Patrica Rice (19 page)

She was good. She was very, very good. She could not have done better had she dumped a pail of cold water over his head. Evan gritted his teeth and stared at the far wall. “One does not go to the authorities with accusations against family. I take it you have met my grandfather?”

He did not need to say more than that. How could the twins accuse the earl’s only surviving child of such heinous treachery? Particularly without proof. They had reached some kind of verbal stalemate. Daphne wrinkled her nose and gave a sigh.

“I was really not meant to be a viscount’s wife at all. And heaven forbid, never a countess. Your grandfather is quite awesome in his authority. What was your grandmother like?”

Evan bent his diminutive companion a startled look. “Is that why the earl condescended to leave his noble tower? Has Gordon asked you to be his wife?”

Daphne threaded her fingers together and wished his gaze were not quite so intense. She was having difficulty enough adjusting to being alone with him. She refused to think of the miserable piece of furniture they were sitting on as a bed, preferring to pretend it was a parlor sofa where they conversed. But she couldn’t pretend away his proximity, particularly when he stared at her like that.

“No, not in so many words, but I fear his sense of honor will require it. He had some notion of protecting me by announcing his intentions to your grandfather. I fear your masquerade has made Gordon very nervous. He did not mean for the earl to come down and inspect me, but I believe I have failed inspection.”

Such bluntness from a female was a novelty to Evan, but a riot of emotions in his breast kept him from fully admiring her honesty, or her extraordinary cynicism, whichever it might be. He wanted to throw Gordon a facer, curse his interfering relations, and offer this tender morsel his eternal protection, all of which would be absolute taradiddle under the circumstances. Evan gritted his teeth against the words that threatened to come out

“This night with me will certainly have you court-martialed should it ever be known. I’ll make it right with Gordon, and he’ll ignore the old man’s decrees. Gordon’s got a good head on his shoulders and doesn’t blow with the wind. If he’s made his mind up, he’ll not change it.”

He pronounced these words with a certain satisfaction. He knew his twin. Gordon would take Evan’s word for what happened. Evan could offer Daphne this happiness in exchange for her mad attempts to save his worthless life. Of course, after the wedding, he might blow his brains out, but that was all part of a dim future. First, they had to escape this predicament and run his Uncle Robert out of the country.

Evan’s words had a dampening effect on Daphne’s spirits, although she couldn’t say why. It was good to know Gordon wouldn’t think badly of her, but she couldn’t help thinking it of herself.

“I’ll not cause a rift between them. Can you imagine what the
ton
would think of me as countess? Me, the daughter of Mad Maria? No, I’m quite content to remain as I am, providing you make very good explanations to my aunt so she’ll allow me to stay. Should I take a look at your shoulder? You seem to be favoring it more than earlier.” Daphne turned inquiringly to him.

If she touched him, he would have her flat against the bed with her skirts about her waist in a trice. Evan didn’t know what she rambled about and didn’t care. It took all his concentration to keep his hands off her. He dropped his hands and swung his feet over the edge of me bed, clutching his fingers into fists as waves of desire smote him with the explosive force of breakers against a cliff. Lord, give him strength, for it wasn’t his neighbor’s wife that he coveted, but his brother’s.

“It still aches when I’m weary. Why don’t you get some sleep? I think I’ll keep an eye on the river awhile.”

“Sleep?” Daphne stared at Evan’s broad shoulders with incredulity. “I am trapped in a room with a notorious thief, surrounded by soldiers, my reputation is ruined, and you wish me to sleep? You may as well ask me to sing songs.”

Evan grinned at the window as he rested his arm along the frame and stared out. “That should be amusing, too. Do you think we would keep the inn’s inhabitants entertained if we lapsed into drunken song for the remainder of the night? Where would we start? Ballad or ditty?”

“Well, as a bridal couple, I should think it ought to be something jolly, but I am more inclined toward something doleful. Should we wail loud enough, mayhap they will all go home.”

