A Mummers' Play (4 page)

But then he sat straighter and made a visible effort to rise up out of gloom. “Forgive me—this is no talk for Christmas.”

He looked at his glass and seemed surprised to find it empty again. Refilling it, he said, “We had the strangest Christmases in the army, you know. One year, we had nothing to eat but onions and stale bread, and nothing to drink but water. Another, we spent in a Spanish estancia drinking wonderful wines and feasting on . . .”

Suckling pig, Justina could have completed. Her bitterness, her pain, her memories, all came rushing back. No wonder his careless words had been cut off. No wonder he was staring into space as if lost in dreams.

Or nightmares, more like.

She’d read and reread Simon’s hilarious letter about that Christmas Eve three years ago, about the sudden abundance of food and wine, about the behavior of the demure ladies of the household, who proved not to be demure at all. One had ended up in Lucky Jack Beaufort’s bed, and Justina had always wondered if perhaps one had ended up with Simon. She was a realist about these things.

In fact, she rather hoped one had, for that had been the last letter Simon had ever written to her. He’d died the next day, Christmas Day, in the ambush surely orchestrated by the only survivor, Lucky Jack Beaufort.

Lucky Jack sat before her now, staring into his wine as if it reflected his soul like a crystal ball. If only she could look into that glass and see what he saw.

She knew the official report by heart. The troop had been caught in an impossible situation without cover, and picked off by musket fire. All except Lucky Jack. She’d assailed the Horse Guards with this fact, demanding that they court-martial the villain, but nothing had ever been done.

She stared at the wretch, graceful even in a sprawl, handsome even with disheveled black hair and drink-slack eyes, and wondered how he could bear to be alive when so surrounded by corpses. She tried to pick his secrets out of the shadowed line of his mouth, out of the shape of his strong hand around the glass, or the smudge of his shielded eyes.

She could not decipher him at all.

Suddenly, he looked up with a smile, but this time it was clearly an artificial one. “Most Christmases weren’t one extreme or the other. I usually spent them in dreary billets eating salt cod and dreaming.”

He’d slid away from that memory, but she’d get him back to it. She swore it.

“And what did you dream of?” she prompted.

“Oh, England. Goose and plum pudding, watching mummers’ plays surrounded by friends and family . . . And now look at me.”

“Eating goose and plum pudding, and watching mummers’ plays surrounded by friends and family.”

It was a mistake to speak so sharply, for he focused his eyes on her. “How can they be family if I don’t know ’em? And what few friends survived the war are off with their own families, wise fellows.”

As Simon would have been, you villain.

He relaxed again, resting his head back against the chair and staring at the ceiling. “When I thought of home, in fact, I thought of Northham. That was where I grew up. A decent, solid, red-brick house with just enough space for a family and just enough servants to cope. Not this,”—he waved a vague hand—“this monstrous pile.”

“Torlinghurst is considered one of the finest homes in England.”

He slanted his eyes down to look at her. “One of the finest houses, perhaps, though to call it less than a bloody palace is ridiculous. It’s not a home.”

Justina could tear her hair out. She was not at all interested in a discussion of English architecture. The only thing, however, was to keep him talking and hope she could steer him back to Spain and that ill-fated Christmas three years ago. “Yet people seem to be enjoying their visit here.”

“Are they? How nice.”

Some of her feelings escaped. “Your ennui and bitterness are absurd, your grace. You are the envy of England!”

Her unwise words cut through the alcoholic mist. He straightened slightly, snapping to alertness. “That’s two, dear Esme,”—he placed a florin by the sixpence—“and people often envy foolishly.”

He surged to his feet and paced the elegant room like a caged lion. “Consider, if you will, my excellent situation. Certainly I have money enough to indulge every whim, but unless I permit myself a total disregard of duty, I cannot do as I really wish—I cannot live in a simple home. I cannot seek a wife who would
want
to live in a simple home, for then she would be as miserable as I. Instead, I must seek a wife who thinks this place delightful, who thinks being a duchess desirable, and who is thus the direct opposite of the type of woman I admire!”

