The Devil's Heiress

Chapter Fifteen

They walked over, as if in perfect accord, to look out at the view. Beyond the river lay peaceful fields, some with crops and some with cows. The land rose in the distance to the downs that lay between here and Brighton.

“What is the big white house up there?” she asked. “Steynings?”

“Yes.”

“Why is the village only on this side of the river?”

“The Eden’s deep here and tricky to cross, and the bridge is quite recent. Before that a person needed a boat or to go downstream a mile to Tretford to cross.”

She saw an old boathouse off to one side, unused now, wrapped around and split by wisteria.

“So Lord Vandeimen’s house wouldn’t have been built over there before the bridge.”

“Not unless he wanted to keep his inferior neighbors at bay.”

She sat on the seat and smiled up at him, simply happy. Happy with everything. “And did he?”

His hand continued to stroke the blissful cat. “When the first Baron Vandeimen settled here, he was inclined to look down on our simple ways, they say. Foreign, you see. Over the generations, they are beginning to fit in.”

Clarissa heard a laughing comment from Lord Vandeimen, but her attention was all on Hawk. His eyes were warm and full of humor. And something else?

He was very hard to read.

He looked out at the view again. “My bedroom is directly above here. We experimented with flashing candlelight messages in the night. Van and I could see each other’s lights, then Van and Con could send messages clear across the vale.”

“I’m surprised that isn’t done more often.”

“It is used—especially by smugglers—but, of course, it’s subject to bad weather. Come on, I’ll show you something else.”

He guided her back across the hall and up a short flight of stairs into another room as if she were the only one on this tour.

“But this is too big,” Clarissa said, looking around at a space that seemed as big again as the house.

“We call it the great hall, which is a little grandiose, but it serves the function. My mother held the occasional small ball here.” He led her further in. “Now you’re in the old tower.”

Then she understood where the extra space had come from. Most of the room was inside the hexagonal tower. To her right were the arrow slits she’d seen from the courtyard. Now she could see that they were glazed. There were more at regular intervals, but in the side of the tower opposite the door, another bank of windows had been cut. Since the tower walls were deep, the window seat was in an alcove of its own.

She went to kneel on the cushions to look out. This view was on a diagonal, looking out at a kitchen garden and an orchard, the trees already laden with small fruit. To the right she glimpsed the farm buildings he’d mentioned, and beyond, the river wound on through yet more fertile countryside.

“The kitchens and such are below, which is why this is raised.” He had come over to stand close behind her, so Jetta’s purr almost vibrated through her. If she turned, how close? “And that, I’m afraid, is all I can show you today. My father does not want to be disturbed.”

She swiveled and found that her knees almost touched his. “He is very unwell?”

“He’s partly paralyzed. He’s improving, but it’s slow and he prefers not to show himself to strangers. He’s also often out of temper.” He took her hand and gently tugged her off the cushioned seat. “Let me take you out into the garden.”

It was a surprise to find the others in the large alcove with them, and frankly she wished they weren’t. According to Queen Cleopatra, she needed to be apart with him.

Then she realized that Hawk held on to her hand. She still wore her gloves, but they were cotton lace and it was almost skin to skin. Queen Cleopatra had been right about the potency of that.

His other arm still cradled the cat, who was eyeing Clarissa suspiciously through slit eyes, but at least wasn’t hissing as yet. She liked the thought that the cat was jealous. Animals were supposed to have good instincts.

As they followed a stone-paved path down to the riverbank, she felt as if she and Hawk blended at palms and fingers to become one, but when they reached the riverbank he abruptly disentangled them. Almost as if he’d only just noticed the joining.

She was lost without a map in a wilderness of emotions and touches.

A family of ducks paddled busily around, bobbing for food, ducklings quacking and dashing. Jetta leaped down from Hawk’s arms to lie in the sun watching the ducklings, as if she hoped one would come close.

“Don’t you dare,” Clarissa warned.

The cat only blinked.

Clarissa decided to stay close, just in case, but she turned back to look at the house. It seemed contentedly slumberous in the sun, wrapped in its blanket of climbing plants and thatch. The sun was warm on her skin and gave a glow to everything.

This was one of life’s perfect moments. She hadn’t had many, but she recognized it. It was a moment she would never forget, but she hoped there would be many more like it.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he said.

Now that was an invitation, but she wouldn’t rush in until he had been given his chance. She could wait.

“My thoughts are that this is a lovely home, and you are very fortunate to have grown up here.”

“Ah.”

At the tone she glanced at him.

“True fortune is to grow up surrounded by love, wouldn’t you say, despite the circumstances? If this had been your family home, would it have made your youth happy?”

“If this had been my family home, it would not be in nearly such good repair. And anything of value would have been stripped from it years ago.”

“I see. You think I should count my blessings?”

She met his eyes. “I think we all should. And the main blessing is a future. Whatever the past has been, the future is always ours to make.”

He was clearly listening and thinking.

“A future without the tendrils of the past?” He looked at the manor. “A house like this says otherwise. The future is not a road stretching cleanly in front of us. It is a layer built on the foundation of the past.”

She thought of her family, her childhood, Deveril, Deveril’s death. “Does no one ever get to start building anew?”

His smile was wry. “Perhaps. But not someone who belongs to a place like Hawkinville Manor.”

“Belongs to,” she said. “I like that.”

But a movement on the ground caught her eye. Jetta had risen to a hunting crouch, and one little duckling was paddling close to the bank.

Clarissa stepped forward and shooed it away.

“She wouldn’t, would she?” she asked Hawk.

“She’s an excellent mouser.”

“That’s different.”

“Not to the mouse. The cat is a predator, Clarissa. It is its nature to hunt.”

She turned back to watch the ducklings. “It is a hawk’s nature too.”

“And a falcon’s.”

She glanced at him. Was that a hint? Did he want her to ask him? Why? “I assure you, I won’t bring you gifts of small victims.”

He reached out and lightly touched her cheek. “Whereas I would like to bring you your enemies, headless.”

“Enemies?” His touch and the word had her dazed.

“People who wish you ill. People you fear.”

She laughed, though to her own ears it sounded shaky. “Alas, I have no enemies worthy of a hawk.”

“Alas, indeed. But lacking a true enemy, I will make do with a petty one. No one has spoken to you unkindly? No carriage has splashed mud on your gown? No servant has served your soup cold?”

He was teasing, but he hadn’t been teasing before. Why should he suspect enemies? How much of the picture had he put together?

“I wouldn’t demand anyone’s head for that,” she said. “In fact, I want no more violence in my life.”

“More?”

She was stuck, but then Lord Trevor said, “Someone’s waving, sir.”

They both looked around to see an aproned figure waving from the manor door.

“Ah,” Hawk said. “The carriage must have returned to take us up to Steynings.”

As the others went ahead, he scooped up the cat, then put his free hand on Clarissa’s back to direct her toward the house. As he had in that room in the Old Ship…

Her dress was fine, and she was wearing the lightest of corsets. She felt the heat, and a thread of excited pleasure up and down her spine as she retraced her steps to the house.

Hawk and Hawkinville.

She would have both. She must have both!

* * *

Steynings was certainly a complete contrast to the manor—all clean, modern lines and symmetry. Inside, however, the place was a hive of mending, hammering, painting, and cleaning. The smell of wet plaster, sawdust, and linseed oil stole any sense of comfort for Clarissa. She followed Maria’s guided tour, wondering if her husband minded his family home being taken over in this way by his new wife.

She didn’t think Lord Vandeimen minded much that his wife did, just as she would find it hard to mind much that Hawk did. He wasn’t by her side now—the men had disappeared, probably to find a quiet corner and drink ale—and every moment of this tour seemed a waste of time.

Since there was no escaping, however, she tried to pay attention and make intelligent comments. One day soon, she hoped, the Vandeimens would be neighbors.

When she studied things, it did seem to her that most of the work was an improvement. Some doors had been moved, and two rooms had been opened up into one. The pale paintwork was fresh and airy and suited this building. It was easy to comment approvingly.

As they all returned to the marble-floored entrance hall, the men emerged.

Hawk came over to her. “More to your taste, I gather?”

Clarissa checked that her hostess was out of earshot before answering, “Not at all, I’m afraid. It’s too cool and big.”

He looked skeptical. Did he really think everyone preferred the modern style?

“Truly, Hawk. I think the manor house is lovely.”

Frustratingly, he seemed to take her comment as mere good manners. What else could she say? That she loved his house so much that she would marry Lord Deveril for it? Well, not quite that, for sure.

Then Lord Amleigh and his wife strode in in riding dress and high spirits. Clarissa did not think she imagined their sharp looks, as if she was being assessed. That was a very hopeful sign, if both of Hawk’s friends thought her of interest.

They all sat down in the dining room for a cold luncheon. Though the room was in a state for guests, Clarissa could see that work had been left half done in various spots. The food was excellent, however, and a general peace suggested that the workmen were also taking their meal.

She began to take in a sense of the house as it would be, and amid the relaxed conversation, indulged herself in imagining dinners here with these couples as her good friends. Her mind sped ahead to children growing up together as the three men had, but all in completely happy homes.

Not in a home like hers, or like Hawk’s.

In some things, at least, a new beginning was possible.

She heard about the Vandeimens’ wedding feast. It would be wonderful to be married like that, to be introduced to the village like that.

“You’ll have to choose a bride soon, Hawk,” teased Lady Amleigh, “so we can have another party before the summer is out.”

“Greedy, aren’t you, Susan? Wouldn’t it be better to wait a summer or two? There aren’t likely to be any more of that sort for a generation.”

“Speaking of generations,” Lady Amleigh responded, “we can celebrate christenings!” She blushed and grinned. “And yes, that does mean that I think there’s going to be a christening in February.”

Everyone congratulated the Amleighs, but Hawk said, “Hardly the time for a village fete, I’m afraid.”

Clarissa detected a touch of wistfulness in Maria Vandeimen’s expression, and wondered. The lady had been married and had no children. Could that happen to her? She supposed it could happen to any woman.

With talk of fetes and babies, everyone was lazy about rising from the table, but eventually Maria said that the workmen needed to get back to their tasks and they’d been told to be quiet while the guests were here.

They all walked out into the hall, and the Amleighs took their departure. The Vandeimens, however, were approached by an aproned man holding rolls of plans, and soon they were embroiled in an intent discussion.

Lord Trevor and Althea wandered to study some painted panels, leaving Clarissa and Hawk alone. It was not a good enough separation, however. The day here was almost done. Soon they would be in the carriage home, all chances gone. And she’d vowed to propose before they left.

Here?

The acoustics of the hall were such that she could almost catch what everyone else was saying. She needed to be outside with him. For quite a long time.

“After a lunch like that,” she said, “I would love a walk. Could we walk back to the village, perhaps?”

Hawk looked at her, but then said, “Maria will probably be some time, and would be relieved not to have us hovering. There’s a pleasant footpath that should take only a half hour or so.”

Anticipation and pure nerves tied Clarissa’s insides in a knot, but she said, “That sounds perfect!”

But then he said, “I’ll ask Lord Trevor and Miss Trist.”

Clarissa fiercely projected a message to Althea to refuse, but the other couple came over while Hawk went to speak to the Vandeimens. Clarissa looked for an opportunity to whisper to Althea, but none presented itself and in moments they were leaving the house by the back terrace, any hopes and plans in ruins.

She tried to imagine Althea lingering behind with Lord Trevor, but couldn’t. Althea, after all, was a stickler for the proprieties.

Halfway across the lawn toward the woodland, however, Althea stopped. “Oh, dear. I’m terribly sorry. My ankle has begun to ache. I twisted it slightly in the mud at the fair.”

They all stood there for a moment, then Hawk said, “We will go back.”

“Oh, no! Please don’t,” Althea protested. “I’m sure you were looking forward to the walk.” She turned to Lord Trevor. “But if you could give me your arm back to the house, my lord…”

Of course he agreed. Clarissa glanced at Hawk, wondering if he would insist on returning as well, but he said nothing.

“Well, then,” she said to Althea, “if you will be all right…”

“Perfectly.” And Althea winked.

Clarissa had to fight not to laugh as she turned again, alone with Hawk at last.

Instinct told her that this could be the most important half hour of her life.

Chapter Sixteen

Hawk linked arms with Clarissa and led her toward the woods and wilderness. He looked down at her, but her golden straw hat shielded her face and made her a woman of mystery—as if she wasn’t enough of a mystery already.

He’d not planned this unchaperoned walk, but now that it sat in his hands he could not reject the gift. He could use it to seek details about Deveril’s death, but he knew he simply wanted to enjoy this time with the woman he could not have.

It was perilous. He recognized that. Strange magic was weaving through this day, and he felt as if he were walking into a fairy circle, being slowly deprived of logic and purpose.

He would do no wrong, however. He had promised Van, and a promise like that was sacred. All the same, a stern chaperone would have been safer.

A yowl made him look back to see Jetta running after them like a thoroughbred. “Ah. A chaperone after all.”

“Do we need one?”

He glanced at Clarissa, catching a wickedly demure look that made him want to groan. What was he going to do if she had wicked designs upon him?

The cat arrived with a final yowl of protest. He picked it up, saying to Clarissa, “If you don’t think we do, Falcon, you are being naive.”

She blushed, but it only created a more devastating glow. “I am capable of saying no to anything I do not want, Hawk. Are you saying you would force me?”

“You have a mistaken idea of the role of the chaperone, my girl.” They strolled on, the cat now limply content. “Her role is not to prevent wolves from attacking, but to prevent maidens from throwing themselves into the jaws of the wolves.”

She turned her head so he could see her whole face, and her expression was decidedly wicked. “I have always disliked having a chaperone.”

He stroked the cat. “Jetta, I think you are truly needed here.”

Clarissa laughed, a charming gurgle of laughter that was new. A few weeks ago in Cheltenham she hadn’t laughed like that—relaxed and happy. Seductive.

He could vividly imagine her laughing like that in bed. Naked in a well-used bed…

He’d seen men bewitched by wicked women, often to the extent of besmirching their honor, once or twice to their complete destruction. Had they, too, felt careless as they fell, as if a few magical moments were worth any fate?

If he had any sense, he would return to the house now.

Instead, he went on with her, out of the sunshine and into the cool mystery of the woodland. Jetta leaped down to explore, and Hawk searched for something innocuous to say. “We played here a great deal as boys.”

“Knights and dragons?” she asked.

“And crusaders and infidels. Pirates and the navy— but we were always the pirates.”

The hat tilted, showing a glimpse of nose. “A criminal inclination, I see.”

An opening. He could not fail to take it. “Of course. Have you never played the criminal?”

He watched carefully, but since he could still see only her nose, it was hard to judge her reaction.

“Have you?” she said.

Yes, now.

How peaceful it seemed in this other world under the green shade, busy birdsong all around them. Jetta pounced into some ferns, then out again, thankfully without a trophy.

Hawk looked at the siren walking so demurely by his side and wished this was the innocent, unshadowed stroll it seemed.

“Not here. None of us wanted to play the true villains. We didn’t consider pirates villains, of course. The dragons, infidels, and navy had to be imaginary.”

She turned so he could see her complete smile. “But villains often have the best lines. I always asked to play the villain in school plays.”

“A villainous inclination, I see.”

“Perhaps.” There was laughter in it, however, not dark meaning. “I certainly preferred it to being the heroine. There are so few good roles for a heroine.”

“Shakespeare has some.”

“True. Portia. Beatrice. I played Lady Macbeth once—”

He could imagine that a hand tightened on her throat, sealing off any more words. Why? What was it about Lady Macbeth that could not be spoken? Like the distant rumble of cannons, speaking of death, he remembered the bloody dagger in the play.

“But is she a heroine?” he asked, watching. “She incites a murder…”

He was almost certain that Lord Arden had killed Deveril, but had Clarissa incited him to it? Pressed the dagger into his hands? It was not a picture he wanted to envision.

“She suffers for it,” Clarissa said.

“But some murderers benefit from their crimes.”

“Only if they’re not caught.”

She was getting better and better at tossing words around without showing her feeling. He admired it, but he wished for a little more transparency.

