“I am not,” Lottie said, the tears beginning to overflow, “overwrought.”
He sighed, pushed his chair back from the table, and stood. “This conversation is pointless. I’ll leave you to yourself until you’ve once again regained your senses. Good night, madam.”
And he left. She sat there in the dining room, gasping and trembling and thoroughly humiliated.
It was the last straw.
“HE’S VERY HURT, Jeremy,” Beatrice said as she paced from Jeremy’s heavily draped window to his bed. “You have no idea. He told me just a fraction of what he’d experienced in the Colonies, and it was all I could do not to scream aloud. How could he survive such horrors? And yet he’s incredibly strong, incredibly determined. It’s as if he’s driven out of his soul whatever softness he may’ve once felt. He’s been fire-hardened.”
“He sounds very interesting,” Jeremy said.
Beatrice looked at him. “I’ve never met a gentleman like him in all my life.”
“What does Lord Hope look like now that he’s transformed himself?”
“He’s tall with very wide shoulders and wears a sort of aloof glare most of the time. He’s quite intimidating and rather savage-looking, actually.”
“But you said he’d cut his hair and donned a wig and other civilized accoutrements. He sounds quite normal to me,” Jeremy said from the bed. That was the best part about Jeremy—he always took an interest in one’s thoughts and troubles, no matter how trivial.
“He may wear the same sort of clothes as other gentlemen, but they fit him differently somehow.” Beatrice picked up a tall green bottle from Jeremy’s cache of medicines and peered at the dark liquid inside before returning it to its brethren. “And he’s still wearing that earring I told you about. The tattoos he can’t remove, but why do you think he hasn’t taken off the earring?”
“I haven’t the faintest,” Jeremy replied with evident delight. “I do wish I were able to meet him, though.”
Beatrice turned and glanced at him. Jeremy was sitting up in bed today. She’d plumped the pillows for him and helped him sit higher. His cheeks were still flushed, his eyes too bright, but she fancied he was a little better than the last time she’d seen him.
At least she hoped so.
“Perhaps I can bring him around someday,” she said.
He glanced away. “Don’t, Bea.”
She blinked. “Why ever not?”
His eyes met hers, and for a moment all amusement left his face. His extraordinary blue eyes were stern, almost cold, and she wondered in a flash of insight if this was what he’d looked like on the battlefield when he’d led his men.
Then his expression softened a little. “You know why.”
She grimaced because she did know why. “You’re too sensitive to your injury. Many men come home without an arm or a leg or even an eye, and one continues to see them at balls and events. No one singles them out except to say how brave they were.”
“That’s not what Frances said.” Jeremy’s eyes were old and sad.
She bit her lip. “Frances was a complete and utter ninny, and frankly I think you were saved years of insipid conversation over your morning tea when she called off your engagement.”
He laughed, thankfully, but it turned to a cough, and she had to hurry over and pour him a cup of water.
“In any case,” he gasped when he could draw breath again, “I’ll not be going out in public again. You know that.”
“But why?” She knelt by his bed on a little cushioned stool so that her face was closer to his on the pillow. “I know you fear the stares of others, Jeremy dear, but you must get out of this room. You live as if you’re already deep beneath the ground in a coffin. You’re not. You live and breathe and laugh, and I want you to be happy.”
He caught her hand in his, and it was like being gripped by flames. “It takes two footmen just to lift me into that chair so I can sit by the fire. The last time they tried to carry me down the stairs, one of the footmen tripped and nearly dropped me.” He closed his bright blue eyes, wincing as if in pain. “I know you think me a coward, but I can’t face that again.”
She closed her eyes as well, because she felt as if she were losing him, her oldest and dearest friend. For the last five years, ever since his return from the war on the Continent, she’d known that he was slowly slipping away from her. Every time she saw him, he was a little more distant, a little more beyond her reach. Soon she wouldn’t be able to touch him at all.
