The Passionate One (22 page)

Her head pounded. A
rushing noise began in her ears, dimming the sound of the others’ voices. Her
vision swam and she stared into his eyes. Pale like the betraying moon, cold,
like a Highland night, beautiful and uncompromising. She rose shakily to her
feet, clutching for the edge of the table, spinning, out of breath—

Ash snuffed the
guttering candle flame between his thumb and index finger, steeping the room in
darkness except for the thin moonlight that trickled from the window and
blanketed the slumbering woman on the mattress.

She’d fainted hours
ago and had yet to come fully conscious. He’d seen the like in prisoners who’d
gone too long without food and were finally fed.

He’d experienced it
himself, his first night of freedom from the French gaol. A crease furrowed
Ash’s brow. Amongst prisoners such an occurrence might be commonplace but not
in gently reared young ladies. Not that his experience with that breed was
extensive.

Rhiannon had downed
that vile broth as though it had been her only meal in a month. And when she’d
risen to her feet, horror had clouded her eyes, a deeper, older horror than
that which had blazed from her eyes since he’d taken her from Watt.

He pulled a chair
near the narrow cot, cocking his head and studying her. Her lips parted on soft
susurration. Not only was she exhausted, she was frightened.

It was his doing,
of course. He’d pushed her too far. He should have recognized that earlier, but
she wore bravery so well and he’d not much experience with fear, having become
inured to it long, long ago. Yet he’d felt a lick of it earlier that day, when
he’d recognized what had been done to the dog and realized a trap had been set
for Rhiannon. And later, when they’d come out of the forest and seen Watt’s
cheerful approach, that lick had become a flail.

He reached over and
tucked his jacket up around her throat, taking care to wipe her square little
chin. So elegant a jaw, so proudly fashioned...

Abruptly he
straightened, raking the black hair back from his face. What the bloody hell
was he going to do?

He couldn’t let her
return to Fair Badden to be murdered, and murder was exactly what he feared had
he left her in Watt’s suspect care. Granted, Watt’s reason for wanting to kill
Rhiannon eluded him. He was not satisfied that Watt’s motives could be wholly
ascribed to his aversion to marriage—yet the attempts on her life seemed to
have begun with their proposed marriage. Nothing else had changed, or
threatened to change, the status she’d held in Fair Badden for ten years.

But Watt had
refused the excuse to withdraw his suit that Ash had offered him. Yet his vow
that he would still marry Rhiannon hadn’t been made by a besotted man, nor even
one too proud to acknowledge himself cuckolded. A desperate man had made it.
Which made no sense.

And if Ash wouldn’t
allow Rhiannon to marry Watt, he would not allow her to become one of his
father’s short-lived brides, either. He couldn’t marry her himself. Even if he
could find some place to hide her until she came of age and no longer needed
Carr’s permission to wed. Or if he could persuade her to marry him in Scotland where Carr’s permission wasn’t needed.

He had nothing in
this world: no friends, no holdings, and no future. What money he had was
promised to his brother.

Abruptly he stood
up, the chair scraping loudly in the hushed room. The only thing in this world
that he owned was a promise he’d made to his mother on the day of her death: to
watch out for Raine.

All his life it had
seemed enough, been his lodestar. When Raine had been taken by that tattered
McClairen mob, he’d fought and killed without remorse to free him.

He would not
forsake his promise. He could not. It was the only thing he’d
not
forsaken, having abandoned faith, and hope, and lo—and everything else that
romantics wept over and pious madmen preached. Nothing he’d done or become had
diminished that obligation.

Nothing until
Rhiannon Russell.

He stared down at
her, and as he watched, she twisted her cheek into the deep velvet pile of his
jacket collar, murmuring in distressed tones. Unable to help himself, he loosed
a coil of hair that had caught against her lip and tucked it behind her ear.

She opened her
eyes. For an instant they lightened with recognition but then the light died,
killed by fear. She scooted up, heels drumming the mattress in her climb to the
headboard.

“If you touch me,
I’ll kill you.”

Well, yes.
The thought was distant, like an echo in a cave, hollow and detached
and having nothing to do with a body that seemed incapable of motion, a mouth
that refused to speak the denial that clamored for expression.

Why, yes.
If she refused to believe she’d been in danger, she could only think
that that was why he’d taken her. It hurt. God help him, it hurt, and he nearly
laughed at how ridiculous it was that such a little matter as a girl’s
misplaced fear could cause such immeasurable pain.

And was it so
misplaced? Would she be wrong at that? All day he’d taken any excuse, however
feeble, to hold her, embrace her, touch her; he wanted her so damned much.

And if something in
him shriveled before the fearful suspicion in her eyes, well, it was a weak,
trifling part of himself that succumbed, a part that he’d never even realized
he’d owned, now happily dead.

He reached down,
grabbed her arm, and yanked her to her knees.

He was better off
without it.

Chapter Eighteen

What little light
came through the window did not reach Ash’s face. He didn’t say a word. He just
stood over her, like a child’s golem, a construct of darkness and earth,
holding her like a child’s cloth doll. Only the violence of his grip bespoke
the deep well of anger his silence could not quite contain.

Well, Rhiannon,
too, was angry. Years of obeisance fell from her like rusty shackles. Fair
Badden had been an opiate, a sweet illusion of kindness and gentleness. But
she’d only needed to pass beyond its borders to be wakened to the world she’d
left behind, one of treachery, desperation, and deceit.

She pitched herself
against his hold and he released her. She fell back on the bed on stiff arms.

“Is that what you
think?” he whispered.

