Dangerous Beauty Read online

  Seth put a hand on the man’s shoulder, to give him a measure of comfort. But Humphries glanced at Seth’s hand, then straightened up as much as his stoop would allow and dropped his own hands to his side. The butler was back in control. “He suffered an attack on Tuesday morning. I found him here, on the floor…”

  Tuesday. The day after the ball. The day when all of London fair rocked with the news of Seth’s reappearance on the ton. Seth did not ask the obvious question, for he already knew. His father had suffered his attack when he learned his disgraced, convict son had returned to London.

  “Thank you, Humphries,” Seth said and turned back to his father. He pulled up the matching wing chair and rested against the edge of the seat, so that he was eye-to-eye with his father. He heard Humphries shut the door.

  Alone, at last, with his father.

  He pulled from his pocket the crumpled note that had been tied to the rock and held it out to him. “This was sent to me last night, after Elisa—Lady Fairleigh—was attacked. Do you want me to read it to you?”

  His father lifted a bony hand covered in liver spots and waved the note away. “I believe you, boy.” His eyes closed, as if he was in pain.

  Seth returned the note to his pocket, staring at his father. There was something awry here that he did not understand. He had expected far more resistance than Marcus Williams had shown so far…it had almost been too easy to gain an audience with him. “Then tell me what the note means. You know, don’t you?”

  In answer, his father turned his face into the shielding wing of the chair. It was the movement of a man racked in shame, or guilt.

  “You must tell me. Elisa was hurt yesterday because of me—because of what happened in Ireland.”

  “Because of the crimes you committed?” His father kept his face averted, but Seth could see that he held himself taut, waiting for Seth’s answer. Something important hinged upon what he said next.

  Seth sighed, and pushed his hand through his hair. He could feel the shadow of his past around his head like a storm cloud. He still did not understand what role his father played in this matter, but he didn’t like the way everyone surrounding him was being drawn into the cyclone, whether he wished it or not.

  He took a deep breath and marshaled his words carefully, knowing he would only get one chance at answering this question. “Sir, you were never one to tolerate excuses or justifications, so I’ll not abuse your patience with long-winded tales—it takes far too long to explain fifteen years.”

  His father, astonishingly, winced. Seth could feel his own heartbeat picking up speed, hurrying along too fast, too hard, feeding off the tension emanating from his father. He tried to relax. “You must, for now, take my word that what I’m about to say is utter truth. I do not have proof— yet. And if the people behind this note get their way, I will never have that proof. So you must trust me for now. I did not do the things I was accused of—the sedition, murder, all of the charges, bar one, were falsehoods. The only crime I committed that night in Ireland was feeling compassion for my friend Liam and his family. I attended his meeting because he so badly wanted me to prove that I cared.”

  His father exhaled slowly. “I know. I’ve always known.” And shockingly, his face crumpled and two big tears slid down the paper-thin, dry cheeks.

  Seth clutched the arm of the chair, staring at his father, trying to absorb his answer. “How could you know?” he whispered, as his father raised both frail, shaking hands to his face to hide his tears. “How long have you known? Fifteen years?” His fingers dug into the brocade, as anger built in him. “Father, Elisa was abducted and then tossed from a moving carriage. She lost the child she carried because of me. If you know what this is about, if you know anything of this at all, you must tell me. I need to know the truth. I must know who the enemy is.”

  His father’s hands stayed over his face and he was silent, but Seth saw that his shoulders shook.

  Seth got to his feet, unable to sit still any longer. “My lord, you must explain yourself. I have spent seven years a convict, fifteen years far from anyone I cared for, and all the while you knew I was innocent. You let them do this to me. I was nineteen years old. I was your son!”

  His father’s shoulders bowed even more. “Oh god…” he wailed into his hands.

  “For that I demand the truth and your pride and dignity be damned! Tell me who the enemy is!”

