Skylark (29 page)

“Because they come from a hot climate, I assume.”

“Nothing wrong with a bit of brisk English weather. As I hear it, those hot places breed diseases.”

“It seems they do.”

“And it’s wrong that the captain stays in his stuffy room all the time, ma’am. Sea air is
good
for you. Everyone says so. I hope their letter comes soon.”

“Letter?” Laura inquired, merely to keep the conversation going.

“Captain Dyer expects a letter, ma’am. Farouk asks about it every day. Says he’s to be told as soon as it arrives.”

“From family, I suppose.” From Caldfort, in fact. It was good to have confirmation that Lord Caldfort had not yet responded, though if Dyer and Farouk were the villains they appeared to be, she was inclined to let Jack murder them!

The maid shrugged, indicating ignorance. “Likely they’re awaiting news before traveling on. Always wise, that, ma’am. My auntie went all the way to Nottingham to visit her sister, and when she arrived her sister’d gone off to Wales!”

“What a confusion. Yes, very wise to wait.”

The maid left and Laura returned to her listening post, praying to have her earlier conclusions proved wrong. She caught Farouk saying a clear, “Yes.”

She hissed with annoyance. If only she’d heard the question. But they were talking again. She grabbed her paper.

 

 

Fellow
? It sounded like a name. She put a question mark against it. Perhaps she’d heard it wrong.

 

 

Voices dropped and she couldn’t catch words.

Des?
Laura underlined that. Desmond? An Irish name? She didn’t think HG had an Irish accent. Despard, Desford, Desalles. Certainly not short for Henry or Gardeyne. It was like the last nail in a coffin, especially with that mention of wanting to be away from British influence. She hadn’t thought convicts escaped from New South Wales, but anything was possible.

 

F: It will,
nuranee.
Trust me.

 

Nuranee
. An Arabic term—or what language did they speak in Egypt? She couldn’t care. These men were clearly not what she had hoped. She made herself read the words as the conversation of two petty criminals intent on a swindle. They fit all too well. Get some money from Lord Caldfort—though HG was afraid the plan wouldn’t work—and then flee the country because it would be too dangerous to stay.

She tried to make the conversation fit HG being Henry, but shook her head. Close to tears, she put aside the paper. Whatever these men were up to, Henry Gardeyne was long dead and so Harry’s destiny would not change. If she didn’t do something, her son would soon be dead, too!

She rose, hands gripped together. She’d do
anything
, but she couldn’t imagine what. She knew Stephen would help, but as she’d said, all his intelligence, influence, and legal knowledge couldn’t keep a small child safe.

He would bring the Rogues with him. Her brief time with Nicholas Delaney told her that he would support her cause, but there were stronger forces. Lord Arden, heir to a dukedom, and some other titled gentleman.

Even they couldn’t help, however, as long as Harry was in Jack’s power.

She drew in a breath.

She had to remove Harry from Jack’s power, and the only way to do that was by marriage, marriage to a man powerful enough to override Lord Caldfort’s will, whether it be his purpose now or his testament when he was dead. Why hadn’t she seen it before? The right stepfather for Harry was his best protection, and now she understood Stephen’s reputation, the choice was clear.

How could Lord Caldfort argue that Harry would learn less by living with Stephen than by living at Caldfort? And when Lord Caldfort died, Stephen would know how to work with Harry’s trustees to remove Jack from the local living. Find him a better one, but far, far away. In the north, near Emma’s family. She deserved some blessings.

Then Harry would be able to visit his property without much danger. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it might work especially with the Rogues brought into play. Surely Jack would understand that once Harry was surrounded by powerful protectors Jack would never survive murder.

All she had to do was marry Stephen.

She stirred and fidgeted about his bedroom, trembling with hopes and doubts. Once, so recently, she’d thought marriage impossible. Now it looked like a necessity, but it was also wrong—wrong to be planning to snare a man whether he wanted to wed her or not.

She could seduce him. She knew she could, and she knew that once he’d compromised her, Stephen would feel honor bound to offer her marriage. It would be easy. Whatever he felt for her, he was not immune to lust.

But she still wasn’t sure that she could make a good wife for him. She wanted to. She would try. But trying was not always enough.

She’d enjoyed a political discussion with him, but she knew herself. Lady Skylark still fluttered inside her, longing to be free. She wouldn’t be happy in a cage of propriety, but could he cope with her soaring flights? She thought of another political man, William Lamb, constantly embarrassed by his half-mad wife, Caroline. She wouldn’t be as bad as that, but she might be a burden to Stephen. When he’d christened her Skylark, he had not meant it to be complimentary.

She considered their brief time here. At times he’d seemed loverlike, but at others only the old friend. Occasionally he’d been distant and even disapproving. She’d been hoping to explore this more when they left, to find the truth of what lay between them, but with Harry’s life at stake, she could not allow Stephen any chance to escape.

She’d never had to hunt a man, and she’d never had to seduce one except in play with Hal. It was the last thing she wanted to do, especially with Stephen, because . . .

Because he was a friend, and friendship required trust. She’d come here without a thought that she might be putting herself at risk because she and Stephen were friends. She didn’t think men worried about being seduced or raped, but perhaps they should.

She leaned against a bedpost and considered Stephen’s bed in an entirely new way.

Laura returned to the parlor and closed the door temporarily on temptation. Now that she accepted that Henry Gardeyne was dead, she saw no point in further listening at the wall. She tried to distract herself with
Guy Mannering,
but such dramas lacked weight now. When a letter arrived from Kerslake, she didn’t open it. It was addressed to Stephen, but she might have read it if she thought it carried news of importance.

She put wood on the fire from time to time, and as the light faded, lit two candles, wandering constantly from window to fireplace, trying to avoid her thoughts. Night was approaching, however, the classic time for lusty wickedness.

