Three Heroes (31 page)

She moved slightly closer, curling her left arm around his torso, and pressing her cheek against his hot back. How firm he was. Muscle everywhere. Used to being close only with female bodies, she found this to be a magic all its own.

An image flashed into her mind—the groom’s naked chest, rippling with well-defined muscles. The major wasn’t as big a man, but would his naked chest look like that?

Would she ever find out?

Suddenly, so closely and hotly entwined, it seemed a moment for bald truth. “You’re a fortune hunter, aren’t you, Hawk?”

She felt his instant tension.

“Why else were you in Cheltenham? You knew about me and came to steal a march on the others. You tempted me into coming to Brighton, and you’ve been stalking me ever since. I’d rather there were truth between us.”

She felt him breathe, three steady breaths. “And if I am?”

“I don’t mind.” Then she felt that went too far too soon. “But I make no promises, either.”

“I see. But you won’t blame a man for trying?”

“No,” she said, smiling against his back. “I won’t blame a man for trying.”

And truth is, I can’t wait until he wins.

Smiling at her golden future, she angled her hand down and forward, following the deep pocket of the man who would one day be her husband. Whose body would be intimate with hers. She sucked in a deep, steadying breath and wriggled her fingers in search of the coin. She felt him suddenly stiffen.

“Am I tickling you?” she said unrepentantly.

“After a fashion.”

Her fingers touched a bone, but then she realized there couldn’t be a bone in the middle of his belly. Her little finger caught the edge of the coin as her mind grasped what she had to be touching.

A girls’ school is not a haven of innocence. There had been many discussions, much sharing of knowledge, and not a few books stolen from fathers and brothers and smuggled into school.

According to a slim, alliterative volume called The Annals of Aphrodite, she was brushing against the Rod of Rapture. But didn’t men only Mount to Magnificence just prior to Carnal Conquest?

She seized her coin, pulled her hand out, and retreated a few steps, pulling on the armor of her sensible glove.

He turned, not changed in any drastic way. A quick glance, however, showed that he was still Mounted to Magnificence. She knew her face had to be bright red.

“So,” he said, “the raw recruit has scaled the walls but is defeated by the sight of fire within.”

“Not defeated. Just not willing to be burned.”

“Even if duty calls?”

“Duty, I think, calls in another direction entirely.” She set off briskly for the carriages.

He soon caught up. “I’m not planning a rape.”

“Good. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“How disappointing.”

She fired a mock glare at him. “No, you are not going to challenge me into it.” But she was loving, loving, loving this. To be able to talk this way with a man!

He laughed. “Another time, then.”

But then Hawk sickeningly remembered that there were not going to be other times. Now that he was certain his Falcon had been involved with Deveril’s death, he had hard choices to make—and he could see none that would lead to a happy ending.

For him or for her.

When they arrived back at the carriages, Van gave him a rather steely look. Since Maria was the chaperone for this excursion, Van would feel responsible, and he wasn’t liking what he saw. Hawk wondered exactly what he saw.

The short version of their story satisfied Maria, but Hawk thought Van was still watchful. Not surprising.

Despite long periods of separation, they knew each other very well.

“But what are we to do with the cat?” Maria asked, clearly not taken with the creature.

Hawk looked at the sleepy animal, which was filthy, scrawny, and missing part of an ear. “I’ll keep it.”

“Your father’s dogs will eat it,” Van predicted.

“I shall have to stand protector.” Hawk climbed into the carriage, cat still bundled in his coat, feeling a maudlin need to protect something.

Clarissa needed advice, and Althea did not seem likely to help with this. Instead, once she’d changed from her soiled dress, she sought out her chaperone. Miss Hurstman, as usual, was in the front parlor reading what looked like a very scholarly book.

“Miss Hurstman, may I talk to you? About Major Hawkinville.”

The woman’s brows rose, but she put her book aside. “What has he done?”

“Nothing!” Clarissa roamed the small room. “Well, he’s wooing me. He’s a fortune hunter, I’m sure, even though he says he will inherit his father’s estate. He admitted that it isn’t very large, and he’s as good as admitted that he does want to marry me. For my money—” She stopped for a breath.

