Star Crossed Seduction (22 page)

“Why should I?”

“Why?” Temperance interrupted. “Because you swore you loved me. If that wasn’t just another of your lies, you’d welcome anything that might prove my innocence. Lady Hartwood’s skill is real. I tested her when first she took me in, and even though I misled her, her charts told her the truth. So I beg you. If you ever loved me, as you claim, give her a chance to find the real thief.”

He knew he should stop his ears to her entreaty the way Odysseus had stopped his to the siren’s song, but he was helpless against her plea. He
had
loved her, and he yearned to love her still. He would grasp at any straw that would let him believe she hadn’t betrayed him. Even this.

Lady Hartwood held out one small hand. “Do give me a chance, Captain Trevelyan. Only last month I found Lady Pemberton’s emeralds, which she thought her maid had stolen. The poor girl would have hanged for it had the chart not told us that Lord Pemberton had secretly gambled them away—and so it proved. Let me see if I can find your jewel for you. You have nothing to lose by letting me try.”

Temperance’s eyes were fixed on him, their gray now the color of tarnished silver. As he met them, her soul reached out from their depths and touched him once more in that inner place where he had always been alone—until he’d found her.

He turned toward Lady Hartwood. “How long will it take you to cast your chart?”

“No more than half an hour.”

“I will grant you that. But in return, I must ask to have a few words in private with Temperance.”

Her Ladyship turned to her. “Will you grant him a private interview?”

Temperance nodded.

“Good,” said Lady Hartwood. “With any luck, we shall get to the bottom of this yet.”

Chapter 19

A
servant led Temperance and the man she was trying so hard not to love down the corridor and ushered them into a small salon charmingly furnished in pale yellow silk, whose windows gave onto the small garden, now stripped of its blooms by the cold December winds. A fire burned in the grate.

It was taking all her control to keep herself from running to the man she had expected to call husband and throwing herself into his arms. In spite of what he had done, her heart still whispered that he was her beloved. It made her desperate.

He had never appeared so handsome as he did at present. The sharp lines of his uniform emphasized the width of his chest, the narrowness of his waist, and the strength of his personality. Discipline kept his features impassive. Only the darkness of the eyes glaring up from beneath the shadow of his thick brows hinted that he, too, was stirred by emotions as powerful as those that held her in their grip.

She longed to hear him speak. She feared what he might say.

Though the room was furnished with a comfortable sofa, he refused to take a seat but paced restlessly before the fireplace with his hands clasped behind his back. He waited for a moment, as if expecting her to seat herself, but she had no choice but to remain standing, to give herself strength, perhaps—or to make it easier to flee.

When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh. “Was it me you referred to when you complained to Lord Hartwood of an attempted rape?”

“Of course not, why would I?”

“Because of how I treated you that first night.”

“I told him nothing about that.”

“Then were you referring to Sir Humphrey?”

She made no reply.

“By God, answer me! Did the man rape you?”

“No!”

“Damn it! If only he had.”

Why hadn’t he just impaled her with the saber that hung at his waist? It would have been kinder. When she could speak again, she said, “You don’t even pretend to love me, do you, now that we are in private. But what have I ever done to you, that you could wish such a thing on me? How could you sink so low?”

“Because,” he grit his teeth, “if Sir Humphrey didn’t rape you, the only other explanation for what he told me is that you gave yourself to him of your own free will. Do you wonder that I should prefer the former? You knew exactly what your betrayal would mean to me.” His eyes drilled into hers. “Did it add to your pleasure to know that you had struck at me where I was most vulnerable?”

“I never gave myself to him. How could you believe such a thing?”

His face twisted in agony. “You tossed away the ring I gave you just before you went to him. I found it when I returned to the room.”

“I couldn’t stand the feel of it against my flesh, not after what Sir Humphrey told me. So yes, I tore it off and ground it into the floor with my heel for good measure. But I didn’t give myself to him. He seized me and locked me in his harem, and would have had his way with me against my will had I not escaped.”

“And how exactly did you escape?” His look was savage.

“When his guard left me all alone, I found my way out.”

“I suppose you found all the doors unlocked, too,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“I did.” As the words left her mouth, she realized how lame they sounded.

