To Taste Temptation

  Sam nodded and faced ahead again, although he didn’t notice who stepped up to shoot next. He hoped to hell that Vale was right and Craddock could help them.

  They were running out of survivors to question.

  EMELINE SMOOTHED THE coral silk draped over her panniers that night as she stepped into the Hasselthorpe ballroom. The cavernous room had been recently redecorated, according to Lady Hasselthorpe, and it appeared as if no expense had been spared. The walls were shell pink with baroque gilt vines outlining ceiling, pilasters, windows, doors, and anything else the decorators could think of. Medallions along the walls, also rimmed in baroque gilt leaves, were painted with pastoral scenes of nymphs and satyrs. The whole was like a sugared flower—overpoweringly sweet.

  Right now, though, Emeline was less concerned with the Hasselthorpes’ grand ballroom than with Samuel. She hadn’t seen him since the shooting party this afternoon. Would he attempt the dance, even after his problem at the Westerton ball? Or would he forgo the experience altogether? It was silly, she knew, to worry so much over a matter that was none of her business, but she couldn’t help hoping that Samuel had decided to stay in his rooms tonight. It would be awful if he were overcome again here.

  “Lady Emeline!”

  The high voice trilled nearby, and Emeline turned, unsurprised, to see her hostess bearing down on her. Lady Hasselthorpe wore a pink, gold, and apple-green confection, belled out so extravagantly that she had to sidle sideways to make her way through her guests. The pink of her skirts exactly matched the pink of her ballroom walls.

  “Lady Emeline! I’m so glad to see you,” Lady Hasselthorpe cried as if she hadn’t just seen Emeline not two hours before. “What do you think of peacocks?”

  Emeline blinked. “They seem a very pretty bird.”

  “Yes, but carved in sugar?” Lady Hasselthorpe had reached her side and now leaned close, her lovely blue eyes genuinely concerned. “I mean, sugar is all white, is it not? Whereas peacocks are just the opposite, aren’t they? Not white. I think that’s what makes them so lovely, all the colors in their feathers. So if one does have a sugar peacock, it isn’t the same as a real one, is it?”

  “No.” Emeline patted her hostess’s arm. “But I’m sure the sugar peacocks will be marvelous nonetheless.”

  “Mmm.” Lady Hasselthorpe didn’t appear convinced, but her eyes had already wandered to a group of ladies beyond Emeline.

  “Have you seen Mr. Hartley?” Emeline asked before her hostess could flit away.

  “Yes. His sister is quite pretty and a good dancer. I always think that helps, don’t you?” And Lady Hasselthorpe was off, singing about turtle soup to a startled-looking matron.

  Emeline blew out a frustrated breath. She could see Rebecca now, pacing gently with the other dancers, but where was Samuel? Emeline began to skirt the dancers, working her way to the far end of the ballroom. She passed Jasper, who was whispering something in a girl’s ear that made the child blush, and then Emeline was blocked by a phalanx of elderly men, their backs toward her as they gossiped.

  “I saw the book of fairy tales you left in my room,” Melisande said from behind her.

  Emeline turned. Her friend was wearing a shade of gray-brown that made her look like a dusty crow. Emeline raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment. They’d had this discussion before, and it hadn’t changed her friend’s attire a wit. “Can you translate it?”

  “I think so.” Melisande opened her fan and waved it slowly. “I only looked at a page or two, but I could decipher some of the words.”

  “Oh, good.”

  But her voice must’ve been distracted. Melisande looked at her sharply. “Have you seen him?”

  Sadly, there was no need to explain who him was. “No.”

  “I thought I saw him go out onto the terrace.”

  Emeline glanced to where glass doors had been opened to let in the night breeze. She touched her friend’s arm. “Thank you.”

  “Humph.” Melisande snapped her fan shut. “Be careful.”

  “I shall.” Emeline was already turning away, moving through the crush.

  A few steps farther and she was at the doors leading to the garden. She slipped through. Only to meet disappointment. There were several couples outside, strolling the stone terrace, but she didn’t see Samuel’s distinctive silhouette. She glanced around as she advanced, and then she felt him.

