Chapter 37
The castle stood gray and majestic on the horizon when Damien’s carriage trundled off the main road. For almost two miles the coachman had traveled a bumpy track enclosed on either side by sessile oaks. Emily vented a sigh of relief when at last they came to a halt. In the midst of a clearing sat a quaint half-timbered cottage that she adored on sight. Behind it a stream bubbled over a bed of sun-dappled stones.
“It’s perfect,” she said to Damien who, ever the romantic, responded, “Deptford uses it as a retreat when he suffers an attack of gout and needs to soak his sore foot in the stream. The water is damn near freezing, from what I understand.”
“What an enchanting image. I vow that one day you should sit down and record all the romance in your soul for the world to savor. I was about to discard all my clothing and splash about like a water nymph.”
His smile promised a sweet revenge. “I must have forgotten to mention it in the excitement since our first encounter, but you are forbidden to splash or frolic in the presence of anyone but me.”
“The same goes for you,” she said as she stepped down from the carriage, only to notice that it wasn’t Damien’s footman who had opened the door but another man with a flintlock musket on his shoulder.
She hung back until she noticed Damien nodding at the behemoth stranger. “It’s all right, Emily. He is a footman. One of us.”
“Does he know that?” she whispered, noting that the musket did not waver even after Damien’s nod of greeting.
“He knows. He’s only making sure that no one followed us off the road.”
Emily offered the enormous footman a smile, which he returned with a broad grin. Relieved that he was a friendly giant, she followed Damien to the cottage door. Another footman answered the earl’s quiet knock and escorted her and Damien to a small musty parlor. There two men sat playing cards at a lamplit game table. The closely drawn curtains allowed no other light into the room.
The elder of the players half rose from his chair to acknowledge Damien. His unkempt gray hair and long lawn shirt made Emily think of an old buccaneer. His leathery face crinkled as he spoke to Damien. “I was a fool not to take your advice, Shalcross. I trust you did not meet our enemies on your travels here. I appreciate the inconvenience I’ve caused you. I know you were not supposed to arrive until the party formally began.”
“I might have suggested you hide out here if you’d trusted me,” Damien said. “I would even have arrived earlier, but then I had a lady to court and a wedding to attend. Lord Deptford, this is Emily Rowland Boscastle, my wife.”
“Lady Shalcross,” the viscount said, his eyes bright with mischief. “I am honored to make your acquaintance. But if you will pardon me for asking, how did a woman who looks like an angel end up with your devil of a husband?”
Emily realized that the viscount was full of flattery, but she welcomed the compliment all the same. And Damien? She waited in suspense for his answer.
“An angel she is indeed,” he said, and caught her wrist to hold her at his side. “It is a wonder that her wings stopped fluttering long enough for me to lead her to the altar.”
The viscount looked from Damien to Emily in amusement. “Did you have to chase her there?”
“Well, it was a—”
“—whirlwind courtship,” Emily said, sparing Damien an explanation that might embarrass either of them. “We didn’t know each other except through letters before the wedding. I’m afraid we are both guilty of misrepresentation.”
“Well, ‘marry in haste, repent at leisure.’ You must have fallen head over heels, Shalcross, that you couldn’t wait to marry her until the conspiracy was crushed. But, then, I suppose you could not bear to be parted from each other. I notice your hand is wrapped like a padlock over her wrist. Are you still afraid that she’ll run away?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Emily said.
The viscount nodded in approval. “Good. Because your husband tried to warn me repeatedly that my life is at risk, and if the conspirators guessed his identity, then you might become their enemy by association. Now, please let us sit for tea so that I can make amends for not cooperating as I should have done.”
Damien took Emily to a wood-framed settle that had been drawn far from the window. It wasn’t her place to explain that this marriage was anything but a love match. Except on her part. She was afraid to admit to her husband that he had stolen her heart. She hoped only that he would protect it as he did her physical person. But it was nothing she would undo—he was everything a man should be and more. Honorable, heroic. As seductive as sin.
She sat, drawn back to the moment by the sound of his voice. He had diverted the conversation to the original purpose of this meeting.
“What happened during the hunting party?”
Viscount Deptford took the chair opposite the settle. “We had only set out when I reached the border of the woods and heard what I thought to be thunder.”
“You heard a loud noise,” Damien said, listening intently.
