A Night to Surrender (27 page)

Then he went silent, just holding her gaze for what seemed like eons. Nerves multiplied in her stomach with every passing second.

She swallowed hard. “Don’t you have anything else to say?”

“ ‘Hallelujah’ springs to mind. Beyond that . . .” He brushed a caress down her cheek. “Does this mean that if I proposed marriage to you right now, you might not make that twisty, unhappy face?”

“Try me and see.”

And then a smile—a broad, boyish, shameless
grin
—spread across his face. It was a smile unlike any she’d ever seen him wear, forever defining the crescent as the shape of pure joy. She felt its mirror stretching her own cheeks.

He propped a finger under her chin. “Susanna Jane Finch, w—”

“Susanna Jane Finch. What’s going on here?” The familiar voice startled them both.

Papa
.

She beat down the impulse to hide, or to scurry from Bram’s embrace. Too late for all that subterfuge, and no need anyhow. She wouldn’t hide from her own father what she was eager to share with the world.

Still smiling, she caught Bram’s hand in hers and wheeled on her slipper heel to face her father. “Papa, I’m so happy you’re here.”

But her father’s expression did not read as happiness. As he approached them, moving across the hall in slow, even steps, he looked wary, at best. He turned his gaze around the room, surveying the shambles of half-finished preparations. Summerfield’s servants jarred themselves into motion. In an instant, the bustle of moving furniture and hanging swags had resumed. Kate went back to playing scales.

Susanna bit her lip. “Is it the hall, Papa? I know it looks a true calamity at the moment, but just you wait for tomorrow. Everything will be perfect.”

“I’m not concerned about tomorrow.” His watery blue eyes fixed on Bram.

Susanna felt suddenly protective of the man at her side. She clutched Bram’s arm. “Papa, we were only dancing.”

One hoary eyebrow arched. “Only dancing?”

“You’re right. It’s not only dancing, it’s more than that. You see, Bram and I have grown very close these past weeks, and . . .” She cast a fleeting glance at Bram. “And I love him.” It made her so happy, just to say it. She never wanted to stop. “I love him, Papa. I do.”

Her father looked at the floor and released a long, measured breath. She stared at him, oddly amazed. How could anyone breathe at a time like this?

Then he raised his head . . . and her heart fell.

She’d just told her father she was in love. For the first time in her life, in
love
. And he refused to even look her direction. From the distant expression on his face, she could tell Papa was going to receive this news in the same spirit he received all her other secrets and confessed emotions.

He was going to ignore it. As if he’d never even heard.

Oh Lord.

Had it been this way, all those other times? When she’d believed herself to be confiding to a distracted genius, had she truly been pouring out her heart to someone who just didn’t care? The idea was nauseating. Unthinkable. Of course Papa cared for her. He’d saved her life. He’d given up so much to live here at Summerfield.

Bram cleared his throat. “Sir Lewis, we obviously need to talk.”

“Oh yes. Indeed we do.” Her father calmly reached into his breast pocket and withdrew an envelope. “I was going to wait until after the field review tomorrow. But I think now is the ideal time.”

Bram released Susanna’s hand and accepted the folded paper. He opened the envelope and scanned its contents. “Bloody hell. Are these what I think they are?”

“Written orders,” her father said. “Yes. I made inquiries with my friends in the War Office. More like strong suggestions. There’s a navy vessel leaving from Portsmouth this coming Tuesday.”

Susanna gasped. “
Tuesday?
”

Her father’s demeanor was cool. “You’ll be on it, Rycliff. And back with your regiment in a matter of weeks.”

“That’s . . .” Bram swallowed hard as he stared at the paper. “Sir Lewis, I don’t even know what to say.”

Say no
, she wanted to scream.
Say you can’t possibly leave so soon. Say you’re marrying me.

“No need for thanks.” With his palm, Papa smoothed his wispy silver hair. “I view it as an even exchange. If not for your militia review, I’d never have this chance to demonstrate the new cannon.”

“The new
cannon
?” Susanna turned to Bram, mortified. He’d given her his word he wouldn’t involve Papa in the militia. Surely he wouldn’t have lied to her.