  “You look lovely this evening.” His breath brushed her bare shoulder, raising goose bumps on her skin.

  “Thank you,” she murmured. She tried to look in his face, but he’d caught her hand and tucked it in his elbow.

  “Shall we stroll?”

  The question was rhetorical, but she nodded anyway. The night air was a relief from the hot ballroom. The chatter of the guests faded as they crossed to wide steps leading into a gravel path. Tiny lanterns hung from the branches of fruit trees in the garden, and they sparkled like fireflies in the autumn dusk.

  Emeline shivered.

  His hand tightened on hers. “If you’re cold, we can go back in.”

  “No, I’m fine.” She glanced at his shadowed profile. “Are you?”

  He gave a soft snort. “More or less. You must think me an idiot.”

  “No.”

  They were silent then, their steps crunching on the gravel. Emeline had thought he might try to lead her off the path into the dark, but he kept to the proper, lighted ways.

  “Do you miss Daniel?” he asked, and for a moment she misunderstood him, thinking he meant her dead husband.

  Then comprehension flooded her. “Yes. I keep worrying that he might be having nightmares. They sometimes trouble him, as they did his father.”

  She felt him glance at her. “What was his father like?”

  Emeline looked down blindly at the dark path. “He was young. Very young.” She glanced at him quickly. “You must think that a silly thing to say, but it’s true. I didn’t realize it at the time because I was young, too. He was only a boy when we married.”

  “But you loved him,” he said quietly.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Desperately.” It was almost a relief to admit it, how terribly she’d been in love with Danny. How prostrate with grief she’d been at his death.

  “Did he love you?”

  “Oh, yes.” She didn’t even have to think about it. Danny’s love had been easy and natural, a thing she’d taken for granted. “He said he fell in love with me at first sight. It was at a ball, like this one, and Tante Cristelle introduced us. She knew Danny’s mother.”

  He nodded, not speaking.

  “And he sent me flowers and took me for drives and did everything that was expected. I think our families were almost surprised when we announced the engagement. They’d forgotten that we weren’t already engaged.” Those days were golden but a little blurry now. Had she ever been that young?

  “He was a good husband?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “He drank and gambled sometimes, but all men do. And he used to give me presents, pay me the loveliest compliments.”

  “The marriage sounds ideal.” His voice was even.

  “It was.” Was he jealous?

  He stopped and faced her, and she saw it wasn’t jealousy in his eyes at all. “Then why, after an ideal, loving first marriage, do you want a loveless second one?”

  She gasped, feeling as if he’d hit her. She raised her own hand, almost without realizing it, either in defense or to strike him back, but he caught her fist and pulled it aside, leaving her unshielded.

  “Why, Emeline?”

  “That’s none of your business.” Her voice shook no matter how hard she fought to control it.

  “I think it is, my lady.”

  “Someone will come,” she hissed. The path was deserted, save for themselves, but she knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. “Let me go.”

  “You lied to me.” He ignored her plea, pushing his face with his analytical eyes toward her. “You did love him.”

/>   “Yes! I loved him and he died and left me.” Her breath caught on the traitorous words. “He left me all alone.”

  He still looked at her as if he could see inside her head to pick apart her very soul. “Emeline—”

  “No.” She tore away from him and ran.

  Ran up the garden path and away from Samuel as if she were fleeing from demons.

  THE DAY HAD turned gray by the time Sam and Lord Vale rode out early the next afternoon. Sam shivered atop his borrowed horse and hoped that there wouldn’t be rain on the trip home. He hadn’t been able to talk to Emeline all morning. Whenever he saw her, she’d made sure to be in the company of someone else. Her refusal to let him talk out their troubles bothered him. He’d touched a raw spot the night before in the garden, he knew. She had loved her first husband. In fact, Sam had the feeling that Emeline was capable of deep, unwavering love.

  And maybe that was the problem. How many times could she give that kind of love and lose it without eventually feeling the effect? He imagined her a fire, banking itself, conserving its embers by burning low so that it might not go out altogether. It would take a determined man to stir those flames again.

  Sam’s horse shook its head, jingling the bridle, and he returned his thoughts to the present. He and Vale were riding to the nearby town of Dryer’s Green where Corporal Craddock lived. Vale had been uncharacteristically silent as they’d procured their horses and jogged up the long drive to the main road.

