Dangerous Beauty Read online

  “No, you mustn’t say such things! Vaughn, what would I do without you? Please, take it back. My life without you would not be worth living.”

  “Shhh…” He held her tight until she calmed a little. “Would you give up these last three years, Elisa, just for a guaranteed future with me in it?”

  “To not have them at all?” She shook her head and her wet cheek rubbed against his shirt. “No, I could not give them up,” she said at last.

  “Neither could I, my love. And that is why we must not give way to this new monster. Whoever it is, they are trying to tell us how to live our lives. And if we give in, Elisa, if we do what they say, we will be diminished, our lives will have lost a little of the freedom we have fought so hard to win for ourselves.”

  “If you pursue this, Vaughn, they might kill you. Or me. Any of us.”

  He lifted her chin so he could see her eyes. “Yes, they might,” he said, as evenly as he could. “I believe they are quite serious in their intentions.”

  She stared into his eyes for a long, silent moment and then gave a gigantic sniff, and wiped her tears from her face. “You are quite right. You showed me how good life could be when I fought to live it for myself. I could not go back to the fear-filled, empty life I had before, so I will support you in this. You must pursue them, Vaughn,” she said, her own voice firm. “You would not be the man I fell in love with if you did not.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Although, if I’d be of a mind to be frank,” Seth said, holding his brandy balloon up so the firelight flickered through the golden liquid, “I’d be asking meself why they decided to pick on you and yours. It is me they want run out of the country, after all.”

  “I’m more of a threat to them, right now,” Vaughn answered. His fingertips were together, the untouched brandy by his side. Unlike Seth, he was quite sober. “You don’t have the means I have to reach deep into Ireland and furrow through their history. If they had succeeded in removing me from the game board, you would have become much easier to deal with.”

  “Means?” Seth said, affronted. He threw his legs off the arm of the chair and swiveled to glare at Vaughn. “I’ve got three thousand English bloody pounds in my cabin. Cold, hard cash. Sterling, mind ye.”

  Vaughn smiled a little. “And by god, we’ll use it,” he assured him. “But you don’t know a single person of influence in this entire land who would care to lift a hand to help you.”

  Seth swallowed the last of the brandy and grimaced. “Except you.”

  “Exactly,” Vaughn finished quietly.

  Seth rubbed his hands through his hair, and sighed. “So they come at ye wife. Fine and honorable, they are.”

  “Another point we agree upon.” Vaughn dropped his hands. “But now we know they will come at us through others, indirectly. We know they give no quarter, Seth, so we know what we’re dealing with and can take precautions. Do you want another brandy?”

  “I’ve ‘ad more than enough,” Seth said and rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes. It was very late. “Is there not something we can do beyond wait for your men to report?”

  “No.”

  “I’m likely to go blind with all this waiting,” Seth warned.

  “You never were very good at it.” Vaughn grinned.

  Seth found himself smiling back. Even though Seth was the elder, it always seemed to him that Vaughn had a wisdom that tapped centuries of experience and the cool head to go along with it.

  The image of Natasha standing by the window, cool and calm, while he had paced the fireplace, flickered through his mind as it had done repeatedly all night. And along with it came the sensation of her small hand against his cock. The deliberate brush. His body tightened and throbbed in response, just as it had all night, every time he thought about it. “This tragedy has affected everyone,” Seth ventured.

  Vaughn speared him with a calculating glance. “You’re thinking of Natasha She seems to have found her feet, at last.”

  “When I beheld her beauty, at the ball, I wouldn’t have guessed in a thousand years the warrior maiden that lay beneath.”

  Vaughn smiled a little. “Most people underestimate Natasha. Including her parents.” His smile faded. “And Natasha herself.”

  “Not anymore,” Seth finished. And again, he felt the brush of her hand against him and the knowing look in her eyes as she had smiled up at him.

  Vaughn laughed suddenly, then dropped his head back on the chair. “You two are a pair, indeed. I wonder who will rule your house?”

