The Black Rose Read online

  For a moment Tess studied him, her eyes wild and unfocused. Then, shaking her head, she began to struggle against him. "You — you're hurting me!"

  Immediately Ravenhurst's fingers loosened, but he did not release her. "Think, damn it! It's important. If not for me, then do it for him! For your country. I'll get the man who did this, you may be certain of that, but I'll need your help, Tess!"

  The barely leashed violence in his voice made Tess blink, her eyes scouring his face. But she could not quite understand what he was saying. His voice seemed to be muffled, as if coming from a great distance away.

  Ravenhurst caught his breath sharply. When he spoke again, his voice was slow and very clear. "Tell me everything he told you."

  "I — he —" A shudder ran through her, and she squeezed her eyes closed.

  For an instant she seemed to catch the faint scent of lavender. Her mother's scent ...

  Blindly Tess shook her head, driving away the seductive comfort of that familiar smell. Her fingers touched the outline of the ring that Jack had given her, now worn securely on the middle finger of her right hand.

  I am not mad, she told herself fiercely. I am not mad.

  When her eyes opened again, their gray-green depths were blurred with tears, but cold and determined. "I'll tell you then. He said it was Ransley and one other. 'Trust no one,' he said. 'Watch for the—' " Her brow creased as she fought to remember Jack's last warning. " 'Watch for the wing.' Yes, I think that was what he said." She shook her head. "But it might have been 'ring.' It — it makes no sense."

  Ravenhurst's scowl told her he thought the same. "And he said nothing else?" His voice was harsh with disappointment, making him sharper than he meant to be.

  "Only one other thing." Tess's eyes were accusing. "You. He said you were not what you seemed. What did he mean?"

  Ravenhurst's lips twisted in a self-mocking smile. "Perhaps that I am someone you can trust, for all that you try to deny it. Perhaps that ..." He cursed long and low, biting back the words he would have said next. Too soon, he thought grimly. "One thing I assure you, the Fox will ride again. And he will not stop riding until I have the man behind this villainy. But first ..." Ravenhurst's fingers settled at Tess's chin, slowly tilting her face up to meet his gaze. "I must bury him, Tess. Later, I will find a priest ... my aunt will see to that, I think. But for now, where —"

  "In the white garden," she answered softly. "He would want that. It was the place she loved most. Yes, in her white garden ..." Her voice trailed away. She blinked suddenly, her eyes filling with tears as they searched Ravenhurst's face. "Thank you," she said simply.

  They were not the words he wished to hear, not even one tiny fraction of all he ached to hear her say. But they were enough.

  For now.

  "Do you have ..."

  "I'll find everything you need," Tess said softly, and then was gone.

  The eyes he turned on her back were dark and haunted, overflowing with the pain that Ravenhurst was usually so careful to hide.

  From everyone. Even from himself.

  * * * * *

  He came to tell her when it was done.

  She was still sitting where he had left her, in a shabby velvet armchair in the middle of the front salon, the room stark and strange with all its fine furniture long sold.

  How different the room had looked that night five years ago, Ravenhurst thought. Then candles had burned in their sconces and a row of ancestors had stared down arrogantly from their portraits on the silk-covered walls.

  How the proud have fallen, he thought. And wondered in the next instant if the words referred to Tess or to himself.

  A bar of silver slanted through the uncurtained window, the only light in this room of shadows.

  Tess's face, when he came to stand before her, was translucent and strangely unreadable. "One last favor," she whispered. Her hands trembled where they lay entwined on her lap.

  Ravenhurst's dark brow creased. A strange tension gripped him at the darkness gathering in her eyes.

  "You — you said I could trust you." For a moment Tess's voice broke, and then she continued in a breathless rush. "Prove it to me."

  She rose, her fingers reaching for his muscled shoulders, tentative at first, then bolder. There was a wildness in her face, a harsh torment that set flames alight in his smoky eyes.

  "Sweet God almighty —" Ravenhurst's breath fled in a harsh rush as her hands brushed the open skin at his neck.

  Fire. Torment on torment. Purest, drugging pleasure.

  "Now, Dane."

