Effie saw herself as the final arbiter of correct social behavior in the household. She had firmly established herself as guide and guardian in such matters, although Harriet frequently reminded her there was nothing of note to guard them against here in Upper Biddleton.
"Like I said, St. Justin ain"t no gentleman. He"s a cruel, heartless, lecherous beast." Mrs. Stone wiped her eyes with the back of her bony red hand. "The earl"s oldest son was killed shortly afore Miss Deirdre realized she was pregnant. He went riding near the cliffs not far from here and they say his horse threw him. Went over the edge and plunged into the sea. Broke his neck, he did. An accident, or so they said. But folks had their doubts later when they saw how the new viscount treated Miss Deirdre."
"How awful." Felicity was still wide-eyed.
"As soon as Gideon Westbrook knew he was going to get the t.i.tle, he broke off the engagement to Miss Deirdre."
"No. Did he really?" Felicity exclaimed.
Mrs. Stone nodded mournfully. "Abandoned her straightaway, he did, even though he knew she was carrying his babe. Told her that now that he was Viscount St. Justin and would someday be the Earl of Hardcastle, he could do better than a poor rector"s daughter."
"Good grief." Harriet recalled the calculating intelligence in Gideon"s tawny gaze. Now that she considered the matter, she had to admit it was difficult to see him as one who would be swayed by the gentler emotions, at least not if he had other goals in mind. There was something quite unyielding about the man. She shivered. "You say he knew Deirdre was with child?"
"Yes, d.a.m.n his soul. He knew it." Mrs. Stone"s hands clenched and unclenched. "I sat up with her the night she realized she was carrying the babe. I held her while she cried all night, and in the morning she went to see him. And when she came back from the great house, I knew by the look on her face that he had cast her aside." The tears welled up in Mrs. Stone"s eyes and trickled down her broad cheeks.
"What happened next?" Felicity asked in a stunned little voice.
"Miss Deirdre went into the study, took her father"s pistol down from the wall, and shot herself. "Twas the Reverend Rushton, poor man, who found her."
"That poor, ill-fated child," Aunt Effie whispered. "If only she had been more cautious. If only she had had a care for her reputation and not put her trust in a gentleman. You will remember this story when you get to London, won"t you, Felicity, dear?"
"Yes, Aunt Effie. I"m not likely to forget it." Felicity appeared genuinely impressed by the harrowing tale.
"My G.o.d," Harriet murmured. "It is all so unbelievable." She glanced into the fossil-littered study and swallowed hard as she remembered the way St. Justin had leaned over her desk and put his powerful hand under her chin. "Mrs. Stone, are you absolutely certain of your facts?"
"Absolutely. If yer papa was still alive, he would tell ye "tis all true. He knew what had happened to the Reverend Rushton"s daughter, right enough. But he kept his silence about it because he did not think it a proper sort of subject to be discussed in front of you two young ladies. When he told me I could continue in my post, he warned me I wasn"t to speak of it. I"ve kept my silence, I have. But I cannot keep it any longer."
Aunt Effie nodded in agreement. "No, of course you could not, Mrs. Stone. Now that St. Justin has returned to the neighborhood, all decent young ladies must be on their guard."
"Ravished and abandoned." Felicity shook her head, awed. "Just imagine."
"Dreadful," Aunt Effie said. "Absolutely dreadful. Young ladies must be so very, very careful. Felicity, you are not to go out alone while the viscount is in the neighborhood. Do you understand?"
"Oh, rubbish." Felicity appealed to Harriet. "You are not going to keep me a prisoner in my own home just because St. Justin happens to be visiting in the district, are you?"
Harriet frowned. "No, of course not."
Aunt Effie grew stern. "Harriet, Felicity must be careful. Surely you see that."
Harriet looked up. "Felicity is a very level-headed female, Aunt Effie. She will not do anything foolish. Will you, Felicity?"
Felicity grinned. "And lose my chance for a Season in Town? You may be certain I am not such an idiot as that, Harriet."
Mrs. Stone"s mouth tightened. "St. Justin has a taste for beautiful young innocents, the great, ravening beast. And now that your papa is no longer around to protect you, Miss Felicity, you must be careful."
"Quite right," Aunt Effie agreed.
Harriet arched a brow. "I take it neither of you is as concerned for my reputation as you are for Felicity"s?"
