Suzanne Robinson (10 page)

“Hmmm?”

“The tea, would you like me to pour?”

“If it will make you happy.” He appeared to find the door of immeasurable interest, for he was still contemplating it when she tried to hand him his cup.

“Sir Lucas.”

“Yes,” he said in a distracted tone.

Prim raised her voice and shoved the cup and saucer at him. “What do you take in your tea?”

“What? Oh, yes, thank you.” He took the cup and began stirring his tea.

“You didn’t answer when I asked what you took in your tea.”

Sir Lucas set the cup and saucer down without
drinking and turned a wide-eyed gaze upon her. Prim sipped her own tea laced with milk and sugar while she grew more and more uneasy. He was going to try again to make her reveal what she knew, and she was too weary to endure it.

“You know, Miss Dane, if you told me what it was you saw, or what you know, whoever is after you would have no reason to kill you. The secret would be out, and there would be no profit in killing you.”

Prim had already thought of this. “You’re wrong. Even if the … the secret were known to the world, there would still be the most urgent of reasons for dispatching me.” The murderer would have an even more compelling reason to want her dead before she could testify in court.

“Bloody damnation,” Sir Lucas said while he gazed at her in wonder. “What could you know that’s so perilous?”

“I—”

“Decline to tell you. I know, I know. So what are you going to do, hide for the rest of your life?”

The question caught her unprepared. All at once her exhaustion rushed upon her. With it came feelings of helplessness and isolation. She had been brave for so long, and she was very much afraid that she could be brave no longer. Her eyes stung, and Sir Lucas began to swim before her tear-blurred vision.

“Oy! Don’t you be sniffling and blubbering at me.”

Her cup and saucer rattling, Prim grabbed her napkin and pressed it to her nose. She was powerless to prevent a great sob from escaping the napkin. The cup clattered perilously on its saucer. Sir Lucas cursed and
grabbed both before she dropped them. Prim pressed the napkin to her nose and mouth with one hand and made a fist with the other in an attempt to regain mastery of herself. She lost the battle as the first sob became many. Humiliated, she brought the napkin up to cover her eyes.

Beside her the cushions of the settee dipped. A warm hand took her fist, causing Prim to gasp and peep over the edge of the napkin. Sir Lucas was sitting beside her, making her feel insect-small with his height. He had taken her fist in his hands, and as she watched, he pried open the fingers, clasped her hand in one of his, and covered it with the other. Her entire hand vanished. Prim’s tears dried up at the feel of his heated skin on hers. Suddenly the world shrank to those few inches where their hands touched, and Prim felt something inside stir, something that coiled and wound around itself, producing an exciting tension.

“It took you all this mortal time to do what I expected of you the first time we met. Choke me dead but you’re powerful brave for a lady spinster.”

“B-brave? I’m not brave. I’m frightened.” The tears returned.

“Then let me help you,” he said.

Another surprise. Nightshade could be gentle. Even his voice could be gentle. Usually it reminded her of a perverse choir—full, harmonious, and singing praises of wickedness. Now she could almost succumb to the images of high battlements and armor and a warrior’s skills that it provoked. But what would be
the result? Danger for two instead of one; danger for the one who had risked his life to help her.

“I cannot allow you to help.”

“You’re a wretched blithering fool, Miss Dane.”

Prim yanked her hand from his grasp. “Only an infamous creature would so address a lady. But you needn’t endure my presence. I shall leave at once.”

“You will not.”

“Then I’m a prisoner yet.”

“Appears so.”

Prim stood stiffly.

“Where are you going?”

“I assumed you were going to lock me up again in some barred room, or possibly your dungeon.”

“Sit down!” Nightshade bellowed.

Prim started and obeyed in spite of herself. He lowered his chin and looked up at her, his stance recalling dark, mist-filled streets and unseen peril. He was doing it again, trying to intimidate her. Prim squared her shoulders and set her clasped hands in her lap as she returned his stare. They remained in this contest for a few moments before Sir Lucas’s smile took possession of Nightshade. She heard him chuckle, and eyed him with suspicion.