  Ravenhurst cursed darkly. He could not. It would be taking crudest advantage of her. It would be rankest danger. It would be ...

  Sweet and infinitely soft, he knew, feeling her lips brush the corded arch of his neck.

  He felt a savage tightening in his groin, knowing it would be nothing but raw pleasure and aching delight to love her now, after their bitter separation.

  Yes, unspeakable ecstasy to have her now, to bridge the chasm between them with wordless, unbreakable bonds.

  A shudder passed through him. Her fingers whispered over his chest, opening the first button at his neck. "Tess ..." he muttered hoarsely.

  As if in a dream, she nudged the first ivory circle free, then bent to the next, knowing she could not stop to think about what she was doing. It was a gamble that rested on nothing but an elusive memory.

  A gamble and something far more dangerous. But already the stirring in her blood made her unable to think of anything else.

  Don't do it! her bewildered mind cried, but her body urged her on, whispering a very different truth. Perhaps her body had always known that truth, even though her traitorous reason had fought to deny it.

  Now she remembered. Hours of torment and delight. Hours of trust and sharing.

  Two men. Really one?

  Calloused fingers gripped her wrist, holding her motionless.

  "Why —" With a curse, Ravenhurst cleared his dry throat and began again. "Why are you doing this, Tess?"

  Tess's eyes glowed, strange and catlike in the moonlit oval of her face. "Why? Do you truly need to ask me that?" Her voice held a hint of mockery. Very gently she slipped closer until their bodies brushed, the touch as faint and seductive as a lover's first kiss.

  "Stop it, Tess," Ravenhurst growled, but at her touch the fire in his loins raged out of control. He was aching with the need to drag her beneath him and fill her. Endlessly and savagely and with exquisite care.

  Until there were no more words. Until there were no questions and no damning answers.

  Above all, no lies.

  "Tell me," she whispered, her head thrown back, her hair a shimmering cloud around them.

  In the bar of moonlight the harsh, angular lines of Ravenhurst's face seemed chiseled from marble. He could not. He must not — not even now.

  Tess waited, deathly still.

  "Gwellan-karet."

  The words erupted between them with soft violence, hanging like a dagger in the taut, choking silence that filled the room.

  Tess laughed once, a ragged, keening sound. "Or perhaps, Andre, now that I know your black secret, you don't want me anymore?"

  Ravenhurst's rough fingers gripped her wrists, his touch brutal and yet strangely careful. "Gwerhez Vari," he muttered, dragging her against his chest. "Oh, I want you all right, bihan, and have since I first saw you hiding in the rose garden at Fairleigh five years ago, your eyes alive with green fire, your hair like a dark flame about your shoulders. Dear God, I've never stopped wanting you."

  His words pounded into Tess, blinding her beneath a mountainous wave of pain and raw betrayal. Up to the very last moment she had dared to hope she was wrong.

  But no longer.

  Her head fell back; wild, choked laughter flooded to her lips.

  "No, Tess," he muttered. "Don't."

  But she was beyond him now, and the darkness was worse than anything she had ever known in her days and nights of blindness. Then she had h
ad light, Andre's light, and the hope he had given her.

  "Andre Le Brix," she spat. "Captain and corsair. Just one more lie, on top of all the others. Dear God, you're no different from my — from the man who pretended to be my father!"

  "Not a lie," Ravenhurst muttered. "Frederick Dane Andre Jordan Le Brix St. Pierre. My mother was a Le Brix, from the Morbihan. The cottage was hers, Tess. And I never took another woman there. Only you." Urgency made his voice harsh.

  Familiar now, and dangerously dear, seduction in every syllable.

  Wild laughter shook Tess's slim shoulders. Even now he meant to convince her of his innocence, after shattering the last vestige of her hope, stripping away the years of her recovery in one ruthless stroke. In the end he had done just as the French corsair had threatened, she realized dimly.

  He had reached into her very soul and ripped the heart from her chest.

  It was his, Tess knew it now, to her bitter torment. Whether Dane or Andre, it made no difference. Her heart had always been his.

