Scandalous

Chapter One

"'Tis sorry I am to be the bearer of ill tidings, Miss Gabby."

More than sorry, Jem Downes sounded positively miserable over the news that he had crossed an ocean and parts of two land masses to bring her, Lady Gabriella Banning thought. His rheumy brown eyes met her widening gray ones sadly. Behind him, the aged butler, Stivers, bowed himself out, closing the door with a muffled click. The smell of damp from Jem's clothes overrode the faint scent of sulfur from the coal fire and tallow from the candle sputtering at her elbow. Jem's hat was in his hands; his travel- stained clothes were splotched with moisture and dotted with shiny-wet raindrops from the unrelenting downpour outside. His boots and trousers were flecked with mud. In the ordinary way of things, the family's lifelong servant would never have dreamed of presenting himself to her in such a state. The fact that he had not waited for the morrow, or even to put off his soiled apparel, spoke volumes about his state of mind.

Almost unconsciously, Gabby braced to receive the blow. Her lips compressed and her spine stiffened until she was sitting regally erect behind the massive desk tucked into the corner of the estate office, to which she had retired after dinner to go over the household accounts. Until this moment, her biggest worry had been whether or not just a few more shillings could be squeezed from the estate's already pared-to-the-bone expenditures. Jem's words caused her heart to give a great lurch, and effectively drove the family's financial picture from her mind. Nevertheless, she fought to preserve a calm demeanor. The only outward sign of her sudden anxiety was her rigid posture, and the convulsive tightening of her fingers around the quill she held. Conscious of this last, Gabby carefully put the pen down near the ink pot, and placed her pale, slender hands flat upon the open ledger in front of her.

Outside, thunder crashed with enough volume to penetrate even so deep within the fortresslike walls of Hawthorne Hall. The fire in the hearth flared suddenly, no doubt because windblown raindrops had found their way down the chimney. To Gabby the sudden thunderclap and the subsequent surge of light and heat seemed almost portentous. With difficulty she repressed a shudder. What now? she thought, staring hard at Jem. Oh, dear Lord in heaven, what now?

"You have seen my brother?" A lifetime of living with the meanest sort of bully had taught her the value of maintaining an outward imperturbability, no matter what disaster was about to befall. Her tone was as cool as hock.

"Miss Gabby, the earl is dead." Clearly aware of the terrible import of his news, Jem twisted the soft felt hat in his hands until it was almost unrecognizable. Fiftyish, with short grizzled hair and sharp features, he had the slight, wiry frame of the jockey he once was. At the moment his posture, hunched under the weight of what he had to tell her, made him seem even smaller than usual.

Gabby drew in a short, sharp breath. She felt as though she had sustained a physical blow. Rejection of her plea, even a reprimand for daring to make it, if Marcus was in personality anything like their father, she had been prepared for -- but not this. Her half brother, Marcus Banning, who, upon their father's death some eighteen months before had become the seventh Earl of Wickham, was a mere six years her senior. Two months previously, when it had become obvious that the new Earl was in no hurry to come to England to claim his inheritance, she had sent Jem with a letter for her brother to the tiny island of Ceylon, where Marcus had lived most of his life on a tea plantation owned by his mother's family. In it she had explained their circumstances as concisely as she could, and asked Marcus for permission -- and funding -- to take their sister Claire to London for her long overdue come- out.

She had sent Jem off with little hope. Still, something had to be done. Claire was already nearly nineteen. Gabby could not bear to think of her sister marrying Squire Cuthbert, the stolid, middle-aged, long-widowed owner of the neighboring property, who was her most persistent suitor, or Oswald Preston, the local curate, by default. Both, in their different ways, were top over tail in love with Claire, and, having been unwelcome at Hawthorne Hall during their father the sixth Earl's lifetime, were now frequent visitors. Claire was kind to them because kindness was an integral part of her nature, but the thought of her wedding either the portly squire or the sanctimonious Oswald was enough to make Gabby ill.

"My brother is dead?" Gabby repeated slowly. A knot formed in her stomach as the ramifications began to ricochet through her head. "Jem, are you certain?"

A foolish question. Ordinarily she would never have asked it. Jem was not likely to make a mistake about something so enormous as the death of the new earl, after all.

