The Runaway Countess (37 page)

“Compassion is the basis of all morality.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Mazie awoke utterly and completely relaxed. So relaxed she did not need to snuggle or stretch. She wanted to lie still and feel Trent’s warm body pressed against her back, his heavy arm anchoring her to his chest.

It felt incredible to be held like this. Pressed into. Weighted down.

She never wanted to leave. She could wake up every morning in this man’s arms.

She closed her eyes and savored the moment. Skin against skin, the slight scratch and tickle of his chest hair when he inhaled, the musky scent of their lovemaking.

Nothing need change, not one thing. This perfect moment could stretch out forever, its edges blending into the bright blue of the morning sky. It was all here, everything she had longed for since her parents died. There was nothing to get, nothing to say, nothing to do, nothing to avoid

Hell.

Reality returned like a splash of cold water.

Roane.

She would have to tell Trent the truth about Roane.

She squeezed her eyes closed harder, tried to push the thought away but it wouldn’t budge. She tried to listen to the flustered chatter of the birds outside but it did not matter, she could not be distracted.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. She opened her eyes. Sunlight fell into the chamber, glinting off the polished walnut surfaces. She could trust Trent to make it right. He’d proven that last night, the way he made love to her and held her afterward. The man knew tenderness, kindness. He had a good heart and the strength to carry the weight of justice.

But not now. She would not tell him, not yet. She did not want to ruin this moment for anything. It was the closest she had come to feeling loved in a long, long time.

She snuggled closer to him. Sandalwood and lemon. Just his smell made her wiggle her hips against him.

He woke up, of course.

“Mmm,” he growled in her ear, spreading gooseflesh over her arms.

Instinctually, Mazie snuggled deeper into him. “You feel good.”

“So do you.” He slid his hand from her thigh to her breast, shaping the contours of her body.

She rolled over and placed a kiss at the corner of his lips.

His hair dark was mussed in the most charming way and his eyes quirked into a smile. “Good morning, hummingbird.”

“Good morning, your lordship.”

Half asleep and tousled in the slanting light, Trent looked delicious. She kissed him again, pressed him onto his back so that she draped across his chesthis bare chest, broad with muscle. It drove her a little bit mad. She kissed her way across it.

“What a good idea,” he chuckled, lifting her hips until she straddled him. The heavy velvet canopy spread over them like their own private sky. “I don’t want to face my day.” He pulled her down and buried his head in the crook of her neck. “Can we not stay here and hide from the world?”

She laid her cheek against his and closed her eyes, savored the feel of him beneath her, the musky scent of his skin. Soon there would be no reason to hide. No need to escape. They would be free of it all.

The truth would make them free.

“I’m surprised the calls and threats haven’t started yet,” he murmured against her shoulder, little puffs of breath that sent shivers coursing through her.

“What do you mean ‘the threats’?”

He sighed and rested his head back on the pillows. Mazie pulled away a touch so she saw his eyes. Anger, he was furious all of a sudden. “Lords Dixon, Nash and Horris told me if I did not reinstate Harrington they would make sure I was never elected on to the Finance Board. I have the power in Radford, but they are older and have more power in London.”

“That is preposterous.” She sat up tall, her spine high and tight with indignation. “You could gather evidence against them. If you exposed them they would lose their influence.”

“Would they?” Trent caressed her arms in long, soothing strokes and let the silence stretch out. “How much do you know?”

“About what?” She bent over him again.

“Their little group.” He traced the side of her breast. “You recognized the symbol yesterday.”

“I know enough, I suppose.” She did not want to talk about it. Not yet.

“Did you know about my father? That he committed illegal acts against his own villagers.” He slid his hands down her arms and tightened them around her wrists.

She exhaled a long breath. “Yes.”

“It’s true, the rumors about my father and the Pentrich Uprising.” He was leaving her, sliding away to his own torment. She would grab on to him and keep him close if she could. “All these years, I had assumed he was a good man. Different from me, but still to be honored. Men died in that revolt. One shot, the others hanged.”

Mazie brushed his hair across his forehead. She hated to see him hurting. She would help him shoulder his pain.

“I did not see it.” He looked over her head, his eyes lost in the ether. “My bias blinded me and I failed to protect my dependents.”

She could give him the chance to redeem himself, to fix his mistakes. She was silent as she gathered her courage. It was a huge trust she was placing in his hands. “I want to tell you about the Midnight Rider.”

His gaze jumped to hers, relieved and stern at once. “Yes, tell me. Give me a chance to make it right.”

“I trust you, Trent.” Lord, the man was honest. Why had she ever thought to deceive him? “I know that when you learn the truth you will be just, fair.”

“I will follow the law, yes.” He stroked her hair.

“The truth is that the highwayman is not who I have led you to believe. His is” Caution froze her tongue. “What do you mean you will follow the law?”

He stilled beneath her, his grey eyes searched her face. “I expect I will turn them all in. Explain my concerns to the crown.”

“The Midnight Rider too? Now that you know his motive?” Mazie sat back and his hands fell to the counterpane.

“Yes, of course. He is still a criminal, Mazie.”

She scrambled off him, shifted her knees and came to kneeling at his side.

He sat up. “The Midnight Rider could have taken his evidence to the right authorities.” His brows dropped, darkened his eyes. “Who is he? What did you lead me to believe?”

“It won’t be fair,” she huffed. “The aristocracy is never punished. The Midnight Rider will be hanged and the others will walk away.”

“The law will mete out its justice. It is beyond me now.” He sighed and took her hand. “I will feel no joy when he goes to the gallows, Mazie.”