Miss Hurstman studied her. “I assume there is no need for this panic?”

Clarissa, suddenly bereft of words, shook her head.

“Then what has caused it?”

The woman’s calm was infectious. Clarissa sat down. “I didn’t plan to marry. I saw no need to. But now, it is beginning to be appealing. You did warn me. I don’t know if this all shows a flexible mind, or a weak one.”

Miss Hurstman’s lips twitched. “Clever girl. The difference between the two can be hard to judge. The main question—the only question, really—is, Will he make you a good husband for the next twenty, forty, sixty years?”

Clarissa could feel her eyes widen at the idea. “I don’t know.”

“Precisely. He is a handsome man, and I assume he knows how to please and interest a woman. His father certainly did.”

“His father?”

“I knew him when I was young. A dashing military man with an eye to bettering himself.”

A fortune hunter. Like father, like son? And yet the father had clearly settled for his modest estate.

Miss Hurstman was looking at her as if she could read every thought. “You cannot know enough about Major Hawkinville yet to make a rational decision, Clarissa. Time will solve that. Take your time.”

“I know, but…” Clarissa looked at the older woman. “You speak of when you were young. Don’t you remember? Just now, reason has nothing to do with it!”

Miss Hurstman’s eyes twinkled. “That, my dear, is why young women have chaperones. Did Lady Vandeimen not play her part?”

Clarissa bit her lip, then said, “We were separated for a little while by a squall of bad weather.”

“For a sufficiently little while, I hope?”

“Oh, yes. Nothing… nothing truly happened.”

Miss Hurstman gave one of her snorts, whether of disapproval or amusement was hard to tell. “I do enjoy an enterprising scoundrel.” Amusement, then. “Panic over?” she asked.

Surprisingly, it was. Perhaps it was simply being away from Hawk, or perhaps it was Miss Hurstman’s dry practicality, but Clarissa didn’t feel so caught in swirling madness anymore.

Time. That was the answer to her dilemma over Hawk Hawkinville, and she had no shortage of it other than that created by impatience. She would make herself wait a week or two without commitment. And without being compromised.

She did not fool herself that it would be easy.

She wished she could discuss her other problem with Miss Hurstman—the matter of Deveril’s death, the way she kept speaking of it, the disastrous effects she seemed to have on other people’s lives—but her trust did not go so deep as that.

Hawk entered the Marine Parade house with his friends, but he went straight up to his room with the cat.

He hoped to avoid Van, but wasn’t surprised when he walked in not long after.

Hawk had taken the cat out of his jacket and was gently checking it for serious injuries.

“What are you going to do with it?” Van asked.

They might as well get to the topic at once. “I suspect Miss Greystone will wish me to care for it.”

“And what Miss Greystone wishes is of importance to you?”

“Yes.” The damnable thing was that he didn’t want to lie to his friend, not even by implication, but he couldn’t tell the truth. Above all, he needed time to think.

Surely there had to be some way to save Hawkinville from Slade, and Clarissa from the gallows.

The cat squawked as he touched a sore spot, but it was a polite complaint without claws attached.

“Quite the lady, aren’t you?” he murmured.

Van came over. “Is it? Female, I mean.”

“Yes, and not in bad shape, considering.” He finished his examination and put the cat down on the carpet. After a body-shaking shudder, it picked its way around the room like a tattered lady bountiful inspecting a lowly cottage.

“No problem with movement at all,” Hawk said. “In fact, quite a dainty piece. Tolerable quarters for you, your ladyship?”

The cat gave him an inscrutable look.

Hawk picked up his jacket and contemplated its sorry state. He hadn’t bothered to hire a valet since returning home, but he needed one now.

Van took it and went to the door. “Noons!” he shouted, and in moments his valet appeared, complained about the jacket, and went off to put it right.

The cat had sat to clean itself with dogged persistence.

“Tidiness above all. That’s the spirit,” Hawk said, scooping it up and carrying it to his washstand. There was a slight chance that if he was busy enough Van would put off the talk to another time.

“What you are about to get,” he told the cat as he gingerly sat it in the wide china bowl, “is some assistance in the cleaning department. Do not be so rude as to scratch me.”