She stared at him and he suddenly stopped his pacing. “You probably think me mad.”

“No,” said Justina. “I understand.”

And she did. Unwillingly, she was remembering some of Simon’s letters, the ones in which he’d talked admiringly of Jack Beaufort. Jack was the best of fellows, brave, bright, and always lighthearted unless he got into his cups and began to talk of his position as heir to the Duke of Cranmoore. On that subject he soon became morose. Simon and the others had cheered him with the fact that his distant cousin, the duke, was young, healthy, and recently married, and so bound to provide little Beauforts to stand between Jack and his dire fate.

Because Justina had been obsessed with this man, she knew the rest. The duchess had proved to be a poor childbearer. She had suffered two miscarriages, then perished of the third. Before the duke could remarry, he had succumbed to a simple cold that settled in his chest and carried him off on the very day of Napoleon’s abdication.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Cranmoore prompted lazily. “Or am I just boring you to sleep?” He’d come to rest with one arm stretched along the marble mantelpiece, and the dancing flames illuminated a disturbingly fine length of leg and torso.

“You are giving me much to think on,” Justina replied, wishing her thoughts were more disciplined. “You could almost be an object lesson to all those who lust after riches.”

“Oh, I’ve nothing against the riches,” he admitted with a quirky, endearing smile. “It’s the trappings I mind. This is my house, or so they say, but if I try to change anything I am positively assaulted by the pain and anxiety of the staff.” He picked up a bristol figurine and walked around to place it on the other end of the mantelpiece. “That will be back in its place by the time I wake up tomorrow.”

Before she could comment, he went on. “And of course my mother seems to think Torlinghurst is a museum where everything should be preserved unchanged forever. She’s a distant Beaufort, too, you know. She always wanted to end up here.”

“Then perhaps your problem, your grace, is inbreeding.”

After a startled moment, he laughed. “I knew you were no prim and proper miss! Miss Esme Richardson, you were sent to me by angels.” But he tossed a ha–’penny with the other two coins.

Justina eyed those coins with some concern. They were evidence that his wits were still very much in place, and she had to wonder just what forfeit he intended to claim.

Then he was beside her with the decanter unstoppered. “A little more?”

Justina realized with alarm that her occasional sips had drained her glass. She let him fill it, but resolved not to drink any more. The faint effect of the wine had fueled her saucy tongue. Much more and it could be she who turned indiscreet.

And that could prove fatal. Literally so. She had no illusions about the lengths to which a man like Jack Beaufort might go to keep his secrets.

He looked down at her. “Will Lady Dreckham be looking for you? Frankly, I’ve no mind to cause a scandal.”

Justina had to think quickly. “No. She was going to bed when she gave me the command.”

“And how did you end up in here?”

“I thought this was the library.”

Without warning, her chin was raised by a strong finger so she had to meet his steady eyes. “You’re lying, my dear. The library is on another floor entirely.”

A shiver ran through Justina. Despite the effects of wine, no one could doubt that this man had been an officer, and a capable one. She supposed effective officers had to learn to keep their wits about them, even when clouded by drink.

“But this place is so confusing. It’s hard to remember even the floor one is on! Your grace,” she added desperately, hoping it would send him off to add another coin to his hoard.

He grinned, clearly seeing straight through her ploy. “I’ll mark that with another coin when we’ve sorted this out, my charming debtor. I want to know exactly what you’re up to.”

Though his tone was light, Justina shivered again. In her wildest dreams she had never expected an encounter such as this, never expected to fight a battle confused by such sensuous maleness.

She had to escape his touch!

The warmth of his finger on the sensitive skin beneath her chin was tearing her apart. No man had touched her so since Simon.

She had to escape his closeness.

She could even
smell
him. Nothing unpleasant, but
him.

“Perhaps,” he said softly, brushing her chin with his thumb, “you made no mistake. Perhaps you are just where you planned to be. Do you have someone primed to interrupt us?”

That snapped Justina out of her weak, muddled thoughts. He thought she was here to trap him into
marriage
? “Of course not,” she declared, twitching her chin out of his control. “I merely mistook the rooms, your grace.”

