Priceless (26 page)

With one sigh as she passed into unconsciousness, Bronwyn slid off the bed and onto the floor. Daphne made
a disgusted noise and prepared to help her, but Adam stopped her. “No. She doesn’t want to be here with a man all London despises, and I don’t want her here. Leave her. Just…leave her.”

Adam was sitting up for the first time in days. His color
was good, he moved with an ease that amazed Bronwyn.

And he had become a stranger.

Not a stranger, really. She recognized this Adam, remembered him from the first time she’d met him. His lips curved in an insincere smile. He radiated hostility. Somehow, some way, he’d become the Adam of long ago. He’d retreated behind a mask as stiff and as cold as any worn by Carroll Judson, and she didn’t understand why.

She only knew he wore it well. He wore it with the ease brought from years of practice.

She brushed the velvet material on the arm of the chair with the edge of her hand. The light fell on it, sparking it to beauty. Trying to maintain her composure, she admired it while avoiding his gaze. “We have arranged for you to be transported back to Boudasea Manor tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

Hardly encouragement, but she had to try. She wanted to speak with him be with him, as she had been with him before. “Madame Rachelle has Judson locked in her pantry.”

One elegant brow lifted as he drawled, “In her pantry?”

“It has the best lock in the house.” She smiled slightly.
“She visits with him every evening, making sure he’s comfortable and well fed.”

“I would think she’d be anxious to place him in the prison, where he’d be uncomfortable and ill fed.”

“Not at all.” She smoothed the green velvet the other way until it displayed its dark side. “The jailers can be bribed, she says, to provide pleasant surroundings and decent food, and if enough money is produced, to provide escape.”

“I see.” His hands, which had been resting on the covers, rose and templed at his chin. “Why not keep him here, then, and torment him as he tormented…others?”

Unable to help herself, she asked, “Like me?” His mouth tightened, and she lost her nerve. “She wants to keep him healthy, the better to have him survive the travail she plans for him.”

“What travail is that?”

“I don’t know. She says he will decide.”

“Interesting.” His eyes narrowed.

“Your mother wanted to come into London, but she found the excitement too much for her.”

“Lord, yes.” The mention of his mother brought a spark to his eye. “Don’t let her risk her health. She’s all I have.”

She recognized a cutting blade when exposed to one. She’d seen too much of the knife, and his words stabbed at her deliberately. “You have more than that.”

“You mean my betrothal?”

A step in the right direction, she determined. “Exactly.”

A smile played about his mouth. “Olivia should not be exposed to the evil London vapors.”

Her fingernails lurched through the nap of the velvet, destroying the pattern she’d so carefully created. “Oh, Olivia didn’t even want to come. Not even when she was told you were sick, and she adores nursing. I don’t, you see. It makes me ill. Invalids are quite beyond my ken.”

“Are they? Yet you revived from your ordeal with
scarcely a whimper. You were kidnapped, bound, gagged, used as a pawn in a dreadful maneuver.”

It sounded as if he accused her, but she refused to experience guilt for recovering from her bruises without scars. “Yes.”

“You were there when Judson and I were trying to kill each other.”

“Yes.” She had to try and explain, make him see she would have given her life for him. “I was there when the mob took you, too. I forced this big man to carry me forward. I kicked him, trying to make him intervene. I did what I could to rescue you”—she faltered at his forbidding frown—“but the mob proved too much for me.”

He dismissed her earnest plea with barely a shrug. “I wouldn’t expect one small woman to stop so determined a lynching. It’s you I am concerned about.” So serious he seemed almost caring, he asked, “Are you well?”

Unsure of the dependability of her voice, she nodded.

“Did he hurt you?”

“Judson?” Her voice rasped in her throat. “He tried.”

“Did he rape you?”

As plain as that. The seaman had overtaken the gentleman, and Adam didn’t wrap his query in any pretty camouflage. She could be plain, too. “No. He tried….” She wasn’t as tough as she wanted to be. The memory of her wrestling match on the seat of the carriage made her choke. She wanted comfort. She wanted to throw herself on Adam’s chest and weep, but no sympathy swayed that cold man seated on the bed. A wave of nausea struck her, and she put her chin down, breathing deeply until she could finish. “He tried, but was incapable.”

He never flinched, never moved. Her emotion meant nothing to him. “Is that why he was late coming to kill Walpole?”

