Chapter 6

Six

WAYLAND'S, LONDON - JUNE 6, 1816

WILLIAM

The higher a man rose, the farther he fell. But what happened when he nearly touched heaven and had to come back down?

Probably something like this, this crushing, aching revulsion that overwhelmed me, slipping through my veins like ice. It wasn't sorrow. Nor was it a tender melancholy for the possibility of tomorrow, a tomorrow that tempted me in a way I hadn't known before. Though that pitiful dream lay smashed at my feet.

It was disgust. Pure and simple disgust.

Her name escaped me, even as I stared at her wide, aghast eyes.

I had been distracted the only time we spoke, a lifetime ago. More important things occupied my head that day. Matters of life and death were more essential than the name of the slip of a girl in breeches who scolded me in an abhorrent accent.

She was his wife?

That much I remembered with absolute certainty. This captivating creature before me, the one whose hand had found her kiss-swollen mouth with shock. Her fingers caught there on her lower lip.

She was that bastard's wife.

Her unfairly beautiful eyes were filled with disgust and loathing. Mine almost certainly reflected something similar.

Without a word, she turned. She ripped both the doors open and disappeared into the discord inside. Silken butterflies and embroidered flower petals chased her, trailing in her wake.

Her delicate golden mask remained clutched tightly in my grasp.

Eight years earlier -Yorkshire

"Mr. Hart! Mr. Hart!" Every bleeding time I sat down she started squawking.

"What is it, Mrs. Talbot?" She rushed through the doorway, all flushed, ruddy cheeks and cotton skirts.

Breathing heavily, one hand pressed to her ample bosom, the other supporting her against the doorframe, she panted, "She's missin', sir! Miss Adriane, she's missin',"

The first time, I had managed to temper my reaction.

The second had been a struggle.

But when she fell into a chill after the third time and couldn't rise from bed for a week, my patience had abandoned me.

"Damn it all! Not again. I pay you to watch her when I'm not able to!"

"I can't make her do nothin'," the woman protested. "There aren't enough pounds in the whole country to pay me to sit there when she's bein' all unnerving like."

"That's exactly what I pay you—generously, I might add—to do. If you cannot, I will find someone who can. Have you checked the kitchens?" A frustrated hand tugged through my unruly curls.

"Humph."

Oh, bleeding hell. I did not have time for a sulk. I tossed my spectacles onto the desk, onto the law book I had been attempting to read. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I steeled myself for the coming megrim.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Talbot. I did not mean to imply that you were replaceable. You're far too important for us to live without you. You know how I worry about Miss Adriane. Have you had the opportunity to check the kitchens? I would not wish her to burn herself."

"She was layin' on the table that way she does when she's bein' vexin'. Talkin' 'bout the darkness and the worms and the stars again. Actin' like a child even though she's a woman grown. An' I told her she wasn't to talk like that no more, but she wouldn't have it. So I said, I don't have to listen to this no more, an' I went to the drawing room. Just for a minute so's she'd stop. But I came back and she weren't there no more. And the door was wide open, so I came to find you."

The speech was delivered in one breath and poorly enunciated, so it took a moment to glean the most important bit of her story.

"Which door was wide open?"

"The front one. Why would I be tellin' you about it if it weren't the front door?"

The front…

Before I finished the thought, I was up and shoving past Mrs. Talbot whose only moment of good sense the entire day had been to get out of my way.

The offending door swung on its hinges in the cool breeze as I raced past, grabbing my scabbard by the door while calling for Adriane. In my panic, I somehow managed to spot a bare footprint in the frost-covered mud.

Toward Rose Hall.

Were I thinking more clearly, I could have reached that conclusion on my own. She was always trying to go that way. She wanted to see him . Convinced that one look at her and he would fall to his knees, beg forgiveness, and wed her instantly. As though he hadn't scoffed at that very notion years before. As though he hadn't thrown her away with the rubbish and left her to the wolves.

My heart pounded and my lungs rejected the cold, damp air. Belting the sword to my waist while running was more of a challenge than I had anticipated and I slipped in the muck.

"Adriane!" Again and again, I shouted for her. Enough times that I began to despair of ever finding her.

"Here!" A throaty feminine voice called out. Not Adriane—but someone. And thank Christ that someone wasn't him . I crashed through a row of overgrown hedges, desperately trying to drag air to my lungs.

And there she was, still pallid and wraithlike on a bench in the clearing. Barefoot in her nightdress, her hem covered in several inches of mud. But she was alive and whole and as lovely as the first time I saw her.

"Adriane! You should not be out, sweetling." She gave one of her pained tremulous moans, clutching at her head.

My knees gave out just before her. I caught her hands in mine, pressing a kiss to my designated place on her temple. "How did you get so far? You must be chilled."

Now that I had found her more or less safe, I recognized the cool, late-winter morning seeping into my shirtsleeves and breeches. Her paper-thin nightdress was surely no protection.

"I wanted to greet the sunshine." Not the celestials again… I wouldn't have to fire Mrs. Talbot, she would quit. The sun and the moon and the stars always left Adriane rattled. That talk brought out the worst of the disquieting tones of her voice and the swaying motions that made the older woman uneasy.