Jem looked, if possible, even more miserable. "Yes, Miss Gabby. Certain sure. I was there when His Lordship met his end. He was out with a party hunting a tiger, and the beast charged from cover when none expected it. Someone fired in a panic, and the shot struck him. He was gone just like that. Nothing to be done."

"Dear God." Gabby closed her eyes, feeling suddenly light- headed. In the months since her father's death, she had both hoped for and dreaded the coming of Marcus, the half brother she had met just once in her life. Everything would be changed with the advent of the new earl: her position, and that of her younger sisters, was bound to alter. For the better, she had hoped, although, as fate had taught her to, she had feared it might be for the worse.

But what could be worse than seeing Claire, and Beth after her, suffer the same fate she had herself? To be alternately bullied and ignored by a father with an abiding contempt for females and not even the smallest scrap of natural affection for his offspring; to be kept so short of money -- and this when their father was a very rich man -- that the amount of food on the family table was ofttimes insufficient; to be left to wither away on the vine with scant prospects for a husband or children or any life beyond the vast isolated acreage of Hawthorne Hall?

Suddenly Gabby knew what could be worse: to lose their home entirely, and the funds that had allowed them to live adequately if not well in it. To be forced to leave Hawthorne Hall, to make their own living as -- and this was if they were fortunate -- governesses or companions. Beth was too young to take up any post, Gabby realized as she tried calmly to consider it, and Claire -- would anyone hire Claire? Claire, whose beauty was so arresting that she turned heads when she did no more than walk down the streets of York, which was the nearest town of any size? No respectable woman would be likely to offer employment to Claire, Gabby realized with a deep sense of forboding. At the ripe old age of twenty-five, with her nothing-out-of-the-ordinary looks and the limp that had resulted from an accident she had suffered at age twelve, she herself was the only one of the three who was in the smallest degree employable. Would she be allowed to keep her sisters with her in any position she was fortunate enough to obtain?

Not likely. Almost assuredly not. Especially not once a prospective employer set eyes on Claire.

What were they to do? The question curled, cold and snakelike, around Gabby's heart, bringing near panic with it. Suddenly Squire Cuthbert and Mr. Preston began to seem almost like lifelines in a raging sea. Certainly, if faced with the choice, Claire would consider marrying either better than being cast upon the world with little more than the clothes on her back.

But wait, Gabby told herself firmly, trying to quell her rising fear, it was early days yet. There had to be other alternatives. It was just that none had as yet occurred to her.

"Did he leave -- a family? A son?" A last faint hope fluttered in her breast as Gabby opened her eyes to look at Jem again.

"His Lordship was unwed, Miss Gabby, and childless, I think. Doubtless he would have chosen a proper English bride when he came home to take his place as earl."

"Yes." Gabby took a deep, steadying breath. Whatever was to become of her and her sisters, there were immediate steps that had to be taken, people who needed to be notified of the earl of Wickham's death. She had so recently performed the same functions after the demise of her father that she felt quite like an old hand. Mr. Challow, her father's chief barrister, would need to be informed, for one, and Cousin Thomas...

Gabby went cold at the thought.

With Marcus's death, the earldom and all that went with it passed to the nearest male heir, the Honorable Thomas Banning, son of her father's late cousin. Her father had loathed Thomas, and Thomas, together with his horrible stiff-necked wife Lady Maud and their two simpering daughters, had returned the earl's animosity with interest. She had seen him and his family perhaps half a dozen times in her life, most recently at her father's funeral. He had been barely civil to her and her sisters, and his wife and daughters had not been even that.

She, Claire, and Beth were now at Thomas's mercy, Gabby realized with a sick sensation in the pit of her stomach. Her father, in his terrible misogyny, had made no provisions in his will for his three daughters, as she had learned to her dismay only at the time of his death. They had no income, no funds of their own. They had been left totally dependent on the generosity -- or lack of it -- of the new earl.

Not for the first time, Gabby wondered if her father, upon dying, had found himself in hell.

Terrible as it was for a daughter to entertain such a thought, she could not help but feel that, if so, it was a reward well earned by the misery he had caused, and continued to cause, those whom he should have most cherished in life.

Perhaps Thomas would allow them to continue to live at Hawthorne Hall, Gabby speculated without much hope. It might please his wife to have Matthew's miscellany, as she disparagingly called Gabby and her sisters because each was the offspring of a different, subsequent countess of Wickham, as dependent poor relations.

