Page 42 of As the Devil Dares

“Oh?” She looked up at him, her eyes bright.

The sight of her unshed tears for him and his family made his own eyes sting, and he had to look away. “In the first war with the Americans. He fought at Saratoga and gave an order that ended up saving the lives of nearly every man in his regiment.” A melancholy smile tugged at his lips. “He’d been just a young officer then, but when the war ended, King George rewarded him with a barony.”

“That’s how your family ended up at Chestnut Hill.” Her fingertip traced delicately over the scratches now, ostensibly checking to make certain that she’d tended to each one, yet completely unaware of how much those soothing caresses gave him the strength to share so much about his father with her. How much they inexplicably consoled him.

“Where my father earned a reputation for being a good landowner,” he added.

Goose bumps sprang up in the wake of her fingers, but if she noticed his reaction to so slight a caress, she didn’t comment. “And a wonderful husband and father, I understand.”

“The very best,” he murmured. Could she feel his racing pulse beneath her fingertips as they grazed his wrist? It was mystifying, that this same woman who infuriated the daylights out of him also left him aching beneath her touch.

“How did he die?”

He froze. His body flashed numb at her unexpected question. Not that…Dear God, not that. He would tell her anything else she wanted to know about his father, but never that.

But her whisper came so softly, so innocently that he couldn’t bear not to answer her. She’d opened her own grieving heart to him, and she deserved better than any kind of dodging or dissembling.

He slowly pulled his arm away from her. “He was mounting his horse when someone fired off a pistol,” he said quietly. The truth—although Robert had no intention of telling her that the reason he had been mounting his horse was because Father had ridden out to find him at a gambling hell where he’d wasted away three days in drink, cards, and whores. “The horse startled. He lost his balance and fell.” He took a gasping swallow of the whiskey. “He hit his head.”

She asked softly, “Were you there when it happened?”

“Yes.” He’d been standing only a few feet away, but he might as well have been on the moon for all the difference it made.

She gently squeezed his fingers. “I’m sorry, Robert,” she whispered. “It must have been so terrible for you.”

He tossed back the rest of the whiskey. Terrible? No. It had been pure hell.

They sat there silently for several long moments. There was nothing to say, but he took an odd comfort in their shared silence. Could it be possible that Mariah Winslow, of all people, might be the only one able to empathize with the grief and guilt he still carried inside him and always would? The one who understood the need he felt to prove himself to his father’s memory? After all, she struggled herself to prove her worth to her own father.

No. He’d trusted her as far as he dared. Sharing any more with her would only make him more vulnerable to wounding when she next decided to bare her claws.

He rolled down his sleeves, then stood and pulled on his jacket. He tugged at his cuffs to bring them into proper place, until there were no visible signs that he’d climbed a tree to appease a nine-year-old. And an ebony-haired minx.

“So what next, then, Carlisle?” As if she sensed the change in him and realized as he did that the tender moment between them had ended, Mariah reached for the bottle to refill his glass. “Where do we go from here?”

He forced a grin at her. “I stay right here in hiding from those women for the rest of the afternoon.”

But the sobriety of her expression didn’t change at his teasing, and she gravely shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” he answered quietly, his grin fading. There were some topics he had no intention of raising this afternoon with her, and settling the terms of surrender on the season and the partnership was one of them. She might have raised the topic of his father in order to share their grief, but that conversation only reminded him of how much he owed to his father’s memory. And how very far he still was from reaching it. He repeated, brooking no argument, “I stay right here in hiding, and you return to your tea.” He snatched the glass out of her hand as she raised it to her lips. “Without the scent of whiskey on your breath, or my mother will never forgive me.”

“Ah!” Her eyes sparkled, and his heart thumped hard against his ribs. He much preferred that unrepentant gleam of mischief in her eyes to grief. “Then you’ve not had tea with Lady Agnes Sinclair.”

He shook his head. “Those stories that she puts whiskey in her tea are apocryphal.”

“They’re true, actually,” his brother-in-law, Thomas Matteson, Marquess of Chesney, corrected as he sauntered into his library. “The woman once put so much whiskey into the tea that she nearly drank two of us under the table.” He fetched himself a glass from the shelf and filled it from their bottle. When they both looked at him disbelievingly, he added, “Why do you think Josie always seats herself next to the woman?”

With a soft laugh, Mariah rose and dropped into a belated curtsy.

Chesney waved off the formality. “Don’t mind me. I’m only here to rescue Robert from the ladies.” Then he pinned him with a no-nonsense look. “And you’ll return the favor at Lady Grenadine’s dinner party next week.”

“Of course.” The dinner party…just one of the many events during the next fortnight to which his mother had insisted Robert escort Mariah. Apparently, his mother hadn’t understood when he said he wanted to be left completely out of her season.

A smile pulled at her red lips as Mariah glanced between the two men. “Do the ladies know how much scheming you gentlemen employ to avoid them?”

“Self-preservation, Miss Winslow,” Chesney replied with exaggerated profundity. “If we didn’t, the males of our species would die out, and then where would England be?”

Another laugh fell from her lips, and this time, Chesney’s eyes lit up as if he found her absolutely charming.