“How can you expect me to believe such a tale? It’s not up to your usual standard. Sir Humphrey gave me proof he had lain with you—a proof I cannot doubt.”

“How could he prove a thing that never happened?”

It took him a moment to gain enough command over himself to respond. Then he spat out each word. “He described that mark on your thigh. If he didn’t rape you, the only other explanation for how he would have seen it was that you gave yourself to him, willingly. To distract him. So you could steal the jewel.”

“He told you he had seen the devil’s mark?”

“He described it exactly.”

“But that mark is the same proof he gave that
you
had betrayed
me
. He said you’d told him I was marked with Satan’s brand on my thigh and described the cloven hoof.”

He wheeled around to face her. “Someone is lying,” he said slowly.

They stared at each other for a moment.

“I told you the truth,” she said. “Just as I vowed I would. It was
you
who lied to me—you don’t even bother to deny it. You lied about why we went to the nabob’s and about Fanshawe. How can I believe you aren’t lying to me now?”

“I’m not, but I can’t prove it. Any more than you can prove you didn’t steal the jewel.”

Trev strode to the fireplace, where a small fire burned, and held out his hands toward its heat. After a long pause, he turned back to face her. “It’s a devilish thing, isn’t it, how we each find ourselves betrayed, in the way that would be most painful to us. It is almost too neat. I could almost bring myself to believe that someone was attempting to drive us apart and using that infernal mark to do it.”

He paused, sunk in thought, the steep planes of his face emphasizing his glowing eyes. Then a change came over his face, and she saw once again that look he got when they were making love, that open look as he opened his soul to her and called to her to join him.

“I meant you to be my bride,” he said. “I wanted nothing more but to love you for the rest of my life.”

The strong muscles of his arms knotted under the tight cloth of his tunic. He was clenching his fists. He was awaiting her answer.

She reached deep within herself to find it. “I wanted to be your bride. I love you even now. Even as you accuse me of these crimes, I ache with the echo of the pain you feel, because you believe yourself betrayed.”

He spun around, and his eyes locked with hers. “We face a choice, now, don’t we. To believe in each other despite the evidence—or to despair.”

She gave herself up to the longing in his eyes that matched her own. How could she have doubted him? But how could she dare to trust him?

A discreet scratching on the door interrupted them. Trev opened it. The maid curtsied, and said, “Lady Hartwood is ready to receive you, sir.”

T
hey found the lady astrologer in her office, where she sat dwarfed by the pile of thick books, bound in the antique fashion, that rose from the heap of papers covering her desk.

Could she really determine the identity of the thief with her mystical talents? The fervor with which Trev found himself hoping she could betrayed his desperation.

When they had seated themselves in the chairs to which she motioned them, she said, “I’ve cast the chart for the question, ‘Who is the thief?’ But I must confess the answer I come up with makes little sense. I will share it with you, still, for it’s possible it will have meaning to you though I don’t understand it. That’s often that way it goes when I give this kind of reading.”

“What does it say?” Temperance asked.

“The only thing I can state with certainty is that neither of you are lying when you claim you don’t know the identity of the thief. If either of you already knew the answer to the question, the chart would tell me that. But it doesn’t.”

“So it proves I am innocent?”

“Absolutely.”

As he heard Temperance’s slow release of breath, Trev felt his heart leap, as ridiculous as it was to trust such a source to exonerate her. “Does it say who the thief is?” he demanded.

“That is where things get confusing. Whenever I cast a chart to answer a question concerning a theft, I begin by asking if a theft has actually occurred. That was how I knew Lady Pemberton’s emeralds hadn’t been stolen. But when I ask if this theft occurred, the answer I get is neither a yes nor a no.”

She picked up one of her papers and pointed to the hieroglyphs that adorned it. “The planet ruling the Seventh House describes the thief, and as Cancer is on the cusp of the Seventh, that planet is the Moon. So the thing that was stolen should be described by the ruler of the Terms the Moon is in. But this chart tells me the thing was only
intended
to be stolen.”

She reached for one of the volumes open upon on her desk and pointed to a paragraph with one dainty finger. “You can see that stated clearly, right here, in my ancestor, Lilly’s book.”

Trev’s heart sank. This was sounding more medieval by the minute. He’d given in to false hope, so fiercely did he want to believe their love had been real.

