The Windflower (59 page)

Merry could have enlightened him about that as well. Again she kept her mouth resolutely shut. Was he trying to see what information he could shock out of her?

Granville's narrow lips stretched into a soft crescent. "My consolation was thinking of the things Devon surely must have done to you before Rand Morgan bothered himself to notice who you were. And with Devon's repressed sensitivity it must have been quite a moment for him when he realized what an innocent you really were. Come here, poppet. Why are you hesitating? Come." He was drawing a round golden object from his pocket, displaying it to her by a dangling chain. "Study it, Merry. Is it familiar?"

Moving stiffly, without grace, she crossed the clearing to take the offered object in her hand, trying not to touch his skin, though she wore gloves. Her heartbeat slowed almost to a standstill as she studied the thing she held. It was a Swiss watch, gold, with a fine enameled back and rose diamonds on the face, and Merry knew the inscription before she read the elaborately engraved words.
To Carl, on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday. With fondest regards. James Wilding.
It had never, to her knowledge, left her brother's possession. So rarely did their father make a gesture of affection, Carl cherished this one.

In an aching voice Merry whispered, "How did you come by this?"

"He gave it to me. No. Let me be more accurate. I took it." The smile, a cruel one, extended this time to his eyes. "He's here in London with me, did you—"

"That's a
lie!”
Anxiety had sharpened her voice.

His brow rose over the smoky green glitter of his eyes. "Is it? If you think so, my fair delight, you and I have nothing more to say to each other. Farewell." Smiling sardonically, he flicked her cheek with a careless finger. "Have the watch as a keepsake. Your brother surely won't have any further use for it." He turned as though he would have left her, but she stopped him with a terrified protest.

"Please! No! I don't understand ..."

"Pay attention, then, because I've wasted enough time here already. Your brother followed you to England—-or at least he thought he was following you, having no idea your route would be so circuitous. Not, I'm afraid, that his advent to the country was aboveboard. He came in by way of a smuggler's punt. What a singularly rough and ready pair you are, to be sure! It's no wonder you do so well for Devon." Granville's smile twisted into a sneer. "He came to me because I had been your escort to England and he wanted to know my version of the events surrounding your disappearance. The poor lad thought I would be sympathetic because he knew I had passed information to the Americans. I wish he hadn't let me know he knew that. It presented me with a very grave problem. I could hardly let him run around England with that sort of information. For one thing, he's a little impetuous. He might be caught and questioned, and tough-minded as he is, he's very young, and I have small confidence in his ability to hold out against an experienced inquisition. Son of a gentleman or not, they'll certainly torture him if he's discovered; before they hang him, that is. I'd have disposed of him quietly at once if he hadn't been your brother."

Doggedly forcing herself to contain her rising panic, breathing in the untidy rhythm of desperation, she backed to the garden seat and sat down on it, holding the watch in her two hands, as though it were a delicate thing made of glass instead of gold. "What do you want me to do?"

"At five of the clock tomorrow evening there will be a black coach with the wheels picked out in red waiting at the southeastern corner of Finsbury Square. How you manage to get there is your own affair, but I imagine a chit of your ingenuity will think of something; but if you aren't in that coach by one minute past the hour, it will leave without you, and I promise you, my pretty, you won't have a second chance. Be there if you want to see your brother. Otherwise, he will cease abruptly to be of any use to me, and I'll let him die. You might, of course, choose to carry this story lo one of your masculine protectors, which would also end his usefulness to me. It would be something of a relief to be able to dispose of him.''

"And of me," she said, her gaze resting bleakly on her hands, where the watch lay softly gleaming like a golden egg.

Granville's boot leather made a faint crinkling sound on the sandy flagstones as he joined her orTthe bench. The back of his hand rested on her cheek, turning her face toward him, though she flinched from his touch. Some of the fierce animosity had fled from the gray-green eyes, and in their depths was the dim mirage of an emotion that might once have been compassion.

