Loretta Chase - The Devil's Delilah (16 page)

What with starting and hesitating and imagining footsteps where there were none and turning back half a dozen times for every dozen he went forward, he discovered the one barren square of soil just as darkness truly fell. Still, having come so far, he could not — would not, for fear and greed drove him on — go back and wait for a better opportunity. He drew out his few hand tools (he had not dared bring anything so loudly incriminating as a shovel) from the pockets of his overcoat and began to dig.

He dug a hole, not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door but, as Mercutio had once observed, it would serve. The excavations Mr. Atkins effected might have served, in fact, to bury a host of volumes and one or two owners besides. These efforts, to his unspeakable despair, did not serve sufficiently to produce what he sought.

Hours after he'd begun, as a few bold stars twinkled defiantly through the heavy overcast of late-night sky, Mr. Atkins sank down on his knees, defeated and near tears with frustration. It must be here. There was no other explanation. Yet there must be some other, because it was not.

He sat and mourned and raged by turns and rubbed his dirty, blistered hands against his forehead and got dirt into his eyes, which made them water, and up his nose, which made him sneeze. A slug began oozing over his fingers towards his shirt cuff. Shuddering, the publisher struck at it with the trowel, but only succeeded in gashing his wrist. While the slug crawled away unharmed, Mr. Atkins, eyes smarting, nose running, muscles aching, and wrist throbbing in excruciating counterpart to his head, collected his tools, rose, and trudged out of the garden.

Chapter 11

Though he'd experienced some confusion the night before, an untroubled night's sleep was sufficient to revive Lord Berne's customary aplomb. He appeared at Elmhurst the morning after the dinner party, fully prepared to recover whatever credit he had lost. When the butler informed him that Miss Desmond was not in, Lord Berne was not too shy to ask where she had gone.

Bantwell certainly had no business telling him. Unfortunately, the butler was suffering the aftereffects of dissipation and, due to what seemed like a hundred nails driving themselves into his skull, was not thinking clearly.

Thus Lord Berne learned Miss Desmond had gone riding. He had only to bribe a groom to obtain a mount. Finding the young lady was not difficult, either. Forbidden any pace speedier than a trot and not allowed beyond the park boundaries, she could not go very far.

He found her decorously following the bridle path which circuited the park, her groom trotting at a discreet distance behind her. Peters, the groom, looked even more ill than the butler had. He was, in fact, rather green about the gills.

Lord Berne smiled. The gods were with him this morning. He erased the smile as soon as he was alongside his beloved, whose expression was not at all welcoming. Without further ado, Lord Berne threw himself at her mercy. He was despicable, he declared. He wished he might be flogged — no, a rack would be better — for the falsehood he had, in a moment of utter despair, committed to paper.

He was informed in flinty tones that his wishes could be of no possible interest to her.

Miss Desmond's icy hauteur immediately aroused Lord Berne as no coquetry could have done. Perhaps this was because, as Jack had supposed, such treatment was a novelty. Lord Berne had encountered feigned indifference before, but this Arctic fury was another species altogether, and held all the exotic thrill of travel in uncharted lands.

"It's as I feared, as I knew it would be, then," he said. "You will not forgive me, and it were futile to explain, to exonerate myself."

"I wish, sir, you would divest yourself of the delusion that anything you do or say could be of any possible concern to myself."

"Is it a delusion, Miss Desmond? Would you be so angry — would you hate me so if what I had done were a matter of indifference to you?"

Her eyes flashed, telling him he had scored his point.

"Spoken with all the conceited arrogance of a true coxcomb," she retorted hotly. "But what do you care how you insult me? I only wonder you take the trouble with one so utterly beneath your notice."

No woman in his whole life had ever spoken to him so, and no one could look so ravishingly enraged while she did. Lord Berne grew giddy with desire.

"Despise me, then," he said. "Loathe me. Tell me I disgust you. At least there's feeling in that. At least I inspire you with some sort of passion." He saw her raise her riding crop. "Will you strike me? Do it," he urged. "I cannot tell you the relief it would bring me."

"How dare you!" she gasped, goaded nearly to tears. "But of course you dare. You think you can say any filth to me you like. And like a fool I remain passively enduring it. Well, I've amused you long enough." She spurred her horse and dashed ahead.

