Three
P haedra stared at the playing cards in her hand. Her eyes, bleary from lack of sleep, refused to focus, and the morning breeze drifting through the open window did nothing to clear her groggy senses. The library at Blackheath Hall, her grandfather’s house, was a small, narrow room set at the back of the second floor. Sawyer Weylin could not see wasting any of his grander apartments upon a set of rubbishy books. The closely packed volumes that lined every available inch of wall space exuded a strong odor of leather and dust. Even though it was but the first of June and the hour not advanced past ten, the air was humid and stuffy. The summer promised to be a hellish one.
Aye, it would be hellish indeed if she continued to be afflicted with such dreams as had tormented her last night. Every time she had closed her eyes, Phaedra had found herself back in Lady Porterfield’s ballroom, circling through the steps of the dance with a silver-masked stranger. Sometimes she would wrench away the mask to see a grinning death’s head. But other visions were worse. She would see Armande de LeCroix, his blue eyes glinting with the intensity of a candle flame, his seductive whisper ensnaring her in a silken web. His mouth had sought hers, hot and moist.
It was fortunate, Phaedra thought, that she had been able to force herself awake. No lady would have such wicked dreams- which were all the more disconcerting because the man was her avowed enemy, Varnais. Ewan had always told her that she was possessed of a harlot’s nature.
“Are you going to play that jack, my girl?” A good-humored male voice with an Irish lilt broke into her reflections. “You might be better advised to lay down your queen.”
With a start, Phaedra realized she was holding her hand too low.
Leaning across the mahogany card table, her cousin Gilly unabashedly perused her cards. She raised them and directed a half-embarrassed glance at the young man sprawling in the slender-legged Chippendale chair, which looked too fragile to bear the weight of his lanky frame. How much of her shameful thoughts had her cousin read upon her face?
Patrick Gilhooley Fitzhurst grinned at her, flicking aside one of the strands of hair that drooped in front of his twinkling green eyes. His riotous mass of brown curls defied confinement in the queue he had attempted to form at the nape of his neck.
“‘Tis a fine hand you have there, I’m thinking,” he said. “Would to God it pleased you to play some of it.”
“I intend to, Gilly, if you would cease interrupting me.”
Re-sorting her hand, she tried to concentrate on her game. But the vision of steely-blue eyes kept rising between her and the cards. She kept remembering the marquis’s final words of warning: he would find a way to be rid of her if she pried into his affairs. Of course, she had made the first threat, but she had been angry and blustering. He had meant it. What sort of deadly game must the man be playing, if the mere hint of a few questions provoked such a response? Phaedra had a feeling that she would never know a peaceful night’s sleep again if she did not discover the truth about de LeCroix.
“Phaedra!”
She started, almost dropping her cards. “Oh, very well, Gilly.”
She flung down a jack, little thinking what she did. With a snort of disgust, Gilly trumped her, taking the trick.
Phaedra strewed the rest of her cards across the table. “You’ve won.”
“Won, is it?” Gilly wrinkled his snub nose. “For all the challenge you offer, I might as well have been playing with my old grandmother, and herself half blind. Here, look at this.”
Phaedra watched as Gilly tugged one threadbare cuff of his rateen frock coat, shaking it until several aces dislodged from his sleeve, fluttering onto the table. “And you not noticing a blessed thing! I thought I’d taught you better.”
“And I thought you would have outgrown such childish tricks.” She began to gather up the cards, but she paused, regarding him gravely. “Gilly, you have not been using these tricks elsewhere. Not when really playing for money.”
The jade eyes widened to the full extent of their innocence.
“Now, by the grave of my sainted mother?—”
“Gilly!”
He sighed, then stood up to remove his frock coat, revealing the patched canvas work on the back of his worn silk waistcoat. “There, now do I look as if I were making my living fleecing gentlemen at cards?”
She smiled. “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Fitzhurst.”
“And so you should, my girl.” He donned his frock coat, adding, “You were such a gloom-faced chit this morning. I only thought to amuse you by reminding you of the old days when we used to play at being cardsharps. Lord, don’t you remember how we planned to run off together and live by our wits? We even practiced picking pockets. That, of course, was only supposed to sustain us until we saved enough for pistols and could take to the High Toby.”
“Yes, I remember. What dreadful, wicked children we were.”
