Teresa Medeiros Read online

  Justin flicked a stray hair from the shoulder of his coat, then cast the ebony strands scattered around his chair a rueful glance. “I hope this is worth it. I feel naked.”

  “But you look splendid.”

  Justin jerked his coat straight, then reached to his chest for a watch that wasn’t there. He remembered the last time he had seen it, gleaming against the satin of Emily’s skin. A smile touched his lips. If things went well today, he would retrieve it soon enough.

  “What time is it, Penfeld?”

  The valet checked his own watch. “Eleven-oh-two, sir, approximately three minutes since you last asked.”

  “Eleven-oh-two? Oh, dear God.” He paced to the door, then stopped with his hand on the knob. “Is my tie crooked?”

  It wasn’t, but Penfeld dutifully straightened it. Justin marched to the door again, but faltered halfway there.

  His massive bed was swimming in a frivolous sea of lace and velvet. Sweeping away a dainty chintz frock, he sank down on the edge of the mattress and hooked his heels beneath the tester to keep from being sucked into a whirlpool of tiny silk gloves and mink muffs.

  “In a few minutes David’s daughter is going to walk through that front door. The first thing I must do is tell her the truth about her father.” He lifted his bleak gaze to Penfeld. “How will I find the courage?”

  “Shall I tell her, sir?”

  A rush of affection flooded Justin. Penfeld had been known to blanch with terror at the mere sight of a child. “No. But you are a treasure to offer.”

  Emboldened by Penfeld’s devotion, he jumped to his feet. “One more thing.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Justin gave him his warmest smile. “Merry Christmas, Penfeld.”

  The valet snapped to attention. “And a merry Christmas to you, too, sir.”

  As Justin strode down the corridor, a cheery whistle rose unbidden to his lips.

  “Good morning, Mary,” he called out, startling a shocked maid into dropping her load. Little polished boots and kid slippers scattered across the plush carpet. As he tripped down the stairs, one of his brothers-in-law passed him, his long nose tucked into a newspaper. “And a good day to you, Harvey,” Justin said.

  “Harold,” the man mumbled, turning the page.

  Justin stopped, frowned, then bounced back up three steps and peered into the man’s face. “Why, I’ll be damned, it is Harold, isn’t it!”

  As he hit the bottom step, he grinned to discover the first floor of the mansion in utter chaos. Servants scurried from room to room, polishing gas lamps, scrubbing the baseboards, and draping the banisters with fragrant garlands of cedar.

  A toothless cook thrust a tray of steaming biscuits under his nose. “Thirty dozen, Yer Grace, just as you asked for.”

  The delicious aroma filled his nostrils. “Mmmm. Superb, Gracie! Did you bake any with raisins? Children like raisins, don’t they?”

  “Mine allus did, sir.”

  He tweaked her plump cheek. “Twelve dozen more, then. Loaded with raisins.”

  “Aye, my lord. Right away.” She bobbed a curtsy and scampered back toward the kitchen.

  A disgruntled butler caught his elbow. “I really must protest, my lord. Someone has left a pony in the library.”

  Justin didn’t even slow. “Imagine that. Take him into the ballroom. He’ll have more room to frolic.”

  He came to a dead halt at the door of the drawing room, his eyes misting with wonder. Within the meager space of a day, the room had been transformed into a Christmas miracle. A towering tree crowned the corner, tickling his nose with the pungent scent of spruce. Edith perched on a ladder, lighting the tiny candles nestled in its boughs while his younger sisters, Lily and Millicent, giggled and offered her suggestions.

  “What did you do, brother?” Lily called out. “Buy out every toy store in London?”

  “Only the ones that would open on Christmas Eve.”

  The flash of his purse had opened more than one door, and there was hardly room to walk for all the toys. There were mechanical elephants and drum-beating bears, skipping ropes and miniature stoves, paints and charcoals, clockwork trains and even a cluttered dollhouse with a tiny grand piano. Two mechanical birds twittered from a golden cage hanging off one of the gasoliers.