“I did not react at first. The dogs set up a furious barking. The stream running over the rocks made conversation impossible. Naturally none of the gentlemen were about to let a little rain ruin their sport. As we charged on through the woods I heard again what sounded like a deafening thunderclap above the trees. This time I realized it was not a storm.”
“How did you know?” Damien asked.
“There was another shot. I was pushed off my horse by Hamm before I could warn the others.”
“You were hunting for-– Did you say it was ham?” Emily asked, trying to picture this.
“It wasn’t a ham,” Damien said. “It was Hamm, my cousin Lord Heath’s footman and bodyguard from London. That was who met us outside with the musket.”
The viscount snorted, motioning to the other card player, who might have been the butler, to leave the parlor. “Bodyguard? The man is huge enough to shelter a small house. I was certain he had dislocated my shoulder when he pushed me down. Still, I wouldn’t be alive today without his intervention.”
Damien frowned, deep in thought. “And you have no idea who shot at you?”
The viscount glanced at Emily in concern. “Is this subject upsetting your wife? She’s quiet all of a sudden.”
“Are you all right, Emily?” Damien asked, turning to study her face.
She was touched by the worry in his eyes, but also surprised by it. Still, she refused to distract him from what must be done. He would puzzle this out until he identified the culprit. Fussing over her every moment would not help the cause.
“Yes.” she said. “I’m fine. But if this person has not been caught, who is to stop him from trying again?”
“I am,” Damien said, affirming what she had feared.
She lowered her gaze to hide her anxiety at his admission. She had known Damien would be gambling with his life, but now that the time for sacrifice came near she was not at all as complacent about it as she’d hoped to be. Yet he needed her to have faith in him. He needed her to believe he would win against his enemies. And she did. She believed in him with all her heart. But she didn’t want to consider what the cost would be. “Might this person still be at the castle?” she asked as an afterthought.
“Yes,” Damien and the viscount said simultaneously.
“It couldn’t have been an accident?” she asked in hesitation.
“One shot after another?” Damien shook his head. “No.”
“I wanted to believe that, too, Lady Shalcross,” the viscount said. “But it was no accident that put two pistol balls in the game wagon that traveled behind me. To be honest, I was convinced the threat to my life was an exaggeration. I no longer feel that way.”
“It was never the Crown’s intention that you serve as a decoy,” Damien said.
“It is damned insanity,” the viscount said with a gruff laugh. “But your life is in danger, too, I fear. You’re standing in the way of unprincipled men.”
“I’m hardly alone,” Damien said.
Emily felt her heart beating faster.
Both men lived in a world of plots and betrayals, a world she hadn’t really believed existed. Now it was her utmost hope that she and Damien could settle down in a village of farmhouses. She doubted, however, that when the time came, Damien would be content to trade his dangerous pursuits for domesticity.
How irrevocably he had changed her life. What if Camden had admitted in the fortune-telling tent that he loved her? What if he’d confessed that he was going to propose to her that night and hadn’t been able to find her at the party?
She might have shed her disguise on the spot and revealed herself to him. He might have fainted. He might have had second thoughts about marrying a woman who employed such devious tactics to wangle a proposal.
He had been her hero, the boy who had saved her a half-dozen or so wasp stings that she would have gladly suffered for his love. The most exciting event in his mind had been playing ghosts with his grandmother. She would have been invisible if Camden had chosen her. Invisible and buried in a small village’s society.
Damien, in comparison, had changed course to protect Emily from political zealots. She didn’t know him well enough to hazard a guess as to what he considered had been the highlight of his life. She was fairly certain that it had nothing to do with his grandmother.
But she could state with confidence that he had been the most exciting thing that had happened in her previously tepid existence.
? ? ?
Damien’s regrets about dragging Emily into his battle seemed to mount by the day. It had been one thing to promise her protection while they traveled together. It was another to take her to a castle where she might be caught in the conspiracy’s crossfire. Then again, he’d had little time to make other arrangements. What else could he have done with her?
She wouldn’t have been safe at Hatherwood. Nor could she have galloped off with Michael on his mission. Damien had done what he’d had to do. He shook off these thoughts and stretched out his legs, wondering how he had been excluded from Emily’s conversation with the viscount. Then he realized that she had drawn the eccentric old man out of his shell because it was easy to talk to Emily about anything. Treasonous plots, family affairs, and the astrolabe that she had noticed on the viscount’s whatnot table. She showed interest in the small matters that Damien took for granted.