Being by no means taken unawares, Lord Berne set off in pursuit, as did the less prepared groom. Unfortunately, Peter's physiology was in no state amenable to a gallop. In less than a minute he was forced to halt, so that he could dismount and vomit into the bushes. By the time he could look up again, Miss Desmond and her pursuer were out of sight.

"Atkins, I admire persistence. A man gets nowhere in this wicked world without it. But I must tell you frankly, sir, that your case now passes the bounds of British tenacity and hovers on the brink of obsession. I told you I haven't got it. You may offer a million pounds, and the Crown of England in the bargain, and I still won't have it. The manuscript is no longer in my possession."

Mr. Desmond's smile was regretful, even pitying, yet something in his eyes caused Mr. Atkins to step back a pace.

Desmond, even at his amiable best — which he was not this morning — was a formidable figure. All the same, Mr. Atkins was desperate. If he was obsessed, he was entitled to be, when his entire future was at stake, when ruin and desolation stared grinning into his face.

"Are you quite sure, Mr. Desmond," he asked poignantly, "you have no idea who
has
got it? No suspicions?"

"If I had suspicions," the Devil answered, "I would act upon them, don't you think? If I sus-pected, for instance, that you would not accept the word of a gentleman, don't you think I might be a little affronted?" He went on, still smiling, but with a warning in his voice that matched the warning in his glittering green eyes, "Yet as you see, I am perfectly at ease. I imagine no such slight to my honour. You are only concerned I may have experienced a momentary absence of mind — a failing, like physical enfeeblement, regrettably common among men of my advanced age."

As he spoke, Mr. Desmond advanced upon his guest, who found himself backing towards the door.

"I appreciate your concern," the Devil added, as Mr. Atkins collided with the door handle, "but I do hate to be fussed over, you know. Ungrateful creature that I am, it makes me irritable. I had much rather, Mr. Atkins, you ceased fussing."

Mr. Atkins's courage — no reliable quality in him anyhow — deserted him entirely as the towering dark figure closed in on him.

"In — indeed, sir, I understand per — perfectly," he stammered. "Most annoying, I'm sure. Very sorry to have troubled you. Good day, sir." He grasped the door handle, wrenched the door open, and stumbled into the hall and against a very large potted palm. The tree tottered and Mr. Atkins made a grab for it, dropping his hat in the process. The tree swayed back into place, its fronds quivering. Trembling likewise, Mr. Atkins turned to retrieve his hat and found Mr. Langdon standing in the way, frowning at him.

Mr. Langdon's frown was attributable to the fact that his life had become a burden to him. From the moment last night when he'd caught Miss Desmond's furtive glance at Lord Berne and heard the ensuing sigh, Mr. Langdon had seen the light. Or perhaps the darkness was more apt a metaphor, because what he saw threw gloom upon every facet of his existence.

It was Tony she sighed for, Tony she longed for, which ought to be perfectly agreeable, since Tony was sighing and longing for her and they were well matched in every way, from their physical beauty to their restless, passionate natures. Yet try as he might, Mr. Langdon could find no joy in contemplating this pair formed by nature for each other. He found so little joy in it that he wished he were dead.

Still, whatever he felt, he knew he had no business behaving so rudely to Mr. Atkins. Though he would like to knock the fellow down for continuing to plague the family, Jack had no right to do so. No one had appointed him guardian of the Desmonds' peace.

Accordingly, he schooled his features into a thin semblance of politeness and — perhaps to make up for this poor show, retrieved the publisher's hat and returned it to him with something like a pleasant greeting.

"Th-thank you, sir. Kind of you, I'm sure," Mr. Atkins mumbled, turning the hat round and round in his hands. "So clumsy of me. Business, you know. So pressing." He darted a frightened look at the sturdy door, then, with a stammered "Good day," scurried away.

Mr. Langdon scarcely heard the farewell, being preoccupied once more with the matter of hands. How curious that so well-fed and well-groomed a City-bred fellow should have such ill-cared-for hands. Mr. Atkins's fingernails had been ragged and grimy, the digits themselves red and blistered. This was odd in a man whose primary labour was the shifting about of pieces of paper and the consumption of vast quantities of ink.