He moved away and tossed two more coins onto the small table. “You must think the forfeit will be pleasant. A lifetime imprisonment here, perhaps?”

“Really!”

But he overrode her. “So, no accomplice. Perhaps you are relying simply on your charms. Let me guess how it was. You knew you would have no chance to be noticed out among the pretty young things with their simpering admiration and artistically exposed ankles. But here, you thought, in private, you might catch my eye. Congratulations, Esme.” He gave her the accolade of a nod. “You have, in fact, caught my eye.”

Justina was gaping at this interpretation. It was so far from reality that she had no idea how to react.

He moved closer, and again raised her face with his hand, raised it to study. “You are not bad looking, you know.” His thumb came into play again, stroking across her chin. “Good bones. But even better strategy. Everyone knows that the way to attract a man is to listen attentively to his ramblings.” He grinned. “You look astonished.”

Furious was more like it. Furious at his appalling arrogance! Justina grasped his wrist to force his hand away, but her fingers didn’t even meet around it and her push had no effect. “I came here looking for a
book.
I am not such a clever creature as you imagine.”

“Not clever?” His thumb brushed her skin again. “I’ve learned that cleverness and good looks do not relate, Esme, but there is a look that goes with intelligence, and you have it. Don’t try to act the simpering idiot. Please. At least be honest.”

Justina pressed her head back, trying to escape him, to escape his words, his touch, but above all, the effect he was having upon her. “I tell you honestly that I have too much sense to want to marry Torlinghurst!”

His finger and disturbing thumb never lost contact with her skin. “Fustian. It’s a burden, but even I’d choose it over servitude to Great-aunt Caroline.”

Desperate to be free, she shifted her grip to his thumb, remembering a trick Simon had taught her. . . .

Then froze and squinted down.

“I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly passive in her hold. “Does it bother you?”

His index finger was missing, leaving an ugly knob of scar and bone. It must have been his middle finger that had raised her chin.

“No,” she said, trapped, for how could she thrust him away now? “I thought you undamaged, though.”

He removed his hand and returned to his chair. “Why make such an unlikely assumption?” With a slight smile he added, “You can count my other scars if you wish.”

A new danger wove into the room, causing her heart to flutter. “I thought you promised not to be a bad drunk, your grace.”

Without comment he added a golden guinea to the coins on the table. Though Justina told herself those coins could count for nothing, they sat there like warning signs.

“In what way am I being bad?” he asked. “Am I seizing you? Am I demanding anything of you? Yes, that was a slightly scandalous suggestion, Esme, but it was an offer, nothing more.”

He filled his neglected glass with a remarkably steady hand and sipped from it. “You’re probably going to be mightily offended, Miss Esme Richardson, but it’s not unusual for a lonely spinster to simply want a night’s comfort. In the true spirit of Christmas, I am offering it.”

Justina froze, stunned by his casual words.

Then she wanted to throw her wine in his face. She wanted to shatter the glass, even, and use it to ruin his handsome, decadent, tempting beauty. How had he sensed her loneliness? How had he guessed the number of nights she had lain awake wanting comfort?

He couldn’t have.

He
couldn’t
have!

Please God, he did not know the hollow, aching need that stirred within her now, summoned in some inexplicable way by him. Not a need of passion, but a need that sprang from memories of tender embraces and sweet kisses beneath the apple tree in her father’s garden.

Simon’s kisses, she reminded herself.

Simon.

Dead because of this man.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his expression somber. “I see I
have
offended you. I will not mention it again. As for my war wounds,” he continued lightly, “my hand is the most notable deformation. The finger was neatly shot off by a musket ball. I hardly even felt it at the time. Such a loss is minor enough compared to those suffered by others.”

Justina grasped the opportunity to get back on course. “So you consider yourself lucky?”

He was about to drink from his glass, but halted in place like a statue. “Oh, no, Esme. I consider myself damned.”

Her startled heart rattled off tempo for a moment. Now the moment had come, she almost didn’t want to hear the words, but she gripped her hands tight on her own untouched glass and waited for his confession.