The Secret Pearl(109)

She watched his mouth as he spoke, listened to the deep tone of his voice, looked up into his dark eyes, and closed her own.

And she was suddenly safe and beyond safety. Enveloped in warmth and strength. She opened her mouth for more of it. And felt an ache of longing spiral down into her throat and into her breasts and stab down into her womb and between her thighs.

She kept her eyes closed and threw back her head as his mouth moved from hers and trailed warm kisses along her throat. He held back her shoulders with strong hands.

“You are safe, my love,” he said against her ear. “No one is ever going to hurt you again.”

My love. My love. He was the Duke of Ridgeway. At Heron House. He had come after her all the way from Willoughby Hall.

She pushed away from him, turned her back on him, crossed the room to one of the windows. There was a silence.

“I’m sorry.” His voice came from across the room. He had not come up behind her, as she had half-expected. “I did not mean for that to happen.”

“What did you mean to happen?” she asked. “What are you doing here? I did not steal anything from your house except perhaps the clothes I bought in London with your money. You may have them if you wish.”

“Fleur,” he said quietly.

“My name is Isabella,” she said. “Isabella Bradshaw. Only my parents ever called me the other. You are not my father.”

“Why did you run away?” he asked. “Did you not trust me?”

“No,” she said, turning to look at him. He was her customer of the Bull and Horn Inn, she told herself deliberately. She looked down to his hands, which she had always so feared. “Why should I have trusted you? And I did not run away. I stopped running. I came home. This is where I was born, you know. In this very house. This is where I belong.”

“Yes,” he said. “I see you in your own proper milieu at last. You are waiting for your cousin to come home? You are waiting for the worst?”

“That is not your concern,” she said. “Why did you come? I will not go back with you.”

“No,” he said. “I will not take you back, Fleur. You do not belong in my daughter’s schoolroom and I will not take you into any of my homes ever again.”

She turned away to a side table and began to rearrange the flowers in a bowl that stood there. She quelled the quite unreasonable twinge of hurt.

“Or try to establish you in any other home, if that is your fear,” he said. “I came to set you free, Fleur.”

“I have never been in thrall to you,” she said. “For all the money you have given me, I have rendered suitable services. The clothes you may take with you when you leave. I do not need to be set free. I have never been bound to you.”

He took a step toward her, but there was another tap on the door, and she froze as it opened.

“The Reverend and Miss Booth are here to speak with you, Miss Isabella,” the butler said, his eyes going briefly to the duke.

“Show them in, please,” she said, feeling a great surging of relief. And she hurried across the room to hug Miriam and to smile at Daniel.

The duke had strolled across to stand at the window she had earlier vacated.

“Miriam, Daniel,” she said, “may I present his grace, the Duke of Ridgeway? My friends Miriam Booth and the Reverend Daniel Booth, your grace.”

The men both bowed. Miriam curtsied. They all exchanged curious glances.

“His grace has come to assure himself that I arrived home safely,” Fleur said. “Now that he has done so, he is about to leave.”

“He is about to do no such thing,” his grace said, clasping his hands behind him. “There was no grand reunion   a moment ago. Do I take it that the three of you have met before, since Miss Bradshaw’s return?”

“We were here last evening,” the Reverend Booth said, stepping forward. “Miss Bradshaw is among those who care for her again, your grace. We will look after her. You need have no further concern about her.”

The duke inclined his head. “You will be pleased for her sake, then,” he said, “to know that Lord Brocklehurst will be making a public statement within the next few days to the effect that the death of his valet was accidental, with no question of murder at all, and that the whole alarm over the misplacement of certain jewels was a false alarm. There was, in fact, no theft at all.”

Fleur’s hands were in the tight clasp of her smiling friend.

“If the statement is not made,” the duke continued, “though I believe there is no realistic chance that it will not be, then there will be a trial in which Miss Bradshaw will most certainly be acquitted and numerous serious grounds for bringing Lord Brocklehurst himself to trial will arise.”