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“I am thinking his parents were married. He is not baseborn,” John Bull defended.
She smiled tightly. “No, just base,” she said with deep regret.
While there was still light left in the sky Tony went outside on the pretext of viewing the gardens now they had been completed. She walked down to the Grecian temple with its graceful columns and lingered about its portico, but there were many gardeners and groundspeople about whose eyes were upon her. She suspected them of being guards. She could clearly see there was a stout lock upon the temple door.
The beauty of the garden made her heart ache. The lake, with its black swans and the woods beyond filled with deer and game birds, made it seem like Paradise, but Edenwood, as its name implied, possessed a serpent who dwelled therein. She loved Edenwood with a passion that bordered on what she felt for its owner, Adam Savage, but her heart told her she must give up both.
At dinner she insisted both John Bull and Kirinda join her. She was entertained by the barbs they shot at each other as they played out the age-old battle of the sexes, yet as she listened and laughed with them, she detected no cruelty in their thinly veiled hostility. They had been together so long and knew each other so well, they were like a comfortable pair of slippers. Not a matched pair, but not far off.
When Tony retired for the night, she had no intention of undressing for bed. Around midnight she intended finding out what Savage had warehoused inside the Greek temple. She gathered a dark cloak, an oil lamp, and a heavy brass candlestick to break the lock. If she couldn’t get in the door, she would break a window. They were very high, but climbing had never deterred her before.
To pass the time she took her journal from her traveling case and poured out her heart onto its pages. Without her even realizing it, her words formed their usual pattern. The first page poured out her anger at Savage; the second catalogued his sins; and the third was filled with wistful longings for what might have been. What she had felt was a grand passion. Adam Savage was the love of a lifetime. Thoughts of him had a drugging effect upon her senses. He was like a narcotic, like the evil substances he’d smuggled. Now that she had tasted him, she craved him. When he was far away she could resist his fatal lure, but when they were together he could wipe away her resistance with his wicked attraction. She drifted off to sleep with Savage filling all her senses.
Tony awoke with a start and wondered what the hour could be. It must be way past midnight considering the amount of oil the lamp had burned. She wrapped herself in the dark cloak, turned the lamp down low, and picked up the heavy candlestick. It would make a formidable weapon if anyone accosted her.
The house was very quiet as she made her way downstairs and through the French doors that led out to the gardens. She moved slowly through the shadows of the trees. At first it seemed pitch dark, then gradually her eyes became more accustomed and she discerned the faint light of the predawn sky. Only when she heard the river did she turn up the wick of the lamp. Her footsteps quickened now that she could see the path that led down to the temple.
When she got to the door she put the lamp on the ground, then hesitated—not because it was padlocked, but because of what she knew she would find beyond the door. Why was she doing this? If she went back to bed and pretended ignorance of his smuggling, Edenwood and its master might still be hers. She made her decision. She would confront him with the evidence. He had such a facile tongue, turning lies to truths so that she wanted to believe whatever he told her. She needed proof of his perfidy.
As she raised the heavy brass candlestick, intending to smash the lock, she was grabbed from behind and the weapon forcefully wrenched from her hand.
Adam Savage wrenched the weapon from the dark intruder in the shadows of the temple. He was stunned when he looked down into the face of Antonia. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He had almost felled her with a brutal blow.
Tony stared at him aghast to be caught red handed.
His voice was as icy as his eyes. “Wouldn’t it be easier to use the key?” He took the lock, inserted an iron key, and unlocked the heavy door.
She held her breath at what would be revealed as he picked up the lantern, but he did not swing back the massive door. Instead he thrust the lamp into her hands. She imagined both his cold contempt and his hot anger.
“Seek your room, mistress, we have work to do here.”
She heard the footsteps of his approaching men and fled back to the house before he could shame her further. With trembling hands she removed the dark cloak and paced the room. She dreaded what he would do to her. The last words she had flung at him had been a threat. “Have a care, Savage. If I open my mouth about you, I could have you swinging on the end of a rope!” Now he had caught her trying to gather evidence against him. She was tempted to flee. The stables held scores of horses, one was even hers. But dawn had arrived. Servants would be awake. She would be easily apprehended. And where would she go? Lamb Hall would be the first place Savage would seek her. She swallowed hard, trying to gain courage. She’d stay and face him. If he began to brutalize her, she would scream for John Bull.
Tony caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She picked up her brush to try to improve her appearance. The girl in the mirror stared back at her defiantly. What was the matter with her? She was a woman, wasn’t she? She would fight him with a woman’s weapons. She would seduce him! She bit her lip, wondering just how she would go about it. In Venice she’d had the tempting gold tissue bodice that displayed her breasts so beautifully, to say nothing of the transparent gold pantelets. The best she could do was a nightdress. He’d never seen her in one. In Ireland they had come to each other naked every night. She took off all her clothes, then donned the white cambric nightgown with its dozen tiny buttons at the neckline. She took the brush up again, stepped before the mirror, then sighed heavily. She thought with envy of the exotic veils that Lotus Blossom must possess.
She brushed slowly, noticing the silken mass now reached her waist. She saw her cheeks blush at her intimate memories. They were so abandoned when they made love, Adam always became entangled in her hair, as if the black tendrils reached out possessively to bind him to her, while tendrils of his long black hair wound about her throat.
When she heard a noise at the door her breath became short and her pulse speeded up crazily. She almost jumped out of her skin as his voice came from behind her. She whirled to face him and saw that he had entered from his own bedchamber.
“I’m sure you have a logical reason for being at the temple in the middle of the night. Why don’t you share it with me?” His voice was deceptively soft, like dark velvet.
Tony decided to confess all and throw herself on his mercy. If she became a supplicant she would be able to close the distance between them and touch him. Always before, one touch had been enough to ignite his hot lust.
“I—I was trying to see the guns … the weapons you have been smuggling into France,” she whispered, taking a tentative step toward him.
“Guns!” His voice rent the very air, stopping her in her tracks. His gaze swept over her as if he were seeing her for the first time. How unbelievably young she looked. The prim white nightdress with its tiny buttons made her look virginal, and in truth she was touchingly innocent. What the hell must he look like to her? Dangerous, sinister, frightening! She actually believed he was gunrunning.
She caught her breath as her eyes fell upon her open journal on the chair beside where he stood. He picked it up immediately.
“No! You cannot read that. It’s personal, private!”
He quickly scanned through it. “My name is on every page.”
“They are my private thoughts about you. In all conscience you cannot read something so personal. You cannot violate my privacy!”
“You know me to be conscienceless. You’re afraid I’ll violate you, not just your privacy. Pray be seated, Lady Antonia, while I learn your innermost thoughts.”
Tony wanted to fly at him to tear the journal from his hands, but she dared not. She knew the brute strength of those hands. She sat down upon an elegant Hepplewhite chair she had chosen with loving care and watched with flaming cheeks as he dropped into its identical mate. He stretched out his legs, then withdrew his ice-blue gaze from her as he began to read.