“I suppose.” Was that all he had to say? Was he repulsed that Judson had tried to assault her? Did that make her
dirty in his eyes? She rose, clung to the back of the chair as dizziness swept her. “I must go. There are things I need to attend to.”

Adam watched as she walked to the dresser, found it with her hand, moved to the door casing, caught it, held it, then groped out of the room. Remorse gripped him, but he held tight to his resolve. He must not involve Bronwyn in his exile from society, but how difficult it was to deceive her. She knew him better than anyone alive. She knew him too well. She had become everything his mother wished for him.

This mask he wore, so familiar, once a part of him, no longer fit. Under the reproach of Bronwyn’s gaze, cracks developed. Chips threatened to break off and reveal his true countenance, but he could hardly let that happen.

What kind of man would subject the woman he loved to the censure of society? Not he. He had always known innocence was no defense, but a London mob had had to beat it into him before he had truly understood. Even now he cringed as he remembered standing on the platform on Change Alley, a noose around his neck, and seeing Bronwyn on the shoulder of some dock walloper. She hadn’t been cheering his demise, he knew, but she had been about to witness it nevertheless. She had seen the scorn of the crowd, of the gentlemen and the streetwalkers.

She thought she wanted him, and without conceit he knew she did. Physically they were a match. He’d told his mother he wanted to be the father of his first child. He’d told Bronwyn he used any method, including passion, to keep her close. He’d told himself he seduced her just to bend her to his will. He didn’t mind hiding the truth from his mother, from Bronwyn, but he knew now he’d been hiding it from himself.

He wanted her. He wanted her above him, below him, in daylight, in candlelight. He wanted her head on his shoulder, her breath in his ear.

But in that place where his demons lurked, he knew he would rather hurt her now than have her turn away from him when she realized how thoroughly society despised him. He felt better every day, and when he was capable he would flee Bronwyn’s vicinity like the coward he was and never see her again.

His life had been arduous, and it had made him strong. He would do what was right—but oh, how hard it was, to place the brightest star of his sky beyond his own reach.

The scene in the entrance hall at Boudasea Manor rivaled the most dreadful amateur dramatics Adam had ever seen. His mother wept in his embrace while Lady Nora wiped invisible tears from her artfully rouged cheeks. Lord Gaynor slapped Adam on the back and roared, “Good to see you, me boy,” while a sobbing Olivia gripped Bronwyn in what looked like white-knuckled desperation.

Bronwyn patted her sister on the back while supervising the transportation of their luggage up the stairs.

“Come into the parlor at once and put your feet up. Got some of your finest brandy waiting for you there.” Lord Gaynor winked. “Gave m’wife and I quite a scare with your little illness.”

“I’m sure.” Adam watched with a sardonic gaze as Lord Gaynor led the way, ordered the seating, poured the drinks, made it clear how well he played host in Adam’s own house. Mab, he noted, let Gaynor do as he would, and he wondered at it. What game was his mother playing?

“But relieved we are to have you here at last.” Lord Gaynor smiled fondly at his wife. “Lady Nora and I feared the first of the wedding guests would arrive before you.”

As Adam watched, little waves rippled in his brandy glass, and he noted the tremble in his hand. After placing his drink on the table, he twisted to face Lord Gaynor as his mother’s hand tightened around his fingers. “Wedding guests?”

“You could have at least let him rest before you told him our surprise,” Lady Nora reproved. Abandoning her own advice, she said, “We’ve planned the entire wedding, Rafferty and I, set the date and ordered the dress. You will marry our very own Olivia a week from tomorrow. Isn’t that breathtaking?”

“Exactly the word I would have chosen.” This was a joke. A joke of phenomenal bad taste, but a joke nevertheless. “Mab?”

Mab answered his reproach with a reproach of her own. “When I heard of your injury, my health failed me for a short time. When I recovered, I found the Edanas had taken care of the wedding, right down to the details.”

Horrified at his mother’s defection, he gasped, “But Mab—”

“And as they pointed out, the reasons for this marriage still exist, just as they did when Bronwyn first came to the house to be your bride.” Mab smiled at him like a woman who understood fate and had at last become resigned to its workings. “You want an impeccable bride who will advance your standing in society. The Edanas want money.”

