True Story (The Deverells, Book One) (35 page)

Now he slurped broth directly from the
side of the bowl and burped, his eyes boring into her the entire
time, looking for a reaction. Olivia knew he was being deliberately
coarse, trying to remind her of his upbringing. Or lack of it.
Using that misfortune, once again, as his excuse.

"You don't wish to discuss it," she
muttered.

The bowl drained, he let it fall back
to the table and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Exactly. Just as
you don't like to tell me what you're thinking and feeling. Just as
you don't care to tell me about your husbands. I have to tease it
out of you, don't I?"

She shook her head, looking down at
her hands in her lap. He wanted so much from her and yet he was
willing to concede so little. Olivia would be the one to make all
the changes, if she wanted to be with him.

Suddenly a woman bumped
into their table and exclaimed, "Why, it
is
you, Mr. Deverell! It's been a
while since we saw you here." She was pretty, pink-cheeked, plump
and bosomy. Her fair hair, full of wispy curls, framed her face
like petals.

"Ah... Sally. It has been a while,
hasn't it?"

"Aye." The woman rolled her hip
against the table edge and gave a low, lusty chuckle. "Not like you
to be stuck up there on that chunk of rock all alone with no female
company for so many months. I thought you was ill. Rumor had it
that bullet hit something vital after all." And then, as if she had
not noticed anyone else seated there until he gestured with a nod
of his head, she finally turned and looked Olivia up and down.
"Who's this then? Not a local girl."

"This, Sally, is Mrs. Olivia Monday.
My secretary. Olivia, this is Miss Sally White."

"
Secretary
?"

Olivia stretched her fingers out,
letting the napkin fall to her lap. "How do you do, Miss
White."

Sally merely twitched her small nose
and looked back at Deverell. "Well, you know where to find me, when
those cold winter nights set in. Ol' Sally will warm you up
again."

"Yes." True smiled. "I
know."

The inn-keeper called for her and
slowly she walked away, collecting empty tankards from another
table and stopping to chat with a group of laughing, ruddy-faced
men by the ale taps.

Olivia picked up her pasty and ate,
filling her mouth before she might feel the urge to say anything.
All that needed to be said in that regard had come out last night
and she would gladly move on, away from the subject of his previous
female attachments. She looked out of the window to watch horses
being prepared for a fine carriage.

"No comment?" her companion asked
gruffly, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

She widened her eyes. "About
what?"

"Women I've had? Women I've tumbled? I
suppose you want to know if Sally's one of 'em."

"Why would it concern me?"

"It was one night I spent with her a
few years back. With her and her sisters. Can't remember all their
names. Four or five hearty lasses."

A piece of pastry went down the wrong
way and made her cough.

He was so brutally honest, it was
painful. But better that, she supposed, than have him try to
deceive her. "I know all about the way you lead your life. You've
made it clear to me."

It was also evident to her now that he
would not change for anybody. Would she want him to? He was the
same all the way through and one would always know what to expect.
Born wild, making his own rules. Not only had he survived against
the odds that way, but thrived. Why should he change? Especially
when he thought it would make him weaker and vulnerable if he
opened his heart to one woman.

She understood. They all had their own
way of getting on with life, overcoming obstacles and who was to
say that her method was better than his?

The awkwardness, the
immoral propositions, the naughty sense of humor, his brusque,
eccentric ways were all a part of what made
him
. And made him strangely
attractive to her. Olivia wouldn't want the man to be anybody but
who he truly was. She must simply decide where she fit in his life,
whether she had a purpose there that went beyond the post she'd
accepted.

Perhaps she was not only meant to help
write his story, but to be a part of it too.

But before she could say any of that,
Miss Sally White was back, this time with a message from someone
who waited behind the paneled walls of the private dining
room.

"One of the guests wants to see you,
Mr. Deverell. If you can spare the time, she says."

"She?" He scowled.

"Aye." She glanced at Olivia and
smirked. "Very fine lady. The one they say was once your lady
wife."

Chapter Twenty-Four

Her name, he learned, was
Lady Charlotte Rothsey. She reminded him of a porcelain statue, all
frail, cool, smooth edges. And she walked in on the arm of Lord
Henry Duquesne. A man whose face and name True had never forgotten.
It was the man that interested him more than the woman. Why
wouldn't it be thus, since this was supposedly his
father?

Duquesne; a man with a bad
temper, so it was said. A violent, cold-hearted man, spoiled and
arrogant.

There was always a chance
that he was not responsible for the feral boy who once ran wild on
his own father's estate, but it was just as likely that he was. No
one would ever know. Not even Henry Duquesne, who had probably
fathered many bastards and cared what became of none.

He studied the man's face
and saw how bloated it was, over-filled with pride and
self-contentment. Duquesne paraded his fiancée about as if she was
the prize-winning sow at a country fair and she, unknowing and
uncaring, bathed in the attention, her lips ever wide in a silly,
empty smile. But yes, she was a handsome woman, a thoroughbred—
elegant and fashionable. She was the kind of woman other men fought
after.

True made up his mind that
he would have her. Just to get his vengeance on the Duquesne's. Let
them raise a child of his without knowing.

Yet, in the end, he found
that he could not let his own cub be left to their mercy. He was
not as heartless as he thought he should be.

He was not his father's
son, after all, but capable of deep feelings for a being not yet
born. And he was fraught with doubts about his abilities to be a
father. He did not know what to do with this emotion. Like any
beast of the farmyard, what he did not know or understand cast
suspicion in his mind and so he kept his distance from
it.

