True Story (The Deverells, Book One) (3 page)

"Nor did I hear about any
engagement."

"He didn't want to tell you until
tomorrow, after the other guests left. For some reason he's afraid
of you and had to get up the gumption. So now what are you going to
do?" The woman was triumphant, eyes agleam. "What would my silence
be worth to you?"

"Silence about what? You came to my
door begging to be let in. Fortunately, I retrieved my senses
before anything really happened."

"That's my word against yours," she
replied, lashes flapping. "Who do you think he'll believe? I'm sure
you have some way to ensure my discretion. A pair of diamond
earrings, perhaps. Like those they say once belonged to Marie
Antoinette— that you demanded back from your wife when she left
you. I'd happily take those as your wedding gift to a future
daughter-in-law. Or some equal payment."

He watched her calmly as another flare
of white lightning ripped across the angry sky and lit her smug
face. "I'm not going to pay you a penny, Miss Pridemore. I wouldn't
want you to feel like a blackmailing whore."

She squinted very slightly, her lips
ruffled with a quick intake of breath.

"It matters not to me, whatever you
tell my son," he added, shrugging into his waistcoat. "Firstly, at
only nineteen he's too young to marry and, secondly, I'm aware my
sons will attract women who want them for all the wrong reasons. My
cubs have yet to learn that money is the motivating force for most
females. You will, no doubt, be a harsh but necessary lesson for
him."

"You really are a rotten
bastard!"

"Precisely." He buttoned his
waistcoat. "But despite my best efforts to go to my grave a selfish
old rake, I still care about my ungrateful litter. Alas, I can't
help myself. So if you don't tell him, perhaps I
should."

"I doubt he would thank you for the
lesson."

He sighed. "I have found fatherhood,
on the whole, to be a thankless task."

"Fatherhood?" she spat. "From what he
tells me, you don't know the meaning of the word."

"As well as you know the definition of
fiancée."

The thwarted Miss Pridemore left in a
flurry of perfumed lace and silk, flushed livid and muttering under
her breath.

He kicked the door shut after
her.

Well, that was no great loss. His son
would recover. Deverells were resilient. They had to be.

Foolish woman. Had she simply asked
him for money and explained honestly why she needed it, he would
have given her some. But if there was one thing he couldn't abide
it was vicious deceit, especially when it would hurt one of his
litter.

Another rumble of thunder echoed
overhead and he smiled, the tension in his shoulders
relaxing.

He loved a good thunderstorm. It was
said that an old gypsy woman had found him as a babe washed up on a
Cornish beach after a shipwreck, during a particularly brutal
tempest, so perhaps that was why it affected him. When Nature took
its temper out on the land, bending trees with the power of its
wrath and cracking a silver whip across the sky, True Deverell felt
his blood surge with energy as if he was one with the storm, his
body rejuvenated by it, reborn.

Once, at a very grand party he'd
attended without an invitation, a gossiping old hag had exclaimed,
"You, sir, will go back to hell the same way you came out of it.
And the sooner the better."

Yes, many folk liked to tell him how
they thought his end would come— if the hangman's noose or a
vengeful victim of his astute card playing didn't get him first.
True rather enjoyed the idea of meeting his end during a roll of
thunder or a sizzling flare of lightening. In a storm like this one
tonight, for instance.

But although he knew the haughty woman
at that party had referred to bad weather, he chose to
misunderstand her.

"There is every chance you're right,
madam," he'd replied. "I'm quite sure that as I came into this life
between a woman's thighs, there is every chance I'll leave the same
way. I certainly hope so."

Remembering that harpy's shocked,
indignant face, his smile broadened. How satisfying it was to get
the last word over her sort.

Funny how the upper classes felt they
had a right to say anything they wanted to him, while he was
supposed to mind his manners, just because he was a foundling. But
despite Deverell's harsh beginnings, he was now a man of wealth and
power. Society couldn't keep him out. They couldn't ignore him,
because he had something they wanted— and yet he didn't need
anything from them in return, and that troubled the upper classes.
He wasn't one of their "sort" and never would be, but he had a damn
good time making his presence felt among them. A stray dog worrying
the sheep.

He straightened his cravat, smoothed a
hand over his dark hair, and checked his reflection in the tall
mirror as another blast of lightning lit the room. Wind filled the
drapes behind his image so that they swelled and lifted, a backdrop
of luxurious silken sails.

You are a wicked seducer!
I don't know how you can look at yourself in the mirror. Attempting
to deflower your own son's fiancée!

Deflower, indeed! He very much doubted
there were any petals left to be plucked on that particular
bloom.

He laughed and gave his twin in the
mirror a cheery wink, which was, of course reciprocated.

That's
how I look at myself, young lady, he mused. A man could
always be sure of an understanding ally when he looked in the
glass. No other soul would ever know him so well, would
they?

Unless...perhaps one day, if he wrote
his memoirs.

Not that he owed anyone an
explanation, but really he ought to tell the whole story. His side.
One day, once he felt he'd done all the living, he'd write a book
about it. Then finally his children might understand—

Suddenly the door swung open and
Ransom stood there with a pistol in one hand, pointed in a manner
that left no question of his intent, despite the slightly weaving
motion of that tall, lean body.

Thunder bounced and banged across the
sky.

"Just couldn't keep it in your
breeches could you, father?" Ransom slurred as he stumbled forward
and his shoulder hit the doorframe.

There was a flash, a loud crack, and
True Deverell had only one thought.

Damn. Should have started his memoirs
sooner.

Chapter Three

The Coast of
Cornwall

Half past seven in the
evening, (an approximation due to circumstances of travel),
Wednesday, August 31st, 1842.