“Let us be married.” Beatrice tightened her hands around his, pushing aside her own desires in her desperate fear for him. “Jeremy dear, why don’t we? Then we could buy a little house and live together, you and I. We wouldn’t need that many servants—just a cook and some maids and footmen, and no haughty butler to bother with. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
“Oh, it would indeed, darling Bea.” Jeremy’s eyes were very gentle now. “But I’m afraid it wouldn’t work. You’d want children one day, and I’ve set my heart on marrying a black-haired lass, perhaps with green eyes.”
“You’d break my heart for a green-eyed lady you don’t even know?” Beatrice half laughed, choking back tears. “I never knew I ranked so low in your estimation, sir.”
“You rank above the angels themselves, my darling Bea.” Jeremy laughed back. “But we all must have dreams. And my dream is that one day you’ll be surrounded by a family of your own.”
She bowed her head at that, for what could she reply? In her mind’s eye, Beatrice, too, saw herself sitting among a crowd of children. But when she imagined their father, it wasn’t Jeremy’s face she saw but Viscount Hope’s.
“WILL YOU TELL me what happened when you reached Sastaretsi’s camp?” Beatrice asked late the next morning.
She’d accompanied Lord Hope on a shopping expedition to Bond Street, hoping for an opportunity to ask about his past again. His aunt was planning a grand ball on the morrow to reintroduce him to society, and there were many last-minute items to purchase, including dancing slippers for him. But more importantly—at least to her—she wanted to hear the rest of his story.
“I’d’ve thought you’d forget the matter by now,” he replied.
It had been almost a week since he’d told her the story of the march to the Indian camp. During that time, she’d hardly seen him, he’d been so busy conferring with his aunt and doing other more mysterious things. He’d disappear before she rose for breakfast and sometimes didn’t reappear back at Blanchard House until after dinner or later. This meant that his and Uncle Reggie’s paths rarely crossed—which was good—but it also meant that she’d rather missed his sarcastic company over the last week.
“No,” she murmured softly. “I doubt I’ll ever forget what you’ve told me.”
“Then why make me continue?” he asked almost angrily. “Is it not enough that I have to bear those images in my mind? Why should you share them, too?”
“Because I want to,” she said simply. She couldn’t explain it better than that. She wanted to know what he’d gone through; the need was more than simple curiosity.
He looked at her quizzically. “I don’t understand you.”
“Good,” she said with satisfaction.
He grunted on what might’ve been a laugh. She turned to stare at him suspiciously, but his face became grave as he inhaled.
“When we came to the Indian camp, Sastaretsi blacked my face with charcoal to signify that I was to die. He tied a rope about my neck and led me into the village in triumph. He whooped as we came to let the others know that he’d brought home a captive.”
“How terrifying.” Beatrice shivered.
“Yes. It’s intended to be terrifying to the captive. I was made to run the gauntlet,” Lord Hope said as they came to a rather foul-looking puddle in the street. It was quite wide, and Beatrice was eyeing it uncertainly when he grasped her by the waist and simply lifted her over it.
“Oh,” she squeaked. He stood for a moment on the other si
de of the puddle, holding her in the air without any visible sign of strain. “My lord!”
He cocked his head, studying her face just slightly above his. “Yes?”
She felt her breath come short, very aware of his large hands at her waist and the gleam in his black eyes.
“You should put me down,” Beatrice hissed. “People are staring.”
And indeed they were. A group of ladies giggled nervously behind gloved hands, and a cart driver leered as he passed.
“Are they?” he asked absently.
“Lord Hope—”
But he was lowering her to the ground as if nothing had happened. Really! He hadn’t given her any warning at all. Did he want to be thought mad?
She peeked up at him and cleared her throat. “What’s the gauntlet?”
“A nasty way to welcome captives to an Indian camp.” He held out his arm for her, and she placed her gloved fingers primly on his sleeve. “All the inhabitants in the village form two lines, and the captive must run between them.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
He looked down at her, the bird tattoos decorating his swarthy skin, the iron cross swinging from his ear. He looked like a pirate. “They hit and kick the captive as he runs.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “And when he reaches the end of the line, what happens then?”
