Lord Deverill's Heir (3 page)

She had stood in quiet command, stiff and cold as the marble wall behind her, until finally the smithy’s ringing hammer and chisel ceased their monotonous echoing.

Arabella guided Lucifer off the graveled drive onto a narrow footpath that wound through the home wood to the small fishpond that nestled like an exquisite circular gem set amidst the green oak and maple forest. The day was too warm for the heavy velvet riding habit. The morning sun baked through the stark black material, plastering her chemise to her skin.

Only a splash of white about her neck broke the somberness of her dress.

Even the soft lawn ruffles about her throat made her skin itch.

Arabella slid off Lucifer’s muscular back and tethered him to a low sturdy yew tree. She hadn’t bothered with a saddle. She remembered clearly how her father had drawn her aside one day when she was no more than twelve years old, and told her he didn’t want to take a chance on losing her, not when she was the best rider for her size in the county.

Side saddles were death traps. He would not allow her to hunt in a side saddle. She could pose on one while an artist painted her, but that was all. She would ride astride or she would ride bareback.

She lifted her skirts from the wet morning grass and walked slowly about the edge of the still water to the far side, careful not to tread on the long, silken water reeds. They were beautiful, those reeds. The thought of trampling them was anathema to her.

What a blessed relief to escape from all those black-garbed visitors, with their long, unsmiling faces, nodding and bowing and reciting in low, doleful voices their mechanical phrases of sympathy. She marveled at how graciously her mother moved among them in her black rustling widow’s weeds, all in the latest style, of course, seemingly tireless, her charm and smile perhaps a bit brittle, but there and well in place. Lady Ann always knew exactly what was expected and executed every duty to perfection. Only Suzanne Talgarth, Arabella’s best friend from her earliest childhood, had pulled her aside, said nothing at all, and hugged her close.

Arabella paused a moment to listen to the baleful croaking of a lone frog, hidden from her view in the thick reeds. As she bent down with a graceful swish of her black skirts, she chanced to spot a patch of black, quite at variance with the myriad shades of green, in a cluster of reeds but a few feet away from her. She forgot the frog, and with a frown furrowing her brow, moved slowly and quietly forward.

She carefully parted a throng of reeds and found herself staring down at a sleeping man, stretched out his full length on his back, his arms pillowed behind his head. He wore no coat, only black breeches, black top boots, and a white frilled lawn shirt that was loose and open about his neck. She looked more closely at his face, calm and expressionless in sleep, and started back with a swallowed cry of surprise. It was as though she were looking at herself in a mirror, so alike were their features. His curling raven hair was cut close above his smooth brow.

Distinctive black brows flared upward in a proud arch, then sloped gently toward the temples. His mouth was full, as was hers, and his high cheekbones accentuated his straight Roman nose. His chin was firm, stubborn. She was certain that his nostrils flared when he was angry. She had dimples. She wondered when he smiled if he had dimples, too. No, he looked too stern a man to have something so whimsical. Naturally, the dimples did not suit her either. She had never even entertained the notion that she was beautiful, but looking at him, she thought he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

“You cannot be real,” she whispered, still staring down at the man, wondering, yet knowing who he must be. Then as the reason for his presence hit her, she cursed. “You damned bastard!” She was yelling now, so furious she was shaking with it. “You miserable scrap of filth! Wake up and get off my land before I shoot you! I might still whip you to within an inch of your miserable life!” She stopped then because she didn’t have her pistol with her. It didn’t matter. She still had her riding crop. She brought it up.

The man’s heavily fringed black lashes parted slowly, and she found herself gazing into her own upward-tilted gray eyes. His were just a bit darker than hers, as were her father’s. Dear God, but he was beautiful, more so than her father.

“My word,” the man said slowly, his voice as smooth as a stone at the bottom of a creek. He did not move, but narrowed his eyes against the glare of the sun to take in the flushed and furious face above him.

“I declare, it is a lady I see. Look at those white hands, never done a day’s work in her life. Yes, doubtless it is a lady. But where, I wonder, is the tavern wench who spoke such foul curses at me? She wants to shoot me? She wants to whip me? Certainly, this is a dramatic situation better suited for Drury Lane.”