But then Gabby thought again of Claire, and knew even that faint hope was misplaced. Maud would not want Claire within a mile of her own whey-faced daughters.

"Miss Gabby, His Lordship writ you a letter."

At Jem's words, Gabby's attention focused on him again.

"A letter?" Her voice, she was surprised to discover, revealed no hint of her distress.

"The night before he -- before he was took. He was on the trail after that tiger I told you about when I caught up with him, away off in the wilds with just those heathen native servants of his. He called me into his tent and gave me this to give to you." Jem fumbled in the leather pouch that hung at his side, and extracted a slightly crumpled and stained letter, which he passed to her.

Gabby took it, broke the seal, and spread it out. It was a single sheet containing just a few lines scrawled in a firm black hand. Another sealed sheet, wrapped inside the first, was revealed as she unfolded the missive. This she set aside.

My dear Gabby, the letter began,

My own knowledge and the tales I have heard of our father lead me to believe that you have, if anything, understated the case in which you have been left. I beg your forgiveness for not attending to the matter earlier. Indeed, I freely confess that I have been remiss in not seeing to the welfare of my sisters, and hereby give you permission to take our sister Claire to London for the Season. You do the thing up in high style, and draw on my funds as needed and at your discretion. A letter to that effect is enclosed, which I suggest you present to Messrs. Challow, Mather and Yadon, attorneys at law, with my compliments. As it happens, my circumstances are such that I find myself viewing a trip to England with favor, and may join you in London myself before many weeks have passed. I look forward to furthering our acquaintance, and to reacquainting myself with Claire and baby Beth, at that time.

Yours most sincerely, Wickham

Unexpectedly, Gabby felt a lump form in her throat as she stared down at the bold script. Her brother sounded both likable and as if he were disposed to have a care for them, and this sheet of paper, along with his scarce- remembered visit to Hawthorne Hall when she had been no more than eleven, was all she was ever to know of him.

It seemed hard. But then, she had learned, such was life.

The other sealed letter was indeed addressed to Messrs. Challow, Mather, and Yadon, she saw as she picked it up, then glanced again at Jem.

"Gabby, Gabby, is that Jem you're talking to?" The library door flew open without warning.

Lady Elizabeth Banning, an exuberant red-haired fifteen- year-old still faintly round with puppy fat, burst into the room. Like Gabby, she was dressed in the unrelieved black of mourning for their father although the obligatory period of time for such had passed, for the simple reason that they were the newest gowns any of the sisters possessed. The dispersal of funds for the purchase of mourning garments had been reluctantly allowed by Mr. Challow after the death of their father, although by rights, he said, he should not be approving any expenditures at all without the sanction of the new earl, whose funds they now were. Even continuing the minimal allowance that had in the past permitted Gabby to run the house had been the subject of some debate within the law firm, he told her, with the consensus being that, without notice from the new earl, the best course of action was to let things go on as they had been until they received instructions to the contrary.

"Oh, Jem, it is you! What did our brother say?" Beth's spaniel-brown eyes had fixed on Jem at once, sparing Gabby the need to answer her original inquiry. She bore down on the pair of them, firing questions as she came. "Did you find him? Did you give him Gabby's letter? What did he say? Can we go? Can we go?"

"I'm sorry, Gabby, I tried to stop her, but you know how she is," Lady Claire Banning said with a sigh as she followed her younger sister into the room. Not even her sober black gown could detract from Claire's dazzling combination of silky raven curls that spilled in charming profusion over slender shoulders, huge, thick-lashed golden-brown eyes, porcelain-pale skin, and perfect features. In addition, her figure was round where it should be round, slim where it needed to be slim, and altogether delectable. "She just could not contain herself one moment longer."

If Claire could just have her season, Gabby thought, looking at her sister almost achingly, she would be overrun with eligible gentlemen wanting to marry her. The sad thing was that here, right under her own hand, was the very instrument that would have given Claire the future she needed, that she was entitled to by right of birth, that she deserved.

Marcus had granted permission for Claire to have her season. He had practically given Gabby carte blanche to fund it, too.

But Marcus was dead. The letters he had sent were now no more than worthless scraps of paper. As soon as Cousin Thomas was apprised that he had become the earl of Wickham, they would be very fortunate indeed not to be cast out of Hawthorne Hall forthwith.

