Seduction Becomes Her (25 page)

“I want you to do what will make you happiest,” he replied with equal caution.

Now what was she to make of that? Disliking the situation and not willing to fence indefinitely with him, she stood up and shook out the folds of her spotted muslin gown. “If you think that I am going to let you have all the adventure and go off on this, this scavenger hunt by yourself, you can think again,” she said bluntly. “I shall go with you to Poole and Brighton.” She gave him a level look. “I am your wife, and my place is by your side.”

Her spine rigid, she marched from the room, leaving Charles to stare after her in mingled despair and delight. She was coming with him! he thought, elated. Even if, he acknowledged gloomily, she had neatly sidestepped his offer to return to her brother and sister. Had she done so because she cared for him and wanted to be with him? Or because, he wondered with a razor-sharp stab of pain, it was her duty?

T
hough Charles came to her bed that night and their lovemaking was as passionate as ever, Daphne was conscious of a faint restraint between them. They pretended otherwise, but it was there, hovering in the air between them like an unwelcome wraith. She wrinkled her nose. Not a fair comparison when held up to Sir Wesley and the little ghost in her bedroom at Beaumont Place.

Having bid good-bye to the staff, it occurred to her, as Charles assisted her into the carriage early that next morning, that she seemed to be surrounded by ghosts in one form or another. Not only the ones at Beaumont Place, but also the shades of Charles’s brother, Raoul, and his stepmother, Sofia.

She cast a glance over at Charles, wondering what he was thinking as he stared out of the window of the coach. Why, she asked herself for the tenth time this morning, had he made the offer for her to return to Cornwall? Didn’t he want her with him? Was he already regretting the bonds of matrimony? Or had his suggestion been nothing more than simple consideration? Whatever the reason, she suspected that it had been more than just consideration—there had been a note in his voice, something in his stance that made her think that there was a deeper meaning behind his words. But what? And why would he send her away? She could think of dozens of reasons, some even logical, why he wouldn’t want her to accompany him, but none of them lessened the hurt that lodged like a thorn in her heart.

“I’m sorry,” Charles said, breaking into her thoughts, “to drag you along on what I am sure is a fool’s errand.”

She smiled uncertainly at him. “I think of it as an adventure. Our first adventure together.”

He picked up her hand lying on the seat between them and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “The first, I hope, of many,” he said huskily.

Giddy with love for him, Daphne smiled widely at him. It didn’t matter why he had offered to send her back to Cornwall, what mattered was that she loved him and they were together. “Undoubtedly, we shall have many adventures in our lives together,” she replied. Her smile wobbled just a trifle. “Some more enjoyable than others.”

His eyes caressed her face, and he kissed her hand again. “Much more enjoyable—I swear it to you.”

Her spirits buoyed by his words, she leaned back against the velvet squabs and settled down for the journey to Poole.

After the long hours in the coach and nights spent in cramped country inns, Daphne was glad when they reached Poole. It was midmorning when they approached the seaport, and Charles ordered the coachman to drive directly to Raoul’s property, just at the edge of town. The property proved to be more extensive than Charles had been led to believe by either Raoul or Sofia. From the main road, amidst the trees and shrubs, he barely glimpsed the rooftop of a house. A narrow, overgrown driveway angled between the trees, and as the coach left the main road, driving toward the house in the distance, it was then that it occurred to Charles that the place might be locked and that he had no key. To his relief, nestled in a bend of the road, was a small cottage that housed a caretaker, Mr. Jacques Robinet. Mr. Robinet was a small, elderly gentleman, hard of hearing if the left-hand cupping his ear was anything to go by. Looking frail enough to be blown over by a strong wind, Mr. Robinet explained, in a heavy French accent that made his speech nearly incomprehensible, that he had worked for Miss Sofia’s family in France and had accompanied her family to England. Anxiety creeping into his voice and his dark eyes darting nervously to Charles’s face, he admitted that he lived rent-free in the cottage in return for keeping an eye on the place. It was obvious that Mr. Robinet was at once awed to finally be meeting the new owner and clearly worried that he might be forced to move.

Charles put the old man’s fears to rest, telling him only that they had stopped by on a whim to inspect the house but that he had no intentions of making any changes; Mr. Robinet’s position was secure. Mr. Robinet was clearly relieved as he placed the heavy brass key into Charles’s hand.

“Merci,
Monsieur Weston,” Mr. Robinet said in a quavering voice.
“Moi,
I will serve you as I did Monsieur Raoul and Madame Sofia. You will see.
Merci beaucoup.”