He spoke well, like a gentleman. No matter. She continued to search his face, unmoved. There was a deep cleft in his chin that she did not have, and he was tanned, with a pirate’s dark face. She had always hated pirates. No, she wouldn’t let this man anger her. She asked, her voice as arrogant as her father’s had ever been, “Just who the devil are you?” Still he did not shift his position, just lay there, stretched out at her feet, as indolent as a lizard on a sunny rock. But he was grinning at her now, showing strong white teeth. She saw then that his gray eyes were flecked with pale gold lights. It was an odd distraction. Neither she nor her father had that. She was glad. She decided it looked common, those pale gold lights.

“Do you always talk like a slut off the back streets?” he asked in a calm easy voice, bringing himself up to rest on his elbows. Those eyes of his were deep and clear, and there was an intelligence in them that she recognized and hated.

“The way I choose to talk to an insolent ruffian lazing about on Deverill land cannot be questioned by the likes of you.” She brought her riding crop up from her side and slapped the leather thongs lightly against her black-gloved hand.

“Ah, am I now to be whipped?”

“It is very possible. I asked you a question, but your reason for not answering now occurs to me.” She stared at him thoughtfully and felt a sickening tightness in her chest. But she’d been taught to face even the most unpleasant things straight on, with no shying away. “You are obviously a bastard—my father’s bastard. You cannot be so blind as not to notice the great similarity between our features, and I am the very image of my father.” She averted her face, unwilling to let him see her pain.

Tears burned her eyes. Yes, she was the image of her father, but not the right sex. Poor father, he had not the good fortune to beget a son in wedlock. But he’d gotten a bastard son. She turned wintry eyes back to his face and said bleakly, “I wonder if there are others like you. If there are, I only pray that they do not all resemble him as closely as you do. I always wished for a brother, for now, you see, my father’s line will die out. I am only a female and thus not acceptable. I have never believed it fair.”

“Perhaps it isn’t fair, but it is the way things are. As for a bastard of your father’s so closely resembling him, it would seem unlikely to me.

But you appear to be in a better position to know of such matters than I.

What, however, does seem likely is that if the earl sired children out of wedlock, they would have the good sense not to show their faces here.” He spoke with calm matter-of-factness, sensing her hurt. He rose unhurriedly to his feet to face her. He didn’t want to frighten her. He didn’t want her to feel threatened by him. That would happen soon enough.

“But you are here.” She was forced to look up as she spoke. “Damn you to hell, you are even of his size. Dear God, how can you come here at such a time? Have you no sense of honor, no sense of decency? My father is dead and yet here you are, acting as if you belong here.”

“You question my honor. I wish you would not do that. I do have some, so it is said of me.”

She felt a terrible urge to slash his face with her riding crop. He stepped toward her, looming over her head, blocking the sun. Her nostrils flared and her eyes darkened, mirroring her violent intent.

“Don’t do it, my dear,” he said, his voice as quiet and gentle as a summer rain.

“I am not your dear,” she said, so angry with him, with herself, she backed away from him. Her eyes narrowed and she said with cold cruelty lacing her words, “You need not tell me your purpose for being here. I am a fool not to have guessed sooner. My father’s bastard, come for the reading of his will. You have no more honor than that croaking toad over there. Do you think to be acknowledged, to be given some of my father’s money?” She was shaking with anger, shaking with frustration, for he was the larger, larger than even her father, and she wasn’t a man and thus couldn’t beat him into the dirt. Ah, and she wanted to. She wanted to pound him. She wanted to grind him beneath her heel. She sensed his indifference to her as he leaned down, brushed twigs and grass blades from his breeches, and picked up his coat. She hated him for his indifference.

“Yes,” he said slowly, as he rose, “I am here for the reading of the earl’s will.”

“God, you are damnable, unspeakable!”

“What venom from such a lovely mouth,” he said mildly as he shrugged into his coat. “Tell me, gentle lady, has no man yet taken you in hand?

Perhaps taken that lovely throat between his hands and forced you to pay attention to his words? No, I can see that you have run wild, that you have been allowed to do just as you please with no regard to others and what they may be thinking or feeling.” He took a step toward her.