* * * *

"What the hell are you doing here,
Charlotte?"

Her bitter gaze— always looking for
some reason to claim she'd been misused or slighted— traveled
greedily over him as he walked up to her corner table. She was the
only customer in the private room, sitting there like an empress,
dining in solitary splendor. A sneer curled her lip lazily upward.
"Since you refuse to answer my letters, I was on my way to pay you
a visit. Imagine my surprise when I heard you were here, in the
public salon. To my relief I shan't have to take the barbarous trip
out onto that island in this foul weather. I can handle my business
here and now."

"I'm busy, Charlotte. If you have any
matter to discuss regarding the children, you know how
to—"

"I didn't realize I'd be intruding on
a pleasant tete a tete, but I'm sure your companion can wait a half
hour. She has nowhere else to go, does she?"

His shock at suddenly
seeing her again was now joined by a fast rising temper, and
considerable suspicion. Perhaps it
would
be a good thing to deal with
her now, rather than have her come out to Roscarrock.

"What could possibly be so important
that you came all this way?" He knew she hated Cornwall and would
avoid the place unless she saw some opportunity to twist a knife in
his gut.

Now she invited him to sit at her
table, but he refused.

"Just get on with it," he snapped,
impatient for pleasanter company.

"Very well. My father will pay for
Raven's wedding and I suggest you don't interfere. He wants to hold
it in Edinburgh and Raven is in agreement."

True suddenly had a toothache. He
pressed on the troubled spot with the tip of his tongue.

"And Raven doesn't want you at the
wedding. You're an embarrassment to her."

Her words were like a punch to his
stomach, forcing him back into a chair on the opposite side of her
round table.

Charlotte continued without even
looking at him, helping herself to broth from the china tureen on
the table before her. "You will, no doubt, be tiresome about it,
but I've told my father to proceed with the plan as he sees fit. We
would like a spring wedding. I thought I'd better come in person
and tell you. It is, apparently, beyond your capabilities to write
a civil letter and I realize you may not even bother reading
anything I send."

He realized how shrill she was. Surely
he'd noticed it before, but somehow tonight it was worse than he
remembered it. Now, of course, he was accustomed to a gentler voice
at his table— someone with a warmer, richer timbre, and, more often
than not, a hint of wry amusement in her tone. Charlotte had no
sense of humor. When she laughed it was because she had succeeded
in making someone uncomfortable. It was generally amusing to no one
else.

True had been rubbing his knuckles on
his thigh so hard he feared he might wear a hole in the corduroy
riding breeches. He had to find something to do with his hands
because whenever she dangled his children about like bait, his
fingers always wanted to squeeze around her neck.

"If my daughter is to marry, I will
pay for it," he muttered. "It is my responsibility. Nothing to do
with Lord Rothsey." He would never agree to a wedding in Scotland,
so far away. On Rothsey's turf.

"But plans are already underway." She
waved a hand carelessly, making the candle flames dance like yellow
butterflies.

"Then you'd better stop them, hadn't
you?"

She scowled hard. "Raven wants to
marry in Edinburgh."

"When I see her at Christmas, she can
tell me that herself."

"Christmas?"

"I have written to invite my daughter
and her young man to Roscarrock for the Yuletide
season."

His former wife sputtered in shock.
"You don't even celebrate."

"This year, I shall."

"Raven won't come here."

"That's up to her."

Charlotte's cheeks looked very thin
tonight, and there were new lines at the corner of her mouth. When
she forgot herself and allowed her brow to wrinkle, the creases
were deeper than he recalled. No doubt he had a few more lines on
his face too. Olivia would be sure to point them out for him, he
mused. "I can't think what you plan to achieve by inviting them
here," Charlotte grumbled. "If you mean to try dissuading her
against marriage—"

"I don't mean to dissuade her against
anything."

"Then why?" she exclaimed. "What good
will it do if she comes here?"

"Whatever she decides about this
marriage, I would like to make peace with my daughter."

"Make. Peace? Make.
Peace
?" She howled with
laughter, tipping her head back. "You? You wouldn't know how. You
settle quarrels with your fists or your money. I doubt that's
changed."

"You haven't known me for a long time.
In fact never. Not properly. We weren't interested in learning
about each other."

"Just as you never bothered to learn
anything about Raven. Never had time for her. She's just another
irritating woman in your eyes. And she knows not to trust you. I've
given her good warning not to."

He pressed his tongue against the
toothache again, and made it worse. Good. "I'm sure you have. And
I've allowed that folly to continue because of my own bull-headed
stupidity."

"I don't follow."

"You are right, Charlotte, when you
say I know little about my own daughter. As I promised her in my
letter, I will amend that when she comes back. Fortunately it's not
too late for me to grow up and be an adult. A proper
father."

She swallowed, fingers to the pearl
choker around her slender throat, almost as if she could feel his
hands there, squeezing. "Raven won't come here," she repeated
flatly.

"We'll see. By the way, you're not
invited for Christmas." He would get that clear
immediately.

"Heavens I wouldn't want to be. I have
plans in London. I'm on my way there now."

He nodded briskly, glad of
it.

Now she tapped her fork to
her plate, watching him with a thoughtful gleam in her eye. "So ...
that funny-looking girl in the ugly grey dress...where did you
find
her
?"

"Her name is Olivia
Monday."