Exactly how had it gone? Planned assassination, or crime of the moment? It mattered. It mattered to him because he did not want her to be guilty in the tiniest degree, and it would matter if it ever, God forbid, came to the courts.

He knew he was dicing with that. By stirring this pot, he risked everything pouring out to destroy.

“It’s a difficult role for a schoolgirl,” he remarked, “but playing Macbeth would be harder still.”

“Oh, not really.” Her voice seemed normal again. “He’s caught up in circumstances, isn’t he? And anyway, schoolgirls love dark drama and tragedy. Every fifteen-year-old girl longs to die a martyr. We used to enact the story of Joan of Arc for amusement.”

She’d slid deftly away from the edge.

“You played Joan of Arc, while we played Robin Hood. Saint and thief. That probably reflects the difference between girls and boys.”

“Militant saint and honorable thief. We girls weren’t attracted to the kind of saint who spent her life in prayer and peace, just as none of you wanted to play the true villains.”

“We conscripted some.” He lifted a trailing branch out of her way. “The head groundsman here was unknowingly our sheriff of Nottingham. Avoiding him was a challenge, especially as he didn’t always approve of what we were doing and carried a sturdy stick.”

“And what about Maid Marian?” she asked with a look.

“Not until we were much older.”

She laughed again, that charming chuckle.

He suddenly stopped, and without question or apology loosened her bonnet ribbons so the hat flattened and hung down her back.

She looked up at him, unresisting.

Tempting. Demanding, even.

With difficulty he remembered his promise to Van. A kiss, perhaps?

No, even a kiss was too dangerous now.

“We did a play about Robin Hood once,” she said.

“Who were you? Robin? Maid Marian? The wicked sheriff?”

“Alan-a-dale.”

“The minstrel? Do you sing, then?”

It shocked him that there might be something significant about her that he didn’t know.

She smiled, a lovely picture of freckled innocence under the green-and-gold filtered light of the summer woods. Then she began to sing.

Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me, And turn a merry note Unto the sweet bird’s throat.

She began to back away, still singing:

Come hither, come hither, come hither. Here shall you see

No enemy but winter and rough weather. Come hither, come hither, come hither.

Hawk stood, almost breathless, caught by her sweet, strong voice and the invitation in her eyes.

No enemy but winter and rough weather…

If only that were true.

He walked slowly forward. “Shakespeare? I didn’t know he wrote about Robin Hood.”

“As You Like It. It’s mostly set in the forest, so we stole bits.”

“You have a lovely voice. And,” he added, “you issue a lovely invitation.”

“ ‘All the world’s a stage,’ ” she quoted lightly, “ ‘and all the men and women merely players…’ ”

He wanted to shoo her away, as she’d shooed away the duckling. You are in the company of predators. Flee, flee back to safety. Instead, his will crushed, he held out a hand.

A kiss. Just a kiss.

Her eyes still and thoughtful, she loosened the fingers of one lacy white glove and slowly pulled it off. Then she began on the other. He watched her unveil creamy, silken skin, a shiver passing through him.

Hands touched, hers cool and soft, and he drew her close, drew her hands to curl behind him. Dappled light turned her hair to a deep, burnished gold, and he loved the rioting wildfire of it. In every way, it suited her. The curve of her full lips and the look in her steady eyes were pure perfection.

She moved a little closer and raised her face expectantly for the kiss. The very boldness was a warning, but he couldn’t heed it now. He took the offered kiss that he needed.

Clarissa took the kiss that she needed.

As their lips blended and sweet satisfaction rippled through her, she didn’t regret anything, past or future. She sank into the spicy pleasure of his mouth and gladly drowned. She held back nothing, holding him tight to her so every possible inch joined with him, absorbed him.

When the kiss ended, she shivered. It was partly pleasure, but more the ache of drawing apart and the hunger for more. For eternity.

She waited for the words that would speak the message in his darkened eyes, in his hands that played gently against her cheeks, but then he stepped carefully away. “I wonder where Jetta is.”

She caught his hand. “Do we care?”

His fingers tightened on hers, but he said, “Yes, I think we must.”

He was right. If they wanted to be honorable, they could not keep kissing like that. But why would he not speak? She felt she might die of this restraint, but she would give him till they were almost back in the village. She would give him that much.

She was the one who turned to follow the path, he the one to be drawn along by their interwoven fingers. “Tell me more about yourself, Hawk. Tell me about your work in the army.” She hungered for everything about him, and there was so much she did not know.

She thought he might resist, but after a moment he led her onward and answered. “I started out in the cavalry, but I was seconded to the Quartermaster General’s Department. It’s a separate administrative unit. There is also the Commissariat, and the duties often overlap.

“The main purpose is the management of the army. It’s no easy matter to move tens of thousands of men and all the hangers-on around efficiently and bring them to battle in good order. In addition, an army is like a city. Everything that happens in a city happens there. Brawls, theft, crimes of passion. Most matters are sorted out by the officers—think of them as magistrates.” He helped her over a spot where a crumbling hole spanned the path. “Sometimes there are more complex problems. Organized thievery, forgery, murder.”

“Murder?” She hoped she sounded merely curious. She’d reacted to the word like a spooked horse.

He gave her one of his sharp glances. She told herself it didn’t matter. Soon they would be bound, and then she would tell him everything.

“Murder,” he agreed, “but rarely of any cleverness. It was usually a case of following the bloody footprints.”

She hoped she didn’t shiver at that.

“We mostly looked into crimes involving officers or civilians, and of course there were always spies, some of them traitors.”

“Men in the army who turned traitor?” she asked, genuinely shocked.

“Sometimes.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“For money. There’s no limit to what some people will do for money.”

There seemed a dark tone to that. Was it because he was thinking of himself as a fortune hunter? Was it simple guilt over that which made him hesitate?

They were talking of crimes, however. It was an excellent opportunity to see just how strictly he kept to the letter of the law.

“Did you always enforce the law?” she asked. “Sometimes there must be excuses. Should a starving person hang for stealing a loaf of bread?”

“No one should hang for stealing a loaf of bread. Our punishment system is barbaric and irrational. But those with wealth live in fear of those who are poor.”

She made herself ask the next question. “What of those who steal life? Should a person always hang for murder?”

He glanced at her, and she could glean nothing from his expression. “You think there should be clemency?”

“Why not? The Bible says an eye for an eye. What if it’s a crime of revenge?”

“The Bible also says, ‘He that smiteth a man so that he die, shall surely be put to death.’ ”

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “What of a duel? Should the victor who kills his opponent be executed?”

“That is the law. It’s generally ignored if the affair is handled according to the rules.”

She took a risk and referred to the heart of the matter. “Yet you said you would have liked to kill Lord Deveril for me.”

He was looking at her intently. She met his eyes, waiting for his answer.

“Some people deserve death,” he agreed.

“So in such a case, you wouldn’t want the law to run its course?” She was being too direct, too bold, but she must know.

He didn’t instantly agree. “Who are we to play the angel of death or the angel of mercy? Who are we to subvert justice?”

“Subvert justice?”

“Isn’t that what you’re suggesting? Shielding a criminal from the wrath of the law?”

It was precisely what she was suggesting, and she didn’t like his answers.

“I was thinking more of a jury,” she said quickly. “Often they let people go rather than expose them to harsh penalties.”

“Ah, true, and why our system does not work.” They had stopped, and he rubbed a knuckle softly in the dip beneath her lips. “We are being very serious for a summer afternoon. You think often and deeply about justice and the law?”

“We had to discuss such matters at Miss Mallory’s,” she said, beginning to melt again—and at such a slight touch. “Do you mind a thoughtful, educated w… woman?”

She’d almost said wife!

His eyes crinkled with laughter. “Not at all. So,” he added, soberly, “what is it you want to know about my views on the law?”

She thought for a moment, then asked a direct question. “Did you ever let a guilty person go because you thought it just, even though the law would have punished them?”

His hand stilled. After a thoughtful moment, he said, “Yes.”

She took what felt like the first deep breath in minutes. “I’m glad.”

“I thought you might be. In at least one case, I was wrong and thus responsible for another death.”

“But—”

Jetta leaped out of the undergrowth just then, and Clarissa started with shock. She put a hand to her chest and Hawk laughed. “That cat will be the death of me. Come on. We are commanded onward by our chaperone.”

Jetta was walking haughtily ahead.

chaperone or not, Hawk put his arm around her as he had that day at the fair. Here, however, there was no need to protect her from a crowd.

She relaxed into the gentle protectiveness of it, but dared another question. “Did you ever have to investigate a friend?”

“Once. I had no choice. He was guilty of repeated cowardice, and a danger to all around him.”

“What happened to him?”

“Nothing dramatic. He was allowed to resign his commission on the grounds of ill health. Last I heard, he goes around recounting his brave deeds and regretting that his weak body forced him to leave the scene of battle.” After a moment, he looked at her and added, “Sometimes we do not know our friends.”

Was that a warning?

“Can we know people at all?” she asked. “Can we ever know another person too well to be surprised?”

“Can we ever know ourselves too well to be surprised?”

She frowned over that. “I feel I know myself fairly well, faults and all.”

“But—forgive me, Falcon—you have flown in circumscribed territory. If you were plunged into the extraordinary, you would doubtless surprise yourself. One way or another.”

She looked up at him. “If we are uncertain of everything, even ourselves, how do we go on?”

“Ultimately, blind faith and trust.”

Trust. That was the key. “I trust you, Hawk.”

His eyes shifted away. “Ah,” he said. “Perhaps you shouldn’t.”

Chapter Seventeen

She looked ahead, to find that the path wound around a large boulder. Jetta, following it, glanced back, then disappeared.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

He took her hand and pulled her along. “Come.”

Beyond the boulder the path tumbled down long, rough steps. It didn’t go very far before it divided, seeming to wander through shrubs and rocky outcroppings. She could hear splashing water somewhere.

“I have led you,” he said, “like the children of Israel, into the wilderness.”

Then she realized what this was. A wilderness garden. “So you have. But surely that isn’t such a terrible thing.”

“It has not, I fear, received Maria’s efficient care as yet, and thus is rather more realistically wild than it should be. Yet it stands between us and our goal.” He looked at her. “Do we go on, or back?”

A wilderness was designed to look wild but to also provide safe, smooth paths for civilized enjoyment. She could see that some paths here were almost overgrown, and there might be other hazards.

She smiled at him. “We go on, of course.”

His smile suddenly matched hers. “So be it.”

He helped her down the rough, rocky steps. “This is all completely artificial, of course. Dig here and you’ll hit chalk, not granite. Careful.”

The final rock was covered in tangling ivy. He stepped on it in his riding boots, grasped her at the waist and swung her completely over to the path beyond.

She landed feeling as if she’d left her stomach and her wits behind her entirely. When he stepped down beside her, she curled a hand around his neck. “A hero deserves a kiss,” she said, and rewarded him, rejoicing in the first kiss she had taken for herself.

When they drew apart, she dared to caress his lean cheek with her fingers, her delighted fingers. “Knight errant and princess.”

“Or,” he said, “dragon and princess… ?”

“With sharp teeth?”

He turned and nipped at her fingers, and she snatched them away. “But you are Saint George! Georgina West said so that first day.”

He captured her hand and drew it to his mouth, to his teeth. “I’m no saint, Clarissa.” He pressed teeth softly into her knuckle. “Remember that.”

Astonishingly, she wanted him to bite harder.

But then he lowered her hand and tugged her along a path. “Come on.”

She laughed and went, their bare hands clasped as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And it was. They were friends. They were joined. He was hers, and she was his, and before they returned to the civilized world she would be sure of it.

He often had to hold back invading branches. At one point, Clarissa raised her skirts to work past a brambly spot. It was necessary, but she didn’t mind showing an extra bit of leg.

“Daisies,” he said, admiring her stockings with a grin. “Are all your stockings fancied in some way?”

She deliberately fluttered her lashes at him. “Why, sir, that is for you to find out!”

When he reached for her, she ducked under a drooping branch and evaded him. Something snagged at her, and she realized that her hat was still down her back. She didn’t mind, but waited for him to unhook her. Then froze at the tender touch at her nape…

They seemed magically transported out of the real world and real cares, to a place where wild rules reigned. She turned slowly to look at him, but he shook his head and drew her onward.

Then they came to the water, a little stream trickling out of a rock to splash into a moss-covered dip and flow away into a weedy pond. Clarissa put her hand under the cool stream.

“Piped, of course,” he said.

She flicked a handful of spray at him. “Just because you have a house that looks as if it’s grown where it stands! That’s no reason to sneer because others have to construct their little bit of heaven.”

“Minx.” Laughing, he brushed away the sparkling trail from his hair. “Nature is beautiful enough. Why try to turn it into something it isn’t? But we did have fun here as boys.”

He looked around. “I remember we knotted a rope onto a branch up there,” he said, pointing at a tall elm that overhung them. “We were planning to swing from one side to the other, like pirates boarding a Spanish treasure ship. Van broke his collarbone.”

“Your parents must have been terrified.”

“We hid the rope and said Van had fallen on the path. We were going to try another time, but never did. Perhaps we did have some sense.”

He put his hand under the water, letting it stream out between his fingers like diamonds in a shaft of bright sun. She watched him carefully, expecting retaliation.

He turned to her, and with his wet hand he gently traced a cool line across her brows, down her cheek, and to her lips. Then he kissed her, hot against the cool, so she hummed with pleasure.

He drew back, frowning. “This is no good. Maria will send out a search party.”

She grasped his jacket and pulled him back. “Can’t we hide here and never be found?”

“Hide in the wilderness?” He freed himself, gripping her hands to prevent further attack. “No, fair nymph, I’m afraid we cannot. The world is a demanding mistress and will recapture us.” He looked around. “The paths wind all over, but we can cut through by going that way.”

She looked where he pointed. “That’s the pond.”

“It’s about six inches deep.” He suddenly swept her into his arms.

She shrieked, but then wrapped one arm around his neck and kissed his jaw. “My hero!”

“You may want to wait and see if I can do this without dropping you. I suspect the bottom is pure slime.”

As soon as he put his boots into the water she felt them slip. “Hawk…”

“What is life without risk?”

“This is a brand-new gown!”

“O little mind, tied down in mundane cares.”

The pond was only about ten feet wide, but he was having to take each step with exquisite care. Clarissa began to laugh.

“Stop that, woman. You’ll have us drowning in duckweed!”

She stopped it by sucking lightly at his jaw.

“Is that supposed to help?”

“Promise of reward?” she whispered.

He halted. “Stop that, or I drop you.”

She looked into his smiling eyes. “Do I believe you?”

“Do you think I wouldn’t?”

“Yes,” she said, and nibbled him.

He groaned and stepped quickly, rashly, the rest of the way across, then set her on her feet. He kept one arm around her, however, and swung her hard against him for a kiss that made their others seem lukewarm.

Clarissa sagged, her knees weakening under that assault. The next she knew she was sprawled back against a rock, a sun-warmed rock, grit and heat clear even through cloth. It was only slightly inclined. Perhaps if his legs weren’t so pressed to hers she would slide down.

All she could think of, however, was his passionate eyes, on her. On her. Everything she wanted in life was here.

“Your gown is probably becoming stained with moss.” he whispered, leaning closer, supported by one arm. The other hand rose to play on her cheek, her neck…

“Is it?” Her own voice astonished her with its husky mystery.

“Your new gown,” he reminded her.

“Am I supposed to care?”

“Yes,” he said. “I rather think you are.”

“But I’m rich, Major Hawkinville. Very rich. What is one dress here or there?”

His lips twitched. “Then what about the evidence of moss on a lady’s back?”

“Ah. But isn’t the damage done? And I can always claim that you were a poor escort and let me tumble in the wilderness.”

“ ‘Tumble,’ ” he said, brushing his lips over hers. “That has two meanings, you know.”

“Like ‘rod’?” she dared.

Those creases dug deep beside his mouth. “Very like ‘rod,’ yes. You frighten me, Clarissa.”

“Do I? How?”

“Don’t look so pleased. You frighten me because you have no true sense of caution. Aren’t you at all afraid?”