“Rot me if we’re not at an impasse, Miss Dane.”

“I’m pleased that my misfortunes and afflictions provide you with amusement,” Prim snapped.

“Now don’t get yourself in an infernal stew. I got a proposal.”

“Really?”

“Damn I hate the way you get all high-flown and royal and make a bloke feel like a Thames water rat.”

“How unfortunate for you.”

“See what I mean? But that ain’t what I got to say. What I was going to say is that you got to agree you’ll have the devil of a time leaving if I set me mind to keeping you here. Right?”

Irritated beyond politeness, Prim merely nodded.

“Right,” he said with a grin that made her want to kick him in the knee. “So we’re in the same rain barrel we were back in London. Want to give your word you won’t run off until we can settle this tangle, or should I pull up the drawbridge and find a nice dungeon for you? I’ll put some furniture in it, o’ course.”

It disgusted her that he could be so logical. A long silence ensued while she did battle with her ire. In the end, Prim realized she had too few alternatives and that leaving Sir Lucas’s protection without a plan might cost her her life.

“For the moment,” she said coldly, “I shall remain.”

“Not just for the moment. You got to promise—”

“Sir Lucas, that is my final offer.”

He looked her up and down as if measuring the strength of her resolve. “Very well, Miss Prim.”

“Now, if you will excuse me, Sir Lucas.” Prim rose from the settee.

“Wait,” Sir Lucas said. “You haven’t heard everything.”

Prim resumed her perch on the settee as far away from him as possible. “Yes?”

“I got something to ask you.”

“I won’t tell you—”

“Not that.” Sir Lucas cleared his throat. “What I was going to say was that since you’re here, how about
teaching me manners like you got? I’m going to get married, and my fiancée is well-bred, like you. I’m going to need Society manners.”

It was the last thing Prim expected to hear. Her mouth fell open; she snapped it shut. He had a fiancée, and she was shocked. No, she was angry. He couldn’t be engaged. She did not want him to be engaged. Her thoughts turned into scorpions that battled and stung each other. Damn him. He was engaged, and he wanted her to teach him manners. Teach him manners, manners he intended to use to impress a fiancée!

“What do you say?” he asked.

“Certainly not.”

He regarded her silently. Then, without warning, he laughed Nightshade’s demon laugh. “Think carefully, Miss Prim. The more manners you teach me, the less you’ll see of Nightshade.” He leaned close to her, causing Prim to edge away from him as he pursued her to the corner of the settee.

“What do you say, Miss Prim?” he murmured, calling up visions of a pirate captain standing on a deck red with blood. “Who do you want to spend your days with—Sir Lucas, or me?”

Prim thrust at his immovable shoulder and slipped off the settee to land on the floor. Nightshade bent over her, offering his hand. Avoiding his touch, Prim scrambled to her feet and rushed to the door. Turning the knob, she looked back, fearing he’d followed her, but he was standing by the settee smiling at her with all the wickedness of a pagan god.

“We’ll begin the lessons at dinner, Sir Lucas.”

Nightshade favored her with the kind of grin the devil must wear after condemning a soul, and swept an elaborate bow to her. “I knew you’d see it my way, Miss Dane.”

Castle Beaufort had once been the home of dukes and princes. Luke bought it from a baron whose family had the distinction of providing mistresses to several Stuart kings, until England had run out of either pretty women or lascivious sovereigns. The castle’s massive foundations, its eight-hundred-year history, and the treasures it contained provided Luke with the feeling of permanence he’d longed for all his life.

He could wander across the bailey and survey towers that had withstood the Wars of the Roses and Cromwell. He could admire the suits of shining plate armor in the Old Hall, the renovated residential wings with their Gothic facades and Renaissance, Palladian and Georgian interiors. And each time he did, he could feel his roots delving deeper into the earth.