  “Don’t be bloody silly, man. I’d be the master of my own house!”

  “Of course you would,” Vaughn said smoothly. He stood up, stretching. “It’s time to find a pillow,” he declared. “You’ll stay the night, of course?”

  “Oh, Harry can watch the ship well enough, but I should be returning anyway.” Seth rose to his feet, and stretched mightily, too. “Either that, or I use the servants’ entrance tomorrow morning, when I leave. I’m beginning to think I should be more cautious.”

  The sound of shattering glass made him whirl towards the window, his heart galloping. As he turned, something slammed into his shoulder with a force that made him stagger backwards.

  At the same time, Vaughn gave a great shout and ran for the door of the parlor.

  As Seth reached for his shoulder, he heard the front door open and Vaughn’s steps on the porch outside.

  A stone the size of his fist lay at his feet. Curiously, it was wrapped in twine. As he rubbed his shoulder, he turned it over with his foot and saw the twine held a folded note to the rock.

  His heart thudded hard. He looked up at the broken window and the empty path on the street beyond. The projectile had been aimed deliberately.

  The front door shut quietly and Vaughn returned. He shook his head. “Gone,” he said shortly.

  Seth picked up the rock. Tiredness and all traces of the brandy had left his system. He pulled the note from under the twine and unfolded it. “Evidence that they weren’t content with warning only me,” Vaughn said, examining the broken window. He turned to face Seth. “They’re warning you away, too?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Seth tried to shrug off the deep puzzlement and dismay the note had provoked, and read it aloud.

  “‘Talk to your father. Ask him to explain the price of sticking your nose where it’s not wanted. Then leave England…or else.’”

  * * * * *

  Seth rose to open the carriage door and looked back. “You’re not coming in?” he said.

  Vaughn had not moved from the bench. His hands rested on the silver-topped cane he’d brought with him. Seth had assumed it was a mere affectation, until Vaughn had handed it to him to feel its weight and balance. The lead-lined cane was a lethal instrument. “Perfectly balanced for a blow to the back of the head,” Vaughn had assured him coolly.

  His friend looked at him, now, with the same cool, assessing look and shook his head. “This must be between you and your father, Seth,” he said quietly. “Your father is clearly part of this business, but he is your father, and you must face him alone.”

  Seth sank back onto the opposite seat and looked out the window at the large Georgian mansion with its pillars and marble stairs and the parkland and wrought iron fencing surrounding it.

  Here in the middle of London, it was an almost embarrassingly large private residence, where land was in such demand. But this pocket of parkland had belonged to his family for nearly three hundred years, well before London had reached out to surround it.

  Seth had once loved the graceful white building. Now he looked at it with dismay.

  “He cannot harm you any more than he has already,” Vaughn said quietly.

  Seth clenched his fists. “Albany seems far more fair to my eyes right now.”

  “Remember why you do this.”

  Natasha. Elisa’s babe. Liam. His mother. And every transportee ever sent to the colonies. Seth nodded. “Don’t wait for me,” he told Vaughn. “
I’ll get a cab back.”

  Vaughn touched his hat brim. “Take care.”

  Seth adjusted his cravat one last time and lurched out of the carriage before he could change his mind. He strode to the steps, startling doves and sending them aloft, while behind him, the coach driver clicked the horses into motion and the wheels of the coach crunched over the gravel as it passed out of the driveway and into the cobbled street.

  At the doors, Seth rapped sharply and resettled his hat upon his head. He was wearing the very best broadcloth suit a man could buy on Saville Row, his shirt was silk and his boots of finest hand-polished leather. But he refused to part with his earring and as he stood before the door, waiting for the butler to answer the summons, he felt that the earring was the only real part of Seth Harrow on display. Who did he really think would be fooled by the finery and the rounded vowels? Certainly not his father.

