Page 12 of An Affair at Stonecliffe

“Pray excuse me. I must set my maid to packing my things. I want to leave right away.”

“Now?” Carlisle asked in surprise. “But, Lady Adeline, surely—”

“No.” She shook her head firmly. “I will take only a few necessities. My maid can pack the rest and follow us tomorrow. I cannot sit here patiently waiting while my grandson is in London. Even if we don’t arrive until midnight, I must go.”

“Of course. I’ll have a fresh team harnessed.”

As it turned out, they managed to roll into London before midnight, but it was nevertheless late, and after a hastily prepared supper, Lady Drewsbury went to bed. Carlisle, however, was too restless to sleep. He strolled down the hall into a front-facing room that had once been the countess’s informal sitting room. Little furniture remained, the focus of the room being the multitude of paintings and sketches that covered the walls. It was the gallery of one artist, and it never failed to touch Carlisle with equal parts admiration and sorrow.

He had always known that Adam was exceptionally talented; he’d tried to explain to the earl that his son was not meant to run an estate but to create beauty. Five years ago, Carlisle had not come back from Paris with Adam’s son, but he had brought his artwork. The earl refused to look at the paintings; Drewsbury viewed Adam’s art as an enemy. But Carlisle had created this room for the countess. And himself.

He strolled around the gallery, going from piece to piece, ending, as he often did, at the unhung canvases stacked against the wall. Adam’s wife was the subject of all of them. Carlisle could not bring himself to throw out any of Adam’s work, but to hang that woman’s picture felt too much like a betrayal. Adam had captured Noelle in every medium: rich oils, precise pen-and-ink, or pencil, dreamy watercolors. And in each one, she was utterly lovely. Carlisle pulled out one and set it against the wall to study it.

It was the best of them all. Noelle was seated, facing away, wearing that colorful dressing gown she had had on when Carlisle met her. One sleeve of the gown had slid down, revealing her bare white shoulder and much of her back. Her golden hair was up, but pinned messily, strands slipping from their moorings, and she was looking back over her shoulder, smiling in a way that was somehow both mischievous and sweet, as if she shared a delicious secret with the viewer.

Her dark blue eyes were lambent, her skin so velvety he could almost feel it beneath his fingers. There was an intimacy to the portrait that made one feel like an intruder and yet, at the same time, beckoned him to come closer. It was almost impossible not to feel a stirring of desire, just as he had that first instant he saw her standing in the Paris apartment, jewels glittering around her slender white throat. He’d been stabbed then by guilt, just as he was every time he looked at this portrait. Adam’s widow. Carlisle’s enemy.

He hated to look at it but could not keep himself from drawing it out now and again. It was like ripping off a scab: painful yet somehow irresistible, reminding him of his loss, his failure—not just to Adam, but to Adam’s son and the countess.

Studying the painting, Carlisle thought of the woman he had met today. Her face was thinner now, the fresh, apple-cheeked beauty whittled away by the years into something stronger, fiercer...and yet all the more desirable for it. She disguised herself in drab clothes and darkened hair, but nothing could dim those luminous eyes or blur the elegant structure of her face. She was still utterly beautiful.

He disliked her. Disliked everything about her—her stubbornness; her impulsive, foolish flight from place to place; her complete lack of consideration for her child’s grandparents, not to mention a deplorable lack of concern for her own son’s comfort and safety. It still made his blood simmer to think of the taunting way she’d sent him back the purse of money she’d stolen—shoving it in his face that she had outmaneuvered him. That she’d found other avenues of support.

But standing there in that wretched lane, looking at her, Carlisle felt the same traitorous leap of desire that he had the moment he first saw her. Fortunately, he was also a man who could control his baser impulses. He was a man of thought, not impulse and passion. She was lovely, yes, but so were other women—women who did not thwart him at every turn. And though he could not deny a certain grudging respect for her abilities and her persistence in eluding him for so long, he didn’t mistake those qualities for virtues. He preferred women of wit and honor.

If Noelle was wary of him, he was even more doubtful of her. He would be polite to her as he’d promised; he would give her what she wanted in exchange for the countess getting back her grandson. But he would be watchful. He did not trust her. Unlike Adam, he would not fall under her spell.

“IT SOUNDS TO me as if he’s being very—oh, what is the word?—tres raissonable.” Business had been slow today, so Lisette and Noelle had retreated to a table in the back room to work and brush up on Lisette’s English—though this morning Noelle suspected the woman’s purpose was more learning gossip than the English language. Though she was Noelle’s employer, Lisette had always been warm and kind to her. Only a few years older than Noelle herself, she had, over the past year, become Noelle’s friend, as well.

“Reasonable,” Noelle translated.

“Yes. I knew it was something close.”

“I suppose he is being reasonable,” Noelle admitted.

“Generous, even. To live a life of luxury. To be with your son.” Lisette looked down at the cluster of wooden cherries she was attaching to a straw hat and made a little moue, dark eyes twinkling. “Instead of doing this? It seems an easy choice.”

“If I could trust him. Which I do not.” Noelle picked up a slender blue feather and tested it against another hat. “Why, after all these years, is he suddenly so generous, as you said? Before now, the men he sent attacked us.”

Lisette shrugged. “Perhaps he admits defeat.”

“But he’d already won. I walked right into his clutches. I couldn’t have stopped him from taking Gil.”

“You said he does not want to disturb Gil,” the other woman offered, looking across the room to where Gil played on the stairs. “It would be, um, not comfortable to raise a boy who hated him.”

“You’re right. It would be much easier to take in both of us and worm his way into Gil’s affections...and then, ‘oh, my, the boy’s mother dies.’”

“Noelle!” Lisette leaned forward, keeping her voice low. “Do you mean—you think he will kill you?”

“I’m not sure. He certainly despises me enough. And he considers me far beneath him, some inferior being. To him it might be nothing more than putting down a horse.” She tilted her head to the side, considering. “Come to think of it, it might be far less. Englishmen do love their horses.”

Lisette chuckled, as Noelle had intended, but said seriously, “Oui. Noblemen are not to be trusted.”

Noelle had wondered more than once what story lay behind Lisette’s distrust of the aristocracy, but Lisette had never raised the subject, and Noelle felt it would be presumptuous to ask.

“He is a handsome man.” Lisette sighed. “It is too bad he is a scoundrel.”

“You think he’s handsome?” Noelle asked.