Chapter Seven
She’d done it deliberately, the clever minx. Endymion refilled his brandy glass, leaned a hip against the black and gold chinoiserie sideboard, and watched. Watched as the exquisite beauty in bronze silk continued to charm and amuse the Marquess of Voil. Dressed in a shimmery gown that caressed her body like a lover, Rhiannon had entered the parlor before dinner and left Endymion and Voil in a state of attentive confusion, from the first sip of her before-dinner glass of sherry to the invitation to join her in the upstairs drawing room for brandy once the meal was done.
The entire meal had been orchestrated to ensure Endymion did not question her about the afternoon’s accident at the mines, nor anything else of substance. An army of servants in severe black and white livery had attended the three of them. The devil, they’d outnumbered them four to one. Rhiannon knew full well that nothing of consequence was discussed in the presence of so many servants. She’d had her cook prepare ten courses. Ten! From the woman who had complained bitterly at the serving of four courses merely a week ago.
Almost from the moment they were seated at the table, she’d engaged Voil in a lively discussion of the war against France, the social season in London, the location and management of his estates. And all the while, Endymion had sat, fevered and chilled in turns. Irritation crawled across his skin, a stinging centipede of awareness. He refused to lower himself to wonder why. He tapped the forefinger of his free hand atop his thigh. He dared not add to the conversation, for fear his first words might be…
“Where did you find such a dress?”
The fabric clung to every curve of her body. The bronze silk ebbed and flowed around her, a perpetual cascading fountain in the candlelight. It drew glints of every shade of golden brown from her hair. Hair dressed in an elaborate coiffure of curls atop her head, as elegant as any style worn by the loveliest of London’s ton beauties. Her earrings and necklace were Whitby jet, glowing against her skin in magnificent simplicity.
To Endymion’s mind, there was entirely too much bare skin against which the Whitby jet glowed. The gown bared her shoulders and a great deal of her chest in a bodice of crossed swaths of satin that lifted her breasts to the point he feared they might spill out for everyone to see. Well, Voil, at least. He took a sip of his brandy and scowled as Rhiannon’s laughter flitted across the drawing room for the third time. The marquess was making her laugh simply to enjoy the effect it had on her bosom. Bastard!
“Did you say something, Your Grace?” Rhiannon inquired, her face a mask of polite boredom.
“Nothing of consequence, Duchess.” He placed his glass on the sideboard and joined his wife and Voil at the arrangement of burgundy and gold damask settee and chairs before the fireplace. “Rather like our entire conversation at dinner.”
“Are you saying I have no conversation, Pendeen?” Voil asked. “Doing it a bit brown for a man who barely said two words through ten courses.”
“There was no need,” Endymion replied. “You and my lady wife had all the conversation needed.” He propped an arm atop the black marble mantel.
“Really, Dymi,” Rhiannon chided. “What a ridiculous thing to say. Not to mention, rude.”
“Not to worry, Your Grace,” Voil said with a smile. “I am accustomed to His Grace’s rudeness, being a victim of it on a daily basis.” The marquess half reclined on the settee whilst Rhiannon sat in the comfortable chair next to it. Did the man ever simply sit on pieces of furniture?
“That is too bad of you, Your Grace. Lord Voil is a most amiable companion.”
Endymion snorted. “He is a most pestiferous companion. There is not a settee, sofa, or chaise in my home that does not bear the imprint of Lord Voil’s fundament.”
Rhiannon’s sultry laughter ran down Endymion’s body like a caress. He barely stayed the involuntary shiver it evoked.
“If your house weren’t the dullest establishment in London, I wouldn’t choose to hide there so often.” Voil, propped on one elbow, leaned toward Rhiannon. “I fear my virtue is in danger from so many determined ladies, I have no choice but to make myself scarce from time to time.”
“Nearly every day,” Endymion clarified. “Usually from just before luncheon until after dinner.”
“Does His Grace truly keep such a dull house?” Rhiannon put her question to Voil, but she turned her teasing eyes, the color of Scottish whisky, on Endymion.
“I have attended Quaker funerals less dull,” Voil drawled.
