The Secret Rose (6 page)

“Yes, Hargrove. Have my carriage brought round. I am going out.”

“Did a message come while I was out?” Abigail asked, taking Palmsworth’s outstretched hand to dismount the carriage. Huge snowflakes fell as she walked to the front entrance.

“No, miss,” Palmsworth said, closing the door behind them, then taking her cloak to hang it to dry. “No message came today.”

Abigail stopped short. “It’s been two weeks. Surely it can’t have taken this long for Mr. Craddock to give my cousin a message.”

“Perhaps wait a day or two longer. If you haven’t heard by the end of the week, I think it might be best to pen a letter of your own, expressing your desire to meet with your cousin.”

“What if he does not want to sell?”

“He will, miss.”

A shiver shook her body. She had to have the deed to Fallen Oaks. “Why, Palmsworth? Why did things happen like they did? If only Father hadn’t spent so much time away from home. Perhaps the events that night wouldn’t have happened.” The words slipped out before she had time to take them back.

“Oh, miss. You know there’s no use crying over spilt milk.”

Abigail fisted her hands at her side, then made her way to the morning room. Palmsworth followed.

“Are you sure it’s best to give up the ships, miss?” the butler asked.

His voice could not conceal his concern. Just as her voice could not conceal her conviction. “What choice do I have, Palmsworth? I cannot lose Fallen Oaks. I cannot lose the convent. No. I have no choice but to do everything possible to keep Fallen Oaks. The money will come from somewhere.”

“Living the life of a recluse in the country is not what your father would have wanted for you.”

“It is too late, Palmsworth. It is the only life he or Stephen left for me.”

Abigail breathed a deep sigh, then walked over to the flaming fire to ward off the chill. Thankfully, Palmsworth turned the conversation in a different direction.

“How did you find everything at the convent?” he asked, adding another log to the fire.

A smile lit Abigail’s face. But one always did when she thought of the convent. Her words tumbled over themselves as she related everything about her visit.

She stopped abruptly. “Oh, Palmsworth. What if Ethan Cambridge finds out what I did?”

“Don’t upset yourself with fears of things that will not happen. After your meeting with your cousin, you will undoubtedly never see Mr. Ethan Cambridge again.”

She gave Palmsworth a halfhearted smile before he left the room. It quickly faded as her mind went back to her conversation with Ethan Cambridge the day of her father’s funeral. Thanks to her father’s letter, he knew she had something of Stephen’s. It didn’t matter if he knew what it was or not, he’d never give up until he had it.

Abigail stood by the fire, warming her hands that had grown cold from her trip to the convent. Time was of the utmost importance now. She had to have possession of Fallen Oaks before Cambridge came back.

“Miss Langdon,” Palmsworth said from the doorway. “There is a rider coming up the lane.”

“Is it my cousin?” she asked, clenching her hands together nervously.

“I don’t know. He’s still too far away to recognize.”

“Oh, yes, it must be. Show him right in, then have some tea and sandwiches brought in. Everything must be perfect.”

“Yes, miss.”

Abigail sat in the corner of the sofa and smoothed the creases from her black bombazine skirt. She waited as patiently as her pounding heart would allow. She must handle this as if she were an expert negotiator. Perhaps there was even a chance she could keep one of the ships. Perhaps even the clipper.

A loud knock at the front door made her heart skip a beat. He was finally here.

Voices echoed in the entryway, and the blood pounded in her ears as she rehearsed the right words to say. She would do whatever it took to save Fallen Oaks. And the convent.

The voices grew louder, and heavy footsteps pounded on the marble floor.

“Miss Langdon, you have a visitor,” Palmsworth announced from the doorway.

Abigail heard the warning in Palmsworth’s voice and turned. She focused on the tall, broad-shouldered force that consumed every inch of the open doorway. Ethan Cambridge stood there, his gaze riveting.

“I told Mr. Cambridge you were not receiving guests, but he insisted,” Palmsworth continued.

