Slightly Sinful (25 page)

He got to his feet without the aid of his cane. She was very upset, he could see-far more so than his provocation would account for. His guess was that the reality of being here at Chesbury Park was far different than what she had imagined. And he was feeling devilishly guilty over that.

"Perhaps," he said, not for the first time, "we should put an end to this whole charade, Rachel. I'll explain things to your uncle, the ladies can go off to reorganize their lives in their own way, and you can stay here to live."

"Oh, yes!" she cried. "It is just what you would suggest now that the novelty of this lark has worn off. You would leave me here where I am not wanted and where I do not want to be, and you would force me to abandon my dearest friends to a life that is insufferable even to think of. Well, it is not going to happen, and that is that."

She reached out a hand and shoved him in the chest. It was not a hard shove, but she caught him off balance as he held some of the weight off his left leg. He toppled awkwardly and inelegantly backward and crashed down onto the seat.

He raised his eyebrows.

"And now look what you have made me do," she said crossly. "I have never in my life knocked anyone over."

"I daresay I have never been knocked over," he said. "But I suppose I deserved it. I did not choose my words with care, something I will remember the next time I want to be kind to you when you are as prickly as a hedgehog."

"Kind!" she said scornfully. "And I am not prickly."

But before she could quarrel more with him, Bridget came dashing up, her basket laden with blooms.

"Whatever happened?" she asked. "Did you fall, Mr. Smith? I warned you-"

"Merely a lovers' tiff, Bridget," Alleyne said, grinning and feeling rather foolish. "Our first. It was entirely my fault, of course. Rachel knocked me over."

"This all seemed such a brilliant idea back in Brussels," Rachel said. "Everyone thought it would be great good fun. And so it is, and so it will continue to be. I think Uncle Richard is dying."

She caught up her flimsy skirt after uttering this apparent non sequitur, whisked herself about, and half ran along the path back to the house. Alleyne would have gone after her, but Bridget set a hand on his sleeve.

"Let her go," she said. "I can remember the time when she used to cry inconsolably for her mother every night. And I can remember when her lovely porcelain doll was smashed to pieces by one of Mr. York's doltish friends. She wrapped up the pieces in an old blanket and cried over them every night. But it was her uncle she wept for. He had come like a ray of sunlight into her life after her mother died, and he had bought her that doll. Then he disappeared as abruptly as he had come. She got over it all within that first year, and after that she was a girl of remarkable spirit and resilience. But now I wonder if she got over it at all. She hates Lord Weston. But what I think is that she won't admit to herself that she still wants desperately to love him. He is her mama's brother-her only link with her roots."

"Oh, Lord," Alleyne said with a sigh, "it is what I think too, Bridget. And look at the scrape I have got her into."

"Never you mind," she said. "It will all work out, you just wait and see."

Alleyne wished he felt her confidence.

CHAPTER XIV

H ALF AN HOUR LATER, ALMOST BEFORE RACHEL had properly composed herself after the quarrel, which had seemed to come out of nowhere and had provoked her into a physical attack upon another human being, there was a tap on her door, and Geraldine came inside without waiting for a summons.

"Such a to-do, Rache," she said. "Phyll is in the kitchen doing battle. She has taken command of the kitchen maids and the food and the ovens, but the cook has only retreated to recoup her forces for a counterattack. She and the housekeeper are fortifying themselves on gin. Then the pots and the language are going to fly, let me tell you. I wouldn't miss it for worlds, so I'll hurry with my message. The baron wants to see you in his private rooms. You had better go. Maybe you can discover where he keeps your jewels and I can don my black cloak and mask, stick a knife between my teeth, and find a stretch of ivy to climb tonight when the moon is down."

Rachel laughed despite herself, but as she hurried along to her uncle's apartments she really wished she were anywhere else on earth. Suddenly all the lies and deceptions seemed despicable. But what could she do now but forge ahead with the plan? She was not the only one involved in the trickery, after all. She could not expose her friends as frauds.

She hated Jonathan. She hated him. He must have been wealthy, arrogant, insensitive, and heartless in his other life. She ignored the fact that he had not shoved her back but had apologized instead.

"Come in and have a seat, Rachel," her uncle said after his valet had admitted her.

He did not rise from his chair. His feet were resting on a padded stool. He looked weary, and yet his eyes watched her keenly from beneath his bushy brows as she crossed the room and took the offered chair. They both sat facing a low window, which looked out onto the parterre gardens and the lawns beyond.

"Uncle Richard," she asked him, "how are you? I mean really, how are you?"

"It is my heart," he told her. "It is giving out on me slowly-or rapidly. Who knows? I have had a few seizures over the past three years, the most recent last February. I was recovering well enough, but then something happened to upset me. And then yesterday you arrived here."

And she was being lumped in with whatever it was that had upset him recently? Well, she could hardly complain. She had invited herself here after refusing his invitation last year. She had not even written to warn him that she was coming. And she had brought a whole crowd of other people with her.

It had not really occurred to her that he would have aged in sixteen years. She had certainly never considered the possibility that his health might be gone. She had expected him to be the same robust, confident man-except that she would be armed against him this time.

"We will leave tomorrow if you wish," she said. "Or even today."

"That was not my meaning," he said. "How well do you know Smith, Rachel? How much do you know of him? He is handsome and charming, I will confess-at least, he is charming when it suits him to be. Did you marry him, perhaps, because you were a lady's companion and your choices seemed few? But that would have been foolish of you. You will be a wealthy woman one day. You could have been wealthy anytime during the past year if you had married with my approval."

