The Offer, Page 2

  “The cachepot is ugly but Mary Louise meant well.” Sabrina slashed her hand through the air. “That’s not at all important. Listen to me, Elizabeth, I must speak with you. I know that this will come as a shock to you, but you must help me. It’s Trevor, Elizabeth—he just tried to rape me.”

  Elizabeth arched a pale blond brow and glanced over at the clock on the mantelpiece. The brow went higher. There was a twisted smile on Elizabeth’s mouth. “First you are rude to my Mary. Now you tell me that my husband of two weeks tried to rape you. Is this some kind of game, Sabrina? Are you that envious of my new status? Such a thing is scarce possible, particularly when it is only three o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Sabrina gazed dumbly at her sister, unwilling to believe the iciness in her voice. No, Elizabeth simply didn’t understand. She rushed forward and laid an urgent hand on Elizabeth’s sleeve. “Look at my face. He struck me repeatedly. It gave him pleasure to hurt me. Look, damn you!”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “So, your face is flushed, nothing more that I can see. You are always in the sun so that is no surprise.”

  “It’s winter, Elizabeth. We haven’t seen the sun for days until just this afternoon.” Sabrina couldn’t believe this. She went on her knees beside her sister, clutching her hand between hers. The sunlight was fierce on her face. She knew that the redness and swelling were clear to see. “You must listen to me, Elizabeth. It would make no difference to Trevor if it was day or night. I went to the portrait gallery to look at the countess’s portrait. I want to paint it. Trevor followed me. You know how isolated the gallery is. No one was near to help me and he knew it. That’s why he followed me there. Elizabeth, look at my face. Don’t tell me it’s simply flushed. No, he slapped me and slapped me. He’s vicious and cruel, Elizabeth. He’s proved he has no honor. He even threatened to kill Grandfather if I told him what he’d tried to do. You must help me decide what we must do.”

  Elizabeth shook off her sister’s hand, as if her touch was distasteful to her. She rose slowly from her chair. Sabrina also got to her feet. Elizabeth was some three inches taller than her younger sister. She looked down at her now, and there was intense dislike in her pale blue eyes. “I forbid you, Sabrina, forbid you, to speak any more such absurd nonsense. Pray remember that you are speaking of my husband and our cousin. Does it mean so little to you that he will be the Earl of Monmouth after Grandfather’s death?”

  Sabrina took an involuntary step backward. “Elizabeth, haven’t you heard me? Did you not understand what I said? Damn you, look at my face! You can see his handprints! My skin is still hot from the force of his slaps. None of it is nonsense. I’m sorry for this, but you must believe me. Trevor is vicious. He tried to rape me. I’m not lying. He isn’t worthy of you. He told me if I tried to lock my bedchamber door against him, he would hurt me even more. Please, what are we to do?”

  3

  Elizabeth sat back down on the delicate French chair and tapped her fingertips softly and rhythmically together. She smoothed her pale blue wool skirts. She looked at the glittering diamonds on her heirloom wedding ring, the huge faceted emerald that sat high in the middle. Finally, she looked up and smiled at her sister. The sight of her ravaged face was balm to her soul. “I gather you are still a virgin, Sabrina?”

  Sabrina stared at her sister’s calm, impassive face as her question rang in her ears. She sounded bored, indifferent.

  “Well, are you? Are you stupid? Can’t you speak?”

  Sabrina didn’t want to, but she turned red, remembering Trevor’s howling yell, seeing again the stain spread on his breeches. God, she hated him, she hated what he’d made her learn, all in an instant of time. “Yes, I’m still a virgin, no thanks to that bastard.”

  Elizabeth’s lashes nearly closed over her narrowed eyes. “So, my dear little sister, what happened is that you teased Trevor, and being a man and weak of flesh, as all men are, he gladly accompanied you to the gallery. You then ran away from him when you realized he had every intention of taking your teasing seriously. Were you afraid he’d make you pregnant, Sabrina?”