Cambridge took a threatening step forward. “As you can see, Miss Langdon, I refused to take no for an answer. After I had ridden all this way in such inclement weather, you can hardly expect me to turn around without first making use of your warm fire and your stables to rest my weary horse.”

He entered the room as if to lay claim to it. “May I?” he said, pointing to the fire. Without waiting for an answer, he walked over to the flames and held out his hands, rubbing them before the heat.

“I am not up to receiving visitors, Mr. Cambridge.”

He turned, arching his thick, dark brows in surprise. “Perhaps just for a moment?”

“I prefer to be alone, sir, so—”

He took a deliberate step toward her, holding up his hand to silence her. “You and I have some unfinished business, Miss Langdon. I do not intend to leave until we have our differences resolved.”

“I would appreciate it if you would gather your coat and gloves and mount your horse before he is made too comfortable in the stables. There is little chance we will ever resolve our differences. Nothing you can say will change my mind about selling my ships.”

With slow deliberation, he walked across the room and stood with his hand on the door. “Thank you, Palmsworth,” he said. “That will be all.” He closed the door, leaving her butler in the hall.

“Mr. Cambridge—”

“Miss Langdon, please.” He held out his hand. “It will do neither of us any good if you continue to build this wall of hostility between us. Please.” He pointed to the sofa, “Sit down.”

She studied the rigid look on his face. He seemed too confident, too self-assured. Too controlling. The first niggling of fear raced through her.

He poured two cups of tea a servant had brought in and handed one to her. She didn’t want to notice how the room shifted once he entered it. Or how her breath caught in her chest when their eyes met for the briefest of seconds. But it was hard to deny the way he masterfully consumed every part of the room. Stephen had never had that ability. He had not been as manipulative or as high-handed or as huge a threat as the man standing before her.

She was glad when he sat in the chair opposite her. To have him stand, his massive height towering over her, was too disconcerting. He rested his cup on his knee, his pose casual and relaxed. She had to look away from him.

“I didn’t have the chance the other day to apologize for arriving in the midst of your father’s funeral service. Please believe me when I say that I truly did not know he had died, or I would have waited to come to you.”

Abigail lifted her chin, not certain she could believe him. “It would not have mattered. My answer would have been the same.”

He leveled his gaze on her, the dark, shadowed look in his eyes intense, the flat line of his thick, foreboding brows frightening. “Have you any idea, Miss Langdon, the enormous responsibility that has fallen upon your shoulders now that your father is gone?”

“Yes, Mr. Cambridge. I understand better than you think.”

“Your father’s holdings are massive, his shipping interests vast.”

She struggled to bring a confident smile to her lips. “And you think I am incapable of running them?”

“I think your capability is not the question. Your gender is. As is your age.”

Abigail stiffened.

“Has Stephen written you since he left?” Cambridge asked, his voice filled with more than a hint of concern.

Her heart leaped to her throat. “No.”

“Don’t you find that odd?”

She shook her head. “Not in the least. We are no longer betrothed.”

“A fact of which I am not sure Stephen is even aware.”

She turned her face from him, unable to form any words.

“He has not written our mother, either,” he continued. “Not even a note on her birthday. Don’t you find that strange?”

“Not considering your brother’s lack of concern over anything or anyone other than himself.”

Her words had shocked him.
Good.
“How well did you know your brother, Mr. Cambridge?”

Cambridge took a sip of his tea. “Obviously not as well as I thought.” He placed the saucer back on his knee. “Did he say anything at all before he left that might explain why he felt the need to leave?”

“He said nothing.”

Her heart pounded in her chest like a team of runaway horses. She could not look at him.

“Do you know what I think?” His voice was soft, his tone threatening. “I think you know what happened to make Stephen leave so unexpectedly but you refuse to tell me. What is it, Miss Langdon?”

She turned on him. “Get out.”

“Miss Langdon.” He placed his cup on the table to his right and leaned forward in his chair. His penetrating gaze captured hers. “You have something in your possession that belongs to my brother.”

