The Runaway Countess (33 page)

Where was the dancing, laughing beau from the festival? Gone. Replaced by this brooding, fierce man. Equally as beautiful. How the women in London must swoon for him. She had to catch her breath herself.

“What is this?” He motioned toward the book in her hand. When she offered it to him, he tilted it to inspect the cover, but did not take it from her. “Ah, a profound and far-reaching text.”

His tone was sarcastic, being that she held a children’s primer. She drew the book back, refusing to be bothered by his mood. She’d been the perfect and proper lady tonight. He hardly had a reason to bait her. “Lady Arlington contends that I should not teach the maids to read. Lady Usling said she would like to know my technique so she may educate her servants, and Lady Persings decided we should talk with Alice. I would not summon my maid to be questioned, so I offered to fetch the primer instead.”

He raised a brow. “An engaging conversation among my guests? Why, you sound as if you are enjoying yourself. And among the aristocracy, no less. I will see you returned to society, you just wait.”

Mazie resisted the urge to frown. Never would she admit that she was indeed entertained. To her relief, the conversation had shifted to more impersonal topics as soon as the ladies retired to the drawing room. She found her companions’ outspokenness had another side. One that was intriguing, even stimulating.

But she did not want to speak of herself. Trent’s face held lines of tension, his conversation was unusually piqued. “Did you not enjoy the talk of politics and alliances? I always imagined men gathered for engaging debate and ribaldry with their cigars.”

“Something like that.” He reached out and touched the snake of ribbon and curl falling over her shoulder. “You look beautiful this evening, hummingbird.”

“Hm,” she murmured, wary of the light in his eyes, wary of her own warbling breath. She should leave. She should slap his hand away.

She did neither. She waited for his next move.

He did not disappoint her. His fingers followed the tendril of hair and brushed the sensitive skin of her collarbone, then lower, to the place where the swell of her breast met her gown. He leaned forward and the earthy, rich scent of fine tobacco surrounded her. “Have you worn this dress to punish me?” His breath caressed her ear and sent shivers cascading down her spine. “For all I can think of is the flesh underneath.”

Mazie closed her eyes, wanted to lean forward into him. Wanted to surrender to the weighty flush of her desire. But she forced herself to draw back. “What are you about, Trent?”

“About?” His eyes widened in feigned shock, as if he were so innocent.

“You contrived this dinner to punish me.”

“Did I?”

She straightened as if she could ignore the thrumming in her blood. “You know you did. Or were there no other suitable guests for the evening? How odd that the Midnight Rider chose to prey on your closest friends.”

“Curious, isn’t it.”

“Doesn’t speak much to the quality of your friends.”

“Touché.” His lips quirked in a half smile, then his head jerked and the smile fell. “Hell, Mazie.” He ran his hand through his hair and everything about him changed. He appeared defeated for a moment, exhausted.

She did touch him then, brushed her fingertips over the edge of his jaw. “Are you well?”

He grasped her hand, held it against his face. “Something in your touch overwhelms me. Maybe it is your scent.” He turned his head and kissed the inside of her wrist, then leaned into her touch. “I try not to desire you.”

“T-try?” Her voice broke. The thrumming was back, beating with a heavy heat in her pelvis.

“It makes me the worst sort of beast.” It was not an apology, but it soothed all the same. For Mazie knew exactly what he spoke of. The endless irritation, the prowling with no purpose or relief. She craved him and she hated herself for it.

He looked at her so intently that she thought he might kiss her. She stood still, not waiting. Wanting.

His eyes roamed her face, and his fingers kissed the base of her thumb.

Just when she thought he would lean forward, when he might touch her lips with his own, a man cleared his throat nearby. The stairwell. The foyer with guests in the house. How easily they had forgotten themselves.

Trent dropped her hand and looked over. “Sterns.” His tone was clipped.

“A messenger delivered this, my lord. He said it was urgent.”

Written on white velum with a red seal, the note seemed innocuous. Nothing in its appearance spoke of midnight search parties and the heartbreak of betrayal.

But Mazie had been at this game too long, and she held her breath as Trent broke the seal and read the note. She stood frozen as he swore under his breath and read it a second time. She would not think. She would wait. He would tell her. No breath, she must breathe. Ten ticks of a clock. Hands clenched as if she could hold her world together.

“Were you going to him?”

Words? Were those words? The sound of them tore through her like a knife.

“What?” What was he talking of? What did the note say? Her heart missed a beat, thumped harshly back into rhythm.

He looked up at her, his eyes cold as the marble around them. “That night at the lake. Were you running to him?”

Roane. “No! No, I swear it.” She reached out for him, grabbed his wrist. He wrenched away. “What has happened? What is in the note?”

“Who is the man to you, Mazie?” His eyes, they were dying. “And do not say he was your lover.”

Finally, the question. She had waited for it, but she had no answer. She shook her head, mute, unable to speak for the lump in her throat.

Trent turned, dismissed her. With long strides, he stalked down the hallway.

He would just walk away? Refuse to tell her what happened? She wanted to grab the paper from his hand. “Wait!” She picked up handfuls of her skirt and ran after him. “Where are you going?”

He gave no reply. Just stiff shoulders and the balled note in his fist.

“Trent!” She grabbed his elbow.

He spun on his heel. His savage expression hit her in the gut and she stumbled back. “He is here, in Radford. He deigned to rob a clergyman.”

Her breath whooshed out of her. But surely this was a jest. “What would he want with a clergyman?”

His eyes glittered with anger. “Certainly you, my pious little prisoner, would never disrespect a man of the cloth.”

He was serious. Maybe the sender of the note was mistaken. Maybe

He was leaving, walking away again.