  Justin had no idea what a girl of ten would enjoy, so he had bought one of everything—including sacks of glass marbles and a handsome regiment of iron Napoleon soldiers. Propped against the sleek spokes of a velocipede was a shiny sled of just the sort he had always wanted as a boy. His father had denied him, but he would deny David’s daughter nothing. He had already robbed her of too much in her life.

  His mother swept in and gave the room a droll inspection. “I’m glad to see you’re not planning on spoiling the child.”

  “Of course not. I shall rule her with a firm but gentle hand,” Justin replied, kissing her perfumed cheek.

  A grubby yardboy came pounding through the door, gasping for breath. “There’s a carriage comin’ this way, my lord. It looks to be the one.”

  Justin swallowed a jagged flare of panic. “Well done, lad.” He tossed the boy a coin, then threw back his head and bellowed, “Penfeld!”

  He took one last look around to reassure himself that everything was perfect. A dazzling array of dolls blanketed the top of the piano, pouting and simpering in yards of satin and lace. Out of their elegant depths protruded a grimy little porcelain nose. Seized by a strange compulsion, Justin rescued the doll he had found in Claire’s stark attic and set her on the music stand, arranging her stained skirts with painstaking care. Her haughty gaze seemed to mock him.

  Penfeld came bouncing into the room, pausing long enough to pick an invisible speck of lint from Justin’s trousers. As a plain black carriage clattered up the drive, word flew through the mansion and the drawing room filled.

  The servants lined up on one side, making last-second adjustments to their caps and aprons and trying not to crane their necks to look out the window. Justin’s sisters whispered together on the other side, backed by their stalwart husbands and the indomitable duchess.

  The air quivered with a nervous hush as Justin took his place at the foot of the handsome tree.

  When Penfeld tried to slip away and join the servants, Justin clutched his arm. “Stay, please,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “You can catch me if I faint.”

  They all watched through the windows as the driver threw open the carriage door. A bony hand protruded and Justin stiffened as Amelia Winters climbed out. His only regret lay in having to pay her the reward he had offered. It was her perverse good fortune that the child had returned to the only home she had known, however lacking in care and comfort it might have been.

  The driver cast the house a surly look, and Justin recognized him as the same lad he had met at the seminary. His steps were hampered by a definite limp, and even from this distance Justin could see the mottled bruise blacking one of his eyes.

  Justin’s breath froze in his throat as a diminutive figure in a simple navy frock and wide-brimmed bonnet climbed out of the carriage, disdaining the driver’s assistance.

  Penfeld leaned over and whispered, “A bit large for a ten-year-old, isn’t she?”

  Justin frowned.

  The severe parade made its way up the walk with the driver lagging behind. As the butler ushered them in, Miss Winters’s cane clicked on the marble tile. The girl appeared in the doorway.

  Justin’s heart tripped into double time. He locked his hands at the small of his back and forced a smile he feared was more grimace than grin.

  She didn’t even look up. Head bowed and hands shoved into a ratty muff, she marched past the somber column of servants and family, straight toward him. His frown deepened. There was something in the sway of her hips … a false submissiveness to her sullen stance that struck a disturbing chord of recognition. A bell of warning jangled in his head.

  She stopped dead in front of him. He gazed at the top o
f her bonnet, holding his breath without realizing it. Even before she slowly tilted her face to his, he knew what he would see. Tumbled chestnut curls framed by the bonnet’s brim. A mocking dimple slashed in a plump cheek. Coffee-brown eyes glittering not in merriment, but bitter triumph.

  Her hand came out of the muff and crossed his face with a resounding crack. Someone in the room gasped. He stood there, paralyzed, feeling all the blood drain from his face except for the vivid burn of her handprint against his cheek.

  Tilting her pert nose in the air, she dismissed him coolly and turned to Penfeld. “You may show me to my room now. The attic will do if you’ve nothing more suitable. I’ve grown quite fond of rats and pigeons over the years. They’re far better company than most people.”

  Penfeld made a helpless gurgle, but Justin gave him a curt nod and he recovered enough to lead her past the gaping servants and white-faced family. She marched past the piles of toys and games without so much as a disdainful glance, but at the piano she paused.

