Fifteen
“ V oices in the garden last night?” Hester’s mouth set in a prim line, but the morning light streaming through the kitchen window betrayed the furtive look in her eyes. “Why, I’m sure I don’t know what yer ladyship would be meaning.”
“And I am perfectly sure that you do.”
Phaedra whisked past the spit boy turning a haunch of beef over the kitchen’s massive hearth. She followed Hester round the broad oak table heaped with biscuits, cakes, and enough hunks of gingerbread to feed an army of hungry boys. Hester reached for a straw basket, affecting to count the currant cakes.
“I heard you talking to someone. A man,” Phaedra persisted, her temper fraying. She’d had too little sleep, and was oppressed by the heat rolling from the cook’s fires. “It must have been past two o’clock in the morning.”
“I am not the sort of woman to be found entertaining gentlemen in the gardens after midnight.” Hester sniffed. “It must’ve been one of the parlor maids.”
“I know your voice quite well,” Phaedra said. “It was you, although I could not tell who the man was.”
“Couldn’t you?” Hester’s smile was smug. She shrugged. “Yer ladyship must have been dreaming, ‘tis all that I can say.”
“I was not dreaming!” Phaedra slammed the palm of her hand upon the table with a force that nearly toppled a stack of cakes. Hester bustled past, issuing commands to the kitchen girls to look sharp and see that all the pastries were packed into the baskets.
“I’ve got to make sure the master gets his breakfast afore all those young devils of his descend upon us.” Reaching for the silver coffee tray, Hester shot a sly glance at Phaedra as she addressed one of the footmen. “John, there’ll be no need fer ye to set a place for his lordship the marquess. I’ll doubt he’ll be bearing much appetite for his breakfast. Proper done in, he looked when he returned.”
Phaedra,feeling on the verge of seizing Hester and shaking the truth from her, paused, thrown off-balance by the reference to Armande.
“You saw his lordship return?” she asked.
“Late last night. If ye had truly been awake, as yer ladyship claims, I don’t doubt but what ye would have heard him, yer rooms being so close and all.” Balancing the coffee tray, Hester disappeared through the kitchen door, a smirk upon her face.
Phaedra let her go. Hester’s moonlit tryst in the garden dwindled to insignificance when set beside the news of Armande’s return. She had tried his door first thing this morning, even risking a light knock. But the room had responded with the same grim silence as it had known in the days after Ewan’s death. Phaedra had despaired, fearing that Armande would never return. Perhaps he thought she and Gilly had been about to expose him.
She was therefore filled with great relief at Hester’s seemingly casual information. But she was not about to humble herself to Hester by asking after Armande’s whereabouts. Leaving the kitchen, she obtained the information she wanted from Peter.
Aye, the footman informed her, his lordship was indeed up and about. In the music gallery, so Peter believed. Phaedra ran toward the back of the house and quietly opened the door to the salon. The gallery was as still and empty as the nave of some great church on a working day. The discordant notes being sounded upon the spinet were all the more jarring, almost a mockery of the chamber’s solemn aura of stateliness.
Half-turned away from her, Armande stood over the instrument, his features beclouded despite the sunshine pouring in through the tall French windows, his fingers plucking listlessly at the keys. One look at him was enough to send Phaedra’s heart sinking to her toes. He was garbed in a blue embroidered frock coat and cream-colored breeches, all traces of his dark hair hidden by his powdered wig. Gone was the bronzed sun god whose loving had warmed her yesterday in the meadow’s sweet grass. Resurrected in his place was the lord of winter, come to chill her heart.
Phaedra sighed, pulling the door shut behind her. Armande’s head snapped up at the sound. She braced herself for his most frozen stare, but the expression on his face was one she’d never seen there before. His eyes were frighteningly empty.
“I have been looking everywhere for you,” she said. “I knew you were fond of music, but I didn’t know you played.”
“I don’t,” he said, moving away from the instrument. He swept her a mechanical bow. Her ears, fine-tuned to every nuance of his voice, caught the edge of sarcasm as he said. “ Bonjour , madame. I trust you?—”
“Don’t!” she said sharply. She had to suppress a strong urge to fly to him, wrench the wig from his head and, kiss away the jaded weariness that marred his features. “You know I hate that pretense.”
