For two years afterward their friendship had been strained. Not because of him. Tony knew how to charm even the most recalcitrant of females, and woo them out of their sulks.
No, it was because back then she couldn’t be around him without blushing scarlet and stammering, and those impediments were so embarrassing that she simply kept away. She had watched him from the windows when he came to visit Carmichael, she had peered at him from across crowded ballrooms, she had scurried out of his way whenever she could. But at night, when she was alone in her bedroom, she dreamed such wonderful, impossible dreams. Dreams that made her blush even deeper whenever he was around, dreams that made her stammer even more. Positively licentious dreams, where he loved her with a manly passion and not a trace of his indolent ease.
She’d grown out of it, of course, as all adolescents, even the shyest ones, do. He’d helped, though she never knew whether he’d guessed her dark secret or not. But he’d continued to treat her with the same brotherly charm, teasing her gently, helping her through the trauma. The day his engagement to the gorgeous Miss Stanley was announced, she considered slashing her wrists. The next day she told herself she was well on her way to being cured.
Still, the friendship remained. There were things she could tell him that she could tell no one else, not even her brother. And she never had to worry about the stilted rules of society, or flirtation, or male and female silliness. Tony would never, ever want someone like her. Not when every single husband-hunting female of beauty and fortune had flung herself at his head for the last fifteen years. She could be at ease with him now without worrying what people would think. She was simply an honorary sister, and she refused to consider anything else.
It was still a wonder to her that Miss Stanley had cried off. How anyone could have rejected Tony was beyond Ellen’s comprehension, both then and now. But Tony had simply shrugged, smiled his charming smile, and said they wouldn’t suit.
“But why?” she’d been bold enough to push him, with the arrogance of her then nineteen years and her recent recovery from her passion for him.
Fortunately no one had been around to chastise her for her boldness. “Because, dear Ellen, she told me I simply didn’t love her enough. That if I had to choose between my horses and her, I’d choose the horses. Since she was absolutely right, I couldn’t put up much of an argument. I’m a sad case, Ellen. I suppose I’ll simply have to wait for you to grow up and marry me.”
She’d laughed, ignoring the very faintest remnant of a twinge. “I’m already old enough to get married, Tony. And I’m certainly not going to marry you.”
“Why not?” he demanded lazily, a mocking glint in his cool gray eyes.
“Because,” she said, “if I had to choose between my horses and you, I’d pick the horses.”
He’d shouted with laughter at that, and she’d had no compunctions about her flat-out lie. But she hadn’t lied about one thing. Tony would be the last man she’d marry. Simply because he’d never ask her. One never got one’s hopes and dreams handed to one on a silver platter.
She’d arrived at Meadowlands still feeling uneasy, but the word that Tony had decided to make a last-minute visit went a long way toward banishing her concerns. She hadn’t seen him since Christmas, and she’d missed him. She always missed him, terribly, but she judged it wise to ration her time with him. If she indulged too, much, she might develop a fatal taste for him, the way certain men develop an attraction for rum or gaming. Once accustomed to his presence, she might be far too unwilling to give it up. So she only allowed herself small doses, just enough to keep her spirits up.
She needed her spirits lifted today. No matter how often she told herself that things would be fine at Ainsley Hall, that Gilly could take care of herself, she still had this dreadful sense of foreboding. Something quite devastating was going to happen. And her comfortable, peaceful life was never going to be the same again.
“Such a to-do,” Mrs. Rafferty clucked, heaving her massive bulk onto one of the small kitchen stools. In another place and time Ghislaine would have watched in amusement, wondering whether the stool would withstand the assault. But not today.
“Indeed.” Wilkins, the elderly butler, harrumphed. “I don’t know about such goings-on in a gentleman’s house.”
Ghislaine managed to bestir herself. “Lady’s house,” she corrected faintly, because it was expected of her. “This is Lady Ellen’s house.”
