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“But you will be the next earl,” I pointed out fretfully. “This is where you should be. And I need to move on, Eddie. I’m an impostor. This arrangement isn’t fair on anyone.”
“I wish to God I wasn’t the heir to anything,” he said moodily, getting up and going to the window. He fiddled restlessly with the curtain cord, looking down on the scene below. “All I want is to go back to Paris and spend my life painting. Cad would be so much more suited to the role of heir apparent. He loves Cornwall, Tenebris, the family name—all the things I cannot find it in me to care about. My father says he seems to have been born with those insights. It was a cruel quirk of fate that made Cad the second son.”
His attention waned as his eyes were drawn to something outside the window. I spoke his name several times with no response. We lapsed into silence. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the mantel clock and the faint popping of apple-scented logs on the fire. I could hear the occasional yap from Bertram drifting up from the lawn below, followed by his mistress’s laughing reply. A slight, sad smile trembled on Eddie’s lips as, trancelike, he watched the scene below.
In the end, I felt so ill that I was content for him to go to London alone and to remain confined to my bed. Oddly, I was glad to be relieved of the responsibility of caring about Eddie and worrying for his health. I might have cheated my way into their home, but I felt inexplicably comfortable with Lucy, Tynan and Eleanor, and was saddened when I remembered that my acquaintance with them was destined to be fleeting.
* * *
The fever that held me in its thirsty embrace kept me tossing and turning in my restless bed. I seethed and chafed and felt like a nest of scorpions had taken up residence in my brain. On the second day, Lucy placed a cool hand on my sweat-drenched brow and, pursing her lips, sent once more for the doctor. He looked more serious on this visit and, through the burning tunnel of delirium, I heard him muttering to Lucy. Phrases such as “next twenty-four hours,” “crucial” and “dangerous heat” brought a frown to my efficient nurse.
Lucy’s presence did much to comfort me, and she eased my raging temperature by bathing my brow with lavender water and making sure I sipped freshly made lemonade. Eventually, soothed by these ministrations, I fell into a troubled sleep.
It was several hours later when I woke, and Lucy had gone. The room was in darkness, except for the glow of a dying fire. Something about the room was different, and I closed my eyes in an attempt to recapture sleep. It eluded me and my eyes flickered open and scanned my surroundings fearfully. I had been wrong in my first impression. Everything about the room was different. Black oak panels lined all four walls. Heavy oil paintings and rich tapestries caught the edges of my vision in the dancing light. The bed in which I lay was a mammoth four-poster, supported by carved columns and hung with crimson velvet curtains. The coverlet clutched under my chin in nervous hands was thick and stiffened by intricate embroidery. My tired, sickly mind had apparently taken me back in time to another century. Feebly, I closed my eyes to shut out these unwelcome fantasies. But I could not dismiss the faint but vaguely familiar scent of mingled iris root, cinnamon and musk. It was an evocative aroma that made my stomach knot with an incongruous mix of fear and remembered arousal. A peach-fuzz of electricity set my nerve endings alight.
A slight noise close to the foot of the bed reached my ears and my eyes flew wide again, searching the gloom. My heart gave a wild thud against my breastbone. A man was leaning casually against the bedpost, watching me. His head was bent, leaving his face in shadow. The cinch-waisted coat he wore hinted at an earlier decade, and his boots and trousers were mud splattered as if he had been riding. His head was uncovered and a lock of ebony hair flopped onto his brow. I gasped and scrambled into a sitting position, even though the effort of doing so caused my head to spin.
My movement made him look up and directly at me. His eyes reflected the golden glow of the firelight. A quiver of recognition ran through me and disappeared in the same instant as I caught a glimpse of a fine scar marring the perfect contours of his left cheek. As I gazed numbly at him, he flashed me a wicked smile and his white teeth gleamed bright. Then—later I could never recall quite how it happened—he was gone. The room returned to normal. Pale, flowered wallpaper replaced the dark panels. Chintz curtains and framed pastel landscapes softened the mood. The coverlet under my fingers was soft, quilted silk.
