The Passionate One (19 page)

Good, Ash thought.
With very little effort he should be able to repair the damage done by his
ill-advised recitation and St. John’s gossip. They were a provincial, gullible
lot.

A vague sense of
self-disgust crawled up Ash’s throat. He swallowed it down, like he had every
bit of vileness in his life, accepting it whole. Watt wanted to like him.

Deliberately he
forced his gaze past Rhiannon, sitting on the ground beside Watt, fussing over
his splintered leg. Watt covered her hand with his great tanned paw, leaning
over to speak earnestly. They were absorbed in each other, deaf to all others,
but Ash’s ears were damnably acute.

“… of course you
must ride this afternoon, Rhiannon,” Phillip was saying. “I refuse to allow you
to stay back because of my injury. Besides, Father arranged this hunt
particularly for you. Really, Rhiannon, you must go. I insist on it!”

She clashed the
back of her free hand across her cheeks, ridding herself of tears. Ash clamped
down on his insane impulse to snatch her up into his arms and kiss the tears
from her face.

“—really are too
kind, Phillip,” she answered. “I don’t deserve you.”

Phillip awkwardly
patted her cheek. “It’s all right. Nerves. A day before our wedding and all.”

She colored
violently, and pulled her hand from under his. Ash saw the moment in which her
honor extinguished her common sense. “Phillip, I have to tell—”

She mustn’t do
it.

“Watt!” Ash hailed.

Rhiannon glanced
up. Her mouth looked bruised.

“Miss Russell.” Ash
nodded his greeting. “Are you not going to join the delightful game Miss
Chapham has arranged?”

He smiled
brilliantly. She needed a few lessons in deception. She’d best learn them soon.
Before
she entered Phillip’s bed. He swung his glance back to Phillip.
The blond giant regarded him sullenly.

“Watt,” Ash said,
“if you don’t take a care to warn visitors of the potency of your village
scrumpy, you’ll end up with a great line of dunderheaded knaves queuing up
before your magistrate trying to account for their idiocy.”

The hurt somewhat
evaporated from Watt’s expression, but the wariness remained.

“I barely recall
what type of an ass I made of myself last night,” Ash said with winning candor,
“but I’m sure it was a large one. I’m liable to lay claim to all sorts of
crimes when I’m in that state. And make promises I can’t keep and swear
allegiance I have no intention of remaining loyal to. Forgive me?”

He ignored the hurt
in Rhiannon’s eyes. Of course she would think he was addressing her.

“Pay it no mind, Merrick,” Phillip said, clapping Ash on the shoulder. “And never mind what was said or sung
or...” he blundered on, “whatever. Fair Badden’s scrumpy has caused the best of
us to make ridiculous claims. And,” he shot a dark look at St. John, “there are
those who will always derive pleasure from carrying tales. Whether true or no.”

“You are too kind,”
Ash murmured.

“Here. Sit by me.”
Phillip waved Andrew, the innkeeper’s boy, to bring another chair. Ash sank
into it. Rhiannon scuttled away from him.

“I say, what’s that
they’re playing, Miss Russell?” Ash asked pleasantly, needing an excuse to look
at her, to examine just how deep he’d driven the spike.

“Blindman’s Bluff,”
she said, eyes lowered. “Would you care to play?”

He stretched his
long legs out in front of him. “Dear me, no. Wouldn’t know how.”

“But everyone knows
Blindman’s Bluff,” she said.

“Not me,” he said.
“There was no nursery where I grew up. No playroom. No classroom. Not a nanny
or a governess. Only a twisted, misshapen old nurse that worked cheap and was
for whatever reason loyal to my mother’s family name.”

As soon as the
words had crossed his lips, he regretted them. Rhiannon had gone still, her
face numb.

He glared at her.
She’d bewitched him, forced confidences from him that he had not intended to
give, brought a ripple of unease to the smooth tableau he’d been working to
create. He sought to regain lost ground.

