A Lady of His Own by Stephanie Laurens
They reached the small chapel beside the cemetery; Charles took her elbow and ushered her in. They were just in time. The plain wooden coffin stood on bare trestles before the stone altar. Someone had placed a spray of white lilies on the unpolished wood. There were few there to hear the short service, few who had known Gimby at all, but there were some “mourners.” All were known to Charles and Penny; all were inhabitants of Fowey.
Together with the rest, they followed the coffin to the graveside and watched it lowered into the earth. Each person threw a handful of soil upon the lid, then one and all, exchanging nods and glances, turned away and left the gravediggers to their task.
Charles paused to speak to the vicar, then joined Penny where she waited with Mother Gibbs, both hanging on to their hats as the wind, brisker here on the point, tried to whisk them from their heads.
Mother Gibbs bobbed a curtsy as Charles came up.
He took Penny’s arm, and the three of them started back to the town. “Have you heard anything?”
“Wish I could say I have, but nay—there’s nary a whisper, and you may be sure I’ve put the word out good and proper.”
“Any advance on Arbry or Granville, or any related subjects?”
Pursing her lips, Mother Gibbs shook her head. “All quiet, it’s been.”
They turned onto the steep path that led down to the harbor; soon they were in the lee of the cliff, out of the wind.
Charles went on, “What about men passing through—gypsies, tinkers, vagabonds, men looking for work?”
“Wrong time of year for most such, but there was a tinker family came through. Near as me and the boys could work out, though, they was camped here, by Fowey town, days before poor Gimby met his end, and though they did head off just before he was found, they said they was heading to St. Austell. Dennis checked with the fishermen thereabouts, and the tinkers did appear there just when you’d expect, so they couldn’t’ve spared time to head the other way and murder Gimby, least not any ways we can see.”
“Thank you.” Charles fished in his pocket and drew out a sovereign; he offered it, but Mother Gibbs shook her head.
“Nay, not for this.” She fluffed her knitted shawl about her old shoulders and looked down at the fleet, bobbing at the quay. “Me and the boys don’t hold with this—Gimby might’ve been a blessed hermit, but he was one of ours. Whatever we can do to help you catch the beggar who killed him, we’ll do it and gladly. Dennis said as to tell ye he and the Gallants are at your disposal should you need extra hands.”
Charles nodded, returning the sovereign to his pocket. “Warn Dennis and the others to be extracareful all around. It’s possible the murderer’s already left the area, but something tells me he hasn’t.”
“Aye.” Mother Gibbs nodded. “I’ll do that.”
They parted from her at the lower end of the steep passageway leading to her door and strolled on along the quay.
Penny glanced at Charles’s face, often expressive, presently uninformative. “What are you thinking?”
He glanced at her, almost as if he’d forgotten she was on his arm. She narrowed her eyes on his. “Or should that be what are you planning?”
His swift grin broke across his face; he looked ahead. “Given that Nicholas is receiving dispatches, I was wondering if it was possible to arrange for him to receive the sort of information that would spur him to make contact with the French again. Assuming, of course, that simple treason is what we’re dealing with, a fact of which I’m still not convinced.”
“You think he might not have been passing secrets, but receiving them?”
“That’s one possibility we can’t as yet discount, certainly, but…” He shook his head. “It’s a feeling that the picture isn’t properly taking shape. Like a jigsaw with pieces that simply won’t fit. No matter what else we learn, at the back of my mind is the nagging fact that despite the assurances we received that there was a traitor working out of the Foreign Office, Dalziel never unearthed the slightest evidence that any information from the F.O. had actually turned up on the other side.
“Yes, the other side might have someone smart enough to hide all trace, however, Dalziel is terrifyingly good at finding such links, but in this case he turned up empty-handed, and it wasn’t for lack of trying.”
He stopped; arm in arm, they stood and looked out over the forest of masts lining the quay. “I don’t believe Nicholas is Gimby’s murderer. I was hoping, still am hoping that he’ll see the light and either confess, or at least take me sufficiently into his confidence so we can, regardless of all else, capture whoever killed Gimby. I am sure Gimby was the link with the French—the signals prove that. But while Nicholas is involved, just how he’s involved…” He sighed, frustrated.
She squeezed his arm. “I see what you mean about pieces that don’t fit.”
She sensed a sharpening of his attention, felt the subtle steeling of the muscles under her hand.
“Speaking of such pieces…”
She followed his gaze to a tall, thin figure standing on the wharf below in deep and animated discussion with two fishermen.
“The Chevalier.” She searched through the others thronging the wharf. “I can’t see Mark Trescowthick, or any others of that group.”
“No.” Charles was watching the exchange between the seamen and the Chevalier. “I have the feeling that while Mark might think he and the Chevalier are close friends, the Chevalier might describe matters differently.”
