* * *
Mariah danced the minuet with Dalton Mirrant, worrying her way through the painstakingly precise steps of the old-fashioned dance in order to glide around the room in Kit’s arms during the waltz.
The orchestra began the three-quarter-time music as Kit relieved Dalton to go dance the first waltz with Iris. Kit took Mariah’s hand in his and placed his other hand on her waist, then stepped effortlessly into the rhythm of the waltz.
“Whatever happens from this moment on,” Kit whispered into her hair, “know that I love you. That I will always love you.”
The tone of his voice alarmed her, and Mariah tried to look up at him, but Kit held her fast. “Kit?”
“Sssh,” Kit soothed. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Everything will be all right.”
“I love you, too, Kit,” she said. “I always will.”
After the waltz Drew was as good as his word. He began circulating through the crowded ballroom, out onto the terrace and back in the smoke-filled card and gaming rooms until he came across Viscount Mirrant, Dalton’s father, leaving the card room and making his way toward the refreshment tables set up at the back of the ballroom.
“Templeston,” Viscount Mirrant said. “I heard you were paying for information about a man named Lewbell.”
“I was asking for information,” Drew answered. “But I’ll be happy to pay your gaming losses tonight if the information is accurate and useful.”
“Years ago I used to play cards with an Irishman. A nice chap. Good cardplayer.” The viscount nodded, remembering. “He had a friend he called Lewbell. Had some connection to the theater, as I recall. I remember hearing Lewbell was trying to console the widow after the Irishman was killed in a carriage accident.”
Drew raised an eyebrow at that. “Do you happen to remember the Irishman’s name?”
“Of course,” the viscount answered. “Like I said, for an Irishman, he was a very nice chap. His name was Declan Shaughnessy and his wife was Lady Siobhan, daughter of the earl of Trahearne. She was orphaned early, and because her father died with no surviving male issue, the title is dormant. The gossip going round was that Lewbell thought he could marry the widow and produce a male heir to inherit her father’s title. I don’t know what happened to him, but I haven’t seen him in London in ages.” He leaned close. “I’ll need fifty pounds.”
Drew reached into his jacket, removed his wallet, and handed the viscount a hundred pounds.
Viscount Mirrant disappeared into the card room. Drew scanned the ballroom. Kit was partnering Iris in another quadrille while Dalton was dancing with Mariah.
Mariah followed the steps of the quadrille as she moved from one square to another. She whirled in one direction and Dalton turned in the opposite as they moved into the next square and changed partners.
“Happy birthday, Mariah.”
Mariah looked up at the tall, handsome middle-aged man who had just become her partner. “Do I know you, sir?”
“Of course you do, my dear,” he said. “I am your betrothed.”
“You’re mistaken, sir.” Mariah tried to step away, but the gentleman grabbed hold of her hand and wouldn’t let go. “I am betrothed to Lord Kilgannon.”
“Oh, no, my dear. You are betrothed to me. I had the prior claim to you.”
Mariah’s eyes widened. “Squire Bellamy?”
“In the flesh.”
“But Lord Kilgannon explained that Reverend Mother was not my guardian. She didn’t have the authority to accept your proposal on my behalf.”
The squire smiled at her and tightened his grip. “It matters not at all to me whether she had the authority to accept my proposal on your behalf or not. The fact remains that she did accept my proposal.” The steps of the dance called for a bow. The squire bowed but did not let go of her hand. “I’ve waited fourteen years for my plan to come to fruition. I’ve waited fourteen years for you to come of age.” He led Mariah down the row of dancers toward the door.
“Unhand me, sir!” she exclaimed.
“Don’t try it,” he warned. “Your father tried to thwart me and he died. Your mother tried to thwart me and she died.”
“Lord Kilgannon—”
“Will die as well if he tries to thwart me. Think about it, Mariah. Do you want to lose everyone you’ve ever loved?”
He danced her out the door, and Mariah never made a sound.
* * *
Kit lead his sister, Iris, through the maze of steps in the quadrille. He moved from one square to another. Iris whirled in one direction and Kit turned in the opposite as they moved into the next square and prepared to change partners.