  Suddenly she exploded into movement, her face slick with tears that shimmered silver as she twisted, struggling, and fell full into the slanting bar of moonlight.

  "It wasn't enough to betray me once, was it? No, you had to repeat your perfidy. Filthy, bloody liar! No, a murderer, that's what you are, for you murdered Andre!"

  "Stop it, Tess. Andre still exists. He is one part of me, the voice of my youth, the joy of a captain at his helm. But you can't have him without me. That's the way of life, Tess: the good can't always be separated from the bad. That's what you can't accept, isn't it?"

  She did not answer, her eyes bottomless, dark with an infinity of pain. "It was all a sick game — a way to get back at me and have the answers you needed for your bloody Admiralty. Even if it" — her voice broke in a sob — "even if it meant betraying me with this gnawing torment of hope. Dear God, why did you teach me to hope again?"

  Unnoticed, there came a rustle of wings from the shadows nearby. A moment later Maximilian sailed from the gloom through the bar of moonlight, a blur of crimson and emerald as he skimmed Ravenhurst's head. The startled viscount ducked, cursing.

  Instantly Tess saw her chance and took it, yanking free of his hard grip and driving her knee wildly upward.

  Just as he had done that day in the kitchen, Ravenhurst bent double and toppled before her blow, driven gasping to the bare floor. Waves of agony ripped through his groin, but still he struggled to speak. "Damn it, Tess. Uhhhh. Wait —"

  "Too late," she cried wildly, her eyes silver with tears. "Andre — Dane, whichever name you chose to hide behind now, it makes no difference! You've betrayed me for the very last time. I'll see you get no other chance."

  His face harsh with strain, the viscount watched her sway, then turn unsteadily and stumble toward the door. "Wait ..." he managed to mutter hoarsely.

  But Tess did not, could not, wait. Her slippered feet swept from the room, their echoing rustle too soft to mask the wild sob that escaped her taut lips.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The moon was high, a pale sickle rocked on waves of cloud-foam as Tess turned up Mermaid Street. Numbly she noted that a damp fog had crept up from the marsh, loosing a sea of chill, ghostly mist that lapped over the cobblestones.

  She had taken Ravenhurst's horse without a second's hesitation, shattered in the wake of Jack's death and the terrible discovery of Andre's identity. Every angry drum of the hooves, every forward burst of those great legs mocked her.

  Too late, they seemed to chant. Too late. Too late.

  White-faced, she heard the rustle and press of unseen things behind her in the darkness.

  Oh yes, the demons were very close this night.

  Jem, the young hostler, might have been pardoned for feeling a rush of fear as she burst into the quiet stableyard a few minutes later, her hair a wild auburn tangle about her ghostly face, her eyes dark pools of pain, a Valkyrie herself.

  Already she knew what must be done, and that it must be soon.

  * * * * *

  Ten minutes later Tess threw the last garment into her old leather satchel and then jerked the fastening closed, praying that she could avoid meeting Ashley. Someday she might explain to him, but not tonight, while the jaws of Hell yawned open before her.

  Tonight she must think only of surviving. At whatever cost.

  "Miss Leighton?"

  Damn! Tess stiffened, not turning her head. The voice was soft, imperious, and entirely unfamiliar.

  "Please ... don't go. I — I have something to give you."

  "Go away," Tess said flatly.

  The voice went on determinedly, as if the speaker was afraid if she stopped she might never begin again. "It is something I have carried for five years, and all that time it has been destroying me," the woman whispered raggedly. "Please — you must take it."

  Something about the desperation in that aged voice penetrated Tess's haze of pain. Slowly, stiff with reluctance, she turned, frowning at the tiny, silver-haired woman standing so erect in the doorway. "Who are you? What do you want of me?" she asked tiredly.

  The Duchess of Cranford's face was gaunt with strain. "You know my nephew. Very well, I think." Her dark eyes probed Tess's face and beyond, deep into every corner of her anguished soul. "You might have been all that he needed. If only ..." Her hand emerged from the deep folds of her skirt, clutching an envelope, which she held out to Tess. "Yours. I know now how very cruelly I behaved in keeping it from you."

