Slightly Tempted (21 page)

"I have indeed,chérie, " he said with a smile. "And so far I have survived the shock."

For the first time it struck her that this journey, this arrival, must be almost as great an ordeal for him as for her. He had to meet people he had not seen in nine years. Somehow he had to pick up the reins of a life he had been forced to abandon when he was a very young man. Had she forced him to come before he was quite ready? She looked at him with deep remorse. She could have been speaking to him about these things during those silent hours on the ship. Instead, she had been self-absorbed. She would makehim the topic of their conversation at dinner, she resolved.

"I hope," she said, "it will be a happy return for you."

Lord Rosthorn took her gloved hand on his arm and smiled at her.

Ilse, somewhat recovered from her indisposition now that they were on solid ground, trailed along behind them as they made their way toward the inn, their faces bent to the wind and the rain. It was a great relief to step inside the building at last and see a fire roaring in the large hearth of the reception hall. Morgan moved closer to it, shaking raindrops from her cloak, while the Earl of Rosthorn approached the desk.

How different were her feelings now from those she had experienced the last time she had been in Harwich, not even two months ago. Surely then she must have been ten years younger than she felt now. If only she could go back, make everything turn out differently. But how? Have a tantrum there at the Namur Gates and insist that Alleyne stop what he was doing and take her back to England then and there?

She held her hands out to the warmth of the fire and turned her head to watch Lord Rosthorn make arrangements for their night's stay-and found herself gazing at a tall, elegantly cloaked gentleman who was striding across the reception hall in the direction of the outer doors.

Wulfric!

For a moment she was so overwhelmed by shock and disbelief that she could neither move nor cry out.

He had not seen her. But hehad seen the Earl of Rosthorn. He stopped abruptly, his face a mask of narrow-eyed coldness, his nostrils flaring.

But Morgan did not really notice. She had found both her feet and her voice.

"Wulf!" she cried, and then she hurtled toward him, panic clawing at her back and at her heels."Wulf!"

Wulfric was not the sort of man into whose arms one would normally think of dashing. But at that moment he represented for her all that was solid and safe and dear. She hurled herself into his arms and felt all the reassurance of his presence as they closed about her.

It was a moment that was soon over. He took her firmly by the upper arms, set her away from him, and glanced briefly down at her before looking over her head at the Earl of Rosthorn. His expression would have made icicles shiver.

"Doubtless someone," he said so softly that he was clearly at his most dangerous, "is about to offer an explanation."

He had clearly heard a thing or two, a part of her mind told her. The Countess of Caddick had doubtless been busy talking. But it was not that thought that was uppermost in Morgan's mind. She did not even think to wonder what he was doing here in Harwich. Panic was clenching her stomach, threatening to make her retch.

"Wulf," she said, her voice shaking so badly that the words blurted out of her in jerky spurts. She pawed ineffectually at the capes of his cloak and forgot all about dignity and partially rehearsed speeches. "Wulf, Alleyne is dead." Then all she could hear was the clacking of her own teeth.

His cold silver eyes changed. Something-some light-went out behind them, leaving them flat and opaque. His hands felt like iron bands about her arms. Then he nodded his head once, twice, and again and again, slowly, almost imperceptibly.

"Ah," he said in a voice so distant that Morgan scarcely heard him.

It was a truly terrifying moment-Wulfric at a loss for either words or actions. She had never seen its like before. He was suddenly a human who might at any moment show a vulnerability she had never suspected him capable of. She did notwant him to be a human being. She wanted him to be her eldest brother, Wulfric, the invincible Duke of Bewcastle. She did not want to be eighteen years old and a woman at that moment. She wanted to be a child again in the safe orbit of his immutable power.

But the moment of near vulnerability passed. His eyes focused on Lord Rosthorn again and he was Wulfric once more. His hands dropped away from Morgan's arms. She opened her mouth to make the necessary introductions, but Wulfric spoke first.

"Well,Rosthorn, " he said, with a slight emphasis on the name.

"Bewcastle?" the earl said in return. "My sincerest condolences. I was in the process of escorting Lady Morgan and her maid home to London. Perhaps we can find some room where we may be more private? You have asked for an explanation."

Morgan darted him a glance. He sounded different, his words more clipped and precise, his French accent almost undetectable. He was looking back at Wulfric with hard eyes and hard-set jaw. Wulfric reallyhad heard something, and Lord Rosthorn knew it. And so she was going to be caught between the pride and infernal sense of honor of two gentlemen.

Just moments after she had told Wulf that Alleyne was dead.

"I believe we may dispense with the need for explanations," Wulfric said. "After the visit Lady Caddick paid me yesterday, I was on my way to Brussels in person to find Lady Morgan and bring her home. Now it would appear that it is unnecessary for me to proceed on my original errand, though perhaps I will need to go to make arrangements to have my brother's body brought home." Morgan watched his hand close about the handle of his quizzing glass, his knuckles very white. "Either way your escort is no longer needed, Rosthorn. I will see to Lady Morgan Bedwyn's protection from this moment on. Good day to you."

Morgan looked at him in astonishment. He was not even going to listen to an explanation? He was not going to thank Lord Rosthorn for escorting her home? Or tell him exactly what Lady Caddick had accused him of? And was it her imagination, or did these two menknow each other?

She turned her head to look at Lord Rosthorn. His expression was still tight, granite-jawed, hard-eyed. She scarcely recognized him. But he looked back at her and made her a deep, formal bow.

"Good-bye,chérie, " he said.

"You areleaving, then?" she asked him. Just like that?

But he had already turned away from them and was moving with long strides toward the outer door. She could not let him simply go like that, she thought. But before she could take one step after him Wulfric took one of her upper arms in his grasp again and she turned her wide-eyed attention back to him.