“Perhaps I could be convinced to bring you to some sort of obedience. You do want taming. Perhaps I could even bring myself to thrash you.” Joy filled her. He had threatened her. He was as vulgar and common as she had first believed. She said almost jovially, “Come here, you bastard, and let me show you what a lady can do.” She took a sudden step to her right, waving her hand at him, taunting him, motioning for him to come to her.

But he didn’t move. His left eyebrow shot up a good inch, making the arch more arrogant, just as her father’s eyebrows had done, particularly when he had spoken in that cold indifferent way to his wife, to Arabella’s mother. No, she wouldn’t think about that. Surely when her father had done that, her mother had done something to provoke it. Yes, certainly.

It had happened rarely. It had been nothing.

“If I am a bastard, then you must be the ill-begotten daughter of a fishmonger. As to my coming near to you, why, I can think of little else that would give me lesser pleasure. You think to strike me with the riding crop? I recommend that you think carefully before you raise that crop to me. I am larger than you and I am a man. I do caution you to exercise caution.”

“I have thought through everything very carefully. You are a coward.”

“You are very lucky that you are female,” he said finally, and then he laughed, fully and richly, and she saw that he had dimples, as deep as hers, in each cheek.

“Yes,” he said, looking at her up and down, insulting her with that male assessing look, and knowing it. “One would almost think that you wished me to wrest that riding crop from you and give you a sound thrashing. Are you one of those females who enjoy rough play?”

“You try it and I will see you in Hell.” It dawned on her with something of a shock that she no longer held the reins of control. She knew a moment of uncertainty about herself. Because she could not bear to feel the weaker, her anger twisted and knotted inside her. She clutched the riding crop in her hand so tightly that a stab of pain shot up her fingers.

No, she wouldn’t let him have control. She forced herself to loosen her grip on the riding crop. “Get off my land,” she said, her voice as autocratic as her father’s had been when military men had come to Evesham Abbey to speak to him on war matters.

“Your land? Though you have the manners and tongue of an ill-bred, spoiled young man, you surely cannot mean to lay claim to the earl’s title? No, you cannot do that.”

He unwittingly struck at the festering wound deep within her, laying it open, raw and ugly. She was filled with the despair of failure, with the old hatred of herself for not being born a boy, her father’s heir, her father’s pride. A curse lay leaden on her tongue. She whipped back her head, drew upon a reserve of strength unique to herself, and said with dignity that took him off his guard, for it sat strangely upon the shoulders of one so young, “I suppose it is now my mother’s land.

Unfortunately, my father did not have a son, as I said earlier, nor did his younger brother, Thomas. It grieves me as it must have grieved him, for his title must become extinct. My father was not blessed in the sex of his offspring.”

Admirable, he thought. Dear God, she was beautiful, now more beautiful than she had been five minutes before. Aloud he said easily, “Don’t reproach yourself for being a woman. Surely you cannot imagine that the fault somehow lies within you. Your father was more proud of you than he would have been of a dozen sons.” He felt a stirring of compassion for her, for the leap of hope in her gray eyes, eyes so much like his. He didn’t like it.

Lady Arabella, daughter of the late Earl of Strafford was back again, her voice filled with contempt. “You could hardly know what my father felt.

He would not have recognized you. If you ever saw him, it was only at a distance. If he did sire you, he would have never allowed you to come near Evesham Abbey, near his wife, near me, his daughter. My father was honorable. He was faithful to his wife. He held honor dear.” He wanted to tell her that what she’d said hadn’t made a lot of sense, but he said only, “As you will.”

Arabella stiffened rigid as an oak sapling. He was dismissing her? She sensed in him a habit of command, the easy use of authority, the confidence of a man used to being obeyed, but surely that couldn’t be right. He was probably exactly what he looked like—a pirate and a rogue, a man who lived by his wits, a man who cared little for anyone, in short, her father’s bastard.

She said calmly, “I bid you good-bye. I only hope that your sense of honor will prohibit your presence at Evesham Abbey. It would cause my mother great pain were you to intrude upon her grief. If you have any decency at all, you will stay away.” Would he think she was begging him?