  Finally, Marcus Williams dropped his hands to his lap. They lay palm up, the flesh glistening wetly. He kept his gaze upon them. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t know who they are. I’ve never known. Do you not believe that if I had known, if I’d had any hint at all, that I would not have pursued it to the ends of the earth, to stop this thing, this terrible fate from falling on you? I tried to visit you in Dublin, at the gaol. I would have tried to explain this…somehow. But you would not see me.” And finally, he looked up at Seth with red-rimmed eyes.

  Guilt extinguished some of Seth’s fury. “I was angry,” he said stiffly.

  “With me?” his father asked, wounded.

  “With the bloody English!” Seth shouted. “God, Father, how could ye not have known what was happening there? Were you deaf and blind both? They were starving. Children, whole families, with barely a bushel of grain to eke out winter. You could have made such a grand difference to their lives, if you’d showed even the slightest bit of attention!”

  His father wiped at his eyes. “You sound like your mother.” It was an accusation—an old one that Seth remembered from long ago, but this time he chose to take comfort in it, instead.

  “Aye, I sound Irish,” he agreed. “’Tis a wonder you find that so offensive. Mother is Irish. I’m half-Irish, but ye don’t like that reminder, d’ye?” Seth curled his lip. “Tell me what you know of this enemy. What have you to do with my conviction?”

  Marcus Williams sighed. “Everything, although I’m sure you’ll take no comfort in that, either. You weren’t taking an interest in my affairs, even though they would one day be yours. You probably don’t remember that a few months before your arrest, the most ambitious Irish trade bill I’d even proposed was being debated in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords?”

  Seth shook his head. “How would I know that? I was at Cambridge.”

  His father gave a small smile. “Studying law, as I recall.”

  Seth tried to shrug off the touch of guilt. “I don’t remember the bill,” he said, a little more sharply than he intended.

  “Oh, no one remembers the bill.” His father smiled sourly. “I withdrew it from consideration, the day after your conviction.”

  Shocked touched Seth with fresh, cold fingers. “They made you? Because of me?”

  “No, Seth. Your conviction was my punishment for not withdrawing the bill the first time they demanded I do so.”

  Seth sank back onto the chair he’d deserted. “That’s…that is…” He shook his head. “And you told no one? Not even Mother?”

  “They insisted I tell no one. Or, they said, your mother would face a future as interesting as the one they had arranged for you.”

  Seth stared at his father, realizing that for fifteen years, Marcus Williams had carried this untold secret inside him. It was little wonder the man had suffered ill health for most of those years. And his collapse on the day he learned his son had returned to London…

  Marcus Williams opened the eyes he had shut in pain. “The enemy clearly has Irish interests, or else why try to void a bill that would affect Ireland?” He coughed a little and caught a quick, wheezing breath before he began to cough again in earnest, the spasms racking his body. He dug into his pocket and produced a snowy white linen kerchief that he held up to his mouth. When the fit had passed, he fell back against the chair, drained. The kerchief was spotted with blood.

  Seth swallowed, his throat dry and raspy. “What else?” he coaxed.

  He took a moment to answer. “There is nothing else,” he husked. “Like you, I was sent
messages that were impossible to follow back to their source. They told me to withdraw the bill and I thought myself above it all—I was doing what my conscience demanded and a higher God would protect me.” He sighed and his eyes closed. “I was wrong.”

  Seth looked at the spotted handkerchief, at his father’s emaciated body. It was as if this knowledge had been steadily eating at him all these years. His father had already paid for his guilt.

  Seth stood up. “I will let you rest.”

  Marcus Williams opened one eye. “Remember this, Seth. The enemy will defeat you by attacking the ones you love.”

  Seth nodded. They’d tried to subdue Vaughn by using Elisa as their leverage—if nothing else, that incident convinced him that the people that had coerced his father were the same people who now were trying to stop Seth.

  Natasha. The name whispered in his mind and it was as if his heart had seized. Pain clutched at his chest and his breath whistled from him in shock. He was moving towards the door before his mind could engage again.

