Page 28 of Brilliance and Betrayal (The Diamond of the Ton Regency Mysteries #1)

27

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear."

—Edmund Burke

T he air was far more sultry than he remembered it as he stood on the balcony of Lady Norwood’s home. It was like being in his mother’s glassed house for exotic plants, hot, humid and difficult to breathe. But he was cold. He was freezing, actually, despite the coat he wore and the sweat he could feel on his forehead.

Where had she gone? The smell of Charity lifted to his nostrils from his coat. She must have just returned to the ballroom, and he felt oddly bereft.

“You are not giving up already, are you?” she said behind him sternly, and he spun on his heel. The world lurched a bit, and she looked… older somehow. Not worn, exactly, but there was just the slightest bitterness in the tilt of her lips and around her eyes.

Confused, he opened his mouth to ask what she was on about, but sudden, sharp pain lanced through his side and then everything altered again with a jolt.

Suddenly she was young again, and in his arms as she was in his fantasies. When he imagined things being different.

Her fingers caressed his temple and cheeks with the lightest of brushes. He shifted his head into her palm, wanting more of a connection between them. She rose up on her toes, her mouth a taunting distance from his.

This was heaven, if such a place existed. The fragrance of her hair teased his senses, and he breathed deeper, wanting more of it—more of her. But the scent was… wrong somehow. It smelled of Charity, but it was hidden beneath some floral instead of citrus, clashing with the spice of clove he preferred.

He let her go, pulling away, but he felt weaker now. Like she was some spirit whose touch had robbed him of some of his vitality. She watched him retreat, her eyes shadowed, glittering in the darkness.

“Wake up,” she told him.

What did she mean? He was awake—or he thought he was. He went to raise his hand to his face, to rub his eyes, but his arm felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds. The sense of wrongness multiplied, and he struggled against the crushing lethargy.

“There you are,” her voice whispered to him, but the sound of it felt as though it was inches from his ear, even though the woman stood yards away from him, watching him so strangely.

Fingers slid through this hair again, wrapping around to the sensitive place behind his ears as the vision standing before him disappeared.

He was losing her again; he couldn’t make the moment last.

Vexed by the strange mire that held him, he thrashed his head again and then demanded his body respond the way he wanted. He felt the cool air hit the underside of his arms. It shocked him enough that he flinched. Pain burnt up his side, white hot even against his scorching flesh, and he let out a hiss as his mind finally swam back into consciousness.

His face was wet, and he blinked, droplets from his lashes blurring his vision. Charity’s face again swam into view—the older one again, and this time she was close enough he could see the lines of worry on her face. She peered at him intently, some of the weight of her expression finally lightening with relief when his eyes met hers and focused.

“Hallo, Sparkles,” he croaked, swallowing to try to generate some moisture in his parched mouth. “Am I still dreaming, or are you brushing my hair?”

Her lips thinned as she tried to repress a smile. He was glad to see it, even though it deepened the circles of fatigue and agitation beneath her eyes. “Perry. Thank God. I was going to try yanking on your hair if you did not finally come back to your senses.”

“Don’t let my being awake stop you,” he whispered, fluttering his lashes at her.

She grimaced. Then her hand left his forelock, and abruptly he wished he hadn’t said anything about it. The desperate melancholy from his dream of the past was still sloughing from his thoughts, and he missed the peace of it. The simplicity of that balcony.

What was real was far too complicated.

“How long has it been? Where am I?” he finally asked after she gave him a trickle of some broth to wet his mouth. He glanced around the masculine room, not recognising it. The drapes were drawn, but dim light leaked along the wall. It must have been either early morning or afternoon.

“I suppose that is proof you never skulked around after climbing into my window,” Charity said a trifle grimly. “You are in the duke’s rooms at Atholl House. The doctor was quite put out by the encampment in his place of business, and we moved you after sundown the day after you were hurt. You have been delirious for a few days.”

Picking up a new cloth, she dipped it in the water, wiping down the side of his face and along his neck.

He must be still a bit feverish. The cloth felt like ice, and he gasped at the shock of it, a shudder wracking him. He brought his hand up to arrest her movements as she began to slide it down his collarbone, and Charity froze as the pads of his fingers grazed over her knuckles, her eyes wide.