“I keep a French chef who is as fond of Lord Voil’s handsome face as Voil is of Andre’s cooking,” Endymion replied.
“Andre?” she inquired of Voil, her eyes wide with faux innocence.
“What can I say?” Voil said with a shrug.
“If it is excitement you require,” Endymion continued, “I think we have come to the right place, if this afternoon’s events at the mines are any example.”
Rhiannon stilled. She swallowed and licked her lips. Her smile faded and then turned, brittle. “An accident, Your Grace. Surely there are accidents in London every day.”
“Indeed, Pendeen. It was an unfortunate accident,” Voil stated as he finally sat up. “The only harm done was to my coat.”
“Accidents in London do not threaten the life of my wife. And three life-threatening occurrences in two months steps beyond the realm of accident into that of deliberate attempts to take my duchess’s life.”
Endymion levelled his gaze on her. She stared back, defiant. Angry even, and he repressed a smile.
Voil goggled, first at Endymion and then at the duchess.
“You have acquired a penchant for hysterics in the last seventeen years, Dymi,” she said. “Not an attractive quality in a duke.”
“I can assure you, Your Grace, Pendeen is many things, but he hasn’t the passion for hysterics. He is the most practical, level-headed man I know.” Voil looked from Rhiannon to Endymion and back again. “Would one of you care to enlighten me?”
She adjusted her skirts and rolled her eyes. “This conversation grows tedious.”
“Two months ago, someone cut through every buckle on Her Grace’s horse’s bridle.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I fell off my horse,” Rhiannon started.
Endymion straightened and took a step toward her chair. “You fell off your horse whilst jumping a wall at the gallop riding sidesaddle, you little fool. You are fortunate to be alive, let alone to have escaped with only cuts and bruises.” He was shouting. Not his way, at all. He moved one hand behind his back and squeezed a fist so tightly his fingernails sank into his palm.
This time it was Voil and Rhiannon’s turn to stare.
“Josiah talks too much,” she muttered.
“Not if it is true, Your Grace,” Voil said, his tone uncharacteristically ominous. “Is it as he says? Was the bridle cut?”
“I don’t know.” She played with the silk folds of her gown. “It was an old bridle. Perhaps it was used by mistake.”
Endymion and Voil exchanged a look.
“And what of your fall at the ruins, Rhee?” Endymion asked as he sat on the arm of her chair. “Was that a mistake?”
“Ruins? You have ruins, Pendeen? How quaint.” Voil had a penchant for making light, especially when it might alleviate someone’s pain.
Rhiannon’s pain. Endymion saw it, sensed it. It drew him into the memory of her telling him of the death of his mother…telling him something, something his mind refused to allow him to remember, but just as frightening as what he was determined to make her admit.
“I tripped. The ruins are not safe.”
“And yet you persist in visiting them,” Endymion gentled his tone. He raised his hand toward her shoulder, bared by her gown. No. Too much temptation. He rested his palm on the back of her chair instead.
“When we were children, I might have said the same of you,” she shot back.
“No one ever tried to push me from the battlements.”
“I daresay, Her Grace may have considered it,” Voil offered.
“More than once,” she muttered. Rhiannon reached up to twist her hair. Impossible, as it had all been upswept, curled, and pinned into a ruthless work of art. Her hand slid down her neck. Her fingers caught her intricate jet necklace and toyed with the filigree gold. Of all the things to remember. She was nervous, afraid even, and it made it difficult for Endymion to breathe.
A primitive, soul-deep need rushed at him, a high tide of misty certainty. The where or the why escaped him. It simply…was. He wanted to keep her safe. Not because she was his wife, his responsibility, or even his duchess. The sight of her intending to twist her hair set up an ache in his chest. Keeping her safe made that aching need go away. It always had. If she was safe, she was happy. If Rhiannon was happy… She wasn’t. Not now. Not since he’d arrived. He’d made her happy before, that much he remembered. He had, long ago.
“Are you listening at all, Pendeen?” Voil asked.
