Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
“What do you think it says?” Miss Harland held the sealed letter in her hand, her finger tracing the red wax. The carriage bounced through a rut in the road, and she gripped it like the last piece of wreckage in a volatile sea.
In truth, he didn’t know. And didn’t want to care.
He was simply glad she was speaking again.
She’d barely said two words since posing that damnable question last night. A question he’d mentally wrestled while his body lay stiff as mortuary stone.
He hadn’t answered because he didn’t dare.
If he had, he wouldn’t have stopped at words. He’d have kissed her senseless, rolled her beneath him, and given her the only answer his body knew.
He’d woken first, harder than he’d been in years, only to find them facing each other, their hands brushing across the bolster. Ramsey would flay him alive if he’d witnessed the cosy scene. Dominic Hawke did not lace fingers with a woman, let alone stroke them in his sleep.
But by God, she’d looked beautiful.
Lashes dark against porcelain skin. Lips parted, breathing slow, sinfully slow.
“I believe Mrs Flavell wanted you to open it,” he said, though last night’s question lingered between them like the ghost of their kiss. “Preferably before we reach Kingston.”
“Do you think Mrs Flavell spoke the truth?” She stared at the letter as if the contents might answer a centuries-old mystery. “I find it hard to believe my mother would call at Grosvenor Place. That she would trust a woman with Mrs Flavell’s reputation.”
“Mothers keep secrets too.” He thought of his own, of how she’d died protecting hers. “She may have turned to an old friend to spare you pain.”
Yet his mother had confided in no one.
Why would she, when she didn’t trust a soul?
She met his gaze for the first time in an hour. “Do you know, when you’re not playing king of the underworld, you can be quite thoughtful.”
“Keep it to yourself. Tell Ramsey and I’ll deny it.”
She smiled. “Let it be our secret then.”
In the space between breaths, he felt it again. That trace of connection. That odd affinity with a woman who should hate him.
“Keep our kiss a secret, too,” he said.
She nodded, not from embarrassment, it seemed. “And that you called my name in your sleep last night.”
Bloody hell. “A nightmare, most likely.”
“I’m not sure. You made a strange sort of hum.”
“There must have been a bee in the room.”
“At Grosvenor Place? In late September?”
“Just open the letter, Miss Harland, before you die of curiosity.”
She chuckled. “So formal? You called me darling Daphne in the dark last night.”
“Now I know you’re lying. ‘Darling’ isn’t in my vocabulary.”
She glanced at the letter again but didn’t break the seal. If she didn’t stop nibbling her lip, she’d make it bleed.
“Would you like me to read it first?” Cursed saints. Was he destined to become her hero? Would he lay his coat on the ground so she could avoid the mud?
She handed him the letter. “Would you mind?”
He’d expected her to refuse. That she trusted him with something so personal was more than he deserved. “Be assured, I shall keep your confidence.”
“I know. You may be many things, but you’re not an idle gossip.”
He broke the seal. A waft of perfume made his nose itch as he peeled back the folds, his heart racing. He read slowly at first, then faster, the words blurring as the pattern emerged. The pallor. The cramping. The barely concealed fear.
He swallowed hard, willing his hand to steady.
Despite armour of steel, the words pierced clean through.
“What is it? Tell me.” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “It’s something terrible. I can see the horror in your eyes.”
Horror was the right word.
But he wasn’t reliving a nightmare.
He was understanding it for the first time.
“How did your mother die?” He fought to keep the desperation from his voice, but he needed answers as much as she did.
“Dysentery. That’s what my father said.” She shifted to the edge of the seat. “Does Mrs Flavell suggest something else?”
Panic flickered in her eyes when he didn’t answer.
She grabbed his knee as if needing an anchor. “Tell me.”
He cleared his throat. “She went to see Mrs Flavell to ask how a lady might avoid conceiving.”
Miss Harland firmed her grip on his knee, though he was grateful for the distraction. “That can’t be right. My mother desperately wanted another child. My parents tried for years.”
“Mrs Flavell feared it was already too late,” he said. “Your mother looked pale. She clutched her abdomen and had to rush to use the pot.”
He’d seen those signs before. In his own home. Though his mother had blamed the damp, bad meat, or the water from the well.
Both women. Both sick. Neither surviving the year.
He knew what killed his mother.
He had never spoken it aloud.
He braced himself before reading the next line.
“She asked Mrs Flavell for a loan. Your father kept a tight grip on the purse strings.” Gamblers always did when the money was gone. “She said she needed to repay a debt but refused to name her creditor.”
