Amanda Scott (55 page)

“That ter Nat Philps,” retorted another. His gesture, clearly visible in the moonlight, drew her attention to his dark figure on the catwalk.

She couldn’t see the first man, but he chuckled. A moment later he said, “That lot will make London safe enough, but I’m wonderin’ about the next, what with the abbey as full as be damned again. Young master’s gettin’ right nervy on us.”

Gwenyth’s attention was riveted now, her mind working madly to make sense of what she heard. Surely they spoke of the earl.

The first man spoke again, and there was a familiar sound to his voice, but she could not think where she had heard it before. “The next may be the last, for a while,” he said. “’Taint’s safe, with so many folks about and young Joey always searching for his treasure. Mayhap one day he’ll know he’s already found it, and then the lot of us’ll be for it. That gate shut proper now?”

“Aye. Won’t no one know nothing about this little trip. Let’s be gettin’ upriver, though, afore we’re seen by someone who’ll split.”

Gwenyth fought the panic rising within her. They would pass right above her and surely would see her if she stayed where she was, for her white shift would show beneath the water in the moonlight. Sliding upward, hoping they were concerned more with getting away from the lock than with watching for observers, she lifted herself onto the bank and swung her feet around, then stood up. The sound of a footfall from the trees behind her startled her as she took her first hasty step. She stumbled, only to be caught from behind as a large hand clapped over her mouth, muffling the little scream that was the only sound she was capable of making. A strong arm wrapped around her, lifting her from her feet.

“Keep silent, damn you!” her captor whispered fiercely.

She knew at once that it was Lyford and was sorely tempted to bite his hand, but he must have known her temptation, for he shifted its position, cupping it over her mouth so that she could not do so. Silently he carried her into the cover of the trees, squatting behind a large one and forcing her to keep low.

When she struggled again, trying to free herself, he muttered savagely into her ear, “Keep still. They’ll hear you!”

His reminder instantly renewed her panic and froze her in place. A few moments later she heard the men pass by.

When the last echo of their footsteps had passed into the distance, Lyford got to his feet, hauling her up beside him with a heavy hand and forcing her to face him. “You,” he said, glaring down at her furiously, “deserve to be soundly thrashed, and I’ve a very good mind to see to it myself.”

G
WENYTH STARED UP AT
the earl, shivering, her breath coming in gasps. The moonlight filtering through the branches overhead played on the rugged planes of his face, revealing his angry expression, making it clear that his threat was no idle one. Had she been a weaker woman, she’d have cringed at the sight.

Lyford glared down at her silently, as though he dared her to answer him back, but when she did not, his gaze shifted lower to her heaving bosom, and his lips parted slightly. Realizing where he was looking, she tried to cover herself and was immediately reminded of her near-naked state. Warmth surged through her and she raised her free arm in an attempt to cover herself.

Her movement recalled Lyford to his senses. Releasing her, he shrugged out of his coat and flung it around her. Then, resting both hands on her shoulders, he looked down at her.

“I am angry with you,” he said harshly, but there was another note in his voice that made her wonder if he was informing her of that fact or reminding himself.

“I know,” she said, hearing her own voice as if it were that of a stranger. All her awareness was centered upon his hands and the feeling in her shoulders where they touched her. He was too close, and she was more vulnerable than she had ever been. His coat didn’t help. If anything, it made matters worse, for she could feel the warmth of him in the material of his coat, and it was thus as though her whole body were being embraced.

“You ought not to swim alone,” he muttered. “It is dangerous. And you promised me—”

“I know,” she said, looking at his top shirt button, “but I was hot. I didn’t think.”

“It is a hot night,” he agreed. His voice was ragged.

“Very hot.”

“Yes.” His hands moved on her shoulders as though he would let her go, but then suddenly they clenched tightly, making her gasp and look up at him again. He gave her a little shake. “You never think, Gwen. You just act. If you had thought about how wrong it was to take Pamela to London after I had said—”

“That was not my doing,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. As always, she wished immediately that she had not done so foolish a thing, for she could not look away, and her whole body seemed to swell with new sensations that made her forget his anger, forget the chill of her damp shift, her bare feet, forget everything except his nearness and her awareness of him.