  Sabrina grabbed her sister’s arm, saw the disdain in her sister’s pale eyes, and dropped her hand. “Listen to me, Elizabeth. You cannot believe what you just said. You make it sound as though I purposefully tried to seduce your husband. I tell you, he is vain and cruel, a strutting evil man who scorns us all.” She wasn’t about to tell her sister what her bridegroom had said about her. “Please, Elizabeth, you cannot ignore this, you cannot pretend it didn’t happen. You must help me, help yourself.”

  Elizabeth stood abruptly again, standing on her tiptoes so she could tower over her sister, and flattened the palms of her hands on the desktop. “Now you will listen to me, you pampered little wretch. For years, even before our parents died, I have watched you twist Grandfather around your little finger, wheedle your way so firmly into his affections so that he had no love left for me. Oh yes, Grandfather allowed me a season in London with Aunt Barresford, hoping that I would find a husband so he would be rid of me. But I always knew that my place was here, even though at every turn you have tried to usurp my position and my authority as the eldest.

  “No more, Sabrina. I am Trevor’s wife.” She squared her shoulders, standing even taller, the sunlight lacing through her blond hair, forming a pale golden halo round her head. She looked like a princess, tall and proud. Then she said, her voice colder than the wind that was tangling through the oak branches outside the window, “When that miserable old man dies, I shall be the Countess of Monmouth. On that day, my dear sister, I shall be the undisputed mistress here and you will be nothing more than I wish you to be. I wonder if I will even allow you to live here. Perhaps the dower house is the place for you. I doubt I’ll waste my money on a London season for you.”

  Sabrina drew back at the naked hatred she saw on her sister’s face. Dimly she realized that the cold aloofness Elizabeth had always shown the world, had always shown to her sister, masked a bitterness that went very deep. Had she somehow been responsible for that? She was appalled. No, she hadn’t done a thing. She was eighteen years old. She’d laughed and played, wept bitterly when her father had been killed on the Peninsula and her mother had died but a year later so needlessly, in the boating accident in the fall of 1811, but her grandfather had been there for her, and she’d accepted his love, his warmth, never realizing that Elizabeth saw herself standing on the outside. Grandfather loved both of them equally, surely he did.

  She struggled to understand her sister, understand her hatred, her defense of a man who didn’t deserve to be her husband. But she’d wanted him because she wanted to rule, to order. She said slowly, “Elizabeth, surely you cannot mean that you married Trevor only so that you would be the Countess of Monmouth. No, you would not have done that.”

  The bleak five years since her eighteenth birthday and her one season in London stretched out endlessly in Elizabeth’s mind. Five years watching this precocious child grow into womanhood. She said with deadly calm, “I have done exactly what I intended to do, and you, Sabrina, never had, and never will have, anything to say in the matter. My feelings for Trevor are none of your affair. He is my husband and he shall remain my husband, his reputation unsullied by you, you filthy little liar.”

  Sabrina felt a knot of fear clog her throat. “Elizabeth, I’m not lying! Trevor threatened to come to me again, even to my own room. He said he would hurt me if I locked my door against him. He hurt me this time, Elizabeth. He’s not natural. Surely most men aren’t like he is.”

  “Shut up!”

  Sabrina stared at her sister’s set face. She’d never felt so helpless in her life. “I had never thought that you so disliked me, Elizabeth,” she said finally, striving to sort through all the ugly words her sister had hurled at her. “I have never done anything to harm you. I can’t believe that my loving grandfather made him care for you less. Don’t turn away from me, Elizabeth. You are my sister and I seek only to protect you and me from that terrible
man.”

  “Get out, Sabrina. I will hear no more of your pathetic lies.”

  Sabrina drew herself up to her full height. “If you will not believe me, then I must go to Grandfather. I can’t simply ignore what Trevor has threatened to do to me. He said he would come to my bedchamber. I won’t wait like a whimpering helpless female for him to come and abuse me.” She turned on her heel and walked quickly to the door.

  Elizabeth yelled, “If you have the audacity to carry your filth to Grandfather, I shall tell him that in your jealousy, you threw yourself at Trevor and that he repulsed you. Think, you little wretch, just think of what would happen. Everyone would revile you. You would disgrace your family. You would disgrace Grandfather. Know that you will get no quarter from me. Just what do you think Grandfather would think then, Sabrina?”

