Into blazing black eyes.
He leaned so close she felt his breath across her lips. The muscles of his leg shifted under her hip, reminding her of her precarious position. His hands tightened around her upper arms, holding her prisoner. “I may indeed be a nasty, bitter, and sarcastic man, madam, but let me assure you that my humanity is more than intact.”
Beatrice’s breath stopped like a rabbit caught in the open before a wolf. She could feel the heat of his body coming off him in waves. Her bosom was nearly pressed to his chest, and to make matters worse, that sparkling black gaze fell to her mouth.
As she watched, his lips parted and his eyelids drooped as he growled softly, “And I will use any means at my disposal to win this war.”
So mesmerized was she by the wicked intent in his eyes that she started when the door to the bedroom opened. Lord Hope abruptly released her arms. He was staring behind her at the intruder. For a fleeting second, she thought she saw something like joy cross his face, but so suddenly did it disappear that perhaps she was mistaken.
In any case, both his countenance and his voice were stony when he spoke.
“Renshaw.”
Chapter Three
“Come, sir,” cried the Goblin King, “I’ll give you fifty gold coins for that sword. Tell me you’ll agree.”
“I fear I cannot,” Longsword replied.
“Then surely you’ll part with it for one hundred gold coins? It is but an old and rusting sword, and you can buy twenty more the same or better for that price.”
At this Longsword laughed. “Sir, I’ll not sell you my sword for any price you name, and I’ll tell you why: to relinquish this sword would cost me my very life, for it and I are bound together magically.”
“Ah, if that is the case,” the Goblin King said craftily, “will you sell me a lock of your hair for one penny?”
—from Longsword
For seven years, Reynaud had thought about what he would say and how he would feel when he saw Jasper Renshaw again. The questions he would ask, the explanations he would demand. And now, now that the moment was here, he searched within himself and felt… nothing.
“It’s Vale now,” the man standing by the door said. His face was a little more lined, his eyes slightly more sad, but otherwise he was the same man Reynaud had played with as a boy. The same man he’d bought a commission with. The same man he’d considered his best friend.
The man who’d left him for dead in a savage foreign land.
“You attained the title, then?” Reynaud asked.
Vale nodded. He still stood just inside the door, hat in hand. He stared at Reynaud as if trying to decipher the thoughts of a wild beast.
Miss Corning straightened from where he’d pulled her across his lap. So intent was he on Vale that he’d almost forgotten her presence. He made a belated grab for her hand but was too late. She’d moved away from the bed and was beyond his reach. He’d have to wait for another time when she might step unwarily close again.
She cleared her throat. “I believe we met once at one of your mother’s garden parties, Lord Vale.”
Vale’s gaze jerked to her, and he blinked before a wide smile spread across his face. He bowed extravagantly. “Forgive me, gentle lady. You are?”
“My cousin, Miss Corning,” Reynaud growled. No need to tell Vale the connection was not a blood one—he’d make what claim he could.
Vale’s thick eyebrows rose. “I never knew you had a female cousin.”
Reynaud smiled thinly. “She’s newly discovered.”
Miss Corning looked between the men, her brows knitted, clearly confused. “Shall I send for tea?”
“Yes, please,” Vale said, while at the same time Reynaud shook his head. “No.”
Vale looked at him, his smile gone.
Miss Corning cleared her throat again. “Well, I think, ah, yes, I think I’ll leave you two to yourselves. There must be many things you’d like to catch up on.”
She walked to the door where Vale still stood and whispered to him, “Just don’t stay too long. He’s been very ill.”
Vale nodded, holding the door for her and then shutting it gently after she’d left. He turned to look at Reynaud.
Who snapped, “I’m not an invalid.”
“You’ve been ill?”
“I took a fever on the ship over. It’s nothing.”
Vale raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment on that. Instead he asked, “What happened?”
Reynaud smiled sardonically. “I think I should be asking that of you.”
Vale looked away, his face paling. “I thought—we all thought—that you were dead.”
“I wasn’t.” Reynaud bit off the words, his incisors closing with sharp finality.
He remembered the stink of burning flesh. The binds cutting into his arms. Of marching naked through new snowfall. Her brown eyes stared up through a mask of blood…. He shook his head once, sharply, chasing the ghosts from his mind, focusing on the living man before him. His hand moved to the hilt of his knife.
Vale watched his movement warily. “I would never have left you had I known you lived.”
“Yet the fact remains that I was alive and you did leave me.”
“I’m sorry. I . . .” Vale’s mouth flattened. He stared at the carpet between his feet. “I saw you die, Reynaud.”
For a moment, demons chattered in Reynaud’s brain, whispering of treachery. He saw clearly the grimace a dying man made while being burned alive. Then, with an effort, he pushed back the image and the mad voices.
“What happened at the Wyandot camp?” he asked.
“After they took you away, you mean?” Vale didn’t wait for the reply but sighed heavily. “They tied us to stakes and tortured the other men—Munroe, Horn, Growe, and Coleman. They killed Coleman.”
Reynaud nodded. He’d seen how the enemies—both white and native—were treated by the Indians who captured them.