“I rather favor ‘Johnny, I hardly knew ye,’ but they may accuse us of being Jacobite traitors or some such. I suppose that eliminates ‘Loch Lomond,’ too.” Evan tried to imagine the reaction of the man down the hall if these laments hit his ears, but the soft laughter behind him said it all. He tried not to watch her image in the darkened glass of the window.

“If I were able to sing, I would try those just out of curiosity. We would at least go laughing to the gallows. But since I cannot sing, you will need to tell me tales. How did you and Rhys meet? I think there’s a story between the two of you.”

Evan gave up and turned around. He was a gentleman and she was his brother’s affianced wife. It was his duty to protect her. He would do his duty or die trying. Duty was something he understood. These other emotions now smothering him were foreign to his nature.

He sat at the end of the bed and leaned back on his elbows. “I don’t think it’s a story that can be told without Llewellyn’s permission. I’ll tell you a story about Gordon if you’ll tell me one about you.”

That was better. The taut energy that had been emanating from Evan seemed to relax to a cautious stance, and he was almost managing a smile. Daphne pulled her legs up under her and encouraged him to continue.

They talked the better part of the night as thunder rumbled and rain beat against the roof, drowning out all noises but their voices soft against the darkness. They talked of London and the things Daphne would have liked to have done and the ones that Evan missed and discovered they were both the same. Evan spoke uncertainly of a future he might never see, and Daphne encouraged him, knowing she had no future beyond these moors.

Laughing in the darkness, they made up a future in parliament for him as a candidate from Gordon’s pocket borough. He would provide funds for needy soldiers and their families, and Daphne insisted that he provide equal funds to train all those who could not find employment due to their physical disabilities. Evan laughed and asked if he should provide equal training for those with mental disabilities and inquired whether she would join the program then and learn to be a sheepherder.

Her sudden tears at this suggestion brought Evan apologetically to her side. “What is it I have said? I meant only to tease.”

His concern brought another rush of tears, but Daphne took a deep breath and determinedly wiped them away. It was more than evident that Evan did not know all the tales about her, so no doubt Gordon had never heard them either. It seemed quite preposterous when she was certain all of London had nothing better to talk about, but perhaps she was overemphasizing her importance. And then, Evan had been on the Continent these last years. He hadn’t been near London to hear all the gossip.

“You hit too closely to home, sir,” she finally replied. “There ought to be some help for people with mental disabilities, but sheepherding and Bedlam are not what I have in mind.”

Puzzled, Evan touched her chin and turned her to face him. “I will agree to that, but there is no reason for my facetiousness to cause your tears. There is something you have kept from me. Isn’t it time I have the whole?”

Daphne sighed and looked away. Her little charade of normalcy had to end sometime. Much better now, before Gordon could say or do anything foolish. It would be easier to tell Evan and let him pass on the story. Then she wouldn’t have to meet Gordon’s eyes when this was over. “You have not heard of Mad Maria?”

At his shake of the head, Daphne clasped her hands on her lap and gazing straight ahead, continued as if repeating a bedtime story. “My mother was a loving, charming woman, but even when I was a child, I can remember how emotional she would become if I came to her with a bloody knee or if we laughed too long over a silly game. She would cry or laugh until she was ill and my father would have to come and send her to bed with her medicine. There would be days she would never come out of her room, but there would be weeks of sunshine and laughter, too. She was my mother and I just thought that was how mothers acted.”

Hearing the painful catch in her voice, Evan tried to halt this speech, but Daphne held a finger to his lips and hurried on.

“No, I want to tell you the truth, before someone tells you the rumors. My mother was a beautiful person, and no one can take that from me. I am not at all like her, but there are times when I wish I could be. When she was well, she enjoyed every minute of life with a fullness I may never possess. Unfortunately, when she was not, she visited some hell where no one could follow.

“The physicians supplied her with medicines to calm her when she became uncontrollable, but there was an incident when she took too much, and my father had to lock the medicine away where she could not find it. He tried sending her to her family in London, thinking she would be happier in the social world where she had grown up, but she always came home after a few months.