  Tess did not move, staring dumbly at that rectangle of vellum. So this was Ravenhurst's aunt, the Duchess of Cranford. Five years ago he had spoken of her with gruff, protective affection.

  The woman's hands twisted and untwisted at her waist. "Take it, please. Even now he does not know that I kept this letter from you. He sent it on the eve of Trafalgar, through an old friend of mine at the Admiralty. I knew it must be very important for him to take advantage of a family connection, something he always so stubbornly refused to do." Her frail hands trembled, and for a moment Tess feared the woman would faint.

  Quickly she moved forward, guided the duchess to a chair, and then poured her a glass of water at the side table. "Drink this. Your Grace," she added, after a moment's hesitation.

  The keen eyes rose, fixed on Tess's face.

  Lapis eyes — just like his. A shiver skittered down Tess's spine, bringing with it a wave of blinding pain.

  Slim, fragile fingers gripped Tess's arm. "He never knew, you must believe me. It was all my — my wretched interference. I thought it would make him stronger, safer in the conflict to come, if he thought everything was finished between you. Then there would be nothing to distract him and make him vulnerable. That is why I told him I had delivered his letter personally and watched as you tore it up, throwing the pieces in my face." Her eyes closed for a moment. "God help me, I thought it was the right thing to do. How I have regretted it ever since!"

  Tess's face paled. One more shock, after so many.

  The lapis eyes, so familiar to her now, flashed open and studied Tess pleadingly. "It changes everything, don't you see? He tried to contact you — to explain, to plan for a future he fervently wanted, in spite of all that had happened. Yes, my dear, he told me even about that. He was half mad that night, I think, and I'm afraid I could only counsel him to put you from his mind forever. It seems I have been nothing but a silly, interfering old fool." The duchess's eyes glazed with tears as she pressed the letter into Tess's hand. "Read it for yourself, my dear. Read it now, for he needs you — more than you'll ever know. He's lost everything else. Perhaps he is near to losing even himself."

  Tess's chest rose and fell unsteadily.

  Open it, a soft voice urged. The answer is there, everything you've ever hoped for. Read it.

  Her fingers tightened on the thick vellum envelope. She looked down and saw her name written in strong, slanting script as decisive and firm as the man who had penned it. Dane's handwriting, achingly familiar.

 
A tear hit the faded ink, smearing it to a gray puddle.

  Cruelly seductive, hope flared through her.

  With a little choked sob, Tess cast down the letter and shrank back, as if from the edge of Hell, more tempted than she had thought possible.

  "It can make no difference," she whispered. "Nothing can be changed. To hope now ... to feel again ..." She caught her lip between her teeth as a spasm of regret shook her. "Dear God, no more!"

  Catching up her satchel, she shrank back toward the door, each step costing her dearly, her face fierce with strain. "D-don't follow me. Don't — don't say anything more! It's — too late, don't you see? For all of us."

  Spinning about blindly, Tess barely noticed the woman standing just outside in the hall.

  So close she had come to losing him, the Frenchwoman thought, watching the auburn-haired beauty flee down the hall.

  Then Danielle's emerald eyes narrowed.

  But here was her chance, dropped into her very lap. She would not miss it, as this silly, stubborn English chit seemed so determined to do.

  Grim-faced, she dug her taloned fingers into her palms, pressing until tears sprang to her heavy-lidded eyes. Then, while the silver drops still shimmered there, she moved quickly forward into the quiet room.

  "Your Grace, forgive me," she began urgently, her hand at her breast. "I could wait no longer. I must speak or die ..." A moan trembled on her crimsoned lips. "Not for myself, vous comprenez? Not even for your nephew. But it is for the child that I come to beg your help. For our child."

  At the landing, where she had returned after leaving a note for Ashley, Tess froze, her face going deathly pale at the Frenchwoman's words.

  If she had had any doubts left, then those words put them to rest.

  Now there could be no going back.

  * * * * *

  A square of light flooded out from Lord Lennox's study as Tess reined in her horses an hour later. Swiftly she jumped down from her curricle and tossed over the reigns to a worried-looking Jem.