A growing despair knotted Gabby's stomach. What she had to tell her sisters was too, too cruel. If only, she thought, throat aching, Marcus had survived just a scant three more months, just until Claire had had her season....

"For goodness' sake, Jem, can't you talk? Did you or did you not find our brother?" Beth demanded, bouncing like an excited puppy around the man who had taught her and her sisters to ride and hunt and fish and enjoy almost every imaginable outdoor pursuit. Over the years the sisters had come to regard him as coconspirator and friend rather than servant, and were on terms of disgraceful intimacy with one who was in actuality no more than a groom.

Jem looked even unhappier than before. "That I did, Miss Beth, but...."

He glanced helplessly at Gabby, who looked down at the letter in her hand and took a deep breath, willing herself to sound composed as she broke the dreadful news.

At that moment Beth spied the letter, and with a quick movement and a gleeful cry snatched it from her sister's hand.

"Beth, wait...." Gabby groaned, grabbing for the letter, but speech was more of an effort than she had imagined and her protest was too strangled to deter her sister, who danced out of reach with a tantalizing grin. To learn how close all their hopes had been to being realized could only make the truth harder to bear....

"Oh, Beth, try for a little decorum, do," Claire put in crossly, throwing herself down in a chair near the fire and trying to pretend that she, too, was not vitally interested in the contents of the sheet that Beth now eagerly perused. "I declare, I've never in my life seen such a hoyden as you're turning into."

"At least I don't break my neck craning it to look into every mirror I pass," Beth retorted, glancing up for a moment to glare at her sister. Then as she returned her attention to the letter her face broke into a beatific smile and she looked at Claire again. "Oh, Claire, you're to have your season! Our brother says we're to go."

Claire's eyes widened, and soft color rushed into her cheeks as she sat up straight in the chair. "Beth, truly?" Her gaze flew to her older sister. "Gabby?"

She sounded almost afraid to believe that so wondrous a fate could be hers.

As indeed, Gabby thought, looking at Claire with a sudden sharp sensation that she could only conclude was heartbreak, she was right to be. What she would not give to be able to provide this one thing for Claire....

At that moment the fire popped as loudly as a sharp clapping of hands and flared again, higher and hotter than before, momentarily drawing everyone's startled attention to it. The color of the flames tinted the pale skin of Gabby's hands an eerie shade of red, she saw, glancing down at the letter to the barristers that still rested beneath them. She had no doubt that her face was turned the same, suddenly most appropriate, hellish hue.

Because the most dreadfully sinful notion had just occurred to her....

"Read it for yourself." Beth thrust the letter at Claire, then perched on the arm of her sister's chair, watching the older girl's face with an air of jubilant expectancy. When Claire reached the end, she gave a little squeal of excitement. The two younger girls put their heads, one bright red and one raven black, together and began reciting the words aloud with increasing glee.

As her sisters read, and the fire died back down, Gabby made a decision. She was, she discovered with some surprise, a true Banning after all. Gaming ran strong in their blood, and now it was her turn to wager all on a daring throw of the dice. She stood, a too-thin woman of no more than medium height clad in head-to-toe black bombazine, her untamable chestnut hair dragged into a reasonably neat chignon at her nape, her pale, squarish face with its small, straight nose and decided mouth and chin brought to sudden vivid life by the fierce resolve that glowed from her usually calm gray eyes, and walked with the deliberate care she had learned to take to conceal her limp around the desk until she reached Jem's side.

"Have you told anyone else of this? Talked to anyone on the ship, perhaps, or since you landed in England?" Gabby asked for his ears alone as they watched her sisters poring over the letter once again. Jem looked wretched as, finishing the missive for what must have been the dozenth time, both girls looked at each other and began to chatter excitedly. Gabby's whisper turned urgent. "What I am asking you is, who else knows of my brother's death?"

Servant and mistress were of much the same height, and their eyes were nearly on a level. Jem glanced at her, his brow deeply furrowed.

"No one in England, Miss Gabby, save you and me. I wouldn't be talking to strangers about family business, on the ship or anywheres else, now would I? A few know in Ceylon, I reckon, but mostly natives and such."

"Then I am going to ask you to do me a very big service." Gabby spoke rapidly, before her nerve could fail her. "I am going to ask you to pretend that you left my brother's side immediately after you received these letters, and never witnessed his death at all. I am going to ask you to pretend that, as far as you know, the earl is still alive and in Ceylon and will be home in his own good time."