He had not thought it necessary to find a private room when Lord Rosthorn had suggested it. But he must have given some indication to the staff on duty in the reception hall. Within moments they were being ushered with much bowing and scraping into a private parlor, and the door was closing behind them.

Her legs felt weak beneath her then as she realized anew the enormity of the moment. Her dearest friend was gone, so swiftly and unexpectedly that she had not even had a chance to say good-bye to him. But she was home. Wulf was here and she had already unburdened herself of her terrible secret knowledge.

He was looking at her with his pale silver eyes. His hand, in a familiar gesture, had already possessed itself of the handle of his quizzing glass.

"You will tell me now, Morgan, if you will," he said, "how Alleyne lost his life."

She looked steadily back at him, ignoring the ringing in her ears, the coldness in her head, and the weakness in her knees.

"He died at the Battle of Waterloo," she told him.

CHAPTER XI

THE RAIN WAS STILL FALLING IN A STEADYdrizzle and the wind was still blowing in chilly gusts. Gervase nonetheless rode his hired horse at a pace close to a gallop, heedless of either danger or discomfort.

He had been dismissed out of hand. Bewcastle, who had clearly heard enough from Lady Caddick to send him on his way to Brussels in person, had first demanded an explanation and then refused to listen to one. He had dismissed his old enemy just as if he were nothing and nobody.

Gervase seethed with a hatred that had flared to new life as soon as he set eyes upon Bewcastle. It was a hatred he had not yet paused to consider. It blinded him, pulsed in his mind, clouded his judgment. But of one thing he was satisfied-for all his cold control, Bewcastle was clearly rattled. And he would be more so, Gervase vowed. They were not finished with each other yet.

Oh, no, not by a long way.

He pulled his horse over to the side of the road to allow a mail coach to pass from the opposite direction, spraying up water and mud as it did so. He moved forward again at a more cautious, mindful pace.

He would be paying the Duke of Bewcastle a visit in London soon. But nottoo soon. Even through his hatred he recognized the need for some decency. The Bedwyn family must be allowed a short while to mourn.

Sheneeded time. Foolishly, he tried not to put a face or a name to the one person who might soften his resolve at the same time as she gave him the opening he needed to cause lasting mischief.

In the meantime gossip from Brussels and from the ship was bound to spread to London, and with the Caddicks to fan the flames Gervase did not doubt that it would be vicious and unrelenting enough to erupt into a full-blown public scandal.

He would not go to London immediately, he decided. It was high time he went home to Windrush Grange in Kent. It was time somehow to pick up his life where he had left it off nine years ago. He wondered if it would be possible, though. He was neither the man he had been then or the man he had been growing into.

He rode onward, very aware that he was in England again, very aware too that it was not a soft welcome that was being extended to him. The landscape was gray and dreary, the clouds heavy and low. Raindrops dripped from the brim of his hat and somehow found their way down the back of his neck. The road ahead glistened with mud and gleamed with puddles denoting mild depressions or deep potholes-there was no knowing which unless one were incautious enough to step into one of them. Perhaps, he thought, it would have been wiser to remain in Harwich, to have taken passage on the first ship back to the Continent.

But he had business here in England. It was time.

He continued to ride onward.

And despite himself he thought of Lady Morgan Bedwyn-exquisite in her youthful loveliness at the Cameron ball, haughty and intelligent and alluring at the picnic in the Forest of Soignés, disheveled and beautiful and unflinching at the Namur Gates as she bent over a human bundle of bloody rags, huge-eyed with grief in his rooms on the Rue de Brabant, fierce with passion as she reached for comfort. A fascinating woman of many facets.

"Damnation!" He reined in his horse when he realized that he had urged it to a gallop again. "Damnation!"

How could he use her . . .

But he already had, of course.

He already had.

FOR TEN DAYSMORGAN SEEMED TO LIVE IN A FOGof unreality. She explained everything to Wulfric, much of it spilling out of her in a great rush in that private parlor at the Harbour Inn, more of it drawn from her by his careful questioning both then and during the seemingly interminable journey home to London the next day. She told him all she knew about Alleyne's disappearance and about the reappearance of the letter, which seemed to be incontrovertible proof that he had been killed. She told him about the Caddicks and their determination to return home and their consequent refusal to remain in Brussels with her. She told him about Mrs. Clark's giving her a temporary home and of all the work they and the other regimental wives had performed tending the wounded.

The story Lady Caddick had told when she called at Bedwyn House, all righteous indignation, had been somewhat different from her own, Morgan gathered. She had made no mention of Alleyne's being missing or of Morgan's tending the wounded. In Lady Caddick's version Morgan had been simply a headstrong, wayward, disobedient girl who had refused to be torn away from the pleasures of the city and the ineligible beaux who danced attendance upon her there, most notably the Earl of Rosthorn.

"And you believed," Morgan asked haughtily, turning her head to look out of the carriage window, "that I stayed for the sake of frivolity, Wulf? Do you know me so little?"

"It would seem so," he agreed. "I did not expect that you would be so bold as to dismiss a chaperon like yesterday's outworn bonnet. However, neither did I expect that your chaperon would discard you. I had a word with Lady Caddick on the subject before she took her leave."

Morgan would love to have been an invisible witness to that particular set-down, which she did not doubt had left the countess feeling half an inch tall.

She tried several times to tell him about the kindness the Earl of Rosthorn had shown her, but each time he listened without comment and then spoke about something quite unrelated to what she had just told him. Wulf would not be able to understand, of course, that there had been nothing ordinary about the past couple of weeks, that the usual rules of propriety had seemed supremely irrelevant to her. But there was, undeniably, the great guilt of what had occurred between them during that final evening in Brussels. It was hard to believe that either of them could have allowed it to happen.