Chapter Two
Dawn sprang to her feet. She was not easily alarmed, but the lord’s words filled her with so much anger and incomprehensible disappointment that she couldn’t be still.
She couldn’t deny that she had liked the way he looked, so tall and handsome and gentlemanly, or that she had liked the way he looked at her. Safe in the protection of her family, and her instinctive but clearly mistaken belief in his honor, she had not feared the lust in his eyes. Rather, she had been unforgivably flattered. And she had flirted. And now this!
Only when he rose with her, bent to avoid the tent ceiling, did she feel threatened and backed toward the flap.
He made no move to stop her, merely said hastily, “Forgive me, I expressed that badly. I meant no insult or even impropriety. Perhaps it would be better if I spoke to you and your father together.”
“Perhaps it would,” came her father’s ominous voice from the doorway.
The other lord, Tamar, tucked his book and pencil into his pocket and went silently to stand beside the earl.
“Shall we sit?” Lord Braithwaite said, dropping back onto the cushions. Perhaps it did not suit his dignity to address them while bent almost double.
“You’re foxed, Braithwaite,” Tamar murmured. “Don’t make a cake of yourself.”
“I am a trifle disguised,” Lord Braithwaite confessed, although his smile as he admitted it was engagingly boyish and for no good reason seemed to tug at Dawn’s heart. “But at the moment, my mind is quite clear. Mr. Boswell, my proposition is this. That your daughter work for me for a little. I shall pay her well and she would live in the castle with every respect. She would wear fine clothes—which she may keep when she leaves.”
Dawn stared at him. There was nothing in his proposal to contradict the general belief that the temporary position he offered was as his mistress. Whatever her feelings about that—and she refused to think about them—she refused to be bought and sold as an object between her father and a powerful lord. And yet at this moment, he did not look remotely loverlike. He barely glanced at her. His eyes were distant, and the smile playing around his lips was not quite pleasant.
“And what would be your price,” her father demanded, “for dishonoring my daughter?” There was nothing in his face or voice to betray his feelings on the matter.
“We can agree on a price, but you mistake the matter if you believe I would lay a finger on your daughter or any other employee.”
“Then what do you want her for?” Ezra asked aggressively.
Lord Braithwaite finally looked at her. “I want her to pretend to be someone else.” He smiled with relish. “A lady who vanished when she was three years old, and whose continued existence would…upset a friend of mine.”
“I’m not sure I would care to be your friend,” Dawn broke in.
“Hold your tongue, girl,” Ezra growled. “You ain’t his friend. You’d be his servant.”
“But you wouldn’t be treated so,” Lord Braithwaite said hastily. “Only you and I would know the truth.”
“And me,” Lord Tamar drawled.
“And you,” Lord Braithwaite allowed. “But not, most importantly, my friend. Who is, I believe, the enemy Miss Boswell somehow discovered in my hand.”
Dawn’s father peered at the earl more closely, as if seeing him for the first time as more than a privileged young man in his cups. “You think to use my daughter to somehow do your enemy a bad turn?”
Braithwaite nodded. “In a nut shell, yes.”
Ezra frowned. “And why my girl?”
“Because of her resemblance to my enemy.”
Ezra’s face remained closed behind his scowl. In spite of everything, Dawn hoped he wouldn’t hit the young lord who alternately charmed and annoyed her, even now when annoyance was to the fore.
Her father said, “If we can negotiate a price.”
Dawn stared at him. He might as well have struck her, trampled her underfoot. She spun away from them all and left the tent.
Fury and hurt and outrage churned within her as she marched around the camp, in front of the cottage, and the other tent, past Matthew and the others by the fire. She ignored everyone, flooded with old pain and new. The child who had struggled to be accepted by her peers, mocked for her light hair and pale skin, still lurked inside her. She remembered only too well her sister Aurora’s taunts that she was not Ezra’s real daughter and therefore was less important than herself.
Aurora appeared at the cottage door. “What?” she said sardonically as Dawn strode past her. “Won’t his lordship come up to scratch?”
Dawn ignored her, pacing around and around the encampment until she all but bumped into Lord Braithwaite emerging from the fortune tent.
He put out a hand to steady her, but she jumped back out of his reach. How could her father, her protector, just hand her over to strangers? Drunk strangers at that, however politely they carried their wine. For money.