The two other senior servants had invaded her kitchen, sending the junior staff about their business. It was late the next day, the staff had finished cleaning up after supper, and Ghislaine had the odd notion that the three of them were conspirators. They weren’t, of course. She had acted alone. As always.
“Even worse,” Mrs. Rafferty said with a disapproving sniff. “For that wicked man to die in his bed here is somehow… indecent, that’s what it is.”
Ghislaine held herself very still, the familiar coldness washing over her. “He’s dead, then?”
“No. Doctor Branford expects him to pull through, which is a mixed blessing as far as I’m concerned. Mr. Blackthorne’s never been anything but a trial and disaster as far as his family is concerned. Even someone as distantly related as Lady Ellen is affected.” Wilkins could look very dour, and he did so now. “It would do everyone a service if he were to quit this earth, but I’d rather he didn’t do it in Lady Ellen’s house. Think of the neighbors.”
“Such a mess, too,” Mrs. Rafferty said with a sigh. “Casting up his accounts all over the place. Gastritis, the doctor called it. Seems like an unpleasant way to die.”
“I imagine it is,” Ghislaine said. “Is he past all danger?”
“The doctor thinks so,” Wilkins said gloomily. “But he warned it might reoccur.”
For a moment Ghislaine could see Nicholas Blackthorne’s face in front of her. The dark, bleak eyes; the sensual mouth; the dissolute beauty of him. It called to her, for one brief, mad moment.
“I rather think it will,” she said evenly.
“This weren’t no bleedin’ gastritis,” Taverner pronounced.
Nicholas managed to raise his head. He had about as much strength as a newborn puppy, and God knew he didn’t want to do anything to jar the temporary peace of his innards. If he were to start the dry heaves again, he might reach for the pistol that had likely seen the end of Jason Hargrove, and follow him into the great beyond. Or perhaps precede him.
According to that fool of a doctor, he almost had. It had been two days since he’d taken sick, two days of the most wretched purging his body had ever endured. For not the first time in his life he’d wanted to die, anything to stop the feeling of having his innards ripped out. In the shaky aftermath, such cowardice astonished him. He’d survived gunshot wounds, knifings, and probably not more than his fair share of beatings, and he’d always snapped his fingers at pain.
But the pain he’d endured during the last forty-eight hours was like nothing he’d ever imagined. And that damned doctor had warned him that it might return, that it might…
Taverner’s muttered words finally penetrated. “What did you say, Tavvy?”
“I said it weren’t no bleeding gastritis. I’ve seen gastritis. My Uncle George died of it. It doesn’t work this way, not that sudden. And not with a young healthy cove like yourself.”
Nicholas managed to pull himself up in bed, cursing the trembling weakness in his limbs. “What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice a flat demand.
“Poison, Blackthorne. I think you’ve been poisoned.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Who would poison me? If Hargrove dies, I imagine Melissa will be nothing but grateful to me. No one else bears him any affection, and he has no family.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but he’s not your only enemy. You haven’t lived a blameless life.”
Nicholas managed a ghost of a smile. “Truer words were never spoken, Tavvy. Not many people would mourn my passing. But there’s a question of opportunity. I don
’t think Ellen would have sprinkled rat poison in the brandy before she left.”
“No more brandy for you,” Tavvy announced decisively.
“Don’t be absurd, man!”
“And I’m going to fix your meals myself. I never did trust the French.”
“Now you’ve really gone mad. Next thing I know you’ll be telling me that ancient old Wilkins is avenging his despoiled daughter.”
“Did you despoil his daughter?” Taverner asked, momentarily distracted.
“I have no idea if he even has a daughter. If he does, and she’s pretty, and I was around, then I imagine I did just that.”
“Those are a lot of ifs. No, my money is on the Frenchie.”
Blackthorne considered this. “I admit she didn’t like me much. I hardly think that constitutes a motive for murder.”
“I don’t know what her motive was,” Taverner declared. “All I know is she had a better chance than anyone. She’s the one who cooked your meal, isn’t she? And it ain’t something as simple as not liking you. I saw her face. She hates you. Hates you something fierce.”