She chuckled, but her laughter held a hint of wistfulness in it. She remembered well the old days. Her Irish days, she was wont to think of them. When she had run wild with Gilly, barefoot down the dusty lanes like a pair of urchins, scrumping apples from Squire Traherne’s orchard, scaling trees as if they were castle walls, galloping bareback across the meadows on half-wild ponies. It was a wonder they both hadn’t broken their necks. Never again in her life had she felt so free.
Gilly, her mother’s nephew, was all that she had left of those days. Her English grandfather, angered by his only son’s elopement, had always hated her Irish mother. With both her parents dead, Sawyer Weylin had done his best to sever all Phaedra’s connections with Ireland, but her affection for Gilly proved too strong a bond even for the old man to break.
Phaedra became aware that Gilly had come round the table to her side. His fingers, roughened from handling the leather of his horses, chucked her lightly under the chin.
“Out with it, Phaedra, my girl. Sure and your mind hasn’t been on the cards. What’s troubling you?”
She sighed. “It seems I have acquired an enemy.”
“The devil you say! And you, with your sweet, gentle disposition.”
“I am serious, you rogue,” Phaedra said, although she was forced to bite back a smile. “What have you heard of a man who calls himself de LeCroix?”
“Is it the Marquis de Varnais you’re meaning? Well, he appears to be far wealthier than me and I’ve heard half the ladies in London would willingly cuckold their husbands in his bed.”
“Is that all you know of him?”
Gilly regarded one of his worn sleeve cuffs. “The marquis and I do not exactly attend the same supper parties, colleen.”
“I would have also thought him to be above my grandfather’s touch, but apparently they have become boon companions.”
Phaedra’s chair snagged on the thick Axminister carpet as she shoved it back, rising to her feet. She paced about the small chamber while she recounted for Gilly the entire tale of her meeting with the Marquis de Varnais, beginning with the nobleman’s advice to Sawyer Weylin that she be kept in Bath, and ending with a description of Armande’s warning.
“And he as good as threatened to kill me if I asked any more questions about him,” she concluded.
To her disappointment, Gilly looked unimpressed. He perched atop one corner of the library’s heavy desk, tapping a boot against the claw-foot leg in negligent fashion.
“Astonishing.” He exuded his breath in a long low whistle.
“Not back in town but one night, and already after picking a quarrel with someone. It must be the Irish in you, my dear.”
“It was far more than a quarrel. There is something sinister about the marquis. The man is plotting some mischief, and I have an intuition that it concerns both Grandfather and myself.”
“And you intend to make sure that it does.”
She glared at her cousin, but he disarmed her with a smile.
“Admit it, Fae. You were piqued by this meddling marquis, so you sought out the fellow and provoked him. You’ve a devilish sharp tongue, enough to rouse a saint to murder.”
“It was nothing of the kind. But I cannot expect you to comprehend. You were not there. You didn’t dance with him.”
“Aye, and I don’t suppose there’s much likelihood of his ever asking me to do so, either,” was Gilly’s cheerful reply. “I think your marquis is simply too top lofty to give an account of himself to anyone. My advice is to leave the man alone. But I see from the mulish look on your face that you’re not about to do that.”
“No, I’m not. I do not like those who intrude themselves in my family. Nor do I like being threatened.” Phaedra stalked over to where Gilly perched upon the desk. “Despite your marked lack of sympathy, I am glad you happened by this morning.”
“Happened by, is it? You had me summoned from my bed at the crack of dawn.”
Phaedra ignored this grumbling remark. Instead, she leaned past her cousin, indicating the sheets of parchment stacked on the desk behind him. “I have another delivery for you.”
Gilly glanced over his shoulder. The next instant he leaped off the desk as though it had caught fire. His air of nonchalance vanished, and he paled beneath his tanned skin.
“Mother of God! Are you daft, woman, to be leaving this about where any dim-witted housemaid might chance upon it!”
Phaedra proceeded to gather up the sheets. “I assure you, no one has been in here this morning but myself. I just wrote it last night.” She didn’t add that the pages had been scratched out here in the dismal hours before the dawn, when her garret room was too hot and her bedchamber far too confined, far too full of the Marquis de Varnais.
She ran a hasty eye over some of the paragraphs, pleased to see that at least she had been coherent at that hour. But she drew up short at the last page.