Jem's eyes widened. As he met her determined gaze, his lips pursed in a soundless whistle.

"Miss Gabby, I can do that, and for you I will willingly, as you knows, but the truth of it is bound to come out sooner or later. Such like that always does, and then where will we be?" Jem's low voice was both alarmed and cautionary.

"In no worse case than we are right now, and perhaps a great deal better off," Gabby said firmly. "All we need is just a little time, and a little luck."

"Gabby, aren't you excited? We're going to London," Beth exclaimed rapturously, springing up from the arm of the chair and dancing forward to envelop her oldest sister in a suffocating hug. "Claire will have her season, and we'll get to see the sights. Oh, Gabby, I've never been beyond Yorkshire in my life."

"None of us have," Claire chimed in. Her eyes were glowing with anticipation and her step was light as she joined them, although, conscious of her status as a mature young lady, she refrained from jumping up and down with the heedless abandon shown by Beth.

"London will be a treat for all of us." Gabby, returning Beth's hug, managed a credible smile. A sideways glance showed her that Jem was looking at her with as much alarm as if she'd suddenly grown horns and a tail.

"Does this mean we can have some new gowns?" Claire sounded almost wistful. Claire loved pretty clothes, and had upon many occasions spent hours poring over the fashionable sketches in such publications as the Ladies' Magazine that, banned from the house by their father, still had chanced to come her way. Without being overly vain, Claire was very aware of her own beauty, and such matters as the latest hairstyles, or the design of a gown, were important to her. She had longed for a season in the worst way, but given their circumstances had known that her chances of ever having one were remote. To her credit, she had been very good about the prospect that it was never to be. But now -- now she could have one after all. Despite the risks, Gabby was suddenly fiercely glad to be able to provide Claire with such a chance.

"Certainly we may," Gabby said, refusing to look at Jem again as she well and truly threw caution to the wind. "An entire new wardrobe, in fact, for each of us."

The fire in the hearth popped loudly and flared again just then, causing Gabby to jump. As her sisters exclaimed more over their unprecedented good fortune, Gabby could not forbear casting the hearth a sideways, slightly nervous glance.

Why could she not escape the feeling that, no matter how pure her motives, some sort of hellish bargain had just been made?

Irresistible

Chapter One

January 1813

If they caught her, she would die.

"Damn ye, where are ye?"

The disembodied voice sounded eerily close. That it reached her ears at all over the roaring of the surf terrified her. They were near. The knowledge goaded her to greater speed despite the treacherous nature of the path underfoot. She had to keep moving....

" 'Twill be the worse for ye, ye little besom, once I get me hands on ye again."

The voice came from almost directly overhead. Daring a quick glance upward, Claire saw that the chilly white saucer of a moon had risen just high enough in the sky to be visible over the lip of the cliff. By its wintry light, she could barely make out the speaker's dark shape through the thick gray fog that had rolled in from the sea sometime in the long hours after sunset. Her heart pounding, she shivered and fought to keep her breathing from degenerating into terrified, and possibly audible, panting. Dangerous as the trail she crept along was, it was her only possible escape route. The spit of land her pursuers searched was narrow, and it ended in a straight drop of more than ninety feet to the tumultuous Atlantic just a few hundred yards past where she clung to the cliff. Had she still been on that marshy outcropping and been forced by its geography to turn back, she would have run straight into the arms of those who meant to kill her.

"Ye'll rue the day you tried to make a fool of me, missy, I promise ye that."

He knew, or at least suspected, that she was near, Claire realized with a clutch of horror. Otherwise, such threats would be meaningless. Forcing herself to forgo the dubious comfort of another glance up for fear that he might see the pale flash of her face against the blackness of the rock, she fought to keep panic at bay as she crept onward. Without warning, her foot slipped. Barely suppressing a cry, she grabbed at the wall for support. Her outflung hand scrabbled desperately over the rock and closed around a jagged jut of stone that saved her. For a moment after she regained her balance she stood perfectly still, her heaving chest pressed tightly against the unforgiving granite, heart pounding, eyes closed, as she willed her breathing to return to something approximating normal.

If she fell, she thought seconds later with a flash of bleak humor, glancing down at the whitecaps pounding the rocky beach as she negotiated the tricky spot, at least she wouldn't have to worry about being killed by her pursuers. She would have done the job quite thoroughly herself.