"Of course. But you know I worry. Perhaps we can meet the sun on the veranda tomorrow?" I offered, pressing a silky curl behind her ear.

Lord, her hair was lovely. No matter how sick she got, it never lost its sheen. It fell in a black gossamer curtain around her shoulders.

"The sun won't come out tomorrow."

Her eyes were the clear blue of ice and her tendency to stare from under lidded lashes unnerved even me on occasion.

"Your sun would not dare hide. Not if you wished to see it. I won't allow it." I had no such power, but in her less lucid moments she sometimes forgot that no one could control the figments of her twisted imagination, not even me.

"Pardon me…" A small voice called from behind me.

I finally recalled the feminine voice from earlier. Bone-deep exhaustion had set in while I soothed Adriane and standing was a trial.

She was a pretty thing, all blonde hair and green eyes. Her Grace had never hired girls so lovely when I had been invited to the house. She had probably been worried about what her son would do to them.

"You're a new one," I quipped.

"I beg your pardon?" she asked. Her accent was vaguely French. Where in France she was pretending to be from was anyone's guess. The London cadence was there, hovering just underneath, begging to be freed from its indistinctly Parisian prison. I could no sooner restrain the resultant eye roll than I could stop the sun from setting.

"Oh, good Lord. Does Her Grace pay you extra to fake the accent?"

"Excuse me?"

" C'est probablement le pire accent que j'aie jamais entendu. " My French was impeccable, accent included. Nearly five years on the continent fighting Napoleon had done that. I would eat my hat if she understood even half of what I said.

" Peut-être n'avez-vous jamais parlé à une fran?aise. "

Fortunately, I wasn't wearing a hat and therefore wouldn't have to eat it. In the language itself, she was slightly better, but the accent was still heavily English.

I was so distracted by it, I had failed to note the breeches she was wearing. That was particularly absurd.

"I've spoken to plenty of Frenchwomen. In France. Where I was stationed. Perhaps you should speak to one. Your French is worse than your accent," I lied. "And the breeches? Is that some ridiculous fashion plate told Her Grace was in style?"

"I am not a servant! I am Lady Celine Hasket, Marquise of Rycliffe, and you will speak to me with the respect I am due."

Instantly, my spine hardened to steel. Adriane was still on the bench, no worse than she had been this morning. Instinctively, my hand fell to the hilt of my sword as I scanned for Gabriel.

When had he married? Why had he married? And this bit of muslin? How had he entered the country without my knowledge?

"Where is he?" I bit out.

"Who?"

"Hasket! Where is he?"

Behind me, Adriane let out a trill of the blackguard's name. My stomach sank, even as I surveyed the landscape for the rake.

"London," Lady what's-her-name answered in a choked whisper.

London, days away. There may still be time to pack up. Time to get away before he returned and nothing in the world could keep Adriane from him. The weather had been warm for March, but wet. Roads would be slower for mud.

"How long?"

"A few more days, perhaps a week."

Time, enough time. Which direction? North, perhaps? He was unlikely to go north. But London would be easier to find work. Perhaps if he never learned of our presence and Adriane never learned of his…

"You never saw us. Do you understand?" Our gazes met as I willed her to understand the seriousness of my direction.

I shouldn't leave her here. It was too risky… But she had helped Adriane. Perhaps she did not know. Perhaps she was a prisoner in her marriage, only throwing his name about when she was frightened.

I turned back to Adriane, urging her to stand. She let out another wordless cry but permitted me to fold her in my arms and carry her back to the house. Later she would fight, desperate to see her beloved Gabriel. But for those few minutes, her frail form wrapped in my arms, I could pretend I was the one she wanted.

As I stood there alone on the balcony, reliving one of my worst memories in a sea that ranged from bad to hellish, the heavens decided to increase my misery. They erupted.

Within moments, I was soaked through to my skin. The idea of returning to the ballroom was made even more unpalatable than it had been seconds before.

The garden below was not so terribly far—a foot, perhaps two. The balcony was more to deter patrons from doing precisely what I was contemplating. Not allowing any further time for consideration, I hoisted myself up and over the railing. Landing on too-old knees, I crushed a few of the fragrant purple flowers beneath my feet.

I had undercharged Ainsley and Wayland when they first opened because I liked them. They could repay me by not hassling me about the flowers.

Free from the trappings of the masquerade, I made my way quickly through the London night. The streets had emptied in the downpour. At last, I made it back to the little apartment above my office.

With a reverence it did not deserve, I set the petite gold mask on the dining table before flinging my wet things into a corner to deal with on the morrow.

Too tired, and too distracted, I didn't bother to dress for bed or close the curtains. Instead, I flopped on the mattress in a thoroughly undignified manner. Then, I memorized the ceiling.

I could just make out a few little rainbows swirling there on the shadowed plaster. It was an effect of carriages driving past the lamps that poured through my uncovered window. They illuminated the farthest corner the same way the sun usually did at dawn.

And then I understood what Adriane had spent all those years babbling on about—the sun, moon, stars, and the play of the light.

I fell asleep trying to determine whether that thought was comforting or entirely horrifying.

Consciousness left me before I could make a decision.