Love's Patient Fury (The Deverell Series Book 3) (33 page)

Rhea’s laughter was tinkling like tiny bells. She did not resist as he began to open the back of her gown. “What has happened today, my love?”

His lips began to skim her nape. His voice was raspy with passion. “I will explain later, Rhea. Our daughter just reminded me of all the things you have been to me. All the things I have missed by behaving an ass and forcing you from my bed.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

If was after midnight when Varian reached London. He went straight to the Wythford’s town residence in spite of the lateness of the hour. Christina would know if Rensdale was responsible for the men who were following his son. The last time he’d seen Christina, he’d sensed she knew more than she was telling him. He’d been wrong not to press her and pursue what it was she’d been keeping from him.

Varian’s knock on the door was loud and impatient. It took but a moment after it opened a crack before Harris, Christina’s butler, recognized him. With no notice at all to Varian’s unkempt traveling state or the alarming hour of this intrusion, after uttering a proper greeting the aged servant escorted Varian to the library before going to rouse his mistress.

Varian stood by the sideboard, helping himself to brandy when Christina joined him. “How dare you break down my door at this hour,” she announced sharply by way of a greeting.

 He whirled with the bottle still in hand. “There was a time you wouldn’t have cared about the hour, my dear.”

She sank onto a chair. “There was a time you came for my bed.”

Varian took notice of the sharpness in her voice and its meaning. His instincts were not wrong.

“I suppose I should wish you happy on the birth of your daughter,” she remarked, picking an invisible bit of nothing from her nightgown. “I trust she is well, Varian?”

He sank into a chair across from her. “She’s extraordinary. I could not be a happier man than I am with my wife and family.”

Her eyes flashed. Varian cautioned himself. It was not wise to bait her. Swirling his drink, he noted she was mussed from sleep and haphazardly garbed in a too sheer nightdress. In the short span since he had last seen her it seemed age had taken greater possession of her face. Age or was it something else? She looked greatly different to him. The once striking lines of high cheekbones and flawless skin diminished even in the kind glow of firelight.

He said, “This is not a social call, my dear. I’m amused you thought it could be.”

Christina’s gaze sharpened with anger. “And I am amused you thought I thought it was.”

She walked over, took the drink from his hand and settled beside him. She took a long swallow and asked, “What is it you want, Varian? Just out with it so we can conclude this business quickly and you can leave.”

The sharpness of her voice surprised him, though it probably shouldn’t have. Had he asked too much of her? Had he been too callous with her heart? He had not always treated her fairly. He regretted that this day.

Christina’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “I’ve taken Warton as a lover.”

“I imagine Wythford isn’t pleased.”

Damn, that sounded crass. He shouldn’t have reacted to her toying with him.

“Wythford is too occupied trying to save his own skin to worry overmuch about me,” she said. “Warton likes to talk. He talks much more than he should.”

A long pause. She was enjoying his anxiety.

“They have a sketch of you, Varian,” she said at last. “It was delivered to Andrew Merrick shortly after your return to England. It is you in flowing black capes dressed like a sea captain. But that is not the most amusing part. It was quite an interesting verse.” She made a pretty show of tapping her fingers on her cheek as if unable to recall it. Then her eyes rounded and she quoted,
“A murderer from shore to shore, claims a gentle bride, from a family he does scorn. Treason, piracy, murderer, thief. He cannot escape justice, behind the skirts of one so sweet.”

Varian’s eyes raged in fury. “Damn you for not telling me this.”

Christina remained infuriatingly calm before his temper. “They’ve traced it back to Rensdale, but they’ve been unable to corroborate his claims. Warton has done nothing but search waterfronts and docks to see if anyone can lay claim to having seen you seen as Morgan. They were halfway to deciding it was a ruse and arresting Rensdale, but then, of course, Rensdale disappeared. And Warton has charged off to search for Rensdale and evidence against you.”

She made a dramatic sigh and started to fiddle with the fabric of her gown again. He’d had enough. In the ruthless clutch of his hand, he jerked her face around so he could meet her eyes. “If you do not tell me everything you have withheld from me, you will rue the day you didn’t, Christina. Or has it not occurred to you if I am charged with these treason, you will be charged with me as well?”