Charles nodded and said, “I’m sure that you will, and I will rest easier knowing that you are here to watch over the place.”

“That was very kind of you,” Daphne said once the coach had pulled away from Mr. Robinet.

“What else could I do?” Charles muttered. “I wasn’t about to throw the old fellow out of his home.”

The two-storied Georgian-style house was set in the middle of a tidy little garden, and as they mounted the steps, Daphne said, “It is a good thing that you did not have Mr. Gerrard sell the place, isn’t it?”

Charles shrugged. “I should have ordered him to do so once the estate was settled, but it simply didn’t matter to me at the time. I told him to continue to pay the bills and that at some point, I would go over things with him and decide which expenses to eliminate. There are probably any number of expenses laid at Raoul’s door that I am still paying for these days.” At her scandalized look, he laughed. “Extravagant, I know, but as you said, rather a good thing, since no one has lived in the house since Raoul.”

Charles and Daphne spent several frustrating hours poking about the stale, dusty space, looking specifically for any likely hiding places for a cache of jewels. They found two, one behind a bookcase in a small library downstairs and another on the second floor underneath a loose board near the bed in what had obviously been Raoul’s bedroom. One held several indiscreet letters written by the wife of a noted leader of the
ton
, the other an iron key. Charles promptly burnt the letters in the fireplace, but the iron key puzzled him. It wasn’t to the house, so what was it used for? And why did Raoul have it in a hidden place?

From the second floor of the house, Charles noticed a small building at the far end of the garden. In the summer, unless one knew what to look for, the stone building would have been hidden by the rampant climbing rose vine that covered it, but this time of year, with the leaves of the rose just unfurling, Charles could make out its size and shape. He looked from the building to the iron key in his hand, premonition coursing through him.

He needed to search that stone building, but he hesitated to leave Daphne alone in Raoul’s house. He knew that the odds of Raoul being alive were slim to none, but he wasn’t taking any chances that Raoul would suddenly nip out of the woodwork and spirit her away. When he suggested that she might want to wait in the coach for him while he explored the building in the garden, the look she sent him told him better than words that she was not going to cooperate. She would go with him.

The garden was extensive, and in another month or two would have been breathtaking, but neither one of them was aware of anything but their destination. After his third false start down one of the many winding paths, Charles said grimly, “It is a good thing I spied the place from Raoul’s bedroom window, else I’d never have guessed that it existed.”

“It’s possible,” Daphne said, her hand nervously tightening on his arm, “that he planned it that way.”

“I’m sure he did,” Charles replied curtly, his eyes cold and hard.

After traversing a frustrating array of curves and loops along the way, the building abruptly appeared before them. The path ended in a tiny clearing, the squat, windowless stone building blocking further exploration. The moment they stepped into the clearing, they both stopped as if they had slammed into a wall of steel.

Daphne had never thought herself particularly imaginative, but staring at that ugly little building, she was conscious of an air of evil. Instinctively, she took a step backward.

Freeing his arm from her hand, Charles said in a voice she didn’t recognize, “Stay here.”

Daphne took one look at his face and froze. This tall, black-haired man beside her was an utter stranger—it was as if the Charles Weston she had known and married had never existed. This stranger frightened her, his face was harsh and set in grim lines, but it was his eyes…She swallowed. His eyes were as empty and cold as the North Sea, and she shivered again, taking a step away from him. She did not recognize this man, and he frightened her.

Oblivious to anything but the building in front of him, the iron key held tightly in his hand, Charles walked over to the thick-timbered door in the middle of the building. He knew that the key would fit, and he knew what he would find beyond that door. He looked at Daphne. “Do not,” he snapped, “follow me.”

Turning back to the door, he slid the key in the big, black lock and gave it a savage twist. The lock gave way, and he pushed open the door and walked inside.

Charles didn’t need to explore the interior to know that Raoul had used this place, as well as the dungeon beneath the Dower House in Devonshire, for his vicious amusements. Women had died here. Died in agony, screaming for help that never appeared. And Raoul, his own brother, had been the monster who had slaughtered them…for pleasure. Bile rose in Charles’s throat, and loathing and horror washed over him.

The only source of light came from the doorway, but guessing what would be there, Charles reached along the wall for the candle and flint that had been placed on a narrow ledge. Lighting the candle, he stepped into the room, carefully shutting the door behind him and dropping the iron bar that locked it from the inside. He wanted no one to see this room, least of all Daphne.