“Yes, Susanna,” her father said. “The new cannon. It will be unveiled tomorrow, as part of the militia review.” He looked to Bram. “I do hope you’ve managed to whip those farmhands into shape? I’m counting on an impressive display, in exchange for the favors I pulled.” He tapped the letter in Bram’s hand.

“But—” Susanna shook her head. From across the room, Kate’s plinking arpeggios hammered away at the last bits of her composure. “Bram, please tell me I’m misunderstanding this somehow. Tell me you haven’t gone back on your word to me, in some underhanded ploy to regain your command.”

He lowered his voice. “It’s not like that. I can explain.”

“Tell me I can trust you,” she rushed on, emotion tweaking her voice. “Tell me you haven’t been lying to me this whole time. Tell me I haven’t made the most wretched, foolish mistake of my life, or . . . or I don’t know how—” Her voice broke.

“Susanna,” her father said sharply. “Stop embarrassing yourself. You know you’re given to overwrought emotion. Whatever silly infatuation you’ve developed, it will pass. Tomorrow isn’t about your girlish fancies, it’s about legacies—both Bramwell’s and mine. Perhaps we’ve humored you to a point, my dear. But there comes a time when men must be men. You can’t keep holding us back.”

Twenty-four

C
ursed cannon.

Colin wrestled with the ropes as he hauled the cannon into the wagon. For a scale model prototype, the thing was damned heavy. The barrel was thick as his thigh, fashioned of solid brass.

He straightened. “You. Don’t touch those.” From his perch on the wagon bed, Colin waved the Bright twins away from a pyramid of straw-packed crates. “Leave those be.”

“What’s in them?” one of the boys asked.

“Fireworks for tomorrow night. Don’t touch them. Don’t even breathe on them. Took more than a week for those to arrive from Town.”

“Can’t we help you with them?”

“No,” he said, gritting his teeth. Those fireworks were meant to be
his
surprise, his own unique stamp on the day’s festivities. Colin was going to produce the display himself, and he was going to do it well—prove to Bram he could be good for something. There wasn’t much he could seem to get right in this life, but he did have a knack for artistic destruction. What better canvas than the clear night sky?

But first, to deal with Sir Lewis Finch’s masterpiece. The cursed cannon.

He grasped a rope in both hands and rocked back on his heels, tugging with all his might. Being responsible for artillery had seemed a plum assignment, until Colin had realized just how much heavy lifting was involved. All day, he’d been hustling to and fro—taking powder to the ladies, then rolled cartridges to the armory, smuggling fireworks to Summerfield, and now carting Sir Lewis’s prototype up to the castle. Loading the thing was taking longer than he’d planned. He was racing nightfall now.

“What’s this one?” one of the twins asked.

Out of the corner of his eye, Colin saw Finn brush the straw from a noisemaker. Before he could object, the boy gave the cord a tug. The firecracker exploded with a sharp pop and a dusting of smoke.

“Cor,” Rufus said, grinning. “Try another.”

“I told you two to leave off,” Colin bit out. He stood tall—just in time to watch Dinner scuttle off with a frightened bleat. The startled lamb squeezed under the fence that bordered Summerfield’s gardens. “Now look what you’ve done. You’ve gone and frightened the damned sheep. You know how Rycliff dotes on the thing.”

“Shall we fetch him?” Finn asked.

“No, I’ll have to do it. He’ll be scared of you now.” Colin vaulted the side of the wagon. He clapped the fraying strands of hemp from his hands and wiped his perspiring brow with his sleeve.

Clambering over the fence, he entered the kitchen gardens, where the house’s vegetables and savories were grown. He watched as the lamb trotted a path between two rows of turnips and squeezed under a second fence to enter a fallow plot bounded by meadow.

“Dinner,” he called, giving chase again and entering the meadow. “Dinner, come back now.”

When he reached the center of the field, he paused to catch his breath and scan the area for telltale tufts of wool. When the lamb failed to appear, he cupped his hands around his mouth and tried again. “
Dinner!
”

This time, his call earned an answer. Several answers. In fact, the ground shook with the collective bestial response. He spied several large, dark forms lumbering toward him through the twilight dusk. He blinked, trying to make them out. These weren’t sheep. No, they were . . .