"I love Jonathan," she said. "And I know he is a man with whom I can live happily and securely for the rest of my life. You could not have chosen more wisely for me than I have done for myself, Uncle Richard."

"And yet," he said, "you have quarreled quite violently with each other this morning. He insulted you, I suppose, and you pushed him over."

Rachel closed her eyes briefly. Of course! He would have had a bird's-eye view of their altercation out of this window. She could see the seat on which they had been sitting without even having to stretch her neck. All she could be thankful for was that the window was closed and therefore he could not have heard a word of what they had said.

"It was nothing," she said. "A sharp exchange, soon made up. That is all."

"But you did not make up your quarrel," he said. "You left him when you were still angry, and he let you go."

"It was not serious," she insisted. She spread her hands across her lap.

"I sincerely hope you have not made the mistake your mother made, Rachel," he said.

She looked up sharply at him.

"How do you know it was a mistake?" she asked him. "You disapproved of her marriage and then, after she had eloped, you cut her off and never saw her again until after she was dead. How do you know she was not deliriously happy all those years? How do you know she would not have remained happy until Papa died last year?"

He sighed. "I would not speak ill of York," he said. "He was your father, Rachel, and I daresay you were fond of him. It would be unnatural if you had not been."

"I adored him," she said fiercely, though she was aware, of course, that she was protesting too much. She had loved her father to the end, but it had not been easy to do so. Sometimes she had hated him.

"What gives you the right to stand in judgment?" she asked him. "To cut off all contact with your only sister because you disapproved of her choice of husband and then to come and gloat over her grave when she died? What gave you the right to win a child's affection-to buy it with ices and a doll and rides on your horse-and then to disappear from her life and leave her with the growing conviction that she must have proved unlovable? I was your own niece. I could not help it that you disapproved of my paternity. I was still your sister's child. And I was still a person in my own right."

"Rachel." He closed his eyes and set his head back against the cushions of his chair and one hand over his heart. "Rachel."

She stood up on shaky legs.

"I am sorry," she said. "I am so very sorry, Uncle Richard. Please forgive me. I never quarrel-but I have done so twice this morning, with two different people. I came to Chesbury of my own free will. It is unpardonable of me to rip into you as if it were you who had invaded my home. All that happened was a very long time ago, and you did offer me a home here after Papa died, even if you did tie it to a threat to marry me off to someone of your choosing."

"A threat." He laughed softly. "Rachel, you were twenty-one years old and had been given no chance, as far as I knew, to meet any eligible suitors. Your father had not arranged any sort of come-out for you. I thought to do you a kindness."

"Well," she said, "I did not get that impression from your letter. But perhaps that was because I was not feeling kindly disposed toward you anyway. You offered no condolences for my loss of Papa."

"Because I was glad," he said wearily. "I thought his passing would finally give you a chance in life while you were still young enough to grasp it. But it was thoughtless of me not to understand that you would be grieving."

"It does not matter," she said. "I have grasped my chance for happiness, but not blindly, Uncle Richard. I chose a man who was both eligible and personable. I chose someone I could love and someone who loved me."

For the moment she was so caught up in the part she played that she believed utterly that she adored Jonathan.

"May I fetch you something?" she asked. "A drink, perhaps?"

"No." He shook his head.

"I did not know you were ill," she said. "I have upset you by coming here. I ought to have stayed away."

"It is twenty-three years since your mother left here," he said. "She was fifteen years younger than I, more like my child than my sister. I loved her dearly. But she was impulsive and stubborn and hopelessly romantic. I mismanaged the situation with York, and though I had a good marriage of my own, there has been an emptiness in my life ever since your mother left. I am glad you have come." He closed his eyes.

It was an emptiness he might have filled anytime during the years following her mother's death, Rachel thought, torn between a terrible grief and a rising anger. But she would not quarrel anymore with him. She really had been an even-tempered person all her life until now. Only so, she believed, had she been able to cope with her father and his friends and all the turmoil of their life.

"Uncle Richard," she said, "let me have the jewels. I will treasure them and so will Jonathan. We will stay for a few days longer and then leave you in peace. I will write to you. I will come to visit."

She would write to him, she vowed to herself. She would confess all to him. And if he would forgive her, she would come to see him whenever she could. She would try not to hold the past against him. Perhaps they could somehow become uncle and niece to each other.

"I am not in any hurry for you to leave," he said. "It is a long time since there were young people in this house, Rachel. And I like your friends. They are charming ladies. It is a long time since I entertained or indeed saw my neighbors except at church. It must be twenty years since there was a ball at Chesbury. There will be one here within the next month. Stay so that we can get to know each other and so that I can get to know your husband."

Rachel bit her lip. The enormity of her deception was becoming more obvious and more painful to her with every passing hour, it seemed.

"And my jewels?" she asked.

He took his time answering.

"I will not promise those to you, Rachel, even at the end of the month," he said. "We will see. Smith is well able to support you if he has represented himself accurately, and so you cannot need the jewels to sell. And as for wearing them-well, they are old, heavy pieces not suited to a very young woman. They are heirlooms and were entrusted to my care-first by my mother and then by yours."

And so all this was to be for nothing, she thought-with only the tiny hope offered by his we will see.

She might have argued. But she noticed that his hand had come up to cover his heart once more and that his complexion again looked gray-tinged. He had not opened his eyes. She looked down at him, alarmed. But though she leaned toward him, she could not bring herself to touch him.