“It’s a fair price, Dawnie,” Ezra said cheerfully. “And I have my lord’s word you won’t be harmed, so off you go and do your best by his lordship.”
The extent of his casual betrayal deprived her of words, of her very breath. She could only stare at him in open hostility and hope no one could see the terrible hurt behind it.
“Oh, it doesn’t need to be tonight,” Lord Braithwaite said with the first hint of unease she had seen in him. “I expect you will want to attend tomorrow’s chris—”
“On the contrary,” she interrupted, turning on her heel, “It has to be tonight. For by tomorrow, I would be gone from here.”
The fiddle didn’t even stop playing as she strode away, up the hill to the road from which the two gentlemen had first looked down on their camp. It had never entered her head that their coming would shatter her family, her security, her life.
For a time, she was too angry even to be aware of the gentlemen walking behind her and then, beside her. Their voices eventually broke into her tangle of despairing thoughts.
Lord Tamar said, “I can almost see where you’re going with this, but it isn’t like you, Braithwaite. It isn’t like you at all. I’ve never seen you jug-bitten before.”
“Yes, you have. I just hid it better. I have a notion to turn the tables for once, that it all.”
“Yes, but I have a notion you won’t want to by tomorrow,” Lord Tamar said shrewdly. “Besides, the girl is clearly too upset to cooperate.”
“You are mistaken, my lord,” Dawn said in a cold, hard voice. “I will cooperate fully.”
Lord Braithwaite smiled at her, an open, dazzling smile that even now made her heart bump. “That’s my girl.”
“Well, all I can say is, I’m glad your mother has gone north to be with Frances. As it is, Serena is going to be appalled.”
Lord Braithwaite frowned at him. “Why would Serena be appalled by Dawn?”
“Not by Dawn, by you,” Tamar retorted.
Braithwaite grinned. “Serena is often appalled by me, for one reason or another.”
“Who is Serena?” Dawn asked, curious in spite of herself. “Your wife?”
“Lord no,” Braithwaite said. “She’s my sister, his wife. You’ll like her. Everyone does.”
Dawn regarded him with genuine fascination. “I think you must be very bosky indeed if you imagine the issue is whether or not I like her. She is guaranteed not to like me in her house. Castle,” she corrected herself in awe as they came up to the gates and the sweeping drive to the great, turreted castle beyond.
She grew quieter again. As her anger with her father died away, the foolishness of coming here with strangers galloped back to her. Why had it seemed a good way to spite Ezra by doing exactly as he had wanted? Just to prove the awful things that would happen to her inside these thick, medieval walls and make him sorry? There had been some such muddled thinking in her fury, along with keeping for herself whatever fee his lordship offered.
Of course, the castle wasn’t all ancient. The drive opened onto a wide terrace and imposing front entrance in a much newer building which had been grafted on to the old. Lord Braithwaite led the way up the front step and let himself in with a key. As Dawn hesitated, Lord Tamar said reassuringly, “He won’t hurt you, you know. There isn’t a dishonorable bone in his body.”
Dawn doubted that. She’d seen the lust in his eyes and his agreement with her father was hardly honorable, whatever lay behind it. However, since she balked at returning to the camp and she was fairly sure both young gentlemen would be asleep in minutes, she forced her feet to walk up the steps and into the house.
Most of it was in darkness, save for a pale lamp lighting the front hall. At the small table it stood upon, Lord Braithwaite was lighting candles.
“The servants have gone to bed,” he murmured, with all the surprise of the inebriated that it had grown so late.
“I’ll wake Serena.” Tamar said resignedly, closing the front door.
“No need,” Braithwaite said. “I’ll put Dawn in one of the guest rooms.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Tamar asked.
Braithwaite regarded him with a hint of mockery. “Do you think I’m going to seduce her? Don’t be a clunch. Even supposing I could, it would rather defeat the object of her being here in the first place.” He cast Dawn another of those devastating smiles, as though inviting her to share the joke. “I shall be good, I promise. Let me to show you to your room.”
Tamar threw up his hands and wandered off in the opposite direction, while Lord Braithwaite handed her one of his candles and led the way up the magnificent staircase. Dawn followed more slowly, gazing upward and around her at the hugely high ceilings, at wood-paneled walls decorated with ancient swords, and at the great chandelier hanging down from several floors up. How long would it take to light all those candles?