Cows
. Large cows. Remarkably fast and menacing cows. A small herd of them, all thundering straight for him where he stood in the center of the field.

Colin took a few steps backward. “Wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t mean you.”

The beasts didn’t listen to reason apparently. A shame, because they did have rather large ears. Or were those . . . horns?

He turned and made a mad dash for the fence.

Blighted idiot
, he cursed himself as he pumped arms and legs, scrambling over the furrowed field.
Corkbrained fool
. What kind of imbecile entered a pasture at twilight and shouted “Dinner” at the top of his lungs?

One who hadn’t left London in a decade, that’s who.

“I hate the country,” he muttered as he ran. “I hate it. I bloody damned well hate it.”

In his hurry, he’d chosen a different route of escape than the way he’d entered the field. Rather than reaching a simple wooden stile, he ran smack up against a hedgerow. A thorny hedgerow.

“Hate it,” he said, pushing his way through the bramble and twigs. “Loathsome, miserable, reeking, wholesome farmland. Feh.”

He emerged on the other side of the hedge to find himself once again in the Summerfield gardens—the pretty bit, this time. He was scraped, but mercifully untrampled. He stood staring at the hedgerow a moment, picking bits of hawthorn from his clothing and cursing country life.

Then something odd caught his attention. A light smack on the head.

He wheeled around, batting blindly with a hand.

The next smack caught him across the face. A red burst of pain stung his already abraded cheek.

Good Lord, what
was
this? The Seven Plagues of Colin Sandhurst, squeezed into the space of one hour?

He raised his hands in defense, dodging the repeated blows.

“You villain,” a female voice accused.
Smack
. “You deceitful cur.”

Colin lowered his hands to get a proper look at his attacker. It was the middle Highwood sister. The dark-haired one. Miriam, was it? Melissa?

Whoever she was, she was hitting him. Repeatedly. With a glove.

“What on earth are you doing?” He dodged another smack, moving deeper into the gardens. He stumbled over a clump of daisies and narrowly missed a collision with a rosebush.

She chased him, still swinging away. “I want a duel.”

“A duel?”

“I know all about you and Mrs. Lange, you . . . you rutting . . .” Apparently lacking either the imagination or the bravery to complete the insult, she moved on. “I never liked you, I hope you know. I’ve always known you for a worthless bounder, but now my mother and sisters will suffer the pain of the revelation. You’ll have disappointed their hopes.”

Ah. So that’s what this was about. He was being made to answer for . . . for what, precisely? Flirting?

“Diana has no father or brothers to defend her honor. The duty falls to me.” She slapped him across the face again. “Name your seconds.”

“Good God. Will you stop with the glove?” He ripped the thing from her hand and tossed it into the thorny rosebushes. “I’m not going to accept your challenge. There will be no duel.”

“Why not? Because I’m a woman?”

“No, because I’ve seen the way you spinsters handle a pistol. You’d shoot me dead where I stood.” Colin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Listen, calm down. I haven’t touched your sister. Not in any improper way.”

“Perhaps you haven’t touched her improperly, but you’ve improperly led her on.”

“Led her on? Perhaps I danced and flirted with her a bit, but I’ve flirted with every young lady in this village.”

“Not
every
young lady.”

He paused, stunned. As he stared at her, he felt a grin nudging his cheeks. “So you’re jealous.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she replied, much too quickly to be credible.

“You are.” He wagged a finger at her, no longer on the retreat. “You’re jealous. I’ve flirted with every young lady in the village but you, and you’re envious.”

“I’m not envious, I just . . .” She made a gesture of frustration. “I just want to hurt you. The way you hurt my sister.”

The way he’d hurt
her
, she meant. If Diana Highwood had suffered one moment of pain on his account, Colin would swallow a Chinese dazzler. But this one . . . she was hurt.

Well, exactly how
did
she expect him to flirt with her? Lines like “river of silk” and “sparkling diamonds” would never work on a woman like this. She was too clever by half. Moreover, such comparisons would be wildly inaccurate. Her hair was nothing like silk, and her dark eyes bore no resemblance to diamonds.