  A strange emotion flickered across her face, squeezing Justin’s heart like a vise. Ignoring all the elegantly garbed and coiffed dolls, Emily picked up the ragged doll on the music stand and hugged it to her breast. As Penfeld led her from the drawing room, the doll peered at Justin over her stiffened shoulder and he would have almost sworn he saw mocking amusement sparkle in her vapid blue eyes.

  Chapter 19

  I still long to think of you as a child.…

  One by one the candle flames winked out, leaving the Christmas tree shrouded in darkness. Justin stood unmoving, hands in pockets, as the maid set down the brass snuffer and brushed past him, averting her eyes. Two footmen wheeled away the shiny velocipede, their voices lowered to somber whispers.

  Outside the drawing room windows the sky faded from dull pewter to smoky black. Servants came and went, sweeping away the last traces of mistletoe and tinsel until Justin stood alone, the naked tree towering over him like the specter of his own folly. He reached up and plucked a stray holly leaf from the gilt cage where the mechanical birds now hung in silence.

  Penfeld appeared in the doorway, clutching a stuffed bear nearly as big as himself. He cleared his throat before speaking. “Sir, there’s still the matter of the pony.”

  Justin ran his thumb over the sharp points of the leaf, remembering how Trini had laid the sprig of greenery at Emily’s feet to welcome her into their lives. At least the native hadn’t been foolish enough to lay his heart there.

  “Have the groom stable it for tonight. It can be returned in the morning.”

  “Aye, sir. As you wish.” The valet hesitated as if he would have liked to say something more, then hefted the bear to his shoulder and lumbered away.

  How could he have been such a fool? Justin wondered. Emily had scattered clues like the crimson petals of the pohutukawas along every path he took, but his own obsessive desire had blinded him. Could he blame only himself, though, when she had deliberately and maliciously deceived him about her identity? As the full realization of her betrayal struck him, a new emotion ribboned through his self-contempt—anger, dark and compelling and dangerous. His gaze lifted to the ceiling above his head.

  His terse interview with Miss Winters had provided some of the answers he sought, but he had some questions of his own for the elusive Miss Scarborough. Ignoring the prick of its points, he crumpled the shiny leaf in his hand and started for the stairs.

  Justin scaled a mountain of pink taffeta and picked his way through a jungle of ribbons and sashes. Toys, books, and beribboned frocks littered the burgundy carpet of the corridor outside Emily’s room as if someone had gathered careless armfuls and tossed them out the door.

  He turned the knob, expecting the door to be locked. To his mingled regret and relief, it swung open soundlessly beneath his touch.

  The only sounds in the room were the crackle of the flames on the grate and a slow, lazy creak.

  Emily perched sidesaddle on the rocking horse he had ordered brought down from the attic that morning. She rocked idly, her pensive profile turned toward the dancing flames. The fresh shock of seeing her there buffeted Justin’s senses, igniting a raw hunger to jerk her up and shake the answers out of her. Or did he just seek any pretense to drag her into his arms? A hint of white cotton stocking peeked out from beneath the navy wool of her skirt. He had seen her garbed in far less, yet the innocent sight made the blood roar in his ears.

  He pushed the door shut and leaned against it, arms crossed. His puzzled family had witnessed enough of their private little war. This battle would be their own.

  The moments creaked away beneath the rhythmic shift of Emily’s thighs. Finally, she lifted her hand. A satin glove trimmed in tiny pearls dangled from her pinkie. “A bit small for me, don’t you think?”

  With agonizing effort Justin kept his face smooth and expressionless. “I thought you were just a baby when your father died. The only photograph I ever saw was the one in the watch. David used to tell me stories about you. About the time you ate the buttons off his coat. The time you crawled onto the window ledge and fell asleep in the flower box. Those were hardly the actions of a girl on the verge of womanhood.”

  Her winsome smile never reached her eyes. “No, but they were Daddy’s favorite stories.”

  “How was I to know?”

  The glove fluttered to the floor. “You might have tried the conventional ways. A visit. A letter.”

  The curtain between past and present seemed to blur. “I’ve written you every day since I’ve been in London.”

  “Writing letters was never a problem for you, was it? Posting them was always the challenge.” Her legs swung in childish defiance.

  “Why didn’t you simply tell me you were David’s daughter?”