“I’m not afraid of you, Hawk.”

“You should be afraid of all men here, alone in the wilderness.”

“Should I? Show me why.”

With a laugh that sounded partly like a groan, he looked down, down at her bodice. Her gown’s waist was very high and the bodice very skimpy, though made demure by a fine cotton fichu that tucked into it.

He pulled that out.

Clarissa lay there, heart pounding, as he softly kissed the upper curves of her breasts, a feather-stroke of lips across skin that had never known a man’s touch before. A wise and cautious woman would stop him at this point. She raised a hand and let her fingers play with his hair as his lips teased at her.

Then his hand slid up to cup her breast. A new, strange feeling, but she liked it. His thumb began to rub and she caught her breath. Ah, she liked that even more!

She realized her hand had stilled and was clutching at the back of his neck. Her eyes half-focused on sunlight on his hair…

A sudden coolness made her start and look down. His thumb had worked both gown and corset off her nipple! She watched numbly as his mouth moved over and settled…

She let her head fall back and closed her eyes, the sun a warm haze behind her lids as he stirred magic in first one breast, then the other.

No, not just in her breasts.

Everywhere. Perhaps because his hand was beneath her skirt, up on her naked thigh. At some time her legs had parted and he pressed between them. She moved her body against his, holding him closer.

So, this was lovemaking.

Ruin.

How very, very sweet.

A deep beat started between her thighs, teaching her what wanting truly was. Wanting a specific man, in a specific way, at a specific moment.

Now.

She wriggled to press closer.

“Good God!”

He pushed away, jerking her up straight. Clarissa opened dazzled eyes to see him in a shimmering halo of light. He pulled up her bodice and searched around for her discarded fichu.

She put a hand on the rock to stay upright, but she was laughing. “That was astonishing! Can we do it again?”

He straightened, fichu in hand. “You’re an unrepentant wanton!” But he was flushed and half laughing too. “You’ve bewitched me completely out of my senses. Heaven knows how long we’ve been here.” He flung the soft cotton around her neck and began to tuck it in with unsteady fingers.

Then he stood back. “You do that. Maria will want my head. And Van will want—”

He stopped what he was saying, and she fixed the fichu over her breasts, fighting back her laughter. She was incapable of anything except total delight. That kiss, that encounter, had wiped away the last trace of doubt about his feelings. He’d gone further than he’d intended. He’d lost track of time.

He, the Hawk, had been lost in his senses with her.

She knew he was appalled, and that spoke of the power of their love.

Their love…

“We need only say we were lost in the wilderness, Hawk.”

“We need to get out of here. Where’s our damned inadequate chaperone?”

He took her hand and virtually dragged her up some more steps and around another boulder out into an open grassy space. There sat Jetta in front of a gate in the estate wall, waiting.

“Don’t ask how she knew where we were going,” he said. “She’s never been here before.” He strode forward and grasped the iron bolt, then swore. “It’s stuck. My apologies.”

“For language or gate?” But Clarissa knew laughter was in her tone. She couldn’t help it. She’d laugh at rain at the moment, at thunder, or at hurricane. He was anxious to get through the gate for fear of her! Of what more they might do here.

She rather hoped the latch was fused shut.

He struggled with it for a moment more, then suddenly stood back and kicked at the rusty bolt. The gate sprang open, the bolt flying off the shattered rotten wood.

She caught her breath.

Crude, effective violence.

A side of Hawk Hawkinville that she had not seen before, suddenly reminding her of handsome, civilized Lord Arden lost in rage, hitting his wife…

He shook himself and turned, the elegant man again. “Come.”

Chapter Eighteen

Clarissa went through the splintered gate. All the beautiful certainty she’d floated in had gone, and she was jolted to dubious earth. Would his next violent outburst be against her? When she told him the truth?

Beyond the gate lay civilization. The English countryside. A well-trodden pathway ran along the edge of a field of barley, winding up the hill behind them, and down toward the village in front.

The path to where? She had vowed to ask him to marry her if he didn’t propose first. Now she faltered before uncertain flames.

“The path rises up to Hawks Monkton,” he said in a very normal voice. “It’s about three miles.”

Jetta rubbed past their legs and headed down. What was there to do but follow?

“Perhaps you would care to visit it one day,” he said as if giving a guided tour. “We have the remains of a monastery there. Very remaining remains. The stones were too useful to be left untouched.”

“We?” she asked. “Does the manor hold this land?”

“No, this is Van’s. The only manor land on this side of the river is around Hawks Monkton. On the other side, we own the village, and land nearly all the way to Somerford Court up there.”

From this height Clarissa could see more of Lord Amleigh’s home—a solid stone block with a lot of chimneys. “Jacobean?” she guessed.

“Early Charles I, but close enough. It doesn’t have the elegance of Van’s house, or the age of mine, and the Somerfords haven’t been wealthy since the Civil War, so it’s shabby in places. But it was always my favorite place to be.” He’d come to a halt considering it. “It was always a place of love and kindness and tranquil days.”

“What happened to them?”

More violence?

He looked at her as if coming out of memories. “Was I speaking in the past tense? That comes out of my mind rather than reality. But Con’s father and brother died while we were in the army. It was his father’s heart. His brother drowned. Fred was boating mad. His mother and younger sister still live there, however, and he has two older sisters who are married with families of their own.”

Clarissa gave thanks for what sounded like a normal family. She was beginning to think such things a matter only for fable!

“And Lord Vandeimen? He doesn’t mention any family.”

He gestured for them to walk on, and she obeyed. She noted, however, that he didn’t touch her this time as he had so many times before. Had that burst of violence indicated a change of mind in him, as well as for her?

What was she to do about that?

“Sadly, Van has none left. It’s hard to believe. Steynings was always so full of life. His mother and one sister died in the influenza that swept through here. His other sister died in childbirth a year ago, on the exact day of Waterloo. God alone knows, death was not short of business that day.” He collected himself. “It’s not surprising that his father went downhill. He shot himself.”

“And Lord Vandeimen came home from battle to all that? How terrible.”

“But his marriage has begun to heal the wounds.”

Marriage. Capable of healing, capable of wounding. She suddenly saw it not as a device, as a comfortable matter of orange blossoms and beds, but as an elemental force.

“My parents were not like that,” she said, half to herself. “I’m sure their marriage was always… and.”

“Perhaps not. Many marriages begin with dreams and ideals.”

She looked at him, realizing that they were talking about marriage—now, when she had become dreadfully uncertain.

“What of your parents, Hawk?”

“Mine?” His laugh was short and bitter. “My father tricked my mother into marriage to gain her estate. Once he had it, he gave her no further thought other than to push her out of his way.”

She stared at him, thinking perhaps she at last understood his lack of action. “You fear to be like your father?” she asked softly.

They had stopped again. “Perhaps,” he said.

She grasped her courage. “If we were to marry, would you give me no further thought other than to push me out of your way?”

Humor, true humor, sparked in his eyes. “If I found you in my way, I’d likely ravish you on the spot.”

She laughed, feeling her face burn with hot pleasure. “Then marry me, Hawk!”

And thus Hawk found himself frozen, pinned to an impossible spot by the words that had escaped him. If he said no, she would shrivel. If he said yes, it would be the direst betrayal.

He could not trap her without telling her the truth. If he told the truth, she would flee.

He’d been silent too long. Mortification rushed into her cheeks, and she turned to stumble away down the path.

He caught her round the waist, stopping her, pulling her against him. “Clarissa, I’m sorry! You are being very generous, and I… Dazzled by sunshine and wilderness adventures with you, I’m in no state to make a logical decision.”

She fought him. He felt tears splash on his hands. In fear of hurting her, he let her go.

She whirled on him, brushing angrily at her eyes with both hands. “Logical! Do you deny that you went to Cheltenham in search of the Devil’s Heiress?”

“No.”

“Then why, for heaven’s sake, when the rabbit wants to leap into the wolfs jaws, are you stepping back?”

“Perhaps, dammit, because rabbits are not supposed to leap into jaws!”

She planted her fists on her hips. “So! You will hold my boldness against me and cling to conventional ways!” Her look up and down was magnificently annihilating. “I thought better of you, sir.”

With that salvo, she turned and marched away, and this time he did not try to stop her. He watched for a moment, transfixed with admiration and pure, raging lust.

My God, but he wanted this treasure of a woman in every possible way. He forced his feet into action to follow, plunging madly back into thought to find an answer, a solution. And it was as much for her as for him. He could not bear to see her suffer like this.

He could accept her offer of marriage. He recognized it for the worm it was, but he could make a clear case in favor.

She loved him. Perhaps she would forgive. Perhaps she would accept a future as Lady Deveril. If not, she would be the offended party, and could march off, banners flying. He’d keep not a penny more of her money than he absolutely needed, and would never try to restrict her freedom. He’d give her a divorce if she wanted it.

But divorce always shamed the woman. She would never be restored to the promise of life that she had now. He would be stealing that from her.

And it would have to be an elopement, with all the problems he’d already considered. All the problems that had made him reject that course. He had always prided himself on courage and an iron will, but now he’d found his weakness. He seemed able to stick to nothing where Clarissa was concerned.

Van.

He had made his friend a promise. He’d already gone further than he ought. Elopement, though—that would be an outright violation. Van might even feel obliged to call him out.

God Almighty! That would be the hellish nadir, to risk killing or being killed by one of his closest friends.

The path separated from the high stone wall, and Clarissa took the branch heading toward the river and the humpbacked bridge. He watched her straight back and high-held head.

Such courage, though he was sure she was still fighting tears. She hurt. He knew that. She wouldn’t agree now, but it was a minor hurt that time would heal.

He must stick to his other plan and let her fly free.

Clarissa watched a crow flap up from the field in front of her and wished she could simply fly away from this excruciating situation. All she could do, however, was hurry to rejoin her party and return to Brighton.

Empty, purposeless Brighton.

No more Hawk.

Why had he pursued her if he did not want her? Why had he kissed her like that in the wilderness if he did not want her? Was it true what they said, that a man would kiss and ravish any woman, given the chance?

It hadn’t felt like that, but what did she know of the reality between men and women?

But, oh, it hurt to think that all her money was not sweetening enough to make her palatable.

She was sure that he was still coming along behind her, and she longed to turn and scream stupid, pride-salving things at him. That she didn’t want him. Didn’t need him. That she thought his kisses horrid.

She bit her lip. As if anyone would believe that.

All she could do was escape with the shreds of her dignity intact.

And then what?

No more Hawk.

No Hawk in the Vale.

No heaven for her. Ever.

She came to a stile, and for a stupid moment the wooden structure seemed like an insurmountable obstacle, especially with tears blurring her vision. She gathered her skirts in order to climb it.

Hawk suddenly stepped past her to climb over and offer her a hand. She had to face him again. Was she fooling herself that his eyes seemed to mirror her pain?

She put her hand in his, realizing by sight that it was gloveless. Somewhere in the wilderness she had mislaid that symbol of the well-bred lady.

As she stepped up on her side, he said, “I’m sorry. You know how to turn a man topsy-turvy, Clarissa.”

“It’s entirely an accident, I assure you. I know nothing.”

“I shouldn’t have criticized you for making that proposal.” He was blocking her way, but at a point where she was nearly a foot taller. Deliberately giving her that superiority?

“I meant what I said,” he went on. “I’m dazzled. This has been an unexpected and remarkable day, and our adventures in the wilderness were enough to turn any man crazed. You must see that.”

The splinters of ice in her heart started to melt, but he wasn’t really explaining. Or accepting her offer.

“I can’t answer you now,” he said. “I told you about my parents. My mother flung herself into marriage with my father in a state of blind adoration, then clung to her disappointment for the rest of her life. Marriage is not a matter to be decided in emotion.”

She stared down at him. “You’re likening me to your father? You, sir, are the fortune hunter here!”

“Then why did you ask me to marry you?”

She knew she was turning red again. “Very well. I, like your father, lust after Hawk in the Vale. At least I’m honest about it. And I won’t push you aside if you get in my way.”

There was something to be said for anger, she realized, and for an additional foot of height!

“And,” she added, “you went to Cheltenham looking for me.”

“Yes.”

“Checking me out before making a commitment?”

A smile twitched his lips. “I liked what I found.”

“And you suggested that I come to Brighton.”

“Yes.”

“And kissed me at the fair.”

“Yes.”

“And took me into the wilderness.”

He looked rather as if she were raining blows on him. That didn’t stop her. She would not play coy games anymore.

She stepped over the middle of the stile to loom over him even more. “So, Major Hawkinville, what happens next?”

“You fly like the falcon you are.” He put his hands at her waist and lifted her, spinning her in a circle twice, then down to the grass beyond.

She landed, laughing despite herself. “No one but you has ever done that to me, Hawk. Made me fly.” She meant it in many more ways than a spin through the air, and she knew he’d know that.

What now? Should she risk devastation by asking him again… ?

A scream severed the moment.

A young child’s shriek.

After a dazed moment, Clarissa realized that a splash had gone with the scream. Hawk was already running, already halfway across a field to the river—the river so deep it had kept the village on one side until the bridge was built. She picked up her skirts and raced after him, dodging around slightly startled cows.

The child was still screaming, but she couldn’t see the riverbank for bullrushes. Screaming was good, but then she realized that there might be more than one child. One screaming, one drowning.

Hawk could swim. She remembered that and thanked God.

The screaming stopped, and she saw that Hawk was there, and a small child was pointing. Then he waded through the rushes.

She ran the last little way, gasping, and took the girl’s hand. She could see a boy Sailing, but in quite shallow water near the edge. Hawk grabbed the boy’s arm and hauled him close.

Safe.

Safe.

Clarissa sucked in some needed air, collapsing onto the grass with the little girl in her lap. “There, there, sweetheart. It’s all right. Major Hawkinville has your friend.”

The dark-haired child was very young to be out without an adult, and the lad didn’t look much older. No wonder they’d fallen into such trouble.

Wondering at the silence, she turned the girl’s face toward her and found tears pouring from huge blue eyes, but eerily without a sound. “Oh, poppet, cry if you want.” She raised her cream skirt to wipe the tears.

A hiccup escaped, but that was all. But then suddenly the child buried her face in Clarissa’s shoulder and clung, shivering like Jetta that first day. Clarissa held her tight and crooned to her.

She thought to look around for the forgotten cat and found it there, lying in the grass, eyes on the child in Clarissa’s lap. Clarissa made a little room, and Jetta leaped up.

The child flinched, but Jetta pushed closer, purring, and the little girl put out a grubby hand to touch her. Then shivering little arms encircled, and tears fell onto the silky fur.

Hawk had the other child out of the water and was hugging him too. He and she were both going to be muddy, but Hawk didn’t seem to mind, and she certainly didn’t. She was glad that he wasn’t wasting breath yelling at the frightened boy.

Clarissa bid her face in the girl’s curls. She was besotted by everything about Major Hawk Hawkinville. She could even, in a way, admire him for not snatching the prize she’d dangled in front of him.

He would be a wonderful father, though. She’d never thought that way before, but she wanted him as father to her children.

He carried the boy over. “He seems to mostly speak French, and be of a taciturn disposition, but he’s one of Mrs. Rowland’s children, so this must be the other.”

“Who’s Mrs. Rowland?”

“A Belgian woman married to an invalid English officer. She has rooms in the village.”

“Her children shouldn’t be out alone.”

“No, but there’s little money. She has to go away sometimes, seeking an inheritance. People have offered to help, but she’s proud. We’ll take them home as we go.”

Clarissa separated reluctant child and cat, then held out a hand. He helped her up with the little girl still clutching.

“At least,” he said, looking her over, “no one is going to be commenting about stains on your dress now.”

Clarissa chuckled. “I’m definitely not still tied down by mundane cares.”

She didn’t want to think back to all that had happened, however, and she had no idea how to go forward. She focused instead on the fact that the little girl was barefoot, and the boy too.

“Where are your shoes, little one?” she asked the girl in French.

The dark curls shook, no.

The boy said, “We were not wearing any.”

