‘I am Jared Hunt and her identity is not relevant, Jared said flatly. ‘Bella has presented me with a dilemma and I suspect she will think she can put pressure on me that will divert me from my allegiance to Lady Northam.’
Stubborn man, Guin thought. Did he really believe he could keep his identity secret from her now she had so many clues? If it were not for the situation they found themselves in then she would have to respect his privacy, but not now that Theo was in danger too.
‘So what do we do now?’ Theo asked. ‘We’ve circumstantial evidence, we can show motives, but that is all.’
‘Find Thomas,’ Jared said grimly. ‘The fact that he has gone missing is damning.’
‘Unless the magistrate thinks I killed him too, to add verisimilitude to my story,’ Theo said gloomily.
‘We need to tell the staff here – the ones we inherited from the Quentens – that Thomas is dangerous,’ Guin said, getting to her feet. ‘What if he comes back here and they hide him under our noses out of misplaced loyalty?’
‘Yes, do that, then go to bed,’ Jared said, standing as she did. ‘You must be exhausted. We need to sleep on this.’
Guin found Cook and Mrs Mountjoy and Porrett all together taking tea in the housekeeper’s room.
‘Please, sit down and I will join you if I may.’ At Mrs Mountjoy’s flustered agreement she closed the door and sat down at the end of the table. ‘It is about Thomas Bainton. Have any of you seen him since we left this morning?’
All three heads shook and all three looked puzzled. They could be lying, of course, but she doubted that they were such good actors.
‘This may be hard to believe, but we fear that Thomas has been behind those attacks on me and probably Lord Northam’s death as well. We think his mind has been turned by my first husband’s death.’ She could hardly accuse the Quentens yet, not without proof. ‘He seems to blame me for it and Lord Northam for supporting me. You heard about the way our carriage was damaged so that there was almost a very nasty accident?’ Again, a trio of nods. The arrival of the four of them on horseback would be the talk of the servants’ hall. ‘There can be no doubt that Thomas damaged the axle and the brake. He is dangerous.’
‘He was always a wild young man and Mr Frank led him astray with his own carryings-on, if you’ll pardon me saying so, my lady, seeing you married him.’ When Guin made a vague gesture Cook pressed on. ‘He was a charmer, Mr Frank. He was just fifteen when the mistress married Mr Quenten and she brought him with her because their parents were dead some years past. His sister doted on him and Thomas would have walked through fire for him. Spoiled rotten, that lad.’
Mrs Mountjoy was looking uneasy. ‘It was a shock when we found out you’d been married to him, my lady. We didn’t like to talk about him, seeing how badly it ended, but perhaps we should have done, told you how Master Frank grew up here.’ She looked sharply at Guin. ‘Do you expect Thomas to come back?’
‘He needs friends now, shelter. He must realise we know he is behind these attacks. Would he think you would give him help?’
‘You were always too soft on him, Mrs T,’ Mrs Mountjoy said abruptly to the cook. ‘I never trusted him – not that I ever suspected any real harm or I’d have told your ladyship when you took him on. Just thought he was indulged because he’d been Master Frank’s friend and he led him astray. But he seemed to have sobered up. Oh Lord, if I’d said something perhaps his lordship would be alive now?’
Guin looked at Porrett who sat shaking his head despairingly. He looked near to tears. ‘I do not think so, Mrs Mountjoy,’ she said as soothingly as she could manage. ‘We had no suspicion what would happen. But you must not let him in if he comes and we must make sure all is secure at all times.’
‘Don’t you worry, my lady,’ Mrs Mountjoy said. ‘You’ve been a good mistress here and his lordship was a fine man. If that rapscallion shows his face around here I’ll take Mrs T’s carving knives to him.’
‘I’ll load the blunderbuss,’ Porrett said. ‘The one I keep in the silver safe in case of burglaries.’