Stephen came in. “I’m sorry for being gone so long. Reverend Lawgood wanted to talk about the Speenhamland system.” But then he asked, “What’s the matter?”

Was her mood so obvious? She hoped her thoughts and plans weren’t.

At the very sight of him, she’d jolted inside. She wasn’t sure if it was from guilt, lust, or both, but it shook her. She did lust, but that made her plan more wicked rather than less. She’d rather be planning a noble sacrifice to a man she did not want.

She found a slight smile and gestured to her notes on the table. “They talked somewhat. It’s clear they’re in this together, and both have been convicts, probably in New South Wales. Dyer can’t be Henry Gardeyne.”

She watched him read, praying even now that he’d find some other interpretation. But he looked soberly at her. “It does sound like that. I’m sorry, Laura.” He came over and took her hand. “Don’t be afraid. We can find other ways to keep Harry safe.”

She knew he wasn’t referring to her plan, but it felt as if he was reading her mind. “Yes, I know.”

She gently pulled her hands free and tried for a light tone. “I do hope that one day I will know the whole story, though. It’s exasperating. Why have that unlikely pair come up with this plot? And why, as Nicholas Delaney asked,
now
?”

“And who the devil is Oscar Ris? That really niggles at me. My impression is that nothing in that letter is meaningless.”

“It doesn’t relate to convicts or the antipodes?”

“Not in any way I can see, and I’ve studied the matter a great deal in my investigation of the legal system. Oh, to the antipodes with the lot of them. The wind’s dropped. Let’s go out and watch the sunset before dinner. Without a telescope. For nothing but pleasure.”

It delighted her as she’d not expected to be delighted here, and perhaps she could encourage a proposal rather than forcing it. A glance in the mirror as she put on her bonnet gave her great doubts. Seduction would have to be for the night, when she was Labellelle.

It was lovely to be out, however, breathing in the fresh briny air as they walked down the beach admiring the last of a sunset that was fiery instead of gray. A sunset that turned the rippling waves bloodred.

Laura closed her eyes to that and inhaled. “Perhaps the sea air is healing.”

“Now the storm’s passed.”

She turned to look at him. “Benign and destructive. Two sides of the same thing.”
Like love, and desire, and two writhing bodies in a bed.
She tried to read his every look and word, seeking the truth of his desires—and his points of vulnerability. He was a mystery to her, but moment by moment, she wanted him more.

They strolled on, just out of reach of the sea’s eternal lick. Like a bloodred lover lapping at skin or at hot, secret places. She swallowed, trying to control the ripple of sensual awareness, but feeling the rumble of the sea up through her shoes, up, up . . .

Their only contact was linked arms, the only permissible contact between a sickly woman and her escort. She longed to turn into his arms, to imitate the sea by kissing, licking, and it was nothing to do with maternal purpose. . . .

“We’d best turn back,” he said, doing so, speaking as if they were only invalid and escort.

The sun’s last fire was fading, darkening the sky and stealing passion from the sea, but that did nothing to the way she felt. He didn’t share her desires, however. That was obvious.

“What will you do when your mourning is over?” he asked.

She was expected to make practical conversation? “I expected to live on at Caldfort.”

“Keeping Harry safe will be easier if you live elsewhere.”

“I know that.” She heard her own snappish tone. “It will not be allowed.”

Could she put the situation to him honestly and make a marriage of convenience? If he refused, however, it would alert him.

“Influence can be brought to bear. So, where would you choose?”

She let a silence linger, hoping he might make a suggestion, a proposal. Then she said, “At Merrymead, I suppose.”

“Not London?”

“My jointure is generous, but it won’t stretch to
ton
life, and Lady Skylark can’t subsist on the fringes.”

“You could live with Juliet until you marry again.”

He was discussing it as if it were a dry matter of law.

“So I could,” she said tartly. “Once I can leave Caldfort, finding a husband should be no problem at all.”

 

As they climbed the shallow slope up to the road, Stephen wanted to smash something or force a kiss on her, wanted to fall to his knee and beg her to marry him, him! But she wasn’t following any of his leads and he didn’t want to press the matter now. Not now, not here, where she had entrusted herself to him. Not when she had no easy escape if his proposal was once again an embarrassment.

Not when she might have said that she no longer cared for life in London, where his work required him to live for most of the year.

“I probably would like to live in London again,” she said, making him wonder if he’d spoken his thought aloud. “If I had Harry with me and a fashionable establishment.”

He couldn’t give her the pinnacle of society or a peerage title, but he could manage fashionable.

Before he could put together the right response, she continued. “As for marriage, I take the matter of providing the perfect stepfather for Harry very seriously.”

“And who would that be, the perfect stepfather?”

She glanced at him, but in the gathering gloom even the light from the windows of the inn couldn’t reveal her expression. “Someone with enough power to overrule Lord Caldfort, of course, and stave off any threat from Jack. Someone able to fight for Harry’s welfare, but also able to love him, to be a true father. And,” she added, sounding strangely rebellious, “someone with enough money to support Lady Skylark’s new flight. If I go to London, it can only be to fly.”

He didn’t understand her tone and it unnerved him. Had she guessed his feelings and was trying to warn him away from repeated folly?

“Only a fool would want to cage a skylark,” he said, and opened the inn door for her.

 

A few moments later, Laura swept into her room and clenched her fists. Stephen had turned cold as the sea at the mention of Lady Skylark. Why, oh, why, had she been driven to honesty? Why hadn’t he taken her hints about marriage?

She felt torn into warring pieces. She was Harry’s mother, who needed Sir Stephen Ball as a weapon, primed and loaded. She was Stephen’s friend, who’d chase off another woman who wanted to use him as she did. She was a wicked woman who desired him—honor and sense be damned.