“Bloody hell!” Kit swore.
Iris flinched. “Kit!”
“What the devil is he doing here?” he demanded.
“Who?” Iris asked in confusion.
“The squire.”
“What squire?” Iris asked.
“The one dancing with Mariah.” Kit glanced around and discovered Mariah and the squire were gone.
* * *
A single lantern illuminated the interior of the carriage as Bellamy shoved Mariah inside it.
He took the seat facing the rear of the carriage and pulled Mariah from the opposite seat to sit beside him. He rapped on the ceiling of the carriage with a silver-knobbed cane, and the vehicle surged forward with enough force to send Mariah tumbling against him.
The squire gripped her left wrist with his right hand and used his left one to remove his watch from his pocket. He opened the lid and looked at the face. “The dance should last another ten minutes or so,” he said. “We’ll have plenty of time to reach our destination before your Lord Kilgannon realizes you’re missing.”
Mariah barely heard him. She stared at the gold and diamond locket attached to the squire’s watch chain. “Lewbell,” she breathed. “You’re Uncle Lewbell.”
“Very good, sweet Mariah. You do remember me.” He reached over and traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. “I wondered.”
“Take your hands off me!” she ordered.
He grabbed her chin in his hand. “I will do more than touch your face, sweet Mariah,” he said. “You are mine. I trained you to suit only me—Sir Lewis Bellingham.”
“Why?” she demanded. “Why me?”
“Because your maternal grandfather left a very nice title dormant and a very large income unclaimed. I intend to marry and get my heir on you so that I might claim it before the earl of Kilgannon does.”
Mariah screamed then. And she continued to scream until the squire turned on the seat, placed his hand around her throat, and squeezed.
* * *
Kit searched the duchess of Kerry’s ballroom from top to bottom, but there was no sign of Mariah.
“We have to find her, Papa.”
“We will, son.” Drew looked at Kit and recognized the agony he was suffering. Drew had suffered it himself when Kathryn failed to show up for their first wedding and again when Kit had been stolen from the safety of Swanslea Park.
Drew turned to Barbara, the duchess of Kerry. “Your Grace, I need to borrow a brace of His Grace’s pistols.”
The duchess nodded toward a footman. “Fetch them.”
“And I’ll need a coach and coachman as I sent my wife and daughter home in ours.”
“Done,” she said. The duchess of Kerry had always been partial to the fifteenth marquess of Templeston, and she had transferred that affection to the sixteenth. With a discreet flick of her fan, the duchess summoned her butler who hurried to her side. “Please see that the marquess of Templeston gets whatever he requires. His word is the same as mine.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Kit said. “Is there anything you can tell me about a man called Lewbell? He was here at the ball. A man who is known in Ireland as Squire Nathan Bellamy.”
The duchess looked up at Drew. “Lewbell? I haven’t heard that name in years. He wasn’t on the guest list, and I can’t imagine him rusticating in Ireland. Why, the very t
hought is incredible.”
“Who?” Drew asked.
“Sir Lewis Bellingham. The celebrated actor. Lewbell was our nickname for him. Lady Siobhan Shaughnessy, Lady Kerseymere, Lady Emberson, and I were patronesses of his theater company. You see, Lady Siobhan’s …” She paused. “Lady Siobhan. Good heavens! Your Mariah is Siobhan’s little girl. Dear me, but she looks like her mother. I should have seen the resemblance right away. But Siobhan …”
“Yes?” Kit prompted.
“Siobhan has been gone so many years. Her husband, Mr. Declan Shaughnessy, managed the property her father had owned here in London including several theaters Sir Lewis’s company leased.”
“It’s too far for him to take her to Ireland,” Kit said. “He must have a place nearby.”
“And a special license,” Drew added grimly. “Otherwise, what is the point of kidnapping her on the day she reaches her majority and can claim her fortune?”
“He means to marry her,” Kit’s tone was urgent. “We have to stop it. Where would he take her?”