  Sabrina felt suddenly like a hated stranger in her own home. She stood uncertainly at the door, staring bleakly back at her sister.

  Elizabeth pursed her thin lips and said more calmly, her words all the more deadly because of their emotionless calm, “No, Grandfather wouldn’t believe you. You know, of course, what Trevor would say. Go ahead, Sabrina, go to him. See how quickly he loses his doting affection for you. Trevor is his heir, you fool. He would take the side of his heir because through Trevor he gains his own immortality and the immortality of his precious line. Mayhap such a filthy story would topple him into his grave. Would you like Grandfather’s death on your hands? Well, would you?”

  Sabrina remembered Trevor’s threat. No, surely he wouldn’t try to kill Grandfather. But what would happen? She shook her head back and forth, unable to find words. Her face ached where Trevor had struck her. She saw the stain on his breeches and felt such hatred she was certain she’d choke on it.

  “You know, Sabrina,” Elizabeth continued, carefully watching her sister, “there is really nothing left for you here. If indeed you are so concerned about my husband’s attentions toward you, perhaps it would be better if you left.” She saw wrenching fear in her sister’s vivid eyes, an incredible violet that everyone so admired, and turned abruptly away from her. She’d said enough. She wanted to smile, but she didn’t. She’d nearly won. “Leave me,” she said, her voice as cold as the winter wind that was beginning to howl against the windows. A storm was coming. A very bad storm. “Leave me. I do not wish to look on your face again.”

  Sabrina licked away a tear that had fallen down her cheek onto her upper lip. She tried to talk some purpose into herself, to force herself to bury for the moment at least the terrible memories of the previous afternoon. She’d spent the night in a large cupboard in the old nursery, waking at dawn, dressing, and sneaking to the stables. Had it just been the day before that Trevor had attacked her? It seemed like a week had passed, a week alone in the dizzying cold, watching the sky darken and fill with snow. She pressed her hand against her chest and felt hope at the thought of the three pounds tucked safely inside her chemise. It would be enough to buy a stage ticket to London, to her aunt Barresford. It would be dark soon. She didn’t have much time. She couldn’t press against this tree forever.

  She pushed back a heavy lock of hair that had come loose over her forehead, and looked about her. Surely she had walked in the right direction. It could not be too much farther to Borhamwood and the warmth and safety of the Raven Inn.

  She felt the searing pain in her chest again, and doubled over, hugging herself tightly. She could hear her own raspy breathing and admitted to herself for the first time that she was ill. “I don’t want to die,” she said, the words freezing on her lips. “I won’t die.”

  She scrambled through the brambles, each tree becoming a goal to reach and pass. She felt a surge of hope, for she was certain that the trees were thinning ahead of her. Yes, that was an opening. She was nearly there, nearly free of the forest, nearly to Borhamwood.

  Suddenly she went flying, stumbling on a large root that stuck up through the moss on the forest floor. She sprawled facedown on the frozen ground, stunned by the force of her fall. She felt curiously warmed by the thick moss.

  She would remain here just a minute or two longer. She sighed. She would rest just a little while longer, then she would feel strong again. She would be so strong she would run to Borhamwood.

  4

  “Bloody hell.”

  Phillip Edmund Mercerault, Viscount Derencourt, drew up his bay mare, Tasha, gazed about him at the forbidding wilderness, and continued his cursing. Damn Charles anyway. He liked Charles, truly he did, had known him for more years than either of them could remember, but this was too much. The directions he’d provided to reach his house, Moreland, had landed Phillip in the middle of a forest in the middle of a snowstorm that could very probably become a blizzard. Phillip would shoot him when he next saw Charles.

  If he next saw him.

  No, that was ridiculous. Tasha was strong and sound. He knew he was going east. He just had to get out of this damned forest soon. But he hadn’t seen a sign for a village called Borhamwood, there hadn’t even been a farmhouse at which he could stop and beg a cup of coffee to warm himself. Of course since this was a forest and not farmland, he supposed it made sense that no farmers were around. He cursed again. There hadn’t even been a ditch where he could get Tasha out of the snow, if for just a minute or two.