By the light of the two pale, flickering candles they carried, Lord Braithwaite led her up one flight of stairs, along a short passage and up another, then along another passage that curved around.
“This is probably the best guest bedchamber. My cousin only vacated it this afternoon, so the fire should still be warm.”
Openmouthed, she walked in after him. The room was dominated by a huge, curtained bed. In fact, the whole chamber was so massive, it was almost like being outdoors, like sleeping under the stars. Except there were no stars, just a high, paneled ceiling.
She swallowed. Lord Braithwaite was poking the fire to reluctant life. He added another piece of wood from the container beside the fireplace and straightened. Without embarrassment, he showed her the washstand, with fresh water still in the jug, and the chamber pot under the bed.
Then he spotted the decanter on top of the large chest of drawers and swiped it up. “I see Ivor has been disposing of my brandy supply. Care for a nip?”
“Why not?” she said boldly.
“That’s my girl. We can drink to our new venture.” He presented her with the one glass and clinked the bottom of the crystal decanter against it. Then he gestured to the chair on one side of the fireplace and sat in the other.
Dawn approached reluctantly, counting the rapid beats of her heart. She didn’t sit in the chair but sank onto the rug in front of the fire and drew off her outer wrappings.
“Your father didn’t abandon you, you know,” he said gently. “I think whatever else he is, he is an excellent judge of character. He knew I would not harm you.”
She shrugged. There was no way Ezra could have known such a thing. Guessed, perhaps but not known.
“No one will be unkind to you under this roof,” he promised.
“Why not?” she countered. “Because even though I’m a gypsy, they’ll all believe I’m your doxy?”
If she had hoped to embarrass the fine-speaking young lord with such crude language, she was doomed to disappointment. He only smiled at her and took a swig directly from the decanter. “I imagine they might admire my restraint and put it down to your virtue.”
“I’m a gypsy. What do you know about my virtue?”
“Nothing,” he admitted. “In fact, although your father told me you had no husband, I didn’t enquire about a lover. Have I made things difficult for you?”
“No,” she said flatly.
“Then there is no suitor?”
She shrugged impatiently. “Matthew—the fiddler—would like to be, but I don’t wish it. I don’t wish for any of them.”
“What do you wish for?”
She stared into the tiny flames of the fire. “I don’t know. I want to belong…and have never found any one or any place to belong to.”
“Belonging can be overrated,” he said ruefully. “You think all this belongs to me. It doesn’t. I belong to it.”
She glanced at him curiously. “You resent your magnificent home and your privilege?”
“No,” he admitted. “I love them. But even I long to escape sometimes. That’s what drew me to your camp.”
“Then you weren’t looking for me?” The words spilled out unbidden, but having said them, she was suddenly glad.
The handsome stranger smiled and the breathtaking lust was back in his eyes. “No. But I was glad to find you.”
“To somehow confound the friend who is your enemy?” She swiveled around and, greatly daring, rested her elbows on his knees. “Or to be with me?”
Slowly, he set the decanter down on the hearth. Her heart thundered. She wondered why she had ever imagined he was young enough and silly enough to provoke with safety. For as soon as his finger slid beneath her chin, tilting her face to his, she knew he was not inexperienced. He was rich and handsome. He would hardly need to try. More than that, he overwhelmed her just by his gaze.
He bent and softly took her lips.
Butterflies soared in her stomach. Desire unfurled like the petals of a flower, sweet and heady… And then it was over.
“If you knew how much I want you, you would not tempt me,” he said hoarsely. His caressing fingers vanished from her chin and he rose, stepping around her. “I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
Completely flummoxed, she watched him cross the room and leave with his candle. She felt suddenly very small and very humiliated. She didn’t even know why she had touched him. She knew what effect it had on her. Flashing visions of his past and future, something that was almost recognition. But teasing him was dangerous. She had only wanted comfort, the assurance that she was loved by someone, just for a few moments, even a stranger so far removed from her world and her life. And yet, there had been an instant when she would have given herself to him not just freely, but eagerly, desperately.
She drew in a sobbing breath and snatched up her blanket before she lay down on the floor in front of the fire and tried to sleep.