“Lud! I almost forgot my signature.” She reached for a quill pen, dipping it into the pot of ink. At the bottom of the final sheet, she hastily scrawled the name, Robin Goodfellow. The signature looked bold and masculine enough to fool anyone, even her sharp-eyed publisher, Jessym. As she proceeded to sprinkle sand to dry the fresh ink, Gilly peered over her shoulder.
“What the deuce have you been writing about this time?”
“Read it and see.”
While Gilly edged himself atop the desk once more and began his perusal, Phaedra picked up a blank sheet of parchment and fanned herself with it. The front of her loose-fitting sacque-style gown already felt uncomfortably damp and clinging. She stalked over to one of the narrow window casements to see if she could force it open further.
Sawyer Weylin’s estate lay far north of Piccadilly. The sprawling Palladian-style mansion was nestled in a parklike setting, simulating a country gentleman’s estate. But one never quite escaped the reminders that the bustling city of London was not far away. Phaedra crinkled her nose. Even out here, one occasionally caught a whiff of the coal-smoke and that pungent odor peculiar to the River Thames.
“Sweet Jesus!”
Gilly’s exclamation drew Phaedra away from the window. She turned around to find her cousin gripping her manuscript, looking far from pleased.
“My essay doesn’t meet with your approval?” she asked.
“The parts about the navy’s ships being filled with dry rot, and the bit about the king and parliament being negligent are excellent.” Gilly raked one hand back through his dark hair, further disordering his unruly curls. “But these passages about the Marquis de Varnais! It sounds as though you are implying he could be anything from a low-born impostor to a French spy.”
“I only hinted at a few reasons why he might be so prickly about his background.”
“This borders on libel, Phaedra, and well you know it! Jessym will never print it.”
“Jessym prints anything he thinks will sell.” But inwardly Phaedra squirmed in the face of Gilly’s disapproval. Maybe she had gone too far in her remarks about Varnais. But she hoped that her writing would make society, and especially her own grandfather, regard the man a little more warily.
Gilly tossed the sheets back down upon the desk. “I’m surprised at you, Fae, that’s all. Your pamphlets have been full of masterful writing, about fine, important issues. It’s that proud of you, I’ve been. This is common gossip.”
Phaedra gave an affected shrug, although she felt the sting of his criticism keenly. She knew that her earlier writings had been much better. Her secret career as Robin Goodfellow had begun some months before Ewan’s death. Then she had written stirring condemnations of the king and his ministers for their shortsighted dealings with both the Americans and the Irish. Her impassioned words had supported the American colonists in their war for independence. She had cried out for justice for the beleaguered Irish Catholics, whose livelihood was being stolen by greedy English landlords. All her writings had been heartfelt because they mirrored her own despair, her own yearning for freedom from a marriage that had become a bondage.
She responded bitterly to Gilly. “I am sorry you disapprove of my ‘common gossip.’ But I had not much choice, thanks to Grandfather and his good friend the marquis. It is not easy to write about fine, important matters from exile in Bath. You know I only intended to make a brief holiday when I left town after Christmas, not to find myself banned for the rest of my days.”
“But you cannot blame Varnais for that. You are an independent woman now. You can come and go as you please.”
“What? With my grandfather controlling the purse strings of the meager pittance Ewan left me? I had barely enough pocket money to get to London on the stage. When Grandfather finds me returned, he may well fling me into the street.”
The stern expression which sat so ill on Gilly’s good-humored face softened. “Well, we can become highwaymen as we’d always planned. How have you managed to escape the jaws of the old crocodile thus far?”
“He was out when I arrived last night. By now I expect his beloved housekeeper has informed him of my return.” Phaedra grimaced. The mere prospect of a confrontation with her grandfather left her feeling deflated. She crossed the room and began to fold the sheets of her essay.
“If you don’t wish to deliver this for me, I understand. But the sad truth is, Gilly, that I rather need the money.”
“Whist now. Did I ever say I wouldn’t take it? You could malign the good Saint Patrick himself, and I’d stand by you to the end.” Gilly tugged the manuscript from her hand and tucked it inside his waistcoat.
When she deposited a grateful kiss upon his cheek, he groused, “ All I say is, heaven deliver you if your grandfather ever suspects that you are the rascally Robin Goodfellow tweaking the king’s nose.” Gilly gave a short hoot of laughter. “Come to think on it, it is more likely myself that’ll be suspected. I think Jessym half does already. Belike one day I’ll find your marquis coming after me with his wicked sword.”
