Like Sybil, she wished Gervase nothing but happiness. More than most she knew what he’d sacrificed during the war; to her mind society owed him some reward, specifically a contented life. It would be a travesty of justice and fairness if he didn’t have that.
Which meant he needed the right wife.
But what, in that context, constituted “right?”
Before seeing the evidence of Lady Hardesty, she would have suggested a London beauty, a daughter of some peer of suitable rank with a solid background in the glittering world of the capital.
But of what use was knowing the order of diplomatic precedence, or the most fashionable type of tea to serve a duchess in the afternoon, if one’s husband’s most urgent question was whom among numerous local functionaries gathered together it was politic to recognize first?
She’d answered that question, in one form or another, on several occasions that day, and while any lady might learn the answer, learning presupposed an interest in doing so, and that—as not just Lady Hardesty but also her female guests had demonstrated—was not a quality London ladies necessarily possessed.
The curricle’s wheels rhythmically rattled along the well-beaten track.
She’d stood in Gervase’s countess’s shoes for the day; she shouldn’t find it impossible to imagine the lady capable of filling the position, yet her mind remained blank, unhelpfully vacant, no matter how she tried to focus, to conjure…no more could she think of any local lady of the right age, the right background, let alone one capable of holding his interest.
He checked the blacks, jerking her attention back to the moment. Slowing to a crawl, he turned his pair; she glanced around and realized he was taking the track to the boathouse.
It took a second to question her own impulses, then to inwardly shrug.
With the horses at the top of the steep path, he drew them to a halt, then climbed down and handed the reins to her. “Stay there and mind the brake.”
She’d started to swing her legs out, but stopped, considered, then swung them back. He went to the leader’s head; grasping the harness close by the bit, he started leading the pair down.
Having someone on the brake was necessary in case the horses tried to go too fast or the curricle’s wheels slipped; the path was too steep, his horses too valuable to risk. Keeping the reins loose in one hand, her other hand on the brake, she let him guide them down.
The curricle fitted neatly into the space behind the boathouse. It felt normal to let him take her hand and help her down, then steer her inside and up the stairs. It was the third time she’d been there with him, in his private place; she was a little surprised by how comfortable and confident she felt—serene and assured—as he led her to the daybed, then turned her into his arms.
He kissed her, the exchange long and sweet, drawn out as she returned the pleasure. When he drew back, her fingers were tangled in his hair, his already busy with her laces. He looked down at her face, his own a medley of sharply delineated planes and shadows. “I wanted to thank you.”
She smiled. “Everyone already has. Multiple times. But what I didn’t tell Sybil, I’ll tell you—I need no thanks. I enjoyed my day thoroughly.”
His lips curved, she thought rather wickedly, but in the poor light she couldn’t be sure. “But I wanted to thank you in my own way.”
Her gown slithered to the floor; she struggled to quell a too-hungry shiver invoked by the sensation of his hands, hard and knowing, and their heat, closing about her waist.
She licked her lips, stretched up to murmur against his, “Your way?”
“Mmm.” His gaze had lowered to her breasts. His hands rose, then reverently closed. “You said you thoroughly enjoyed your day. In return for your help, it seems only right that I ensure you also…thoroughly enjoy your night.”
His fingers flexed; she caught her breath. They played and her lids fell, lips parting on a soft, impossibly evocative—undeniably erotic—gasp.
He dipped his head, covered her lips, and with consummate mastery swept her into the dance.
The one he’d taught her.
One where their bodies spoke more clearly than words ever could, where each touch carried meaning as well as pleasure. Where lips and tongues and hands orchestrated and communicated with a degree of eloquence unimagined, where bodies, minds and even souls could speak with a directness unfettered by any of the intrinsic limitations of verbal speech.
As, all hot naked skin and long tangling limbs, they tumbled onto the daybed, she realized she could say so much more this way. As he drew her beneath him and with one powerful thrust joined them, as she embraced and clung, then encouraged and exhorted, then unshackled her wilder self, letting it free to ride with his, as the heat and the passion rose and consumed them, here, like this, she could open her heart and let the truth come tumbling out…and no one would hear.
Only she knew as she crested and clung, as throwing her head back, she let the glory claim her, just how deep, how strong, how irrevocable and powerful that glory now was. What depths of her heart and soul it had plumbed.
Just how irretrievably and ineradicably it had become a part of her.
Only she knew.
The storm washed past, the frenzy died, subsiding into blissful aftermath. Lying on her back with him slumped, boneless and heavy, over her, eyes closed, her fingers idly stroking through his hair, she smiled, and told herself it didn’t matter. That no matter the cost, only she would know, and no matter what the cost, she would readily meet it—just to know she could feel like this.
To know what it was like to be all she as a woman could be.
He’d given her that, and for that gift, she’d be forever grateful.
Lifting her head, she pressed a gentle kiss to his temple, then lay back, relaxed, and let satiation claim her.
An hour later, Gervase lay propped against the daybed’s raised back, watching while Madeline delicately sipped a glass of amontillado, then bit into a ripe plum. The dark purple juice stained her lips, threatened to overflow at one corner, but then her tongue darted out and lapped.