“What else?” she
spat up at him. She was not half dead with fatigue now, not lost in a labyrinth
of hellish, living memories. She knew where she was, what she was doing... what
was being done to her. She’d fought once and survived. She would fight again.

“I’m taking you to
my father’s to keep you from being killed.”

“You are too good.”
Even as she jeered, some misbegotten part of her wanted him to convince her
that he believed what he said. Even if it was madness, madness she could
forgive. But he was not mad, nor misguided. He was simply a devil.

He didn’t expend
the paltry effort of a reply.

“I don’t know what
you hope to accomplish by telling me this,” she said, in spite of herself. “Why
would someone want to hurt me or kill me? Why would
Phillip
want to
kill me?”

His gaze slipped
away from hers and she noted the involuntary act with bitter conviction. He
would lie now. “Watt did not want this marriage. He may not even know why
himself. Perhaps his father was forcing him to it and he saw no other way to
escape.”

She laughed. “Not
want this marriage? I went to him yesterday, to tell him what I had done. He
wouldn’t let me, even though it was clear from what he said in the forest that
he suspected. Is that the act of a man looking for a way out of a marriage?”

“You were going to
tell Watt? Why?” He sounded shocked. “You asked me not to tell him.”

“Of course.” She
bit off the words. “Because I feared you would say it in such a way that he had
no recourse but to call you out—just as you
did.
You told him in the
crudest manner possible. I could not have gone to my marriage bed with that lie
waiting to be discovered and I would not have deceived him. But you would have
no understanding of that, would you, Lord Janus?”

A flinch?
More likely contained laughter.

“None at all,” he
said. “I was going to advise you to prick your thumb as he slept and smear your
thighs.”

She felt the blood
flee from her face, her skin grow cold, but she was stronger now. She ignored
his crudeness.

“What I would like
to know is why you have even bothered weaving this pitiful story,” she said. “I
would think a man of your talents would have at least come up with some better
tale.” Her lip curled back in as much contempt for herself as for him. “In
fact, why fabricate this Banbury tale about assassins at all? I mean, you
have
the bloody letter naming you my surrogate guardian, don’t you?”

She peered through
the darkness, trying to find some sign she’d struck a human chord in that
inhumanely still countenance. All she could see was moonlight shimmering over
his black hair.

“You didn’t really
need an excuse to take me, did you?” she insisted.

“No,” he finally
answered in that cool, dead voice.

She could hear his
breathing, the slight draw and exhalation, light, measured, as if he were
consciously regulating it.

“So if you don’t
mean to rape me—and make no mistake, that is the only way you will ever again
take your pleasure between my legs—what
do
you want?” With bitter
satisfaction she heard the small, sharp inhalation of his breath. Pain or
anger, it made no difference to her, as long as it discomforted him.

She waited for his
answer, head up. A long moment passed.

“Don’t you know?”
he finally ground out.

“Money,” she said
flatly. It made sense. In hindsight his entire stay in Fair Badden had been
one, long, well-orchestrated bit of dodgery: the charming, unsuccessful fumbler
slowly transformed into a peerlessly lucky gamester.

“There’ll be no
money from Mrs. Fraiser,” she promised. “The lands and everything on it are
entailed to her son and he’s far beyond the reach of your stratagems.”

No reply.

She bent forward
into the light from the window so that he could see her contempt, read her
disdain.

“You’ve no chance
of blackmailing
anyone
into paying for my return.” A small
satisfaction, but she would take what she could. “Whatever Phillip might want,
Squire Watt will never accept me as his daughter-in-law now.”

“So sure? I’m not.”

She shook her head,
and the long, tangled skeins of her hair settled around her cheeks and throat
like a widow’s webbed veil. “He might overlook the lack of a dowry but not the
lack of a maidenhead.”

“Oh, Rhiannon, I
assure you, you’ve more to recommend to that particular marriage than a simple
intact piece of skin.”

“I loathe you.”

“I know.”

He would not be
baited, nor pricked with the contempt she was wielding like a blade. His heart
and soul were immutable if, indeed, he owned them at all. How could she have
been so deceived?

“How lucrative was
your stay in Fair Badden?”

The shadow shape
shrugged, drifting back a pace, dissolving further into the gloom. “Four
hundred pounds. More or less.”

“You admit it?” she
asked.

“Why not?” he
countered. “You’ve already discovered me. I see no advantage in promoting your
naïveté. If you could not stand to—how did you phrase it?—‘go to your marriage
bed with that lie waiting to be discovered,’ how can I be any less noble? Only
honesty between us now, eh, Rhiannon? Unless,” his voice dropped, became low
and mocking, “you’d rather we dispensed with even that inconvenience... ?”

She shrank back
from its ugliness.

“No? Ah, well.”

He was every bit as
terrible as she conjectured. How much worse could he be? She had to know the
extent of her gullibility.

“The song?” she
asked. “Is that true, too?”

“Which song?” he
asked.

“ ‘The Ride of the
Demon Earl’s Brood.’ ”

“St. John must have
tripped in his haste to tell you that little tale.”

“Is it true? Did
you?”

“Why?” he
countered. “Are you wondering just what sort of evil seed you received?”

She gasped at his
crudity, at the calm passionless manner in which he delivered it.

“All right. Here it
is. I slashed through a line of men armed with pikes and staves. I made my
sword bright with their blood. I trampled them under my horse’s hooves.”

She wrapped her
arms around herself.

“I aided redcoated
Brits in killing Scottish peasants.” And then, so quietly she barely heard him.
“
I saved my brother from being
killed
.”