The Earl's Bargain (Historical Regency Romance) (23 page)

"I am not your master, Louisa."

She could have sworn he said those words
with regret. The effects of the wine must be lingering, clouding
her thinking.

When the innkeeper's wife brought another
pot of hot tea, Harry questioned her. "I say, my wife and I are
trying to decide if Lord Tremaine is the same man we once met in
London. Tall, distinguished looking with a beard."

"That sounds like him," the woman said.
"Only saw him once meself. At St. Stephen's Church the day they
dedicated the new windows. Lord Tremaine paid for them himself.
'Twas the only time I know that he set foot in the church. The
family pew sits empty as you please at the front of the church
Sunday after Sunday."

Harry gave her a shilling and lavish
compliments over the comfort of their room.

Louisa could barely contain her excitement
until the woman left the parlor. "Oh, Harry! Lord Tremaine has to
be our man."

He nodded solemnly. "A good thing today is
Public Day at the castle."

* * *

Since the weather was fair, they decided to
walk to the castle, which perched on a cliff above the village of
Falwell.

"I understand it dates to the twelfth
century," Harry remarked as Louisa gazed up at the stone
fortress.

A mighty fortress it must have been,
guarding much of the Cornish coast through the Middle Ages. Its
battlements had eroded over the centuries but were still plainly
visible even from a half mile away. Bulky round turrets anchored
each corner of the square castle grounds.

As Harry and Louisa wound their way through
the cobbled streets of Falwell, Harry found himself wondering if
there was a moat around the castle. Moats and castles had
fascinated him as a youngster. He had more than once lamented that
Cartmore Hall was not a castle.

The sun was high in the sky when they
strolled up to the gate to Garwick Castle, which did have a moat,
but which looked to have dried up centuries earlier.

They weren't sure where to go once they were
within the castle yard, then they saw an old aproned woman with a
throng of girls around her.

"Must be a school trip," Harry muttered.

They walked across the yard and stood
waiting with the group of girls, whom Harry judged to be somewhere
between ten and twelve years of age.

They only had to wait a few moments before
the housekeeper opened the huge timber door and welcomed them into
the castle, gratefully accepting their shillings.

She led them to the great
hall first and gave accounts of the days when oxen were roasted in
the massive fireplace. Despite his childhood fascination with
castles, Harry found snippets about the
inside
of the castle exceedingly dull.
When would they get to the interesting things like armor and
buttresses? he found himself wondering.

He was rather amazed at Louisa's interest in
the building, but he supposed women liked that sort of thing. He
was a bit embarrassed at being the only man in the group.

Partly out of boredom, partly because he had
not forgotten their reason for coming, he was careful to glance
down every hallway and into every room, looking for signs of the
lord of the castle.

Nearly an hour elapsed, and no luck yet. If
only there were a painting of Lord Tremaine. That should be enough
for Louisa to make her identification.

When they made their way to the second
storey, his interest perked. Surely this was the floor where
Tremaine resided. Harry continued to eagerly look down each hall
and into each room, even if they were not on the tour. He sincerely
hoped the housekeeper did not think he was scoping out the place
with an eye to burglarizing it.

Then he realized the foolishness of his
idea. The place practically crawled with big, bulky liveried
servants. Why would a man need to keep so many strong men in his
employ?

At eleven o'clock in the morning, it was far
enough removed from mealtime to give the housekeeper liberty to
show the group the castle's massive dining room.

"The table seats sixty," she said with pride
as she led her group into the rose-colored room. She rather
reminded Harry of a mother duck leading the way for a trail of
ducklings. The room was carpeted, and the smooth walls had been
covered with silk damask. Everything was the same soft shade of
red. The housekeeper had called it rose. He called it red. Mindful
to stand behind the girls so as not to obstruct their view when the
housekeeper began her recitation, Harry strolled into the room and
stood behind the students. Then he looked up at three huge crystal
chandeliers suspended from the ceiling.

Next, his glance swung to a portrait that
hung above the marble fireplace, and a chill sliced into him. His
heart began to drum, and he swallowed hard. He began to break out
in a sweat. He almost questioned his sanity. Was he actually
standing in Garwick Castle, or was he standing in the dining room
of Wycliff House in Grosvenor Square a decade earlier?

For the portrait was the missing portrait of
his mother.

He felt as if her emerald eyes looked down
on him. He loosened his cravat. He could almost hear her reassuring
voice. Louisa guessed that something was wrong with him. She moved
to his side and lay a gentle hand on his arm. "Are you unwell,
Harry?"

He shook his head. "The bloody bastard has
stolen my mother's portrait."

Louisa gasped, her glance shooting to the
painting that dominated the room. "She's. . .beautiful," Louisa
whispered.

* * *

That afternoon and evening, Harry drank with
a vengeance. So much that Louisa worried about him.

She watched him as he sat beside her on the
upholstered bench not five feet from the blazing hearth that
lighted their parlor. His face took on a gold cast from the light
of the fire. His brow was moist with perspiration, and his dark
hair was tousled.

"It was almost like seeing her again," Harry
said.

He wasn't really carrying on a conversation
with her, Louisa knew. He was merely thinking aloud.

"You were very close to your mother," Louisa
soothed.

"Everyone who knew her counted her a friend.
She had that way about her. Everyone loved her."

"With such a disposition as well as beauty,
I think she must have had an army of suitors – before she married
your father, of course."

"Her suitors all came before my father. You
can be assured once she wed him, she never looked at another man.
She was completely devoted to him." His tone sobered. "You know she
died but one month after my father died."

Louisa nodded sympathetically as he
continued.

"She defended him when I berated him for
losing everything."

"At the time I thought perhaps she would
have been better off wedding the first man she had been engaged
to."