“Absurd,” Nicholas said, closing his eyes and considering the notion nonetheless.
“Maybe. But I’m keeping a close eye on her. And she don’t put her foreign hands on anything you eat. No one does but me.”
“You sure you’re not poisoning me, Tavvy?” he murmured, exhausted from the struggle his body had been through.
“Nah,” his servant replied. “I’d stab you in the back if I’d a mind to. Poison is a woman’s game.”
“Perhaps,” Nicholas said wearily. “But I suggest for once in your life you try to be subtle. If it was poison, and she was the one who did it, we need to catch her in the act.”
“I’d like to cut her throat.”
Nicholas waved an impatient hand. “Wait and see. Give me a couple of days to regain my strength. You insist on fixing all my food, and watch out for the ingredients she lets you use.”
“What do you think I am, a flat?” Taverner demanded, incensed.
Nicholas ignored him. “Then, if the gastritis hasn’t returned and I’m feeling better, we’ll have her prepare me a splendid meal.”
“We will?”
Nicholas smiled with haunting sweetness. “And we’ll make her eat it first.”
Taverner nodded, chuckling. “You always were a bad ‘un,” he said.
“I try, Tavvy. I do try.” And closing his eyes, Nicholas Blackthorne fell into an exhausted sleep. Only to dream, inexplicably, of France.
Chapter 3
Nicholas was twenty-two when he first went to Burgundy. He was old for a grand tour, too old to have an impoverished cleric leading him around with a guidebook. Indeed, his main goal in his tour of the continent was to raise as much hell as he could get away with.
He’d been sent down from Cambridge, of course. It had taken him the better part of three years to accomplish that, but in the end he did, wasting the expensive education his martinet of a father had provided for him.
It had been a close call. The problem was, he found he actually enjoyed scholarship. He’d been on the verge of some disastrous escapade, something guaranteed to blacken him in the eyes of all and sundry, when something would take his interest. And his interests were damnably wide.
He studied the latest methods of agriculture, he studied the properties of electricity and the workings of the human body. He immersed himself in Greek and Latin, in the study of warfare, in the philosophies of Plato and Sophocles. He even allowed himself to be temporarily seduced by the workings of the legal systems, before his goal in life revived itself.
That goal being to humiliate his father. The father who’d humiliated him, ignored him, turned from him in disgust when his elder son and beloved wife had died. Nothing Nicholas ever did was good enough for his father; no attempt at earning his love, or even his approval, succeeded. Eventually Nicholas had given up trying, deciding that if he was doomed to disapproval and dislike from his father, then he’d do his best to deserve it.
Not that his father had lived a sober, blameless life. There was bad blood in the Blackthornes, the madness ran deep, and Jepthah Blackthorne, in his diligence to appear untouched by the family instability, had carried sedate behavior to an extreme. And Nicholas had rebelled, flinging the dark family history in his father’s face on every occasion, until finally, when he was close to graduating with honors, he’d made his move. A drunken brawl, followed by a horrendous scene in the ancient and conventionally silent library, followed by an inebriated disruption of a solemn church service, and Nicholas Blackthorne was out on his ear, disgraced.
He hadn’t been nearly so drunk as he’d pretended. Just drunk enough to give himself the courage to do it. He’d remembered the shocked expressions on the faces of his peers, his second cousin Carmichael Fitzwater, for example, and that lazy fop, Antony Wilton-Greening. And he’d seen the horrified expression on his father’s face as he’d screamed imprecations at him before collapsing at his desk.
He’d felt no triumph later that night as he’d stood by his father’s bedside and watched him struggle for breath. A matter of time, the doctor said. The next apoplectic fit would carry him off, and unless his black-sheep son made himself scarce, that fit would come all too soon.
Nicholas felt no guilt. None at all, he told himself, as he watched his father struggle. He would have been more than happy to stay and watch his father die, if it hadn’t been for the implacable decision of his elderly Uncle Teasdale.