The butler appeared, breaking in upon Mr. Lang-don's reflections.

"Her ladyship has just come in from the garden," said Bantwell. "She says that if you will be so kind as to excuse her appearance, she will be pleased to meet with you in the drawing room."

Mr. Langdon was duly led in and announced in unsteady tones by the red-eyed, but otherwise pale, butler.

Lady Potterby looked rather peevish and ill as well, an appearance she explained was the result of unwelcome news from her gardener. "He insists we are overrun with moles, Mr. Langdon, which is most distressing."

"Moles?" Jack echoed blankly.

She nodded. "Jenkins tells me there are holes everywhere. He's beside himself. The lavender half uprooted and the lilies a shambles and I don't know what else. At least the worst of the damage was — " She caught herself up short as Mr. Langdon's eyes widened. "Well, it is most tiresome, and I shall spare you the details."

Mr. Langdon, upon whom an awful suspicion had just dawned, hurriedly dispatched his errand by returning Lady Potterby's fan to her. He then asked after Miss Desmond.

Upon learning the young lady was sufficiently recovered from last night's jollities to go riding, he expressed his satisfaction and made a hasty departure.

He had just broken into a run, preparatory to a mad dash back to the Rossing stables for his horse, when, turning the corner of the hedge, he narrowly missed colliding with Mr. Desmond.

"All this dashing about in the height of summer — it is a wonder you young people have not succumbed to heat prostration," said the Devil. "Well, you
are
young."

Mr. Langdon rather incoherently concurred with this observation.

"Since you are thirty years at least younger than myself, Mr. Langdon, I wish you would get my horse back for me, and save me some exertion."

"I beg your pardon?" said Jack distractedly.

"That knave — Berne, I mean — has borrowed Apollyon and gone gallivanting with Delilah. I particularly wanted to ride today and I particularly want my own horse," said Mr. Desmond in aggrieved tones. "Apollyon and I are accustomed to each other. We are quite intimate. I got him from Wemberton two days ago in trade for an ill-natured grey."

"Indeed, sir," said Jack, practically hopping with impatience.

"So will you not borrow a mount and get my horse back for me? Her ladyship's stable is nearer to hand," the Devil added, "and I am in rather a hurry."

No horse can sustain a gallop forever, regardless how inconsiderate its rider. Miss Desmond was boiling mad, but she was not inconsiderate. Out of compassion for dumb beasts she was eventually compelled to slow her mount. She glared at Lord Berne when he rode up alongside her once more.

"Go away," she said, panting. "Go to the devil."

"I come to his daughter instead. Gad, but you ride well," he said admiringly. "We must hunt together one day."

"Are you deaf? You are not wanted. Go away."

"You know I can't. You are the woman I've been searching for my entire life." His voice dropped to low, thrilling tones of urgency. "You must let me speak."

"To insult me further?"

"There was no insult in what I said. Only you made it so. Still, it served my purpose."

"Your
what
?"

"I wanted to be rid of the groom, which you did for me by becoming enraged and galloping away. Were you not aware he was too ill to follow?"

Miss Desmond glanced behind her and knew an instant of alarm. She was alone and unprotected in the company of a libertine who had deliberately manipulated her into this predicament. Nonetheless, she reminded herself, this was her great-aunt's property. He would not dare misbehave. She willed herself to be calm as she turned to meet his gaze, and was taken aback by the piteous longing in his countenance.

"It was only because I could not speak what was in my heart while others were by," he said tenderly. "I must speak because, despite your mistrust — oh, I admit you have reason — but despite that, despite my parents' warnings, Hope persists. How can I help it, worshipping you as I do? I must hope… or die."

In her short life, Delilah had heard enough sweet talk to fill all seven volumes of
Clarissa
. Since she had never, however, heard Lord Berne at his heart-stirring best, she might as well have spent her twenty years in a convent. His voice easily drowned out the one in the back of her head which was shrilly recommending she return to the house immediately.

He raised every objection she could have to him just as though he had direct access to her brain, then answered each objection as brilliantly as if he had been on trial for his life. It was not so much his rhetoric that held her, however, as the boyish innocence of his handsome face and the sincerity of his tones as he gave her to understand she was the most beautiful, brilliant, altogether admirable woman who had ever existed.