A Dangerous Man (23 page)

“Would you even know it if you had?” the Dowager went on. “Society is based on subtlety and nuance, Miss Coltrane. Perhaps unwittingly you have encouraged these gentlemen’s attentions or expectations.” Mercy met her gaze. The Dowager’s did not waver. “I am loath to say this, but their expectations cannot be ones you would welcome.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My point exactly.” There was a hint of bitter triumph in her tone. “You must not think for an instance that your charm and wealth will overcome generations of exclusivity and breeding.”

“Ma’am?”

“I am forced into being unbecomingly coarse,” she said, her face tightening with distaste. “Acton finds you vivacious and intriguing. It is only to be expected. He has had scant intercourse with a woman of your upbringing and subsequently has developed all the signs of becoming besotted with
you. But mark me well, my dear, he is, when all is said and done, the Duke of Acton.”

My God
, Mercy thought,
she is warning me off Acton
. That bluff, fusty, sweetly incompetent man! “Your Grace … !” Mercy blurted out in a agony of embarrassment.

The Dowager lifted her hand, waving down her words. “I do not care that the Duke of Manchester’s son has married an American heiress. His profligate behavior had already precluded him from marrying any decent Englishwoman. Not to mention that his mother danced the cancan at a music hall with the Prince.” She sniffed, some mental image offending her. “What more could one expect of her offspring? But that is not the case here, Mercy. Acton has impeccable antecedents and a tradition to uphold.”

Mercy’s sense of humor saved her at the last minute. The Dowager had sat back a little and was watching her expectantly, if compassionately, obviously expecting Mercy to wail with despair that she wasn’t going to be allowed to wed her son. Mercy simply did not have it in her to disappoint such maternal confidence.

“Oh!” She managed to turn a laugh into a shaky breath and bowed her head, her lower lip trembling.

“I know, dear,” Lady Acton said. “But it had to be said. One can only hope that your heart is not already too deeply engaged. Acton can be most charming.”

Mercy sniffed. Three sniffs seemed adequate.
“I’m nonplussed, madam. But I shall strive to overcome my … disappointment.”

The Dowager fidgeted. It was so uncharacteristic, that Mercy abruptly left off snuffling. “There is something else, ma’am?”

“Yes.” The Dowager stiffened her spine and edged forward, sitting regally erect, composed and autocratic. She did not flinch from meeting Mercy’s eye. “I am further compelled by my obligation as your hostess and chaperone to warn you that neither is the Earl of Perth a potential suitor. No matter what his extraordinary behavior a few minutes ago.”

She was blindsided by the Dowager’s words. She had not expected to have half-formed dreams, dreams so tenuous and fragile she had not even acknowledged them to herself, so brutally discovered and dismissed. She had no defense against the other woman’s words, she could only stare at the Dowager’s stern face, feeling more exposed and vulnerable than she’d ever been before.

The blood pounded dully in her temples. The room seemed suddenly too large, too cold. She should have expected this, but she’d been intent on deluding herself, experiencing each moment in Hart’s company as a separate thing, without past or future, refusing to acknowledge the emotion that grew each time she saw him.

Love.

God help her, she was in love with Hart Moreland, a man to whom titles and privilege and English
society were so important he’d spent a decade serving them for his sisters’ sake.

Fool, she thought bitterly, telling herself Hart cared, quivering with joy when he’d stormed into her room, storing away the memories of his heart beating beneath her cheek, his arms effortlessly lifting her, the scent of tobacco and wool, his lips opening over her own with something she’d foolishly called desire.…

“Perhaps Mr. Hillard might entertain notions of forming a permanent alliance with you, Mercy,” the Dowager went on after a moment. Mercy nearly wept. “He is, after all, an intimate of our Prince, a man who is reported to be quite besotted with young American girls. And Hillard has no title to consider.”

And then the tears did fall, hot and bitter and uncontrollable. She dashed them away, her face averted, staring out the window.

“My dear,” the Dowager said, stiffly reluctant. “Perhaps a Hungarian count. Or a French
duc …
their titles are mostly formalities anyway.”

“Please, just go,” Mercy said.

“Well. My heavens.” Indignation that she’d been so summarily dismissed filled her tone. Mercy heard the Dowager’s heavy skirts rustle, heard the click of heeled slippers cross the room.

“I will leave you to compose yourself.” There was heavy criticism in her voice.

Mercy almost laughed through her tears. No, indeed, she wasn’t acting like a lady, not at all. But
a lady probably wouldn’t allow her heart to be shredded on an icy facade and an ancient title.

“I will see what I can do for you. Perhaps when we return to London, I can arrange an introduction to one of the Russian princes. Or an Italian count,” the Dowager said. The door hissed open and quickly shut.

Mercy buried her face in her hands. The Dowager could parade titles and coronets and medals and estates by her until the end of time. She did not want a title.

She wanted a gunfighter.

Hart stared out of his bedroom window as dawn, still a filigree of silver, traced the horizon. He hadn’t slept much. Not that he ever did. Rather than attend dinner last night, he’d gone back to London. There he’d scoured the Soho district, looking for some trace of William Coltrane.

He hadn’t found Coltrane but he had found others: lost eyes and ruined dreams, men feeding a hunger for oblivion and women feeding an irrepressible hunger to survive. Desperation, remorse, and resignation. He’d seen the like before, in North African tent villages and overflowing Eastern seaports, in American cattle towns and in European capitals. He saw the like every time he looked in the mirror.