Cooled volcanic glass, perhaps.

“Listen,” he said in a placating tone. “It’s not like that, Melinda. You
are
a tolerably pretty girl.”

“Tolerably.” She rolled her eyes and made a dismissive noise. “
Tolerably
pretty. What kind of compliment is that? And my name’s not Melinda.”

“No, not tolerably pretty,” he said, tilting his head for a better look. “Genuinely so. If only you’d . . .”

“Don’t say it. Everyone says it.”

“Everyone says what?”

She spoke in a low, mimicking tone. “ ‘If only you’d remove your spectacles, you’d be lovely.’ ”

“I wasn’t going to stay that,” he lied. “Why would I say that? What a perfectly stupid thing to say.”

“I know you’re lying. You dissemble as easily as you breathe. But my feelings aren’t at issue here. This is about your cruel misuse of Diana.”

“I assure you, I’ve not come close to using your sister, cruelly or otherwise. I apologized for all that business at the tea shop.”

“Oh yes. You apologized quite prettily. You made them believe you were decent. That you cared. And then you took up with a
married
woman
.”

Colin rubbed the back of his neck. He really didn’t have time for this. He had fireworks to set, a cannon to mount, and a lamb to catch. “I don’t know what you hope to gain by pursuing this conversation. I tell you now, I won’t offer marriage. Not to your sister, not to anyone.”

“Hmph. I’d never allow you to marry her.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I want justice! I want you to be responsible for your actions, instead of always weaseling out of them with a few pretty words.”

Do you see?
Colin wanted to say.
This is why I avoid you.
It was as if those spectacles gave her the power to see straight through him.

“You’re starting to sound like my cousin,” he said. “I do hope you’re not planning to give me the same treatment you gave him.”

She stared at him a moment. “What an excellent idea.” With a swift, swooping motion of her arm, she drew back her reticule and let it fly.

Colin flinched just in time to take the blow on his shoulder, rather than his crown. Still, the cinched velvet purse landed with surprising force. Pain exploded through his shoulder. “What the devil is in that thing? Rocks?”

“What else?”

What else, indeed. How could he have forgotten her ridiculous obsession with geology? Vile harpy. “Listen, Marissa . . .”

“It’s
Minerva
.” She raised her hand to swing the rock-filled reticule again.

This time, he was ready. In a lightning-quick motion, Colin caught her wrist. He spun her around and pulled her to him. Her spine pressed flush against his chest, and he cinched his arm around her middle.

Her spectacles slipped from her face and tumbled to the grass.

She wrestled his grip. “Let me go.”

“Not just yet. You’ll step on them, if you don’t stop struggling.”

He wasn’t sure he truly wanted her to stop struggling. From where he was standing, poised to look straight down her bodice, all that wrestling did wonderful things for her breasts. No cool, perfect alabaster to be found here. Just warm, womanly skin. And as enticing as she looked, she
felt
even better. So angry and alive.

“Hush.” He pressed his lips close to her ear. Her hair smelled of jasmine. The scent swirled through his head, muddling his thoughts. “Be calm,” he told her.

Be calm
, he told himself.

“I don’t want to be calm. I want a duel.” She wriggled in his arms, and desire pulsed through him, as fierce as it was appalling. “I demand satisfaction.”

Yes, he thought. This was a woman who
would
demand satisfaction. In life, in love. In bed. She would demand honesty and commitment and fidelity, and all manner of things he was unwilling to give.

Which was just the excuse he needed to let her go.

“Don’t move, or you’ll crush them.” He bent to retrieve her wire-rimmed spectacles from where they’d landed in a clump of ivy. After brushing them clean of dirt and moss, he held them up to the moonlight to inspect them for scratches.

“They aren’t broken, are they?”

“No.”

She made a lunging grab for the spectacles, but he held them back. She stumbled, pitching forward to collide with his chest. As she looked up at him, blinking hard in her attempt to see clear, her lashes fluttered like thick, plumed fans. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

Good God. For a buttoned-up bluestocking, she had damned sultry lips. Luscious, plump, and a deeper red at the edges. Like two slices of a ripe, sweet plum. His mouth watered.