“I thought it was only in bed that the performance didn’t amuse you.” He tried to hold her at a distance, but Phaedra refused to let him. She flung her arms about him, pressing her face against his waistcoat. The satin felt too cool, too slick beneath her cheek, his chest as unyielding as iron. He made no move to thrust her away, but his arms did not close about her, either.
“Please, Armande. I know you are feeling hurt, betrayed. But you will not give me a chance to explain. You were gone nearly all night. I feared that you were never coming back.”
“I almost didn’t. Then I remembered why I had come to London. I’ve taken too many risks to be undone by you now. I simply never realized how much his granddaughter you are.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t answer her, waiting with studied patience for her to release him. But she clung to him more tightly, fearing that if she let him go now, it might be the last time she ever touched him.
“So what did your Irish spy find out in France?” he asked. “Obviously not enough for you to go running to your grandfather and have me whipped at cart tail’s end for the low impostor that I am.”
“Gilly found out nothing that I didn’t already know,” she said. “He went to France the same day I tried to have you arrested for theft-before I ever came to your bed, before I even dared whisper to myself that I loved you.”
She searched his face, praying for one sign that he believed her words. But his eyes were like blue steel. She continued desperately, “I spent yesterday afternoon trying to persuade Gilly you really are the Marquis de Varnais, attempting to deceive him. Gilly, my dearest friend, who has been like my own brother.”
Armande raised an eyebrow. “And did he believe you?”
“No.” Her mouth quivered into a lopsided smile. “I’m such a terrible liar.”
“One improves with practice.” Armande’s hard words seemed to mock himself more than her.
“The important question is whether you believe me,” she said.
“You cannot think that I seduced you in order to?—”
“It is not important whether I believe you or not.”
“Not important? How can you say that when this is wrenching us apart?”
“You cannot tear apart what never has truly been together.”
His words filled her with despair. “We have been living in a fool’s paradise, my dear. But even fools must eventually grow wise.”
Her arms slipped from around his neck, dropping back to her sides. It was as though his coldness had finally seeped into her heart, leaving her numb.
“Was it so foolish,” she asked, “your loving me?”
“The most stupid thing I’ve ever done.” His harsh answer caused her to flinch. “Love cannot survive where there is no trust. I realized that at the outset and should have spared us both this misery. There is no way you can ever have any faith in me, no way you will ever be able to trust me.”
She drew herself upright, stung by his words. All these weeks she had demanded no explanations, never pleaded to know his real name. What more proof of her love and trust did the man require?
Yet her anger was tinged with guilt. She had willingly closed her eyes and turned her head the other way. But self-deceit was not the same as trusting, putting complete faith in the man one loved. She had held back as much from Armande as he from her.
“You give up on our love far too easily, Armande,” she said. “If it is trust you want, I shall bring it to you. The kind you can hold between your hands.”
She ignored his bewildered frown as she ran from the room. She rushed to her garret, unlocked the desk drawer and yanked it open. Grabbing up a handful of the ribbon-bound papers, she raced back down to the music gallery.
Armande hovered upon the threshold as though he had been on the verge of coming after her. Phaedra shoved him back into the room, closing the door.
“Here,” she said. “This will show you how much I trust you.”
She tugged the ribbons off the paper and slapped the unfolded parchment upon a table before Armande, as though she were flinging down a gauntlet.
Armande regarded her uneasily. “Phaedra, I don’t understand.”
“Just read,” she commanded.
He picked up the sheets with reluctance and skimmed the black ink, his brow furrowing into an even deeper frown. “I still don’t understand. These seem to be some sort of political tracts, pages of text copied from what is that blasted paper? The Gazetteer?”
“Not copies,” she said. “The original drafts. What you see before you is the hand of Robin Goodfellow.”
She waited for his reaction, but he still looked confused.
“My hand,” she added.
The truth broke over him at last, his eyes flashing to meet hers in a startled expression. “You are Robin Goodfellow!”
“That’s right. So never again tell me that I cannot trust you. You are holding enough there to ruin me and my grandfather, as well.”