He shook his head.
“By Jingo, one must tread carefully about you and your softhearted bride, Watt.
I can understand her frailty, being country bred and lacking wisdom in the ways
of the world and worldly men.”
He must not look at her.
“I didn’t mean
to suggest I did not play games as a child. We played aplenty.”

Desperate
games. Feral games. His father had been a master at teaching them.

“Mostly games of
chance. Inveterate gamblers, we Merricks. Same with your people I imagine, eh,
Watt?”

“Yes. Indeed,”
Phillip blustered.

“Now, tell me about
this Blindman’s Bluff. Can one bet on the outcome?”

“I suppose,”
Phillip said consideringly.

“I’ll wager you a
shilling to a crown that Margaret Atherton is the first to be caught,” he said
to Watt, avoiding Rhiannon’s eye. There was still something to be taken from
Fair Badden. Even if it wasn’t the thing he wanted.

Rhiannon rose to
her feet. She hesitated, uncertain of whether she ought to stay, but Phillip
had forgotten her and Ash would not look at her. She walked away, silently
praying her trembling legs would hold her until she’d rounded The Ploughman’s
corner and found the bench set against its sunny outer wall. Her knees did not
betray her but the moment she stepped in front of the homely bench they gave
out and she sank down, finally finding a moment of privacy in which to try and
sort her wild thoughts and indiscreet heart.

She couldn’t stop
shivering, a deep shudder that began inside and worked its way out. She knew
its source. She’d betrayed Phillip and the guilt of it was eating her from the
inside out.

She buried her face
in her hands. Tears sprang to her eyes and washed down her hot cheeks and she
cursed herself roundly for it. Tears did no good; guilt did less, for neither
could call back last night and let her replay those fateful hours. Even if they
could, she was not sure she wanted those hours altered.

Except he did.

She saw it in his
cool dark eyes this morning in the kitchen and heard it in the veiled warning
he’d issued her with his words about “worldly men and naive country lasses.”
She scrubbed at her eyes and pressed the heels of her hands against her temples
trying to think, to make some decision.

Clearly she had to
tell Phillip what she’d done or she’d become so shaken by the keeping of this
secret that she’d fly apart. Twice now she’d tried and twice Phillip had
managed to stymie her. It was almost as if he already knew what she would say
and feared it and sought to keep her from telling him. She twisted her fingers
in her lap.

Nonsense. It was
only her own wishful thinking. How much easier this would be if she could
convince herself that Phillip was best off not knowing. And she could, with
very little difficulty, convince herself of just that. She knew Phillip had no
great love for her, that he’d chosen her as his bride because she was biddable
and undemanding. He’d even told her once that his father had quite succinctly
pointed out her suitability to be Phillip’s wife because she had no aspirations
to live anywhere but Fair Badden, no inclinations to travel, and no social
ambitions regarding the London season.

And the old man had
been right. She and Phillip were perfectly suited. She did not want to leave
Fair Badden. It was lovely, quiet, and safe. Just the thought of venturing
elsewhere added ripples of panic to her shivers of misery. Out there—bad things
happened.

She should have
thought of that before she’d risked her future—the lovely, genteel future that
even now was still within her grasp—on a night of surrender to her long-buried
passionate nature.

Time to bury that
nature again. Deeper this time. So deeply that it would finally die, never
again to be resurrected.

An involuntary
sound of anguish escaped her lips. Unsteadily, she stood up. She couldn’t think
anymore, each thought circled back onto itself, a snake eating its tail. She
felt dazed and frightened. The light glancing off The Ploughman’s whitewashed
wall dazzled her eyes and she looked away. She mustn’t think anymore.

She saw Edith
Fraiser moving gingerly across the town square, a thin envelope in her hand.
Behind her one of the men held a brace of hounds straining at the leash.