‘Thank you, all of you. Mr Hunt is doing all he can to put a stop to this business.’ She stood up and Porrett hurried to open the door for her, shoulders back as though he was a soldier going on parade. Yes, she felt confident they would not take Thomas’s side in this.
Guin made her way slowly up the servants’ stair to the ground floor. She could hear Jared and Theo talking as they made their rounds of the doors and windows at the far end of the house. No-one was in sight and she went into the study, took down the atlas from the shelf and opened it on the desk. Cross Holme house was not marked, presumably because it was still a humble farm when the area was surveyed, but she could find Crossholes Beck which narrowed the area down somewhat.
There would be farms scattered about, and they too would not be marked, but she doubted somehow that Jared was the son of a farmer. She circled round the area with the tip of her finger. No manor houses marked, no hamlets close by, only a house called Ravenscar marked by a little black square and labelled in tiny block capitals.
Ravenscar. How did she discover who lived there? Perhaps one of the road books that were in the carriage would tell her, but it was to late to go out and find one now. Frustrated, Guin replaced the book on the shelf next to the equally battered old copy of the Peerage and opened the hidden door to the staircase leading up to her bedchamber. Jared was right, they all needed to rest, to sleep on this.
And I should stop being so inquisitive. He will tell me when he is ready, she chided herself as she reached the small landing area outside her door and let herself into the room, making Faith, who was laying out her nightgown, jump.
‘I’m sorry, Faith. Just unlace me and then you be off to your bed. I am sorry you have had such a frightening day of it.’
Faith sniffed. ‘I’ll give that Thomas frightening if I get my hands on him. And don’t you worry, my lady, Mr Hunt will make all right, just you wait and see.’ She helped Guin out of her gown and into her nightgown and turned back the bed. ‘Shall I brush your hair, my lady? That’s very soothing.’
‘I’ll do it myself, you get to bed now, Faith, thank you.’
Guin settled at her dressing table, pulled out the pins and shook her hair loose. It settled around her shoulders, whispering over the silk. Jared’s hair had felt like raw wild silk when she had freed it. Freed was the word, like loosing a caged animal. The brush snagged on a small tangle and she let its weight carry her arm through the motions of brushing, calmingly repetitive.
Hair-brushing gave one time to think. Think about Augustus. She reached out her free hand and picked up the miniature that always lay on her dressing table. Dear man. Kind man. She laid it down, traced a fingertip over the strong features. He was dead now because of an act of gallantry, an act of generosity to an unknown young woman. We will avenge you, she promised, blinking away tears.
Think about Jared instead. There was that faint hint of Yorkshire in his voice, but he had admitted he had grown up somewhere near here and boys would run wild with their friends, whatever their parents might have to say about it. Leaving that aside, his accent was educated, refined, without a suspicion of the self-improved about it. Listening to him in that ballroom the night before Augustus had died, there had been nothing to distinguish him from the men around him.
Then there was that pride, verging on arrogance – although he has much to be arrogant about, she thought. He had left home at the age of seventeen because of a slight on his honour and was not prepared to let it lie now. This was not a yeoman’s son, a country gentleman’s son. This was an aristocrat who’d had pride and honour and self-assurance bred into him, fed him with mother’s milk, beaten into him by the unforgiving expectations that aristocratic fathers heaped on their sons.
But he had not been the eldest son, the heir, the privileged one. When that situation had arisen and his father had to chose which son to believe his choice had been, inevitably, his heir. Who was now dead.
She had stopped brushing some time ago, she realised. Who is he? What has Jared just become? Downstairs was the Peerage, dusty on the shelf. He did not want her to know, did not want anyone to know. Would it be a betrayal to look?
Probably he would look at it that way, Guin decided. But she felt a deep revulsion for secrets that could do so much damage. She wanted to help and so she needed to know who might be Jared’s enemies. Was she justifying her own curiosity? Yes, she admitted, putting down the brush on the dressing table and belting the sash of her robe more securely. Yes, but she was going to do it anyway. He was angry enough over the way their feelings for each other were interfering with what he saw as his role as her protector, she may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
Her bare feet brushed silently through the silky pile of the Chinese rug and the staircase door swung open onto darkness on well-oiled hinges as a figure in white rose from the ground directly in front of her. Guin swung instinctively with her chamber stick, the hot wax spattering her hand before she made contact with solid flesh.