Lady Hartwood pressed on. “And here is what confuses me. Though the thing was only intended to be stolen, the Lord of the Ascendant is in the Second House, which means the object’s owner is the thief. I find myself at a loss to understand how an object could be intended to be stolen at the same time that the owner of the jewel is the putative thief.”

“Could it mean the nabob intended to steal his own jewel?” Temperance asked.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Lady Hartwood replied. “But why would he do a thing like that?”

So he could keep his greedy paws on it, despite his promise to give it up
—which was exactly what Trev’s instincts had suggested when he’d been face-to-face with the man—before the Mad Nabob had floored him with that infernal proof of his.

But Lady Hartwood gave Trev no time to answer her question, for she plunged on, saying, “No. It wouldn’t fit this chart for the nabob to steal his own jewel. For the Lord of the Seventh House, which describes the thief in a chart like this, is placed in the Tenth House, and my ancestor Lilly states quite clearly that this means the thief is ‘a lord, or a master, or of the king’s house. Some person that lives handsomely and is not necessitated to this course of life.’ ”

“That could still describe Sir Humphrey,” Temperance said.

“Unfortunately, not. For the chart is full of indications that the thief is a woman. The Ascendant of the chart is in a feminine sign. The angles of the chart are, too, and the Moon is in a fruitful sign.”

“But you just said I didn’t steal the jewel,” Temperance protested.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest you were the thief,” Lady Hartwood assured her. “You couldn’t be. For the Moon is late in her sign, which makes the thief an older woman. No, the testimony of the chart is that the thief—if there is one—and it’s not clear to me that the theft ever went beyond the planning stage—must be a wealthy older woman, someone directly connected with the king.”

Any hope Trev had been nourishing that Lady Hartwood could clear up the mystery had died. Much as he wished to believe in Temperance’s innocence, he wouldn’t find it here. He must make his report to Fanshawe and hope that the man didn’t have more damning evidence that would destroy the fragile bit of hope their conversation had given him. He stood and thanked Lady Hartwood for her efforts.

“I hope my reading helped you,” she said.

“I wish it had,” he replied. “But I’m a practical man, and I would be lying if I pretended I found it useful. I must go now and make my report to my superior. He will be interested only in hearing facts. I can hardly inform him that, based on the testimony of the stars, despite all the evidence that points to Temperance, the thief is an older woman who serves His Majesty—or that Mad Nabob may have stolen his own jewel, or that there has been no theft at all.”

“Why not? That
is
what the chart tells us,” Lady Hartwood said. “But you must make your own decision about what to do with that information I have given you. It is always difficult for people to take my astrological readings seriously until they prove themselves. Lady Pemberton swore up and down her husband couldn’t have got his hands on her emeralds. But once she sent someone to make inquiries among his cronies, the truth soon came out. ”

“Then we must hope this reading proves itself, too,” Trev said, modulating his voice in a belated attempt at politeness. But couldn’t imagine how it could. He must set aside his dreams, as tempting as they had been for that brief moment when he had spoken with Temperance in the yellow salon. Much as he wished to love her still, he must prepare himself to withstand the impact of the cold hard facts that would come out in an hour, when he met with Fanshawe.

He asked for a private word with Lord Hartwood, and when they were alone, he told him of the arrangements he’d made with Major Stanley for Temperance’s maintenance. Wrong though it might be to help her find safety if she turned out to be the thief after all, he could not bring himself to abandon her.

Then he took his leave without returning to the office where he’d left her. Much as he longed to see her one last time, it would be too painful to awaken further hope. It would only hurt more when it was blasted away once and for all.

H
e was halfway down the hall, waiting for the maid to bring him his cloak and shako, when Temperance came up behind him and put out a hand to stop him. “Before you go, there’s one last thing I must tell you. Lady Hartwood’s reading may have been truer than she knew.”

“If you mean her idea that Sir Humphrey blamed you for a theft so he could keep the jewel, I’ve already thought about that and I will insist my superiors investigate the possibility. I hope with all my heart it is the explanation and that with it we may still recover the jewel.” He took a deep breath and let his tone soften. “I want to believe you, Temperance. I’m doing my best to do so.”