Aunt Effie was immediately contrite. "Now, dear, you know it is not that. But you are nearly five-and-twenty, after all. And the sort of lecherous rake Mrs. Stone is describing does tend to go for young innocents."
"As opposed to old innocents such as myself," Harriet murmured. She ignored Felicity"s teasing grin. "Ah, well, I suppose you are correct, Aunt Effie. I am hardly in danger of being ravished by St. Justin." She paused. "I seem to recall telling him as much earlier."
"What on earth?" Aunt Effie stared at her.
"Never mind, Aunt Effie." Harriet started toward the open door of the study. "I am certain Felicity will keep her head and anything else that is of any importance to her should she happen to find herself in the company of Viscount St. Justin. She is no fool. Now if you will excuse me, I must finish some work."
Harriet made herself walk sedately into her small refuge and calmly close the door. Then, with a heartfelt groan, she sank into her chair, propped her elbows on the desk, and dropped her head into her hands. A deep shudder wracked her body.
It was not Felicity who was the fool, she decided grimly. It was she, Harriet, who had been the foolish one. She had summoned the Beast of Blackthorne Hall back to Upper Biddleton.
Chapter Three.
The thick gray fog that had rolled in from the sea during the night still clung tenaciously to the sh.o.r.e at ten o"clock the next morning. Harriet could not see more than a few feet in front of her as she made her way down the cliff path to the beach. She wondered if Gideon would keep the appointment she had set up for them to view the thieves" cavern.
Harriet also wondered uneasily if she truly wanted him to keep the appointment. She had lain awake most of the night worrying that she had made a dreadful mistake in sending the fateful letter to the notorious viscount.
Her st.u.r.dy leather half boots skidded on some pebbles as she hurried down the steep path. Harriet took a firmer grip on her small bag of tools and reached out with her free hand to balance herself against a boulder.
The path down the cliffs was safe enough if one was familiar with it, but there were some tricky patches. Harriet wished she could wear breeches when she went out to hunt fossils, but she knew Aunt Effie would collapse in shock if the notion was even casually put forth. Harriet tried to humor her aunt insofar as it was possible.
She knew Aunt Effie was opposed to the whole matter of fossil hunting in the first place. Effie considered it an unseemly occupation for a young woman and could not comprehend why Harriet was so pa.s.sionately devoted to her interest. Harriet did not want to alarm the older woman any further by pursuing her fossils in a pair of breeches.
Heavy tendrils of mist coiled around Harriet as she reached the bottom of the path and paused to adjust the weight of the bag she carried. She could hear the waves lapping at the sh.o.r.e, but she could not see them in the dense fog. The damp chill seeped through the heavy wool of her shabby dark brown pelisse.
Even if Gideon did put in an appearance this morning, he probably would not be able to find her in this fog, Harriet thought. She turned and started along the beach at the base of the cliffs. The tide was out, but the sand was still damp. When the tide was in, there was no beach visible along this stretch at all. The seawaters lapped against the cliffs at high tide, flooding the lower caves and pa.s.sageways.
Once or twice Harriet had made the mistake of lingering too long in her explorations inside the caves and had very nearly been trapped by the incoming tide. Memories of those occasions still haunted her and caused her to time her trips into the caverns with great care.
She walked slowly along the base of the cliffs, searching for footprints in the sand. If Gideon had come this way a few minutes ahead of her she would surely be able to distinguish the imprint his huge boots would leave. Again she questioned the wisdom of what she had done.
In summoning Gideon back to Upper Biddleton she had obviously gotten more than she had bargained for.
On the other hand, Harriet told herself bracingly, something had to be done about the ring of thieves who were using her precious caves as a storage facility. She could not allow them to continue on as they were now. She simply had to be free to explore that particular cavern.
There was no telling what excellent fossils were waiting to be discovered in that underground chamber. Furthermore, Harriet reminded herself, the longer she allowed the villains to use the cave, the graver the risk that one of them might be shrewd enough to start digging for fossils himself. He might find something interesting and mention it to someone else, who might just mention it to another collector. Upper Biddleton might be overrun with fossil hunters.
It was unthinkable. The bones waiting to be discovered in these caves belonged to her.
Other collectors had explored the caves of Upper Biddleton in the past, of course, but they had all given up the search after finding nothing more interesting than a few fossil fish and some sh.e.l.ls. But Harriet had gone deeper than anyone else and she sensed there were important discoveries waiting to be made. She had to find out what secrets lay in the stone.