“That’s not uncommon in the country,” Hawk said, “and even less so on the continent. But I suspect that these two slipped out of the cottage without permission. Their mother is probably frantic.”

They crossed the bridge into the village, passing a sinewy woman with a basket who clucked her tongue. “Those little imps. Do you want me to take them, sir?”

Hawk thanked her but refused, and led the way behind the clanging smithy to a door in the back of another building.

“Bert Fagg lets out these rooms,” he said.

“A rough place for an officer and his wife,” Clarissa said.

“I know, but she’s living on my father’s charity. She claims to be a connection of his. He certainly enjoys her company. He said he invited her to live in the manor house, but she refused. She’s a strange, difficult woman.”

He knocked on the door of the very silent building. Rough cloths covered the windows, so Clarissa couldn’t see inside.

“Perhaps she’s out looking for the children,” she said.

But then the door swung open and a dark-clothed woman stepped out. The only brightness about her was a stark white cap that covered her graying hair and tied under her chin with narrow laces. She did not look well. Her skin was sallow, and dark rings circled her eyes.

“Oh, mon dieu!” she exclaimed, snatching the little girl from Clarissa’s arms. “Delphie!” Then she went off into a rapid tirade of French that Clarissa could not follow.

She heard a noise and looked down to see Jetta, back arched, hissing at the woman. She hastily picked up the cat. “Hush.”

Jetta relaxed, but still looked at Mrs. Rowland with a fixed stare. Clarissa could almost hear a silent hiss, and knew just how the cat felt. Yes, any mother might berate a child who had fallen into danger, but there was something coldly furious rather than panicked about Mrs. Rowland.

Clarissa glanced at the boy, whom Hawk had put down. He looked suitably afraid. Any child could be afraid after being caught in such naughtiness, and he had taken his baby sister into danger with him. All the same, there was something old about his fear. She desperately wanted to stand between the woman and her children, as she’d stood between Jetta and the duckling.

Mrs. Rowland suddenly put the girl down and said in clear French, “Come, Pierre. Take Delphie inside.”

Pierre walked over to his sister, head held high, and led her into the cottage,

“Thank you, Major Hawkinville,” said Mrs. Rowland in heavily accented English. She sounded as if she’d rather be eating glass.

“Anyone would have helped. May I ask that you not be too harsh on them, Mrs. Rowland? I think they have learned their lesson through their fright.”

The woman did not thaw. “They must learn not to slip away.” She went back into her house and shut the door.

Clarissa blinked, startled by such lack of gratitude, and also by a flash of recognition. Who? Where? She was certain she’d never met Mrs. Rowland before.

Hawk drew her away. “There’s nothing we can do. Any family in the village would spank the pair of them for that.”

“I know. But I don’t like that woman.” She stroked the cat in her arms. “Jetta hissed at her.”

“Understandable. That’s only the second time we’ve spoken, and she makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I’d think she was avoiding me except that she avoids everyone except my father.”

They walked back around the smithy onto the green.

“She visits your father?”

“Yes, and surprisingly he frets if she stays away too long.”

“You don’t like it?”

He glanced at her. “I told you once, I’m inclined to be suspicious of every little thing.”

“I suspect your instincts are finely tuned.”

His look turned intent. “At the time, as I remember, I was speaking of Miss Hurstman. You have reason to worry about her?”

Clarissa almost told him. But no. At this point she wasn’t at all sure that he could be trusted with her secrets.

“Surely Hawk Hawkinville can find out about a Belgian woman married to a British officer called Rowland.”

“Hawk Hawkinville has been somewhat busy. But certainly the next time I’m in London I’ll check on them both at the Horse Guards. She rubs me the wrong way, but she’s probably simply a poor woman in a very difficult situation and with a prickly nature.”

Then he said, “Gads, Maria is probably already at the Peregrine, steaming! Come on!”

He took her hand and they hurried across the green. This was the moment when Clarissa had promised herself that she would propose.

But she had, and she’d been rejected. It was so painful that she couldn’t imagine how men plucked up the courage to do it, especially the second time.

She’d spiraled up to heaven in his arms, then plunged into fear at his violence, and then to hurt and furious shame at his rejection. But she still loved him. Silly, besotted fool that she was, she still loved, still hoped.

They were almost at the inn. She said, “That is a horrid house,” meaning the stuccoed one next door.

“Thoroughly.”

“If your father owns the village, didn’t the builder need permission?”

He stopped and turned her toward him. “Clarissa, I need to tell you something.”

“Yes?” Her heart speeded. She sensed this was something crucial.

“My father is deep in debt to Slade, the man who owns that house. That’s why he couldn’t stop it. My father has mortgaged Hawkinville Manor and all its estates to Slade. If we don’t get a lot of money soon, Slade will be squire here. And the first thing he plans to do is to rip down the manor and the cottages to build an even more monstrous house on the river.”

She stared at him, struck by an almost physical sense of loss. “You can’t permit that! My money. It’s my money that you need, isn’t it? Then why… ?”

He winced. “I can’t explain everything now, Clarissa. But I wanted you to know the truth. So you’d understand.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“Major Hawkinville! Good day to you, sir.”

They both turned to the man who had come out of the white monster. He was middle-aged, fit, and well dressed. If Clarissa had been a cat, she would have hissed.

Hawk put an arm around her as if in protection and moved to avoid the man.

“A lovely day, is it not?” Slade persisted.

“It is becoming less so.” Clarissa could feel tension in Hawk—the leashed desire for violence. The wretched Slade must know it and was deliberately tormenting him.

“You and your lovely lady have had an accident, Major?” the man asked, narrow eyes flicking over them.

Clarissa realized that in addition to being a mess she still had her hat hanging down her back, and her hair was doubtless rioting. A glance showed her that Hawk for once was almost as disordered.

“Only in meeting you, sir,” said Hawk.

“So I suspect,” said Slade in a voice full of innuendo.

Clarissa felt Hawk inhale, and hastily stepped between the men. “You must be Mr. Slade. Major Hawkinville has told me how kind you have been to his poor father.”

Slade froze, and his narrowed gaze flicked between her and Hawk.

“Clarissa…” Hawk put his hand on her again to move her away.

“How happy you will be,” she said, evading him again, “to know that soon your generosity will be repaid. I am a very wealthy woman.”

It was delicious to see the odious Slade turn pale with shock and fury, but Clarissa didn’t dare look at Hawk. He was probably pale with shock and fury too, but she hadn’t been able to stand seeing him baited.

“My congratulations, Major,” Slade spat out.

“Thank you, Slade.” Hawk’s voice sounded flat. “It must be a great relief to know that your generous loans will be repaid in full, with interest, before the due date.”

“A hasty marriage, eh? Doubtless wise.”

Clarissa blocked Hawk again, facing the iron founder. “Not at all, sir.” She wanted to knock the man down herself! “It will take time to arrange a suitably grand affair. On the village green, no doubt, since Major Hawkinville’s family is so important here.”

Oh, lord. She could feel Hawk’s anger blistering her back.

“The loans come due on the first of August, young lady.”

She assumed what she hoped was a look of astonished distaste. “If you insist on payment on the dot, sir, it will be arranged by my trustees. Under no circumstances will I permit Hawkinville Manor to change hands.”

Hawk’s arm came around her then, pulling her to his rigid, angry side. “As you see, Slade, there is no point in your further residence here.”

The man’s face was still pale, but now splotches of angry color marked his cheeks. “I believe I will wait to dance at your grand wedding, Major.”

“If you insist.”

Hawk turned Clarissa toward the inn, but Slade said, “Is the name of the bride a dreadful secret?”

Clarissa twisted back to say, “Not at all, Mr. Slade. I am Miss Greystone. You might have heard of me. Some call me the Devil’s Heiress.”

She was then swept away by an arm as strong as iron. Lord, that had been thoroughly wicked, but also thoroughly satisfying. Slade was probably drooling with fury.

So was someone else. Not drooling, but furious.

Chapter Nineteen

Hawk dragged her not to the main door of the inn, but through the arch into the inn yard. Ignoring, or perhaps oblivious to, the various servants there, he thrust her against the rough wall. “What exactly do you think you are doing?”

“Trouncing the odious Slade!” she declared, grinning even though her knees were turning to jelly with fear. Glory in the battle warred with memories of Beth’s bruised face. “Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that.”

“Enjoy being taken by the scruff and dragged through a bramble patch?”

“Enjoy watching him drink bile.”

Suddenly his furious eyes closed, and then he laughed, leaning his forehead against hers. “Zeus, yes. It was worth a thousand torments.”

Clarissa knew she should feel hurt by that, but she didn’t. She was suddenly certain that all was right in her world. She didn’t understand his reluctance, but she was sure it could be blasted into dust. Above all, she was sure that she wanted him, and that he would be all she wanted and more.

She poked him hard in the belly. “If you’re rude again about the prospect of marrying me, I’ll go right back and tell Slade he can have Hawkinville, every last post and stone.”

He straightened to look at her, eyes still wild with laughter. “Clarissa, there is nothing I want more than to marry you.”

“Well, then—”

His kiss silenced her, a hot, enthralling kiss that sent fire into every part of her, though she couldn’t help thinking of the watching servants.

With glee.

He’d certainly have to marry her after this.

“Hawk! Clarissa! Stop that!”

Clarissa emerged from a daze to find Maria hitting Hawk’s back with a piece of wood. Fortunately it was rotted, and was flying into pieces with each blow.

Hawk turned to her laughing, hands raised, and she threw the remaining fragments away in disgust. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. Then she stared at Clarissa. “Or more to the point, what have you done?”

“I ravished her in the wilderness, of course.”

“What?”

“Don’t be a goose, Maria. That wilderness of yours, by the way, is too damn wild. But most of the damage to our appearance was done by our gallant rescue of two children from the river.”

“Rescue?” Maria collected herself. “That doesn’t explain such a shocking kiss in front of the servants.”

“A certain madness comes upon us all after battle.”

“Battle?”

Clarissa was threatened by incapacitating giggles, for a hundred reasons. She simply leaned against the wall and enjoyed the show.

“Clarissa just routed Slade by telling him we are engaged to be married. I thought I had better compromise her thoroughly before she changed her mind.”

She’d won! She didn’t know how, but she’d won. She lovingly brushed some fragments of rotted wood off her future husband’s shoulders.

He turned, and the look in his eyes turned her delight to cold stone. The laughter had gone, and was replaced by something dark and almost lost. A movement beyond him caught her eye, and she saw Lord Vandeimen emerge from one of the stable buildings, suddenly deadly.

Why on earth would she think that?

As if alerted, Hawk swung around. “Nothing happened.”

“Nothing!” exclaimed Lady Vandeimen, but then she seemed silenced by the crackling tension.

“Nothing of any great significance,” Hawk said with precision.

Clarissa wanted to protest that, but she too was frozen by something ready to burst out of this ordinary place into the world of claw and fang.

Lord Vandeimen said, “A word with you, Hawk.” His head indicated the stable behind him.

Clarissa put her hand on Hawk’s arm as if to hold him back, but Maria pulled her away. “Come into the inn and tidy up, Clarissa.”

“But—”

“You can’t possibly return to Brighton looking like that.” She ruthlessly steered Clarissa into the building, chattering.

“Lord Vandeimen is not my guardian!” Clarissa broke in, forcing a halt. “What’s going on out there?”

Maria looked at her. “More to the point, what went on during your walk?”

“Nothing,” said Clarissa, “of any great significance.” Then the whole tumultuous half hour burst out of her in tears, and Maria gathered her into her arms, hurrying her along to a private room.

“Hush, dear. Hush. Whatever went on, we’ll arrange matters. I know Hawk loves you.”

Clarissa looked at her and blew into her handkerchief. “You do?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then why doesn’t he want to marry me?”

Maria’s smile was close to a laugh. “Of course he does!”

Clarissa shook her head. “Men are very hard to understand, aren’t they?”

Maria hugged her again. “There you have a universal truth, my dear.”

Hawk followed Van into the pleasantly pungent stable thinking that the day couldn’t get much worse, but knowing that in fact it could.

Van turned and merely waited.

“That kiss probably did go beyond the line,” Hawk said. “But nothing worse happened.” Then he remembered the wilderness. “More or less. That bloody wilderness of yours is a disgrace.”

He saw Van fight it, then laugh. “It’s almost worth it to see you in this state, Hawk. What the devil are you up to?”

“I’m trying to save Hawkinville.”

“I assume you have decided to woo Miss Greystone. Is it necessary to be so crude about it?”

“She told Slade we were engaged to marry.”

Van visibly relaxed. “Why the devil didn’t you say so? Congratulations!”

“I’m not going to marry her, Van.”

Van leaned back against a wooden post, frowning in perplexity. “Would you care to start at the beginning? Or at some point that makes sense?”

Hawk said, “My father is the new Viscount Deveril.”

Van frowned even more. “You’re the son of Lord Devil? The one Miss Greystone inherited from? And I’ve never heard of it?”

“The new Lord Deveril. You know my father changed his name as a price of marrying my mother. He was born a Gaspard, and that’s the Deveril name. When Lord Devil died last year, he chased back up and down the family tree and discovered that he’s the heir. It’s taken him the best part of a year to settle it, but it’s just about done.”

“Congratulations. You’ll outrank me one day.”

“Bugger that. The name’s fit to be spat upon.”

“A name’s a name. The first Lord Vandeimen was a spineless lickspittle. Is this where the debt comes from?”

“More or less. The squire’s been obsessed by the Deveril money. He thinks he should get it along with the title, that the will was a forgery.” Hawk looked around and spotted a room with a door. “Come in here.”

Van followed, and Hawk shut the door. The room was small and seemed mostly to hold nostrums for treating horses.

“Unfortunately,” Hawk said, “my father is probably right.” He didn’t want to say it, but he had no choice. “I’ve been dangling after Miss Greystone not to woo her but to entice her to spill something about the will.”

“You’re a damn fine actor, then.”

“I’ve learned to be. Van, for God’s sake, there’s no question of marriage! Once Clarissa discovers what I’ve been up to, and that I’m a future Lord Deveril, it’ll all be over.”

“Hawk, this doesn’t sound like you.”

“What, underhanded trickery and sneaky investigation? It’s my stock-in-trade. I’ve softened up plenty of villains for the gutting.”

“But not an innocent young woman.”

“If she was innocent, there wouldn’t be any gutting to be done.”

Van frowned. “All right, let’s talk about this. What exactly do you think her guilty of?”

“Murder, or conspiracy to murder.”

“Murder?” Van managed to keep it soft. “If I’m any judge, Miss Greystone would run from killing a mouse.”

“The mouse wouldn’t be forcing vile kisses on her, and threatening worse.”

“You think she killed Deveril when he tried to rape her? You’d send her to the gallows for that?”

“No, dammit. But remember, she ended up with the dead man’s money.”

It was a detail he tended to willfully ignore.

“All right,” said Van, “do you have any reason other than wishful thinking to believe that Lord Deveril’s will was forged?”

“When have you ever known me to indulge in wishful thinking?”

But his thinking about Clarissa came perilously close.

“It was handwritten,” he said crisply, “witnessed by servants who have conveniently disappeared, and it left everything not entailed to a young woman, to come to her completely and without control at age twenty-one.”

Van’s expression lost its indulgence. “Hell.”

“Hell, indeed. I can add, from Clarissa’s own lips, that she was sold to Deveril and hated him, which he must have known. She threw up over him when he tried to kiss her.”

“It does look damned bad. How did Deveril die?”

“Knifed. Viciously.”

But then Van shook his head. “It still doesn’t fit. I know I don’t have your acute sense for truth and lies, but Clarissa Greystone makes an unlikely thief and an impossible murderer.”

“Appearances can be deceptive. Did I ever tell you about an innocent-looking, big-eyed child in Lisbon? Never mind. You don’t want to know.”

Van’s brows rose. “Are you protecting Demon Vandeimen from sordid details, Hawk?”

Hawk sighed. “I would if I could. We none of us need more darkness in our lives. But I have to save Hawkinville. You must see that, Van.”

“Yes, of course. Perhaps I’ll simply cut Slade’s scrawny throat.”