“It depends,” he said, guiding her around a clump of ladies eagerly peering in a shop window. “If the captive is a child or young boy, sometimes he is adopted into the Indian tribe.”
“And if he is older?” she whispered, dreading the answer.
“Then most often he is tortured and killed.”
She inhaled sharply. He said it so matter-of-factly.
“Were you . . .” She swallowed. How could she ask? But she had to know. The experience no matter how terrible was part of who he was. “Were you—”
“I wasn’t tortured.” His lips tightened as he looked straight ahead. “Not then anyway.”
Sudden tears rushed to her eyes. No, part of her wailed inside. Not him. Not this man. She’d known it had to have happened, but to hear it from his lips was devastating. For them to have hurt—shamed—this man ripped apart a portion of her soul. She felt suddenly older. Weary with the knowledge.
“What happened instead?” she asked quietly.
“Gaho saved me,” he said.
“Who is Gaho? And how did he save you?”
“She.”
She stopped and looked up at him, ignoring the mutters of the other pedestrians who were forced to go around them. “A lady Indian saved you?”
He smiled down into her face, making the birds crinkle as if they’d taken flight. “Yes. A powerful lady Indian saved me. She owned more furs, more pots, and more slaves than any other in that village. You might even call her a princess.”
“Humph.” She faced forward and began to walk, but she was unable to keep the question from leaving her lips. “Was she pretty?”
“Very.” She felt the whisper of his breath against her ear as he leaned down to tease her. “For a woman in her sixth decade.”
“Oh.” She tilted her nose in the air, feeling irrationally relieved. “Well, how did Gaho save you?”
“Sastaretsi had a rather bad reputation it seems. A year before, he’d killed one of Gaho’s favorite slaves in an argument. Gaho was a wise woman. She knew that Sastaretsi had very little to his name, so she’d bided her time until he acquired something that she might demand in repayment for the loss of her slave—me.”
“And what did she do with you?”
“What do you think, Miss Corning?” His wide, sensuous mouth twisted, curving down sardonically. “I was the son of an earl, a captain in His Majesty’s army, and I became the slave of an old Indian woman. Is that what you wanted to hear? That I was reduced to the lowest of the low in that Indian camp?”
He’d stopped in the street, but no one muttered as the crowd gave them a wide berth. Lord Hope might be attired like an aristocrat, but his expression was savage at the moment.
Beatrice had a cowardly urge to flee, but she stood her ground, tilting her chin up at him, holding his wild black eyes as she said, “No. No, I never wanted to hear that you were humiliated.”
He leaned over her, large and intimidating. “Then why persist in asking?”
“Because I need to know,” she said low and rapidly. “I need to know everything that happened to you, everything you experienced in that place. I need to know why you are the man you’ve become.”
“Why?” His black eyes widened with confusion. “Why?”
And all she could whisper was, “I just do.”
Because she couldn’t admit, even to herself, why.
REYNAUD HAD LED men into battle, had faced an Indian gauntlet without flinching, had endured seven years as the slave of his enemy and survived. All this he had done without a breath of fear. Therefore, it was simply impossible that he’d feel missish nerves at the thought of a ball.
Yet, impossible as it seemed, here he was pacing the hallway as he waited for Miss Corning to descend the stairs.
Reynaud halted and took a deep breath. He was the son of an earl. He’d attended innumerable balls before his capture in the Colonies. This creeping feeling he had—that he no longer belonged in London society, that he’d be denounced and repudiated—was ridiculous. He shrugged his shoulders in his new coat, twisting his head about to loosen the muscles of his neck. His new wig was impeccable, he knew—he’d hired a competent valet with the monies lent by his aunt—but it still felt foreign on his head. When he’d lived with the Indians, the only thing he’d covered his head with was a blanket, and then only when the winters were especially cold. He’d worn a long tail of braided hair, and his clothes had been a shirt, breechcloth, leggings, and moccasins—all soft materials, well worn and comfortable. Now he had a scratchy wig on his newly shorn head, a neck cloth half strangling him, and his new dancing slippers felt tight. Why so-called civilized men should choose to wear—
“Thought you’d be gone to that damned ball by now,” a male voice said from behind him.