He drew in a sharp breath, then let it out slowly, but he did not take his eyes from her. The tension in his body made her more aware than ever of the fact that she had on only her thin shift, reminding her that in the moonlight, when he had first seen her, she might just as well have been naked. When he bent his head toward her, she knew she ought to step away, but she could not move. Mesmerized, she stood silently, waiting, anticipating, her lips invitingly parted, her eyes wide.

His mouth touched hers, and when she did not resist, his hands moved from her shoulders to her back, and he drew her nearer, kissing her harder. The coat slid off one shoulder, and he pushed it impatiently off the other, moving his hands exploringly over her shoulder blades, down to her waist and hips.

The night air touched her again, chilling her arms and shoulders, as well as the skin beneath the damp shift, but instead of bringing her to her senses, the feeling stirred a heat within her that matched Lyford’s. She did not know herself. It was as though some other young woman stood there on the riverbank experiencing a host of new feelings, discovering within herself a hunger and passion that she had never known she possessed. Lady Gwenyth Traherne watched that strange young woman from a distance, enjoying the scene and the resultant sensations vicariously, and thus shamelessly.

She did not want him to stop. When his tongue pressed inquiringly against her lips, they opened for him as though she had done such things many times in the past instead of only once before, with him. And when his hands caressed her hips, then moved upward along her sides to the soft swell of her breasts, she stirred against him as though to urge him to take even greater liberties. When the fingertips of his right hand traced an outline along the lacy edge of her shift above her breasts, she waited, breathless, for those fingers to slip beneath the cloth to caress her soft bare skin.

He held her closer, his left arm around her waist, his right hand cupping her breast gently, tenderly, warmly, making the nipple tingle with a sensation she had never experienced before. When Gwenyth moaned deep in her throat, Lyford went still. For a long moment he did not move. His lips pressed against hers, but they no longer demanded. His right hand still rested against her breast, but it no longer caressed her. Slowly, gently, he moved it away and stepped back, his left hand moving back to squeeze her shoulder for a brief moment before it dropped to his side.

She stared at him, wondering why he had stopped. Her senses were whirling, uncontrolled, still part and parcel of the strange young woman, not Gwenyth’s senses at all.

“Foolhardy,” he said, the word barely audible as he bent to recover the coat and drape it about her again. She did not know whether he meant himself or her. Then he muttered, “You have no understanding of the foolish risks you run.”

When he said nothing more, but just stood there looking sternly down at her, she began to collect her wits, to realize that there had been no fantasy, that what she had been allowing him to do had been real. No less pleasant, merely real. Biting her lower lip, she looked again at the top button of his shirt.

“I don’t think,” she said slowly, careful not to look up, lest she find herself trapped again in the depths of his eyes, “that what just happened between us was altogether my fault.”

“Nor will it be altogether your fault, I suppose,” he said grimly, “if I make good my threat to put you across my knee and teach you the lesson you deserve for what you did tonight.”

“You would not dare.” But she moved both hands protectively to her hips.

“Don’t tempt me. I ought not to have done what I did just now, either. But the temptation was too great to resist, and the temptation now is nearly as great, for there is no one else to deal with you. Or will you tell me that Tallyn would not dare, had he come upon you as I did tonight?”

“That,” she said with careful dignity, “is different. He has the right; you do not.”

“But he is not here,” he reminded her, “and I am. Surely you have learned by now that I do not always follow the rules.”

She had learned that much of him, to be sure. Biting her lower lip, she watched him warily, noting with relief when he took visible, rigid control of his temper.

After a moment of silence he said evenly, “You have a knack for stirring my anger, Gwenyth. Indeed, I cannot remember ever being so angry with anyone as I was when I saw you alone tonight in the river, or before, in London.”