‘What the blazes are you doing?’ Jared demanded.
‘What am I doing? What are you doing outside my door?’ She put the chamberstick with its guttering candle down on the floor and sucked her wrist where the hot wax had burned.
‘Guarding it. The lock on the main door into the corridor is good but Thomas knows this house. If he gets in he could well come this way to do you harm.’
Guin looked down at the cramped landing space, the scuffed dust. ‘You were sleeping across my threshold out here?’
‘Attempting not to sleep.’ Did she catch just the faintest glimmer of amusement in his voice? ‘Where were you going?’
Guin was not certain how it had happened, but she was in Jared’s arms and his question was a breath on her lips. ‘I was restless.’
‘The idea is that you lock yourself in your tower, my lady Guinevere, and your knight fights the battle for you.’
‘This is not the Middle Ages, you are not the mysterious knight Lancelot disguised behind your visor and I want to take a broadsword to the enemy myself.’ It was difficult to speak assertively about broadswords when a man was kissing his way along the line of your jaw, nibbling your ear. ‘Jared – are you listening to me? Do you know what I want?’
‘Yes, I am, yes, I know.’ His voice was muffled in the angle of her neck and shoulder, then he looked up. ‘You want a broadsword and you want me to take you to bed.’ He was laughing at her, his eyes sparking amber fire in the candlelight, his hands sliding over her body with dangerous ease, those beautiful, mobile lips curving into a smile.
‘Not necessarily in that order,’ Guin murmured as he walked her backwards towards the bed. When her knees hit the edge she sat down and watched as he went to lock the stair door, wedged a chair under the handle then did the same to the main door. He laid his rapier on the bedside table and then turned to look at her.
Somewhere he had shed his coat, waistcoat and neckcloth and his feet were bare. Why, when she had seen him naked, the bare feet, the vee of skin at his throat should affect her so powerfully, she could not say, but heat flooded her. ‘Not the most romantic of preparations for lovemaking,’ Guin said, more to try and stop herself dissolving into a puddle of lust than anything.
‘This time I am going to take every precaution. You want romance too?’ Yes, he was laughing at her. Or perhaps it was with her – there was no edge, no malice in his amusement.
‘It would be nice,’ Guin said demurely.
‘What is this?’ Jared bent to pick up a scrap of red leather that lay by the side of her dressing table. ‘Book binding. Someone has been in here.’
‘No. No, that must have been on my skirts. I was looking at something in the study before I came up to bed.’
The red leather turned again between his fingers to reveal gold tooling.
‘The Landed Gentry. You know how battered the binding is on that old copy,’ she said.
‘Why were you going downstairs, Guinevere?’ This time there was no sensual amusement behind the words.
She could lie. There were so many excuses she could find. ‘To look for you in the Peerage.’
‘I said – ’
‘I understand. But you cannot keep it a secret for ever. We need to know, we cannot fight this battle with some of the information missing.’
He shrugged off her words with a slight lift of one shoulder. ‘You wanted romance? Romance is for courtship.’ The laughter had gone although the smile lingered faintly, empty now. ‘You would be justified in having expectations of that, Guinevere, because you are correct and you will find my name in the Peerage.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes, it matters and I should have thought of that before I came into your chamber. What we had before was an affaire, a brief flare of passion with a clear understanding that nothing could come of a liaison between a lady and a swordmaster. Now things are different, but I have nothing to offer you except an empty courtesy title, taken second-hand from my brother and the prospect of I know not what when my father is no more. At the moment I live on what I earn and that has not changed.’
‘So now you are Lord – Lord what?’
‘Viscount Ravenlaw. James Andrew Jared Forrest, son of the third Earl of Huntingford.’