No, there was no choice but to proceed along her present course, Harriet decided. She needed someone powerful and clever to help her get rid of the thieves. What did it matter if Gideon was a dangerous rogue and a blackguard? What better way to handle the thieves than to set the infamous Beast of Blackthorne Hall on them?
Serve them right.
At that moment the fog seemed to swirl around her in a slightly altered pattern. Harriet halted abruptly, aware that she was no longer alone on the beach. Something was making the hair on the nape of her neck stir. She whirled around and saw Gideon materialize out of the mist. He walked toward her.
"Good morning, Miss Pomeroy." His voice was as deep as the roar of the sea. "I had a feeling you would not be deterred by the fog."
"Good morning, my lord." Harriet steadied her nerves as she watched him stride forward across the damp, packed sand. It seemed to her overwrought imagination that he was emerging from the mist like a demon beast moving through the smoke of h.e.l.l. He was even larger than she remembered.
He was wearing black boots, black gloves, and a black, heavily caped greatcoat with a high collar that framed his scarred face. His black hair was bare and it glistened with morning mist.
"As you can see, I have obeyed your command yet again." Gideon smiled with faint irony as he came to a halt and stood looking down at her. "1 must watch this tendency to jump to do your bidding, Miss Pomeroy. I would not want it to become a habit."
Harriet drew herself up and managed a polite smile. "Have no fear, my lord. I am certain you are not likely to get in the habit of obeying others unless you happen to feel like doing so for your own purposes."
He dismissed that with a slight shrug of one large shoulder. "Who knows what a man will do when he is dealing with an interesting female?" His cold smile twisted his ruined face into a dangerous mask. "I await your next order, Miss Pomeroy."
Harriet swallowed and busied herself adjusting the weight of her c.u.mbersome bag. "I have brought along two lamps, my lord," she said quickly. "We shall need them inside the pa.s.sageway."
"Allow me." Gideon took the bag from her fingers. It dangled from his huge hand, seemingly weightless. "I shall deal with the equipment. Lead on, Miss Pomeroy. I am curious to see your cavern full of stolen goods."
"Yes. Of course. Right this way."" She turned and hurried forward through the mist.
"You do not seem quite so certain of yourself this morning, Miss Pomeroy." Gideon sounded amused as he stalked silently along behind her. "I suspect someone, probably the good Mrs. Stone, has given you a few lurid details about my past history here in Upper Biddleton?"
"Nonsense. I am not interested in your past, sir." Harriet made a desperate effort to keep her voice very cool and extremely firm. She did not dare look back over her shoulder as she hastened across the sand. "It is no concern of mine."
"In that case, I must warn you that you should never have summoned me in the first place," he murmured with silky menace. "I fear I cannot be separated from my past. Where I go, it goes. The fact that I am in line for an earldom is extremely useful in getting people to overlook my past on occasion, but there is no denying I cannot shake it entirely. Especially here in Upper Biddleton."
Harriet glanced quickly over her shoulder, frowning intently at the veiled emotion she sensed in his voice. "Does it bother you, my lord?"
"My past? Not particularly. I long ago learned to live with the fact that I am perceived as a fiend from the nether regions. To be perfectly frank, my reputation has its uses."
"Good heavens. What uses?" Harriet demanded.
His expression hardened. "It serves to keep me from being pestered by marriage-minded mamas, for one thing. They are extremely cautious about throwing their daughters in my path. They are terrified that I will shamelessly ravish their fledglings, have my wicked way with them, and then cast the poor things aside as soiled goods."
"Oh." Harriet swallowed.
"Which they would most certainly be," Gideon continued evenly. "Soiled, that is. It would be quite impossible to put a young girl back on the Marriage Mart after it got around that she had ruined herself with me."
"I see." Harriet coughed a bit to clear her throat and hurried forward a little faster. She could feel Gideon behind her, although she could not hear his footsteps on the packed sand. The very silence of his movement was unnerving because she was so vividly conscious of his size and presence. It was, indeed, like having a great beast on her heels.
"In addition to not pestering me with their young innocents," Gideon continued relentlessly, "not a single parent in recent memory has attempted to force me to make an offer by employing the old trick of accusing me of having compromised his daughter. Everyone knows such a ploy is highly unlikely to work."
