Shana Galen (3 page)

Winn tore his gaze from her daring red gown and surveyed the room. There. The man in black was standing near the orchestra. Winn started for him, and the man moved toward the French doors, slipping outside. It was a trap, and Winn knew it. He also knew he had little choice but to follow. As he paused just inside the French doors, staring at the moonlit paving stones marking the path into the garden, the waltz ended, and he heard the announcement for supper. He stood aside while the couples, who had been enjoying the early autumn evening, strolled inside, and then he slipped into the darkness.

He had a fleeting thought for Elinor—whom she would sit with at supper—but he couldn’t afford to lose focus on the mission.

His focus saved him. The large earthenware vase shattered against the wall just to the right of his ear. Before Winn could blink, the man in black collided with him. Winn went down, rolling once so he was on top of the assailant. But the man had the momentum and rolled him back over. The assailant reared back and punched Winn hard across the cheek. Winn squinted, knowing it would leave a mark.

“Give me the key,” the man in black demanded. Did he have a slight French accent? Winn’s ears were ringing too loudly for a definitive answer.

“You’ll have to take it off my dead body.”

The man smiled. “If you insist.” He pulled the pistol from his greatcoat, but Winn grabbed the barrel before the assailant had time to aim. For several moments, the two men struggled for possession of the pistol, and then Winn knocked it free, and the weapon slid across the paving stones with a clatter. Winn watched the pistol skid to a stop against a large pot like the one the assailant had thrown at him, and then both men dove for it.

The man in black reached it first, but Winn grasped the man’s ankle and hauled him back. He punched him, his right hand glancing across the man’s cheek. The assailant stumbled, and Winn grasped his coat and hauled him upright. “Whom do you work for?”

The assailant smiled in response and threw a punch. Winn ducked, but it sent both men off balance, and they stumbled down the wide, low steps leading to the garden. At the bottom, they tumbled onto the grass, and Winn got another punch in before the assailant boxed his ears. They rolled, the branches of a shrub slicing at Winn’s face.

Suddenly, the man in black stiffened. And Winn looked up.

Voices.

As of one accord, both men ducked back down into the shadows of the hedgerows and ceased moving. Winn still held the collar of the man in black’s greatcoat, and the assailant still had his palm wedged under Winn’s chin, but neither moved.

“It is a lovely evening,” a woman said. Winn’s fingers clutched around the material of the greatcoat. It was Elinor.

“I thought so,” her companion—a
male
companion—answered. Winn would have bet his life it was the puppy. “Look. There’s the North Star. Bright, isn’t it?”

Winn was torn between revealing himself and interrupting the tête-à-tête, or remaining hidden. How was he going to explain what he was doing, fighting an assassin in the Ramsgates’ garden? He couldn’t, not without more lies and deceptions than even he, a master, could make believable.

He was thankful the hedgerows provided shadows, but he and the man in black would be visible if Elinor and her suitor decided to go for a stroll.

“The moon is full,” she was saying. “I so rarely take a moment to look at it.”

Winn wanted to roll his eyes. How utterly predictable—lovers’ talk of stars and moons. If he was wooing Elinor, he would speak of…

Winn could not think of what he would speak of, but it would be much more original, of that he was certain. All the talk of the full moon had reminded him of something. The pistol was lying on the paving stones just a few feet from where Elinor stood. The moonlight lit up the white stones. If she should happen to look in the direction of the vase…

“Yours?” the man in black murmured.

Winn looked down. “What?”

“Is that woman yours?”

“No.”

“You seem rather annoyed that she is conversing with the
younger
gentleman.”

Discovery be damned. Winn reared back and slammed the man’s head into the ground. Unfortunately, the dirt beneath them did little damage. His assailant shoved his palm up, and Winn’s head jerked back. He struggled to remain on top, but the two rolled, Winn ending up on top again and both of them blinking into the foliage.

“What was that?” Elinor was asking.

“Probably some beast or other. Don’t fret. I will protect you.”

“Bloody hell,” Winn muttered. The man in black laughed. Winn slammed his head into the ground again.

“Perhaps we should return to supper,” Elinor said.

“I’ll escort you into the supper room,” the puppy told her.

“Thank you.”

Winn wanted to growl, but at least she was going inside. He prepared to finish the assailant off, but then he heard Elinor’s voice again. “Oh, dear!”

He gritted his teeth. If she had seen the pistol…

“I wonder how this vase was broken. I shall have to inform Mary.”

Yes, go inside and speak to Lady Ramsgate.