“This is not proper. You shouldn’t be here—nursing me—at all,” he said as sternly as he could. Beneath his thumb, he could feel the pulse in her wrist leap. She knew it too. Her butler was probably beside himself.

Tiny diamonds of moisture appeared at the corner of her eyes. “I was afraid… that you would somehow slip away from me while I was absent.”

As if he would let a fever carry him away when there was still unfinished business to attend with her. Still—“You do not need the trouble that might come from an accusation I have compromised you.”

Her eyes flashed at him. “This is my home. And I am not worried about being accused of being debauched by an insensate man with a gut wound in a house ringed with guards.”

Guards? What guards?

He barely parted his lips to ask what was going on when fragments of memories began to piece themselves together. Hodges. Cameron. McGrath.

His mother.

A different kind of sensation lit beneath his breastbone, gnawing him raw from the inside. His mother had marked him for death. And Charity had brought him back to her home .

Abruptly he was both furious with her and sick to his stomach. It took him a moment to even name the feeling: Thick, cloying fear.

Something he hadn’t felt in years.

“Why did you bring me here?” he asked, trying to keep his voice even. But his grip on her wrist betrayed him, tightening hard enough to bruise.

Her face was a mask as she endured the pain he caused her, but finally she tore her hand away, looking both uneasy and exasperated. “Why else? To keep you safe while you recover.”

Peregrine had to hand it to the duchess. She really knew how to unman a male. This was a bloody uncomfortable way to have a long-due reckoning—flat on his back, where he felt utterly helpless. Pressing his arms down into the mattress, he began to force himself into a slightly more upright position.

“Perry, you should not move too much,” Charity protested, putting her hands on his shoulders to keep him from raising himself too far. “We had to move you more than was wise already.”

“How could you be so foolish as to bring me here?” he snarled at her, and she dropped her hands, tears springing to her eyes. Abandoning the attempt to sit straight up, he ignored the pain in his side as he rolled to face away from her, attempting to slither to the edge of the bed. He would crawl out the bloody front door on his hands and knees if he had to.

But Charity circled the foot of the bed quickly, throwing her arms around his shoulders.

“Stop, please,” she breathed into his ear as she held him fast. “I know you’re not angry. You’re afraid. But you don’t have to be. You’re not alone in this, do you understand me?”

Beneath her hands, another shudder wracked through his fever-sensitive body, lightning quick. His soul keened, wanting to pull her closer, even though he needed to thrust her away.

“You don’t have to deal with your mother alone,” Charity whispered, pressing her forehead to his.

She didn’t understand a damn thing, and not since he was a child could he remember ever being so close to weeping for the utter frustration of something. “This—is a mistake. Let me go. Give me space.”

She pulled away and gave him a look that hurt, but without her touching him, he had the strength to shove those feelings down. He tried to tell himself this was better.

“What happened with Cameron and McGrath?” he asked, trying to wrest their conversation to safer places.

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with any longer,” the duchess replied coolly, a mulish set to her lips. “It is being handled.”

“God damn it, Charity,” he ground out. “Do not act like a petulant child.”

“I am not; I am striking bargains for information. A trade for a trade. You want what I know, Fitzroy?” She leaned down to peer in his face again. “I want to know why you are behaving like this.”

Fine. She wanted to know? He would tell her. “Because it’s your fault, ” he hurled at her. “Not since I became a grown man have I been afraid of anything, but now I am. Everyone knows how they can harm me. I finally have a fatal weakness, Charity—and it’s you.”

He meant to send her running from the room, but the duchess’s face grew lifeless and careworn. “Ravenscroft told me all that McGrath said—he is dead, incidentally, and Cameron is still at large. Someone is cleaning up behind Cameron, which makes McGrath’s words about another person working in London credible.”

Charity was still for a long moment. “Selina wanted me to try to persuade you to go to her and her people for protection. Is that what you would rather do?”

He flung himself over onto his back again, easing the cut in his flank. “Never. I will not indenture myself for protection—certainly not to Selina and the others.”

