A glimmer shone in his eyes, but his stance was rigid and he did not unlock his arms.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“About.”

“Where?”

Mrs. Polley bustled past them, apron full of eggs. “Dark gentlemen like to keep secrets. I’ve said so already.”

He looked after her as she wobbled down the path toward the house. “She has?”

“Oh, any number of times. She believes I must be warned repeatedly. I don’t know if that is because she thinks my memory is faulty or that she imagines my fear of you will increase with her repetition.” She touched his arm, he returned his gaze to her, and then she felt his shaking, a definite vibration of his body. “But—” She struggled to remain light. “But she needn’t repeat herself, because I am already terrified of you, of course.”

He drew away from her. “Of course.” He moved from the shed and to the path toward the house. The rain had slackened, but the sky was still thickly gray, and upon his cheeks rode a thin sheen of moisture.

“Are you ill, Mr. Yale?”

“In fact I am not perfectly well today, Miss Lucas.”

“Oh, no. You must have taken a chill from the road. Is that why you have stayed away today? You don’t wish to share it with us?”

“I am happy to report that this is not an illness any of you can contract.” He said this grimly.

“I don’t understand.”

He stopped, turned to her, and strain showed upon his brow. “It is a temporary state, not one that you need concern yourself over. Do leave it at that, if you will.”

“You look very serious.”

“There is probably a reason for that.”

“I am supposed to take that as a hint, but instead I will now pretend to be remarkably obtuse. I was worried about you, being gone all day.”

“I am well able to take care of myself, Miss Lucas.”

“We are quite remote here, in the middle of nowhere. I only wondered where you had gone.”

This seemed to give him pause. “Were you afraid here? Without me?”

“Not afraid. It’s very peaceful here. And frankly after the constant excitement I don’t mind a day of rest in such a pleasant place. I was only worried about you.”

“Then you needn’t worry further. I will not leave again.”

“Perhaps you ought to sleep.”

“Excellent idea.”

But he did not. He attended her to the kitchen where she assisted Mrs. Polley with preparations for dinner while Owen blithely regaled them with stories of the ironworks that made Diantha’s hair stand on end.

“When my sister took the fever, they put her in the sick house. She caught the croup. Didn’t last two days after that.” His shoulders drooped.

“Those places aren’t fit for animals.” Mrs. Polley scowled. “Best you’ve found my mistress here to take you in.”

Diantha chopped herbs without finesse and cracked eggs into a bowl and was lucky she did not cut off her fingers with the knife or spill their dinner onto the floor. She had no attention for anything but the gentleman. He also watched her, shadows beneath his eyes and hands in his pockets. But he seemed unusually restless.

They ate picnic style, without ceremony in the kitchen. Owen consumed half the platter of eggs, bread, and jam the moment Mrs. Polley set it on the table. Diantha made a plate for Mr. Yale and, remarkably, he ate. Then, with a “Thank you” to Mrs. Polley and a bow to her, he left.

Diantha gobbled up the remainder of her food and went after him. She found him in the parlor, facing the hearth where the peat simmered, hands thrust deeply into his pockets, his eyes closed. He opened them as she entered and turned to her.

“Forgive my hasty exit, if you will, Miss Lucas.”

“You are truly ill.” She went toward him and he withdrew from her a step. She halted, her stomach turning over.

“I am less than comfortable, it is true.” His jaw seemed very tight.

“Perhaps you have taken Mrs. Polley’s chill.”

“Now you are repeating yourself.”

“Well, I may be, because although I’d thought before that I had a lot of courage, I may not after all, for I cannot possibly allow you to be suffering some more serious, dreadful disease, because I do not wish to sit here helplessly in the wilds of Wales and watch you die.”

His brow lifted. “You have a fine flare for the dramatic, Miss Lucas. Usually dormant, admittedly. But when it animates it is truly impressive.”

She wrung her hands. “You are very frustrating to converse with sometimes. Tell me what is wrong with you.”

He looked toward the window. “Nothing that a few fingers of brandy would not put to rights. Ah, it has begun again to rain.”

“You look like you wish to say ‘fitting’ or something equally dispiriting.”

“Not at all. It is only that when one has spent a night outside in the rain without sleep, a night enjoyed within doors in a fire-heated room seems a vast luxury.” He smiled then, but barely, and his eyes held a peculiar look. The look of the predator again.

A shiver skipped up her spine. “You spent last night outside in the rain? After exhorting me to find a bedchamber in which to sleep?”

“I fully admit to being a hypocrite. Throw me in irons and bear me to the hangman’s noose, if you wish. I will be there soon in any case.” He said this last seemingly as an afterthought.

“Now who’s the nonsensical one? You are irrational. You should go to sleep.”

“Thank you, I will remain here. But you are welcome to go yourself.”

“It is only dusk.”

For a moment his eyes flashed bleakly, a shadow of desperation like that night in the hotel corridor in Knighton when he had touched her, that night that he did not remember because he had drunk too many spirits.

Then, abruptly, she understood. Or thought she did.

“But you won’t have a few fingers of brandy now,” she said slowly. “Or even one. Will you?”

His gaze shifted to her face but he said nothing.

“You have ceased drinking spirits, haven’t you? Altogether.”