He heard Van laugh and wondered if he was going to get away with it.

The cat had stiffened, but it wasn’t frightened.

“Bear up like a good soldier,” he said soothingly, and poured a little warm water over the side where blood was thick and sticky. The animal gave a yowl of complaint, but turned its head to lick. “No, no,”

he said blocking its head. “Let me. You can clean up the remains later.”

He gently rubbed the blood till it softened, then washed it away under a new dribble of water. He was careful of the gash above it, and to soothe the cat, he kept talking.

“Not all of this blood is yours, is it? You must have done a fair bit of damage. It’s my guess you could take on any rat you wanted. Beneath your dignity, was it, duchess? Risked having your neck broken over it, though, didn’t you?”

As he started on a patch on one shoulder, Van interrupted his monologue. “What exactly are your plans in regard to Miss Greystone?”

Hawk hadn’t really expected to get away with it.

“In loco parentis are you?”

“After a fashion, yes.”

Hawk tried a mild deflection. “Marriage is making you damn dull.”

Watching, Hawk could see Van control his temper. Damn. When they were boys a comment like that would have led either to a fight or to Van slamming out to work his temper off elsewhere. Either would have cut short the discussion.

They weren’t boys anymore.

The cat licked his hand. It was probably a command for more water, so he supplied it, working on another spot.

“Maria thinks she is assisting a courtship,” Van said. “A courtship very much to your advantage.

Generous of her, wouldn’t you say?”

Hawk winced at that one. “I do not necessarily need assistance.”

“You are likely to get it anyway, women being women. The question is, Do you deserve it?”

Hawk lifted the cat from the muddy, bloody water and wrapped it in a towel for a quick dry. Though not scratching, it wasn’t purring either.

He had to say something. “I’m not sure what you mean by that, Van.”

Van rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m not either. Damn it all, Hawk, Maria likes Miss Greystone. She’s playing at matchmaking. I don’t want her hurt.”

Ah, that Hawk could understand.

He put the cat down, and it stalked to a corner and began furiously cleaning itself.

“I don’t want anyone hurt, Van. Not even a damn cat. A fine state of affairs for a veteran, isn’t it?”

“A pretty natural state, I’d say. What’s going on?”

Hawk realized that it was no good. Van wouldn’t be deflected, or satisfied with a denial, and a good part of it was probably concern for him. The past was a strange beast. It lay dormant, appearing to be harmless, but it had claws and fangs and leaped up to take another bite at unexpected moments.

A poor analogy. He would embrace the past and the future it promised, if he could.

He would have to tell Van part of it, at least.

He emptied the dirty water into the slop bucket and washed his hands in fresh. “My father has mortgaged Hawkinville to Josiah Slade.”

“That damned ironmonger? Why?” After a moment, Van asked, “How much?”

Hawk turned to him, drying his hands. “More than you can afford.”

Van smiled. “Come on. I’m not ashamed to use my wife’s money in a good cause.”

“How much of it is left? Maria returned the money that her husband cheated your family out of. She’s been doing that elsewhere, too, hasn’t she? She has her dependents to take care of and Steynings to restore.”

“You think patching the plaster at Steynings is more important than keeping Slade out of Hawkinville?

Perdition, he’d be squire too, wouldn’t he? Intolerable! How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

Van stared, struck silent.

“Even if you could lend me that much, when could I pay it back? Even squeezing the tenants for every penny, it would take decades.”

“But what option do you have?” Van asked. “You can’t let Slade…” But then he answered himself. “Ah.

Miss Greystone.”

Lying by implication, Hawk said, “Ah, indeed. Miss Greystone.”

Van was frowning over it. “Do you love her?”

“How does one know love?”

“Believe me, Hawk, you know. Do you at least care for her?”

“Yes, of course. But will she marry me without protestations of love?”

Will she elope with you, you mean.

Van grimaced. “Probably not.”

“With my father’s example before me, I am naturally reluctant to woo an heiress under false pretenses.”

But wasn’t that exactly what he was doing?

The cat came to rub against his leg, miaowing. He scooped it up.

“The ratter told Clarissa the cat was called Fanny Laycock.”