  “We all live by our expectations, don’t we, Mr. Connor? You expected Claire Scarborough to be a little girl and I expected you to be an unfeeling monster who would steal his best friend’s gold and abandon a child entrusted to his care.”

  Justin’s jaw tightened, but he refused to quail before her taunts. “Forgive me if I disappointed you. If I’d have known you were coming, I’d have sharpened my horns. The truth of the matter is that the Maori took the gold mine during the uprising and I thought you well cared for. I had no idea Miss Winters was such an old b—”

  “Battle ax,” she supplied. “You really should police your language in front of your ward. Children can be so impressionable.”

  She climbed off the rocking horse, the roll of her hips beneath the ill-fitting wool a taunt of its own. She gazed up at him, her lips parted, her eyes darkened in smoky accusation. Would he ever again see them sparkle in merriment? he wondered. The winter months had faded her skin to a delicate peach and carved faint hollows beneath her cheekbones. What had she endured on the harsh voyage from New Zealand to England?

  His heartbeat quickened at her nearness. “Miss Winters said they were bringing you to me. That you jumped off the boat and ran away rather than be delivered into my hands.”

  “And she accused me of having a vivid imagination! I didn’t jump off the boat. When they couldn’t find my wealthy guardian, they tossed me overboard like so much shark bait.”

  His hand shot out to grasp her wrist. “If that miserable wretch Barney ever laid a hand on you, I’ll—” He left the threat unfinished, but the vision of the ruffian’s stringy paws against Emily’s skin tightened his grip.

  “Surely you jest.” Her low laugh hit an off-key note. “Miss Winters would never have allowed it. She wanted me given into the hands of my illustrious guardian, pure and undefiled.”

  Her words struck Justin like a blow. Reeling from its shock, he stared down at her wrist. The dusky hairs on the backs of his knuckles stood out in sharp relief against the pale silk of her skin. His hands were strong, graceful, from long hours at the piano, honed and callused by hard physical labor, and like any man’s hands, capable of both gentleness and cruelty.

  His fingers had stroked her until she
cried out for his touch in a voice husky with passion. His hands, not Barney’s, had defiled the child given into his care.

  His thumb massaged the circlet of prints he had left in her tender flesh. “Ironic, isn’t it? I’d kill any man who had touched you as I have.”

  She pulled her arm free and paced to the window, turning her back on him. “A pity dueling is out of fashion. You could challenge yourself. Penfeld would make a dapper second.”

  A ragged sigh escaped him. The flippant Miss Scarborough was beyond his reach. His only hope lay in coaxing out a glimpse of his Emily.

  His voice softened. “Why didn’t you wait in New Zealand? I was coming back for you.”

  “Too little, too late, Mr. Connor!” Emily spun around, her ruse of control snapping. Unshed tears polished her eyes to brilliance. “What did you want me to do? Sit at the hut window until the birds built nests in my hair? No, thank you! I’ve had my fill of waiting for the likes of you. Seven years of it. Dreaming, hoping, praying. Sitting with my fingers pressed to the window until I thought they’d crack and fall off from the cold. Even after I’d stopped hoping and started to hate you, I’d wake up crying in the middle of the night and think I heard your footsteps on the stairs.”

  Justin started for her. She recoiled violently, stumbling over a miniature railway laid before the window.

  Her foot lashed out, sending the caboose slamming into the wall, marring the wallpaper with an ugly red gash. “Did you really think you could erase years of neglect with trains and dolls?”

  Her arm raked across the marble-topped chiffonier. Tiny bottles of toilet water tumbled to the carpet, their crystal stoppers rolling away. The sickly sweet fragrance of lavender water stung Justin’s eyes. “Did you hope to buy my forgiveness with baubles? Trinkets?” She hauled open the doors of the lacquered wardrobe, snatched out an armful of dresses, and hurled them toward him. “I fear you’ve misjudged me, sir. My affections can’t be bought for a length of ribbon or a scrap of lace.”

  Justin stood unmoving beneath her assault, allowing Emily her anger. He owed her that much. She was finally giving vent to the pain she hid so well behind sarcasm and flippancy. She was magnificent in her fury, whirling through the bedroom like a cherubic demon of vengeance.