Chapter One
Dublin, Ireland, 1820
“I love you,” Freddie gasped against her neck as the final echoes of his most recent passion quivered away.
He thought he meant it, too, poor dear.
Maura bit back a sigh and stroked the sweat-dampened curls at the nape of his neck without comment.
What the Honorable Edmond “Freddie” Vaughn lacked in finesse as a lover he leveraged into energy and enthusiasm. Her body thrummed from his attentions as she tried to concentrate on the moment—on the man in her bed—not on the disastrous consequences awaiting any response she might fashion to his rash declaration.
There simply was no safe answer save the physical. She trailed her fingers across his spine and felt him shiver against her. The only safe answer.
Half an hour later she sat before her mirror brushing her hair while he dressed. Lamplight caressed his trim form as he slid finely tailored trousers up his legs and shrugged into his proper linen shirt. She should feel flattered by his claims of affection; Freddie had much to recommend him beyond his physique, social standing, and rapidly improved prospects. He possessed an honest innocence and sweet thoughtfulness she felt almost honor bound to protect, especially from his own intentions. He was so very young, for all he was her elder by two years. It was only natural for him to fancy himself in love with the first woman with whom he’d carried on a sustained liaison.
She should be flattered, but all she felt was dread.
His gaze caught hers in the mirror, and she stopped her brushing.
“Let me.” He stepped over to the dressing table and took the brush from her hand, laying his brocaded waistcoat and crumpled cravat next to her perfumes and powders. Gently, but firmly, he stroked the silver brush through her dark hair, keeping his gaze locked with hers in the mirror. The intimacy of the moment and the intensity of the look in his eyes hitched her breath despite her determination to remain indifferent to his appeal.
“I meant what I said.” His serious tone belied the tousled carelessness of his sandy brown hair. “I do love you. Marry me.”
He relinquished the hairbrush and slid his fingers into her hair, sculpting it back, tenderly tracing the curved rim of each ear before resting his hands on her shoulders. His hands looked dark against the ivory silk of her wrapper. The heat of his palms warmed her flesh while the fervor in his gaze chilled her.
He meant every word. Every socially damning word.
He might be young, but he was not so naïve as to be unaware his proposal pushed the boundaries required by their relationship, let alone the social reprisals he would subject himself to with such a choice. She couldn’t help wondering what might have happened had she been different. Freddie might be easily duped by a greedier woman than her.
“Freddie—” She took up his cravat, stood, and turned to look at him.
He put his finger on her lips to still her protest as he drew her to him. “I know you do not think I am sincere. Or that I know what I am saying. But I do, Maura.”
His lips brushed hers in a kiss both tender and demanding. A shiver of uncertainty raced through her. It would take too little effort to let herself pretend to love him back, to believe he might be able to mantle her in the respectability she had lost years ago, to leave this part of her life behind and start fresh.
But she knew better. The impossibility of that wish struck new pain nonetheless.
“You are so beautiful.” Freddie’s breath fanned her cheek. His hands drew her closer still. “Come back to bed. Let me show you how much I can offer you. Let me spend the night and make love to you until tomorrow dawns and your doubts are nothing but yesterday’s shadows.”
“Nonsense.” She forced a lightness to her tone she didn’t feel. “You have nothing to prove that you have not already shown me.”
None of her lovers ever spent the night. Not the whole night. It was a small measure of control and distance she strove to maintain.
She brushed her fingers over his cheek to take any sting out of her words, pushed back from the security of Freddie’s embrace, and flung the cravat about his collar. “You have always been generosity itself with both your attentions and your financial rewards.”
He frowned, raising a dark brow at her bald statement regarding the true nature of their arrangement. She persisted nonplussed, smiling up at him as she tried to make light of the tension tightening his shoulders. “As for spending the night, did you not tell me you were escorting your mama and younger sisters to your grandfather’s estate in the morning?”
