“For a week I’ve been trying to get close to you, my pretty, and bloody hard it’s been, as well as Devon has you guarded. I never quite expected this little piece of good fortune. A helpful juvenile, Cat. I had him once when he was a child. Did he tell you?”
Three thoughts hit Merry in such rapid succession that she had to force her mind to capture and hold each one. The first was that on the instant whatever doubts she had entertained about who might be right or wrong in Devon’s apocryphal and confusing battle with Granville had been totally resolved in Devon’s favor, and that thought was surprisingly potent in its power to give her comfort. The second was that the “boy” he had seen leave her was Cat, and not Raven, and she was not as alone as Granville thought, which was a comfort also. Her third thought was not so much a rational concept as a flash of blinding rage that this man would use such a hideous weapon to attack her. Like a seed fallen upon fertileearth, even that last impression nurtured her, turning her feelings away from her own fear and channeling them into a tidal wave of protectiveness toward Cat. This creature was not a phantom. He was here, and human, and she must face the repugnant necessity of dealing with him. Her icy anger made it easier to pretend that she had regained her composure and her courage.
“What do you want?” she asked in a voice carefully shed of color.
He laughed suddenly, standing where he was, the sharp sound curling like acid in her senses. “What do I want? You puling trollop, your pretty husband has been chasing me the width and breadth of the country since three days after he set foot in Falmouth. Now that he has the proof he needs to convince himself—if not a court of law—that one of my raiders brought down a ship with his sister on it, my life isn’t worth a stone penny. Don’t show me that face of bovine innocence! I know he had my letters stolen from theGuinevere. Before he had proof, Cathcart and Morgan kept him off me, tender souls. They didn’t want him to trade his life for mine. But there’s enough in those letters to implicate me in feeding information about British shipping to American privateers, if he’s broken the code. And—clever youth that he is—don’t try to tell me that he hasn’t.”
She had no intention of telling him anything of the sort. Nor did she mean to reveal that those papers were no longer a threat to him, through a soaking she’d given them in her attempt to escape Devon.
He seemed to take a queer satisfaction in her silence. “Interesting of them to take you as well. By the time it occurred to me that the papers must have vanished through Devon’s busywork, I regretted I’d been so gentle in my methods of disqualifying you as the future Duchess of St. Cyr. Obviously he didn’t believe the charming tales I spread about your easy virtue in New York.”
Merry could have enlightened him about that as well. Again she kept her mouth resolutely shut. Was he trying to see what information he could shock out of her?
Granville’s narrow lips stretched into a soft crescent. “My consolation was thinking of the things Devon surely must have done to you before Rand Morgan bothered himself to notice who you were. And with Devon’s repressed sensitivity it must have been quite a moment for him when he realized what an innocent you really were. Come here, poppet. Why are you hesitating? Come.” He was drawing a round golden object from his pocket, displaying it to her by a dangling chain. “Study it, Merry. Is it familiar?”
Moving stiffly, without grace, she crossed the clearing to take the offered object in her hand, trying not to touch his skin, though she wore gloves. Her heartbeat slowed almost to a standstill as she studied the thing she held. It was a Swiss watch, gold, with a fine enameled back and rose diamonds on the face, and Merry knew the inscription before she read the elaborately engraved words.To Carl, on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday. With fondest regards. James Wilding. It had never, to her knowledge, left her brother’s possession. So rarely did their father make a gesture of affection, Carl cherished this one.
In an aching voice Merry whispered, “How did you come by this?”
“He gave it to me. No. Let me be more accurate. I took it.” The smile, a cruel one, extended this time to his eyes. “He’s here in London with me, did you—”
“That’s alie!” Anxiety had sharpened her voice.
His brow rose over the smoky green glitter of his eyes. “Is it? If you think so, my fair delight, you and I have nothing more to say to each other. Farewell.” Smiling sardonically, he flicked her cheek with a careless finger. “Have the watch as a keepsake. Your brother surely won’t have any further usefor it.” He turned as though he would have left her, but she stopped him with a terrified protest.