All color drained from his face as Armande clutched the sheets.
The first feelings of doubt niggled at Phaedra. She had not known quite what to expect from Armande at this moment. Amazement certainly, but where was his realization of how much she did love him? She had expected even a little praise perhaps, some pride in those achievements of her mind that he had always claimed to admire. What she had not expected was this silence.
“Don’t you understand what I have given you?” she cried. “It is my life bound up in those pages?—”
“It is you who do not understand!”
Phaedra recoiled before the anger that flared in Armande’s eyes. It was a fury strangely mixed with despair.
“Damn you! I was trying to make it as plain as possible that you dare not trust me.” He flung the papers back at her and they fluttered to her feet, like leaves tossed by the wind. “If you have any more such secrets, keep them to yourself!”
He stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him. Phaedra stared after him, hardly able to breathe. At last, she bent and began gathering up the scattered papers. She felt like a gambler who had taken an enormous risk and lost. Most disturbing of all, she wasn’t even certain how high the stakes had been.
Phaedra snapped open her parasol to shield her face from the afternoon sun beating down upon the lawn, hoping that it shielded her unhappy expression as well. She picked her way past her grandfather’s servants struggling to clear away the remains of the fete luncheon.
The table looked like a field of battle at the end of a fray, with linen cloths hanging askew, some of the crockery broken, and forks like discarded weapon strewn through a trail of cake crumbs. But the combatants had not retired. Tearing past Phaedra’s skirts, some fifty boys whooped, their voices ranging from the childish treble to those cracking on the brink of manhood. Most of them were from hard-working families known to Sawyer, lads he and Jonathan had seen placed beneath the tutelage of good, honest masters to learn a trade.
Some of the boys crammed their cheeks full of gingerbread, while others wrestled, traded cuffs, or played at tag, as frolicsome and clumsy as puppies in a kennel. Phaedra started back as a horseshoe whizzed past her nose.
Several stout lads who were supposed to be playing at quoits were growing more unruly by the minute. The game that had resulted in the misfired shoe broke into a bout of fisticuffs. Grinning like a boy himself, Sawyer guffawed, encouraging the rough-and-ready behavior. It was left to a harassed-looking Jonathan and one of the footmen to separate the young pugilists before any came away with a bloodied nose.
“Tell Mrs. Searle to fetch more cakes for the lads,” Sawyer bellowed. “Blast it all, where is that woman?”
“More cake is the last thing they need,” Jonathan snapped. The heat appeared to be affecting even his solemn composure. He tried desperately to catch Phaedra’s eye.
“Phaedra, I must talk to you,” he said as she glided past, but she ducked deeper into the shade of her parasol.
Her mind was yet too full of the scene with Armande. She barely heeded Jonathan or the boys’ antics, not even when one bold rascal let loose a frog near her petticoats.
“You must have been mad.” She rebuked herself for the dozenth time. “Whatever possessed you to confess to Armande that you were Robin Goodfellow?”
And yet, she thought, why should she continue to fret so over the incident? It was not as if Armande were the enemy she had once imagined him to be. This was the man who had cradled her in his arms so many hot summer nights, vowing his love for her. And she had believed him.
If only his reaction to her secret had not been so strange. She had never seen such anger in his eyes, an anger that she sensed had been directed against himself as well as her.
Her gaze strayed to where Armande stood at the far edge of the lawn. No trace of his wrath remained as he tried to help a chubby, freckle-faced lad string a bow that was much too large for him. The boy thrust his tongue between his teeth, puffing and turning red as he tried to bend the supple wood back far enough to slip the string into the notch.
“I doubt biting your tongue off will help, monsieur,” she heard Armande say. The teasing light springing into his blue eyes played havoc with her heart. How oft had she glimpsed that same expression in the hours when they exchanged banter that so frequently concealed a growing desire.
“A little more muscle is what is wanted.” Armande’s strong, slender fingers closed over the small pudgy ones, helping the child accomplish the task. He handed the boy the arrow, and then tousled his hair. “Now don’t shoot any of your comrades, hein?” He smiled as the boy gave his promise and ran off.
