Beauty Tempts the Beast (Sins for All Seasons #6) - Lorraine Heath Page 0,49

dancing wildly on the hearth, but for some reason she sought out the dark depths of his eyes, the square cut of his jaw, the sharp, knife-like edge of his nose, the high bones of his cheeks, all the contours of his face that had become so achingly familiar she could have drawn him from memory. The intensity with which he studied her as though he truly cared about the answer frightened her as much as it comforted her. Scared her because she shouldn’t long for his attentions, cherish his presence. He was a temporary part of her life, as so many had been. She had learned through heartbreak and disappointment that devotion could be snuffed out with a mere word or gesture.

“It was eight minutes past two in the wee hours of the morning when the loud knocking at the front door woke me,” she croaked, her throat knotting as though to prevent the hideous words from being uttered. “I don’t know why I thought to look at the clock on the mantelpiece. The window of my bedchamber looked out over the drive. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have heard the commotion. When I looked out . . . the entirety of Scotland Yard must have been there. I suppose the butler, maybe a footman, opened the door to them and then the corridors were filled with the echo of stomping boots and yells. The door to my bedchamber burst open—”

She gulped some sherry. Its sweetness seemed contrary to the bitter words she was uttering.

“The inspector, or whatever he was, gave me a quick look and returned to the hallway. As though in a trance I followed as far as the threshold. My mother was shrieking, her maid striving to calm her. So many men were moving about I couldn’t cross over to her. They were dragging my brothers down the hallway—I suppose they’d dragged them out of bed as well—and all I could think was that they weren’t civilized enough to wear nightshirts. How curious. Then Marcus shouted, ‘For God’s sake, man, allow us to make ourselves presentable.’

“You’ve not met Marcus, but he can be quite intimidating. Probably comes from being the heir, as they did let them dress themselves. I remember as they marched him past, he caught my eye and said, ‘It’ll all be all right.’ And I believed him. Only it wasn’t, of course.”

Chapter 11

As much as he hated hearing the details of what had happened to her, he welcomed the opportunity to know her better, to understand her.

Her fingers were visibly shaking as she took hold of her glass and tossed back the sherry as though it would provide her with additional stamina. He considered getting her more but that would involve too much activity, and it seemed wrong all of a sudden to have any sort of movement other than the hands on the mantel clock ticking off the minutes and the writhing flames creating a soft crackling as they turned coal into ash.

Very slowly, as though she were a baby hare that would dash off if startled, he extended his glass toward her. “Here.”

Taking it, she stared into the amber. “Scotch?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never tasted scotch.”

“Then take a small sip.” Such mundane words after her devastating description of what was no doubt the worst night of her young life.

Briefly the rim of the tumbler touched her lips. He very much doubted she’d swallowed a thimbleful. She tapped her fingers one after the other in a rhythmic movement against the cut crystal. “They thought my brothers were involved, knew something. Only they weren’t, they didn’t. It was two weeks before they released them.

“A week after my father and brothers were arrested, my mother decided we should attend a ball to which we’d been invited. She argued that we should carry on as though all was normal, and that our appearance would signal that we were not involved in this conspiracy, we did not support it, and our loyalty to the Queen was above our loyalty to her husband, my father, the Duke of Wolfford.”

As she had yesterday, she spoke as though all this had happened to someone unknown to her, not to herself. Her voice was distant and flat. But he couldn’t help but believe that inside, a maelstrom of emotions bombarded her.

“I tried to convince her we would be better served to wait until all was settled. I had not yet accepted the notion that my father could possibly be involved in so traitorous an