“That last time she came home, she wasn’t well at all. Nothing returned her spirits. I think it hurt my father badly, and he stayed away from home much of the time. Anyway, I was the only one home except for the servants the night she took out the chaise. Even our stableboy was gone.

“It had been drizzling all day and I knew the fog would rise in the valleys, but there was no one there to warn her or stop her but me. And it had begun to thunder and lightning. It wasn’t a safe night to drive. There wasn’t time to saddle a horse to follow her, so I took father’s gelding, the one he kept a bridle on all the time. I fastened the reins and found a fence I could stand on and rode it without a saddle.”

Daphne ignored Evan’s intake of breath. She had been young and impetuous, but she dared say she would do it again. Now that she had begun the story, there was no point in stopping it to examine the full extent of her youthful stupidity.

“The chaise was going too fast down the hill, and I had difficulty catching up with it. It all happened too quickly. I saw her horse run in one direction, and the carriage went the other, off the road and toward the tarn. I must have screamed, or perhaps it was the lightning striking just ahead. My horse reared. And then I knew nothing else until I woke in bed in excruciating pain.”

Evan started to gather her into his arms, but Daphne placed a hand against his chest and held him off as she spoke against his shoulder.

“I was in horrible pain and didn’t understand the import of what I was saying when I tried to explain what happened. But my father did. And the physician did. And before long, the whole village had heard some version of the tale. They knew my mother had to have deliberately unhitched the horse for the accident to have happened as I said.

“Of course, someone checked the harness, as they never would have done had I not told what happened. My mother’s carefully planned accident became known as the suicide it was. She had been known as ‘Mad Maria’ before for her lively manners and eccentric emotions, but now the whole world knew she was mad in truth.”

Evan stroked the thick silk of Daphne’s hair and let her continue. He knew of nothing he could say to comfort old wounds.

“My accident kept me invalided for almost the length of our mourning. The physicians said I would never walk again, but I knew I would follow my mother to the grave if I were bedridden for life.

“So as soon as my leg was healed enough, I began moving it, a little at a time, more each day. I would get up at night when no one was watching and practice walking again, holding onto the furniture. When I could stand on my own, I walked out of my room in daylight, and they finally had to consent to let me downstairs. It is a tedious story, but suffice it to say, when it came time for my come-out, I went to London, against my father’s wishes.”

She wasn’t done yet. Daphne lifted herself from the tempting comfort of Evan’s arms and stared at the faded mirror across the room. “I am afraid of so many things. After the accident, I was terrified of horses. And carriages. Rain. Darkness. Thunder. Lightning. Anything could return the nightmare of that night. People began to whisper I was as crazed as my mother. I was determined to prove them wrong.

“My mother’s family tried hard to be kind. Before I arrived, they prepared everyone to be all that was amiable for their poor, invalid relative. The tale of my mother’s death made the rounds again. Everyone watched and listened, waiting for me to give evidence that I was all that they expected, while being sympathetic. I’m afraid I was rather rude to some, and lost my temper with others, and the rumors didn’t go away as I had hoped. Whatever I might or might not be never really mattered. The gossip was so much better.”

The cynicism had returned to her voice as Daphne pulled away and sat with arms folded across raised knees. She didn’t look back at Evan as she concluded, “So, you see, I am rather sensitive about jests as to my state of mind. I am also a coward, and somewhat lame when it rains, and none too certain on my feet when it does not. A far from perfect specimen in anyone’s book.”

“Coward,” Evan snorted scornfully from behind her. “You are the least cowardly female I have ever had the misfortune to come across. Name me one woman who would have taken that ramshackle cart out at night, in the rain, and driven it to the river. I cannot think of even one who would dare that much, no less all the rest. Coward, you are not. Fool, quite possibly.”

Daphne turned on him with rage, but Evan caught her small fist before it could beat his sore shoulder. “Pax, little heathen. This is neither the time nor the place to judge ourselves. Let us save that for others to do when we escape this little scrape. I have a feeling recriminations aplenty will fly then. Sit back, and I will tell you of my unfortunate father, or if you prefer, I’ll create lies of my hectic social life in London. What story would you like to hear?”