  The butler was almost bent double with age and he peered up at Seth, blinking in the harsh morning light. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Is Lord Innesford in, this morning? I’d like to speak to him.” The precise grammar came to Seth automatically. It was triggered by the clothes and the memories the aging butler brought flooding back to him.

  “I’m afraid Lord Innesford can’t be disturbed, especially without an appointment,” Humphries replied. His voice quavered, but his dignity was intact. The butler was properly indignant that someone dared disturb his master without the courtesy of arranging the affair ahead of time.

  “Come, Humphries,” Seth said gently. “Surely he’d make time for his son?”

  Humphries blinked. “Surely you make a crude jest, sir? Lord Innesford’s son has been dead these fifteen years gone.”

  Despite being braced for such difficulties, Seth still felt his heart pick up speed and the prickling of discomfort like a hot rash across his skin. Keep ye temper, boyo! he reminded himself.

  “Humphries, surely you recognize me? I know it’s been fifteen years, but I refuse to believe you’ve forgotten that much about me.”

  Humphries stared at him and there was nothing in his expression to reveal his thoughts. That poker face had served his father for thirty years and was serving him still.

  “I am sorry, sir, but his lordship is not in.” He began to close the door.

  Seth slapped his hand against the wood, holding it open. “Ask him,” he said softly. “Tell him who I am and ask him. I at least deserve that much civility.”

  Humphries considered this. “I will see if his lordship is in,” he said, with formal stiffness.

  He made to shut the door again, but Seth pushed it open and stepped inside. “I’ll wait in here,” he said, taking off his gloves and hat and dumping them on the hall table beneath the ornate gilded mirror on the wall. Beyond the foyer he could see the marble and wrought iron steps climbing to the upper floors, with their priceless Oriental carpets. The carpets had been brought back to England by his grandfather, who had traveled to Constantinople to see to his business interests there. Those Oriental interests wound back in time to the second crusade, where another ancestor had fought and died valiantly on the fields before the walls of Jerusalem, slain by the infidel who now traded carpets with his family instead of insults.

  At the top of the stairs, the big grandfather clock softly chimed the quarter hour, emphasizing how quiet the house had grown. Seth remembered it as a bustling place, with servants hurrying to and fro. So much had changed, even here.

  Humphries descended the stairs at a sedate pace, his white gloves at his sides. Even at his advanced age, he would not lower his dignity by grasping the stair rail. Seth moved out of the foyer, to stand at the bottom of the steps. He knew Humphries would not be hurried, nor would he consent to calling out his information from halfway down the stairs.

  Seth gritted his teeth and waited until the man stood next to him. “Lord Innesford is not in, young sir.”

  His temples began to pound. “Did you tell him his son was here to see him?”

  “I did.” Humphries turned and held his hand out toward the front door. “If you’ll step this way, sir…” The butler’s other hand was hovering behind Seth’s back, ready to coax him physically if necessary. But Humphries had also aged fifteen years while Seth had been gone and his days of force-marching unwelcome guests out the door were over.

  Seth spun out of Humphries’ reach and raced up the stairs. He instinctively turned to the left at the top. In all the years he had lived here, he’d most often found his father in the big corner study, where morning sunlight flooded in through the banks of windows and a fire crackled in the fireplace.

  His father had always sat behind an ornate empire desk, said to have come from the royal palace in Vienna. Even as a child, Seth understood that the desk gave his father power and authority he did not always feel—especially when dealing with his recalcitrant son, who had plagued his days. As he strode along the hallway towards the big door, Seth realized that his whole childhood had been a long series of scrapes and difficulties, each punctuated by a mortifying interview with his father. Only after he had met Vaughn at Eton and learned how to move around authority rather than meet it head-on with both fists, had the endless series of interviews and interrogations diminished. In a way, his conviction and transportation had capped off his childhood, and closed that period of his life irrevocably.

  He pushed open the door to the study, stepped into the brightly lit room and shut the door firmly behind him, locking it with the key that sat in the lock.