“I would never let it come to that,” Phaedra vowed earnestly. “If you were ever accused of being Robin Goodfellow, I would?—”
She broke off, interrupted by a high-pitched scream.
“What the devil is that?” Gilly asked.
“I don’t know,” Phaedra said, looking up fearfully at the ceiling above them. “But I think it is coming from the direction of my garret.”
Lifting her skirts, she dashed out of the library, with Gilly hard on her heels. Seeking out the backstairs, she took the risers two at a time, not pausing for breath until she reached the small chamber at the very top of the house.
The scream had not been repeated, but when Phaedra stood outside the door to her private sanctum, she could hear the sound of muffled sobbing and above it, a steady thwack, like a poker being pounded against a cushion.
“Sounds like someone is taking the devil of a drubbing,” Gilly said. “You’d best let me deal with this.”
Phaedra shook her head, her mouth compressing into a hard line. Turning the knob, she flung the door open and burst into the room. The sight that met her eyes occasioned more rage than astonishment, for she had already guessed what was amiss.
The chamber, with its low ceiling and plain white plaster walls, was a jumble of furniture discarded from the elegant apartments below. Between a Jacobean daybed and an empty bookshelf, cowered a tall, raw-boned maid, her flat bosom heaving with sobs. The girl held her large-knuckled hands before her face in an effort to ward off the blows. Her assailant, a wisp of a woman garbed in black bombazine, brought her cane crashing onto the girl’s back with great energy, her lips stretched in a grimace of ecstasy.
Phaedra flew across the room, catching the woman’s arm in mid-swing, and wrenched the weapon away from her. “Mrs. Searle! What is the meaning of this? How dare you strike my maid!”
From beneath the starched lace of her mobcap, Hester Searle’s colorless eyes glared at Phaedra with all the malice of an adder contemplating its prey.
“When yer ladyship hears the truth, ye’ll want to beat the wicked creature yerself. I caught Lucy fixing to burn yer ladyship’s finest gowns.” The woman pointed an accusing finger toward a pile of black silks strewn before the fireplace.
The girl scrambled over to Phaedra, shrinking behind her skirts.
“Oh, milady,” she sobbed, “I tried to explain.”
Phaedra glanced down at the purple swelling which had begun to disfigure the girl’s cheek. She shook with anger, but she managed to place a gentle hand upon the girl’s shoulder. “Never mind, Lucy. I will settle this. You run along to Thompson and have him apply something ointment to that eye.”
With a hiccup of relief, the girl bolted from the room, nearly blundering into Gilly in the doorway. Phaedra rounded upon Mrs. Searle. Never had she so loathed the sight of that woman’s sharp-featured face, the coal-black hair drawn back from her brow in a widow’s peak. A distant relative of Ewan Grantham’s, poor and untutored, Hester had been hired as the housekeeper upon her late husband’s recommendation. More often than not, Hester had served as Ewan’s spy. Upon her husband’s death, Phaedra had hoped that Hester would resign her post, but it seemed she was never to be rid of the sly creature.
“This time, you’ve carried your impertinence too far, Mrs. Searle. In the first place, I’ve told you that I consider this my own private room. I don’t ever want you coming in here. Secondly, that girl was acting upon my orders. I told her to destroy those gowns. I no longer have a use for them.”
Hester Searle pursed her lips. “Begging yer ladyship’s pardon. How was I to know? Such a strange command, burning these lovely silks. If you had but told me you wished to be rid of them, I could have?—”
“You are only the housekeeper. How I dispose of my personal wardrobe is none of your affair. “
“Aye, but Fae, I fear for once I must agree with Madame Pester about the gowns.”
Having all but forgotten Gilly’s presence, Phaedra twisted her head to glower at him. He leaned up against the doorjamb. “‘Tis more the action of a spoiled, highborn beauty than the cousin I know, to so wantonly destroy such clothes as many a poor woman would be glad to have upon her back. If you don’t want them, m’dear, give them away.”
Phaedra bit her lip. More than anyone else, Gilly should understand why she despised those black gowns. With irritation she realized that Gilly was right. It was wasteful to burn up the gowns. She had seen enough of poverty herself to know better. Before she could reply, however, she was distracted by the sound of Hester hissing like a cat. Her pale eyes spit fire at Gilly.
“You. You, here in this house! If my dear Lord Ewan were still alive, ye would never have dared.”