The jagged cliff edge appeared to
crumble away beneath them, and it was a mystery how the horses
found their footing. Venturing to look out through the carriage
window was not for the faint of heart, but while her traveling
companions avoided the thrilling view on the left side of the
vessel, Olivia admired it bravely, longing for a gulp of that fresh
sea air. The interior of the coach was crowded, stale, and she was
crushed so far into a corner that if the door should suddenly fly
open she would undoubtedly tumble to her death.

It was not a prospect that worried her
unduly.

Certainly there was little left for
her on this side of the divide and if her end came about by
catapulting out of a speeding carriage, the event would have a
satisfyingly dramatic flourish. She pictured the curiously shaped
dent her corpse would make in the wet sand below. Some mischievous
person might carve a commemorative line into the cliff
side.

In this place Olivia
Westcott Ollerenshaw Pemberton Monday finally left a good
impression.

A figure suddenly passed into view— a
man on horseback galloping through the rippling waves of the pretty
bay below, scattering a flock of gulls up against the strawberry
sunset. The rider drew level with the coach and then, in a wild,
frothy spray, pulled ahead with ease, leaving a mess of hoof marks
across the formerly pristine sand.

Of course, any time there was a
peaceful scene a man could be counted upon to spoil it.

While a woman riding alone in such a
fashion would be subject to censure, that handsome creature was
free to race with the wind and the tide, foam and seaweed flying up
his riding boots and sticking to his breeches. He wore no coat,
just the white sleeves of his shirt, curving like the sails of a
racing frigate. He was hatless, his hair on the longer side,
flowing defiantly free in the wind.

Shocking!
As prickly old Great Aunt Jane was fond of
exclaiming,
Another example of standards
slipping. Where shall we all be in twenty years when such liberties
are taken with propriety?

Today Olivia agreed with her. Was the
man on such an urgent mission that this state of undress was really
necessary? Did he think he was a character in a gothic
romance?

She shook her head,
tut-tutting softly under her breath. Good thing she didn't have to
do
his
laundry,
whoever he was.

Despite his wild pace, she was forced
to admit that he sat well in the saddle, managing the power of that
horse with a firm hand and skilled thighs. Not that she ought to be
looking at his thighs or even thinking of their bulging existence.
That sort of thing had got her into trouble before, with her first
husband— delightfully naughty Captain Ollerenshaw. Poor Freddy.
Some would say she should have learned her lesson with
Freddy.

"
She's doing it again,"
she could
hear her stepbrother exclaim in the distant corridors of her
twisted mind. "
Someone ought to stop
her."

While Olivia was still thinking about
not looking at the man on the horse, he lifted slightly from the
saddle, showing a glimpse of taut, tidy buttock.

She must have sighed out loud then– or
made some sound— for several faces turned to stare at her, their
curiosity burning holes through her widow's veil.

Slowly she sank into the corner again,
giving up her splendid view. When a heavy-breathing, red-faced
gentleman seated opposite continued to stare at her while running a
thick tongue over his sparse front teeth, she closed her eyes,
escaped into darkness and willed the wheels to spin faster, the
horses' hooves to sprout wings.

At last the coach turned right.
Crackling and creaking like an old lung, it pulled into the yard of
a noisy inn and came to a groaning, depressed halt. To Olivia's
intense relief, all the remaining passengers emptied out, leaving
the interior to her alone. No one else, it seemed, cared to venture
farther along the rocky coastline today, and most of them looked
back at her as if she was mad to try it.

But now she had the coach to herself.
Heaven! So for those last few miles, back on the cliff road and
winding downhill, she made an attempt, finally, at a real nap, only
to be bounced savagely awake by a violent jolt just as she found a
semi-comfortable spot for her head.

Tipping forward, her bottom almost
sliding off the seat, she heard the coachman curse loudly—having no
care for the ears of a lady— and then he yelled, "Can't get no
further up yon lane. Mrs. be trottin' rest o' way to the Devil's
'Ell on her own hoofs before the tide comes in."

The Cornish accent was thick, but she
caught enough of it to understand that this is where she was to be
dumped out of the coach and left to her own fate. And yes, she was
familiar by now with the name the locals had given to Roscarrock
Castle— Devil's Hell. A charming alias full of wholesome, welcoming
warmth.

The sunset had turned a sinister shade
of blood and ochre, and the sound of the sea— once a distant, lazy
sizzle over sand —was now closer, a rhythmic, disgruntled slapping
against rock. The tide was coming in and before too long the rocky
outcrop on which her destination crouched menacingly would be cut
off from the mainland until tomorrow. If she didn't make haste to
beat the sea's advance, she could be swept into the water and
drowned.

Really, she thought in some
bemusement, a man could not get much farther from civilization, or
discourage it from visiting quite so effectively.

But Olivia was not afraid of the
darkening sky, the encroaching tide, or of walking alone. Or of
much at all, she liked to think. If she were, she wouldn't be there
now, would she? Certainly enough people had warned her not to go,
citing the dangerous reputation of the man who had— by letter and,
as far as he knew, entirely sight unseen— engaged her as his
secretary.

She opened the carriage door, took her
hatbox from under the seat and climbed out while the grumbling
coachman untied her trunk.

The remaining stretch of causeway
shone damply ahead of her, seawater already pooling on the stone.
It was a treacherous path of lumps and bumps leading to the steps
that would take her up the side of a craggy island to the grim
silhouette of the house.

At least the coachman had got her as
far as he could. Olivia thanked him and counted some coins from her
purse, laying each one carefully in the palm of his outstretched
hand, while she felt his eyes staring at her, hard and
disapproving.