It was not a dungeon, but the room, though on a much smaller scale, was terrifyingly similar. A tiny cell was in one corner, and iron manacles hung from the wall; a stone slab served the same purpose as the one in the dungeon beneath the Dower House, the dark splatter of stains on its surface silent testimony to the horrifying fate of Raoul’s helpless, nameless victims.

Moving stiffly like a man whose limbs were frozen, Charles forced himself to explore the area. His greatest fear was not realized; he found no bodies. Raoul, he decided, must have disposed of the remains of his victims under cover of darkness. Most likely, by throwing them into the sea, he thought sickly, forcing himself to look more closely at the room and its meager contents. He didn’t expect to find anything useful, and he did not. His search complete, he unbolted the door and fairly shot out of the building, gulping in great breaths of air, trying to cleanse the odor of death from him, trying to push away the horror of that small room.

He locked the door and strode over to where Daphne waited for him. Daphne took one look at his pale, tortured face and flung herself into his arms, wrapping herself around him as if the touch of her body could draw all the pain and poison away from him. Her lips pressing desperate little kisses along his neck and jaw, she said, “Do not think of it. Put it from you.” Cupping his face in her hands, she made him look at her. “He was a monster. You are not. You are nothing like him, and you bear no blame or guilt. His deeds are his own…and that of his loathsome mother.”

Charles gave her a twisted smile. “I know the truth of what you say, but I cannot…”

Daphne shook him. “You must. You must not let his sins become your sins.” She shook him again, harder. “He was the evil one, not you.” She clutched him close. “Never you.”

Charles crushed her next to him and buried his head against her neck. For silent moments, they stayed locked together, Charles feeling the horror, the ugliness drift from him as he drank in the sweet scent of her perfume, the soft warmth of her body. Daphne would allow no devils to ride him, and she would always lead him into the sunlight and drive away the darkness. She might not love him, kindness might prompt her actions, but she was his salvation, and he loved her more than life itself. His lips found hers, and he kissed her deeply, reveling in her instant response, reveling in the joy that she brought him.

Lifting his lips from hers, he tried for a light note. “Thank you. Not many brides would be so accepting of a fiend like Raoul in the family tree.” He ran a caressing finger over her mouth. “I am sure this is not quite how you expected to spend your first few days of marriage.”

She smiled tremulously. “Does it matter? If Fate is kind, we shall have many, many years together, years which we shall look back on with joy. So what are a few days of, um, unpleasantness over the course of a lifetime?”

“Unpleasant is one way of putting it,” he said dryly, urging her away from this cursed spot and toward the front of the house.

Daphne spared a last glance at the building. “What are you going to do with it?”

“Burn it from the inside out and let it fall into itself,” he said grimly.

“Despite that ghastly little building, we didn’t really find anything helpful at the house,” Daphne said a few minutes later as the coach bounced down the driveway toward the main road. Thoughtfully she added, “But that doesn’t prove anything either.”

“I would have been more encouraged if we
had
found some jewels,” Charles replied sourly.

“Because it would prove that Sofia did give them to him and he didn’t return for them?”

He nodded. “At least we would have something to show for our efforts and confirmation of our suspicions. And if we had found some jewels, it would indicate that he did die because he didn’t come back for them. As it is, we’re still stumbling around in the dark.” He looked at her, noting the weariness in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have brought you along,” he said abruptly. “I should have insisted that you return to Cornwall.”

“And have everyone gossiping that we had quarreled so soon?” Daphne muttered, looking at her gloved hands in her lap.

His eyes narrowed. “Is that why you came with me? To keep others from gossiping about us?”

“Does it matter why I came with you?” she asked, lifting her gaze to his face. “Isn’t it sufficient that I am by your side?”

No! By God, he thought fiercely, staring blindly out the window at the gathering dusk, her presence was
not
sufficient. Her reasons for being here beside him mattered enormously. It mattered so much it was eating him alive, tearing him apart, and he wondered again why she had remained with him and not returned to Cornwall. He wanted her presence here with him to be because there was no other place on earth she’d rather be and not, he admitted with an acrid taste in his throat, because she wished to avoid wagging tongues or it was her damned
duty.
He smiled bitterly to himself. It wasn’t enough that she loved her siblings above all else, but it appeared that she also loved duty and the avoidance of gossip with an equal fervor. Which left him where in her affections? Somewhere dangling at the bottom?