  If they attacked those they believed to be your loved ones, what would they do to Natasha? The pair of them had stood in that garden last night, arms about each other…how could they fail to have missed that?

  By the time he reached the top of the stairs, he was running. He took the steps three at a time, his hand sliding down the cold, iron balustrade, ‘til he reached the bottom and could fling himself over the rail.

  He pushed open the front door and was out of the house before the footman could even stir from his perch in the little room off the foyer. Outside, the air was crisp and still.

  Seth hurried into the street, looking for a cab. He hailed the first one he saw and climbed inside. The driver leaned down to hear Seth’s directions and Seth rattled off Vaughn’s address. As the horses began to clop, Seth banged on the roof. “No, wait!” he cried. He stared about the street, at the boys hanging off the wrought iron fencing, staring at him, at the woman selling flowers from her cart, at the people huddled together on the other side of the road from his father’s house. At the shopkeeper sweeping his footpath.

  There were too many people. Too many eyes watching him. He felt sweat break out on his temples. “Just drive around. Go to the park,” he told the driver.

  “Right, guv,” the driver agreed and touched the horses with his whip again. It was of no matter to him where he went—he would be compensated anyway.

  Seth tried to relax back onto the bench, to look like he was not suddenly conscious of everyone who glanced at him. His heart was thudding at a pace that would surely drive him into the grave if it kept up for too long—each beat hurt, as if the heart was throwing itself against his chest.

  The enemy—whoever they were—were watching him. They must be watching, for they had known every move Vaughn and he had made so far. They’d known where Seth was to throw the rock that passed the note along, they’d known Elisa and Natasha were in the park…it could mean the enemy was someone he knew, or someone that moved around so naturally in this world that they were overlooked. He could not drive back to Vaughn’s and bring the enemy to the doorstep.

  Until he knew who that someone was, he had to assume he had no privacy, and no secrets, that he would be followed and his every move examined for weaknesses and vulnerabilities. For the lever that would push him out of England.

  Chapter Eleven

  Natasha sat with her feet and knees together, her hands folded demurely in her lap, and her perfectly straight spine eight inches from the back of the chair. A small, meaningless smile adorned her lips. She wore a modestly cut evening gown and her hair was dressed conservatively. She wore the barest skerrick of rouge and powder and appeared to be the very model of maidenly decorum. Beneath the placid exterior was a maelstrom of hot yearning for rebellion, vengeance and carnal desires.

  It was just over a day since she had returned home in Vaughn’s carriage, her hair and clothes in utter disarray. Her timing had been unfortunate, for she had stepped into the house to find the drawing room full of titled guests and all of them gaped at her appearance, eagerly taking note of every shameful detail.

  Her mother, dressed in blue satin and lace, with the family’s heirloom diamonds dripping from her neck and ears, stepped around a bevy of her guests and hurried over to take Natasha’s arm in a painful pinch.

  “You dare appear here in that condition!” she muttered, hurrying Natasha towards the stairs.

  “Mother, I did attempt to simply go upstairs. I had no idea you were entertaining tonight. You certainly didn’t inform me.”

  “You have indicated that you are not interested in the affairs of this family.” Caroline’s voice was an acid hiss as she marched Natasha up the stairs. “Your father insisted we abide by your wishes as long as you did not shame us. I told him you would not honor your side of the agreement and I was right, by god. Two days…and you have already made us a laughingstock!”

  “Mother, what on earth—”

  But Caroline was not listening. “Cavorting about Hyde Park, showing your ankles and screaming like a fishwife…have you no sense of propriety? No pride?” She threw open Natasha’s bedroom door. “How could you?” she demanded, turning Natasha to face her.

  Natasha shook her head a little. “I don’t understand. If you’ve heard about what happened in the park today, then you must know I was merely trying to help Elisa— Lady Fairleigh.”