“Try Number Twelve Berkley Square,” said Viscount Mirrant, whom Dalton had recruited from the card room to help in the search for Mariah. “That’s where Shaughnessy lived. I heard it sold to someone in Ireland a few months ago.”
* * *
Mariah awoke in the parlor of the home in which she had been born. She was sitting on a chair, her wrists tied to the wooden arm of the chair with a silk scarf.
“Welcome home.”
Mariah looked around. The house seemed vaguely familiar, but she had no real memory of it. “This is not my home.” Her throat hurt and her voice was little more than a painful croak.
“It was, sweet Mariah, and it will be again. After tonight.” He leaned so close his warm breath brushed her cheek.
She stared into his eyes and saw the madness living there. “You killed my mother.”
He shook his head. “Most unwillingly, I assure you, but she refused to marry me. After I had gone to all the trouble of arranging your father’s unfortunate accident. She recognized the snuffbox I took from him as a keepsake, and she refused to allow me to become your papa. She told me she was going to put you in the convent where I could never get my hands on you again.”
Mariah began to shudder as a barrage of memories came rushing back. She remembered Lewbell reaching beneath her skirts. Lewbell threatening her, promising her something bad would happen to her mama if she said a word. And Mariah hadn’t said a word, but he had killed her mama anyway because her mama had seen the blood Lewbell had left. Mariah had tried to wash it off, but it had left a mess and Mama had seen it. Her mama had sent her to St. Agnes’s to protect her. He had killed her mama and taken her locket.
“The reverend is waiting in the study. Shall we invite him in?” Lewbell opened the door to the parlor and called for the reverend.
“You are wasting your time, sir,” Mariah told the minister as he walked into the room. “Because I won’t marry him.”
“Yes, you will,” Lewbell contradicted her. “Because if you do not, Lord Kilgannon will die.” He opened his coat to reveal the pistol secreted in the waistband of his trousers.
“You will die before he does,” she said fiercely. “I promise.”
Lewbell laughed. “No need to protect him, my sweet little girl, because he won’t want you once he knows the truth about you.” He stood in front of her facing the parlor door, his back to the window as he looked down at her.
Mariah tilted her chin up a notch higher. “And what truth is that?”
“That you were mine first and that you’ll always be mine first,” Lewbell said, and Mariah shuddered in revulsion at the look in his eyes.
“I was never yours,” Mariah spat. “I will never be yours.”
Lewbell turned red in the face and shouted at the minister, “Begin!”
* * *
“Stop!” Kit burst through the front door of Number Twelve Berkley Square and raced up the stairs to where the sound of voices could be heard. His father, Dalton Mirrant, Ash Everleigh, and Viscount Mirrant followed close behind him to the front parlor.
Mariah was seated, her wrists tied to the arm of the chair. She turned to look at him.
“Keep going,” Lewbell ordered the minister.
“Do you, Mariah Shaughnessy, take this man—”
“No, I do not.”
“Yes, she does,” Lewbell corrected. “Keep going.”
Kit walked into the parlor. “No, she does not. Stop this ceremony at once!”
“Take one more step and she dies.” Lewbell raised his pistol and pointed it at her.
Kit froze.
Mariah did not.
She saw the gleam in Lewbell’s eyes as he stared at Kit and knew he intended to kill Kit the way he had killed her mother and her father. Leaning back in her chair, Mariah lifted her feet and kicked Lewbell as hard as she could in the groin.
He cried out and stumbled against the windowsill behind him. The pistol fired and shattered a vase by Mariah. For an endless moment Lewbell teetered, fighting for his balance, before the latch on the window gave way and there was nothing but air to cling to. He tumbled through the window and fell onto the cobblestone street below.
Mariah heard his shout of terror die as he hit the cobblestones. She heard a warning cry from someone below and the frightened neighs and the clatter of shod horses as they scrambled to regain their footing on the slippery street. And she heard the thick, heavy crash of a carriage overturning.
Lord Templeston rushed to the window, looked out, then quickly exited the room.
