Seacliff (17 page)

He met her enraged stare evenly. “That is not something to concern a woman, Caitlin.”

“If it concerns Seacliff, it concerns me. My people—”

“Well,” he interrupted, “one of
your
people, my dear, viciously attacked a king’s soldier several months ago. He escaped into the hills and was captured only a day or two before we returned. There was, in this case, no alternative.”

She paused for a few seconds, fighting for calm. “And who gave the order of execution? Who carried it out? How was it—”

“I gave the order,” he said stiffly. “I issued instructions, and Mr. Flint carried them out. As to the person who informed us, I have asked Mr. Flint to keep the name to himself. The others would not, to put it mildly, take it kindly if they knew one of their own—”

“All right,” she said sharply. “I’ve heard enough.”

“I suspected as much.”

She spun on him suddenly, startling him into leaning away from her glare.

“You suspected as much? Oliver, you push me too far.”

Slowly he unfolded himself from his chair and rose, his face florid, his lips taut and bloodless. For a moment she feared he would strike her. The rage passed, however, and he took careful hold of her arms, shaking his head in shared sorrow. “Caitlin, Caitlin,” he whispered, “can you ever forgive me?”

She eyed him warily. “For what?”

“For forgetting my place.” He stepped to her side and kept hold of one elbow, guiding her toward the wall just off the cliffs.

“I am only trying to spare you until you’re able to shoulder your share of the responsibilities. And in this case, my dear, I do know the law. If this man had been freed— which you must admit you might have been moved to do yourself—a dangerous precedent would have been set. You do see that, don’t you?”

She nodded her agreement, but not before he caught a flurry of doubt in her eyes. He stepped away and bowed rigidly before turning and heading for the house. She wanted to follow, yet she couldn’t think of anything to say. She shivered when she recalled the offhand way he had spoken of the execution, and worse—he had said that someone in the village had actually taken the English side and played the traitor.

She leaned over the wall to stare at the water below. The breakers tumbled furiously over boulders laid bare by the tide. Oliver was right: she never would have ordered a hanging in this instance. Some weeks in a cell, hard labor in the fields… but never a death just for striking a soldier.

She stumbled along the wall blindly, not looking up until she realized she’d reached the twisted bare pine that marked the wall’s comer. She stopped. It was here her father had come for peace, and it was here that he had died. Before she could stop herself, she peered down the sheer face of the cliff. The stony beach below was flooded, the place where her father had been discovered was now tumultuous surf. She sighed and turned around, and the wind tangled her hair in front of her eyes, so she couldn’t see.

She brushed it away, and suddenly something became clear in her mind.

The wind. That was what she’d been trying to recall—the wind! Oliver had said her father was out here in a squall, and in his weakened condition had toppled over the wall. But how could he have? The wind would have been blowing in the wrong direction.

No. She shook her head feverishly, rejecting the horror that crept into her mind. “No,” she said aloud, “no!” And a hand took her shoulder. She spun around, heart leaping into her throat, her palms clasping her chest. James Flint snatched back his hand as if he’d been burned.

“My lady,” he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t,” she snapped. “No, you did. But I wasn’t talking to you. I was…” She sputtered to an awkward halt.

“I do apologize, Caitlin,” he said more softly. “But Oliver has been noting the approach of a storm, and he did not wish you to be caught out here.” He looked pointedly at the tree and the wall.

“Especially…”

She nodded curtly, but she realized he didn’t understand her mood. Rather than explain, she allowed him to take her arm and start leading her away.

A fierce gust of wind suddenly slapped debris against her back, and she turned to face it, her eyes narrowed. The pine was straining under the gale, disappearing into the darkened shadows and taking on the unpleasant appearance of some desolate grave marker. She shuddered once, violently, and commanded herself to stop thinking. It was the argument with Oliver; it was visiting her father’s resting place; it was Lynne’s perfunctory sympathies; it was all of these things…

And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling. The wind had been blowing in the wrong direction.