His mother’s older brother was a bachelor, one of high-living tastes and an amazing amount of tolerance. Nicholas had always wished Teasdale had been his father, instead of the rigid, miserable old man who’d made his life a torment. Maybe then the blackness wouldn’t eat into his soul as it had. But then, blood will tell. And the tainted blood of the mad Blackthornes ran thick and blue in his veins.
Even tolerant Teasdale drew the line at inadvertent patricide. He’d sent Nicholas off on his grand tour with more than enough funds from his own private account, and told him to come back a man. One ready to learn responsibility.
And he might have done just that. He’d dallied in the brothels of Paris, fallen in love with Venice, and been bewitched by Rome, moving through the political turmoil that was Europe with a single-minded absorption in his own pleasure. He was ready to return home, ready to make peace with a father who was, against all odds, recuperating. It was then he made one of the worst mistakes in a mistake-strewn life.
Responsibility, his Uncle Teasdale had told him. One responsibility was to make a courtesy visit to his godparents in Burgundy, godparents he’d never even met. The Comte and Comtesse de Lorgny had been friends of his mother’s, their position as his godparents only a formality. But those formalities begat more formalities, and there was no way he could go anywhere near Burgundy without spending several nights at their chateau.
For once he was on his best behavior. The long absence from his father and the shadows of his childhood instilled in him the desire to be a new man, and he was doing his best to live up to that desire. He was polite and deferential to the old comte, charming to his little birdlike wife, brotherly to the young boy, Charles-Louis.
But it was the daughter who disturbed him. The one with the odd name, Ghislaine, and the huge, trusting eyes. The skinny boy’s body with breasts just beginning to bud behind the tight silk bodices of her dresses. The quick, delicate gestures, the silvery magic of her laughter. The pure, innocent grace of her tore at his heart. And at his loins.
He’d bedded a number of willing females during his sojourn on the continent. Barmaids and aristocrats, chambermaids and duchesses, he’d had his pick of any number of accommodating women. He had no delusions about his appeal. He knew he had a way about him, a certain combination of form and features, that women found attractive. And he discovered within himself a dangerous kind of charm that made that attraction even more volatile.
But the women were all experienced. A
ll older than he was, all buxom, sensual females with eager appetites and sophisticated practices. He’d learned a great deal from them, and enjoyed himself immensely.
But he’d never been moved by someone little more than a child. Wanted someone trembling on the very edge of womanhood. His very longing for her disgusted him, but as each day passed, and the three-day visit stretched into weeks, that longing increased until it was an obsession.
He assumed she didn’t know. She was too young, too innocent to realize what was going on in his satyr’s mind every time she took his hand, smiled up at him, kissed his cheek, and left a trail of delicate perfume behind.
It could have gone on forever. Or at least until she was old enough, if fate hadn’t conspired to change his life. To halt the right turn he’d made, sending him tumbling back into blackness and despair. Into evil.
He’d known what the letter would contain the moment he’d recognized his Uncle Teasdale’s handwriting. Teasdale would never write anything more tedious than a gaming IOU unless it was a matter of life and death. Indeed, it was the latter.
Sir Jepthah Blackthorne had succumbed to another fit of apoplexy. Teasdale hadn’t given any of the particulars, but Nicholas could well imagine them. He’d probably died lamenting the fact that his name and his estates could only descend to a worthless, ramshackle creature like his younger surviving son. He probably cursed him with his dying breath, never knowing that Nicholas had made his first tentative steps on the road toward redemption.
He sat alone in the gardens of Sans Doute, the elegant country estate of his godparents, and crumpled the letter in his large hand. There was a curious burning in his eyes, one that must have been occasioned by the brightness of the overcast sun. A similar ache hovered somewhere mid-chest, and he ascribed that to a surfeit of port with his godfather the night before. He sat alone, dry-eyed, and felt the first fiery tendrils of rage begin to rekindle inside him.