“Wait until you sample this,” Daphne told the vicar proudly. “You may decide never to leave.”
Two hours later, full of roast pheasant, stewed mushrooms, Yorkshire pudding, and lemon pie, the vicar wholeheartedly agreed.
Pushing back his plate, he groaned. “You were right, Snowdrop. Not only do I not wish to leave such a splendid feast, I fear I might never be able to. With the massive amounts of food I’ve just consumed, I doubt I can stand, much less walk.”
Daphne laughed, rising from the table. “Why don’t we adjourn to the sitting room? I’m sure some conversation and an exceptional glass of claret will do wonders for—” She broke off, swaying on her feet, groping for a nonexistent object upon which to brace herself.
Pierce caught her just before she fell.
“She’s fainted,” the vicar said, his features tight with concern.
“She’s white as a sheet,” Pierce managed, looking as pale as his wife. Swiftly, he carried Daphne into the sitting room where he placed her gently on the sofa. “Snow flame?” Lightly, he stroked her face, brushing tendrils of hair from her forehead. When she didn’t respond, he turned paralyzed eyes to the vicar. “What do I do?”
Instantly, the vicar appraised the situation. Pierce was bordering on panic. In that state, he could do naught but get in the way. “Go to Daphne’s bedchamber. I’m certain you’ll find a vial of smelling salts there.”
Pierce’s eyes narrowed. “This has happened before?”
“On occasion, yes.”
Comprehension dawned. “When that bloody bastard beat her.”
“Get the smelling salts, Pierce,” the vicar instructed quietly. “Daphne will be fine.”
This time Pierce complied, taking the steps two at a time, bursting into Daphne’s bedchamber like a man possessed. “Lily!” he bellowed. Not waiting for a reply, he began flinging items from Daphne’s dressing table, frantically searching for the vial he sought.
Nothing.
Her nightstand.
Veering around, Pierce crossed the room, yanking open Daphne’s nightstand drawer. The vial was right in front, the first thing he spied. Seizing it, he raced back to the sitting room where the vicar, surrounded by over a dozen worried servants, was pressing cold compresses to Daphne’s forehead.
“Let me through,” Pierce ordered. Instantly, the servants complied, hastily making a path for the duke to pass. He knelt at Daphne’s side, waving the vial beneath her nose. “Please, sweetheart. Open your eyes. Damn it, Vicar, she’s been unconscious for at least a quarter hour!”
“It’s been a scant two minutes, Pierce. See? There, she’s coming around.”
Daphne shook her head and blinked, slowly opening her eyes. “Pierce?” She pushed the smelling salts away, her fingers going to the cold cloth against her forehead. “What happened? Why are you all staring at me?”
“You fainted, Snow flame. You scared the hell out of me. Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. That’s odd. I normally never faint unless Father—” She saw the murderous glint in Pierce’s eyes and checked herself.
“Is the duchess well, Your Grace?” Langley demanded.
“Apparently, yes. Nevertheless, she is going straight to bed.” So saying, Pierce scooped Daphne into his arms and rose. “Vicar, you’ll forgive us. I want Daphne to rest.”
“Of course,”
“I don’t need rest,” Daphne protested.
“You’re going to get it anyway.” Pierce was already halfway across the room.
“Vicar, don’t forget our visit to the schoolhouse Monday,” Daphne called over her husband’s retreating shoulder.
“I won’t. In the interim, you take care of yourself.”
“Really, Pierce, this is ridiculous,” Daphne demurred.
Her husband’s taut jaw told her she was wasting her time.
“Where the hell is Lily?” Pierce demanded, depositing Daphne on her bed.
“I gave her the evening off.”
“Fine. Then I’ll stand in as your lady’s maid.”
Daphne couldn’t suppress a smile. With his towering height, powerful build, and smoldering expression, Pierce looked about as much like a lady’s maid as an avenging Greek god. “Are you adept at braiding hair?”
“Very amusing.” He began unbuttoning the back of her gown.