  When they reached the wrought-iron gate that stood at the drive’s end, Vale spoke. “Your aim was impressive all day yesterday. I think you hit a bull’s-eye on every shot.”

  Sam looked at the other man, wondering at the choice of subjects. Perhaps Vale was only making small talk. “Thank you. You didn’t shoot yourself, I noticed.”

  A small muscle jerked in Vale’s jaw. “I had enough of guns and gunfire in the war.”

  Sam nodded. That he could understand. Aristocrat or common soldier, there had been far too many experiences in the war that didn’t bear repeating.

  Vale glanced at him. “I expect you think me a coward.”

  “Far from it.”

  “Kind of you.” The other man’s horse shied at a leaf, and for a moment, he tended to the reins. Then he said, “It’s odd; I don’t mind hearing gunfire or smelling the smoke. It’s just holding a gun in my hands. The weight and the feel. Somehow it brings it all back, and the war is real again. Too real.”

  Sam didn’t reply. How could one reply to such an observation? At times the war was too real for him, too. Maybe the war still lived for all the soldiers who had returned home—the wounded and the ones who only seemed whole.

  They’d turned into the road now, following an ancient hedge along one side, the other side bordered by a drystone wall. Beyond these barriers, the brown and golden fields rolled away into the distance. A party of haymakers was working one field, the women with their skirts gathered to their knees, the men in smocks.

  “Did you know Hasselthorpe was in the war, too?” Vale asked suddenly.

  Sam glanced at him. “Indeed?” Hasselthorpe didn’t have a particularly military bearing about him.

  “Was an aide-de-camp to one of the generals,” Vale said. “Can’t remember which one now.”

  “Was he at Quebec?”

  “No. I’m not sure he saw any action at all. I don’t think he was in the army very long, anyway, before he inherited.”

  Sam nodded. Many aristocrats sought soft commissions in His Majesty’s army. Whether or not they were suited to army life had very little to do with their choice of career.

  Their conversation ceased until they’d entered the outskirts of Dryer’s Green some minutes later. It was a bustling little town, the kind that would have a thriving market every week. They passed the smithy and a cobbler’s shop, and an inn came into sight.

  “I’m told Honey Lane is just here.” Vale indicated a small road just past the inn.

  Sam nodded and turned his horse down the lane. There was only one house here—a mean little cottage, the thatching blackened with age. Sam looked at Vale, his brows raised. The viscount shrugged. Both men dismounted their horses and tied them to low branches near the stone wall that separated the cottage from the road. Vale unlatched the wooden gate, and they marched up the brick walk. The place might’ve once been nice. There were signs of a garden, long neglected now, and the cottage, while small, was well proportioned. Evidently Craddock had fallen on hard times. Or he’d lost the ability to tend to the house.

  On that uneasy thought, Sam knocked at the low door.

  No one came. Sam waited a moment and then knocked again, this time more forcefully.

  “Perhaps he’s out,” Vale said.

  “Did you find where he’s employed?” Sam asked.

  “No, I—”

  But the door creaked open, interrupting Vale. A woman of middling years peered at them through a hand-span crack. She wore a white mobcap but otherwise was all in black, a shawl wrapped across her bosom and tied at the waist. “Aye?”

  “Pardon us, ma’am,” Sam said. “But we’re looking for Mr. Craddock. We were told that he lives here.”

  The woman gasped softly and Sam tensed.

  “He did live here,” she said. “But not anymore. He’s dead. He hung himself a month ago.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Six years went by in wedded happiness—for what man wouldn’t be happy to be rich and married to a beautiful woman who loved him? In the sixth year, Iron Heart’s happiness reached a new peak, for the princess found she was expecting their child. What rejoicing there was in the Shining City! The people danced in the streets, and the king showered the populace with gold coins the night the princess gave birth to a son. This small baby was the heir to the throne and one day would wear a king’s crown on his head. On that night, Iron Heart smiled down on his son and his wife and knew that soon he would be able to speak aloud their names. For this was the third day before the end of his seven years of silence....