Gilly gave the woman a mocking grin. “What, Madame Pester? You mean to say you are just now aware of my arrival? Tch. Tch. Your prying little eyes must be wearing dim with age.”
“Don’t bandy words with her, Gilly.” Phaedra stamped her foot. “Mrs. Searle, you will treat my cousin with respect or I swear I shall send you packing.”
But Gilly called out, “Now, Fae, Madame Pester has reason to be shocked by my presence. A gentleman in your private room, an Irishman and a Catholic to boot. Fie! For shame.”
“You are guilty on the last two counts,” Phaedra retorted. “But upon my authority as a spoiled, highborn beauty, let me tell you, sir, that you are no gentleman. Now be off. I am certain you have a rather pressing errand to attend.” She glanced pointedly toward where her manuscript bulged in his waistcoat pocket. “I can pack away these gowns for the almshouse without your interference.”
A smile of approval lit Gilly’s face even.as he swept an exaggerated bow, encompassing both Phaedra and Mrs. Searle. “Oh, yes, your ladyship. Right away, your ladyship. And Madame Pester, charmed as always to be making your acquaintance again.” Still bowing and scraping, Gilly backed out of the room.
When his grinning countenance had disappeared from view, Phaedra turned her attention back to Mrs. Searle. The woman had successfully disguised any rage she felt at Gilly behind her normally morose expression. Her hands folded before her, her strangely wrought fingers peeked out of her black lace mittens, crooked only at the first joint like the claws of a vulture.
“I regret having disturbed yer ladyship with my error,” she said. “If I am excused, I will be about my work.”
“Oh, yes. I am sure you are just dying to go see my grandfather and tell him all about my having Gilly here. “Phaedra was well aware that Sawyer Weylin despised her Irish cousin nearly as much as her late husband had.
“Nay, I shouldn’t dream of disturbing the master when he’s holding his levee,” Hester said. Although she lowered her lashes, her thin, blue-veined lids did not hood her eyes enough to disguise a glint of malicious anticipation.
“Get along, then. And when Lucy has recovered, send her up here to bundle these gowns. But if I ever catch you striking her or prowling through my room again, I swear I’ll wring your scrawny neck with my own two hands. And not even my grandfather will be able to stop me.”
Her face emotionless, Hester nudged several of the black gowns aside with her toe, uncovering a cloak. Retrieving it from the pile, she prepared to slip out of the room.
Phaedra sharply drew in her breath. “And where do you think you are going with that?”
Hester shrugged, shooting Phaedra a sly glance. “I only thought as ye be now giving these things away, I would have it for myself. Being but a poor housekeeper with no wealthy grandfather to ease my way.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. Give me that.” Phaedra wrenched the cloak from the older woman’s grasp. “You think I’ll let you walk off with this, so I can find it turning up amongst my things again one day? Don’t think for a minute I don’t know that it is you who keeps slipping this back into my wardrobe.”
“Why, ma’am, ye seemed to cherish it so,” Hester purred. “I couldn’t believe ye meant to discard it.”
“Liar!” Phaedra’s fingers tightened on the soft folds. “I will tolerate no more of your tricks, do you hear me? Now get out of here. Go make your report to my grandfather. And keep your sneaking face out of my sight.”
“Yes, my lady,” Hester sneered, her stiff skirts rustling as she glided out of the garret, the door clicking shut behind her.
Phaedra trembled with anger. Meddlesome old witch. She did not doubt for a moment that the housekeeper’s true purpose had been to snoop amongst Phaedra’s most private belongings.
Anxiously, Phaedra hastened toward a small cabinet lodged in one corner of the room. One of the few pieces of furniture she had brought with her from Ireland, the cabinet was fashioned of blackened bog oak, the sides carved with fanciful figures like those found in the Book of Kells. Within its locked drawers resided her notes, first drafts of the pieces she had written under the name of Robin Goodfellow and the copies of the Gazetteer, the newspaper that printed her essays.
Reassuring herself that the cabinet had not been tampered with, she resolved to take even greater precautions in future to keep Hester Searle out of her rooms. She’d endure no more of the woman’s prying and malicious tricks.
Phaedra’s gaze dropped to the garment she yet clutched in her hands. She wanted to fling the cloak from her, but instead she smoothed it out, the cloth exercising the same terrible fascination for her it always had. Fashioned of dove-colored cassimere, it had a folding hood that expanded to frame the wearer’s face in layers of ruffles. Phaedra hugged the cloak close to her body, the inches of fabric falling far short upon her. The garment had been designed for someone daintier than herself.