“You—” He paused, and seemed to reconsider, then said only, “I have.”

“And it is making you ill.”

A moment’s silence, then: “Yes.”

Another silence stretched during which she was entirely unable to say the many things that rushed to her tongue. Her virtue and his honor were now tangled in a piteous mess.

“Because of what happened between us at the inn in Knighton,” she finally said.

“Because of that,” he replied.

Her unsteady hands found a chair and she lowered herself into it. “You should sit down.”

“I am comfortable standing.”

“You look about as comfortable as my sister Charity when my mother tried to marry her to Lord Savege. Before he married Serena, that is.”

A smile creased his delicious mouth. “I hadn’t heard that story.”

“They all keep it very quiet. It was one of the reasons my mother left, I think.” She could not look at him directly now. “She was disappointed in her high hopes for Charity.”

A pause. “And what of her hopes for you?”

“Oh, she had none to speak of for me. Charity is very beautiful and demure, of course.”

“Ah.”

He could not possibly understand, not this handsome gentleman, elegant and well mannered even when he was ill and in the impossible situation into which she had gotten him with her reckless quest and her brazen behavior.

“My father always said he would cease drinking spirits,” she said. “He did so once, but he didn’t last the sennight. I was very young, but I remember it because after several days when he wished to drink his whiskey again he told me to fetch him the bottle.”

“And did you?”

“I refused.” She shrugged. “I liked him better without the whiskey. He was more enjoyable to talk with. Not that day, of course. He was furious, and when my mother returned home she locked me in my bedchamber. Shortly after that my father became ill. My mother said he drank himself to an early grave.”

There was another very long silence then during which nothing stirred but muffled sounds from the kitchen and Ramses’ soft snores from the hearth rug.

“This is not the first time.”

Her breaths stilled. It seemed he would confide in her after all, this man who owned secrets she feared she could not hope to understand.

“How was it that time?” she asked. “Those times?”

“That time. Better than this. Considerably better.”

She took a big breath and stood up. “It goes against my feelings on the matter in general, but you should not do this. Not now, at least. If I promise not to—”

“No. Be still.”

“Be still?”

“Rather, as still as you are able.” It seemed that he wished to smile, but he looked remarkably poorly, for all his elegant cravat and coat and perfectly handsome face. His eyes were the worst, as though the hungry predator searched for something he could not find and the desperation was building even as they spoke.

“You look peculiar.” She moved a step toward him and this time he did not retreat. “You are thinking about taking me home again.” His mind must have gone where hers had. It would be so much easier for him if she simply weren’t his responsibility. Then he could do as he wished, go where he wished, drink whatever he chose without fear of her throwing herself at him. “I would be if I were you.”

“Then it is a good thing for you that you are not me.”

But she could not be satisfied with this, not when his gaze seemed now to consume her, each feature of her face at a time.

“Then what are you thinking about?”

His attention fixed on her mouth. “The . . .”

She could not breathe properly. “The . . . ?”

“I cannot stop thinking about”—his gaze rose to her eyes—“the cellar.”

She must be very stupid. “The cellar?”

He swallowed and she saw the rigid movement of his throat above his neck cloth. “Last night I emptied the bottles in the drawing room and the library, but . . .”

Oh. “But there is a wine cellar belowstairs, isn’t there?”

He nodded, a ripple of a shiver crossing his shoulders quite visibly. She had not really understood until this moment.

Now she did.

She set her hands on her hips. “Then we must empty those bottles as well.”

“No.”

“Do you want to give up on this, then, after all? It would be easier, of course, at least while I am demanding that you—”

“No.”

They looked at one another for a long moment.

He took a tight breath. “Down to the cellar it seems we must go.”

“I can do it alone,” she offered.

“No.”

“I really should tally the number of times you say that word to me.” Beginning with the moment he had stopped kissing her in the inn at Knighton, then had done so anyway. The moment that had led them here.

Chapter 14

As it happened, he was little help after all, except in keeping her company, and at least this way she could watch him and make certain he did not expire on the spot. The wine cellar was small and dark but remarkably dry and removed from the kitchen where Mrs. Polley had fallen asleep.

He leaned against the doorjamb and seemed more at ease. But he traced the path of liquid from each bottle into the drain with an increasingly feverish stare.

“The clarets must go first,” he murmured.

“Why? Are they the strongest?”

“God, no. I simply don’t care for claret.”

“Then we should empty them last.” She took up the nearest bottle of brandy and glanced over the racks stacked with bottles lying on their sides. “Uncorking each is something of a chore. I don’t know how butlers do this every day. My fingers are already beginning to blister.”

“Break the necks.” His voice was tight.

She did not look at him. She would beg him to go upstairs, but she knew he would not. He was a very strong man. He had borne with her for days already, after all, and now he was doing this. For her.

“Break them on what?”

“A rock.” He looked grim.

“Outside?”

“Outside.”

“In the rain?”

“On the side of the well.”

“The well? Then the water will be—”

“It is dry.”

“How do you know that?”

He stared at her, his eyes slightly glassy now.

“All right,” she mumbled. “But then I shall have to carry them all out there.”

“I will help.”

She donned her cloak and he his coat, and armful after armful they lugged the contents of the cellar—five score bottles in all—to the well beyond the kitchen door.