Hope fluttered inside Phaedra. At this moment Armande looked very like the man who had so tenderly lifted her out of the saddle yesterday afternoon. She rustled toward him, but his smile faded the instant their eyes met. It was the Marquis de Varnais who raised his head and attempted to stride past her.
His rejection of her pierced her more keenly than any wound Ewan, with all of his studied cruelties, had ever been able to inflict.
“You needn’t take to your heels the instant I approach, monsieur,” she said. “I assure you, I don’t intend to burden you with any more of my secrets.”
“I pray you don’t have any more such to reveal,” he muttered.
He had started to move away, when he turned and came back as though drawn to her side against his will. “I am sorry if I lost my temper with you earlier.” His apology was as stiff as his manner. “You took me by surprise when?—”
Armande’s eyes darkened as he bent forward, his voice hard and bitter. “Why in blazes did you choose to confide in me now? Where you hoping for some sort of trade? Your secrets for mine?”
“And you presume to lecture me on the subject of trust!”
Phaedra arched her brows, trying to look scornful-but it was difficult with tears burning behind her eyes. “No, monsieur, I was not seeking a trade. I merely had some foolish notion that it would help if I offered you proof of my love. I fear I always have been too stupid to know when matters are past mending.”
This time it was she who tried to walk away from him, placing her parasol between them like a shield.
“Phaedra.” He breathed her name, but whatever Armande had been about to say was blotted out by the sound of another voice, whose lilting notes carried above the shouts of the boys.
“Top of the afternoon to you, Master Weylin. Master Burnell. ‘Tis that sorry I am to be late. I can see I’ve been missing a feast fine enough to take the shine out of Paddy Duggan’s wake.”
Phaedra whipped about in time to see her cousin, resplendent in a scarlet frock coat, sweeping off his three-cornered hat and favoring Sawyer with a jaunty bow. The bruises marring Gilly’s eye and jaw had faded to an unbecoming shade of yellow, but they did nothing to tone down his impudence.
She had nearly forgotten he was coming, as well as his reasons for doing so. Never had she thought the time would come when she would view the sight of those sparkling green eyes with such dismay.
She glanced at Armande and saw him go rigid at Gilly’s approach, the wary expression upon his face far from welcoming. Her stomach knotted tighter.
After greeting her grandfather and Jonathan, Gilly vaulted toward her in three quick strides. “Phaedra, my sweetest coz. Sure and you’re looking as fair as the shamrocks in the springtime.”
Despite his jovial expression and the thick brogue he was putting on for her grandfather’s benefit, she saw the hard glint of determination in Gilly’s eyes. His resolution to search Armande’s room had not abated a jot in the past twenty-four hours.
Her cousin bruised her ribs with his rough embrace. She hissed in his ear, “Gilly, I swear if you go near the house today, I will break your head.”
He merely laughed, giving her chin a hard pinch. “Ah, sweet, indeed, and a tongue to match.”
He turned to Armande, sweeping into a mocking bow. “By all the saints, if it isn’t his lairdship, the Marquis de Varnais. A good day to your worship. You’re looking elegant enough to coax the snakes back into Ireland.”
“Mr. Fitzhurst.” Armande’s smile was cold. “You seem to become more Irish each time I meet you.”
“Ah, well, ‘tis a damn sight cleverer than becoming more English.”
Phaedra’s breath snagged in her throat, but Armande’s only acknowledgment of her cousin’s biting comment was a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. He bowed and tried to move on his way, but Gilly barred his path, her cousin’s chin tilted to a pugnacious angle.
“I have recently returned from France. A charming country. But sure and I don’t have to be telling your lairdship that.”
Armande’s lips compressed as he nodded in polite agreement. Once again he tried to sidestep her cousin, but Gilly laid a restraining hand upon his arm.
“I even had the good fortune to travel by your lairdship’s own estates, and what do you fancy I?—”
“Gilly!” Phaedra cried. She sensed the belligerence coursing beneath her cousin’s lazy smile, the tension masked behind Armande’s expression of indifference.