It was a joke. Hawk hoped, but he shook his head. “No more blood if I can help it.”

“So, let’s sort it out.”

Hawk put up a hand. “Maria will be waiting. We can talk later if you want.”

“No, let’s deal with this now. If necessary we can stay the night and get Con in on it. You really think Clarissa Greystone committed a vicious murder and planted a forged will?”

“No, dammit, but that could be willful delusion.”

Van smiled slightly at the implied admission. “I’m not willfully deluded. Let’s consider this. If someone else was the murderer and thief last year, who could it have been? From what I’ve heard, she left school and went to London. She can’t have known many people who would kill and forge for her—” He broke off. “Talk about teaching a grandmother to suck eggs. You must have been through this.”

Hawk resisted for a moment, but he knew Van wouldn’t let it go. “Arden,” he said.

“Arden?”

“The Marquess of Arden was the killer. Last year he married a teacher at Clarissa’s Cheltenham school.”

Van’s jaw dropped. “The heir to Belcraven? Are you mad?”

“High rank means honor? You know better than that, Van.”

“It means hell’s fires if you meddle there and can’t prove it beyond doubt. And what motive could he have?”

“Maria has that pretty niece, Natalie. What if she were in the power of a man like Deveril? Couldn’t Maria persuade you into doing something illegal to rescue her?”

“I’d knife him in public if necessary.”

Hawk knew Van was speaking the literal truth. He himself would do it too. And so would a man like Arden, he was sure.

“If that was the way it was,” Van said, “give the man a medal.”

“Then how do I get the money?”

“How do you get the money this way?”

Hawk put it into plain words. “I blackmail him for it.”

Van braced himself against a worktable. “You’d destroy essentially honorable people?”

“Don’t get too misty-eyed. Disposing of Deveril was a virtuous act, but misappropriating his money was straight-out, deliberate theft.”

“How in God’s name do you think to go about this? Men like Arden and his father can destroy with a word.”

“Ah, yes, the Duke of Belcraven. He’s Clarissa’s guardian, by the way.”

“Zeus! They’re all in it? But why?”

“Simply protecting her, I assume. Which has my sympathy. But I must save Hawkinville, and I see no reason not to have enough of that money to also rebuild Gaspard Hall and get my father off my back. And do something for the poor Deveril tenants.”

Van was looking slightly alarmed. It took a lot to alarm Demon Vandeimen. “You’ll have to convince the duke that you would make it public. And,” he added, “watch your back.”

“I’m good at that. Van, I’m depending upon the fact that these are essentially honorable people. Deveril was thought to be without an heir. Surely they’ll see that it’s wrong to divert all that money.”

“And Clarissa?”

“She’ll hardly be left penniless.”

“She’s an innocent party.”

“Innocent! She shows no guilty conscience over enjoying the ill-gotten gains.” Then another piece clicked into place. “Devil take it, the fortune is payment. She was present at the murder, so Arden arranged the forgery to pay her off. No wonder she’s as closemouthed as a tomb about it.”

“Hawk, this is wrong.”

“No, dammit, forgery is wrong. My father, damn his eyes, is right. The money belongs to Hawkinville, and I won’t see Slade destroy it because I was too squeamish to hurt Clarissa’s feelings!”

“You can’t do it.”

Hawk was about to wring Van’s neck when he saw the expression on his friend’s face. As if he’d suddenly seen an unpleasant vision.

Van straightened. “Arden will call your bluff.”

“He daren’t risk it.”

“Why not? If you prove anything, you will destroy Clarissa as well as him.”

“With any luck, he won’t know that’s a factor.”

“More to the point,” said Van slowly. “Arden is a Rogue.”

“What?”

“One of Con’s Company of Rogues. I can’t believe that slipped by your brain. Roger, Nick, Francis, Hal, Luce…” Van recited. “We heard enough about them. And Luce is Lucien de Vaux, Marquess of Arden.”

It had slipped by him. Devil in flames. Something about Arden had been niggling him, but Con had always talked about the Rogues by first names—unusual enough. Luce.

“And Hal Beaumont,” he said. “The man with Mrs. Hardcastle. Clarissa said he was an old friend of Arden’s. But being a Rogue doesn’t give Arden immunity.”

“No, but he has to know who you are. I’m sure Con spoke of us to them as much as he spoke of them to us. And there’s only two of us. Unless he has the brain of a sheep and the spine of a rabbit, he’ll have to know that you could not possibly attempt to destroy one of Con’s Rogues. However, perhaps Con can act as go-between.”

“No!” Hawk’s rejection was instinctive, but reason followed. “That’s an intolerable position to put him in. ‘Admit to murder and forgery of your free will and quietly move half of Clarissa’s fortune to my friend Hawk.’ No,” he repeated, standing among ruins. “I’ll come up with something else.”

“You don’t have much time. Why not simply tell Clarissa the truth? Perhaps she will be able to forgive your deception and overlook a future as Lady Deveril.”

“But how will Arden and his father feel about it? She still needs her guardian’s permission.”

“Damn.”

“Strange, isn’t it? I have all the cards in my hand, and yet it still seems possible that I might lose.”

“We have to tell Con. He can’t be left out of this.”

“Haven’t you thought that he might know? The Rogues don’t keep secrets from each other.”

“You think he knows that they set up a will that defrauded you?”

Hawk shook his head. “I haven’t told him anything about the debt or the Deveril title. Someone in the Rogues has to know, though, with my father chasing it through the courts.”

“I can’t believe Con would do nothing about a situation like that.”

“He’d be caught in the middle.”

“No,” Van said. “It’s more likely that they’re protecting him from it. He’s only recently started to recover from Waterloo and Dare.”

Hawk considered it and knew it might be true. “All the more reason not to tell him yet.” He went toward the door. “I need a little more time, Van. Perhaps if I shuffle the cards again. At the least I need to go down to the manor to get clean clothes.”

They emerged from the room and separated, but as Hawk walked to the manor, he couldn’t seem to shuffle the cards into anything but disastrous patterns.

Who should suffer? Himself, for certain, but he was choosing the pain.

What of Con, or Clarissa?

What of the Dadswells, the Manktelows, and the Ashbees? Was Granny Muggridge to have the roof torn down around her head?

But at what point did the price of Hawkinville become too high?

Cut the loss.

It was a process he’d done often in the war, even when it meant choosing between one set of soldiers or another. Perhaps if he thought of everyone as troops of soldiers.

The option with the least loss was to elope with Clarissa. He would have the money, or at least the expectation of it. He knew the will, and the money came to her at her majority, regardless of what she did or whom she married. As her husband, he could easily borrow against it.

Hawkinville would be safe.

There would be a fighting chance of happiness for them. There was something deep and true between them, and he would work to gain her forgiveness for the deception.

Van might never forgive him for breaking his word, but he could hope that time would heal that, especially if he could make Clarissa happy.

Con. At the moment, Con was an unknown. If he saw this as a betrayal of the Rogues, it could lead to a rift. The Rogues certainly weren’t going to like it. They were going to have to damn well trust him not to expose their criminal acts.

But it was the only way.

Gathering the detached purposefulness that had carried him through scenes of carnage, he went swiftly to his room to change, then gathered the money available in the house. He thought about leaving a note for the squire, but then knocked and entered his father’s room.

The squire was lying on his daybed fondling—there was no other word—some papers. “They have come,” he said, with shining eyes. “The documents. You may now officially call me Lord Deveril!”

Hawk had to stop himself from seizing the papers and ripping them to shreds. Pointless. Pointless.

This settled things, however. In moments his father could begin spreading the word. Since Clarissa was in the village, she would hear about it, and that would be the end of that.

“Congratulations, my lord. You may congratulate me, also. I am about to marry Miss Greystone.”

His father beamed. “There, you see. All’s well that ends well. And her money will pay to refurbish Gaspard Hall.”

“Not a penny of her money will go on Gaspard Hall, my lord. We will pay off Slade, but the rest will remain under her control.”

If he had to do this, it had to be that way.

“What? Are you mad? Leave a fortune in the grasp of a chit like that? I will not allow it.”

“You will have no say in it.” He turned toward the door. “I merely came to say that I will be gone a few days.”

“Gone? Gone where? We must arrange a grand fete to announce my elevation to the village! I outrank Vandeimen now, and I’ll see him recognize it.”

The fury boiling inside Hawk threatened to burst out of control, but he’d not struck his father yet. Now was definitely not the time to start.

“It will have to wait, my lord. I am off to Gretna Green.”

He closed the door on his father’s protests—not about the elopement but about delay in his fete—and ran down the stairs. Somehow he had to get Clarissa out of the Peregrine and on the road north before his father set the news spreading.

He fretted even over the time it took a groom to saddle up Centaur, imagining his father leaning out of his window above to shout the news. He wouldn’t do that, but he would tell his valet—might already have told his valet. His valet would tell the other servants and…

Perhaps a servant had already hurried home to spread the word.

He led Centaur up to the inn, considering how to steal Clarissa. Perhaps he’d have to snatch her on the way to the coach, like Lochinvar snatching his beloved from her wedding. .

So light to the croup the fair lady he swung.

So light to the saddle before her he sprung!

“She is won! We are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;

They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,“ quoth young Lochinvar.

And that, of course, was the problem. He was dubious about young Lochinvar riding so rashly with a lady at his back, and he’d no intention of attempting it with Van and Con—especially Van, an incredible horseman now equipped by his rich bride with the finest horses—in hot pursuit.

He would have to go in and try to lure her out.

Then he saw Clarissa—beloved, unconventional, impetuous Clarissa—in the arch to the inn yard. Alone. Her hat shaded her face again, and some order had been brought to her curls, but her dress was irredeemably stained.

When he reached her, she stepped forward. “I’ve told them all what I did with Slade and that I kissed you, not the other way around.”

If he hadn’t adored her already, he’d have crumpled then. He held out his gloved hand. “Elope with me.”

Her eyes widened, but she only said, “Why?”

“So that this can’t be snatched from us.”

She looked down and away, obviously flustered, but then back at him. “Do you love me, Hawk? Don’t lie. Please don’t lie.”

“I adore you, Clarissa. And that is no lie.”

Then she smiled and put her hand in his. “Then, of course. It’s a mad, impetuous notion, but that probably suits us both.”

He laughed as he swung his fair lady to the crupper and settled in front of her. “I used to be a very sane, thoughtful man,” he said. “Hold tight. We’re going over bank, bush, and scaur.”

And he set off, past a few startled villagers, along the road that would eventually take them north to Scotland, where minors could still legally marry without the permission of parents, guardians, or Rogues.

But he soon turned off, going west instead of north. He couldn’t outride Van. But, by heaven, he could probably still outthink him.

Chapter Twenty

The rest of the party was in the entrance hall of the Peregrine, waiting with some impatience for Clarissa to return from the privy. Eventually, Maria asked Althea to find her, but Althea returned frowning. “She’s not there. I don’t know where she can have gone to. Perhaps she’s returned to the room upstairs.”

But then one of the Misses Weatherby trotted in, cheeks flushed. “My dear Lady Vandeimen!” she gasped. “Oh, my lords.” She curtsied around, clearly breathless with excitement. “Are you by any chance looking for your companion? We saw you earlier. My sister and I. Saw you on the green, and returning. And the handsome major returning with the lady.”

“Miss Weatherby,” Maria interrupted ruthlessly. “Do you know where Miss Greystone is?”

“Why, yes,” said the lady, not well concealing her glee. “She’s just ridden off behind Major Hawkinville.”

Maria looked at her husband. “Van?”

He’d turned pale with anger in a way she’d never seen before.

He was actually moving when she grasped his sleeve. “Wait! Talk.” She smiled back at Miss Weatherby. “Thank you so much. I know I can trust you not to spread this around.”

Unlikely hope, but it might stop the news for a minute or two. She didn’t think there’d been any inn servants nearby to hear. She dragged her husband into the adjoining parlor, the rest following, and shut the door. She couldn’t have done it if he’d resisted, so she knew she was right.

“I think he truly loves her,” she said. “And I know she loves him.”

But Miss Trist wrung her hands. “Why run off together? She’s refused him, and he’s abducted her!”

“Nonsense,” Maria snapped. “Abduction is completely illegal these days. He can hardly drag her against her will to Scotland.”

Van said, “I have to stop this, Maria. For everyone’s sake. I’m sending a note up to Con.”

He left before she could stop him again, and indeed, she wasn’t sure she should. But he’d looked for a moment as if he would kill his friend.

Demon Vandeimen. Did she know what he was really capable of?

Van returned with a letter in his hand. “I’ve sent for Con. When he arrives, give him this.”

Maria took it, but she knew he was setting off in pursuit. “Don’t kill him, Van. For your own sake, don’t.”

He relaxed slightly. “I won’t. I might beat him to a pulp, but I won’t kill him.” He kissed her quickly, tenderly, then rubbed at what must be lines in her brow. “Don’t worry. This is a mess, but I’ll find a way to bring it all out right.”

“He hasn’t abducted her,” she said. “Clarissa’s besotted with him, and I’d say he feels the same way about her. What’s going on?”

“It’s complicated.” He kissed her again quickly, then left.

Maria could have screamed with frustration. Complicated! She’d give him complicated. She considered snapping the seal on the letter in hopes that it explained, but long training in proper behavior would not permit it.

Instead she called for tea and settled to soothing Althea. Poor Lord Trevor was looking as if he wished himself elsewhere, but he was bearing up like the well-trained officer he was.

It took remarkably little time for Con to turn up, though it had felt like an hour. He strode in, another man behind him.

“Mr. Nicholas Delaney,” he said. “My guest at the moment, but he’s probably involved.” He took the letter, opened it, and read.

Then he passed it to his friend.

“Con,” said Maria, “if you don’t tell me what is going on, I am going to do someone serious injury.”

He laughed, but sobered, looking around the room. “Ffyfe, I’m sure you’re as curious as any human would have to be, but it would simplify things if you weren’t here. And Miss Trist, you could help Miss Greystone as well by strolling on the green.”

Lord Trevor accepted his orders remarkably well, but Althea looked around. “What’s going on? Is Clarissa in danger?”

Lord Trevor took her arm. “Truly, Miss Trist, it would be simplest if we left. I trust Lord Amleigh to take care of everything.”

Maria watched him coax Althea out of the room, and said, “He’ll go far.”

“Doubtless. Listen, Maria. The squire has mortgaged Hawkinville to Slade. More than mortgaged. He’s deep in debt to the man, and Slade plans to tear down most of the village to build a preposterous villa on the river. Of course Hawk has to stop him.”

“Of course, but— Ah, I see. Clarissa’s fortune. But why elope?”

“Because, according to Van’s letter, the squire is about to become Lord Deveril. Sorry,” he said, passing over the letter. “Read it yourself.”

Maria took it and read quickly. “He really thought she would reject him for the name?”

“And for the deceit of it all. It was more a case, I assume, of him not being willing to risk everything on the chance that she might. It’s the way Hawk’s mind has learned to work. Pinpoint the one thing that must or must not happen and work toward it, damn the incidentals.”

“Incidentals,” Maria muttered, scanning through the letter again. “Some of this is so cryptic!”

“Judiciously so,” said Mr. Delaney, whom she’d forgotten entirely, which was surprising, since he was a good-looking man with presence. “Con,” he said, “you should follow to assist Vandeimen. I’ll hold the fort here. Talking of things that must not happen, Clarissa must not marry Hawkinville without knowing the truth.”

Con nodded and strode out, and he must have narrowly missed colliding with Althea rushing in. “That Miss Weatherby says that Major Hawkinville’s father is now Lord Deveril! Lord Deveril!”

“We know,” said Maria with a sigh. “Sit down, Althea, and have some more tea.”

Therese Bellaire stood by the smithy, observing confusion on the village green and seething.

She’d been uneasy about that encounter with the heiress, though the girl had shown no sign of recognition. Her main concern, however, had been the relationship between the two. To her experienced eye it hadn’t looked like a man bewitching a silly young woman, but like a man bewitched.

By love. The greatest traitor of all the emotions.