Louisa's brows lowered.

Harry gave a little chuckle. "She actually
ran off with my father. She had become engaged to a wealthy suitor
– she called him George – but had not really been in love with him.
Then she met my father and knew she belonged with him, not
George."

Louisa asked, "Is there a possibility Lord
Tremaine could be George?"

He shook his head. "They would have referred
to him as Lord Tremaine."

"Perhaps he had not succeeded to the title
until after your parents were married."

He thought on Louisa's comment for a moment,
then hurled his glass into the fire.

The fire surged and sputtered, then died
down to normal.

Harry turned to her. "You must be
right."

They sat there in silence, Louisa watching
light from the fire dance along the strong planes of his face.

His face grew solemn. "Killing him would
give me great pleasure."

She curled her hand around his arm. "Don't
talk like that. There are other ways of reaping vengeance upon
him."

"Such as?"

"You could expose him for ruining your
father."

"My dear Louisa, there are no laws against
taking a man's money and possessions at a gentleman's club."

She thought some more. "We can steal back
your mother's portrait."

He searched her face from beneath hooded
brows. "You would do that for me?"

"It wouldn't really be stealing," she
defended. "The painting belongs to you. Besides, he is a vile man.
We don't want Lady Wycliff's portrait in his possession."

He lifted both of Louisa's hands and kissed
them.

It was all she could do not to throw her
arms about his neck.

She was drinking nothing stronger than warm
milk tonight. No more morning-after headaches for her. She watched
with worry as Harry continued to drink hour after hour. At midnight
she finally persuaded him to come to bed. With one arm around him,
she helped him climb the stairs to their room.

On his own, he staggered the short distance
from the room's door to their bed and fell upon it. His eyes were
shut and his breathing was deep but steady.

Louisa closed the door and walked to the bed
where she pulled off his boots, then placed a single blanket over
him.

A moment later, wearing her woolen night
shift, she slid under the covers beside Harry. As she lay there, a
feeling of comfort swept over her. Why couldn't she have been
pledged to a man like Harry? How different her life would have
been.

Her hand possessively stroked over the
hardened planes of Harry's manly shoulders. She could see herself
happily lying beside him for the rest of her nights, but such
thoughts – such torturing pleasure – must not be invited. For Harry
Blassingame, the Earl of Wycliff, was as far removed from her touch
as the stars in the heavens.

With the Cornish winds howling outside their
casement, the smell of salt air flooding their chamber from the
half-open window, and the warmth of Harry beside her, she fell into
a contented sleep.

* * *

It was Louisa who brought tea and elixir to
Harry the next morning. Harry was in the same position he had been
in when he sprawled on the bed the night before.

"Can you not close the curtain?" he asked,
refusing to lift his head from the bed. "The blasted sun's far too
strong."

"As well it should be," Louisa answered. "It
is almost noon."

"Our daylight grows short," he exclaimed,
moving to sit up and force down the elixir Louisa offered. Then he
laughed at himself. "I was thinking we were still on the road to
finding our mysterious lord." He finished drinking and sat the
glass on the table beside the bed. "Now, there's no longer a need
to make tracks during daylight."

Louisa stood beside the bed and looked down
at him. "Now, I think, we will need night, rather than day, to
accomplish our mission."

He looked puzzled. "What mission would that
be?"

"We're going to
reclaim
your mother's
portrait."

His lips curved into a smile. "You are a
positive vixen."

She laughed. "I know that's what all you
aristocrats say about me."

He made room for her to come and sit beside
him on the bed while he finished his tea.

It felt perfectly natural for her to be
sitting here with a barefooted lord, on a bed, in the village of
Falwell, carrying on a conversation about stealing a painting.
Everything she did with Harry seemed perfectly natural. As if they
were meant to be together. Which, of course, could never really be.
Harry was an aristocrat, and she was a bluestocking, and the two
did not get on. Add to that the fact Harry didn't really like her.
He had made that perfectly clear when he had recovered from his
grave illness.

"How would you propose to gain entrance into
the castle at night? I expect the drawbridge will be up."

She bit at her lip. "I hadn't actually
thought of that."

He looked down at his feet. "Pray, where are
my boots?"

"At the foot of the bed."

"And who, may I ask, took them off?"

"I did."

He looked down at her with a devilish glint
in his eyes. "Why did you not remove the rest of my garments while
you were at it?"

"I had no desire to see you without clothes,
my lord," Louisa said haughtily.

A cockiness swept across his face. "I don't
believe you."

"Shall we continue our
discussion on how we are to gain entrance to Garwick Castle if the
drawbridge is drawn at night?" she asked, standing up and walking
to the window, then turning back to face him. "I have determined
the
reclaiming
must
take place at night because of the immense size of the portrait. We
could hardly escape detection in the light of day."

"That's true," he said,
nodding. "Yet I believe we shall have to devise a way to get into
the castle during the day and wait until after the Tremaine fiend
has taken dinner, then we'll – I mean I – will have to, ah,
reclaim
the
portrait."

"Why did you amend your statement, my
lord?"

"I can't possibly let you
be a party to the
reclamation
."

"Why, pray tell?" she demanded, her eyes
narrowing, her voice hard.

"Because you're a female and because it may
be dangerous."

She would see about that! "Tell me, my lord,
how do you propose to get in? Public Day won't come again until
next Thursday."

"I shall have to think on it."

Once Harry had dressed and shaved, he met
Louisa downstairs at the Speckled Goose Inn. This morning he
declined breakfast but asked for rather strong tea. Since Louisa
had already finished her meal, they just sat and talked in the
privacy of their parlor.

"I have decided," Harry began, "not to steal
into the castle at night but to go there in broad daylight and
demand to talk with this Tremaine."