  He’d been a bloody fool to wave off his valet, Dambler, with his carriage and luggage. Dambler, despite all his lapses into martyrdom, had a nose for direction. It was uncanny, this ability, but unfortunately, at this point in the afternoon, Dambler was probably roasting his toes in front of a nice kitchen fire at Moreland. And here his master was—cold and hungry with only two changes of clothes in the soft leather valise strapped to Tasha’s saddle.

  What had ever possessed him? Hunting and Christmas festivities at Moreland. He wondered if he’d find his way there by Boxing Day.

  He patted Tasha’s glossy neck and gently dug his heels into her sides. He swallowed snow even as he said, “Come on, Tasha, if we stay here much longer, that damned Charles will find us here thawing out in the spring.”

  Surely he was riding east. He tried concentrating on his nose, the way Dambler told him he drew the various latitudes and longitudes into his being—through his nose—but all he got out of it was a sneeze.

  It was getting late. It would be dark soon. If he didn’t find his way to somewhere, he would be in big trouble. Tasha suddenly snorted, jerking her head left. To his left was a cottage nestled in a small hollow, carved out, it seemed to him, from the midst of the forest itself. He wheeled Tasha about, the thought of hot coffee scalding his lips making him forget that he wanted to bash Charles the next time he had him in the ring at Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Salon.

  No, it wasn’t a simple cottage. It was a two-story red brick hunting box, its facade covered with ivy dusted white by the snow. He swung off Tasha’s back in front of the columned entrance, stamped his cold feet, and thwacked the knocker loudly.

  No answer and no wonder. It was indeed a hunting box. The owner, whoever he was, wouldn’t return until spring. As he swung back into the saddle, he said, “Tasha, I promise you an extra bucket of oats if you get me to Moreland so that I may thrash Charles before dark.”

  Phillip groped with one gloved hand through the rich layer of his greatcoat to the watch in his waistcoat pocket. It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. He gazed apprehensively up at the snow, coming down more thickly now, and turned Tasha about again toward the narrow, rutted path. If he didn’t find his way out of here, he would return to the hunting box. He’d give himself another half hour, no more.

  Despite his fur-lined greatcoat, the swirling wind chilled him to his very bones. He shivered and lowered his head close to his mare’s neck.

  Snowflakes dusted the bridge of his nose when he chanced to look heavenward. He pulled his greatcoat more closely about his throat, pulled his scarf up nearly to his eyes, ducked his head closer to Tasha’s neck, and urged her on. At a fork in the pa
th, Phillip looked up again at the snow-filled sky. He had absolutely no notion of which direction to take. He drew a guinea from his waistcoat pocket, flipped it, and with a shrug turned Tasha to the path at his left. He wasn’t about to forget the direction of the hunting box. If the impossible happened, then he would return there.

  He grinned suddenly, imagining what his friends would be saying to him if they knew he was lost in the middle of a snowstorm in a forest in Yorkshire. He doubted he’d live it down for many a good year. He could just hear his long-time friend, Rohan Carrington, say in that amused drawl of his, “Well, Phillip, what is one to say? You can find your way all through Scotland, but when it comes to the backyard in Yorkshire, you lose yourself in a bloody blizzard.”

  And then there was Martine, his mistress. He could just see her lying there on her bed, wearing something frothy, something he could see through yet not really see through, something that would fill him with such lust that he wouldn’t, frankly, care if she laughed her head off.

  The snowfall became thicker, if that was possible. He couldn’t see the path beyond three or four feet ahead. Tasha quickened her pace.

  He kept his head pressed against Tasha’s neck. She would stay on the path. There was nothing more he could do.

  Except go back to that hunting box if they didn’t clear the forest soon, very soon. Say in the next ten minutes, maybe even nine minutes. He had a marvelous sense of timing, even Martine told him that. Yes, he knew the exact moment when she wanted him to do this and then do that. He was smiling as he pulled out his watch. Yes, he’d give it ten more minutes, then it was back to the hunting box.