“Please! No! I don’t understand…”
“Pay attention, then, because I’ve wasted enough time here already. Your brother followed you to England—or at least he thought he was following you, having no idea your route would be so circuitous. Not, I’m afraid, that his advent to the country was aboveboard. He came in by way of a smuggler’s punt. What a singularly rough and ready pair you are, to be sure! It’s no wonder you do so well for Devon.” Granville’s smile twisted into a sneer. “He came to me because I had been your escort to England and he wanted to know my version of the events surrounding your disappearance. The poor lad thought I would be sympathetic because he knew I had passed information to the Americans. I wish he hadn’t let me know he knew that. It presented me with a very grave problem. I could hardly let him run around England with that sort of information. For one thing, he’s a little impetuous. He might be caught and questioned, and tough-minded as he is, he’s very young, and I have small confidence in his ability to hold out against an experienced inquisition. Son of a gentleman or not, they’ll certainly torture him if he’s discovered; before they hang him, that is. I’d have disposed of him quietly at once if he hadn’t been your brother.”
Doggedly forcing herself to contain her rising panic, breathing in the untidy rhythm of desperation, she backed to the garden seat and sat down on it, holding the watch in her two hands, as though it were a delicate thing made of glass instead of gold. “What do you want me to do?”
“At five of the clock tomorrow evening there will be a black coach with the wheels picked out in red waiting at the southeastern corner of Finsbury Square. How you manage to get there is your own affair, but I imagine a chit of your ingenuity will think of something; but if you aren’t in that coachby one minute past the hour, it will leave without you, and I promise you, my pretty, you won’t have a second chance. Be there if you want to see your brother. Otherwise, he will cease abruptly to be of any use to me, and I’ll let him die. You might, of course, choose to carry this story to one of your masculine protectors, which would also end his usefulness to me. It would be something of a relief to be able to dispose of him.”
“And of me,” she said, her gaze resting bleakly on her hands, where the watch lay softly gleaming like a golden egg.
Granville’s boot leather made a faint crinkling sound on the sandy flagstones as he joined her on the bench. The back of his hand rested on her cheek, turning her face toward him, though she flinched from his touch. Some of the fierce animosity had fled from the gray-green eyes, and in their depths was the dim mirage of an emotion that might once have been compassion.
“Why do you think I told you in New York that your aunt planned to take you to England? I had hopes you’d run home to your patriotic father and stay out of my net. Much as I regret it, poppet, I can’t afford to care about your hurt. I’m not sure whether this will comfort you, but it wouldn’t suit me to end your life. What I need now is to negotiate some sort of peace with Devon, and without having you whole and hale and in my power, I’d find myself very thin of bargaining capital.” He stood. “Tomorrow evening at five. Finsbury Square,” he said and strode quickly away, vanishing like a ghoul into the night’s black serum.
In another moment Raven’s hands closed on her wrists, holding them in a sustaining grip. She was standing, though she couldn’t remember having moved.
“You heard?” she murmured tensely.
“Every word. M’love, I want to stay with you now, but I can’t. I have to follow him.”
“Why? What purpose will it serve if—” Interpreting the grim set of his mouth, she cried, “Raven, you can’tkillhim!”
“No? All right, lambkin. Don’t fret. I’ll only kill him a little.”
“Raven, you can’t! Didn’t you understand? He has my brother!”
Raven was a gentle man, both by nature and by disposition, but he had been reared in a hard school, and his affection did not transfer readily from Merry to her brother. Nor did he have much faith in either the authenticity of the watch or the likelihood that Merry’s brother would still be alive if he had put himself in Granville’s orbit. And even if the whole unlikely story were true, Raven would have unhesitatingly sacrificed the unknown brother for Merry. But he was not proof against her sterling, honest gaze.
“As you wish it, m’dear, but I can’t stand here argufying about it, or I’ll lose him.” He cast an impatient glance over his shoulder. “I’ll just discover where he goes and then take the matter to Morgan—”
“No!”
“Well, then,” he said, releasing her hands, starting to move across the clearing, “Devon.”