Her eyes misted over when she recalled the first time she had ever seen the cloak. It had been lying draped over that very same indigo-blue velvet wing chair, nestled so close to the fire screen. Of course, then the wing chair had been new, part of the elegant bedroom furnishings downstairs. The velvet was faded now, but not so her memory. Sinking down upon the daybed’s stiff brocade covering, Phaedra stroked the soft wool of the cloak, her mind drifting back to her wedding day.
She had returned, exhausted from the celebration of the rites in Hanover Square, to the rooms Sawyer Weylin had had prepared for her and Ewan. Exhausted, yes, but happy and full of plans for the future. She had not been pleased to begin her married life under her tyrannical grandfather’s roof, but was sure it would not be long until Ewan whisked her off to his own estate in Yorkshire. Scrambling into her linen shift, she had sent her maid away, then snuggled beneath the coverlets to await Ewan. Her handsome, charming, husband.
Phaedra’s heart had skipped a beat, her youthful body wriggling in anticipation. She was not totally ignorant of what to expect. Although she was still a maiden, Phaedra had learned much from a muscular Irish stableboy, whom she had once fancied. Learned far more than her parents would have wished. It was at that time the decision had been made to find her a husband. Phaedra had giggled as she remembered how forcefully her mother had put the case to Papa.
“By my faith,” Lady Siobhan had snorted, “the girl is overripe, George. Delay much longer, and we shall see her fruit plucked by the wrong hands.”
Strangely, Sawyer Weylin had chosen that time to heal the breach between himself and his son. Although Weylin still had refused to receive his Irish daughter-in-law, he had showed an interest in producing a suitable candidate for his granddaughter’s hand. At first Phaedra had rebelled, wanting nothing to do with the grandfather who so snubbed her beloved mother. But Lady Siobhan herself had insisted that Phaedra accept Weylin’s offer, seeing better prospects for her daughter in England than in Ireland. Phaedra’s own objections had lessened when she saw the portrait of the man Sawyer Weylin had selected. Lord Ewan Grantham was decidedly a fine figure of a man.
The betrothal was delayed for another year by the untimely death of her mother. Most willingly would Phaedra have remained with her father, but George Weylin seemed to have no heart left for anything but his grief. He had bundled Phaedra off to England at the earliest opportunity. Banished to a strange country, her mother gone, her Papa far away at Abbey Lough, Phaedra had received a cold welcome from Sawyer Weylin, who from the outset regarded this half-Irish grandchild critically. But Lord Ewan had turned out to be as handsome as his portrait. Most naturally, Phaedra had transferred the full fire of her passionate affections to him, adoring her new husband.
Squirming beneath the sheets on her wedding night, Phaedra had wondered how she could contain herself much longer if Ewan did not hasten to her side. It was then that she had first noticed the dove-colored cloak. With a shriek of feminine joy, she had bounded out of bed, snatching up the garment. Then the door to the bedchamber had crashed open and Ewan had staggered inside. She had turned to him, glowing with pleasure.
“Oh, my love. What a splendid wedding gift. I thank you, oh, a hundred times.”
But instead of the urbane smile she had come to expect, Ewan flashed her a look of anger and hatred. He yanked the cloak from her hands, nearly spinning her off-balance.
“Don’t you ever touch this again,” he had slurred. He reeked of whiskey. Phaedra shrank back, the smile withering upon her lips. “I-I am most dreadfully sorry. I thought it was meant for me.”
“You?” He gave a vicious bark of laughter. “This little cloak for a great horse like you?” He shoved the fabric in her face, and she stepped back, wincing.
“Then whose is it?” she had whispered.
“This, my little Irish bitch, belonged to the woman I loved.”
Hugging the cloak as if he embraced a lover, Ewan wove his way across the room. He attempted to seat himself in the wing-backed chair, missed, and sank into a heap by the fire.
Phaedra had tried to reach out to him, but he waved her away, shaking his fist. “You stay away from me. Don’t want you. Never did.” He buried his face in the cloak. “Oh, Anne, my lovely Anne.”
Phaedra’s hand fell limp to her side. She quavered. “Is she your mistress?”