She slapped his hand away and sprang from the sofa. “You have your nerve coming here and being critical of me.”

She met him angry stare for angry stare. This woman before him was someone he did not know any more. Once, he had thought he’d known every corner of her heart. Or had he? Did any man ever truly know a woman?

“I am not being critical of you. I am trying to keep your spite from destroying us both,” he said in a low harsh voice.

She paused for a moment. She stared. Hate in her eyes. It hurt Varian to see it there. He started to walk toward the door.

Behind him she said, “Rensdale knows about the boy, Varian. They are going to use Indy to destroy you and then they are going to kill him.”

~~~

The past, the present and the future, unleashed, were colliding. Inside of Varian they were colliding as well, only there was also guilt and regret mixing with the powerful unsettled forces unleashed by his own hand. Indy had accused him long ago of thinking he was above other men. Those words rang in haunting eloquence in his memory this day.

In the custody of his worry and guilt, for this brief moment he regretted not having murdered Rensdale the day he had learned him responsible for all the tragic events that had befallen his life.

Death would have been merciful to Rensdale
, he had told Merry, explaining why he had not exacted vengeance in preference to justice. How foolish he had been to trust that fate held fairness in her fingers. His first task should have been to put a bullet in Rensdale’s head.
Death would have been equitable.

He’d made the crossing from London to Falmouth in two days’ time. If they knew about Indy, he couldn’t trust that they didn’t know Tom and the
Corinthian
were meeting the boy in Falmouth. Varian would not permit the thought that Indy wouldn’t be there when he arrived. To lose the boy again to Rensdale’s villainy; god would not be cruel enough to grant that fate.

Feeling the untimely possession of guilt and regret, he fought against his rising worry as he attempted to plot his next plan of action. Finding Indy and seeing him safe was the priority. He would deal with the threat of the Merricks and his past as Morgan later. He would not lose his son a second time; not even Merry would be able to heal that hurt in him.

He was just nearing the darkened waterfront of Falmouth when his senses became overly alert in the strange way when things suddenly seem to move too slowly, an illusion of too many things moving all at once. Popping and crackling in ear-piercing loudness. Shouting voices. Men running toward the ships. The worst imaginable hell was unfolding before his eyes in a grim scene of panic and fire. There in the Falmouth harbor the
Corinthian
was rapidly being turned to ash by flames.

~~~

“Kate, will you stop that infernal pounding!” Merry shouted, springing from her chair in the west drawing room.

Kate froze, her trembling hands hovering above the keys of the pianoforte. Her posture and the quivering lips made Merry instantly regret her sharpness. She could feel her parents watching her, and she crossed the carpet to where Kat played, dropping down to take her daughter in her arms.

She hid her face against Kat’s pudgy cheek. Her nerves were as taut as an over-tightened bow string, and each day was another turn making her insides knot even tighter. A month. Varian had been gone a month and had not sent word. He would not have done that if something had not gone terribly wrong.

Putting her lips to her daughter’s brow, she tried to reason the right course in this. Was it safe to ask for her father’s help? How much was it safe to tell him? She did not know, Varian was nowhere to ask, she only knew deep in her soul she needed to act quickly if she hoped to see her husband again.

She lifted her face to find her father’s intense blue eyes watching her. Feeling Kat fidget in her arms, her decision was made. If she could not trust her father with her heart, then there was no one on this earth to help her.

Blue eyes locked on blue eyes. “Find him,” Merry whispered in ragged agony. “I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care what you learn. You have men at your disposal. Send them to find my husband.”

Lucien’s face remained without reflection. His daughter’s anguish was not without anguish for him. He had dispatched men to find Varian a fortnight ago. An internal warning had sounded in him, instinct born of a lifetime managing dangerous endeavors. 

Lucien rose and went to Merry. It would hardly comfort his daughter to learn his men had not been successful in their task. Varian had all but disappeared, though his men continued to search, and Lucien had grown increasingly less hopeful day by day. That disclosure would do Merry no good at present.

“I have done all I can do,” Lucien said, easing down in front of his daughter.

Merry’s eyes flashed with hurt and anger. She misunderstood him, he noted with a sharp pain in his heart, but before Lucien could explain, she snapped, “You have done nothing but try to take my husband from me since he walked through the door. If you permit harm to come to Varian I will never forgive you. Do not pretend you cannot fix this for me, if you had a wish to do so.”