“Pierce, I really am fine,” she said softly, stroking his arm.
“And you’ll be finer still once you’ve rested.” Systematically, he undressed her down to her chemise, then tucked her beneath the bedcovers. “Mr. Chambers seemed unsurprised by your fainting spell. In fact, he was even aware that you kept smelling salts. Why is that?”
With a resigned sigh, Daphne replied, “Because this has happened two or three times in the past, when I was particularly overwrought by an encounter with Father.”
“An encounter,” Pierce echoed bitterly. “You mean a thrashing. I take it that means you’ve shared the full extent of your father’s brutality with the vicar.”
“No.” Daphne shook her head, a troubled frown forming on her face. “The vicar knows only that Father strikes me when his temper overcomes his reason. But constant beatings? The scars on my back? Only you know of those, Pierce.” She gripped her husband’s forearms tightly. “If the vicar were privy to the whole truth, it would kill him. Not only for me, but for Mama.”
Privately, Pierce disagreed with Daphne’s assessment of the vicar’s insights. Perhaps the clergyman had never viewed Daphne’s or Elizabeth’s scars firsthand, but the anguish on his face when he’d spoken of Elizabeth’s torment, the resignation in his voice—no, Pierce was certain Chambers perceived only too well what transpired under Tragmore’s roof. And that perception, together with his own helpless inability to set things right, was tearing him apart.
“Pierce?” Daphne probed anxiously. “You won’t tell him, will you?”
“No, Snow flame,” Pierce assured his wife. “I won’t burden the vicar with any more than he already knows. What you’ve shared with me, showed me, will remain between us. However, I’m now thoroughly confused. You. just said your previous fainting spells were caused by episodes with your father. Yet, in order to keep the truth from Mr. Chambers I have to assume you didn’t flee directly to the church after your father’s assaults; that you waited long enough to compose yourself. Therefore, how could the vicar have been with you when you fainted?”
Daphne plucked at the bedcovers, attempting to explain something she wasn’t sure could be conveyed. “I didn’t compose myself. I was quite hysterical when I reached the church.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. But I believe you of all people can. For my most terrifying moments, like yours, were caused not by physical but emotional pain. The salvation I craved and that which the vicar provided, the times when circumstances seemed most unbearable, came not after Father had beaten me, but rather after days had passed when he hadn’t.” She shuddered. “I can’t begin to describe my mounting dread, lying awake, night after night, never knowing when my bedchamber door would burst open and Father would charge in, eyes ablaze, stick clenched violently in his fist.”
“You don’t have to describe that feeling,” Pierce broke in, assailed by dark childhood memories.
Daphne nodded and drew a slow, trembling breath. “I thought not. In any case, there were times the apprehension became unendurable. I dared not go to Mama. The consequences would be dire. So I raced to the church, and the vicar. He was all I had until you. And, in answer to your question, he demanded no explanation nor did I provide one. I wept, and he took my hands in his, offered me his prayers and his friendship. Several times that wasn’t enough. The combination of my nerves, which were long since frayed, and the frantic run to the village sapped my strength to the point where my body simply gave out.”
“And you fainted.”
“Yes.”
With painstaking tenderness, Pierce gathered Daphne to him, pressing her head against
his shoulder. “Never again,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “Never again will you be without the strength you need. When your own subsides, mine will replace it.” Softly, he kissed her hair. “But why tonight, Snow flame?” he murmured. “You were so happy. And you’re far away from Tragmore, un-threatened by your father’s rage. What caused you to faint?”
With a self-deprecating smile, Daphne leaned back in his arms. “Stupidity. Mingled with excitement. I was so caught up with the arrangements for tonight; and the arrival of our first dinner guest, that I skipped breakfast and didn’t eat all day. That wine I drank at dinner must have gone straight to my head.”
“You’re right,” Pierce retorted, nearly weak with relief. “It was stupid. Now go to sleep. And don’t scare me like that again.”