Armande removed Gilly’s hand from his sleeve in an elaborately courteous manner. “I am glad you had such a rewarding journey,” he said. He took out his snuffbox, flicking open the lid, the gesture laden with weariness almost as though he himself had conceived a distaste for the role he had to play. “You have not been spending your money unwisely again, I hope?”
“After all your grand advice when last we met? Certainly not. I expect far greater results from my investments this time.” Armande closed the snuffbox with a click. Phaedra wondered if he realized he had forgotten to pretend to take a pinch.
“Indeed, Mr. Fitzhurst?” he said. He looked directly into Gilly’s eyes. “Well, I wish you a long life in which to enjoy it.”
Gilly blinked, astonished; and Armande managed to walk past him with an air of quiet dignity. Her cousin let out his breath in a long, low whistle.
“What a cool devil! I think I have been rather silkily threatened, but stap me, if for an instant I didn’t fancy his good wishes were sincere.”
Phaedra glared at him, realizing how her hands had trembled during the exchange. It had been like watching two duelists facing each other and wondering who would be goaded into striking first.
“I shouldn’t wonder if he had threatened you when you were doing your damnedest to provoke him.”
“I was only seeking to know the man better, my dear.” Gilly’s innocent expression was belied by the acid in his tones. “Bring forth his warm, caring side you’ve been telling me so much about. Perchance I’ll become better acquainted with himself before the afternoon is out.”
Phaedra placed her hands upon her hips. “Perchance you’d best stay away from Armande-and the house.”
“Oh, I promise to stay away from him.”
“I warn you, Gilly,” she said, “I will be watching you.”
He shot her an aggravating smile and sauntered away, twirling his hat. She had little choice but to dog his footsteps, fearful that at any moment he intended to slip off to the Heath.
While Gilly joined a group of the older lads in playing at ninepins, she hovered in the background, taking care to keep her cousin constantly in sight, all the while affecting a deep interest in the game. When someone tugged at her sleeve, she pulled away without glancing around.
“Phaedra,” Jonathan pleaded. “You must give me but a moment of your time.”
“Not now,” she started to protest, then swallowed the words as she recalled guiltily that she tended to avoid Jonathan too often of late. The poor man appeared nearly ill with worry over something. She sighed, offering her hand in a gesture of acquiescence, permitting Jonathan to lead her to a bench where she could still keep Gilly within her line of vision.
Knowing Jonathan, she was certain whatever had caused this state of anxiety would prove nothing more than a tempest in a teapot. She did not even feel startled when Burnell announced gravely, “Phaedra, I am afraid you may be in danger.”
Phaedra forced a smile to her lips, her eyes drawn to where Gilly hurled the ball, scattering the heavy wooden pins. “Jonathan, I assure you, despite the heat, I am not planning to go swimming or do anything else which might distress you.”
“I am worried about this Robin Goodfellow affair,” he said with a sharp edge to his voice. She glanced up at him in surprise.
“Phaedra, it is that last piece you wrote. You have caused riots in the city.”
“I know all about that. Gilly told me.”
“Did he also tell you Jessym’s house was attacked by a mob last night, the windows broken while they howled for the real name of Robin Goodfellow?”
“N-no.” She faltered. “I am sorry to hear that. I trust Jessym was unharmed?”
“Aye, but I hear he would sell his soul to reveal the identity of Goodfellow and deflect the anger from his own door.”
“He can sell away,” Phaedra said. “As long as the only two people who ...” Her words trailed off as she was about to offer Jonathan the familiar assurance only he and Gilly knew her secret. But there was now a third. Armande. But no matter how angry he was with her, surely he would never betray her. Even if he had ceased to love her, what possible reason could he have for doing so?
“Everything will be all right,” she said. “This will all pass. And I have decided never to write as Goodfellow again.”
“Have you, my dear?” Jonathan brightened, his careworn features suffused with relief. At least, she thought wryly, her decision to fling aside her only chance for independence had made someone happy.
He clasped her hand between his own. “Such a wise choice. I am so glad of it.” He immediately sobered. “Of course, I realize what the writing meant to you. Your husband has left you in such dire straits, and Sawyer sometimes can be so difficult.”