The puppy said something in return, but his voice was fading. Silence descended, but for the sound of the frogs croaking and the lonely call of an owl. Winn looked at his assailant, and the man looked back. By unseen cue, they resumed the fight. Winn slammed the man’s head into the ground again before the assailant bloodied his nose. They rolled and finally came apart.

“Enough,” Winn, who was closer to the house, muttered. He ran for the discarded pistol. When he reached it, he saw the assailant had discerned his intention and was running the opposite way. Winn gave chase, but by the time he reached the garden wall, he knew he’d lost the man. He could go after him. Five years ago he would have stopped at nothing to catch him. Winn hunched over and attempted to catch his breath. He was tired.

And he needed a drink. He wondered if Lord Ramsgate had anything more substantial than champagne.

Ten minutes later, he peered in the mirror hanging on Ramsgate’s library wall. He’d come in through the window and had already drunk one snifter of brandy. He frowned at his reflection. He looked… old. Well, he looked like he’d just come from rolling about in the garden, but he could see lines about his eyes and a deep tiredness in their depths. It seemed impossible, but he felt worse than he looked. And he looked battered and bloody.

He couldn’t enter the ball like this. Even if Elinor was entertaining half the men of the
ton
, there was no way to repair the damage to his appearance enough to make himself presentable. He had blood on his lip from his bleeding nose, his knuckles were bruised, and his coat sleeve was torn. He looked down at his trousers, noting they were covered with leaves and stains. He had to return home.

As he climbed through Ramsgate’s window, his one thought was that eventually Elinor would have to come home too.

And he would be waiting.

Elinor departed from the ball early. It was barely after two in the morning, and by all appearances, the ball would continue until at least four. Lady Ramsgate had instructed her cook to begin preparations for a light breakfast in case the guests were still in residence at six. She had begged Elinor to stay, offering her a guest room if she wished to send her coachman home, but Elinor declined. She wanted her own bed.

And she wanted to know what had happened to Winn. He’d disappeared without so much as a by-your-leave. Someone mentioned seeing him heading toward the garden, but when she’d ventured there after supper, she hadn’t spotted him. Was he that angry at her choice of gown? She could only hope. Anger was better than his usual polite disinterest.

“But Elinor,” Mary was saying as Elinor collected her wrap, “I have it on good authority Mr. Trollope will attend. He never goes out into Society before midnight.”

“Then you shall have to give him my regrets. I will be exhausted on the morrow as it is, and I have two girls to care for.” She started for the door, which was opened smoothly by the Ramsgates’ butler. Craning her neck, Elinor searched the line of carriages for her own.

“Your girls are nearly grown!” Mary said, following her. “Why, Georgiana will turn fourteen in a matter of weeks, and Caro is…”

“Twelve.”

“Yes, twelve. They do not need you hovering over them every moment.”

This was true. The girls were growing up. Why did that make her so inordinately sad?

“Besides, Baron Keating is in Town. Let him chaperone them for a morning,” Mary continued.

Elinor laughed. “Winn chaperone? He would not know what to do with the girls if I were not there. He is so rarely at home.”

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Mary pointed a finger at her. “That’s why you are leaving early.”

“A quarter past two is hardly early.”

Mary ignored her. “You wish to see that husband of yours.”

Elinor pretended to study the passing carriages intently. “Most wives do wish to see their husbands on occasion.”

“And I have never been a proponent of infidelity, but in your case I am prepared to make an exception. Winslow Keating is monstrously inattentive and neglectful of you.”

“Mary! Shh!”

“I will not. Why you are still in love with him, I will never understand.” She turned and walked away.

Later, when Elinor was settled in the darkness of the coach, her friend’s words rang in her ears. Why was she still in love with Winn? Habit? Foolishness? Hopeless romanticism?

He did not love her. That much was patently obvious and had been since the beginning—well, almost the beginning. He did not flaunt mistresses. In fact, she’d never so much as heard a rumor suggesting he had a mistress, and she had never found evidence suggesting another woman. It was true Winn rarely visited her bed, but then he was rarely in Town. He had inherited half-a-dozen properties all over the country and insisted on supervising them personally. Elinor did not understand why. His father had managed the properties well, giving their supervision largely over to local stewards. There was no reason Winn could not have done the same.

There was no reason he could not have taken her and the girls with him on some of these trips. But he did not. He never so much as offered. The girls had long ago ceased asking where he was or when he would be home. She wished she could stop wondering herself.