Daphne laughed, unfooled by her husband’s show of bravado. “You become more heroic by the day. Reluctant, perhaps, unconventional, for certain, but heroic.” She yawned, settling back against the pillows. “I’m not the least bit tired.” Her lashes drifted to her cheeks.
Seconds later, she was asleep.
For long moments Pierce remained where he was, drinking in his wife’s incredible, untainted beauty, not only that which was visible to the eye, but that which was not. How fiercely she protected those she loved, even at the risk of her own safety. And her values—as unsullied and precious as the innocence she’d gifted only to him. A one-guest dinner party and the concept of restoring a battered roof exhilarated her more than a deluge of elegant balls and a strongbox of jewels. Her heart was full—with love, with compassion, with the wonder of discovery. And, by some miracle, that incomparable heart belonged to him.
As his did to her.
Pierce rose, walking inanely about the room. He’d never uttered the words I love you aloud, never even dreamed he was capable of feeling them. But all that was once dead inside him had been reborn that fateful day at Newmarket when Daphne came into his life. And whether he uttered the words or not, they were there.
Reveling in this strange, new emotion, Pierce glanced back at the bed, smiling when he saw how deeply asleep his “untired” wife was. He strolled over to the nightstand, intending to extinguish the lamp. Noting the chaos he’d created in her open drawer, he paused to rearrange the items he’d flung about in his earlier search for smelling salts. He was about to slide the drawer shut when the corner of a sheet of paper caught his eye. The headline, “Tin Cup Bandit Eludes Authorities Again,” immediately captured his attention. Without thinking, he reached in to extract the paper, only to find that it was part of a bound volume of some sort. His curiosity thoroughly aroused, Pierce eased the book from its home, opening the volume to scan its contents.
“Bandit Succeeds—Workhouse Prospers!,” was the first headline Pierce turned to. He recognized the article at once. It was one of the first reported by the London Times when the bandit had made his debut amid the beau monde.
Brows drawn in bafflement, Pierce turned the page once, twice, three times. Each page was the same: an article recounting the bandit’s latest crime, right up to his most recent theft at the Earl of Selbert’s Mansfield estate, together with the authorities’ frustration at not being able to thwart the mysterious phantom who preyed on the rich and gave to the needy.
What Pierce was holding was a damned testimonial to the Tin Cup Bandit.
Slamming the book onto the nightstand, Pierce was seized by unreasonable, irrational jealousy that blasted through him like gunfire. At the same time, he was appalled at the ludicrousness of his own reaction. What the hell was he jealous of? He was the bandit, for God’s sake. Not to mention the fact that the bandit wasn’t actually a man, but a legend, a valiant figment of Daphne’s fanciful mind.
But he wasn’t only a legend, damn it. He was flesh and blood, a man Daphne had met in the intimacy of her own bedchamber. They’d stood tantalizingly close, heat blazing between them, and her response to his touch had not been his imagination. He was a man, all right, one who had wanted Daphne Wyndham with every fiber of his being.
What was more, the blossoming woman within Daphne had wanted him, too.
She hadn’t—couldn’t—have recognized that, he argued with himself for the umpteenth time. She was too damned naive.
Still, she’d gazed up at him, adoration lighting those mesmerizing kaleidoscope eyes, and her breath had quickened when he’d come near. Consciously or not, she’d responded to him. And all this time he’d excused it away with the fact that she’d never been this close to a man and was therefore too inexperienced to recognize what was happening or to dismiss it in lieu of something real—the something she experienced in Pierce’s arms.
But she was a married woman now. And she bloody well understood what passion was about. Hell, not mere passion. Explosive, consuming passion that was intensified all the more by the fact that it was rooted in love. She belonged to him, body and soul. So why the hell had she brought that bloody journal with her to her new life as his wife?
No. Any way he contemplated it, the result was the same. His wife, in love with him or not, was at the same time completely enthralled with another man.
Even as he flinched at the thought, Pierce shook his head in self-censuring disbelief. For the love of heaven, he was behaving as if Daphne had been unfaithful to him.
Well, hadn’t she?
No. Yes. In a matter of speaking.