The Hawk was supposed to remove the heiress and leave the old man in possession of the money! If he married the heiress there would be three lives between her and victory. Two accidental deaths could be arranged. Three, however, would be perilously suspicious, especially if she survived as Squire Hawkinville’s wealthy widow.

And now what was going on? One of the silly, nosy Weatherby sisters was flitting around in an ugly, over-ornamented bonnet. People were appearing from buildings like worms from bad apples.

Surely she’d seen Lord Vandeimen ride north out of the village. Not at a dangerous gallop, but with some urgency, and yet his wife’s carriage had not left.

Then two men rode to the inn at speed.

Lord Amleigh, she thought, and…

Nicholas?

Danger skittered down her spine, but excitement too. Ah, if he was here it would become a great game. And perhaps she would have the chance of true revenge. There was his dull wife. And a child now, as well. She’d checked on him, and he rarely left their sides. What if they were here too?

She licked her lips. This was almost as good as a tender goat in her bed.

It would be so deliciously dangerous to go over to the other side of the green, to be close to the inn, where Nicholas might see her.

Would even Nicholas know her in this disguise?

She began to walk across the green, wondering whether she dared to go into the inn and seek a meeting to see if he would know her like this. If anyone would, he would. They had been so spicily intimate six years ago, when he had been so young, so tender. None other of her young conquests had been like him.

They had been so wickedly intimate two years ago, as well. Compelling him had added a delightful twist. If she held his child captive, would he surrender again?

Fatally tempting, but too much so. It was time to be sensible if she was to have the life she wanted. She would have her fortune back, or as much as she could get, and escape.

As she neared the groups of people, she heard the name Deveril.

“Why, Miss Rowland,” said one of the Misses Weatherby. “Have you heard? Our dear squire has become Viscount Deveril! He has just received the news!”

“Amazing!” she said. “I must go and congratulate my cousin.”

Miss Weatherby’s scrawny face pinched. She and her sister had never quite believed the supposed connection. But then, both sisters were enamored of Squire Hawkinville in their pathetic, spinsterish way. What would they think to know that Therese could have him at a snap of her fingers because she provided flattery, a clever mouth, and opium?

One of the inn’s grooms was out here, and he smiled his crooked-tooth grin. He was proof that she could still enslave men in this ugly guise. It was never entirely a matter of looks. So few women realized that.

Probably the poor man was bemused and guilty about the lustful urges he felt toward the drab foreign woman with the sick husband.

He sidled over. “Grand news, ain’t it, ma’am?”

“Wonderful.”

“And such a coming and going.” He was almost bursting with news.

“Yes?” she asked, as if he were clever and important.

“Here’s Lord and Lady Vandeimen at the inn with a party, visiting the village. And one of the young ladies has disappeared! Miss Weatherby,”—he tipped his head in the lady’s direction—“she says she saw the lass off with Major Hawkinville on a horse! And,” he added in a whisper, “now Lord Vandeimen’s hurried off in a fine old mood. Known him since he was a lad, I have, and there’ll be blows before the night’s out, even if it is another George.”

Sometimes the English idioms escaped her. She ignored the last comment, but inside she was cursing.

Eloped. She’d feared as much.

“And here’s the other one arrived with a friend.”

Since the groom clearly had no more to say, she thanked him and hurried down to the manor. The new Lord Deveril was of no use to her anymore, but it was best not to drop a part. And he would be good for a few guineas.

When she left, it was with guineas, and confirmation that the Hawk was off to Scotland with the heiress.

She paused to look at the bucolic setting and the robust English peasantry still gossiping. Thank God she could escape this place. If only she could set fire to its smug prettiness before she went.

She might try if not for the wet weather. It had doubtless left the thatch too sodden to catch.

She had survived a perilous life by recognizing when to drop one plan and pick up another. She headed briskly for her home here.

She still had Lieutenant Rowland, and there was a chance of Nicholas’s child. All was not lost. Possibly, just possibly, she could have her money and Nicky on his knees begging before it ended.

Once Althea was calmed, Maria looked at Mr. Delaney. “You’re the leader of the Company of Rogues, aren’t you? I heard of you from Sarah Yeovil, and of course some more from Van.”

“Leader?” he said, looking strangely both relaxed and poised for action. “That was at Harrow. Now we’re simply a group of friends.”

Maria glanced at Althea, wishing she could send her away again. Sensible Lord Trevor had not reappeared.

“But what connection is there between a group of school friends and Clarissa that leads to you giving Con a command? Ah, no, I’m sure you’d call it some friendly advice.”

His eyes sparkled with amusement. “The connection is Lord Arden,” he said, and it was fencing for the hell of it. “He’s a Rogue. His wife was one of Clarissa’s schoolteachers and is by way of being a friend and mentor now.”

“You Rogues are very willing to put yourselves out for each other, aren’t you?”

“Of course. Is that not the root of friendship?”

They were interrupted by Lord Trevor, carrying Hawk’s cat. “Lady Vandeimen? This cat’s hanging around and making a nuisance of itself. Someone said it was the major’s.”

“It belongs at the manor, I suppose…” But Maria remembered Van saying the squire’s dogs would eat it.

The cat leaped out of Lord Trevor’s arms and up onto the table to look around with what could only be described as severe annoyance. Maria sketched the rescue story for Delaney, and he laughed. “I’ll take her up to the Court and try to keep her there until Hawkinville returns. One certainty in all this is that he will return.”

He picked up the cat, and though still radiating grievance, she stayed in his arms. “What do you wish to do now, Lady Vandeimen? There is nothing you can accomplish here, I think.”

Maria sympathized with the cat’s feelings. “I am not one of your Rogues, Mr. Delaney.” Even so, she rose. “I see that I get the task of explaining to Clarissa’s chaperone that I have allowed her to be carried off to a clandestine marriage.”

He put on a look of mild alarm. “Definitely. I’m not going to take that news to Arabella Hurstman.”

“You know the lady, I see,” she said, pulling on her gloves.

“Oh, yes. I asked her to take care of Clarissa.” . “Nepotism!” gasped Althea, who was looking dazed.

He glanced at her. “Did she say that? She would. As it happens, she’s godmother to my daughter. Tell her that Arabel is nearby and will come to visit when this is straightened out—if she doesn’t eat anyone in the meantime.”

“Your child has cannibalistic tendencies, Mr. Delaney?”

He grinned. “More than likely. But I was referring to Miss Hurtsman. Don’t worry. This all seems high drama at the moment, but it will sort out readily enough with a little attention.”

“Indeed! What a shame you weren’t involved in the war.”

Though he scarcely twitched, it hit home, and she shepherded Althea out of the room regretting her sharp words. She was irritated at being excluded from the inside circle, however, and deeply worried about Van.

All had been delightful since their marriage, but it wasn’t that long since he’d tried to blow his brains out. His estates were in no danger, and he had many reasons to live, but some of those reasons were rooted in Hawk in the Vale and the Georges.

What would happen if this caused a deep breach with Hawk?

They climbed into the waiting carriage, and Lord Trevor appeared, leading his horse, ready to escort them.

Such an excellent young man, and thank heavens he’d been spared both physically and mentally by the war.

Unlike Con. Con had left to follow Van, but she suddenly realized that Con could be put in a position of having to choose between two groups of friends.

She almost left the carriage, driven to stay here. But why? There was nothing she could do. Whatever happened would happen far from here, presumably on the road north. Could Hawk really outrace Van? What would happen when Van caught them?

Van said that Con was the steady one, the one who had anchored them to prevent extremes. But the Con Somerford she had known in the past weeks did not strike her as rock solid, even with Susan and his new happiness.

Van said it was Waterloo, and the loss of his fellow Rogue, Dare Debenham, there.

Maria had known Dare. His mother, the Duchess of Yeovil, was a distant cousin. Dare had been a young man put on earth to make others smile, and Sarah Yeovil had not even begun to recover from his loss, especially as there had been no body to bury. It had taken months for her to accept that he was gone.

Con Somerford hadn’t deceived himself that way, but apparently, despite all reason, he blamed himself, as if he could have nursemaided Dare through the battle and kept him safe.

He couldn’t afford to lose another friend.

Chapter Twenty-one

Tollgates, thought Van, were a very useful institution. Not only did they provide the funding for decent roads, they marked the passage of travelers, especially unusual ones such as a man with a lady up behind him.

When he joined the London road, the keeper of the first tollbooth north told him that no such couple had gone that way, on horse, by carriage, or on foot. Of course. Hawk would hardly try to outrace him on the direct route, double-laden.

He had to turn back toward Brighton to check the side roads, but there were dozens of them weaving off into a complex network linking village to village. Damn Hawk. He was going to have to waste hours, and he didn’t have the patient nature for this kind of work.

Con might follow, so he left a quick note with the tollkeeper explaining his actions, and saying that he would leave a clue on the signposts of the roads he went down. It would be one of their old boyhood signs. A twist of wheat. The fields were full of it.

Then he turned back, stopping to ask anyone he passed if they’d seen the couple, and also to cut a handful of wheat from the edge of a field. He turned off onto the first side road after sticking a crude wheat dolly in a crack on the top of the signpost.

Damn Hawk! He’d throttle him when he caught him. And yet a part of him hoped his friend would get away, marry Clarissa, and that it would all somehow work out for the best.

Hawk followed side roads and did some cross-country work, though he couldn’t jump hedges with Clarissa at his back. They didn’t talk and he was glad of it. He didn’t know what to say.

Speed wasn’t important at this point; concealment was. At an out-of-the-way village he stopped at a small inn and asked if anyone in the area would have a gig to hire out. Luck was with him, and Mr. Idler, the squint-eyed innkeeper, admitted to having one available himself. “Mostly used to go to market day, sir.”

Despite the squint, Hawk assessed the man as honest, and the type to hold his own counsel. “May I hire your gig, sir, for a week or more?”

The man pursed his lips. “A week or more, sir? That’d be a bit of an inconvenience.”

“I’d pay very well. And I’d leave my horse as security.”

The man’s eyes sharpened, and he went over to give Centaur an expert scrutiny. “Nice beast,” he said, but he still looked suspicious. “Where you and the lady be going, then, sir?”

Hawk gave him the true answer. “Gretna Green. But I’ll only take the gig as far as London. Perhaps not even so far as that. I won’t be able to return it until we come back, though.”

The man looked between them, then fixed his eyes-more or less—on Clarissa. “You going willingly, miss?”

Hawk watched her response. She smiled brilliantly. “Oh, yes. And I’m not being duped by a worthless rascal, either. My companion is an army officer who served well with the Duke of Wellington.”

Mr. Idler was not impressed. “There’s many a gallant soldier no sane woman would want to husband, miss, but that’s your affair.” He turned to Hawk. “Right, then, sir.”

They settled terms quickly, then Idler added, “Your lady might want a cloak, sir. I could sell you one my daughter left behind for a shilling.”

The deal was struck, and Clarissa climbed into the gig wearing a typical hooded country cloak of bright-red wool over the shambles of her fashionable gown. She smiled down at the innkeeper and said, “Thank you. You’ve been very kind.”

“Aye, well, I hope so.”

Hawk extended his hand to the man, and after a surprised moment, Idler shook it. “I’ll take good care of your horse, sir. But if you’re not back here in a few weeks with my gig, I’ll sell it.”

“Of course. I make no demands on you, but if my lady’s brothers should happen by, we would appreciate it if you didn’t tell them of our business.”

But Idler didn’t make any promises. “Depends on what they say, sir, and what I make of them.”

Hawk laughed. “As is your right. My thanks for your help.”

He climbed up, accepted Clarissa’s bright smile wishing he were worthy of it, and set a rough course east to pick up the Worthing road north of Horsham and work his way to London by that roundabout route.

They went four hours on the Worthing-to-London road, able to make only a steady pace because of the one horse. He wanted to push closer to London, but the sun set and then darkness crept in, with rain threatening. Hawk turned off into a narrow road to a village called Mayfield, which he hoped would have some sort of inn.

He halted the gig partway, however. “We’ll have to stop here for the night. Any regrets?”

She looked at him with a calm, direct gaze. “None, except that you can’t tell me why.”

He was tempted, but he said, “No, I can’t. But we’ll stay here as brother and sister.”

She smiled as if she was hiding laughter. “No one will believe it. We look completely unalike. We might as well stay as husband and wife. It is what we will be, isn’t it?”

His heart began to thump, but she was right. “Yes, it is.” He dug in his pocket and took out the rings he’d brought—a plain gold band, and the one with the smooth ruby between two hearts.

“It’s been the betrothal ring in my family since Elizabethan times,” he said, taking her left hand and sliding the ring onto her finger. “A perfect fit. We do seem to be fated.”

“I think so.” She blinked away tears. “I didn’t know I could be so happy as this. And the other?”

He held it in his fingers. “My mother’s wedding ring. I’m not sure we want to use it. She wore it all her life, but apparently refused to be buried with it.”

She closed his hand around the ring. “You are not your father, Hawk, and neither am I. We are marrying because we love each other. Nothing else matters.” She opened his hand again to look at the ring. “I wish I could wait until we say our vows, but I suppose I should wear it.”

Her complete trust was undermining him, but he’d known how it would be. Rather as a man facing amputation knows how it will be. Knows it has to be.

He slid the ruby ring back off her finger and put the gold band on. “With this ring,” he said to her, “I promise that I will always cherish you, Clarissa, and will do everything in my power to make your life happy.”

He meant every word, but even so they were tainted by what was really going on.

She shone without reservation. He put the ruby ring above the other and clicked the tired horse into motion again. “We’ll wait until the real vows are said before we go any further with this, of course.”

She didn’t say anything, but when he glanced at her she was smiling in a damned mysterious manner.

The Dog and Partridge was small, but the buxom landlady admitted to a room for the night. He didn’t think she believed for a moment that they were married, even with the rings, but she was willing to mind her own business.

He saw Clarissa blush as they were led upstairs and into a clean, surprisingly spacious bedroom, but she showed no sign of doubt or hesitation. What would he do if she did begin to get cold feet? Compel her to go through with it?

Impossible.

The woman lit a lamp and went to arrange their washing water and their dinner. Then they were alone.

As well as the bed, the room contained a table and chairs, and two good-sized armchairs with cushions on the seats. A washstand occupied one corner and a chamber pot another, both with screens, thank heavens, though he would use the outside convenience.

Clarissa hung up her cloak, then sat in a chair. “I’m astonishingly happy. But, then, you know I have an impatient nature. Waiting weeks for a church wedding would have been torture. I only wish it were possible to fly to Gretna Green.”

Hawk laughed, wondering if it sounded like a groan. “I wish that too.”

He meant that he’d not have to worry about pursuit anymore, and would be sooner done with deception, but he saw her take it as a longing for her delightful body naked in a bed with him.

Another groan threatened. He did long, and from her slight, totally wicked smile, he feared his bride longed too.

How the devil had it come to this? And yet this was the only option that would save the village and give at least a fragile chance of winning Clarissa too. But if he didn’t win her…

He could shoot himself. Hawk in the Vale would be saved.

But then it would end up sold when the squire died with no heir. Damnation. He had to get her with child to see this through?

After a knock, the door opened to admit two maids with their meal and jugs of washing water. He gave them their vails and they curtsied out.

Hawk pulled himself together. He’d never been one to do things halfheartedly. These moody silences didn’t serve at all. He smiled at Clarissa. “Do you want to wash first, or eat?”

“Eat,” she said with a grin. “But I’ll wash my face and hands at least. I am starving, though. I was in too much of a tizzy to eat much at lunch.” She looked at him, rosy with some kind of humorous guilt. “I’d vowed to propose to you, you see, if you didn’t get around to it. I wasn’t leaving Hawkinville without trying to capture you.”

He could not resist. He went over and kissed her. “I am certainly thoroughly snared.”

“No regrets?” she said to him, direct and sober.

He couldn’t flat-out lie. “Given a different world, Falcon, I would rather have married you in a church before your friends. But I do not regret the marriage.”

It was enough to make her smile. Soon they sat to their meal, divided by large amounts of very welcome food.