"Why do you think I told you in New York that your aunt planned to take you to England? I had hopes you'd run home to your patriotic father and stay out of my net. Much as I regret it, poppet, I can't afford to care about your hurt. I'm not sure whether this will comfort you, but it wouldn't suit me to end your life. What I need now is to negotiate some sort of peace with Devon, and without having you whole and hale and in my power, I'd find myself very ,
^:
thin of bargaining capital." He stood. "Tomorrow evening at five. Finsbury Square," he said and strode quickly away, vanishing like a ghoul into the night's black serum.

In another moment Raven's hands closed on her wrists, holding them in a sustaining grip. She was standing, though she couldn't remember having moved.

"You heard?" she murmured tensely.

"Every word. M'love, I want to stay with you now, but I can't. I have to follow him."

"Why? What purpose will it serve if—" Interpreting the grim set of his mouth, she cried, "Raven, you can't
kill
him!"

"No? All right, lambkin. Don't fret. I'll only kill him a little."

"Raven, you can't! Didn't you understand? He has my brother!"

Raven was a gentle man, both by nature and by disposition, but he had been reared in a hard school, and his affection did not transfer readily from Merry to her brother. Nor did he have much faith in either the authenticity of the watch or the likelihood that Merry's brother would still be alive if he had put himself in Granville's orbit. And even if the whole unlikely story were true, Raven would have unhesitatingly sacrificed the unknown brother for Merry. But he was not proof against her sterling, honest gaze.

"As you wish it, m'dear, but I can't stand here argufying about it, or I'll lose him." He cast an impatient glance over his shoulder. "I'll just discover where he goes and then take the matter to Morgan—''

"No!"

"Well, then," he said, releasing her hands, starting to move across the clearing, "Devon."

"No! Raven, I don't think so. You have to allow me time to think."

"Hell and the devil, there's no time for thinking! I have to go."

She ran after him, dragging up her heavy, bouncing skirts. "Promise me that you won't tell anyone.
Promise.
We'll meet tomorrow morning and decide what to do."

"Fine! Good-bye!"

The impenetrable vegetation stopped her, and she had to call after him,
"Where?"

He returned swiftly! "Hush! Noon at St. Mary Abchurch. It's near the Royal Exchange. And I hope to God that by then you'll have decided to see sense."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Outside Merry's window the sky had the dark luster of a ripe brambleberry. She had surrendered to a yawning abigail the formidable pile of arraignment she had worn to the ball: the heavy silk gown, the long gloves, the petticoats, the light stays, the silk stockings; and then sent the weary girl to bed. She had meant to remove her jewels and change the sheer chemisette for a nightgown, but exhaustion had overwhelmed her suddenly, and the burdens she had disguised under a smile and a slightly nervous vivacity came slipping back with a battering strength.

Devon had retired to his own dressing room, and she was grateful that for this moment at least she didn't have to pretend. Part of her wanted to crawl beneath the bed linen and give her mind to the nothingness of sleep, except that the hairpins that supported her classical hair design had been placed for effect, not comfort, and they were likely to keep her awake all night if she didn't remove them now. She dropped tiredly onto the stool before her dressing table and sat with her head drooping before she lifted her hands to her hair. Searching through her curls, she began to discover and withdraw hairpins, making each a
might be
for things that could come to pass if she told Devon about Granville's visit.
Devon might kill Granville and be charged with his murder. Granville might kill Devon. Granville might kill her brother. Devon might rescue her brother and yet feel obliged to deliver him to the British authorities. Devon might rescue her brother, try to protect him from the authorities, and then be charged himself with treason. . . .

So deeply did she enter the world of her own thoughts that she didn't hear Devon come into the room, though he had made no particular effort to do it quietly. He came to the threshold, meaning to make some casual remark to her. The words never left his mouth. Instead he put one hand on the bedpost, watching her reflection in the mirror.