Finally, a few hours after midnight, a glassy-eyed dandy had told him that he’d shared a pipe
with Will Coltrane a few days before. Hart had pressed him. A day to an addict is no more than a notion. But the man had insisted he knew Will well.

Charming chap, for all his American accent, the man had said. Too bad he’d been bankrupted. Rather changed his personality. Became unpleasantly insistent. The man had paused to squint at Hart in perplexity. Why, the dandy had wondered aloud, hadn’t Will’s mentor extradited him from his financial troubles?

Mentor? That had caught Hart’s attention. What mentor? Who was he? “The mentor” was discreet, well spoken, English. Maybe tallish, maybe broad, always wore a slouch hat, didn’t know what color his hair was. The dandy couldn’t say any more than that. He hadn’t paid that much attention.

Hart had returned to Acton’s estate with his thoughts racing. Who was guiding Will through London’s sordid underbelly? And, more important, who was responsible for Mercy’s accidents? Because the more he considered the matter, the more inexplicable those accidents became. And try as he might, he could think of no one more likely to want Mercy dead, and her inheritance forfeit, than her own brother. A desperate man, Hart knew full well, was capable of any betrayal.

But how had Will Coltrane managed these accidents? Could he somehow be at Acton’s estate? It seemed impossible that his presence wouldn’t have been noted.

There was only one thing Hart was certain of: he couldn’t tell Mercy his conjectures. She wouldn’t believe him and, knowing her, it would only send her racing into potential danger.

When he’d finally stumbled to his blankets, Hart had been hounded by dreams as relentless as they were familiar. But this time images of Mercy’s body, torn and brutalized, were superimposed over all the other horrific visions. He’d woken, sweat drenched and shivering in the cold winter darkness, and stood sentinel at midnight’s gate, waiting for dawn.

Madness
, he thought, finally turning away from the ash-colored vista. How had he allowed Mercy Coltrane to become so thoroughly entangled in his heart? When had he let her past the wall he’d so carefully constructed?

Let?
he asked himself grimly,
allowed?
His heart had not asked permission to love Mercy. He had simply taken the only course open to him. To deny himself this love, however ill fated it might be, would be like asking a blind man to relinquish an hour of sight.

But like that blind man, there was a price to pay for the sharp, painful reawakening of his heart—brief, tantalizing, so acute it burned.

For there was no chance such a love could find expression. He lived by sheer will on the near side of madness, hounded by night terrors from which he awoke howling like a dog, chased by unnamed specters that could set him trembling for days on end.

What could he offer her? A man whose hand sometimes shook so badly he could not hold a glass of water without spilling it? The custodianship of a madman? Sometimes only his fury and disgust at his weakness kept him from sobbing like a babe. God, even his name was not his own to give.

And, too, there were others to consider. He snagged the blanket from the floor and flung it to the bed. He could offer but one thing: he could find her damn brother.

For all the joy it would bring her … or him.

Chapter 20

“I
t’s delightful to see you up and looking so well, Miss Coltrane,” Nathan Hillard said the next day as he joined her at the dairy barn’s door. It was late morning and Acton was taking them on a tour of the home farm.

“Thank you, Mr. Hillard. And thank you for your consideration yesterday,” Mercy replied. Hillard had apparently been the first one to her after she’d fallen. He—so she’d been told—had carried her to the house, shouting orders for her immediate care. Now, his unusual eyes shone with a soft, concerned light.

“I trust your unfortunate accident yesterday left no lasting impairments?” he asked.

“None in the least.” She had responded to countless such queries since she’d appeared at breakfast. By and large they had been solicitous. Except, that is, for the unmistakable tincture of gratification coloring Annabelle Moreland’s gratis
inquiry. As though she had supposed something unseemly was bound to occur to any woman who infiltrated so masculine a province as hunting and was happy to have her suspicions confirmed.

Mercy hung back from the rest of the guests peering into the barn. Hart stood a short distance away, Annabelle’s hand resting in the crook of his arm, his austere features approximating interest. The Whitcombes were beside them, Richard tenderly supporting a puffy-faced Fanny. Only Henley and Beryl’s absence kept the group from presenting a perfect tableau of family affection, Mercy thought, suddenly wishing fiercely that Will were here, with her.

She found herself studying Hart’s drawn face. He knew something, she would swear to it, and he was keeping it from her. All morning he’d avoided her, making polite conversation with the other guests, placidly dogging his sisters’ steps—in other words acting totally out of character. Perhaps Lady Acton had had A Conversation with him too. The thought hurt. It hurt more that he’d apparently taken it to heart.

Well, he needn’t concern himself that she would embarrass him by reading anything into his appearance in her room yesterday. She knew now what she had seen: a man she’d coerced into extending his protection to her; a man to whom responsibilities were sacrosanct.

She didn’t need his protection. She needed him to find Will. She would think only of her brother.

Liar
.

“I was so very worried about you,” Nathan said in a low, warm voice, interrupting her thoughts. “Your welfare has come to mean a great deal to me.”

His fixed study of her face brought warmth creeping up her throat.

“Miss Coltrane, I cannot stay silent any longer. Surely you must be aware of my regard—”

“Sir, please,” she broke in, remorsefully recognizing the ardor in his tone. “I am unable to think of anything other than finding my brother. I cannot think of myself while he is lost.”