“Have you said anything of importance?” Endymion inquired. A surge of irritation and surprise drew him back to the present. Attention to even the most boring of conversations had ever been his grandfather’s credo. One never knew when something useful might make its way into the bog of meaningless drivel that was polite conversation. As much as he wanted to learn everything about the woman Rhiannon had become, at this moment, he needed to discover what, if anything, she suspected about these accidents.
Voil threw up his hands. “I despair of you, Pendeen. I truly do. Her Grace assures me she knows the ruins too well to have ever been in danger. She merely lost her footing.”
Endymion glanced down at her from his seat on the arm of her chair. She sat ramrod straight, her hands folded gracefully in her lap. The picture of a demure English lady. He suppressed the urge to snort. She met his gaze with one of her own—one that said “Go to hell” in English and Cornish, no less.
“Her Grace is correct concerning her knowledge of the ruins,” Endymion said. “She has played among them since she was a child. Which begs the question, armed with such knowledge, what might cause her to slip and fall from a window in which she has sat and played princess thousands of times?”
His composed duchess used both hands to try and shove Endymion off the chair. He refused to budge, even when the heat of her touch against his hip and thigh set up a slow burn in danger of traveling to far more interested parts of his body.
“You played princess? How delightful,” Voil said with a flash of his most charming smile. “No doubt, Pendeen here was one of many knights who rode to rescue you.”
“Stubble it, Dymi,” she ordered when Endymion opened his mouth to reply.
“Wait.” Voil held up his hand imperiously. “You fell from a window? How did you fall from a window? Were you injured? When did this happen? Good Lord, Pendeen, why is it you insist upon keeping the pertinent details to yourself?”
“Finally caught up, have you? It is difficult to impart any details when one is forced to wedge them into the whirling dervish that is your discourse, Voil. And I only learned the details myself a few days ago.”
“From my traitorous, garrulous footman,” Rhiannon snapped as she exploded from her chair and paced across the room to the French windows that opened onto a balcony overlooking the back terrace. She spun to face them, arms crossed in such a fashion as to lift her breasts even higher in the damned dress. “Did you come all the way from London to put my servants through an inquisition, Your Grace?”
Endymion stood and took a step toward her. “If you mean, did I ask the footman who insisted upon accompanying you to the ruins and was swift enough and strong enough to catch you before you landed on the cobblestones of the old courtyard about your slip from the window, no, I did not question Tall William. He volunteered the information.”
“I don’t believe you,” she replied.
She did. He heard it in her voice.
“Why would he tell you about something so trivial? Something that happened months ago?”
“Perhaps he understands that, as Duke of Pendeen, I am charged with the safety of everyone on this estate, especially the safety of my duchess.”
“Too pompous by half,” Voil—When did he get up?—muttered as he strolled past him, headed to the sideboard, empty glass in hand.
“You are charged. You are charged? Of all the arrogant, pompous— At what point, Your Grace, were you charged with the affairs of this estate?” Rhiannon stormed back to him, which, at least, removed her arms from beneath her bosom. “At what point in the last seventeen years have you bestirred yourself from London to even acknowledge the existence of Cornwall, let alone this estate?” Her face flushed, her eyes shone with righteous fury, and her hands fisted the glistening fabric of her skirts.
“Told you,” Voil whispered as he ambled back from the sideboard and crossed in front of Endymion to hand Rhiannon a glass of brandy. The interfering rogue offered her his arm and escorted her back to her chair before the fire.
“It matters little how I acquired the information, madam. Suffice it to say, now I know, I intend to find out who is responsible and turn them over to the magistrate.”
Voil stood behind the duchess’s chair, a hand over his eyes, shaking his head.
“You are the magistrate, you daft…” Rhiannon caught the corner of her bottom lip in her teeth. His lady wife wanted to continue. Badly. She always chewed her lip when she had more to say.
Stubble it, you great daft looby. I am as intelligent as any man, Endymion de Waryn.
God help him, that is what he feared the most. She was far too clever. How had he forgotten it for even a moment? Each time his memory let slip another thing about her, about his life in this place, it startled and confused him. It lashed at his control, his one shield. His strength. He inhaled deeply. And looked away from Voil, who appeared to be having a seizure.