“Mab, you and I discussed this, and we decided that—” That Bronwyn was the woman for him. What malevolent demon had changed his mother’s mind? Seeking support, he looked about for Bronwyn, but he saw only Olivia. Never before had the beautiful Edana sister looked gawky in his eyes, but she did now. She stood awkwardly, like a bird undecided about flight. She flapped her arms, bit her lips, shredded her handkerchief as her sister used to do.

“Olivia!” Lady Nora’s sharp tone brought her to attention. “Tell your bridegroom how happy you are to share the marriage rites with him.”

Olivia tried to speak, but though her lips moved, no sound came out.

Lady Nora provided the dialogue. “She’s thrilled.”

Awash with pity, Adam protested, “I doubt I’ll be a worthy bridegroom in only a week’s time. Perhaps—”

“You’ll have your whole life ahead of you to perform a bridegroom’s duties,” Lady Nora told him coyly.

“Besides, the autumn has far advanced,” Lord Gaynor added. “’Tis October, and Lady Nora and I have a desire to see our Olivia settled before we go into London for the Season. So when Lady Nora suggested we use this as the Season’s first party, I agreed. Of course.”

“Of course. But I think you underestimate the depth of society’s abhorrence for me.” Adam’s smile stretched his mouth, but his lips felt tight with tension, and he abandoned his attempt to be tactful. “No one will come to this wedding.”

Lady Nora sucked in her cheeks in a practiced expression of superiority. “Of course they will. You underestimate the influence my husband, my daughters, and I have on society. And”—she held up her hand to stop his protest—“should society really be so disapproving of you, there is still the curiosity factor. Oh, they’ll come, for one reason or the other.” She looked about her. “Where’s Bronwyn? I haven’t got to greet my own dear child.”

Bronwyn was nowhere to be seen, and Olivia stammered, “She went upstairs. Perhaps she is exhausted from the journey.”

“More likely she is exhausted from her family,” Mab said. “Poor girl, what a thing to come home to.”

“You can’t hide from me forever.” Olivia stood before Bronwyn, twisting her handkerchief. “I’m your sister. I love you.”

Bronwyn settled her back firmly against the stone bench artistically placed beneath a spreading yew. The fall colors of the garden comforted her, turning as it was from living bits of creation to the dead dull of winter. As the
cold of the seat seeped through to her spine, she replied, “I know you do.”

Shuffling the gravel of the garden path beneath her shoe, Olivia said, “I can’t stand this estrangement between us. You’re my best friend. You’re the only person who understands me.”

Brief and bitter, Bronwyn laughed. “I don’t understand you. I thought I did, but I don’t.”

Olivia dropped her outstretched hand. “What do you mean?”

As it filtered through the leaves, sunshine speckled Olivia’s lovely face as if nature herself were complimenting the girl. That infuriated Bronwyn. Since she’d returned from London and discovered the wedding date set, everything had infuriated Bronwyn. “You said you didn’t want to get married yet,” she accused. “You said you didn’t want to marry Adam. Yet tomorrow you’re going to.”

“You’re just angry because you love him and you can’t have him,” Olivia cried.

“A silly little reason, I know.”

“Then you admit it?” Olivia pounced like a cat on a juicy mouse. “You love Lord Rawson?”

Sulky at being cornered, Bronwyn drawled, “Yes. I suppose.”

“I told you so! I told you you loved him.” Olivia ground her fist into her palm. “Well, it’s your fault I’m marrying him.”

“My fault?” Bronwyn put incredulity into her tone, but not much conviction. She knew what Olivia would say.

“Yes, your fault. You ran away and stuck me in that situation. You even knew Maman and Da would suggest I take your place.”

“I didn’t know it.” At Olivia’s skeptical sniff, Bronwyn admitted, “I suspected.”

“So it’s up to you to avert this disaster and stop the wedding.” Olivia tried to sound authoritative and succeeded in sounding doubtful.

“How do you propose I do that?”

“Just tell Lord Rawson you want him.” Olivia’s authority strengthened. “He’ll take the appropriate steps.”

Brushing a leaf from her lap in elaborate carelessness, Bronwyn asked, “What makes you think he cares?”

Olivia laughed, a merry, tinkling laugh that ran like the bells of the chapel. “I think he would not only do anything not to marry me, I think he would do everything to marry you.”

Mulling that over, Bronwyn said, “Think of the scandal. First me, then you, then me again.”

“That’s Maman talking.” Olivia sat beside Bronwyn and caught her hands. “You’ve always been the brave one. In Ireland you used to jump off the cliffs onto the sand, remember?”