The sight instantly
calmed Rhiannon, releasing the poisonous tension coiling within her.
The
hunt.
The hunt would clear her thoughts and sweep the confusion from her
heart. A race with the wind that would leave behind every vestige of her life,
every concern, obligation—and betrayal. Aye. She’d follow the hunt.

* * *

Ash flicked the
envelope Edith Fraiser had given him beneath his chin as he watched Susan
Chapham being blindfolded.

He should be quite
pleased. His purse was nearly fifty pounds heavier; he’d reestablished himself
amongst these well-fleeced sheep as a harmless lambikins; and he’d kept
Rhiannon from running to Phillip in full
mea culpa
cry before her
wedding.

He
was
quite pleased. This feeling of heartsickness was simply the result of too much
country. A surfeit of vegetables. Too much sun.

He opened the
envelope, and glanced at the signature. It was from Thomas Donne. Ash’s
interest sharpened as he read. The letter suggested a reason for the attacks on
Rhiannon—an improbable conjecture, but a reason nonetheless. He frowned.

It had been his
plan to leave soon but because he owed the lass some small part of his
consideration he would wait around and play watchdog. All would come right, for
then she would once and for all be Phillip Watt’s concern.

And if he could not
account for the hurtful rhythm of his heartbeat, he did not try.

Chapter Sixteen

“Go on without me.
I’ll just stay back and enjoy the day,” said Ash Merrick from atop the back of
his steed.

The two young men
he addressed, the last members of the hunting party to mount up, regarded him
dubiously. Ash waved them off and watched them go, his smile dissolving. He
wasn’t about to inform them that for him those years a young man dedicates to
refining his hunting skills had been spent in a dungeon.

His gaze picked out
Rhiannon Russell’s figure. Clad in midnight blue velvet that turned her roan
tresses incandescent, she lagged near the rear of the group rather than the
front where he would have expected her.

Behind her, Stella
darted into a patch of bushes. Rhiannon called out to her. With a crash the
hound burst from the tangle of brush, tongue lolling, tail wagging.

Would that all curs
be so well favored, Ash thought. The other hounds barked and danced at the end
of leashes, waiting for the Master of the Hunt to loose them to the trail, but
Rhiannon’s dog enjoyed its freedom. And Rhiannon’s love.

He frowned and
pulled Donne’s letter from his waistcoat pocket, scanning the missive for the
portion that had made him reconsider leaving:

—if this man in
the French islands is, indeed, Miss Russell’s long-lost brother, should he die
without wife or brat his plantation would revert to his next of kin. Since she
is Scottish, Miss Russell would be next in line, even though she is female. We
Scots are so barbarously nonpartisan with regard to women, aren’t we?

However, should
Miss Russell wed one of your Englishmen, her property becomes his. Someone
might take exception to this. I think I would make some inquiries about Miss
Russell’s extended family.

But all this
presupposes a brother precipitously restored from the grave and just as
precipitously returned, as well as a secret family member plotting from the
shadows.

Instead I would
look for a potential murderer in Miss Russell’s jealous rival or some person
harboring a grudge. If Miss Russell has trapped herself a groom by becoming
enceinte, I would say look there. Or perhaps the elder Watt cannot abide the
thought of a Jacobite daughter yet dares not risk alienating his son by
refusing to countenance the marriage?

Now, enlighten
me as to whether those rural strumpets know any interesting tricks that have
eluded their urban cousins—

Ash refolded the
vellum and pocketed it. Interesting. He hadn’t realized that the Scots laws
governing inheritance were so different from the English. Certainly a
molasses-producing plantation would be prize enough to commit murder for.

No wonder Carr
wanted to marry Rhiannon.

But as Donne
suggested, the tale of the long-lost brother did seem unlikely. Perhaps
Rhiannon had beaten out other favorites for the Watt name but he’d seen no show
of animosity amongst her friends. He, above all others, knew that Rhiannon had
not trapped Watt into marriage by conceiving, and Watt’s father had apparently
handpicked Rhiannon to be Phillip’s wife—