“Not even if she was threatening to expose your plan to poison Prince William with croton oil to bring you into the fold?”

Peregrine was startled into a brief, low laugh, and he pressed his thumb and fingers into his grainy eyes. “Ah, Sina, you catty bitch.”

“Perry, is it true?”

“Will Hodges was her creature, wasn’t he?” he said tiredly, ignoring her questions.

“She was the one who sent him to the continent with you, yes,” Charity said softly. “But after that… I think he took a shine to you. He says he took Selina’s money after that to take more steps to keep your house safe. I think even Ravenscroft believes him, and he was quite annoyed by that.

“But… is it true? Were you going to poison Prince William yourself? She said that was the favour you owed her.”

“Those friends of England—they do not want their future queen to get married to that Dutch Prince. I was not going to put it in his cup, but did I help Selina pick a poison that would cause an incident and break off the negotiations?” he finally put his arm down, locking eyes with Charity. “Yes. I did.”

He could see her throat working, though her face remained expressionless, and he wondered if this might be the end of his path, after all. “What are you going to do with me now, Charity?” he asked softly. “You have a helpless monster in your adjoining rooms. Are you going to call the guards and see me executed for William?”

“No.” She answered so abruptly, he knew she was feeling more emotion than she showed. “Cameron will pay for what was done to William once we find him. Your hand was forced. You are not a monster, Perry,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed beside him so she could stroke his cheek with her palm. “I am so sorry for the words and thoughts I had before, and I am so glad you are getting better so I could tell you that—I am sorry.”

He closed his eyes again, letting her touch destroy him. “I should have known my mother took you from the ball,” he confessed. “I underestimated her willingness to hurt you. But I was… trying to do everything I could to avoid even thinking about you. How the only woman I’ve ever wanted, in all the seasons I’ve attended, was going to marry someone else.”

The bed tilted unexpectedly, and his eyes flew open just as Charity pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. It was a hesitant touch—light, fleeting, uncertain. As though she had meant to kiss him properly and lost her courage at the last moment.

Her breath fanned against his cheek, warm and unsteady, and he felt the way her body had gone still, waiting. Deciding.

A tremor passed through her, so slight he might have imagined it. Then, as if summoned by some force beyond reason, her lips brushed his again—closer this time, still hesitant, still soft, but undeniably a kiss. A real one.

Peregrine wasn’t going to miss this chance again. His blood roared in triumph as he sank his hand into her hair, the silken strands tangling around his knuckles as he dragged her back to him. This time, there was no uncertainty. He took her mouth properly, his lips sealing over hers in a kiss that stole the air from both their lungs.

She made a small, surprised sound against him, her lips parting just enough to let him deepen it. He pressed his advantage, but gently—reverently. Widow she might be, but she was so clearly untutored in this. He would not frighten her. Instead, he let her learn him, let her explore at her own pace, teasing her lower lip with his own, tasting the sweetness of her breath.

She hesitated for only a second before responding, her mouth softening beneath his, her hands curling into the fabric of his shirt. The tentative press of her lips turned searching, as if she were committing this moment to memory. As if she were realising—just as he already had—that there would be no coming back from this.

A breathless sound escaped her as he nipped at her lower lip, coaxing her to open for him. She did, tentatively at first, then with a kind of fragile boldness that sent heat thrumming through his veins.

And God help him, but he let himself revel in it. Just this once.

Because for her, this kiss was a beginning. And for him, it was the only taste of a future he would never have. So he clung to her for as long as he dared.

And finally, she pulled away, her eyes huge with want—and guilt.

“I guess you should have had more concerns about being debauched by a sick man,” he said teasingly, and her face flushed the deepest pink he had ever seen on her. “Go rest, Sparkles. I think I am on the mend, but I am in need of another nap—and you look like you have been sleeping poorly.”

She nodded, crossing the room to a door that opened to the sitting area. “He is awake, and could use some assistance,” she said in a low voice, and he could hear stirring from the other room as a man in livery followed her back in, carrying a stack of towels and bedding. And then she departed, leaving him with the manservant who helped to feed him and clean him up.

It was a tiring effort, but Peregrine needed as much time as he could to think and recover. He began to form the bones of his plan.