The town house was dark when she arrived home, but one of the footmen was waiting and provided her a candle with which to light the way to her chamber. Elinor thought about inquiring as to whether his lordship was at home, but she could not bear the embarrassment and pity. She lifted her skirts and carried the candle up a flight of stairs to her bedchamber. She knew what waited for her there, in the darkest corner of her dressing table, under a pile of ribbons and silks. But she would not succumb tonight. She would not even
look
at them. No matter how alone she felt.

She paused outside her bedchamber, set the candle on the delicate decorative hallway table, and pressed her hand to her belly. She remembered the last time she’d seen him. He’d given her the smudged, hastily written note begging for a rendezvous. She knew his handwriting by now. Knew the passionate strokes of his pen.

The way he’d looked at her that night! His eyes had burned her with the intensity of his need. The way his gloved hand had rested just a little too long on her arm, so she could feel his heat burning through the thin silk fabric. She knew desire when she saw it. Mr. Trollope—Rafe, as he begged her to call him—wanted her, and the very thought of allowing a man who was not Winn to touch her hand, press his body to hers, touch his lips to her mouth both thrilled and appalled her.

It had been so long since anyone had looked at her like she was anything other than a mother. It had been so long since anyone had looked at her with want in his eyes. She missed being touched, being held, being kissed by a man. A meeting with Mr. Trollope was wrong. She knew it, but she could not seem to resist. Elinor took a shaky breath and turned to her bedchamber.

Bridget, her lady’s maid, gave her a sleepy greeting and helped her undress and don a night shift. Just as Elinor sat down at her dressing table—her disobedient gaze straying to the bottom-most drawer—and leaned her head back so Bridget could begin to take the pins from her hair, she thought she heard a sound.

Winn? Her heart—ridiculous organ that it was—began to pound. Her gaze met Bridget’s in the dressing-table mirror, and Bridget gave her a subtle nod. Elinor’s heart clenched painfully in her chest at the same time her belly did a slow roll. Her face flushed, and her hands began to tremble.

Winn was home. He had not gone elsewhere after leaving the ball.

“I’ll comb your hair out and tie it with this ribbon, my lady,” Bridget said, indicating a pretty blue ribbon. Elinor only nodded. She couldn’t seem to speak. If she had found words, she didn’t know what she would have said. That the hair ribbon didn’t matter? Winn wouldn’t want her no matter how attractive she looked?

She glanced at her reflection in the mirror and noted the beginnings of lines at the corners of her mouth and between her brows. They were faint but would deepen. Her hair had a few strands of gray, but for the most part it remained a rich brown. She didn’t think she quite looked her thirty-five years, but she definitely could not compete with the debutantes of seventeen and eighteen. She couldn’t even compete when she had been seventeen and eighteen. She’d been in her third Season and all but on the shelf before Winn had proposed.

And now she’d borne two children. She had a mother’s figure and the face of maturity. If she’d ever had any hope of making Winn love her, it was long past. “There,” Bridget said, tying the ribbon into a bow. “Very pretty, if I do say so myself.”

“Thank you, Bridget,” Elinor said. “That will be all.”

Bridget winked. “You don’t have to dismiss me twice, my lady.” And she hurried out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Elinor looked in the mirror, turning her head to the side to catch a glimpse of the bow. It looked silly, like something Caroline or, more likely, Georgiana would wear. She pulled it out and tossed her hair over her shoulder, then pulled her robe closed over her night shift. Quietly, she tiptoed toward the door adjoining her room to Winn’s.

She could hear Winn’s valet speaking to him quietly, and then there was silence. Should she speak to him? Wait for him to approach her? In the morning, his anger would have subsided. Was that what she wanted? The return of her cool, indifferent husband?

She put her hand on the door handle and listened again. His room was silent. Had he gone to bed? She took a shaky breath and tapped on the door, then turned the handle and pushed it open.

He was standing across the room, shirtless, hair tousled, and he turned as she opened the door. The first thing she noted was the fatigue in his eyes. He’d always had the most beautiful, clear green eyes. He’d once given her a pair of emerald ear bobs, and she thought if he had been a woman, they would suit him better, for they matched his eyes perfectly.

The second thing she noticed was it had been quite some time since she had seen him without clothing. His chest was bronzed and hard. He had broad shoulders, powerful arms, and a flat stomach. When he’d turned to look at her, the muscles in his abdomen had bunched and rippled in a way that left her all but breathless. And she still hadn’t caught her breath, because she noted he had lost a little weight. His trousers were loose at the waist and hanging at his hips, where a line of dark hair trailed temptingly downward.