Weariness and, it seemed to him, some sort of soul-deep dejection had robbed her face of animation and hence a certain amount of its beauty, and he was reminded of the days when she was at the peak of her illness, when the ravages of disease had made her so plain that Cat had quietly removed all mirrors from her presence. It had been in those days that Devon had begun in some unconscious way to face the fact that he loved her, when the "fondness" he felt toward her had shone on undimmed, strengthening, and he had been forced to acknowledge that her physical self had little to do with the power she exerted over his heart. An errant memory came to him of holding her cold and shaking fingers under his as he dragged a rope around her wrists. Fear whispered through him like a white flame, and then its attendants, which he had recently learned to expect—nausea, remorse, self-hatred. Was it some past base act of his that brought this sad look to her face? Meeting her aunt had made him comprehend wholly what kind of life Merry had lived before his own advent into it, and he understood almost more than he could bear about how frightened she must have been by what she had experienced on the
Black Joke.
A lingering haunted quality dwelt in her remote gaze, and while her sadnesses had always touched him, since their first full coming together, her emotions affected him even more potently. It was as though the membrane of some strange fruit had ruptured within him, spilling and spreading its seed through every chamber of his body. Seeing her thus, his impulse was to drop to his knees at her side and weep into her palms.

Her head moved slightly, lightening the shadows on her face. A cluster of candles on the dressing stand cast mock suns into the deep coils of her hair. Her eyes were very blue against the gold of her skin and the lush coral of her cheeks. The St. Cyr rubies winked in solemn splendor on her breast and on the delicate rise of her shoulders. There was an exotic quality to the famous jewels. The droop of the necklet seemed to describe the swell of her breasts; a gold-and-ruby cuff rested three inches above her right elbow; each of her lovely ankles—one stretched in a firm line before her, the other lucked up and under the ivory curve of her buttocks, barely revealed beneath her sheer undergarment—carried a dainty ankle bracelet of glinting gold links and small rubies. He had glimpsed them earlier, when some turn of the dance or other movement of hers had carried up her skirts enough to reveal the radiant gems and flesh.

A flicker of distress seemed to pass over her features. Her eyes locused, and she gazed into the looking glass and saw him. Her smile was brilliant, unthinkingly arousing; but it came too quickly, too defensively, and he felt a painful, swift stab of desire.

Long-standing habit had made it second nature to him to control his features. His face revealed the nuances of his feelings only when he made a conscious attempt to express them or when his emotions were beyond thought. And so to Merry his eyes seemed only thoughtful and alarmingly probing. As he had guessed, her smile had been a defense, but seeing him suddenly brought back the terror-subdued recollection that even on the
Joke,
when he believed the worst of her character, he had still loved her, and had told Raven so. Her smile dwindled; her throat grew tight; her pulse began softly pounding. Nor could she forbear to notice the picture he made, leaning witi rakish ease on an upraised arm that rested against the bedpost. His other hand lay relaxed at his thigh, the long fingers negligently! clasping a forgotten glass of white wine, and his unbuttoned shirt | fell apart enough to give her a glimpse of the tough, inviting] musculature of his chest and his stomach. Slippery candleligh smoothed like ointment over his hips where they shaped his breeches;; She caught a breath as he spoke.

"What troubles you, my dear love?"

Their eyes met through the chill medium of the mirror. She said nothing. The faint shake of her head, which displaced the thick curls on her shoulders, was perhaps a denial of her mood.

He came to her at an unhurried pace, standing behind her, holding her gaze. His hand, slowly lifted, came to her cheek to chart its structure with the careful tracing of a finger.

"Dear heart, can't you tell me what it is?" he asked quietly. Sh answered him with silence, her eyes drenched with startlingly brig color and apprehension, and he recalled that she had spent time in the garden talking with Cat and, according to Cat, with Raven also. Probably she had shared what was in her mind with them, and the idea that they might be more in her confidence than he was hurt him. But he was perversely grateful for the wound. Suffering seemed the only way he had of paying for the unearned joy that loving her
¹
brought him. He had said as much yesterday to Morgan, who had merely opened his dark eyes rather wide and murmured, "What an interesting fancy, child. ! hardly know whether to mix you a physic or congratulate myself on how much the year's done to improve your character."