She was laughing now, despite herself, despite her gloom, hiccuping, trying to shove him with her fists, but he grabbed her wrists and held her firm.
“What you are,” he said slowly, “is the woman who is my wife. As for the other, there will be answers. Because I am a superior man I will find the answers we need.”
She was utterly distracted. It had been well done of him, and he knew it. Then she flung her arms tightly around him, sending them both backward onto the carpet, an unexpected bonus to his brilliance.
“I would like to stay here with you for a fortnight and do everything that it is possible to do to your lovely self.” He leaned up and kissed her mouth. “Unfortunately, you will make all your fine curtsies tonight and charm all our neighbors. I will be contrite and by the end of the evening everyone will be on the road to forgiving me my perfidy because it is obvious that you have.”
Curse him and bless him, Susannah was thinking sometime after midnight as she stood fanning herself behind a palm tree, he’d been right. Of course, it was his own lazy, self-deprecating charm that gained him forgiveness from all and sundry.
Her feet hurt, and she stood on one leg to wiggle her toes. On top of everything else, her husband was an excellent dancer. When she’d told him that, laughing up at him when they came together, he’d said simply, “Isn’t that what you would expect from a man of my reputation?”
She’d frowned at him. She frowned now, thinking about it. He was charming, vigorous, and wickedly handsome, she’d heard one of the ladies say behind her hand. But he was also something more, something a lot more.
She heard his laugh and came out from behind the potted palm. He was dancing with his mother, and the two of them were so beautiful, so graceful together, that several of the couples had moved back to watch them.
She heard a voice say softly behind her, “Well, well, just look at them. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
Susannah turned around slowly to look up at Tibolt.
“You were not invited,” she said slowly, not moving. He was dressed immaculately in black evening clothes, his shirt as white as the chalk cliffs.
“No, but then again, I’m a Carrington and thus can come and go as I please. Just look at them,” he said again, staring at Rohan and his mother. “You can see where Rohan gleaned all his carnal knowledge. From her. Do you know that she seduced my tutor? Yes—he was young, filled with the Lord’s fervor, cloaked in grace, until he saw her and was lost.
“I preach that women are the snare of the devil. My folk believe me because when I say the words—oh yes, I say them often—they know I believe them utterly. Yes, just look at her. Have you ever seen a mother look like she does?”
“Why are you here, Tibolt?” Susannah wasn’t about to speak about Charlotte to him. That he could speak of his own mother in such a way only lowered him more in her eyes.
“Did you know that she scarcely paid me any attention at all once I was determined upon my course to become a man of God? Even when I told both her and Father that I would eventually become the Archbishop of Canterbury, they paid me no heed. I would crown kings, I told them, but they didn’t care. I disappointed her, you see. She and my father had hoped that I would become like Rohan. They wanted two sons like themselves. Then, of course, she birthed George. They believed they’d gotten another priggish puritan like me, but now at l
east Mother knows differently. George was a budding rotter. I have wondered whether if he hadn’t drowned he would have become a complete rotter with the years.”
Susannah wished the music would end. She wished Rohan would magically appear beside her. She felt uncomfortable with Tibolt, no, more than uncomfortable, she was beginning to feel a bit alarmed. “Why are you here, Tibolt?” she said again.
“Why, I came to see my little niece, the little bastard you foisted off on Rohan.” Suddenly she felt a pistol pressed hard against her stomach. “Actually, Susannah, you will give me your half of the map and that little golden key. You and I will simply walk out the glass doors here and onto the balcony for a bit of fresh air. Then we will go around the gardens to the side door into the estate room and from there upstairs. If you make a sound, trust that you will regret it.”
“Why are you doing this? Why?”
“Shut up. I haven’t much time. Let’s forget my little niece on this visit, hmmm?”
She wondered if she should simply pretend to faint from sheer fright and collapse at his feet. Would he shoot her? No, surely he would not. She sucked in her breath, but he grabbed her arm, whispering with ferocious calm in her ear, “You try to deceive me in any way and I will take that little bastard of yours and no one will ever see her again. I will put her in a workhouse, where worthless little bastards belong. Do you understand me, Susannah?”
Oh, yes, she understood. She nodded.
“Hurry, then.”
26
TIBOLT CARRINGTON EASED INTO HER BEDCHAMBER AFTER her, then very quietly closed the door. Only one branch of candles was lit. The air was redolent of some sweet spice, coming from the candles.
Tibolt sniffed. “It is my mother’s doing, isn’t it? Imagine a candle smelling like a brothel. I expect that you fit right in. It sickens me that you and Rohan will breed another generation of degenerates. I must congratulate you on the matchless job you did of trapping my brother. Rohan has always believed himself so superior to the rest of us, but just look at what he has saddled himself with for life.
“And Rohan’s bedchamber is just through that adjoining door,” he said, waving the gun toward the door. “I wonder if that door ever closes. I also wonder how you tricked him. All his experience with whores and sluts, and yet you netted him. You’re not even beautiful. You’re quite ordinary really, except for those breasts of yours. He appears to admire you. I don’t understand it. It seems he wants to protect you. Oh, yes, I saw all those men he’d set about guarding the house and patrolling the grounds.”
What men? Then she realized that Rohan was indeed trying to protect her, to protect all of them. He’d been worried after they were attacked, she’d known that. She’d been worried too. Why hadn’t he told her what he’d done?
“Yes,” she said simply. “How did you get past them?”
“I know my way in here,” he said. “If Rohan were really as smart as he believes he is, he would have suspected me enough to set a guard against that small gate nearly hidden now by all the shrubbery just behind the apple orchard. My superior brother must have forgotten about it and the entrance into Mountvale from there that lets into the chamber just off the library. How do you think I got in here that very first night he brought all of you here?”