“But I did nothing in London to warrant—”

“You did!” he snapped. “You might have been killed. Supposing that instead of being thrown against the partition, you had been knocked over the balcony. You would never have survived such a fall. And all because you decided to do as you pleased instead of what was sensible. Why are women never sensible?”

She straightened indignantly, “Of all the crackbrained things to say! Of course we are sensible, and even with all that was written in the papers, I saw nothing to suggest that violence would prevail that evening. The only thing that happened before then was that the noise of the crowd made it impossible to hear a word the actors said. No one in the theater was hurt, for heaven’s sake. And you blamed me for taking Pamela to town! That was not my doing at all.”

“Perhaps not,” he said, abandoning that argument, “but your swim tonight can scarcely be blamed upon anyone else, and here you are now, standing about in a wet shift, bandying words with a man who could as easily seduce you as look at you.”

“Could you?” she asked, a note of defiance, even of daring in her voice.

“Dammit, Gwen, I am not made of stone. Do not challenge me like that, or we’ll both be sorry.”

“Very well, but do not try to convince me that I should be afraid of you. I do not understand everything that’s happening, but I do know that I need not fear seduction from you.”

“By God, you need a master,” he growled. “Someone who will curb your extravagance and keep you from doing such idiotic things as must endanger both your life and your honor. What your brother has been thinking of to give you your head these past years, I cannot imagine. He ought to be horsewhipped.”

Her lips folded tightly together, and the only emotion she was aware of at that moment was anger. “You clearly want to hit someone, my lord, but I am cold. I am going back. We ought not to be standing here like this, anyway. We might be seen.”

Lyford glanced about, then looked ruefully at her again. “I can’t believe I forgot those men for even a single moment,” he said. “Did you see what they were doing?”

His attitude was suddenly a little too casual, and Gwenyth struggled to regain her wits, to remember what she had seen and heard. He had told her he’d seen her from the library window, and she knew that that was entirely possible. But she had not seen him, and she had looked. Moreover, it was equally possible that he had been near the river all along, that he was the “young master” the others had mentioned, that dark deeds were being done and that he knew all about them. In any event, his question was not so casual as he would have her believe. He wanted to know how much she had heard. Remembering the death of Silas Ferguson, she knew she did not dare follow her instinct to trust him until she had had time to think. She took refuge in her anger.

“I have no more to say to you tonight, Lyford,” she said icily. “If you do not desire to escort me back to the house, I will go alone.”

For a moment he looked as though he meant to press her for answers to his questions, but something in her expression must have convinced him that such an inquisition would prove futile, for he shrugged and reached out to adjust the coat over her shoulders instead. “Little idiot,” he murmured, but there was warmth in his voice again, and she was glad to hear it.

They found her dress and sandals and then did not speak again until they reached the house, entering through the east wing and taking the back stairway, as Gwenyth had done earlier. Upstairs, as they walked along the corridor toward her room, she might almost have predicted the moment he would speak.

He said very quietly, “We must talk, you know. There are matters that must be discussed.”

She glanced up to see that he was watching her intently. She wanted to trust him, to discuss the possibilities suggested by the events she had witnessed that night. But she could not forget that he might be part of whatever was happening, that a man had already been murdered for knowing too much.

As she opened her mouth to tell him that she was tired, the door next to her own opened suddenly, startling them both, and Pamela put her head out.

“There you are, Gwen! I couldn’t think where you had gone. Goodness, your hair is all wet! And your dress.”

Lyford said sternly, “You go to bed.”

“Well,” she said indignantly, letting the door swing wide as she placed her hands upon her hips, “of all the things to say when you come strolling along in a wet coat with a lady whose hair is dripping! I daresay your grandmama and Lady Cadogan would be vastly entertained to hear of it.”

“They will hear nothing about it,” Lyford said grimly.

“No?” Pamela retorted with a saucy smile. “Perhaps they will not if you will promise to take me back to London before the king’s Jubilee celebration has ended.”