Page 7 of How to Tempt An Earl
In the end, it wasn’t the seductive niceties, the bath, the clothes, the food, the house or even those brown velvet eyes that made her decide. It was the simple words, ‘You’re safe here. More than safe, whoever you are. You don’t need to go back to him.’
She’d not been safe for years. The idea that she might be, could be, safe was more intoxicating than champagne to a woman who was alone and tired. Intoxicating enough that the words were out before she knew it.
‘My name is Celeste Sharpton. I’m the ward of Cabot Roan.’ She worried her lip and waited, waited for his vaunted promise of safety to disappear, waited for him to explode, waited for him to say he felt betrayed and that he’d let the enemy into his home. But the eruption didn’t come. There was only silence, punctuated by those dark eyes lingering on her while pieces fell into place behind them like a puzzle assembling itself.
When he did speak, it was not the rejection she’d expected. ‘I’m Kieran Parkhurst.’ A slow smile crossed his mouth. ‘I promised you a name for a name, did I not? Now you know I am a man of my word. If I say you’re safe here, you are.’ He poured more champagne, the summer night deepening around them. ‘Now we can have a real conversation. Bring your glass; let’s take a walk about the garden.’
She knew what came next: a game of questions. She took her glass in one hand and his arm with the other. She understood the reason they were leaving the table. He wanted complete privacy for this discussion…privacy for him or for her? He waited until they were on a gravel path, lit by tiny lanterns posted on rods that came out of the ground ankle-high, before launching his first question. ‘Why come forward now?’
‘Because I’d had enough, because I could and because I had to.’ She was honest enough to admit that if she hadn’t been suspected of eavesdropping the night she’d fled—an act of which she was absolutely guilty—she might not have found the courage to run, regardless of how much she’d wanted to. It had been the hardest decision she’d ever made to date. But it was perhaps also the most right.
‘Had to?’ he queried.
‘I’d been on my way to the music room for a shawl I’d left behind and Roan’s office door was ajar. I overheard him talking with our guests after supper. The temptation was too much to resist. They were discussing the Horsemen.’
The Horsemen were mentioned often in the Roan household. It was no secret Roan found them to be the bane of his existence, regular spoilers of his plans. She’d come to romanticise the idea of knowing there were four horsemen out in the world riding for good against evil. By the time she was nineteen, she’d turned them into something idealistic, born from the mind of a lonely young girl surrounded by corruption in which she was an unwilling part. How many nights had she gone to bed wishing the Horsemen would rescue her, before she’d realised she would have to make her own rescue?
She chose her next words carefully. ‘They were toasting the hopeful demise of one of the Horsemen.’ She watched his strong jaw tighten; a tic jumped in his cheek. ‘Then they vowed to bring down the rest of you because of Amesbury’s death.’ She’d met the blond Duke once. She was not sorry he was dead. ‘Then Roan said he was going himself, that he wanted to be the one to pull the trigger.’ That was when a servant had come round the corner and seen her in the hallway. She’d moved on quickly but the servants were all loyal to Roan—frightened into it, but loyal, nonetheless. Her presence would be noted.
‘So, you just left, to warn us? Three men you don’t know?’ He knew how to probe, how to hunt motives.
‘Would you do less?’ she challenged. ‘They were laughing over the death of a Horseman, over the death of a human being. Death is not laughable. Deliberately taking a life is not laughable. It angered me. It reminded me that I was, in my own way, complicit in such behaviour if I stayed, if I did nothing.’
It had galvanised her into action along with the need to see to her own safety. Roan took punishment seriously and she knew its power for maintaining conformity among his ranks empirically.
‘I left for myself as well. I’d been wanting to leave for a while. I simply hadn’t been brave enough.’ She’d been paralysed by fear of failure and what would await her should her escape not be successful. Escapes were a sign of disloyalty. She’d failed a loyalty test to Roan before. She’d not been brave enough to face the consequences again. Fear had kept her rooted in place until that night when the need to protect herself had collided with the need to protect others.
Celeste let her fingers trail over leaves, a sweet fragrance releasing into the summer night. ‘Sometimes we can do for others what we can’t do for ourselves.’
‘And now here you are.’ Kieran was studying her intently, no doubt turning over each word in his sharp mind, mining each of them for more, reading between the lines in his search for understanding. ‘Is that the only secret you’ve come this far to impart?’
She’d not expected that. ‘Why do you think there’s more?’ But it was a weak defence to answer a question with a question.
He finished his glass. ‘Because you were his ward. You lived in his house at least part of the time. And because Roan coming after us is not entirely a surprise.’
‘Butwhen, and that he is coming in person, most certainly is,’ she countered. She did not like him dismissing her warning as inconsequential.
‘Still, it’s a long way to come to tell us something we could guess. We already knew he was behind the bargain for arms,’ Kieran countered gently. ‘But, as you say, you also came for yourself.’
She faced him in the moonlight, letting him have full view of her seriousness. ‘Yes, I also came for myself. And I would go even further still to ensure my safety. If you’ve never been unsafe, you cannot possibly know how integral it is to one’s well-being, one’s ability to function, to live.’ She’d not even been safe with her lover, David, whom she’d thought would protect her unto death. She’d not known how to read men in those days. She was more cautious and more astute now. She understood what motivated them, that for them love was not a prized emotion to feel but a tool to wield.
He gave a nod of contrition. ‘My apologies. I did not mean to imply otherwise.’
No, but he’d certainly sensed there was more to tell, and his instincts had been right. But those things veered into the personal and she was not going to go down that path tonight.
‘I think there have been enough questions for one night,’ she said quickly when she saw he might ask another. ‘If you don’t mind, I would like to retire.’ She wondered if the card tables in the drawing room were full of men with secrets waiting to be revealed along with their hands.
He smiled as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘I’ll see you up.’ It was guardianship disguised as gallantry. He didn’t want her roaming the house on the way to her chambers. Fine; she would have other chances to have a look around, to work out Kieran Parkhurst. Tonight, she would allow herself the simple joys of a clean white nightgown and slipping between fresh sheets with a summer breeze ruffling the curtains. For tonight, she would be safe, and that would be enough.
Chapter Four
Aname had been enough, for now. Kieran sat across from Luce in front of the cold fire in the study at the back of the house, sipping brandies and mulling over the events of the day. Or, more precisely, the events of the last thirty-six hours, which had been hectic and, in their own way, life-changing. His glance strayed to the big desk that dominated the room—the desk from which Caine had spent years presiding over the Horsemen. But Caine was married now, and happily so, even as that marriage fulfilled one of the requirements that went with the new titles: that the Horsemen marry within the year or the titles would revert to the Crown upon their deaths. Proof that nothing in this life was guaranteed.
‘You miss him.’ Luce nodded towards the empty desk.
‘I know he’s not gone. I know he’s a letter away. It’s the immediacy I miss, and his sureness. As annoying as it was at times, Caine was always right. Caine never doubted his instincts.’ Not the way he did. He had the ghost of Sofia to thank for that. Doubt was a different sort of scar from the one he carried near his liver.
‘Hewasannoying, and I am sure he will be again—only from Newmarket instead.’ Luce laughed and then sobered. ‘But I understand. It’s just us now.’ He fingered the short stem of his glass in a gesture that indicated he had something difficult to say. ‘It isusnow, Kieran. Youandme. I am here for you. Youcancount on me.’