Reynaud whirled, crouching low, his knife already in his right hand. St. Aubyn started back.
“Have a care,” the usurper cried. “Could hurt someone with that knife.”
“Not unless I wished to,” Reynaud said as he straightened. His heart pounded erratically. He slid his knife back inside the sheath he’d had specially made and glanced up the staircase. Miss Corning was late. “And I’m waiting for your niece if you must know.”
“What d’you mean, waiting?” St. Aubyn’s face darkened.
“I mean,” Reynaud enunciated clearly, “that I intend to escort Miss Corning to the ball given by my aunt.”
“Nonsense!” the old man sputtered. “If anyone’s escorting Beatrice, ’twill be me.”
Reynaud arched an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware you were attending the ball.” St. Aubyn had been invited, of course, but from his lack of comment in the last week, Reynaud had rather thought the other man had thrown the invitation away.
Apparently not.
“Of course I’ll be attending. Think I’d let a popinjay such as you chase me away?”
Reynaud took a step closer to the other man so that he loomed over him. “When I’m in possession of my title, I shall take great pleasure in personally throwing you from this house.”
St. Aubyn’s face was nearly apoplectic. “Your title! Your title! You’ll never see it, sir!”
“I’ve already set the date to appeal my case before the parliamentary committee.” Reynaud slowly grinned as he watched all color drain from the older man’s face.
St. Aubyn’s mouth twisted. “They’ll take one look at you and deny you the title. You’re insane, and everyone in London knows it. One only has to see those tattoos and—”
But something had snapped in Reynaud. He surged forward, gripping the older man’s neck and slamming him against the wall. The usurper’s face tu
rned purple, the sour smell of fear rolling off him, and then St. Aubyn’s gooseberry eyes suddenly shifted, looking behind Reynaud.
At the same time, small fists pounded his back.
“Let go of him! Let go of him!” Miss Corning cried.
Reynaud bared his teeth at St. Aubyn and then backed away, freeing the man.
Immediately Miss Corning flew to her uncle. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine—” the old man started.
But she swung on Reynaud like an avenging fury. “How dare you? What could possibly possess you to manhandle him so?”
Reynaud raised his hands in surrender. He knew better than to try to talk his way out of this. But then he really looked at Miss Corning. She wore a blazing bronze gown that made her creamy skin positively glow. The bodice was low and square, and her breasts were pressed into two tempting mounds.
“Ahem.”
His gaze snapped up at her pointed murmur.
Miss Corning’s bosom might be inviting, but her expression was anything but. “You had no right to lay hands on Uncle Reggie. He’s ill—”
“Beatrice!” her uncle protested, looking embarrassed.
“It’s true and he needs to know it.” She stood with arms akimbo and glared at Reynaud. “Uncle Reggie had an attack of apoplexy a little more than a month ago. You could’ve killed him just now. Promise me you’ll never lay hands on him again.”
Reynaud eyed the older man, who wasn’t looking particularly grateful for his niece’s interference.
“Lord Hope.” She stepped closer and laid one gloved hand on his chest, looking up into his face. “Promise me, my lord.”
He took her hand and, holding her gaze, slowly raised it to his lips. “As you wish,” he breathed over her knuckles.
She blushed and snatched back her hand. Reynaud grinned.
But St. Aubyn was not as interested in avoiding discord. “Surely you don’t mean to accompany this… this jackanapes to the ball, Beatrice?”
Miss Corning hesitated, but then she threw back her shoulders and turned to her uncle. “I’m afraid I do.”
“But, m’dear, had I known you wished to go to this ball, I could’ve escorted you.”