  —from Iron Heart

  “Capers,” Lady Hasselthorpe said.

  Emeline swallowed a bite of goose and glanced at her hostess. “Yes?”

  “That is to say...” Lady Hasselthorpe looked down her long, elegant supper table at her guests, all of whom had paused to look at her. “Where do they come from?”

  “From the cook! Ha!” a young gentleman exclaimed. No one paid him any heed, save the young lady at his side who giggled appreciatively.

  Lord Boodle, an elderly gentleman with a thin, pale face under a rather stringy full-bottomed wig, cleared his throat. “I believe they are buds.”

  “Truly?” Lady Hasselthorpe widened her lovely blue eyes. “But that seems most fanciful. I rather thought they might be related to peas, only more sour, if you understand my meaning.”

  “Quite, quite, my dear,” Lord Hasselthorpe rumbled at his spouse from the other end of the table. One wondered sometimes how Lord Hasselthorpe, a thin, dour gentleman without an ounce of humor, had ever come to marry Lady Hasselthorpe. He cleared his throat ominously. “As I was saying—”

  “Very, very sour peas,” Lady Hasselthorpe said. She was frowning down at the puddle of sauce that surrounded the slice of goose on her plate. A scatter of capers swam there. “I don’t know that I like them, really, sour little things. There they lurk in a perfectly plain sauce, and when I bite into one, it quite startles me. Doesn’t it you?” She appealed to the Duke of Lister, sitting on her right.

  The duke was known for his oratory in Parliament, but now he blinked and seemed at a loss for words. “Ah...”

  Emeline decided to rescue the conversation. “Shall we have the footman remove your plate?”

  “Oh, no!” Lady Hasselthorpe smiled charmingly. Her blue eyes were exactly matched by the blue in her gown tonight, and she wore a tight necklace of pearls at her throat that highlighted her long, slim neck. She really was extraordinarily beautiful. “I shall just have to watch out for the capers,
shan’t I?” And she popped a piece of goose into her mouth.

  “Brave woman,” the duke muttered.

  His hostess beamed at him. “I am, aren’t I? Braver than Lord Vale and Mr. Hartley, I think. They didn’t even come back from the village for supper. Unless”—she glanced inquiringly at Emeline—”they are hiding in their rooms?”

  Actually, this was a subject that Emeline had been rather worrying about. Where could Samuel and Jasper have got to? They’d left directly after luncheon and had been gone for hours now.

  But Emeline feigned a careless smile for her hostess. “I’m sure they’ve simply stopped at the village tavern or something similar. You know gentlemen.”

  Lady Hasselthorpe widened her eyes as if uncertain whether she did know gentlemen or not.

  “Actually.” Lister unexpectedly cleared his throat. “I believe Lord Vale is in the conservatory.”

  Lady Hasselthorpe stared. “Whatever is he doing there? Doesn’t he know supper isn’t served in the conservatory?”

  “I believe he is, ah”—the duke’s face reddened—“indisposed.”

  “Nonsense,” their hostess said roundly. “The conservatory is a silly place to be indisposed. Surely he’d pick the library?”

  The duke’s rather hairy eyebrows shot up at this statement, but Emeline only vaguely noticed. What was Jasper doing in the conservatory indisposed? He’d have to have been back to the house for some time to be in that condition, yet she hadn’t seen him. More importantly, where was Samuel?

  “Have you seen Mr. Hartley?” she asked His Grace, interrupting his convoluted explanation as to why a gentleman might choose to indispose himself in the conservatory.

  “I’m sorry, no, ma’am.”

  “Well, they shall both have to miss their suppers,” Lady Hasselthorpe said merrily. “And go to bed without.”

  Emeline tried to smile at this witticism, but she thought the smile didn’t quite come off. The supper lasted nearly another hour, and for the life of her, she had no idea how she replied to the conversation of her neighbors. Finally, after a course of cheese and pears that she could hardly bear to look at, the meal ended. Emeline lingered only long enough to be polite; then she hurried in the direction of the conservatory. She traversed a series of halls before her heels tapped on the slate floor that heralded the entrance to the room. A pretty glass and wood door kept the moist heat within the room.