Proper Scoundrel (18 page)

Cursing, he leaned against the wall to decide his next move. He’d dropped his wet clothes while trying to get his door open and considered putting them on to cover himself, but one touch of his cold clammy shirt, and he decided against it. In this frigid place, he’d wear it, catch lung fever, and die naked and alone.

Marcus chuckled at the thought, at himself, and at his foolish predicament.

“Lust brought you to this sorry pass,” he told himself as he made his way back up the stairs. Outside Jade’s room, he listened for Lacey or Jade talking, or anyone moving around, but he heard nothing but his own frosty sigh. “Jade,” he called in a whisper. “Jade?” A bit louder.

Any louder and the residents of Peacehaven would start looking for a ghost.

Clearly, Jade had left, and he wondered why Lacey had come for her so early. He hoped all was well at Peacehaven and that Jade could cope with the crisis without him. She’d managed quite well by her household long before he arrived, and he had confidence she would do so today. It could be as simple as someone getting sick. Anyone. The children, one of the old retainers, Eloisa, the twins, Garrett.

Garrett. Garr’s room was right below his. Taking the stairs at a hopeful clip, Marcus stubbed his toe and stifled his curse, making a hop-run to the next landing.

Outside Garrett’s room—he hoped—Marcus searched the wall for the outline of the door that should be cut into it. Calling to Garrett would do no good without a door. His brother couldn’t break down a wall if he wanted to. Then again, Garr could at least go looking for Jade, though she’d likely figure out he was missing sooner or later and know where to look.

When Marcus couldn’t find the bloody blasted outline of a door, he cursed silently and ran his hand through his hair. Perhaps he’d searched too far left or right. Then a woman gasped, and Marcus pulled his hands away from the wall as if he’d touched fire.

This couldn’t be Garrett’s room. As much as he hated to listen, damn it, he had to know. He leaned against the wall to hear better, braced himself, and quite by accident found the outline of the door.

Good news and bad. Whose bloody room would he invade if he tried to force it?

He heard a woman murmur something low, now a man. Movement. A scuffle, perhaps. But that didn’t make sense, because their tone—

Marcus stepped back so fast, he backed into the opposite wall. Holy bloody hell! That could have been him and Jade a short while ago. Clear as day, he heard his brother’s name shouted in passion. And yes, that was Garr’s return shout, then his brother’s voice soothing and encouraging.

Marcus grabbed his clothes and backed up the stairs before turning and running. Then elation and frustration surged through him in one stroke as realization stopped him. Garrett had never wanted to discuss whether anything other than his ability to walk had been impaired. He’d said not to worry when Marcus broached the subject of his lack of female companionship. But Marcus had worried, and not a little bit. Having caused Garr’s accident, he’d wanted to believe all was fine with his brother, but he’d never been certain. He didn’t think he could have borne it if he’d crippled Garrett’s manhood as well as his legs. Now he knew.

He grinned. Garrett the Lady Killer rides again.

He frowned as fast. Damn, but the Lady Killer’s brother would find no way inside at this turn of events, however happy the discovery.

Marcus feared that he had no other choice but to explore and break through any hidden doorway he could find. He raised his gaze. “Just please God don’t let me die of embarrassment, naked, in a roomful of women.”

He climbed to the very top of the stairs first, trailing his hand along the wall as he went, in case doors existed mid-flight. But none did, and the stairs themselves ended abruptly at the ceiling, however weird the construction.

He found a telltale cut in the ceiling’s surface, but that “door” remained as stubbornly immovable as his own.

Foiled again, he went back down. The stairs curved toward the bottom, exactly like the kitchen stairs did, so he knew where in the house he was, but there were no more doors along the wall and no landings but the bottommost, before an age-old wooden portal.

It creaked—fit to wake the dead—when Marcus pushed it, delighted out of mind that it moved at all, and looked into the darkest, coldest tavern of a ... He examined the ceiling to confirm his suspicions and found it constructed of shored-up chalk and stone. If he guessed correctly, he stood beneath the house in a cavern of sorts, man-made by the look of it.

Ah. Perhaps, this was the cave Jade had not wanted to enter yesterday, which explained her firm refusal. A smuggler’s cave. How very gothic: hidden stairs leading to an underground chamber, in which to hide smuggled—or stolen—goods.

Marcus reminded himself that England’s coasts were riddled with caves leading to and from its older estates. Nothing unusual about a cave leading to Peacehaven. Hadn’t his own fortune been enhanced considerably by the owlers in his family tree, who, like their namesakes, worked by night?

According to Fitzalan family legend, cutters had landed near Seaford Cliff daily, as many as a dozen at a time. Their holds were laden with Hyson, Chinese green tea, ankers of spirits, fine wines, perfumes, and spices from Ceylon.

Those same cutters had returned to the continent with their bellies full of English wool.

His wily ancestors had evaded revenue men and excise men. They’d thumbed their noses at coast and land guards. They’d sunk illegal tubs of spirits to hide them under the sea, then collected them at ebb-tide, after the Preventive Water Guard had given up and returned home.

Aye, coast people were jonnick—staunch. Neither his nor Jade’s forbears would have hesitated to stop a railroad or anything else in their way.

They were two of a kind, him and Jade, cut from the same sturdy cloth. Tough, resilient, durable. So evenly matched that only one of them could win the battle, but which of them would win the war?