She had the mad notion to put her tongue on that trail and follow it down with long, wet strokes. She shook her head. Where had
that
idea come from? Elinor forced her gaze back to her husband’s face. He had a day’s worth of stubble and what appeared to be the beginning of a bruise on one cheek, and for some reason, it made him look rather rough and dangerous. That and the length of his wavy hair. How long had it been since he’d had it trimmed? She had never seen it this long. For a moment, she wished he were some dangerous stranger who would cross the room, take her in his arms, and kiss her until she forgot to breathe.

She must be overly tired to be having so many uncharacteristic thoughts. “My lord.”

He nodded at her, his expression unreadable. Was he surprised to see her? Annoyed at her presence? Taken off guard? “My lady.”

She stood in his doorway and waited for him to say more. He looked back at her. Were they reduced to this, then? The formality of greeting each other using courtesy titles? She cinched her robe tighter, and his gaze followed the movement.

“You are home late,” he said with a pointed glance at the bracket clock on his table. Elinor saw it was now almost three.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” she said.

“No. I was still awake when I heard you come in.” He lifted a snifter of something, probably brandy, and drank. “Did you enjoy the ball?”

“I did. You left without taking your leave.”

His brow arched. “You seemed enamored of your companion. I did not want to interrupt.”

Elinor frowned. Was this jealousy? But why would Winn be jealous? He had never shown much interest in her before. “I would have preferred you for a companion,” she said, “but despite all of your promises, you were not here at the appointed time.”

His face darkened. “And so you took it upon yourself to dress like a courtesan and seduce a boy young enough to be your son?”

She opened her mouth to protest, opened her mouth to argue that her gown had been perfectly acceptable, that Sir Henry was too old to have been her son, that she was not the least bit interested in the man… any number of things. And then she looked at Winn. His emerald eyes burned, his fists were clenched, and a vein in his neck throbbed. Why not allow him to seethe a bit with jealousy, if that’s what this was? She had done her fair share of seething over
his
slights.

“Frankly,” she said, turning back toward her room, “I’m surprised you bothered to make an appearance at all.” She pulled the adjoining door closed, but when it should have clicked shut, it was forced open. She gasped as Winn grabbed her wrist and hauled her up against him. His skin was warm, and he smelled like the soap he used in his bath. She looked up at his face and glimpsed what appeared to be a scrape along his temple. She had the urge to lift her hand and ask what had happened.

Her gaze strayed to his lips. Even when she was angry, she could not help but want his mouth on hers. She could not stop a silent prayer that he sweep her into his arms, carry her to the bed, and ravish her. Her heart pounded in her ears, and she waited to see what he would do.

And waited.

He released her wrist and stepped back. Disappointment slammed into her, and she almost crumpled from the weight of it.

“We shall speak about this again in the morning.”

She lashed out. “There is nothing more to say, unless you wish to drone on about commitments and duty and tenants who don’t pay their rent.”

“I do not
drone
.”

She raised her brows in challenge. “No, your adventures in estate management are fascinating. I’m certain you are equally fascinated by my tales of garden parties and French lessons. By the by,” she added, “Georgiana’s birthday fast approaches. If you are not too occupied with more important matters, your daughter requests the pleasure of your company at her celebration.”

And with that, she closed the door, shutting out the storm clouds crashing about his face.

***

Winn took a deep breath and forced himself not to open the door and throttle the woman. His wife. She had never spoken to him thus. And she had never attended a ball alone. And she had never looked so completely ravishing as she had tonight.

He moved away from the door, from temptation, and lifted his brandy again. It wasn’t merely the gown she’d worn to the ball. She wasn’t wearing anything more alluring than a linen night shift and an old wrapper tonight, but something about her was different.

Or was it?

He pulled the drapes back and peered into the garden. The shrubs threw long shadows on the paving stones, and he spotted a forgotten book lying on one of the stone benches. One of his daughters had probably left it there.

Elinor had always been an attractive woman, but her main appeal was her affection for him. He’d known from the first she was madly in love with him. And he’d known her feelings for him would work to his advantage. She would not question his frequent absences; she would not question his secretiveness or his unexplained injuries. Added to that, he knew from the start she would make him an excellent baroness and be a good mother to their children. After all, he had a duty to more than his country. He had a duty to his title.

His mother had approved of her. After his father’s death, she had advocated a quick union and the production of an heir. To his mother’s disappointment, there had been no heir, and it did not appear one would be forthcoming. He would have had to share a bed with his wife to produce another child. And while the idea was not unappealing, he had been far too busy these past few years to spend much time sleeping in a bed, much less engaging in any other activities therein.