She considered. “The Chevalier’s rather older than Mark.”
“And far more serious than an overindulged pup like Mark Trescowthick. I’m sure the Chevalier is charming when he needs to be, but I doubt they have much in common.”
“If the Chevalier is just using Mark as his excuse to be down here, that rather raises the question of why.”
Charles studied the Chevalier for a minute more, then stirred. “With any luck Dalziel will help us with that—he has contacts enough to find out what the Chevalier’s real purpose here might be. Meanwhile, I should speak with Dennis, maybe tomorrow, and give him the names of our five visitors. Let’s see what he and the Gallants can learn.”
Together, they turned and started the climb back to the High Street.
“Perhaps we should ride to the Abbey and see if Dalziel has sent any word.”
Charles shook his head. “Not enough time has passed since I sent my report. The reply will come late tonight at the earliest, but most likely sometime tomorrow.” He looked at her. “Let’s have a quick lunch at the Pelican, and then, given Nicholas had a delivery this morning, I think a stint in the folly might be wise.”
They walked on in silence. As they neared the Pelican, she said, “On the way back, I’m going to stop off at Essington Manor. If I’m not seen about, visiting as usual, people will start wondering where I am—”
“And what you’re doing.” Charles sent her one of his devilish grins. “Good idea. I’ll endure the folly on my own. Who knows?” He arched a brow at her as he held the door of the Pelican wide. “I might even catch up on some sleep.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, elevated her nose, and swept past.
And hoped, in the dimmer light inside, that he wouldn’t see her blush.
That blush hadn’t owed its genesis to any prudish start but to her realization of how reluctant she was to forgo an afternoon in the folly with him.
But reason had to prevail.
When she rode into the Wallingham Hall stables at five o’clock—and not a minute earlier, as he’d instructed—he was waiting. Together they walked up to the house.
“Did anything occur this afternoon?”
“No. Nicholas is sitting tight.” Charles looked toward the wing that housed the library. “I’m inclining to the notion that he doesn’t know who to contact any more than he did when he first came here looking for Granville’s friends. If that’s so, it’ll be pointless to arrange to give him something worth another pillbox to sell. However, I think he
“So he’s being extracareful.”
“Indeed. I’m going to try to rattle him this evening.”
Reaching the garden door they entered, and once again went their separate ways. She repaired to her room, bathed and changed for dinner; given Norris was in Charles’s confidence, she expected he was doing the same. Certainly, when she walked into the drawing room fifteen minutes before the dinner hour, he appeared immaculately groomed.
He was standing with Nicholas by the fireplace, dwarfing Nicholas more by vitality than size, and appeared to be in expansive good humor—a fact Nicholas, it seemed, had learned to view with suspicion, as well he might.
She did her best to provide the right foil for Charles’s machinations; it didn’t truly matter which of them Nicholas decided to trust. If he ever did; despite Charles’s best efforts—not overtly intimidating but in a vein any scion of Eton or Harrow would instantly recognize and correctly interpret, such as a largely one-sided discussion of the type of secrets that Gimby might have assisted in ferrying across the Channel—Nicholas remained tight-lipped.
Indeed, his resistance seemed to have hardened. The antipathy between the two that Charles had originally remarked seemed to be resurfacing.
When, hours later, she went into the front hall to farewell Charles, much to Nicholas’s transparent relief, she murmured, “He’s more…dogged, don’t you think?”
Charles nodded, the line of his lips tending grim. “We’re going backward with him. He’s come out of his funk and realized we have no evidence whatever. If he just sits tight, he’ll escape any net.”
“I wonder,” she said, walking toward the front door left open to the pleasant night, “if something in those papers he received might account for his change of heart. Perhaps we could look at them later?”
“He’s keeping them in his room, but there’s nothing there other than what he suggested—memos he needs to approve.”
When she turned to stare at him, he smiled. “Norris has missed his calling. He looked, and remembered enough for me to be sure.”
She sighed. “In that case…” Raising her head, she met his eyes and gave him her hand. “I’ll bid you…au revoir.”
His smile deepened. “Indeed.” Lifting her hand, he pressed a kiss to her fingertips, paused, his gaze on hers, then turned her hand and pressed a much more intimate kiss—one she felt to her marrow—to her palm, then gracefully bowed, released her, and went out and down the steps.
Leaning against the doorframe, a smile curving her lips, she listened to the scrunch of his boots as he headed around the house toward the stables. Outside, the night was peaceful, serene but dark; the moon had yet to rise. She drank in the silence, let the aura of home wrap her about. And thought of how long it would take Charles to circle the house and slip upstairs.