The last woman in his life wouldn’t have known what an astrolabe was if one had hit her on the ear. She would have gone into hysterics if he’d even mentioned an assassination. Emily didn’t have to feign interest to be agreeable. She had a mind of her own, a mind receptive to knowledge.
If Damien weren’t careful, he might come to need her. And that was a possibility he had never considered. He had never needed anyone. He could not allow himself to be at her mercy. He glanced up to discover the viscount asking Emily if she had chosen a permanent home yet and discussing Damien’s preferences as if he were not there. He cleared his throat. They appeared not to hear him. In fact, the pair of them had started to laugh. He could have been sitting in the next room.
“Excuse me,” he said lightly. “If I am to be the subject of your hilarity, I insist that you let me in on the joke.”
Emily straightened in her chair like a chastised schoolgirl.
The viscount made no effort whatsoever to hide his mirth. “Sorry, Shalcross,” he said unsympathetically. “It’s just that your wife and I both realized we had met you when you were Sir Angus Morpeth. No disrespect intended, but you are half the man you used to be.”
Another laugh escaped Emily. “Thank goodness for that,” she said, braving a look at Damien.
The viscount chortled. “He looks a damn sight better than he did with all that red moss hanging from his chin.”
Damien refused to smile. “What a couple of ingrates you are. Poor Sir Angus left this world having done what he could to protect you, and this is the thanks you show him?”
Emily attempted to look mournful. “If you like, we could hold a memorial service for Sir Angus. I’m sure we’d have to invite the sheep whose fleece he sells.”
The viscount slapped his knee and burst into unrestrained laughter. Damien folded his arms across his stomach and stared at Emily, who belatedly added, “I’m afraid that I’m also guilty of misrepresentation. Damien did not know me well before our marriage.”
His eyes narrowed. “It would seem that I do not know you now.”
“All women are unfathomable, Shalcross,” the viscount said, as if he were Emily’s defender. “We shall never uncover their secrets, and that is how it should be. A woman is like a book, revealing herself one page at a time.”
Damien said nothing for several moments. He felt like the biggest spoilsport in all England. “Do either of you know what it feels like to wear iron padding? Or to grow a beard and dye it red every day?”
Emily opened her mouth to answer and then apparently reconsidered and subsided into silence.
“I’d no idea the subject touched a nerve, Shalcross,” the viscount said. “I’ve worn uncomfortable costumes to a masquerade.”
“Not for five weeks straight,” Damien said, his irritation eroding at the guilty look on his wife’s face. “Oh, bugger it all. Wearing disguises is essential in my work. Laugh if you like. I felt damn ridiculous in that costume, if you must know.”
“I thought you looked rather handsome,” Emily said in an overt effort to placate him.
“It was a convincing disguise,” the viscount added. “I’d no idea that Sir Angus was a fictitious character when we first met.”
Damien looked away from Emily to the window. “This isn’t the time to let personal issues distract us from our goal. I regret that it took an attempt on your life to make you realize that we are up against men dedicated to committing monstrous deeds. But I have to wonder why you didn’t believe those who warned you. Nor do I understand why you withheld evidence against the ring when your own existence was at stake.”
A shroud of heavy silence fell. The viscount seemed to age a decade as Damien awaited his answer. Emily looked down at her lap.
“My only son is one of the conspirators,” the viscount said at last. “To give evidence is to sign his death warrant. But I can no longer protect him or hope he will see the error of his ways. I can’t allow him to harm others for whatever warped reasons he believes are justification for his grudge against all authority.”
Damien shook his head. Of all the scenarios he had considered to explain the viscount’s resistance, this had never crossed his mind. Would Damien have gone to such lengths to conceal his own son’s crimes? He could not know. He prayed that he would never face such a test. Still, his child could be forming inside Emily as he contemplated the strength of family ties. Would he as a father put country before flesh and blood? How long had the viscount carried the secret?
He said, “I didn’t realize what personal sacrifice you would have to make by agreeing to cooperate with the Crown.”
“He will be hanged as a traitor.”
“Perhaps not,” Damien said. “If he has not committed prior crimes and can be stopped before he causes harm, there is still hope for his redemption.”