew they were only here as a favor to Damien to help protect her.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said hesitantly. “I am sorry to have ruined your New Year’s Eve.”

“Not at all, Miss FitzHubert,” said Lieutenant Colonel MacHugh, a tall, red-haired Scotsman with piercing eyes and a fierce-looking scar on his face. “We are glad to do it. Winterley would do the same for us.”

“You’re very kind. Have you seen him?”

“He retired about an hour ago.”

She furrowed her brow. “He is in his rooms? Are you sure?”

“He said he wasn’t feeling well,” Captain Sutherland offered. He was a dashing blond fellow with a carefully groomed moustache.

This did not sound good, she thought as she nodded to them, wished them health and luck in the new year, and retreated, going back upstairs. That scoundrel had been in his rooms the whole time. Why had he not spoken up when she had come knocking? Was he hiding from her?

A few minutes later, she was back where she had started her search. “Damien?” she called, knocking more insistently on his door. “I know you’re in there. Sutherland and MacHugh told me so.” She waited. “Damien, answer me!”

“Go away.”

“Stop being a child. Are you ill?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I send for the physician?”

“No.”

Her gaze searched the floor as she listened for any hint of his condition in his voice. “Can I get you anything?”

“Go
away
.”

“I will not go away. What kind of sickness are you feeling?”

He did not answer.

“It’s not a sickness of the body, is it?” she asked grimly through the door. “Have you been drinking?”

Still, he said nothing.

“Damien, are you armed in there?”

His black, bitter laughter sent a chill down her spine as it reached her softly through the thick door.

“Let me in!” she cried, slamming the door with the heel of her fist, her heart pounding with dread that he might do violence to himself.

“Run away, Little Red Riding Hood,” he whispered madly, “before you are eaten by the big, bad wolf.”

She backed away from the door with a gulp. Staring at the door—the locked, solid barrier he had set between them—she knew that this was the moment of testing, the moment that counted. The moment, she realized, for which Lord Lucien had given her the key.

By God, this affliction was the real reason Damien had refused to let himself love her. It was time to do battle for him the way he had fought to save her on Bordesley Green. She ran off down the hallway to retrieve the key from her chamber.

There.
He had scared her off. From behind the door, Damien listened to her light footfalls moving off down the corridor. He was shirtless, covered in sweat, high in his battle state, and fighting it for all he was worth. He clenched his jaw to stop himself from screaming out her name and rested his head slowly against the door, closing his eyes with a grimace as reality continued flashing between past and present with dizzying speed, like shutters flapping in a gale. Curious, how his very soul pleaded for her while his cold lips always uttered,
Go away
. His demons were tearing him to shreds tonight; in his brain was a maelstrom of anguish, grief, rage, and guilt. He sought to ride the storm, to master it by sheer will alone, but he could not.

Every scar on his body burned like a brand. The icy armor of his numbness was dissolving, and he was in this room, drowning silently on the tears he refused to shed. The distant booming sounded like artillery, and he could swear that it was coming closer. Who was it? General Massena? General Soult? He could beat Soult easily, but Massena was a foe to be reckoned with.

“No,” he muttered under his breath, pacing back and forth across the room like a caged animal. It was just the fireworks, and damn him if he did not kill the regent the next time he saw that crowned feeder hog for doing this to him. He had never gone to war for Prinny. King George was still the monarch, mad as a March hare. Like him. He picked up a Hepplewhite chair and smashed it against the wall.

Ah, it was so satisfying to hear that splintering of wood. If only he had his axe! But, no, no, he could not trust himself with sharp objects. He had hidden them all away in case he somehow slipped his cage. It eased him for a second, killing the chair; then more evil visions flooded back: a trio of ravens picking at the entrails of his most promising young ensign. The colors had changed hands five times that day, as one standard bearer after another had been cut down. His thoughts whirled faster as each distant burst of fireworks lit his darkened room in faint, sickly colors. There was a certain angle of artillery where one good-sized cannonball, if aimed correctly, could behead a whole line of foot soldiers as it came screaming in, tearing through the column. It was one of the few things at the war that had literally made him throw up.

His legs trembled beneath him as he marched to the window and threw back the drapes, which he had closed earlier. He stared in hatred at the distant lights and explosions, trying to reason with himself, but it was no good. He touched the window’s frosted pane and took comfort in the coldness, lifting his dewy hand to his feverish brow, wiping the coldness against his skin; then, with a sudden, evil inspiration, his gaze zoomed in from the flashes of light in the distance to the glass before him. This could all be over quickly, he thought. The pain finished. He need only put his fist through that glass, pick up a good long shard, and slash his throat with it.

He stared at the feathery designs of ice on the glass, fascinated, his pulse ticking in his temples. It would be a horrid mess. But that’s what servants were for.

Do it,
hissed the serpent in his brain, and its power was great, constricting him in its coils of pain, but there was only one problem.

Who would take care of Miranda?

Hurry,
she urged herself, grabbing the key from her dresser, her hands shaking. She was certain now that Lucien had entrusted it to her because it would give her some secret access to Damien’s chamber. This time she was not going to stop until she found the way in and reached him.
How could Lucien know about a door that not even Mr. Walsh was aware of?
Her eyes flared with inspiration. Lucien’s room . . .

She ran back down the hall, going silently past Damien’s door. She did not want to give him any warning that she was seeking another way in, lest he bar her from entering there, as well. She tiptoed into the bedroom next door to his, the key in one hand, her candle in the other. Holding up the light, she searched the dim chamber that she reasoned had been Lucien’s boyhood room.

The bed looked as though it had not been slept in for ages. The room bore the stamp of Lucien’s scholarly nature: The volumes on the bookshelves were neatly arranged by language—French, German, Latin, Greek. A microscope, a globe, and a pair of calipers sat out on display on the boy-sized writing table in the far right corner. On the left, a door opened into the dressing room. Since Damien’s chamber was on the other side of the left wall, she searched that side, her imagination offering up visions of the twins as young boys playing here. Anyone could see that there was a deep bond between them. Recently, during a family conversation in the drawing room after dinner, Robert, the duke, had told her in amusement that, as children, whenever the twins were bad, the worst punishment that their parents or governess could inflict was to separate them. Neither knew quite what to do without the other. The pair, he had said, had always seemed to have their own language; they appeared to know what each other was thinking at any given moment. Lord Alec had agreed. They were, the youngest brother had drawled in his winsome way, like one person in two bodies.