The thought of falling, of her body hurtling helplessly down to be broken on the sharp rocks below, was almost enough to cause her to freeze in place. But then she had a hideous mental vision of the fate her pursuers intended for her. Tied to a filthy bedstead in a room off the kitchen of the farmhouse where her captors had taken her, she had overheard their plans: In the small hours of the morning, when all honest folk were asleep and all of the other sort knew to look the other way, they meant to take her out to sea and drop her, bound hand and foot, into the frigid depths. Drown 'er like a mewling kitten, was how their leader had put it, his voice spine-chilling in its careless joviality. Claire shivered again, violently, as the callous words replayed in her head.

This band of brutal strangers meant to kill her. But why? Why? She had racked her brain but found no answer that made sense. Ever since she had tricked the man above her into releasing her from her bonds by claiming she had to make urgent use of the chamber pot, then clouted him over the head with said chamber pot when he grudgingly handed it to her and turned his back, she had quit asking herself why. She'd been too busy running for her life. She could figure out the why behind this nightmare later. If she survived.

"Eh, Briggs, what're you doing? Ye're afrighting the poor lassie."

This second voice sounded as close as the first. Claire recognized it as belonging to the group's leader. This time, despite the best will in the world not to do so, she was unable to prevent a terrified glance up. There were two dark forms standing close together near the very edge of the cliff, which was now some forty feet above her head. From their stance, they were, presumably, looking toward where the others still searched for her along the spit. Another quick, reflexive glance down revealed little save the frothing breakers and the inky infinity of the night beyond the fog. But she knew that another fifty feet or so of treacherous cliff still stretched between her and the relative safety of the beach.

Did they know of this path? Did they know that she had taken it and was directly below them even as they spoke? Were they toying with her, like cruel cats with a terrified mouse? This possibility, which had just popped into her mind, terrified her.

Please God, she prayed with a quick glance up into the ether, she did not want to die. Not tonight, not like this. She was only twenty-one years old.

To her horror, she felt her knees begin to shake.

This would never do. Take a damper, Claire, she ordered herself sternly. She was not going to die. She had already lived through so much: the far too early death of her mother; a childhood made dark and frightening by the cruelty of her father; a promising marriage turned bleak and empty; and the crime that had given her over to her pursuers. She had survived too much to die now.

Fiercely telling herself that, Claire stiffened her knees and inched onward. Pebbles underfoot made her slide precariously a second time, and again she nearly cried out. But she managed to choke back the sound even as she recovered her footing, and then, gritting her teeth, she forced herself to go on. With luck, they would believe her hidden somewhere in the prickly gorse above. With luck, they would never even think of looking down.

Once she reached the beach, she reminded herself in between sliding footsteps and deep, calming breaths, the safety of Hayleigh Castle, her husband's family seat, was less than an hour's walk away. Although she had hated the vast turreted pile from her first sight of it, her heart yearned for it now. How ironic was it that her husband was there, all unknowing of the danger that threatened her, while she fought for her life practically in the castle's shadow? Strain though she might, she could see nothing of it through the fog-shrouded darkness. But she knew it was there, perched like a great stone falcon on the rocky promontory overlooking the sea that was this one's twin. The high granite cliff on which the castle was built and the one she was presently descending, known as Hayleigh's Point, served as end posts to a half-circle of cliffs surrounding a bay that looked as if a hungry giant had taken a bite out of the coastline. From the castle to this spot was a distance of perhaps six miles. To the east was desolate marshland dotted with beacon fires ready to be lit at a moment's notice should Boney, now fortunately occupied in Russia, at last decide to invade. To the west the land fell away in a sheer vertiginous drop straight down to the turbulent waters of the Atlantic. The only way up, or down, was via perhaps half a dozen narrow paths winding precariously through the rocks. The locals called them smugglers' paths because, once the province of goats, they were now used almost exclusively by the "gentlemen," as the smugglers were known in these parts, who over the course of the war had turned the running of the French blockade into a fine art.

Tonight this particular path had saved her life, so whatever quarrel anyone else might have with those who traded clandestinely with the hated French, she herself was grateful to them.