Such a mild description of her grandfather’s irascible temper almost made Phaedra laugh aloud, but she became uncomfortably aware of the way Jonathan was stroking her hand.
“A woman as young as yourself,” he said timidly, “must marry again one day.”
Phaedra gently but firmly disengaged her hand. “You are beginning to sound like Grandfather. He has been doing his best to thrust me into the marquis’s path all summer.”
“Varnais? Surely not! Such a strange, cold man.”
Phaedra stiffened, not liking Jonathan’s assessment of the man she loved any more than she had Gilly’s.
All the worry lines returned to Jonathan’s brow. “Blast Sawyer and his ambition. How could he even think of forcing you to marry that-that?—”
“Do stop fretting, Jonathan. No one is forcing me to marry anyone.”
“But I know too well what Sawyer is like when he gets one of these notions in his head. Nothing ever stops him.”
“Jonathan, I assure you,” Phaedra said wearily. “I will never be the Marchioness de Varnais.”
She regretted she had ever mentioned the matter, only seeking to divert Jonathan’s thoughts from the Robin Goodfellow affair. Now she had given him something else to worry about. At times his concern for her could be almost oppressive.
“I am sorry, Phaedra,” he said. “I do not mean to annoy you. But I would do anything in the world to protect you.”
“I know that, Jonathan,” she said, making one last effort to dispel his anxiety and coax a smile from the solemn man. “Long before Grandfather bullies me into marrying anyone, I will have run off to become a highwayman, just as my cousin and I have always planned.” She nodded to where Gilly played at ninepins.
Where Gilly should have been playing. Her cousin’s place had been taken by a chubby boy with a jam-smeared face. Phaedra jerked to her feet, glancing wildly about her. But her desperate gaze encountered nothing but a sea of boys, her grandfather urging them on in a tug of war, the servants bringing forth more cakes and ices. Gilly was nowhere in sight. Nor could she see Armande.
“Damn him!” she said through clenched teeth, although she was not certain which man she cursed. Perhaps both of them. Not taking the time to offer an explanation to the startled Jonathan, Phaedra tore off running toward the house. She heard him calling her name, but she dared not stop.
She was out of breath when she reached the set of long doors that brought her in at the back of the Green Salon. Clutching her aching side, she hastened into the front hall.
The house was silent except for the sound of her ragged breathing. She might have fancied herself in some abandoned castle with all the grim accoutrements of war gathering dust upon the walls above her. So quiet was the vast stone chamber, as still as that long ago night when James Lethington must have hidden behind the armor, the mace clutched in his sweating palms.
Phaedra darted up the stairs as though the armored suit itself could come to life and pursue her. She buried her fear beneath angry muttering. “It is I who shall be doing the murdering this time. I will kill Gilly when I find him.”
That is, if Armande had not already done so. She suppressed the thought, hating herself for even imagining her love capable of such a thing.
The deathlike silence pervaded the landing as well. Had not one servant remained behind to guard the place? Any other time that wretched Hester Searle would be lurking about to intercept her cousin. Where was the blasted woman the one time Phaedra needed her?
Phaedra crept toward Armande’s bedchamber and pressed her ear to the door. She did not know whether to feel relieved or more alarmed when she detected not a single sound. She tried the door and found it unlocked. Inching it open a crack, she risked a peek inside.
“Gilly?” she whispered, but received no answer. The room appeared undisturbed, Armande’s scant belongings untouched, even down to the small locked chest upon the dressing table. Still, Phaedra did not quite trust her wily cousin not to be hiding somewhere, merely waiting for her to leave.
She tiptoed into the room, peering into the dressing chamber, behind the draperies and the wardrobe, beginning to feel rather foolish. Perhaps she had once more leapt to conclusions. Perhaps Gilly was not in the house at all, but still somewhere upon the grounds, waiting for his opportunity. She had better hasten out of here, before Armande caught her prowling.
She left the room, softly closing the door behind her. Should she linger here to see if Gilly did attempt to make good his threat?
Uneasily, she glanced down the hallway. She hated being alone here. It was as if the Heath itself brooded, watching her with unseen eyes. Adjuring herself to stop being ridiculous, she made her way toward the backstairs. Knowing her cousin, she thought it likely that he might be trying to slip in through the servants’ passageway.
