The Swordmaster's Mistress: Dangerous Deceptions Book Two(68)
‘He will only hurt you again,’ she said passionately, standing up, closing her hand over his on the pommel of the rapier.
Jared shrugged, both shoulders now, a weary, resigned thoroughly English movement, not the elegant gesture of the French-taught swordsman. ‘I am not a boy any longer and I do not care what he thinks or what he says. There is nothing he can do to wound me now and even if there was, that does not change where my duty lies.’
‘You will tell Theo and Dover?’
Jared shook his head. He released his hold on the pommel and curled his fingers into hers. ‘I need to discover who I am, what I am. How my father is. He will be mourning, angry with fate, if I know him at all. He may make it easy for me to help, he may make it downright impossible, but I must find out.’
‘You will be walking into a place where your sister-in-law is the friend and confidante of a murderess. She wounded you unfairly, cruelly all those years ago, I do not need to have the details to know that. She will feel guilty and guilt often turns to hatred. She will fear you now.’
‘She has no cause.’ Jared turned until they were face to face, fingers entwined, sending messages of pressure and touch seemingly of their own accord. ‘I loved her once, so I thought.’
‘When will you go?’ Guin asked. She could smell the plain soap on his skin and the dust from the stairwell and, almost on the edge of her consciousness, the disturbing scent of aroused male. He still wants me.
‘Tomorrow. Dover and Theo will be with you. You will be safe. I would leave it longer, but I may find proof there, with Bella.’ Jared bent and kissed her, his mouth warm and possessive, the pressure fleeting. ‘I should have better self-control,’ he said ruefully as he released her hand and went to move the chair away from the latch of the tower stair door. ‘Go back to bed, Guinevere, you need your sleep.’
There was no snick of the lock on the other side when he closed the old oak behind him. He was staying there then, cramped on the cold stone, guarding her. Wanting her. Denying them both, the maddening, honourable man.
Chapter Twenty Two
Guin climbed into bed, snuffed out the candle and lay imagining that she could hear Jared’s breathing on the other side of the door. Of course this could never be anything but an affair. How could she agree to marry him now, if that was the alternative he was offering to them remaining as lovers? She had lost two husbands in suspicious circumstances, the print shops had been full of her image. Her innocence would not weigh in those scales. Even if they managed to resolve this awful situation, neutralise Elizabeth’s venom, prove Theo innocent, scandal would still cling to her.
Scandal would cling to Jared too, the long-lost second son reappearing conveniently to claim his inheritance, the reasons for his disappearance a subject for gossip and speculation. He must marry and marry well to counter that in the eyes of Society. Sophie the Duchess would be able to find any number of well-dowered eligible young ladies of breeding for him. He did not need a twice-married, scandal-ridden wife from the obscure Lancashire gentry.
She was not going to cry, she told herself. She would go to sleep thinking of ways to expose Elizabeth and avenge Augustus, find a way to live her life when all this was over. Guin rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. The man had ears like a cat, he would probably be able to hear the most silent tear…
Ravenscar was as rugged as its name. It was bleak even in sunshine, growing out of the sandstone outcrop from where it loomed over a deep-cut ravine with a narrow torrent at the bottom. All around the landscape was more benign, green, prosperous, but Ravenscar looked what it was, a house that could withstand a siege, built in an age when your neighbours would take your stock by force of arms and your womenfolk too if they could.
But it was home. He had thought that he hated it, never wanted to see it again, but now Jared blinked hard to get the battered silhouette into focus then set about breaching its defences.
First it was necessary to get inside the high stone walls without going through the two-storey gatehouse. He had no intention of announcing his presence until he was inside and knew who was there, but the section of wall to the south, where some penny-pinching repairs in the mid eighteenth century were beginning to crumble, offered the same handholds that he had used as a schoolboy.
The turf was soft as he dropped down at the back of the shrubbery. The sense of being fourteen again almost made him grin, before the silent mass of the house sobered him as returning always had. It was the classic E-shape of the 16th century, a long range to the west with two side wings at either end of the eastern side and a massive porch forming the central stroke. He had no intention of walking in at the front door.
The grounds seemed deserted and garden room door was probably unlocked. Jared sauntered across the grass between shrubbery and house. No-one glimpsing him would see suspicious or furtive movements.
The handle turned under the pressure of his hand and he was inside, edging between benches holding pitchers and vases, a pair of shears, bundles of wire and a vast bucket full of greenery. It seemed Bella, or the housekeeper, still arranged flowers in the house.
The hall clock struck ten as he came out of the shadows under the great carved oak staircase. Unless his father had changed his habits he would be in his study now for an hour. That would be the usual time for summoning boys in disgrace. Jared recognised now that it had been deliberate in order to give the culprit – usually himself – a sleepless night and no appetite for breakfast. He wondered if some long-engrained habit had made him time his arrival for just this hour.