Vale inhaled, as if bracing himself. “Then, after Coleman’s death on the second day, the Indians took us to where they were burning a man at the stake. They told us it was you. He wore your coat, had black hair. I thought he was you. We all thought he was you.” Vale looked up, meeting Reynaud’s gaze with haunted turquoise eyes. “His face was already gone. Blackened and burned by the flames.”
Reynaud looked away. The reasonable part of his mind knew that Vale and the others had had no choice. They’d believed him dead because of overwhelming evidence. Any sane man would believe the same when faced with what they’d seen and been told.
And yet…
And yet the beast at his core refused the explanation. He’d been abandoned, left by those he’d risked life and limb for. Left by those he’d called his friends.
“It was almost another fortnight before Sam Hartley brought back a rescue party to ransom us,” Vale said quietly. “Were you in the Indian camp that entire time?”
Reynaud shook his head, watching his left hand flatten against the counterpane, noting absently the contrast of his brown skin against the white fabric. His hand was thin, the tendons standing out clearly on the back. “How is my sister, Emeline?”
He heard Vale sigh as if frustrated. “Emeline. Emeline is just fine. She’s remarried now, you know. To Samuel Hartley.”
Reynaud’s head jerked up, his eyes narrowing. “Corporal Hartley? The ranger?”
Vale smirked. “The same, although he’s no longer a lowly corporal. He’s made his fortune importing and exporting goods from the Colonies.”
“Miss Corning told me that she married a colonial, but I hadn’t realized it was Hartley.” Even if Hartley was wealthy now, Emeline had married beneath her station. She was the daughter of an earl. What had possessed her?
“He came to London a year ago for business and for other matters and quite stole your sister’s heart, I think.”
Reynaud contemplated that information, his mind spinning in confusion and anger. Had Emeline changed so much in seven years? Or were his memories tainted? Warped by time and all that had been done to him?
“What happened, Reynaud?” Vale asked softly. “How did you escape death at the Indian camp?”
Reynaud’s head jerked up. He glared at his former friend. “Do you really care?”
“Yes.” Vale looked bewildered. “Yes, of course.”
Vale stared at him as if waiting for the story, but Reynaud was damned if he’d rip open his soul for him.
Finally Vale looked away. “Ah. Well, I’m glad—very glad—that you’re back safe and sound.”
Reynaud nodded. “Is that it?”
“What?”
“Is that it?” Reynaud enunciated. He was tired and needed sleep, dammit, though he wouldn’t let the other man know it. “Have you finished whatever you came for?”
Vale’s head snapped back as if he’d been clipped in the chin. Then he widened his stance, squared his shoulders, and leveled his head. A wide, unamused smile spread across his lips. “Not quite.”
Reynaud raised his eyebrows.
“I also wanted to talk to you about the traitor,” Vale said silkily.
Reynaud shook his head. “Traitor…?”
“The man who betrayed us to the Indians at Spinner’s Falls,” Vale said as a roaring began in Reynaud’s ears that almost drowned his last words. “A traitor with a French mother.”
BEATRICE HEARD THE crash as she mounted the stairs with another tray of tea and biscuits. She paused on the grand staircase, gazing blindly upward at the floor above. Had it been an accident? A China figurine or a clock falling off the mantel? The thought was hopeful, but she sped her steps, rounding into the upper hallway as the second crash hit. Oh, dear. It sounded rather as if Lord Hope and Lord Vale might be murdering each other.
Down the hall, the door to Lord Hope’s room burst open and Viscount Vale stomped out, angry but blessedly still intact.
“Don’t think this is over, Reynaud,” he called. “Damn you, I’ll be back.”
He jammed his tricorne on his head and turned and saw Beatrice. A sheepish look momentarily crossed his face.
Then he nodded curtly. “Your pardon, ma’am. You might not want to go in there at the moment. He’s not fit for civilized company.”
She glanced at the door to the scarlet room and then back to Lord Vale. As he neared, she saw with horror that a red mark marred his chin.
As if someone had struck him.
“What happened?” she asked.
He shook his head. “He’s not the man I once knew. His emotions are… extreme. Savage. Please, be careful.”
Lord Vale bowed gracefully and then strode past her and down the stairs.
Beatrice watched him disappear before glancing at the tray still in her hands. The tea had spilled a bit, staining the linen cloth covering the bottom of the tray. She could go back to the kitchens and have one of the maids lay a new tray—and perhaps have the girl deliver it as well. Except that would be cowardly. It wasn’t her duty to send servant girls into places she herself was afraid to venture.
She looked down the hall. The door to Lord Hope’s room still stood open. He was in there all alone.
She squared her shoulders and marched to the open door. “I’ve brought some more tea and biscuits,” she announced briskly as she sailed into the room. “I thought you might actually drink it this time.”
Hope was lying in the bed, turned toward the wall, and at first she thought he might be asleep, silly as that notion was after the commotion of before.
He didn’t turn. “Get out.”
“You seem to be under a misapprehension,” she said conversationally.
She started to set the tray on the little table beside the bed, but there were shards scattered in an arc away from the table, comprised of what had once been an ugly china clock and a matching pair of ceramic pugs. Added as it was to the previous tea things she’d brought up before Lord Vale’s visit, it was beginning to be quite a pile.