Pierce uttered a muffled curse. His deduction was utter lunacy, and he knew it, and that only served to heighten his rage. Daphne’s betrayal, if one could call it that, was only in thought, not fact. Yet it was still thoroughly untenable. Especially tonight, when he’d finally admitted to himself that he loved her, when the vulnerability spawned by his newly acknowledged emotions demanded that she belong wholly and forever to him.
Determinedly, Pierce lowered himself to the edge of a chair, gripping his knees as he began his evening vigil. He’d wait for Daphne to waken.
At which time she had a great deal of explaining to do.
The heavyset man arrived at Tragmore precisely on schedule. Ushered to the marquis’s study, he extracted a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
“You have a report for me?” Tragmore demanded, sipping at his brandy.
“Yes, sir. However, my findings are rather disappointing.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Very well.” The man cleared his throat. “Lady Tragmore has received a mere three visitors at Rutland.”
“Really? Who?”
“Your daughter, for one. Accompanied by her new husband.”
Tragmore waved that information away. “And the third guest?”
Pudgy cheeks drooped lower still. “Your church vicar.”
The marquis’s glass came down with a thud. “Chambers?” His eyes glinted. “You’re certain?”
A nod. “I’m certain. Is that significant?”
“I don’t pay you to ask questions, Larson. I pay you to answer them.” Tragmore walked around to the front of his desk. “How many times did the vicar call on my wife?”
“Twice.”
“And how long did he stay?”
Larson glanced at his notes. “A quarter hour the first time, a bit longer the second.”
“Let me see that.” Tragmore snatched the paper from Larson, scanning it with the greatest of interest.
“That copy is yours, my lord.”
“Excellent.” With a grand sweep, Tragmore placed the page on his desk. “Precisely what I’d hoped to see.” Reaching into his pocket, he extracted a hundred-pound note. “Here’s something for your diligence, Larson. Now keep up the fine work.”
The investigator blinked, accepting the note with as much bewilderment as pleasure. “Keep up…? I thought you’d no longer require my services. I mean, given that your wife hasn’t done anything indiscreet.”
“I beg to differ with you.” An ugly smile curved Tragmore’s lips. “I need your ser
vices now more than ever. So return to your post. I’ll expect your next report in a week.”
Larson shrugged. “Whatever you say, sir.”
“Good. We understand each other. Good night, Larson.”
“Good night, my lord.” Larson took his leave, greedily fingering the hundred-pound note before shoving it into his pocket. Harsh laughter exploded from Tragmore’s chest. Let the fool have his hundred pounds. If things continued as planned, the rewards would render that sum insignificant. Yes, in a very short time the Marquis of Tragmore would have money to burn.
17
IT WAS JUST AFTER midnight when Daphne opened her eyes.
She was greeted by Pierce’s brooding stare.
“Pierce?” She pushed herself to a sitting position, wondering with sleepy disorientation why her husband looked so angry. “What time is it?”
“Five after twelve. You’ve been asleep for nearly three hours.”
“Three hours? I must have been more exhausted than I realized.” She inclined her head quizzically. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong? Yes.” Pierce bolted to his feet, snatching the journal from her nightstand and thrusting it at her. “This is wrong.”
Briefly, Daphne glanced at the journal. Then, her gaze lifted back to her husband. “It’s a collection of articles reporting the triumphs of the Tin Cup Bandit.”
“I know what it is,” he snapped. “What I don’t know is why you have it.”
Daphne gave him a baffled look. “I collected it.”
“Obviously. But why?”
She blinked. “Because I admire him more than I can say. Because he’s a hero. In my opinion, one of the greatest heroes of our time, despite his unorthodox methods.”
“How touching.” Pierce tossed the journal aside, struggling with a blistering resurgence of jealousy.
“I don’t understand why this angers you so.” Daphne rose from the bed, staring at Pierce with a thoroughly perplexed expression. “Surely you don’t condemn me for applauding someone who takes from the rich and greedy and bestows upon those in need?”