Abigail shot from her chair. “I have nothing that belongs to your brother.” She made her way to the other side of the room before she turned on him. If it was a fight he wanted, it was a fight he would get. “Stephen gave me nothing.” She was unable to hide the anger or the bitterness from her voice. “I would give anything if he were here right now to tell you how little he left me, and how much he took.”

He rose to face her. The fire in his eyes blazed with determination. “What you have may seem like nothing to you, but to me it is the difference between survival and losing everything.”

“Then you will lose everything!”

He took a step toward her, the black look in his eyes as harsh as anything she’d ever seen. “I will not leave until I have it.”

Her heart thundered. The blood raced through her head. He was a force with which to be reckoned. His dark brows angled in an unyielding line over eyes that brimmed fire. His high, chiseled cheekbones molded in rigid perfection. The solid set of his jaw clamped in warning. He was without a doubt the most frightening man she had ever met. The only man in all of England who could take away what she held most dear.

He turned on her with all the anger and hostility of a battle-ready soldier. “You cannot keep it. Surely you realize that.”

She faced him with every ounce of strength she could find. “You have no right to it. None!”

He slapped his hand against his thigh. “Dammit, woman! The jewels are not yours. They belong to Stephen’s family!”

The air left her body, sucked out of her lungs like a huge wave pulled from the shore.
Jewels.

She sank down onto the nearest chair, and clamped her hand over her mouth to stop the strangled cry that wanted to shatter into the gaping silence. One tear slipped down her cheek, and she swiped it away with frantic urgency. It was a tear of joy.

He thought Stephen had given her jewels.

Ethan felt as helpless as a ship dead in the water. He stared at her, devastation pummeling to the pit of his stomach, each word a blow as debilitating as if she’d fired on him with a sixty-cannon warship.

She did not have the jewels.

He stared at the relief on her face. He’d been so sure Stephen had cherished the girl with the huge green eyes and hair of spun copper above all else in the world. He was so sure he had given her the Burnhaven jewels for safekeeping. How could anyone not give her everything he possessed?

But she did not have them. He could see it written on her face.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

She shook her head, still taking in big gasps of air as if just surfacing from too long beneath the water.

“Then what were you so fearful I would take from you? What did Stephen give you that you refuse to give up?”

Her shoulders lifted. “Nothing of any consequence to you, Mr. Cambridge.”

Ethan turned away from her and looked out the long, wide-paned parlor window. This time he didn’t see the beauty in the giant flakes of snow that fell to the ground. “Damn him!” He pounded his fist against the window casing. “How did he think this would all end?”

“He expected my dowry to save him,” she whispered.

He looked over his shoulder. His probing eyes locked with hers. The haunted look in her eyes matched the faraway sound of her voice.

How could Stephen have turned his back on such strength, on such uncommon beauty? Each time he looked at her, a heaviness settled deep in his chest. She was far better than Stephen deserved.

“Then why did he not stay to marry you? Why did he leave when he knew there would be nothing left when he returned?”

Her face paled even more, but when she opened her mouth to speak, her fragile jaw quivered. “Perhaps he could not bring himself to care for me.”

A sharp pang twisted deep in his gut. It pained him to hear such unabashed honesty. “I am sure you are mistaken. He always spoke most appreciatively of you.”

She smiled, a smile that said she knew things he would never know. Was the smile one that told how much she had loved Stephen? Still loved him? Or one that told him how much he’d hurt her?

Never had Ethan felt more anger toward his brother than he did at this moment. How could Stephen have left her so unprotected?

“Miss Langdon,” he said, sitting in the chair beside her. “I know how difficult this is for you, but—”

She rose to her feet, her chin high, her back rigid and straight. Her small smile turned her features more fragile and delicate. “Do you? I think not.”

With dignified grace, she gave him her back and walked to the door. “I would like you to leave now. I do not have the jewels you thought Stephen had given me, nor do I have anything else that would be of any monetary value to you. I am afraid we have nothing more to say to one another.” She opened the door as if ordering him to leave.

Ethan followed her to the door. He stood so close he could smell the clean scent of rose petals in which he imagined she’d bathed. “Have you changed your mind about selling the ships?”