He forced himself to look away. Reaching for the hand that held the glass, he raised it so he could brush a kiss across her knuckles. “Thank you for staying by my side today—your insights were invaluable.”
Still chewing, she smiled.
Before he could think too much he went on, “No one else could have done it. Having you there, by my side, felt right. The others thought the same.”
She swallowed, then lightly shrugged. “Your role used to be mine, so I suppose in a way it was a trial run for you.” She looked down, inspecting her fingers. “Next year, you’ll have your new countess to assist you.”
He managed to keep the frown from his face; she hadn’t made the connection he’d intended.
Before he could think of something to jog her mind in the right direction, she looked up and met his eyes, searched them. “You needn’t worry anyone will read too much into my being by your side today. Everyone will realize I was merely helping you find your feet.”
Setting aside the glass, plum finished, she slid around onto her belly, her bare rump distracting him, and proceeded to lick her fingers clean—further distracting him.
“That’s not what I’m worried about.” Disgruntled irritation colored his tone. “I’m perfectly sure everyone else read the situation correctly.”
She glanced at him, tried to read his mood; expression quizzical, she tilted her head. “So what is bothering you?”
You. He wondered what it was going to take to open her eyes—to make her see that no one else viewed her as in any way ineligible to be his wife. More, that everyone else was starting to assume that she would fill the position. Looking into her eyes, he felt frustration well. He wanted their engagement settled, wanted her hand acknowledged as his—by her most of all. His sisters’ artful manipulation and Harry’s direct question had only exacerbated his natural irritation at having to play such a roundabout game.
His natural inclination was to take the Valkyrie by the horns and insist on submission, on total surrender, but with this particular Valkyrie…
He’d kept his expression impassive; he knew she wouldn’t read anything in his eyes. Reaching out, he set one hand in the indentation of her waist, then stroked slowly down, over the lush curve of her hip and derriere. “I’m in two minds over whether I’ve thanked you enough.”
Her eyes had widened slightly at the caress; now they widened even more. With undisguised interest.
“Hmm.” On that sultry murmur she shifted, turning to him as he turned to her. “Perhaps…maybe…I deserve a second helping?”
He bent his head and set his lips to hers, and set about confirming, reaffirming, his hold on her, on her body, and at least for those moments, on her mind.
But as for her heart, let alone her soul…when it came to those, he had no assurances. When it came to those, he was operating blind.
Some hours later under the cloak of the same night, Helen Hardesty again made her way to the gardener’s cottage on the banks of the Helford to meet with her sometime lover.
She found him pacing in the dark like a caged tiger. “I take it you’ve had no good news?”
“No, damn it! The cargo seems to have disappeared into thin air, which is nonsensical. It can’t have. It must be here somewhere—and someone must know where.”
She’d never seen him so intensely aggravated. Her impulse was to go to him, to spread her hands over his chest and distract him, but she knew well enough to wait until he calmed. “Nothing from the peddlers at the festival?”
“No. I asked at the stalls and booths selling curios and antiques—no one had, or had seen or heard of, even the most minor piece of the cargo.” He glanced sharply at her through the gloom. “I have men in the area, scouring the peninsula, and in Falmouth. There’s been no word of a wreck, and nothing—neither information nor the goods themselves—has reached London.”
“You would know?” She was surprised.
“Oh, yes.” His tone sounded vicious. “Believe me, I’d know.”
He paced some more; she watched him, waited.
“I want you to start nosing around—quietly. I want to know if anyone has heard of anything that might in any way relate to the missing cargo. Whether anyone’s been approached by someone wishing to sell items of that nature—museum-quality jewelry, timepieces, snuffboxes, lamps, silverware.” He shot her another hard glance. “Concentrate on the gentry. I already have men covering the rest.”
She studied him, then, judging him settled enough to approach, she closed the distance, laid a hand on his chest, looked into his face. “Why are you so obsessed with this cargo? I know it’s a fee—a payment due to you—but it’s not as if you need the money. Your family’s one of the wealthiest in the land.”
For a moment, looking into his still, contained face, she wondered if she’d gone too far.
But when he spoke, his voice was even, his tone flat. “You don’t need to understand why I want it, only that I do.”
She grimaced. Lifting her arms, she wound them about his neck. “Very well. I’ll do as you ask and with all due caution see what I can learn.”
“Do.” He looked down at her, then accepted her blatant invitation and kissed her.
When he lifted his head, she murmured, “For my usual payment, of course.”
He laughed briefly. “Of course.”
Raising his hands, he closed them about her breasts; bending his head, he recaptured her lips, then steered her back until her spine met the closed shed door.
“Come on.” The next morning, Harry led Edmond and Ben down from the cliff path north of Lowland Point. “We can walk along the sands and look into each cave we pass.”
Leaping down to the beach, Harry waited until the other two joined him, then walked down to the strip of hard-packed sand above the retreating waves and started to trudge north along the shore.
He didn’t expect to find anything in the caves, but the exercise kept Edmond and Ben happy; both were certain that if they just looked hard enough—if they searched every cave honeycombing the peninsula’s cliffs—they’d be sure to find hidden treasure.