“The gallows!” She leapt out of bed, grabbed the sheet to cover her nakedness and left Trent all long, naked limbs on the bed.

He came to standing as well and pulled on his breeches. “He has committed an act of treason, yet you still choose him?”

“It is not a choice.” She paced the room, too angry to think straight.

“You know what this is costing me.”

“What about me?” Her hands ached as she clutched the sheet around her. “You would take him from me?”

He reared back. “I wasn’t aware the man meant so much to you.”

Mazie puffed out a frustrated breath. Roane was in danger here. She needed to get him out of her thoughts, out of the room.

Her eyes focused on inconsequential details. The opulent blue silk and chintz, the sparse furnishings of a washstand and a small chest of drawers. A door that must lead to the countess’s chambers. Chambers that could be hers. They hadn’t talked of the proposal since the day he made it and Mazie half-believed he had forgotten. “And my punishment?” She faced him. “Will you send me to London as well?”

“No.” Trent stood frozen in the middle of the room. “I won’t prosecute you.”

“Why?”

He gave no answer.

“Why? Because of this?” She swept her hand over the huge canopied bed.

A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he did not reply.

Mazie felt desperate inside her skin. “Did I please you?” She opened the sheet and bared her naked flesh to him. “Did I whore my way to freedom?”

“No,” he growled, stepped forward and pulled the sheet closed around her. “Stop this.”

“Then tell me why.”

“Because I cannot, goddamn it, Mazie. I cannot send you there.” His hands still gripped the fabric as if he would shake her. “Call me weak, but I would never sleep again thinking of you in gaol.” He released the sheet and rubbed his hands over his face.

“Because you know me, Trent. You know my heart.” She thumped her chest. “What if you knew R—the Midnight Rider as I do?”

“He is a highwayman, guilty of treasonous crimes.” Trent crossed his arms over his bare chest. “The law punishes him to death, not I.”

“But you can”

“I can do nothing but see him delivered to London.” He would not sway his opinion. Everything in his stance, his expression, told her this.

She pressed on out of desperation. “Because they are talking of you and your supposed failures? Because of your pride?”

“Because of the
law
and my position within it. Because of my honor.”

“Ugh!” Mazie cried, her frustration and distress an overwhelming mix. She turned away to collect her clothes. She needed to get away from this man. Now.

Trent grumbled behind her, “If I did not already despise the Midnight Rider, I sure as hell do now.”

“BB to meet GV. Friday with the dancing bees.”
The phrase published in
The Radford Journal
turned over and over in Mazie’s mind.

BB would be big brother, what Mazie had called Roane in secret. GV would be Gweneviere, her role of choice. Friday was the Mortons’ ball where there would be dancing, and the bees would be the garden.

Oh, Roane was a fool, but it just might work. They could run from there, if Mazie could convince Trent to take her to the ball.

“Have you seen my brother?”

“Mmm?” Mazie glanced up.

“The earlthe big brooding bearI haven’t seen him all day.” Cat looked over her shoulder toward the hall, though only a corner of the west wing was visible from the archery field.

Mazie bent over and pulled an arrow from the mud. “Not once today. He has been locked in his office.”

“I know. Poor Sterns has been kept busy with a constant parade of visitors.” With excessive force, Cat pulled an arrow out of the target. “Trent told me the truth about our father.”

Mazie pressed her lips together in what was neither a smile nor a frown but a silent offering of comfort. Somewhere, somehow, Cat had become a true friend.

Cat turned away and plucked the arrows out of the straw as if removing a sword from stone. “You needn’t look like that.” She forced a laugh. “I wasn’t surprised. I never idealized my father the way Trent did. I worry for him.”

“He seems quite upset.”

“An understatement.” Cat glanced at her from under the rim of her yellow bonnet. “What about you, Mazie. You have been hiding as well.”

Mazie shrugged. She had spent most of the day sitting in the library, looking out on the rain-soaked fields, wondering why she had ever fallen in love with the Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire.

It was the worst mistake she could have made. It put everything in dangerRoane, Mrs. Pearl, her own sanity. Yesterday morning she had almost told Trent the truth about Roane, had almost admitted that the Midnight Rider was her brother. Harebrained fool that she was, she had convinced herself she could trust
him
, her
enemy
. That it would be
responsible
of her to tell him.

And, the most preposterous, she had believed that exposing the truth would free her heart.

Love had made her blind at a time she most needed to see.

And the worst of it was she had chosen her own blindness. She had wanted so desperately to believe in Trent that she had fabricated a reality of her own making.

“So serious, what is on your mind?” Cat peered at her.

Mazie turned back toward the far end of the archery field and Cat followed. The bed of red daylilies was bright against the dull day and Mazie remembered the afternoon Trent had brought back Bébé. How he had been angry for her loss. And kind.

Her chest ached with longing. For him, his heart. For a future that could never be.

She could no longer trust herself. She would leave with Roane. “I am worried is all.”

What would Trent do when he found her gone?

“It has been an exhausting few weeks for all of us, but you especially.” Cat picked her way up the wet field. “I am eager for it to end. But only in a good way.”

Mazie was silent. What could she say? She lifted her gaze to the storm roiling and gathering in the distance. It was what her heart felt like, dark and restless. Like the clouds heavy with wet sorrow, her heart wanted to weep.

Trent would send her brother to the gallows.

No, she wouldn’t weep. She would scream. “I cannot see how this could end well. There can only be hurt on all sides.”

Cat leveled her eyes on Mazie and looked so much like Trent it hurt. “Everyone thinks the Midnight Rider is in Radford. If he has come for you, what will you do?”