"My lord, if this is your unsubtle way of warning me not to get any such notions, you may rest a.s.sured you are quite safe."
"I am well aware that I am safe enough, Miss Pomeroy. It is you who should exercise some caution."
Harriet had had enough. She came to a sudden halt and whirled around to confront him. She discovered he was almost on top of her and she took a quick step back. She scowled up at him. "Is it true, then? Did you cast aside the previous rector"s daughter after getting her with child?"
Gideon studied her gravely. "You are very curious for someone who professes no interest in my past."
"You are the one who insisted on bringing it up."
"So I did. I fear I could not resist. Not after it became obvious you had already heard the tale."
"Well?" she challenged after a taut moment. "Did you?"
Gideon quirked one heavy black brow and appeared to give the matter serious consideration. His eyes burned with a cold fire as he gazed down at Harriet. "The facts are exactly as they were no doubt related to you, Miss Pomeroy. My fiance was with child. I knew it when I ended the engagement. She apparently went home and shot herself."
Harriet gasped and recoiled another step. She forgot all about the cavern full of stolen goods. "I do not believe it."
"Thank you, Miss Pomeroy." He inclined his head with mocking politeness. "But I a.s.sure you that everyone else certainly does."
"Oh." Harriet recovered herself. "Yes. Well, as I said, it is no concern of mine." She spun about to hasten toward the cave entrance. Her face was flaming. She should have kept her mouth shut, she told herself furiously. The whole situation was unbelievably embarra.s.sing.
A few minutes later Harriet breathed a sigh of relief as she reached her goal. The dark opening in the cliff wall loomed dimly in the mist. If she had not known precisely where it was located she would have missed it in the fog.
"This is the entrance, my lord." Harriet halted and turned once more to face him. "The cavern the thieves are using lies some distance inside this pa.s.sageway."
Gideon gazed at the opening in the cliff for a moment r and then set down the bag he had carried. "I believe we will need the lamps now."
"Yes. One cannot see a thing once one is more than a few steps inside the entrance."
Harriet watched Gideon light the lamps. For all their size and power, his hands moved with an unexpected grace and deftness. When he held one of the lamps out to her, his eyes caught hers studying him. He smiled without any sign of real warmth. The scar on his face twisted evilly.
"Have you started to have a few second thoughts about going into the caves alone with me, Miss Pomeroy?"
She glowered at him and practically s.n.a.t.c.hed the lamp from his hand. "Of course not. Let us get on with it."
Harriet stepped through the narrow entrance and held the lamp aloft. Tendrils of fog had drifted into the cave and caused the lamp to throw strange shadows against the damp rock walls. She shivered and wondered why this pa.s.sage seemed so extraordinarily eerie and forbidding this morning. She reminded herself that this was certainly not the first time she had been alone in it.
It was the viscount"s presence that was making her nervous, she decided. She really must get a firm grasp on her imagination. Stick to the business at hand, she lectured herself silently.
Gideon came up behind her, moving with his noiseless, gliding tread. The glow of his lamp added to the bizarre shadows on the walls. He looked around, his face set in disapproving lines. "Have you been in the habit of entering these caves alone, Miss Pomeroy, or do you generally have someone accompany you?"
"When my father was alive, he was usually my companion. He was the one who instilled an interest in fossils in me, you see. He was always an avid collector and he took me with him on his explorations from the time I was old enough to walk. But since he was carried off by the fever, I have always gone exploring alone."
"I do not think it a particularly sound notion."
She slanted him a wary glance. "So you have said. But I a.s.sure you my father and I learned to explore caves long before we moved to Upper Biddleton. I am an expert. This way, my lord." She walked deeper into the cave, chillingly aware of Gideon hard on her heels. "I trust you are not one of those people who become unsettled in confined areas such as this?"
"I a.s.sure you, it takes a great deal to unsettle my nerves, Miss Pomeroy."
She swallowed. "Yes, well many people do have a problem in caves. But the pa.s.sage is actually quite comfortably wide, as you can see. It does not get much narrower than this even at its smallest point."
"Your notion of comfort is somewhat different than my own, Miss Pomeroy." Gideon"s tone was dry.
Harriet glanced back and saw that he was having to stoop and angle his ma.s.sive shoulders in order to get through the pa.s.sage. "You are rather large, are you not?"