Ewan had raised his head long enough to roar at her. “No! She would have been my wife! My true wife!” His voice grew thick with weeping and his entire frame shook with sobs. Numbly, Phaedra had retreated to her own bedchamber, but the heavy oak door could not block out the sound of his dreadful sobs, which continued far into the night. It was then that Phaedra had fled to the top of the house and found the abandoned attic chamber that would become her retreat-a place to shed quiet tears of her own for a love lost, for a love that she had never truly had.
The memory of that night faded as Phaedra folded up the cloak her husband had wept over so long ago. She had never asked Ewan what had become of his Anne, whether the woman had died or married someone else. The manner in which Ewan had cherished that cloak had told Phaedra all she cared to know. She could see now what a fool she had been, becoming infatuated by a handsome face. How many times had she met Ewan before their wedding day? Perhaps thrice. She had been nothing but a pawn, caught between two ruthless men: her ambitious grandfather, who wished to marry a member of his family into the nobility, and Ewan Grantham, in need of Weylin’s money to settle his debts. Never, Phaedra vowed, would she permit herself to be so used again.
She resolutely put the garment from her. She had had to endure Ewan’s keeping the cloak about, but now that he was dead, she was not going to be haunted by it anymore. She regarded the fireplace grate, longing for the courage to stuff the cloak in and watch it burn to ashes. After all these years, the dove-colored wool still seemed to exercise a spell upon her. But, at least, she would have it boxed up, sent someplace where she never had to lay eyes upon it again.
Stuffing Anne’s cloak under her arm, she retreated down the stairs to the hall below, directing her steps toward that wing of Sawyer Weylin’s mansion that she had shared with her late husband. The carpeted floors seemed unnaturally quiet now without the constant stream of tradesmen, barbers, and other servants who had ceaselessly attended upon Ewan’s demands.
Although Sawyer Weylin was generous about paying Grantham’s debts, there had been conditions attached. The one that had irked Ewan the most was her grandfather’s’ insistence that the newlywed couple live under his roof, where Sawyer could maintain control over her spendthrift husband. Too weak to defy the old man, Ewan had directed his bitterness at Phaedra. He had felt as trapped by their marriage as she. His dying had released them both.
Phaedra’s step faltered as she passed the door to Ewan’s bedchamber, locked now in accordance with the mourning custom, which dictated that the deceased’s chambers be shut up for a lengthy period of time. Not that Phaedra cared a whit for that. She had no desire ever to set foot again in that room, which held for her only memories of humiliation. On those infrequent occasions when she had had to submit to Ewan in his bed, his lovemaking had been brief, almost savage, as though he sought to punish her for not being Anne.
But her own bedchamber was linked to his by a connecting door, and Phaedra was disturbed by the tomblike silence that now emanated from Ewan’s room. It was like living next to a mausoleum.
Clutching Anne’s cloak a little tighter, Phaedra prepared to skirt past that still, forbidding doorway. Then she froze, hearing a sound where there should have been none. The light padding of a footfall, a whisper of silk.
Not even the housemaids were permitted to enter Ewan’s room. Then who would dare? The door had remained locked since the day of Ewan’s burial. Stretching out a hand, she tried the knob.
It turned easily. Phaedra scowled. The housekeeper was the only person with a key. Phaedra ground her teeth as she inched the door noiselessly open. If Hester were up to more of her tricks, she would-
Phaedra paused on the threshold, taken aback by the flood of sunlight. She had expected to find the room shrouded in darkness, but the curtains were flung wide. All the furniture was gleaming with a fresh polish of beeswax from the mahogany dressing table to the four-poster bed where where a strange man stood with his back to her, shrugging himself into a pair of breeches. Phaedra caught a glimpse of muscular buttocks before the man eased the tanned cloth over his lean hips. Stunned, her eyes roved upwards past a trim waistline to a broad back, as hard-muscled as any strapping farm laborer’s. Shagged lengths of sable-colored hair covered the nape of his neck.
“Who are you? What are you doing in my husband’s room?” Phaedra managed to ask at last.
The man started at the sound of her voice. As he spun around, a gasp escaped Phaedra. Her arms went slack, dropping Anne’s cloak in a heap.
“You!” she cried.
The elegant satins might be stripped away, along with the mask and white-powdered wig. But there was no mistaking the lean, jawline, the sensual mouth, the chilling blue eyes. The half-naked man who now stalked toward her was undoubtedly Armande de LeCroix, the most noble Marquis de Varnais.