Guin stood up and dropped a curtsey. ‘My lord. And I have no expectations of you that I did not have of Jared Hunt, swordmaster.’
‘Then you should have. You should expect me to marry you. An honourable man would offer you his hand. An honourable man who could keep you in the manner befitting you, that is. I cannot do that because I have no expectations whatsoever and no status in Society. I would not put it past my father to disinherit me of every scrap of unentailed land – and that is what supports the house and the household.’ Now even the ghost of the smile had left him. ‘A lady may condescend to take an inferior as a lover. An impoverished viscount does not take advantage of that lady, not without honourable intentions.’
‘You are splitting hairs, and you did not take advantage of me.’
‘I lied about who I am. I thought I was safe from having to be my true self ever again.’
‘I wanted you and I still want you. As a lover. I have had two husbands. One was a scoundrel, the other was a good substitute for my grandfather. I am in no hurry to take a third simply because he has a title.’
‘Guinevere, we would be a scandal. We are a scandal, only not many people know about us.’
‘Augustus would have approved of us. Theo, who is head of the family now, approves of you. And you have a Duke and Duchess as close friends – they will not condemn us, surely? Besides,’ she added when that produced no response, ‘I am caricatured as a wanton widow who plotted with her lover and nephew by marriage to kill her own husband. After that a swordmaster-viscount is positively respectable.’
He picked up his sword belt and buckled it on, the refusal as clear as if he had spoken it.
Do I have any pride left? Probably not. I can be shameless for one last throw, I suppose. ‘You do not want to be Ravenlaw. You do not believe that your family wants you. Stay as Jared Hunt, open your salle d’armes, be the man you created for yourself.’ Be my lover.
‘Before I was the spare with a vigorous older brother who married a fertile woman. I was not needed. Now William is dead and leaves no son. I have a duty.’
‘To the father who would not believe you?’ she demanded. How could he be so…
‘To the title, to the name, to the estate and its people. I have no idea how my father is. He was always a reclusive countryman, just as William was, and I have made no effort to find out. Whether he wants me or not, I have to make the effort now.’
‘He will only hurt you again,’ she said passionately, standing up, closing her hand over his on the pommel of the rapier.
Jared shrugged, both shoulders now, a weary, resigned thoroughly English movement, not the elegant gesture of the French-taught swordsman. ‘I am not a boy any longer and I do not care what he thinks or what he says. There is nothing he can do to wound me now and even if there was, that does not change where my duty lies.’
‘You will tell Theo and Dover?’
Jared shook his head. He released his hold on the pommel and curled his fingers into hers. ‘I need to discover who I am, what I am. How my father is. He will be mourning, angry with fate, if I know him at all. He may make it easy for me to help, he may make it downright impossible, but I must find out.’
‘You will be walking into a place where your sister-in-law is the friend and confidante of a murderess. She wounded you unfairly, cruelly all those years ago, I do not need to have the details to know that. She will feel guilty and guilt often turns to hatred. She will fear you now.’
‘She has no cause.’ Jared turned until they were face to face, fingers entwined, sending messages of pressure and touch seemingly of their own accord. ‘I loved her once, so I thought.’
‘When will you go?’ Guin asked. She could smell the plain soap on his skin and the dust from the stairwell and, almost on the edge of her consciousness, the disturbing scent of aroused male. He still wants me.
‘Tomorrow. Dover and Theo will be with you. You will be safe. I would leave it longer, but I may find proof there, with Bella.’ Jared bent and kissed her, his mouth warm and possessive, the pressure fleeting. ‘I should have better self-control,’ he said ruefully as he released her hand and went to move the chair away from the latch of the tower stair door. ‘Go back to bed, Guinevere, you need your sleep.’
There was no snick of the lock on the other side when he closed the old oak behind him. He was staying there then, cramped on the cold stone, guarding her. Wanting her. Denying them both, the maddening, honourable man.