She ran from the room, battling her tears until she was alone in her bedroom. She paced the stifling confines of her room, bouncing Kat in her arms as she tried to make her worry-muddled mind work so she could figure out how to help Varian. Her anxiousness caused her to jiggle the baby too fiercely. Kat started to wail.

She was so distraught, she couldn’t calm her own daughter.  She went to the nursery and set Kat in the arms of Netta. She needed time alone to think.

What to do? What to do? She could feel it in her bones. Something was terribly wrong. Today the anxiousness in her limbs was unbearable. It had been with her from the moment she woke.

Impending doom. Death. It was in the air all around her. And there her family sat, peacefully carrying on while her heart was near to breaking.

Back in her room, she settled in her chair, her fingers curling around the armrests. Helplessness was a cruel being, curling through her limbs and picking at her heart.

Suddenly her worry dulled senses became aware of much commotion in the house. Voices raised. Her father yelling. The quick running feet of the staff in an agitated state. Varian? Was he finally returned to Bramble Hill? She could think of nothing else that could so quickly agitate her father but Varian. She sprang from her chair, running as fast her feet could take her to the stairs.

Eyes round, Merry halted for a brief suspended moment on the landing, fighting to put into order what she was seeing. There inside the front door a hulking form, long blond hair, burley arms, and rough seaman clothes…Shay! There was a body beneath him on the floor, but his wide back blocked from view who it was.

Oh please, oh please let it be Varian and let him be well, was her frantic prayer as she tore down the stairs. As she came around Shay’s hovering form, her heart fell. It wasn’t Varian on the floor. It was Indy, covered in soot, a bloody and lifeless body the Irishman wouldn’t release from his hold.

Merry looked up at her father. “Damn it! Why are you all just standing there? Take him to a bedroom. Get Netta. For pity sake why has no one gotten the boy help?”

Her father came quickly to her side. “He won’t let us near the boy, Merry,” her father said urgently. “He won’t put down his weapon.”

It was then she noticed the pistol in Shay’s hand pointed at the room. Merry gently took hold of Shay’s shoulder. “Shay, listen to me, it’s Merry. Whatever has happened you’re safe now. I won’t let any harm come to you or Indy. Put down the gun. You don’t have to shoot anyone here. Let my father take Indy. He won’t harm him. I promise! It’s me Merry!”

It was then Shay’s eyes, wild and flashing, turned on her, and his face held the look of shock. “Oh, Merry lass, thank god a soul I know. Himself sent me here with the boy, but I didn’t know who to trust. And someone has already tried to kill him once tonight. He is halfway to dead as it ’tis.”

Her eyes widened. “Himself. You’ve seen Varian? Is he well? Where is he?”

“’Twas awful, Merry lass!”

Fighting to keep her wits about her and not drown in her fast rising panic, Merry motioned for her father to come as she gently eased lower the pistol in Shay’s hand. “Give me the gun, Shay.” She closed her hand over his, then unbent his fingers and eased the pistol from his burly hand.

The footmen rushed forward, retrieving the boy, and her father was rapidly barking orders as Indy was sent to an upstairs bedroom, and a servant dispatched to fetch Netta.

Remaining on the floor with Shay, but desperate to check on Indy and even more desperate to know what Shay knew about Varian, Merry turned his face toward her and asked anxiously, “Tell me what has happened. You said you saw Varian. Where is he?”

Shay shook his head. “It was madness. We’ve been at port in Falmouth but a day. And the lad come back aboard ship as he was to. I was just get’n into me bunk when the smell of smoke touched me nostrils and I could hear run’n feet and shouting men. Fire on ship and not just any fire, Merry lass. A blaze set near the magazine to destroy the ship. The men, they rushed about trying to put out the flames, but there were other men on the ship not of the crew. Had the lad, they did. Were taking him by gunpoint. I charged down the passageway, I did. Wasn’t going to let them take me captain. That’s when the boom happened and a beam licked with fire gave way, falling on the blackguards try’n to steal the lad. Trapped me on one side of the fire and Indy on the other. I couldn’t get through the flames, Merry lass. I tried.”