This cave must have served generations of nefarious brigands the way it served Jade now, surely her point of exit last night, the reason she approached from the beach, not the house.

Less relieved, and more disturbed than he cared to admit, he stepped through the thick old portal at the bottom of the stairwell ... and it slammed shut behind him.

“Bloody bare-assed fool!” His echo mocked him even as he tried and confirmed that the blasted door had locked behind him.

Cursing fit to discompose every man jack who ever walked these chambers, Marcus set off in search of its entrance, no easy task with its wide assortment of dead ends and more legs than a nest of spiders, but he continued on. He had no choice.

When he reached the mouth, the sun shone bright, and like some Godforsaken fugitive, he peeked in both directions before he scuttled forth to wring out his clothes and lay them on the grass to dry. If Jade didn’t come for him soon, he’d put them on in an hour or so, when they were at least bearable, and walk back to the house.

While they dried, he went back into the cave to explore. One of the forks had appeared to widen a great deal, though it darkened also, so he hadn’t followed it at first. It might lead to a storeroom of sorts with treasure fit for a king. He mocked himself with a laugh but he sincerely feared finding a treasure in lumber.

He stopped and considered turning around and going back to sit at the mouth of the cave to wait for his clothes to dry, but he had a responsibility to Garrett and so he continued.

His chosen tunnel dead-ended in a huge chamber which, indeed, held a number of articles some would consider treasure, none of it lumber. Marcus strolled among the maze of wooden boxes, everything crated, nothing sealed, every cover addressed to the South Downs Railroad. Bloody hell.

A construction timetable and map lay atop one. Where and how the devil did she get them? A crate with railroad spikes here. Steam and water level gauges there. Pick axes, shovels, and tarpaulins further on.

She’d stolen nothing. ’Twas all addressed and crated to be sent back, but he’d wager his railroad stock that she planned to wait until after the appointed deadline passed and Parliament revoked the South Downs Charter.

Marcus went immediately back for his clothes, but couldn’t reach them, because Lacey and several of the women, a number of children beside them, were playing in the sand by the water. One little boy, Bruno, he thought, dragged his trousers toward the others. “I found me a treasure,” he called. “Lookee here.”

Marcus made for the storage room and the crate of tarpaulins. If anyone came looking, he’d not be caught in the altogether.

Wrapped in a tarpaulin toga, he heard the occasional childish shout for an hour or more, but nothing after, for quite a while, so he finally made himself a bed of tarpaulins, covered up with another and closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept in two days, and damned if this didn’t feel good.

It could have been minutes or hours later when Marcus woke to Jade calling his name. His body reacted predictably to her approach, but he’d let no man-part control his thinking at this turn of events. He wiggled and shuffled into a sitting position, wrapped in a toga of rough canvas laced with sand, and leaned against the cave wall to await her.

She finally appeared, like an angel of salvation, so bloody beautiful, Marcus fought to maintain his anger. Then again, just glancing about the cavern bolstered his fury a great deal. An angel in black breeches, he should say, looking good enough to unwrap and make love to in a cave on a bed of tarpaulins.

He wanted to ask Jade what Lacey had wanted so early this morning, but he preferred to let Jade speak first, give her a chance to address the abundance of damning evidence that lay between them ... heavy between them.

“I forgot,” she said at last. “Your secret door was sealed a few years ago. The one in Garrett’s room as well. And the attic.”

He nodded, confirming he’d discovered as much. “But your door remains unsealed?”

“We missed you at lunch,” she said, ignoring the implication, but I had my hands full. “When you missed tea too, I realized what must have happened and remembered Gram having the doors secured.”

“Slipped your mind, did I? That puts me in my place. What about this?” He indicated the room with a wave of his hand. “Don’t you have anything to say about this? Did all these railroad supplies slip your mind as well? How convenient. And don’t tell me you don’t know anything about them.”

“We planned to return them.”

“We?”

“I ... I planned to return them.”

Marcus scoffed. He knew better than to think she’d implicate anyone else in this. “The papers have been full of the failures of the South Downs Railroad and everybody knows their deadline. You were waiting until after June 30th to return it, weren’t you? What the bloody hell do you have against progress, Jade?”

She shook her head and wrung her hands. “Some people don’t think the railroad is progress.”

“Most do. Did it never occur to you go to the owners of the railroad and tell them you didn’t mean to sell that option? Ask for it back?”

“It’s too late for that.”

“If you’d done it at the beginning, they might have had the time to go around your property.” And my brother wouldn’t stand to lose everything he’s ever worked for. Lord, he wanted to hit her with those words.

“They probably wouldn’t have sold it back.”

“At least you would have acted honestly!”

“I’m not dishonest, Marcus.”

“I don’t believe you are, fool that I am. I do believe you’re frightened, though. Tell me why. Please let me help you.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

That made him mad. She didn’t trust him. After everything, she didn’t trust him.

“You do realize, Jade, that if you were caught with these goods, you would be considered a thief and could be transported or worse. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, am I? I wonder, though, if you ever considered the people who’ve invested in the railroad. You could ruin them, destroy their lives.”

“Investors are rich,” she said, her protective shell weak at best. “No one will be hurt.”

“I knew you were naïve, but I didn’t think you were stupid—or is it blindness, intentional perhaps? You don’t see what you don’t want to.”