“He killed my mother,” Mariah whispered. “He killed my mother and my father. He has my mother’s locket. She put me in St. Agnes’s to protect me because she knew he killed my papa.” She was babbling and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
Kit ran to her, untied her wrists, and then covered her face with kisses. “Shh, sweetheart.” He held her close. “It’s over.”
“He killed them, Kit. And he would have killed you, too. I had to stop him.”
“You did stop him, my love,” Kit murmured. “You saved my life.” His hands were trembling as he framed her face between his palms and kissed her lips before he lifted her wrists and gently rubbed the circulation back into them. “Mariah, sweet Jesus, Mariah. Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she managed.
But he had. Kit saw the bruises his thumbs had made as he pressed them against her throat.
“He’s dead.” Lord Templeston reentered the parlor a quarter of an hour later. “He landed on the street in front of a hansom. The driver overturned the carriage trying to keep the horses from trampling him. The driver and the horses are fine, but the carriage landed atop Bellingham. The passengers were a bit shaken up, but luckily, none of them were hurt. After we loosed the horses and righted the carriage, I retrieved this.” Drew walked over to Kit, and handed him the gold and diamond locket that had belonged to Mariah’s mother. It was similar to be sure, so similar it was almost identical, but there was no seal or jeweler’s mark and the picture inside it was not George Ramsey. On one side was a miniature of a man and on the other side was miniature of a little girl. Declan Shaughnessy and his daughter, Mariah.
The only legacy attached to Lady Siobhan’s locket was a legacy of love and remembrance from a loving wife and mother.
“I love you,” Kit said, kissing her gently. “Mariah, I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she answered. “I always have.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In thy breast are the stars of thy fate.
—JOHANN CHRISTOPH FREIDRICH
VON SCHILLER, 1759–1805
The wedding of the year—that of Christopher George Ramsey, twenty-ninth English earl of Ramsey and the twelfth Irish earl of Kilgannon, to Miss Mariah Shaughnessy—took place at Telamor Castle in Inismorn, Ireland, at the conclusion of the London season.
Lord Templeston stood up with his son. Lady
Templeston stood up with Mariah. Lord Ashford Everleigh and Mr. Dalton Mirrant served as groomsmen, while Lady Iris Templeston and Lady Kate Templeston served as bridesmaids.
Since Father Francis O’Meara had baptized the groom and served as priest and confessor to the bride, he claimed the right to perform the wedding ceremony and the mass that followed.
The groom’s solicitor, Mr. Martin Bell, represented the bride’s father by giving her away in marriage and negotiating her dowry and settlement.
Five hundred guests, including the sisters of St. Agnes’s Sacred Heart Convent, attended the ceremony and the wedding breakfast.
The bride and four assistants spent nearly a month creating the wedding cake decorated with hundreds of tiny pink rosebuds. It was, the residents of Inismorn decided, her finest creation.
And the bite she shared with her husband at the wedding breakfast was the first taste of cake she or Kit had had in fourteen years.
* * *
Hours after the wedding, Kit shared a glass of whisky and conversation with his father.
“He hurt her,” Kit said. “He abused her parents’ trust by molesting Mariah, by taking her virginity before she was six years old.”
“Then let’s hope the bastard is roasting in hell for all eternity.” Drew’s condemnation was swift and unforgiving.
“What do I do?” Kit asked. “How do I—”
“Remember Zeus,” Drew advised. “Follow Mariah’s lead. I know you’re eager, but you have the rest of your married life to satisfy your needs. Put her needs above your own. Make tonight special for her and you’ll build the foundation for a long and satisfying marriage.”
Kit took his father’s advice.
Their honeymoon began where their romance began. In the room at the top of the tower ruins.
Kit knocked on the door to her bedchamber. “Mariah?”
“Yes?” She opened the door, and Kit saw that she was wearing a silk nightgown that was so thin as to be transparent.
“May I join you?”
She nodded.
Kit walked into the room, and Mariah walked into his arms. Desire sparked, igniting them like the strike of a Lucifer match against a rough surface. There was friction. Lots of it. But it was tempered with love. She leaned forward and closed her eyes as Kit sought her mouth with his own. He bent at the knees and swept her up into his arms.