"Come, milady, stop your foolishness now and ye'll see we'll not harm ye." The leader's accent was pure Sussex. His voice turned wheedling as he raised it to be heard over the pounding of the surf. Clearly he too knew -- suspected -- that she was near. "We'll carry ye back home, all right and tight, just like we intended all along, see if we don't. 'Twas merely the matter of a small ransom, which has since been paid."

Milady...a ransom...paid? Did they know, then, that she was Lady Claire Lynes, wife of the heir of the Duke of Richmond, one of the richest peers in the realm? But David, her feckless husband, had little money of his own, and could get his hands on no very substantial sum until he inherited, if indeed he ever did. As the present Duke, who had lived abroad for many years, was both unwed and childless, David cherished some hopes in that direction. But still, hopes would not pay a ransom. In any case, her abduction was only hours old. There had been precious little time....

But no. It was a lie, a trick meant to cozen her into revealing herself. She was not such a fool as to fall for that, no matter how much she might wish to believe that it was true. She had heard their plan with her own ears, and there was no reason to suppose that it had changed with her escape.

You'll not catch me that easily, Claire vowed silently to the men above her. Continuing to move, she willed herself to think no more about the plot against her until she was once again on solid ground. Situated as she was, a single misstep could prove fatal. Instead, she concentrated on the rhythmic slap of the waves against the rocks below in an effort to calm herself. Sweaty palms, shaky knees, and a racing pulse were a recipe for disaster, she knew. Wetting her lips, she was surprised to taste salt in her mouth. Only then did she realize that the great plumes of freezing spray from the sea that had intermittently blown up to splatter the cliff had left her wet through. She was beyond cold; her hands were as icy and lacking in feeling as those of a corpse. Though her high-necked, long-sleeved traveling dress was made of wool, it was a fine kerseymere variety that provided little warmth, and certainly it had not been designed to withstand exposure to the elements. And her boots, her cunning little half-boots that were so fashionable this season, had equally not been designed for a death-defying climb down a near-vertical cliff. Their smooth leather soles slipped and slid like skates over the slippery ground. She did not have even a cloak to ward off the elements. Like everything else she had brought with her on the journey from her sister's home in Yorkshire to Hayleigh Castle, it had been left behind in her carriage when she'd been dragged out.

"If ye put me to the trouble of fetching the dogs to sniff ye out, milady, it'll be the worse for ye." The leader's coaxing tone had deteriorated into pure threat. Claire dared another scared glance up and saw that the men had not moved. But they held a lantern now; its warm yellow glow swayed gently in the leader's hand as, back turned to her and the sea, he held it aloft to illuminate the night.

The light, she realized, her breath catching on what was almost a sob, was bright enough to allow her to see a bleeding scratch on her hand where it clung to an outcropping of rock. If the men turned and looked over the edge of the cliff, it was also bright enough to give her away.

She was more than halfway down now, she reckoned, as, unnerved by the light, she stopped, holding tight to the rocks with both hands. Closing her eyes and pressing her forehead against the spray-slick granite, she sent another prayer winging skyward and took another calming breath. If she could just reach the beach, she would run as if her heels had sprouted wings. Somewhere at its far end lay another path that led to the castle and safety. But first she had to reach the beach, and to reach the beach she had to move.

Gritting her teeth, she did.

"Very well, milady, ye've brought it on yourself." The leader's raised voice was harsh with frustration. Claire listened with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as he called out, presumably to the rest of the band who still searched the spit: "There'll be bloody hell to pay if she's not found, ye understand? Bloody hell. Briggs, go fetch Marley's hounds."

"Aye."

A glance up confirmed that only one dark shape was now visible above her. Briggs had vanished into the night, presumably gone to fetch dogs to hunt her down as if she were vermin. Claire's heart leaped and her breathing quickened as panic threatened once again to overtake her.

Why would anyone want to do this to her? Try though she might -- and despite her determination to do so, she hadn't been able to dismiss the question from her mind -- she couldn't make sense of it. Was it some unlucky happenstance of time and place, as she had first supposed, or, as was seeming increasingly possible, was it a carefully executed plan directed specifically at her? She had spent Christmas in Yorkshire, in the bosom of her own family, choosing to go to Morningtide, her sister Gabby's home, over a celebration with her husband and his mother. Her excuse had been an urgent desire to be with Gabby, who was all but bedridden by a most difficult first pregnancy. With both her parents dead -- her abusive, unloving father, the Earl of Wickham, three years before, and his third wife, her beautiful but modestly born mother, when Claire was a mere infant -- her two sisters, and now Gabby's husband as well, were her family, as well as being the people she loved most in the world. The holiday had been the merriest she had known since wedding David, and she had enjoyed every minute of it. Then, a week after Boxing Day, she had reluctantly bowed to David's wish that she join him and a party of guests at the enormous, drafty anachronism that was Hayleigh Castle, her husband's family seat since the days of William the Conqueror, and set out. That had been two days ago.