13

L
ater that evening, after hours that seemed years long, Caitlin stood before an oak-framed, full-length mirror and examined herself from all angles as she drew a brush thoughtfully through her hair. Downstairs in the front parlor, Reverend Lynne was talking to Oliver—his official greeting to the master of the house. The rest of the village would soon follow, taking up much of her time and energy. And though she did not wish to dwell overly long on her father’s demise, she was grateful for the opportunity to sense the village’s reaction to her, and to keep her mind on the proprieties of grief and away from the terrifying images that had been assaulting her since morning.

Several times in the last hour she had drifted out to the balcony and stared down at the pine tree in the wall’s far comer. And several times she found herself recreating the elder Evans’s struggle against the squall. Finally, when the wind grew too strong and drove her back inside, she realized the accident could indeed have happened the way she’d been told. The wind took many directions once it reached the shore—barreling inland like howling banshees, or swirling around the ground in violent eddies that broke through the crevices in the cliff and wall. It could very well have happened. It could have. And when she had almost blurted out her suspicions to Gwen, she also realized how incredibly farfetched they sounded, like the ravings of a woman who’d lost her senses to grief.

The outer door opened, then, and Gwen entered with a damp cloth. Despite the storm’s approach it was stifling inside, and the cloth was for wiping the perspiration from Caitlin’s cheeks.

“The vicar’ll end up staying for dinner,” Gwen said sourly. Caitlin grinned. “You object to a cleric in the house?”

“To a toad sitting on chairs I have to clean, yes. I swear, that Mary’s less than useless around here. Like a weasel she is.” Caitlin laughed and adjusted her neckline, smoothed her skirt. “You could always swoon, y’know,” Gwen suggested as they headed for the door. “That’s proper, ain’t it?”

“It wouldn’t stop them from coming back,” she said. “And the sooner I get it over with, the sooner I can get to work.”

“Cat!”

Caitlin frowned. “I didn’t mean it badly, Gwen.”

“I know, but you’d best not say that to them. They don’t know you as well as I.”

She remembered the unfortunate conversation with the vicar, and sighed. Sympathies she knew she could handle, but sensibilities were another matter entirely. Patience, she knew, was not her strongest virtue.

Patience that shortened as July passed near to August, and the summer’s heat began taking its yearly toll on the land. The villagers came and were polite enough, but she was aware from the outset of a distinct reserve that made her uncomfortable. Neither did Oliver assist her through the ordeal. His patience vanished entirely, and he muttered that the villagers seemed ready to turn her father into a damned local saint.

“Were it not for you,” he said one morning, “I’d be back to England in a trice.”

She said nothing. She’d known it would be difficult for him to take her father’s place, but he also had a duty he was leaving all to her. And that bewildered her. One day he was telling her to mind her place and her tongue, the next he seemed ready to leave it all and flee to Eton. As a result she had no idea where she stood, and she felt emotionally drained in face of his temper swings.

Griff Radnor helped her not at all.

Each day, during her riding, he was there, in the distance.

Shadowing her, watching her, staying in the distance.

And then there was James Flint.

For the most part he managed to keep to himself. He’d been granted apartments in the north tower, and he was seldom seen out of them. Once or twice a week he came to dinner, but he held his silence save for polite responses to direct questions, and gave her no signs of encouragement she could catch. Yet she had to talk with him. Still convinced he hadn’t used her, convinced he was keeping his distance to avoid Oliver’s jealousy, she found herself haunting the corridor by the tower until, one afternoon, he appeared, dusty and hot, red in the face from exertion.

“James, please, just a minute,” she said, a hand on his arm to detain him.

He stopped and took a long moment before turning. “My lady?” She smiled coyly. “What happened to
Caitlin?”

“I have been trying to remember my station here.”

“I see.”

His expression hinted he didn’t think she did. “I told you once he was a hard man.”

“I know,” she said softly. “To me as well.”

Suddenly he truly smiled, and relief flooded her; she hadn’t been wrong. James Flint cared.

Then: “Caitlin, I would talk if I could, but Sir Oliver is waiting and I must change. But perhaps,” he added more quietly, “you might enjoy a stroll after dinner this evening. The air is wonderfully cool. It would clear your head for sleeping.”