It seemed almost inappropriate to be so hungry at such a time, but life marched on in the midst of even the most extraordinary events.

Clarissa considered it unfortunate that the chairs had been placed at either end of the table. It put five feet between them. All the same, they were alone, and in a more steadily intimate situation than they’d ever been.

And, by some miracle, on their way to their wedding.

With only one bed for the night.

Her heartbeat was already fast, but she was willing to wait for the first seductive moves.

Hawk poured wine into her glass and indicated the plates. “It’s probably best if we help ourselves.”

Though she’d honestly claimed hunger, now she wasn’t sure she could eat, but she took a chicken breast and some vegetables, then sipped her wine, watching him in the pool of lamplight.

It touched gold in his hair and picked out the handsome lines of his face and the elegance of his hands. Was it kind to her? A flutter of uncertainty at her appearance started inside. The small mirror had told her that neatness, as usual, had totally escaped her. Perhaps she should have asked to borrow his comb. He’d used it to restore his usual elegance.

Then he looked up, and something heated danced in his eyes that smoothed the flutter away. He raised his glass to her. “To our future. May it be all you deserve.”

She raised her own. “And all you deserve, too.”

As she sipped, she saw a twitch of expression.

“Hawk! Don’t you think you deserve happiness?”

“You forget. Any future is built on the past.”

It was as if Deveril were trying to bully his way into the room. She should tell him before he committed himself…

But she thrust it away. “Tonight, can’t we forget about the past?”

“The past is always beneath our feet. Without it, we walk on nothing.”

“Perhaps without it, we fly.”

And he smiled as if the shadows fled. “Perhaps we do, wise Falcon. Perhaps we do. Eat. You’ll regret it later if you don’t.”

“Advice from experience?” she asked, but she cut into the tender chicken and made herself eat a mouthful. Then she discovered that she was hungry, and she ate a few more forkfuls of food in silence.

“See?” he said, his lips twitching.

Lamentably, she flicked a piece of bean at him.

He caught it in his mouth. “Army tricks. Never waste food.”

They laughed together and she thought, friend.

She’d had friends at school, some of whom she’d felt close to, but she’d never felt as she did about Hawk. She didn’t know how to say it—it seemed almost childish— but it was a warm glow near her heart. Something steady and dependable. Unlike the rather frantic burning of her love.

She talked a bit about Miss Mallory’s and he shared some of his time at his school, Abingdon.

“Van, Con, and I went to different schools,” he said.

“Different family traditions. And I think our families thought a little variety would be good for us. Part of the purpose of schooling is to make useful connections, after all.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Time away from the manor was always pleasant.”

She sensed a hard truth being delivered. “We won’t let your father destroy our happiness, Hawk.”

“I pray not.” But he didn’t seem to believe it.

She chattered for a while about Brighton matters, but something was disturbing that warm glow of friendship like a chill draft playing on a candle flame.

They might as well talk of serious matters. “How long will it take us to get to Scotland?”

“Three days, with good speed.”

“Can we elude pursuit?”

He pushed away his plate still half full. He hadn’t touched it for some time. “I hope so. Van doubtless has murder on his mind.” He picked up the decanter of claret. “More wine?”

She wasn’t used to a lot of wine and had already drunk two glasses, but she accepted more. “He’ll never catch us on this route.”

“It will be luck if he does. He does, however, have amazing luck.” He shrugged and filled his own glass. “We’ll be in London tomorrow and can arrange some disguise and then speed north.”

She looked down at her stained and muddy dress. “I’ll treasure this dress, though. It has very special memories.” That flicked her mind to something else. “Do you know, during the journey I’ve been thinking about the horrible Mrs. Rowland. I know her from somewhere.”

“Where?” he asked, eyes suddenly alert. “Is there anything else to the feeling? Any connection?”

She laughed. “Always the Hawk! It wasn’t anything dire or suspicious. Just curious. I wish I could pin it down.”

He’d relaxed again, but she thought his eyes still seemed intent. He’d told her he couldn’t resist a mystery, and it seemed to be true. She was definitely right to be binding him.

“Well, then,” he said, “where might you have met her?”

“That’s it. I have no idea. You have to understand, Hawk, I haven’t led a very adventurous life.”

He laughed, and she protested, “I haven’t! Things have happened to me recently, but most of my life has been positively boring. The only place I might have met her was last year in London.”

“More or less at the time of Waterloo, when Lieutenant Rowland was in Belgium fighting and being wounded. It would be strange if his wife and children were in London then.”

“And I’m sure I never encountered a Belgianwoman. I was restricted to fashionable circles, and rarely escaped my mother’s eye.” She shook her head. “It’s probably a mistake. Some people look like others.”

“But you aren’t confusing her with someone else, are you?”

She could only shrug. That faint sense of recognition was becoming less substantial by the minute. The talk had passed some time, but she was no longer interested.

“Never mind,” he said, one finger stroking the long stem of his glass. It reminded her of his stroking of Jetta, and of how very much she wanted him to be stroking her.

She couldn’t bear it. She stood and carried her wineglass around to his side of the table.

Their eyes locked for a moment, and then he pushed back his chair, inviting her to sit on his lap. An invitation she took, heart racing, heat surging through her.

It must be the wine, but it was magical.

“Another adventure,” she said, adjusting herself and looping her free hand around his neck. “I’ve never sat on a man’s lap before.”

“As usual, you get the idea very quickly.” He accepted her daring kiss, then one hand rose to cradle the back of her head. His lips opened and she settled, melted, into a deep joining.

After a languorous time, their mouths parted and he whispered, “Do I want to know what other adventures you have planned?”

“Plan?” she said, exploring his jaw, his ear with her lips. “I’m a creature of impulse.”

“Heaven protect me. What impulse drives you?”

“I think you know.”

He moved her apart a little. “Clarissa, I promised Van that I wouldn’t seduce you.”

“I didn’t promise anything.”

She swooped in for another kiss, but he held her away. His face was flushed, his breathing unsteady. “I think perhaps you’re unaccustomed to wine…”

“Not that unaccustomed.” She cradled his face, feeling the roughness of a day’s beard on his cheeks. “Why wait? What if they do manage to stop us?”

“Then it would be better.”

“Or our marriage would be essential.”

He captured her hands and held them away. “Clarissa—”

“There’s only one bed. Where are you going to sleep?”

“On the floor. I’ve done it before.”

“You’ve eloped before?” she teased.

The look in his eyes filled her with a sense of extraordinary power. She could hardly believe that she was doing this—trying to seduce a man. She, Clarissa, the plain one that no man ever looked twice at.

But she was, and she was winning, and it didn’t seem so extraordinary, so ridiculous. She could feel it in his hands, still controlling her wrists, and see it in his eyes. She could sense it in the very air around them.

His scarce-checked desire.

For her.

For her.

“What would you do if I started to undress here, in front of you?”

His eyes closed with what looked like pain.

“You’d like it?” she asked, astonished to hear it come out in an almost Jetta-like purr.

“Would I like to be burned to a cinder?”

“Well, would you?”

His lids lifted, heavily. “It’s every man’s deepest longing.”

That might be teasing, but she knew it went deeper than that. It was hunger.

She leaned forward, letting him keep control of her hands, to brush her lips across his. “Make love to me tonight, Hawk. It is my deepest longing.”

His lips moved beneath hers for a moment, then slid away. “What if you change your mind, if you decide you don’t want to marry me?”

“You think I will be so disappointed?” she teased.

He avoided her lips again. “Clarissa, I’m trying to be noble, dammit. If anything prevents our marriage, you’d be ruined.”

“Are you saying you won’t marry me?”

“No. But you may change your mind.”

“You forget. I’m in love with your house.”

He laughed, and rolled his head back, eyes closed. “Think. You might get with child.”

She nibbled down his neck. “So, I’ll be the even more scandalous Devil’s Heiress. I don’t care.”

“The child might.”

“Then I’ll buy it a father. But, Hawk, I want you. Nothing is going to change my mind. I love you.”

His lids lifted, heavily. “You said you loved my home.”

“And you. If Slade tears down Hawkinville Manor, I will still love you. But he won’t do that. We are on our way to our wedding to prevent it.”

He swallowed. She felt it.

“Do you feel your feet sliding, Falcon?” he said softly. “Love only greases the path. It doesn’t promise a safe landing.”

“Some paths lead to heaven.”

“Downward?”

She chuckled and moved her lips downward, nuzzling at the edge of his collar. “It would seem so…”

Dimly, somewhere far away in the house, a clock began to chime. She decided to kiss his neck and jaw for each chime, and ended at ten. “Ten fathoms deep,” she breathed against his skin.

He released her hand to hold her off at the shoulders. “I surrender to the depths.”

Triumphant, sizzling, she relaxed away from him, and he raised her left hand to his mouth. “I give you my love and allegiance, Falcon. I swear that if this falls apart, it will be at your desire, not mine.”

“Then it will never fall apart.”

He slid her from his knee to lead her to the bed.

“Electricity,” she said.

“Lightning.”

“Yes.” She knew she was blushing, but she didn’t mind. Despite The Annals of Aphrodite, she was unclear about what was going to happen here, but she didn’t mind that either.

She simply waited, for Hawk.

He raised his hands to her hair, which she knew was a mess. “I suppose your maid arranged this carefully this morning. Does that seem a very long time ago?”

“A mere century or two.”

“And the destruction is considerable.” Pins fell to the floor, and his fingers threaded into her curls. “But it is rioting, tempestuous hair, like its owner.” His eyes met hers. “And as lovely.”

“You like storm and riot?”

“Very much.” He raised her hair and let it fall. “It catches the lamplight in a net of fire.”

He lowered his hands and turned her to the bed. It was set high, and steps stood ready for them to climb into it. Should she take off her clothes yet, or would he do that for her?

He dropped her hand to pull off the buttercup-yellow coverlet. Meticulously, he folded it and put it on the chest that sat at the base of the bed. Then he folded down the other covers, exposing a large expanse of pure white sheet The precise preparations stirred a pang of panic. “Won’t I bleed?”

“The people here must suspect what is going on. If it bothers you, we can stop now.”

“Oh, no.” Then she plunged into honesty. “It’s just that this suddenly frightens me, but in the spiciest way. Does that make sense?”

He put his hands on her waist and lifted her to sit on the high bed. “Of course. It frightens me, too. Because I want it too much.”

He was looking into her eyes as if searching for doubts, for retreat. She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him.

He laughed, broke free. “Stay there.”

He went to pile the remains of their meal on the tray, then put it outside the door.

“You think of everything,” she said, and heard a touch of a pout in it.

He came back toward her. “That is my reputation.” He went to his knees and began to unlace her right half boot.

Clarissa sat there, feeling slightly like a child, but at his touch, intensely woman. Keen anticipation suddenly swirled inside her.

And impatience.

“I feel,” she said, looking down at his bent head, “that at a moment like this I should be wearing satin slippers, not muddy shoes.”

“At least they’re leather.” He put the right one on the floor and began on the left. “The mud and water don’t seem to have soaked through to your stockings.”

She flexed the toes of her liberated right foot. Her daisy-embroidered stockings were pretty, but sturdy. “I should be wearing silk stockings, too.”

He glanced up, smiling. “For a day in the country? I’d think you a flighty piece.”

“You don’t think me a flighty piece?”

He discarded her left boot. “Hmmmm. Now that you come to speak of it…”

He began to slide his hands up her leg beneath her skirts, making her stir and catch her breath.

“Is this… is this the way it’s usually done?”

“What?” He met her eyes, but his hands continued to move up.

“Is the gentleman supposed to remove a lady’s shoes and stockings? Is that part of it?”

His lips twitched. “Are you going to analyze every step?”

“This is a very important experience for me, you know.”

“Yes, I think I know that.”

His hands found her garter, and undid the knot by feel, sending the most extraordinary feelings up the inside of her thigh.

“There are a thousand ways to make love, Clarissa. Doubtless more. If this was our wedding night, I might have left you with your maid to undress and get into bed, then joined you later.” He looked down again, and pushing her skirts up to her knee, rolled down her stocking.

“I bought those yesterday,” she said softly. “With you in mind.”

“And they are much appreciated.” His voice seemed suddenly husky, and she couldn’t contain a smile, even though her heart was beating so deeply she wondered if she might faint.

Dazedly, she watched her pale leg reveal itself. Doubts stirred. It was a very ordinary leg.

He stroked his fingers up and down her shin, then raised her foot to kiss her instep. “This is definitely an argument for anticipating marriage.”

“What? Oh, no maid et cetera…”

“Precisely.”

“So many places to kiss.”

“And I intend to kiss every one.”

So many places on him to kiss, she thought. Would she be brave enough to kiss every one?

Then he explored for the garter of the left stocking. Clarissa leaned back on her elbows, closing her eyes in order to concentrate on the feel of his hands. She felt unsteady. Quivery. She wasn’t sure she wasn’t actually quivering.

When he kissed her left instep, his hand cradled her foot warmly to raise it, fingers brushing against the side of her heel. Then his hands slid slowly back up her legs, opening the way for cool air. He was pushing her skirts up now.

She truly did quiver, for he must be close to her naked privacy.

Lips hot on the top of each knee in turn, hands stroking the length of her thighs.

Then he pulled her up and lifted her off the bed to stand.

Chapter Twenty-two

She opened dazzled eyes to see him framed in a halo from the lamp. “This is remarkable.”

He laughed, and it seemed to be with unshadowed pleasure. “I hope it becomes even more so.” He pulled her suddenly close for a kiss. “You’re not at all afraid, are you?”

“Is there anything to be afraid of?”

“A little pain?”

She shrugged. “I’m sure it hurt to swing on ropes across the wilderness.”

“That was Van, not me.”

“But you’d have been next, wouldn’t you?”

He grinned. “We’d already argued over it. And you’re right. I wouldn’t have counted the scrapes and bruises.” He raised a hand and brushed some hair off her cheek, back behind her ear.

“But lovemaking is dangerous, Falcon. Be warned. At its best or its worst it takes us to places beyond the ordinary. Beyond swinging ropes, beyond battle, even. The French call it the little death. They believe that for a moment the heart stops and all bodily sensations cease, so that return to life is both exquisite delight and exquisite agony.”

She quivered again, deep inside, with hunger. “Can it be like that the first time?”

He laughed, or it might have been a groan. “If I can possibly make it so. Which at the moment,” he added, turning her to unfasten her dress, “might come down to a question of how long I can stand this torture.”

“Torture?” she asked, shrugging out of the dress.

“Only moderate so far. Corsets, however, are the very devil.”

She giggled, but could only wait as he unknotted and loosened her laces. She turned then. “I can get out of this and my shift while you undress. Or do you need me to help you?”

“That would probably be my undoing.” He began to rip off his clothes, as she struggled out of the corset. He was watching her in a way that brought back every scrap of that sense of female power, and she was clumsy with humming excitement.

He pulled off his shirt, and she froze, corset dangling from her failing fingers. Not so massive as the groom in Brownbutton’s stableyard, but the stuff of maidens’ dreams all the same, with ridged muscles down his belly and curved ones in his arms.

There was a dark mark above his right breast. She let the corset fall and walked over to him.

“The tattoo,” she said. “I see it at last.”

“Didn’t you always know you would?”

She smiled up at him. “Yes. This was inevitable from the first day, wasn’t it?” She raised her left hand to trace the purple lines. “A G and a hawk?”

“Van was a demon. Con a dragon.”

“Why?”

“Why do sixteen-year-old boys do most of the things they do? Because one of them suggests it, and it seems like a good idea at the time. We wanted to be able to recognize one another’s mangled bodies.”

She shuddered and with her left hand on the tattoo, she ran her right down a jagged scar in his side. “You could have died before we met.”

“True, though I didn’t have a very dangerous war.”

“What was this, then?” she asked, still touching the scar.

“A chance to swing over the wilderness. If staff duties were light, we were sometimes given permission to join the fighting forces.”

She looked up. “And I suppose you leaped at it.”

He seemed surprised by her tone. “Of course. Can’t you imagine how frustrating it is to be surrounded by the fever of battle—the electricity—and not be caught up in it?” He ran a hand up her side to stroke the curve of her breast. “Rather as if we were to be suspended like this for the rest of our lives, never to fall fully into the madness of desire.”