  “By bellowing at the top of your lungs in a public place and baring your legs? Worse, you demeaned yourself by taking over a task better suited to the working class, when there was already a driver there.” Caroline’s face was red, her lips white. “Do you know the humiliation you have made me suffer tonight? They’re laughing at us!”

  Natasha stepped away from her mother, toward the window. “But…I was merely helping…”

  “You completely abandoned every lesson, every principle I have ever taught you. You have shamed your father. He can barely hold his head up, down there and we must endure this excruciating dinner, knowing that they came to stare at us…at you!”

  Natasha sank onto her bed. “Let me understand you properly, Mother. You are saying that the correct action today would have been to do nothing? To let Elisa’s abductors take her to god knows where?”

  “Calling for help is not beneath the dignity of a lady,” Caroline said, squaring her shoulders. “But the public display you put on—oh, I shall never live it down!”

  “I see,” Natasha said, hiding her outrage. She kept her fists tightly closed, let her fingernails dig into her palms and welcomed the pain—it was something to focus upon. She recalled the astonishing lesson Elisa had imparted that very afternoon. For a lady, appearance is everything.

  She took a deep breath. She wasn’t sure she could do this, but she would try—for Elisa’s sake. “I am most terribly sorry I’ve disappointed and shamed you and Father, Mama. It was not my intention. I forgot my station—I thought only of the danger in which Lady Fairleigh had been placed. How can I make amends?”

  The words left a sour taste in her mouth, but her mother’s startled expression, the softening of her features to the warm, tender parent Natasha remembered from her childhood suddenly seemed worth it. “I appreciate your contrition,” Caroline said stiffly. “But such a transgression cannot go unpunished. You will remain in your room until such a time as I see fit. And I’m sure your father will also have words to share with you.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Natasha gritted her teeth to hold herself silent. She could not afford to inflame the situation now that her mother had calmed.

  Caroline walked over to the mirror above the fireplace mantle and checked her hair. “I must return to the drawing room, so that dinner may be called. If a sufficient amount remains once the serving is done, I will ask one of the maids to bring you a supper plate.”

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  Caroline grimaced at herself in the mirror. “I declare I do not know how I will survive this evening. They are the most catty�
��” She took a deep breath, smoothed the satin over her abdomen and picked up her train. She spared a glance at her daughter. “You might spend your confinement profitably,” she suggested. “Think upon the expectations your birthright brings. You must learn to deport yourself in a manner that fits your station.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  But Caroline did not acknowledge her response. The door shut and the lock turned, leaving Natasha alone in her room.

  She remained there until five o’clock the next day and saw no one except the maid who brought her food. She spent the time not in reflection of her duties in life, but upon the exciting contemplation of her next meeting with Seth.

  What would he do? Say? What could she do? She brought out her secret novels, and read revealing, stimulating passages. She wondered, as she always did, about the practical aspects the books left hazy. Elisa had helped somewhat, but soon she would know just what they had left out. Very soon.

  Just after the carriage clock on the mantel chimed five, Caroline appeared, with two maids in tow. “You must prepare for dinner. We are attending Lord Dulsenay’s dinner party tonight.”

  “We?” Natasha asked.

  “Your father will accompany both of us. You are expected.”

  Caroline must have accepted on her daughter’s behalf. Natasha gritted her teeth, and recalled Elisa’s lesson. “I must bathe,” she insisted, standing up. “I still smell of the dirt in Hyde Park.”

  “Your bath and water is being brought upstairs now,” Caroline said. “I must also prepare. I trust I can leave you unattended in this matter?”

  “I have apologized, Mama. What else can I say that will assure you I have mended my ways?”

  Caroline’s gaze raked over Natasha. She sniffed, and left the room.

  Natasha had bathed and dressed in the most conservative evening gown she possessed. It was from her first season and most likely someone would remember the gown and comment upon its age, but she did not care. What was important was the impression she made. She wanted everyone believing her to be a gentle, modest maid with nary a thought in her head but the need to find a husband.