“What will you do?” Mazie did not care to keep the pleading from her voice. “You cannot think to look for him tonight. It is too dangerous.”

Nothing.

“Trent!” She stomped her foot.

“I will not go alone.”

The men from London. Please, oh please… She did not know what she prayed, or to who. Again, she picked up her skirts and hurried after him. “But they will kill him on sight.”

He did not slow, did not turn. “It is not how I would have chosen to capture him, but so be it.”

“Trent, please!” Desperation rang everywhere through her body, her voice, against the cold marble.

He rounded the corner toward his study.

“Trent.” She bent over, clutched her hands to her waist. “Do not kill him!”

His footsteps echoed in the empty hall.

Chapter Nineteen

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Shakespeare

The rain had stopped, but the storm raged on. Mazie and Cat stood under the front portico of Giltbrook Hall and watched the chaos before them. Men on horses, men on foot, men in wagons gathered in a bizarre dance that brought to mind only one thing.

War.

Mazie wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders, warding against the damp blackness of the night. But nothing touched the violent shaking within her.

Beyond the flickering light of the torches, into the places where darkness reigned, search parties would scatter across the forest like buckshot. They would hunt Roane like some rabid animal.

She took a deep breath of the cool night air and felt like gagging on the dank smell of mud and wet horseflesh.

“Gather ’round!” Even from twenty yards away, Trent’s commanding voice rattled through her bones. He paced in and out of the torchlight on the drive, his massive hunter too frenzied to stand still. From the shadows into fire then back again. His greatcoat flared out across the horse’s flank and his wide-brimmed hat was pulled low. She could see nothing of his face. “Gather ’round!”

He was incredible. Lordly, beautiful. Terrifying. Her teeth chattered and she ground them together.

The menmostly footmen and grooms from the nearby estates, men who must answer to their mastersformed a semi-circle on the graveled drive, many still on foot, some already on their horses. Mazie thought she saw Harrington, but she must have been mistaken. Surely Trent would not have included the man in this.

Trent’s mount turned with a flick of his tail. The man atop was fluid grace. “To my right is a wagonload of guns and ammunition. Each man is to be mounted and armed, but I want the Midnight Rider alive. Gather your supplies and return to your group leaders. We ride in ten minutes.”

A cheer went up in the crowd, the sound of men thirsting for glory and death. Mazie covered her ears, but it still seeped through her fingers, leaked down her spine in a wash of ice.

So many guns. A wagonload full. And with the earth muddy and uneven, the night pitch black. Men everywhere, so many men. Husbands and fathers and sons, andHarrington. Hell, it was him, standing by the weapons with much authority.

Did Trent know he was here? Conversing with another man on horseback, Trent had turned in his saddle. Mazie followed his line of sight and watched a pack of riders arrive. The hired men from London. Hats low, rifles at their side, they appeared calm, expertly prepared, frighteningly experienced.

Oh God, she would be sick all over her shoes. She reached out to a stone pillar, leaned her forehead against the cold and struggled to calm her revolting stomach.

Had Roane any idea they were coming for him?

“It’s terrible,” Cat whispered beside her. Mazie turned toward the other woman, who was white with worry. She put her hand on Cat’s sleeve, but Cat stepped aside and shrugged it off.

Mazie felt Cat’s dismissal like a pierce to her heart. Cat blamed her for putting Trent in harm’s way.

She blamed herself as well. For her part in this disaster.

What the hell was Roane thinking? Why he had come out of hiding? And why had he robbed a clergyman, for heaven’s sake. Mazie turned back toward the hunting party. It was not only his life he was endangering with this foolhardy move, but Trent’s and the other men. These servants sent out to hunt in the dark.

She pressed away from the pillar, scanning the men. Trent, where was he? She could not see him, her dark lover on his horse. Her heart stopped. Had he left? She searched wildly, her gaze raking the scene like claws. There, he was there. On the far side of the gathering, talking to the men from London. Her gaze locked on him.

She might never see him alive again.

It was an intolerable thought. She shook her head against it as if she could remove it from her brain.

He left the hired men and circled the back of the gathering. Stopping to talk with Harrington, he acted as if the man belonged there. Then he moved around to the local gentry, the men who had been seated by her at dinner. Finally, his circling brought him toward the front of the house, toward her.

He would say goodbye now. He would leave.

Her teeth rattled and she could not make them stop. She was terrified, shaking everywhere with her fear. He was right. She
was
scared of life, scared of this world where one’s heart could be ripped open. All the light swallowed by the dark. Where everything was beyond her control.

She could lose Roane. She pressed her fist against her mouth. Her big brother, with his easy smile and teasing manners.

And she could lose Trent. See him dead and buried. A choked sob escaped her. She bit it back and tasted blood.

She could not stand it. She could not possibly stand it. Her eyes clung to him as he talked with his men.

She loved him.

Loved him. Could not lose him. Loved him. He could not die.

She loved him, this man who would hunt her brother.

A wail of anguish tore through the dark. It was not her. Cat rushed down the stairs. “Have care, Trent,” Cat yelled into the chaos. “Return safe.”

He looked over his shoulder and turned his horse. Cat ran to him and he grasped her hand in his. His lips moved. He was talking, touching his sister. So much love in this man. Cat leaned her head against his leg before she stepped back, head bowed.

Then his gaze was lifting. Lifting up the steps. Lifting to Mazie’s. Pinning her. Hurt, angry, determined. And beautiful, so beautiful it stabbed her, cut her. Sliced her into a thousand disjointed pieces. She did not try to hold herself together. Even if he returned she would never be whole again.