Her smile deepening, she straightened and turned inside. As she crossed the front hall, Nicholas came out of the drawing room. He halted; a faint frown shadowed his face.
Drawing near, she raised her brows in easy query.
“How does Lostwithiel come and go? I haven’t heard wheels on the gravel when he leaves.”
She smiled in understanding. “He’s most at home in a saddle. Knowing him, he rides over the fields—he never was one to stick to any straight and narrow.”
“Indeed?”
Faintly disconcerted, as she’d intended, Nicholas nodded a good night and headed for the library. According to Norris, he’d lost all interest in the local area and was now leafing through her father’s books on pillboxes.
Inwardly frowning, she climbed the stairs.
Ellie was waiting. Penny thought about dismissing her, but decided to stick with her usual routine.
Eventually, Ellie left. Rising from her dressing stool, Penny snuffed the candles, then went to the window and opened the curtains. The moon was just rising over the escarpment, sending fingers of silvery light into the room. She remained at the window, looking out as the light strengthened and the familiar landscape was reborn, transfigured by the play of moonlight and shadow.
A minute later, Charles materialized from the shadows behind her. She hadn’t heard him enter, but knew he was there before he stepped near.
Reaching past her, he unlatched the window and pushed it open. In the same movement, he stepped close, one large hand sliding across her waist to ease her back against him.
Smiling, she relaxed and crossed her arms over his hand, holding him to her; leaning back into the haven of his strength, she rubbed her temple against his jaw. “Nicholas asked how you traveled back and forth from the Abbey. He noticed the lack of carriage wheels on the drive.”
“What did you say?”
“I intimated that, unconventional as you were, you probably rode.”
There was a moment’s silence. “Unconventional?”
“Hmm.”
She could almost hear his mind working.
“You don’t like conventional.” Statement, not question.
“Conventional is well enough in its place, but there’s a time and place for everything, including the other.” She turned in his arms, looked into his face. “And the other is certainly more…challenging.”
His smile would have beguiled an angel. “And,” he said, bending his head, “you like to be challenged.”
“I do,” she whispered, and kissed him.
She’d learned long ago the art of dealing with him, treating with him. It was imperative to stop him from grabbing the bit of their interaction and running with it, leaving her forever trying to catch up. Instead, as before, she boldly seized the reins.
Opened her mouth to him, lured him in, sank into his arms, pressed herself to him, drew him deep, then turned the kiss on him. Let her fire rise and pour through her into him; let her desire—the desire he’d shown her she had—freely rise and take her, and claim him.
She dropped all pretense; she knew what she wanted of him—she let it show. Knew that would provoke him as nothing else could.
Winding her arms about his neck, she held him to the kiss. Pressing into him, she swayed, flagrantly caressing his already rigid erection, deliberately taunting its hardness with the giving tautness of her belly, sliding her thighs against his, sinuously shifting her peaked breasts against his chest.
He stilled, then surrendered, yet even as he gave way, as he let her will dominate and ceded control to her, she knew she hadn’t, this time, succeeded in stunning him long enough to seize it; he’d been waiting, ready for her, but had made a deliberate decision to let her lead. To allow her to script their play.
That willing subservience was such an un-Charles-like act, at least of the Charles she’d known; with an effort she broke from the kiss that had progressed to beyond voracious, that had already reduced them both to gasps, to, from a distance of an inch, try to read his eyes, his face.
Her wits were her own, but they weren’t functioning logically, all but overwhelmed by her senses. Her gaze steadied on his dark eyes, then lowered to his lips. Hers throbbed. “Why?”
She was sure he’d understand, was sure he did, yet he didn’t immediately answer.
He hesitated long enough to make her wonder what he was hiding.
She raised her eyes to his.
He held her gaze, thinking for a moment longer, then replied, his voice so low she wasn’t sure she heard so much as felt his words.
“Whatever you wish, however you wish. I’m yours. Take me.”
Love me. Charles bit back the words—not yet, not now. He might be caught, but he wasn’t sure she was. Experience had taught him not to imagine he could read women’s minds; heaven knew they were infinitely more complicated than men’s.
Her eyes searched his, verifying his meaning, then a slow, sultry smile—one he’d only seen in recent days—curved her lips.
“However I wish…” she murmured, and stretched up and kissed him.
CH
14
INWARDLY SMILING, CHARLES GRIPPED HER WAIST; FOR LONG moments, as her tongue dueled with his, he simply savored the feel of her between his hands, supple, imbued with feminine strength, subtly rather than overtly curvaceous.
Why that last should so attract him he’d never understood; perhaps it was because her body with its svelte charms echoed her elusive and therefore more tantalizing feminine responses.
If she liked challenges, he liked them even more. Especially when they were feminine. Especially when the female was her.