Shortly before dark her traveling carriage had neared its destination. She had been aware of a not-unfamiliar lowering of her spirits as the reunion with her husband drew ever closer. The day was gray, cheerless, threatening rain, its bleakness a perfect match for how she was feeling. Then, in a dense wood not many miles from the castle, her carriage had been attacked. Without warning a band of masked riders had appeared out of nowhere, surrounding them, forcing the vehicle to halt. The coachman, fumbling for his blunderbuss, had been shot from his seat forthwith. The horror of that had scarcely sunk in when the carriage door was wrenched open and two burly men peered in. With the best will in the world to show courage, she had screamed as hysterically as her maid, Alice, a sweet country girl from Gabby's household recruited to take the place of her own beloved Twindle, whom she had left behind to care for Gabby. Shrinking back into the plushly upholstered corner of the seat, she had tried to fight off the rough hands that reached for her. Her efforts availed her nothing. In an instant she was dragged from the carriage. She fuzzily recalled Alice being pulled out behind her; the maid's screams had abruptly stopped just seconds before a foul-smelling rag had been pressed over Claire's nose and mouth. After that, she remembered no more until she had awakened upon that bed in the room behind the farmhouse kitchen, quite alone.

" 'Tis your last chance to behave like a sensible lassie, milady," the leader called, bringing her back to the present with a jolt. Glancing up, Claire realized that she could no longer see him. He must have moved away from the edge of the cliff. Only his voice and the lantern's glow that limned the cliff edge in gold told her that he was still near. Obviously he did not know of the path's existence, or had forgotten it if he did. It was her good fortune that the crime had occurred in country she knew. She had spent the first months of her marriage at Hayleigh Castle, and David himself, in one of his even then increasingly rare charming moods, had shown her this path down to the windblown gray shale crescent of a beach.

The sea was roaring in her ears now as, inch by perilous inch, she crept closer to it. Through the fog she could see the curvy white lines of foam where the waves broke against the shore. Beyond that, the black vastness of the ocean blended with the black vastness of the sky so well that one was all but indistinguishable from the other.

She had only twenty or so feet to go, she calculated with a fresh surge of hope. Once on the beach, she would run as if all the hounds of hell were after her -- which, by then, they might well be.

A tiny pinprick of light, warm and yellow amid all the cold blackness, shone briefly on the surface of the sea. Her eyes widened and her step faltered. The light was there, and then gone even as she strained to see. So fast did it appear and disappear that she was not quite sure her eyes were not playing tricks on her -- until it flashed again.

Still staring in some perplexity out to sea, she at last arrived at the uppermost reaches of the beach, stumbling a little as she made the transition from slippery path to uneven ground. Frowning, she continued to probe the blackness for another glimpse of light. Then she gathered her sodden skirts in one hand to clear her feet and started to scramble over the rocks toward the beach proper. Had she imagined it? No, there it was again. There was no mistake.

Were her pursuers coming after her by boat now? she wondered, panicking anew. But no. A glance up confirmed that they were still above her, presumably searching the cliff. The yellowish glow of the lantern light through the fog was unmistakable.

But she had seen something. Perhaps it was no more than a fairy light, she thought, shivering as she clambered over another rock and at last reached the relative flatness of the beach itself. The moors thereabouts were legendary for elusive beacons sighted briefly in the dead of night, and fairy lights were the name the local folk gave them. Or perhaps it was a fisherman, late getting in. Or, more likely, smugglers...

A muffled crunch on the shale behind her was her only warning. At the sound, Claire's heart lurched. She whirled, but it was too late: A man loomed behind her, a tall dark shadow just separating from the legion of shadows that were rocks and cliff and sea, close enough to touch. She was caught! She would be killed....

She never had time to let loose the scream that tore into her throat before something slammed hard into the back of her head and she crumpled without a sound into blackness.

Copyright © 2001 by Karen Robards