He would live here, marry, and raise a family here.
Never again would he be the lost, unwanted, and dirty urchin who had to steal in order to eat. Owners of castles never wanted for food or for respectability. Luke remembered how Mr. Tuggle, a greasy and rotund grocer in Pitch Lane, would snarl at him in distaste, as if he were horse dung brought in on a customer’s boot. Sure he’d filched an apple once, but that was after his mother died and he’d spent two days on the streets starving. He’d asked for any spare fruit or vegetables first, but the fat old bugger had kicked and spat at him. No one would ever make him feel that way again.

The memory of Mr. Tuggle receded, and Luke glanced down at the letter he was composing. He was in his office, next to the library on the ground floor of the palace. His door was open and he looked down the corridor at a succession of rooms, their doors open to admit air and candlelight.

Beyond his office lay the Mural Room. Its ceiling was painted to simulate a dome that was open to the sky in the center. Ornate frescoes adorned the walls, and the Mural Room was considered a masterpiece of Renaissance art. But to Luke all the busy classical figures, the emperors, senators, ladies, gods, and goddesses, made the room feel crowded.

His study was much simpler. It had a carved frieze consisting of shells supported by palm fronds. Carved overdoors held portraits of unknown castle occupants from the late seventeenth century. These worthies now looked down upon Luke as he wrote.

His pen scratched instructions to his representative
in London—the man who served as intermediary between him and the world he’d escaped. Either Prim had run afoul of someone as dangerous as Inigo Ware, or she’d come upon knowledge that threatened someone powerful. This last was what Luke feared. His agents would have to be careful not to arouse suspicion while making their inquiries, and he was writing to emphasize the need for caution.

Signing the letter, Luke slipped it into an envelope and sighed. He was worried about Miss Dane. He’d seen the look of desperation and resolution in her eyes. She was going to apply herself to thinking of a way out of her dilemma, a way in which she could protect herself and him,
him
.

As if he needed the protection of a wisp of a girl with gray-green eyes. That was one of her most aggravating qualities. Miss Primrose Dane thought she had to protect everybody, thought she knew best for everybody. And what had it got her; it had almost got her killed. Sometimes she was so exasperating he wanted to throw her in the moat. He wouldn’t do it, of course, in spite of the temptation. Although why he restrained himself on her account mystified him.

Perhaps her good qualities had impressed him. She cared about children such as he’d once been, cared enough to try to teach them to better themselves. As well, Miss Dane had more courage than a whole company of Her Majesty’s grenadiers. Yes, Miss Primrose Dane was an admirable young woman. Odd that she wasn’t married. Come to think of it, her whole situation seemed odd. She was cast among relations who obviously cared little for her, while her brother
lived well at Oxford and failed to provide a place for her in the home he’d inherited.

Luke took up his pen again, this time to write to Ross Scarlett. He needed to find out more about Miss Dane. If he did, he might find a way to keep her at Beaufort, and a key to her dangerous situation as well. In any case, he needed her with him long enough to teach him propriety, etiquette, all the things he still had to learn if he was going to marry.

His engagement had been almost as easy as the purchase of Castle Beaufort. Years ago when he’d first acquired his wealth, Luke had learned that it bought respectability. Many families of ancient lineage were willing to overlook his humble origins, as long as he was rich now. Luke would never forget his amazement at discovering how tides seemed to drain all the sense from a family. People whose ancestors had been clever bullies in the age of knights and sieges had descendants who couldn’t keep a shilling in their pocket if it was glued there.

The Randolphs, the family in possession of the earldom of Benfield, were such descendants. In danger of losing the family seat to debt, the earl had gladly consented to a marriage between Luke and his daughter, Lady Cecilia. However, the earl insisted that Lady Cecilia approve. Luke had already made inquiries about the lady before offering marriage. All that remained was for her to assure herself that she desired the connection. In a few weeks she was coming for a visit, suitably escorted by an aged lady relative.