  The room smelt unpleasantly of stale camphor and an odor that made Seth think of wet, rotting leaves.

  “Is that you, Humphries? Has he gone?” It was his father’s voice, but weak, trembling. And it came not from the massive desk, but from the high-backed wing chair that stood before the fireplace.

  Seth’s heart was racing hard now and it had little to do with the climb up the flight of stairs.

  “No, he hasn’t gone, Father,” he said. He moved to the fireplace and stepped around it to face his father and fought hard to keep his expression even.

  His father was an invalid.

  The door handle was rattled loudly. “Sir!” came Humphries’ voice from the other side. “You cannot disturb the Earl!”

  Marcus Williams lay propped in the wing chair. He had once been a robust, redcheeked man with a full set of whiskers and all his teeth. He had always eaten and drunk heartily, although not to excess, and rode the hounds whenever he could. He had stood taller than Seth at eighteen and had twice the bulk. Now he was shrunken, frail, huddled beneath a checkered blanket. His face was an alarming shade of gray.

  But his eyes were bright enough as they looked up at Seth. “Tell him I’m already disturbed,” he said, his voice a painful wheeze. Speaking sent him into a paroxysm of coughing that shook his whole body and stole his breath for an endless minute while Seth watched, alarmed.

  Then it subsided and his father fell back into the chair, his eyes closing and his mouth slack.

  There was a muffled metallic thud from the doorway and Seth looked up. The key had been pushed out of the lock from the other side of the door, to fall onto a newspaper slipped under the door. As he watched, the newspaper was drawn back under the door, taking the key with it.

  Seth crouched in front of his father. “Sir, they will be through the door in a few seconds and only you can stop them from throwing me out of this house. I need only a few moments of your time, then I will remove myself from your life once more. That is all I ask of you as my father and nothing more.”

  “Why should I give you that much?” his father husked, his eyes opening a fraction.

  The door was being rattled and Seth heard the key being fitted into the lock on the other side. He spoke quickly. “Because, Father, last night a woman I know—the wife of a friend—was injured and her babe lost. The agency responsible for that loss tells me I should ask you why I must leave England and cease asking questions about what happened in Ireland fifteen years ago.
”

  Astonishingly, his father’s face paled even more. It made the flesh seem as thin as parchment. All the bones in his head seemed to push against it, stretching it taut. He groaned and his eyes rolled.

  The door burst open and two hefty young footmen sprinted over to grab each of Seth’s arms, hauling him back onto his feet.

  “You, sir, are leaving,” one of them promised.

  Humphries was close behind them. “Get him out!” he declared, waving his finger at Seth, his voice quavering.

  Seth looked down at his father. “Father!”

  His father sighed. “Leave him,” he whispered.

  “My lord!” the footman protested. “He burst in ‘ere without so much as a by-your-leave.”

  Marcus Williams waved his hand weakly. “Leave him,” he repeated, in a firmer voice. “He is my son, he deserves that much.”

  The hands on Seth’s arms loosened, but did not lift away completely. “Are you certain, my lord?” Humphries asked. Seth saw that he carried a pistol. Such was Seth’s reputation as a hardened criminal that Humphries felt arms were a suitable defense.

  “No, I’m not certain,” Marcus Williams said with a sigh. “But it is what I wish. See to it, Humphries.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Humphries bowed and jerked his head to the two footmen, who reluctantly backed away. They left the room.

  Seth caught the butler’s eye and stepped around the chair to speak to him. He lowered his voice. “How long has he been like this?”

  “His lordship has been indisposed for some years now,” Humphries said stiffly.

  “He has been this frail for years?”

  “No, sir. He was much stronger than this, even though he could not ride the hunt, or even sit upon a horse.” Humphries glanced at the back of the wing chair. “His condition turned suddenly to the worse a few days ago.” He wrung his hands. “I have not been able to get him to eat.” Honest worry showed on the old man’s face. He had been taking care of his master’s affairs his entire life.