He tried to breathe deeply without alerting her, but the hollow look his mother had worn in her final days haunted him still.
His suspicions had been correct.
She’d been using her body to settle the debts.
Lord Harland had forced both women into impossible predicaments.
Now all three were dead.
Had the Moseley brothers killed him?
Or was there another player in this damned game?
Perhaps he should hire an enquiry agent, but he wouldn’t drag his mother’s memory through the dirt.
“Why did your mother struggle to conceive?” he asked, though he couldn’t tell her why the answer mattered.
“My—” She shook her head as if dazed. “My father had a riding accident years ago. His physician seemed certain that was the cause.”
Cold crept through Dominic’s chest.
Then who the hell had fathered his mother’s unborn child? He needed that physician’s report.
“Did you ever see strange tinctures at home?” His tone was too sharp, like some overeager Bow Street runner. But he needed to fill the gaps in his mother’s story. “Pennyroyal? Savine? Anything meant to bring on her courses?”
“I—I don’t know. I was young. Naive to such things. Why are you asking?”
He gathered her hand. “My mother would take a tincture when things got desperate. Pennyroyal, a splash of rue, mixed in gin. She claimed it was for her nerves, but she always took it after my father came home drunk. She’d not have another child suffer for his addictions.”
She looked down at their clasped hands, firming her grip, and he clung to it like a lifeline. “You think the story about the riding accident is a lie? That my mother took a tincture for the same reason?”
He watched her closely. “I don’t know what to think. But the answer is buried in the past. We’ll keep digging until we find it.”
He needed to know why Harland was in debt to the Moseley brothers, how long he’d been gambling, and whether his own father had owed money to the same men.
She nodded, tugging her hand free. “We both deserve peace. A chance at happiness. To leave this bitterness behind and start anew elsewhere.”
Was there no end to her romantic notions?
Could she not see that life was cruel?
“I’ll never leave Shadowmere.”
It was a vow, not a choice.
He wondered how she imagined her future. Perhaps walking hand in hand through a meadow with a devoted beau, picnicking beneath the summer sun, making love on the grass. A dream far removed from the world he knew.
“You mean to host wild parties forever?” She looked at him as one might a shoeless urchin.
“Not forever.” He folded the note and handed it to her.
“Good.” She slipped it into her pocket. “You deserve a better life. One that doesn’t chip away at your soul.”
It was too late for him.
The die had been cast long ago.
They settled back in their seats, watching the countryside roll by. His thoughts were fixed firmly in the past, and he suspected hers were too.
Peace was the only thing he craved.
Not the only thing. He cast a glance at her mouth, at the swell of her breasts in the fitted pelisse, the soft thighs he didn’t need to imagine. He had already admired them in breeches.
But he’d be over it soon.
Vengeance was the only constant left.
Shadowmere’s grand iron gates came into view. Beyond them rose his house, weathered grey walls and ugly spires. The heaviness in his chest returned.
Damn this place.
Ramsey was on the steps, hands braced on his hips, before the carriage reached the portico. His grimace could put the gargoyles to shame.
“Don’t expect a warm welcome,” Dominic said.
Ramsey yanked open the carriage door, inclined his head to Miss Harland, then growled, “Where the hell have you been? You didn’t say you’d stay the night. We’ve been worried sick.”
“We had no choice.” He alighted, boots crunching the gravel. He could hardly admit he’d stayed for Miss Harland. “Mrs Flavell had information we needed. The woman made it impossible to refuse her hospitality.”
“You stayed in Grosvenor Place?” Ramsey glanced between them like they’d been caught in a naked clinch. “And it never occurred to you that might not be wise? Miss Harland has no hope of returning to society now.”
Good. He’d not see her handed back to wolves dressed as gentlemen. At least he was honest about his intentions.
She let Ramsey help her down, much to Dominic’s chagrin. The sight of her fingers wrapped around another man’s hand stirred something dark and territorial in him.
“It was my idea, Mr Ramsey.” She smiled sweetly. “The world is a big place. I don’t need to confine myself to London. I’ve long considered a tour of Bath.”
“Bath?” Dominic scoffed. “Full of gout-ridden colonels and simpering widows. You’d be bored within a week.”
“Oxford then.”
“Full of boys who think learning Latin makes them men.”
“Where do you suggest I go, Mr Hawke?”
He shrugged. “I’ll think on it.”
Kingston was the last place he should suggest.