At the look in his eyes, and the tantalizing touch, a shudder passed through her, a shudder of pleasure and pain such as she had never even imagined. She felt as if she contained seething power between her two hands. His heat, his breathing, his controlled patience…

She leaned closer to press her cheek against his hot, smooth skin. He sucked in a deep breath, moving against her like a wave, and she let her hands slide around him, encircle him, pressing to him so only the fine cotton of her shift lay between their bodies.

“What would I have done if you had died?” she murmured.

His arms came around her. “Found some other man to love.”

“It doesn’t seem possible.”

“It doesn’t, does it?” His head rested against hers. “When I watched you at the manor house today, standing near the sundial, surrounded by roses, it was as if a missing piece had fallen into my life. I give you fair warning, Falcon. You will have to fight to be free of my hood and jesses.”

She smiled into his skin. “As will you. And a falcon, remember, is a superior bird to a hawk.”

She heard a hum, presumably of pleasure. “The thought of you hunting me down,” he said, “almost tempts me to fly.”

“I have claws to catch you with.” She lightly pressed her nails into his back.

His inhaled breath swayed her again. “Have you any idea,” he said, “how perfectly happy I am at this moment? Or, come to think of it, it’s more a state of perfectly happy anticipation.”

Understanding, she moved back, though she would willingly have stood like that, so intimately close, for hours longer.

He sat on the bed and urgently pulled off his boots. She went to help, tossing first one, then the other aside. She put hands to his right stocking, but he seized her, swinging her onto the bed, and falling on her with a ravishing kiss.

At last!

She wrapped her arms and legs around him, kissing him back, pressing a burning, aching need against him. Then he broke contact, freed himself to pull off her shift.

Thus, finally, she was naked, and fear hit her. Not fear of joining, but fear of disappointing.

He put a hand to her breast, slid it down over her ribs, her hip, her thigh, then back up again. “You are so beautiful,” he murmured.

“You don’t have to lie to me.”

He looked up at her. “I’m not lying, love. Don’t you know? Your legs, your hips, your breasts… You’re cream and gold and honey. A perfect, delicious sweetmeat.”

He suddenly swooped down and licked, licked up her belly, around her breast.

She had a beautiful body? She’d never thought beyond her plain face, but the way he was cherishing her with touch and gaze, the hunger she sensed in every touch, tempted her to believe. The perfect jewel in a perfect day. He was taking pleasure, true pleasure, in her body.

He tongued her nipple, making her catch her breath, mostly in anticipation. This she already knew, and she remembered the way he’d been swept beyond sense in the wilderness.

She wanted to do that to him again.

Again and again.

Forever…

He suckled her, first gently, then more deeply, and she arched. “Hurry,” she said. “Hurry.”

“Patience,” he murmured. “Patience.”

“I don’t want to be patient!”

“Trust me.”

He slipped away from her breast and began to lick slowly toward the other one.

She punched at his shoulders with both fists.

He laughed.

Loving the feel of his broad shoulders, she began to knead them. She loved the feel of his tongue, too, though not as much as the suckling.

He hummed again, approvingly, so she kneaded him some more, more deeply as he suckled, kneading her need into his deep muscles again and again.

Her leg was rubbing against his and his breeches bothered her. “Undress,” she commanded.

He pushed away from her, and she grabbed for him. “No, don’t stop.”

“Patience,” he said, laughing and escaping. “A little waiting will definitely do you good.”

She sat up, hands on hips, pretending annoyance, not having to pretend frustration at their separation. But it was almost worth it to watch as he stripped off his remaining clothes.

He stepped out of his drawers and looked at her, and suddenly his jutting manly part grew larger, rising.

“Oh, my,” she said. “I thought the pictures exaggerated.”

“Pictures?” He climbed back on the bed and gently pushed her down.

“Men have books, and women steal them.” She was still looking at his Rod of Rapture, wondering if the book was right, and he would like her Felicitous Fingers. “Some of the girls brought interesting treasures back to school.”

“But you didn’t quite believe them? From what I’ve seen of such books, you were very wise.” He captured her face and looked into her eyes. “Are you frightened, love?”

She thought about it. Something was beating in her, but she didn’t think it was fear. She certainly didn’t want to stop. “What I’m feeling is nothing I’ve ever experienced before.”

He kissed her, laughing. “Still analyzing.”

Despite the fluttering inside and outside of her skin, she chuckled. “Of course. I don’t want to miss or forget any of this. Perhaps I should keep a diary.”

“Now that would shock our grandchildren.” His hand had found her breast again.

Grandchildren. An astonishingly beautiful thought.

Grandchildren at Hawkinville.

“I’d write it in code,” she murmured, dazed by his touch. “The first sight of you. The first feel of your skin. The special smell of your body. My own strange state. Your every touch…”

His hand stilled. “It is somewhat disconcerting, you know, to think of you taking notes.”

She looked at him. “Hawk, are you nervous?”

“You think I’m not?” When she just looked at him, he said, “I want this to be perfect for you, my heart. But perfection really isn’t possible.”

She smiled and ran her hand through his hair. “Whatever it is, it will be perfect.”

He kissed her quickly. “Continue to take notes, then,” he said, and turned his attention to her breasts.

“I like that,” she said. “Oh! I feel as if I’m coming down with a fever. But not at all ill. Uncomfortable, though. Inside.”

His hand slid down. “Perhaps I can heal that.” He paused to circle her navel; then his fingers pushed into the hair between her thighs, close to the tingling ache.

She followed every touch and sensation in her mind, marveling.

“Open for me, sweetheart.”

When had she pushed her thighs so tightly together? She hastily spread them, breath held, and his fingers slid deeper.

Slid. She could feel moisture there. “The Delectable Dew of Deliquescent Desire…”

“What?”

She hadn’t realized that she’d spoken aloud. “A book called it that.”

“A bedazzling book of bridal bemusement?”

Laughing, she said, “The Annals of Aphrodite. It was rather alliterative.”

“So I hear. You are Definitely Delectable.”

“Impossibly Impatient?”

“Dauntingly Demanding.”

They collapsed into laughter, but he looked at her. “Don’t you think perhaps we could take this seriously?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m becoming Desperately Desirous.”

He was ruffled and rosy. She laughed again at all the r’s, but said, “Then I am Wonderfully Willing.”

He pressed his hand back between her thighs. “But not Rapturously Ready, my Pulchritudinous Pleasure.”

Beautiful pleasure. She didn’t know if she was truly beautiful, but he was, and this was, made more so by the blessing of laughter. She would never have imagined being in a bed with a naked man entwined in laughter.

Her hips rose of their own accord to greet his fingers, and an ache intensified. Passion’s Penultimate Pang. They were near the end?

It was deep, deep inside her. Where he would go.

Soon, she prayed. Soon.

“Does that feel good?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. But…”

He began to circle his hand. “Better?”

All the feelings seemed to rush to the place he pressed on, and her hips pushed up again. “Oh! The Precious Pearl of Eden’s Ecstasy.”

“Probably.” He laughed into her dazed eyes. “By all means, tell me what else you recognize as we go.”

“The Wanton Wave of Womanly Welcome,” she gasped as her body rose up and fell of its own accord. “I tried it. Stroking the Precious Pearl… It was pleasant, but not like this!”

Her body seemed to clench itself painfully, but she wanted more.

“Books for men tend to emphasize the delicacy of the pearl,” he murmured into her ear. “Those for women should doubtless emphasize firmness. Tell me if I hurt you.”

His hand pressed harder, and his mouth settled hot against her breast. Something shot between his mouth and his hand, and Clarissa let out a little shriek. “The Searing Spear of Sensual Sublimation!”

Her senses were firing off into sparks and sparkles, but she tried to comment as he’d asked, “And… the Final Fragrant Fragmentation. Oh, my! Don’t stop!”

“I won’t.”

She wanted to push back, so she did, again and again, desperately seeking something that wasn’t alliterative at all.

And then she died.

She felt it. That sudden, perfect stop, then the torrent of sensation that left her shaking and breathless.

Then he moved over her, and as her mind came together she realized that it wasn’t his hand anymore.

It was him against her.

She was still quivering and aching, and she caught back a cry, not sure if it was of need or protest. Her body seethed with sensitivity, but he was forcing her hips wide, forcing her open in a way his fingers had not. She felt impaled—

She stifled the shriek, but then said, “That hurt!” and was shocked back to the real and awkward world.

He stilled. “Are you all right?”

She wanted to say no, that she needed time to get used to this, that perhaps they should try again another day. But she could sense his tense desperation, and could imagine what he might be feeling.

“Of course,” she said, trying for laughter again. “The… Perfumed Portal has been Pierced.” Oh, but she was invaded. “So it’s time for the… Masculine Mastery of Maidenly Mysteries.”

“Not maidenly anymore,” he said, but she was rewarded by his abrupt surrender to his needs.

The Fearful Phallic Ferocity. She knew just what the Annals had meant.

Again, and again, and again.

She could bear it, she could bear it, she could bear it.

But then pain faded and other feelings flowed back. Fierce, thunderous feelings, shared with him. She found she was meeting his movements, harder and harder, thrust for thrust.

The Joyous Joust!

Then he froze. She could feel the rigid tension in every inch of his muscular body. She opened her eyes to revel in the sight of him, beautiful in the light and shadow of this perfect room, lost in the little death.

Oh, yes, making love was a very dangerous thing. They were more than naked here. They were naked to the soul.

He relaxed as if the Wave of Womanly Welcome had rolled over him, and collapsed to kiss her in the way she needed to be kissed. In the way that expressed the shattering experienced.

Then he rolled to the side, still tangled with her, to hold her close. They were plastered together at every possible point, sealed by sweat, and she found it impossible to imagine ever being separated again, even by clothes.

They were one. Forever. Indivisible.

She kissed his chest, then wriggled up to kiss his mouth, then looked into his sated eyes. “That was perfect.”

“Perfectly Perfect? That’s as close to alliteration as I can come at the moment.”

His eyes were amused, but above all they were deeply content and centered on her. “Perfection will come, and we’ll enjoy the practice.” He closed his eyes and laughed. “Is it possible to say a sentence without two words starting with the same sound? After this, I’m going to embarrass myself every time I open my mouth.”

She sprawled on his chest, looking at him. “Persistent Practice?”

His eyes opened. “You want to fly higher and higher?”

“Why not? Why stay close to ground?”

“For safety?”

“Do we care about safety?”

“Yes,” he said, smile fading, “I rather think we do. I intend to keep you safe, love, even if it does mean staying in the nest.”

She snuggled even closer. “That won’t be too bad if the nest has a bed. When can we do it again?”

He looked at her. “I had the impression it hurt you quite a bit.”

When she thought about it, she could feel soreness. “The design of the female body is very inconvenient.”

“Most parts of it are thoroughly delightful,” he said, cradling a breast and kissing it. “Especially yours.”

She dared to ask. “Do you like my breasts?”

“I adore your breasts.”

“More than other women’s breasts?”

He looked up. “Don’t. That’s a game that no one wins. You are you. I love you. I have never loved a woman as I love you. As it happens, you have very beautiful breasts, full and pale, with generous, rosy nipples. But it wouldn’t matter if they were otherwise. They would still be the breasts of the woman I love.”

She put wondering hands to her body, to her breasts. “It’s hard for me to think of myself that way.”

“As beautiful?”

“And loved.” She felt tears threaten, and she didn’t want to spoil this with tears. She smiled and put one hand on his chest. “You have a beautiful body, too.”

“Is that all I am to you? A beautiful body?”

He spoke teasingly, but she sensed that the same need pulsed through him as her.

“No, you’re the man I love. If you went back to war and came home scarred and maimed, you would still be the man I love.”

“Why?” But then he put up a hand to stop her answer. “God, no. That’s another game that no one wins.”

She wanted to laugh. “Why wouldn’t any woman fall in love with you? You’re handsome, honorable, brave, strong…” But she moved down to kiss the hawk on his chest. “For me, though, the most wonderful thing is the way I’ve been able to talk to you from the first. You are my deepest, lifelong friend. I know you have other friends—”

He sealed her lips with his fingers. “None closer. Now.”

“Truly?”

His eyes were steady and deep. “Truly. For as long as you wish.”

She began to cry. She couldn’t help it. This was the most perfect moment of her life, but she was sobbing as if she’d lost everything that mattered. He gathered her close, rocking her and murmuring for her to stop. She tried, but she couldn’t.

“It’s all right,” she managed. “I’m happy, not sad!”

“Lord save me from you sad, then, love. Do stop, please.”

She laughed and wiped her face on the sheet. “I look a mess when I cry, too.”

He helped her dry her eyes and didn’t deny her statement. For some reason, that put the perfect finish on perfection.

This was all completely honest.

She ran a hand across Hawk’s wide shoulders, then down the center of his chest, just wanting to touch. She traced the scar again, chilled by how close it must have been to fatal.

“It was a mere glancing blow.”

“I’m surprised it didn’t break your ribs.”

“Cracked them. Hurt like the devil.”

She stroked along the scar. “I’m glad you’re not at war anymore.”

“I was rarely in much danger. Unlike others.”

She looked up. “Why do you blame yourself? Your work was important.”

“I know.”

“But you still felt as if you were shirking,” she risked, sliding down and holding him, his head on her shoulder.

She thought he wouldn’t speak of it, and she didn’t dare to press him further. But then he began to talk, about his army life, but especially about others, including Lord Vandeimen and Lord Amleigh.

She listened, stroking his hair, blending deeper with him at every word. She kept feeling she’d found perfect happiness, only to rise up to more, and more. She truly felt she might fly away, but it would be to heaven.

Heaven. Ah, yes. No purgatory for her. Certainly no hell. Instead, miraculously, she had heaven.

Except for the small worm of her involvement in Deveril’s death.

It was time to tell her story. But not quite yet. This time was for him. He was talking about Hawkinville now.

“I went into the army to escape it. When I returned a few weeks ago, I planned to deal with whatever problems my father had and ride away. I didn’t intend to cut myself off from Van and Con, but I didn’t think I could live there.

“But when I rode in, people recognized me. God knows how, since most of them hadn’t seen me since I was sixteen. And I recognized them. Not always immediately, but within minutes it was as if the passing years had disappeared. Even my old nurse…”

He moved his head restlessly against her. “Nanny Briggs saved my life. She was my mother in all true senses of the word. Even after she left my father’s service, I spent more time in her house than at the manor. I sent her letters and gifts. But I hadn’t thought she really mattered to me anymore until I saw her.

“In ten years she’d gone from a robust woman to a frail one, shrunken, crooked, and in pain. And in ten years, I’d hardly given her a thought apart from casually sent packages. Of course, she’d treasured every one.”

He suddenly shifted, moving up to look at her. “Why am I boring you with all this? Come and be kissed for being such a good listener.”

The kiss was Hawk’s kiss, as skillful and delightful as ever, and yet afterward, cuddled against him, Clarissa pined for the links that might have been forged with the words he had left unsaid.

“I wasn’t bored,” she said. “I don’t think you should blame yourself for not thinking of them. When a person grows, he will often leave his home and start anew. And I’m sure war demands a man’s attention. You would not have wanted to be distracted.”

His hand was stroking her back again, and she remembered him stroking Jetta, remembered wanting to be stroked that way. And now she had it. For as long as they both should live…

He nuzzled her hair. “I’ve never embarrassed myself with so much chatter before.”

She smiled against his skin. “You’ve never been married before.”

“We’re not now.”

“As good as. In the eyes of heaven. I’ve never felt like this, either, Hawk. I’ve never truly had someone to be with like this. It’s like catching sunlight and finding it can be held in the hands forever.”

“Or having heaven here on earth.”

“Perfect Perpetual Paradise,” she murmured on a laugh. This would be the moment to tell him. So at peace, so relaxed, so inextricably bound.

And yet, it would change things. They’d have to talk, to make sense, to leave the soft clouds. Better surely to sleep now, and do the telling in the morning.