At the bend of the servants’ stairway she paused, trying to decide whether to go up or down. If Gilly’s object was to search Armande’s room, it was not likely he would have gone to the Heath’s uppermost floor. But when she glanced up the stairs, she was startled to see the door to her garret flung wide.
She supposed Gilly might have hidden up there if he thought he heard someone coming, but she doubted it. As she mounted the steps slowly, her heart thudded in a disquieting rhythm. She craned her neck, trying to peer inside the room without actually entering. She could not even bring herself to breathe Gilly’s name this time. Why had she never noticed before how gloom-ridden her precious garret was, even in the daytime?
At last she took a cautious step inside, telling herself she was being even sillier than she had been in Armande’s room. Her garret appeared much as it had this morning when she had bolted inside to gather up the papers to show Armande. Of course, she had been in a tearing hurry then.
Her gaze flew to the desk, the carved gargoyle heads on the legs grimacing back at her, seeming as ever to guard her secrets. Then why was she beset by this eerie feeling of something being not quite right about the garret, something different or out of place?
She studied each feature of the room, trying to determine what it was that bothered her. Her glance skimmed past the window, the desk, the daybed, the jumbled assortment of three-legged stools, the little table that held her supply of candles, the bookshelf tucked away in its dark corner.
The bookshelf which should have been empty.
Phaedra stared, uncertain whether what she saw was reality or some startling phantom image. The shelves, which had stood vacant for so long were now crowded with books.
Stumbling across the room, she reached for the leather-bound volumes of every size and thickness, half-afraid they would crumble and disappear at her touch. Smollett, Johnson, Goldsmith, Fielding, even her Shakespeare and Aristotle, they were all there, like old friends miraculously restored to life, resurrected from the ashes of Ewan’s fire. Only the bindings were newer, as yet unworn by her loving hands. Nearly every book Ewan had robbed her of had been returned, along with a few new ones. For a moment all she could do was caress the fine-tooled leather, too stunned to do anything else. Then she reached for one-rose-bound book on the top shelf which stood a little out from the others, as though beckoning her.
The first volume of Gulliver’s Travels .
Phaedra carried it over to the light streaming through the garret window in order to see it more clearly. She opened the book to its flyleaf, half-expecting she might see the inscription her mother had written so long ago, somehow knowing what she would really find.
The words were not in Lady Siobhan’s delicate, spidery hand, but a bold, elegant scrawl. To Phaedra, the inscription read, From your fellow voyager on the sea of dreams .
He hadn’t written his name, but she needed no signature to identify the writer. She thought back to the time she and Armande had spent together these past weeks, those precious stolen moments of making love and those other, equally precious moments when he had encouraged her to talk. She realized now he had been drawing her out, carefully gleaning the title of every treasured volume she had lost, committing the names to memory. What hours he must have spent combing the bookseller’s stalls until he found them all.
She snapped the book closed. And this was the man she regretted having trusted with her secret, the man she feared might do some harm to her beloved cousin. Armande had been right to accuse her of a lack of trust. How quick she always was to doubt him, to lose her faith in his love.
Even as bitterly betrayed as he was feeling, he had done this for her, gifted her with the return of all her childhood fantasies, that and so much more. Yet she knew he would turn away, not even permitting her to thank him.
Her lips quivered with a determined smile. She would find him and force him to accept her gratitude, and her love as well. She leaned out the garret window, allowing a soft breeze to caress her face. Suddenly the world that had seemed so dark this morning was bright with promise, as shining as the sun over her head. She started to pull back in when she glimpsed something below that brought her to an abrupt halt.
Frowning, she stretched out as far as she dared, peering downward at the cobbled pavement. How strange! It looked as though someone had dropped a bundle of black rags. She strained for a closer look and saw that the rags appeared to be sopping up a pool of something red. Blood.
A strangled sound escaped Phaedra, and she lost her grip on the book. Frozen with horror, she watched the book fall as though time itself had slowed. The volume spun end over end until it landed with a dull thud, only yards from where Hester Searle’s lifeless form lay crushed upon the cobblestones.