“Even better, Your Grace,” Endymion started. “As magistrate, I can—”
“Was Pendeen the only knight who rode to your rescue, Your Grace?” Voil suddenly asked. He came around her chair and sat on the arm of it as Endymion had done.
“Was he…” She tilted her head to gaze at Endymion. A smile she borrowed from the girl she’d been slipped onto her lips. “No, he was not.”
“I suspected as much. Surely, every lad in the county flocked to your tower window,” Voil teased. He gave Endymion a pointed look. Unfortunately, Endymion had not the slightest inkling what the marquess intended to convey.
“Not so many as that, Lord Voil,” Rhiannon assured him. “But there were a few.”
“Aha! And who were these brave souls who dared to trespass on Pendeen’s domain?”
Rhiannon swallowed. Endymion fixed his gaze on her delicate throat and then up to her chin, her mouth, her dainty nose. His eyes met hers. Dizziness, the sort one sank into when falling from a great height, blurred her face, but her eyes held him. Still he fell. Brick by brick, the wall he’d built against Cornwall crumbled beneath his feet. He was not this man. He was not.
“My brothers. We all played together as children. The ruins were our particular domain. We spent hours there, didn’t we…Rhee?” He marveled at the steady tone of his voice. His face felt the same as ever it did. Composed. Dignified. Staid. With no indication of the numbness suffusing his limbs.
Rhiannon turned her attention to her brandy. She sipped it and studied the low flames in the hearth.
“Brothers?” Voil’s bafflement was palpable. “You don’t have brothers.”
“No, I do not. Not anymore,” his hoarse tone could not be helped. His throat had elected to close.
“What were their names?” Voil asked, his expression stricken.
Endymion raised his hand to rest it on the cool marble of the mantel. He’d heard the question. He knew the answer. And he knew if he opened his mouth to speak, not a word would escape.
“Hector and Achilles,” Rhiannon said softly. “His Grace’s father was a scholar of all things Greek.”
Endymion steeled himself, drew the cloak of the Duke of Pendeen’s consequence and reputation around him. He needed to move on, forward, anywhere save here. “As they cannot, you and I will have to serve as Her Grace’s champions, Voil, if you are up to the task.”
“I do not need even one champion, let alone two, Your Grace,” Rhiannon assured him. “What I need is to be allowed to manage the estate without interference.”
“As may be, but tomorrow you will accompany me on a picnic and a tour about the estate. Whilst Voil looks into the accident at the mines. You will not return to the pits.”
Voil dropped his head and groaned.
Rhiannon. Rhiannon rose slowly. She patted Voil on the shoulder. She offered Endymion her half-drunk glass of brandy. Which, for some unfathomable reason, he took. Her expression was one of terrifying serenity.
“Lord Voil, you may do as you please tomorrow. As shall I. And you, Your Grace, may take your orders and your picnic and go to the devil.” She quit the room in a swish of bronze silk. A log shifted in the fireplace. The ormolu clock ticked into the quiet.
Endymion downed the glass of brandy. It helped to reassemble the bits and pieces of his reserve she’d torn away in the last hour. Though the shredded remains of that much-vaunted reserve now fitted him ill and would perhaps never fit him again.
“Stubble it, Pendeen.” Voil stood and began to pace the thick wine and gold Aubusson carpet of the drawing room. “You are not allowed to speak. Probably not ever again.”
“I beg your pardon. What the devil are you on about?” Endymion collapsed into the chair his wife had so hastily vacated.
“You. First, you acquire two brothers of which I’ve heard not a word in sixteen years. Then you order your duchess to attend a picnic.”
“I said to invite her to show you the estate and to join you for a romantic picnic by the lake. Apparently, I should have provided you with a better definition of romance. It doesn’t include ordering your wife about like a new recruit in the King’s Navy.”
“She’s in danger, dammit. Someone is trying to murder her.” He refused to explain to Voil the familiarity of the fear this threat evoked in him. It was visceral, made all the more so because he’d felt it before. At least, he thought he had.
“Who would want to murder your wife, Pendeen? We’ve been here over a week and it appears to me your people love her. Who would wish her harm?”
It came to Endymion in a rush of noise—horses, gunfire, men’s shouts, and the cries of two young boys.