“Damn tomorrow,” he offered with the enthusiasm of his youth. “I only wish to talk about us, about tonight. About what I have asked you. Let me stay.”
She twisted his cravat into the waterfall arrangement he preferred. “Her Ladyship will not take kindly to any tardiness caused by your dawdling in bed with your mistress until all hours.”
She looked up through her eyelashes and pulled her lips into a pout with just a hint of feigned regret. It was an expression that seldom failed to win her whatever she desired. “Could we not discuss this when you return to Dublin?”
“Ever the practical one, eh?” He hesitated a moment longer, as if searching for the magic words to make her acquiesce to his demand. Then he pressed his lips into a line and reached around her for his waistcoat. She took it from him and helped him get into it, then fastened the buttons for him. Her fingers smoothed the fabric over his tapered chest and firm abdomen.
“I will miss you,” she admitted, not certain whether she meant during his journey or when he eventually left her to continue on with his life.
He smiled then, a spark of hope lighting the depths of his soft brown eyes. “Mother plans to stay at Clancare Manor for the better part of next month, but I will be back within the next fortnight despite Grandfather’s threat to saddle me with the Barony of Stanhope.”
“So the
Ard Tiarna
plans to make a true lord of you.” She handed him the carved-gold studs for his shirt cuffs.
“The High Lord can try.” Freddie shrugged. “He wishes to saddle me with lands to tend and a wife to bear his next set of heirs as soon as he can manage. He thinks it is time I settled down and began my training to be his heir.”
“Perhaps he is right.” She concentrated on threading the end onto the studs for him as relief over the clue he had provided for this urgency soothed her anxiety.
Rebellion against the heightened expectations thrust on him, so unexpectedly and recently, explained his rash proposal. The immediacy of her dilemma eased. She had no need to act in his best interest and end things between them just yet. Freddie would come to his senses on his own, or his grandfather would pull in the reins soon enough.
“Only if I may have the wife of my choosing.” Freddie’s tone carried a note of resolution she’d never heard before. “Only if I can have you, Maura Fitzgerald.”
She had absolutely no idea what to say at that moment, so she released a long sigh.
Freddie cupped her cheek. “We’ll talk when I return. Perhaps you would do me the honor of hosting a few of my friends for an evening of cards and allow me to stay the night then.”
“Perhaps.” She nodded, promising nothing but not dashing his hopes altogether. She was not ready to bid final farewell to the new Lord Stanhope.
He smiled broadly. “That’s a heartening answer. Give me a smile and a sweet kiss to linger over while I am away.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him the soul-searing send-off he expected.
The Ogham stone’s edge grated against Garrett’s soul as much as his shoulder as he kept watch under the light of the full moon over Saint Marnock’s well across the grouse.
Even within the cloak of night this meeting site was too exposed, too risky. But his recent absence from the city had left him little choice. He’d had no time to investigate the possible reasons behind this late-night appointment or to change the location. Keeping it, or not, were his only options.
In the distance, high golden moonlight spilled over the ruins of a medieval church once dedicated to a Cistercian monk and the lone, silhouetted figure pacing the clearing between them. The only sound was the pounding of the Irish Sea on the distant strand. A hint of salt carried on the wind mingled with the taste of anticipation on his tongue.
Damnation, where was Sean?
So much depended on timing, on their both being in place. The rough edge of the ancient pillar’s incised lines scraped his ear and tore a hiss from him. The messages these lines were meant to convey were wrapped in almost as much mystery as the summons that had brought the Green Dragon and his most trusted lieutenant to this coastal meeting.
A high-pitched trilling sounded from what had once been the roofline of the church. The redstart’s song, at last. It was time to begin.
He followed the line of the dunes to the place he’d noted earlier as the best approach for crossing to the well unobserved. When the admiral turned and headed once more away from the view of Velvet Beach far below, the redstart’s call sounded again. The way was as clear as it ever would be. Garrett moved as quietly as he could toward the strangest meeting he’d ever been asked to attend.