She watched his departure with a heart wildly beating. But once dinner had been cleared away, and Bradford had taken the brandy into the sitting room, she excused herself and fetched a shawl from her room. Once outside she was lost in the calming influence of the night’s cool air; the moon’s silver carpet across the gently rolling water; the call of the night birds in the groves.

She walked slowly, her eyes half closed; she did not see him until they’d nearly collided. Then she was taken into the shadow of her father’s pine.

“James—”

The rest was smothered by a long, ardent kiss, his hands pressing her close. When he finally broke away, she sighed and took several deep breaths.

“I believe,” he said, “the proper expression is ‘How dare you, sir!’”

She giggled and turned to the wall; he stepped closer and slipped his hands around her slim waist. She leaned her head back against his chest.

“He doesn’t treat you as he should, you know. He doesn’t know what he has.”

“Oh, he does,” she said sadly. “He really does.”

“I didn’t mean having Seacliff,” he scolded lightly. Her smile broadened. “Are we back to flattery again?” He seemed to relax.

She felt herself drifting on a cloud, and realized the danger he was putting himself in by holding her thus; she was right to trust him. A moment, another, and suddenly, quietly, she unburdened herself of her suspicions about the manner of her father’s death, pulling out of the embrace once to indicate the tree and the height of the wall. He listened intently, grunting several times, and finally turned her back to the water filled with night whispers and diamonds.

“I can understand your concern,” he said, pulling her gently until she was once again leaning against him. “Were I in your position, I would leave no question unanswered until I’d uncovered the truth. But tell me… why haven’t you asked Sir Oliver about this?”

She shook her head in slow dismay. “He would only laugh. Or worse, he would lecture me and tell me I was being a foolish, grief-stricken woman. I would gain no satisfaction from confiding.”

She felt his nod of agreement.

“Do you have anyone in mind?” he asked then. “A culprit?”

“No. Lord, no, James.”

“What about Mr. Radnor.”

She stiffened, unable to prevent herself from wondering if Flint knew what she’d once felt for Falconrest’s master. But when she did not respond immediately, she knew he’d taken her silence for—if not a negative answer—then at least one that did not instantly condemn Griff.

“He’s an odd one,” Flint said after a few moments. “Is he now?”

“He is.” She hesitated, and frowned until he cleared his throat softly.

“There’s word, you know, that he’s in league with the mountain outlaws.”

“No,” she said, almost too quickly. “There’s a great deal about the man that infuriates me, James, but I doubt he would deliberately flout the law.”

“Are you sure?” Flint asked her, his voice velvety, his thumbs shifting to brush the underside of her breasts.

“Are you really sure? I haven’t seen him here. A curious breach of courtesy, don’t you think? An important personage such as he does not, it seems to me, ignore the proprieties. Especially not in a case like this. I find it, in fact, rather reprehensible.”

Caitlin nearly nodded, checked herself, and held her tongue. She did not tell James of Griffin’s distant pursuit of her, nor did she admit that she’d lied. It would, in fact, take little energy to imagine Griffin assisting the outlaws in the mountains. It would be exactly like him, since most of them were fleeing from English sentences passed down by English judges on rather arbitrary English laws.

To agree, however, would place her stamp of approval on Flint’s obvious dislike of the man, and that she was oddly reluctant to do.

And she certainly could not condone the implication that Griffin had been involved in her father’s death.

“Still,” he said, so quietly she’d almost missed his voice, “the winds here are rather impish, don’t you think? This way and that, and there’s no telling what they might do if they’d a mind.”

“Do you really think so, James?” A desperation colored her voice, and he hugged her, slowly taking the breath from her lungs. Then he kissed the side of her neck, the slope of her shoulders, and she made no move to stop his hands from cupping and squeezing her breasts. Instead, she closed her eyes and allowed the soft fires of his caresses to warm her, to soothe her, while the heat of his lips branded her flesh.

“James,” she whispered.

“I dare not remain for very long,” he told her breathlessly. “Despite Sir Oliver’s arrogance, he is no fool.”