Whose hidden treasure was a moot point.
But for Harry the time spent tramping along the beaches, watching the ever-changing sea, gave him time to think, to wonder, to imagine. To examine his options and what he wanted of life. And how to achieve that.
He’d started by looking in on Madeline in the office; he’d half expected her to smile and wave him away—tell him he didn’t need to bother his head with the accounts and ledgers, with the various questions she, in his name, dealt with every day. Instead, she’d taken his offer to learn and help seriously. He now spent part of every day with her, learning of his patrimony and how to manage it.
He’d made the offer to help because he’d felt he should; he’d never imagined he would find fields and crops and yields so intriguing. But he had; now his biggest worry was to keep his enthusiasm for “work” within bounds—and contrarily pretend to some interest in his brothers’ hunt.
“Watch out!” Edmond yelled.
Harry glanced back to see Ben, who had chased after a retreating wave, come scampering, laughing and whooping, back up the sand—only to trip, stumble and fall, and have the wave catch him, and froth and surge around him.
As the wave receded, Ben sat up spluttering. He was drenched.
Harry and Edmond exchanged a glance, then burst out laughing.
Ben sat in the sand, picking feathery strands of seaweed from his hair and flinging them off.
Harry and Edmond staggered up, clutching their sides.
“Your face…” Edmond gasped.
“Fumblefoot,” Harry said.
Ben looked mulish. “I didn’t trip. Well, not over my own toes, anyway.”
He didn’t wait to hear his brothers’ opinions on that, but instead scrambled down to a spot below his feet and started sticking his fingers in the sand. “Here.” He stopped poking and started digging.
Harry frowned and shifted closer. “What?”
“It’s here.” Ben worked his hand into the sand. “What I tripped over. The wet sand keeps filling in the hole….”
Edmond glanced at Ben’s face, then crouched down and used his hands to pull the sand back from the spot where Ben was digging. Harry did the same on the other side; between them, they eased aside the surrounding sand enough to stop it sliding back immediately Ben dug down.
“Got it!” With a wriggle and a wrench, Ben pulled a sand-encrusted object free. A thick strand of seaweed dangled from it; wrapped around it, the seaweed had anchored the object in the sand.
“Look out!” Edmond pointed down the beach to where another, larger wave was rolling in.
Leaping up, they ran back to where the sand was dry.
Ben stopped and brushed at the damp, compacted sand clumped all over his find. Metal winked; the object was shaped like a long oval big enough to cross Harry’s palm. But the wet sand stuck.
“Here—let me.” Pulling his shirt from his breeches, Harry lifted the oval from Ben’s hand and, using his shirttails, carefully dried it, then poked, flicked and blew the sand free…a clump covering the center finally fell away.
“Oh, my God.” Harry stopped and stared.
Edmond’s and Ben’s eyes grew round. Their mouths fell open.
Ben recovered first. “We did it!” he shrieked. He danced around. “We found buried treasure!”
“Sshhh!” Edmond said. He grabbed Ben and held him still.
“Shut up!” Harry glanced around.
So did Edmond and a contrite Ben. But there was no one on the beach but them, no one on the cliffs that they could see.
“Sorry,” Ben mumbled. He looked back at their find.
Then, simultaneously, the three looked down the beach to where they’d made their discovery, the sand now smoothed by the wave. They walked back, searching the surface, kicked, pr
odded, poked, but there was no sign of any other buried items. Finally retreating from the incoming waves, they glanced at the cliffs again.
“Lucky it’s so early. No one’s about.” Halting, Harry studied the oval; the other two gathered close, staring as he cradled it in his palms. “It’s a brooch, isn’t it?”
Edmond picked it up and turned it over, exposing a long pin running the length of the oval. “It looks like a brooch.” He set it back on Harry’s palms right side up.
Reaching out a wondering finger, Ben traced one delicate metal curve. “That’s gold, isn’t it? And are those diamonds?” The awe in his voice touched them all. “And what’s that?” He pointed to the large rectangular stone in the brooch’s center.
Harry swallowed. “We’ll need to take it home and clean and polish it, then we’ll be better able to see…but I think that’s an emerald.”
They stared in stunned silence, then Edmond, the most practical, said, “What should we do with it?”
Harry raised his brows. “Is it even ours to decide?”
“Of course it’s ours,” Ben hotly declared. “You saw me find it—it’s treasure trove. We asked about the laws and that’s what they say—anything found below the tide line is treasure trove and belongs to the finder.”
“True.” Edmond nodded at the brooch. “So what—”
“I know what we should do with it,” Ben said. “We should clean it and give it to Madeline for her birthday. Much better than that scrappy scarf thing we got at the festival.”
“It’s not a scarf,” Harry said. “It’s a fichu, and she’ll like it and use it, but most ladies use a brooch to hold their fichus in place.” He held their find up between thumb and forefinger. “A brooch like this.”
He looked at Edmond, then at Ben, and the decision was made.
“Right, then.” Edmond turned and headed toward the path they’d scrambled down. “Let’s take it home and wrap it.”