Several minutes later, the admiral paced back toward the appointed spot, his gait uneven from the stiffness he bore in one battle-scarred leg and the walking stick he used to compensate.
“Halt where you are, sir.” Garrett gave the warning.
The older man stopped immediately.
A heavy cape swirled around his mast-straight figure clad in the dress breeches and high boots of a naval officer. Beneath his ancient tricorn hat, he did not appear either surprised by Garrett’s presence or concerned at being alone on a deserted hillside with the man considered by some to be one of Ireland’s most notorious criminals—the man he had spent nearly a year of his retirement trying to catch. After all, he’d summoned the Green Dragon to this spot.
“If you have assured yourself I am alone as promised, I would prefer speaking to you man to man, not man to shadow.” The crisp command of years spent on a quarterdeck came with unmistakable disdain.
Not for the first time, Garrett wondered what had forced this old salt to issue his urgent invitation. That much at least he was surely about to discover, along with the cost. There was always a cost where the English were concerned. He stepped away from the well. “Good evening, Admiral Fuller. State your business.”
For the stretch of several minutes, the admiral remained silent, assessing Garrett as his keenly observant gaze took in his mask, the rural simplicity of his attire, the brace of pistols in his belt, and the knife he held in his right hand. The only reaction Garrett could discern under the muted light and shadows supplied by the moon was a small tick in the admiral’s cheek.
He fought the urge to squirm under the mariner’s intense scrutiny. The sooner they could get their business concluded the better, but he had no intention of betraying his unease over this whole matter. Finally, the man’s chin raised ever so slightly, then dropped. He’d made up his mind.
“Why are we meeting, sir? Why here?” Garrett pressed.
“Why here?” The admiral looked over his shoulder at the church ruins. “Marnock was a sailor, you know. Not much is known about him save that he is rumored to have inspired your Brendan into making his own voyages of discovery. Brendan is supposed to have journeyed over the seas to the New World even before that Spanish fellow—”
“Italian,” Garrett corrected. He had no patience for delaying tactics.
“What was that?” The admiral turned back to face him.
“Columbus was Italian.”
“Quite right.” The Admiral nodded. “I knew you must possess a superior education. No common criminal could be so elusive based on luck alone.
Garrett’s impatience grew. “Admiral Fuller, you did not request this meeting to fish for clues regarding my identity, nor to exchange information on my country’s seafaring legends. Pray get to the point and explain your summons.”
The admiral pressed his lips together. “Right again. Still, this does not come easily to me.”
He paused, and several more moments passed as he clenched and unclenched his fist on the balled head of his walking stick. “This concerns my daughter.”
His daughter? Garrett knew of her. Jane Fuller made quite a splash in Dublin’s social circles when her widowed father retired last year and brought her with him to take up the Irish estates he’d been granted as recognition for his valor and long, distinguished career in the king’s navy.
“You have a daughter?” Garrett forced a casual, almost bored incredulity into his voice despite his heightened senses at the mention of Miss Fuller.
“Do not feign ignorance.” The admiral fixed him with a hard look. “She is my only child and she is missing. Went berry picking with her maid on my country lands and never returned.”
Awareness prickled Garrett’s spine. “How long?”
“Nearly two weeks.”
Two weeks? He’d been away from Dublin for a little more than a fortnight, yet there had not been a whisper of this on anyone’s lips upon his return. Something as salacious as the disappearance of an admiral’s daughter, no matter how discreetly handled, would have slipped out. Perhaps this was an elaborate trap after all. “Why seek me out and not the authorities?”
The admiral held his peace. The tic returned to his cheek. His fist continued to clench and unclench the head of his walking stick. The only sound was the rustle of the marram grass spikes along the dunes from the breeze rising off the water behind them.
Garrett puzzled a moment more over the admiral’s reluctance to continue, then expressed his thoughts aloud. “Unless you think she has run off with a beau and you want her back before the scandal breaks.”