The Perfect Seduction Page 16

  Carden drank the contents of his glass, set it aside, and then drank half of Sawyer's, thinking about what a godawful thing grave-digging was to do. Filling it in was even worse. That made it all so final, so damn undoable and · forever. All the words that hadn't been said and never would be. All the things you wished you'd known and hadn't until it was too late. All the things you wished you'd done ... A nice coffin, quoting Scripture, planting flowers ... None of it was ever enough to make the pain of loss and the sorrow of regret go away. And cherubs. You couldn't forget the carved cherubs.

  "God," Carden muttered darkly into his glass, "you don't suppose they'll want a headstone, do you?"

  Aiden laughed. "For a man who has absolutely no experience with children, you're doing quite well at this, you know. You and Sera ought to have a houseful of your own."

  Sera. The words rippled slowly through his rapidly clouding awareness. In a vague sort of way he knew they had a' significance. But fully and firmly grasping it just wasn't possible. He'd have to think on it later. Much later.

  Right now, there were some things he needed to set straight with Aiden. "Are you here to ask Seraphina to attend the Martin-Holloway dinner with you?"

  "Yes," his friend replied slowly, warily. "Unless you have a reasonable objection."

  "No objection. Just a caveat." Carden drained the glass and set it aside. Meeting his friend's gaze squarely, he smiled and said, "Lay a hand on her, Aiden, and I'll break it."

  "Are you making a formal claim to her?" his friend asked incredulously.

  Formal? Hell, he didn't know. Being unaware was the whole point of drinking hard and fast. And since he didn't have a sufficient number of his wits about him to see the maze Aiden was asking him to navigate, he opted for covering familiar ground instead. "You may escort Seraphina out for an evening, but you'll treat her like one of your sisters."

  ''There will come a day when you get bored with her, you know."

  And Aiden was licking his chops in anticipation. The bloody scoundrel. He could damn well cool his heels.

  "Well, it's not going to be today or tomorrow. Or even the next day."

  "How about three days from now?"

  Which was when the Martin-Holloways were having their dinner party. Aiden could only hope and dream.

  "Sorry to disappoint you," Carden replied smugly, "but I rather doubt it."

  Something about the way his friend was looking at him-something in his smile ... Whatever it was, it was damn irritating. And unsettling, too. "What?" he demanded.

  Aiden shrugged, but his expression didn't change. "I was just thinking about digging holes. Shouldn't we be about the one for the puppy?"

  That was one of the problems of drinking; you knew in your gut that there were layers to what people were saying, but your mind wasn't sharp enough or fast enough to figure out what they were. He'd remember, though, and think on it later. Perhaps tomorrow, he decided, heading for the door-when it would be safe to be sober. Or, better yet, the day after when his head stopped pounding.

  Sera glanced around the foyer and, seeing Sawyer nowhere in sight, decided that the only polite thing to do was to see Honoria out herself. "I'm sure you'll feel better when you get home, Honoria," she said, pulling open the heavy front door. "It was very nice of you to endure for the sake of the girls."

  Honoria sniffled daintily and dabbed at her nose with a lace-edged handkerchief. "It was a lovely service." She raised a silver brow to sniffle again and add disapprovingly, "Despite the fact that Carden's attention was awash.

  He drinks entirely too much, you know."

  "But far less than other men," Sera countered firmly, "far less often, and he isn't mean when he does. There's a great deal to be said for that."

  "It's still a bad habit and doesn't ... " Honoria silently struggled against the urge to sneeze again and then pressed the handkerchief to her face a mere fraction of a second before it overwhelmed her.

  "Bless you."

  "Thank you. Reflect well on him or the fami-"

  Another sneeze interrupted her discourse and Sera seized the opportunity to put an end to it altogether. "Bless you again," she said, pulling the door wider and stepping aside. "Do feel better, Honoria. And thank you again for attending."

  Honoria nodded, sneezed twice in rapid succession, waved her hand in hasty farewell and fled. Sera waited until the carriage door was closed before doing the same with Carden's front door. As she turned away, her gaze passed over the foyer table and the walking stick Carden had flung there as they'd entered with the puppies.

  Curiosity niggling at her, she picked it up and examined it, marveling at how very ordinary it appeared. The shaft was of some sort of dark, almost black wood that started at a smallish silver-tipped end and gradually widened up the length until it came to a long, relatively thick and heavy piece of silver with ripples along one side. She slipped her hand around it, noting that her fingers instinctively fitted into the grooves. With one hand on the shaft and the other on the grip, she pulled in opposite directions, starting at the sound of metal hissing against metal, at the speed and ease with which the small sword fully cleared the scabbard. Shaking her head in amazement, she care- fully sheathed the sharp-edged instrument and laid it back on the table.

  "You did that very well, Seraphina."

  She looked over her shoulder to find Barrett leaning against the jamb of the parlor door. "I wasn't aware that you'd come to visit," she said brightly, glad that Aiden wouldn't have to manage the situation entirely on his own.

  "Carden's in his study."

  He grinned. "Sawyer says that I have impeccable timing and, yes, I've already seen the rapidly declining state of Carden Reeves." He pointed to the walking stick. "It's an interesting little toy, isn't it?"

  "I thought it was an ordinary walking stick."

  "That's the intention. You always want the element of surprise on your side."

  Sera chuckled. "I didn't realize that Hyde Park was such a dangerous place."

  "It's not, generally speaking." His smile faded by slow degrees as he considered her, his mind clearly working through a decision. "But once you acquire the habit of being armed," he said carefully, ''you feel a certain vulnerability without a weapon easily at hand. Carden has always favored the cutting weapons. Myself ... I'm much less personal about my violence. The pistol is my weapon of first choice."

  "I didn't realize that there were different kinds of violence," she admitted, sensing that Barrett had both an objective for their conversation and a reason for it.

  "I was already with Her Majesty's engineers in the Transvaal when Carden was assigned to the regiment,” he went on, still leaning against the doorjamb. "Our commanding officer at the time was a bureaucrat who fancied himself a man of considerable technical talent and expertise.

  A combination that made our work extremely-and quite unnecessarily-dangerous.

  "We were spanning a gorge and he and Carden had a strong difference of opinion as to how it ought to be done structurally. Carden, being a subordinate, lost the contest.

  And when the trestle collapsed-just as Carden said it would and despite his every effort to keep it from happening- we lost seventeen good men,"

  Sera held her breath and watched Barrett gaze back into the horror of the past. After several long moments, he shook his head and straightened, saying bluntly, "Carden went after him bare-handed." He held up his own hand, a mere sliver of space between his thumb and forefinger.

  "And came this close to beating him to death."

  Her heart was racing and she had to swallow before she had the poise to ask, "Did they lock him away for attacking a superior officer?"

  Barrett fastened his gaze on hers and coolly, very pointedly, replied, ''There were no witnesses to support the commander's accusations."

  She knew-to the center of her bones-otherwise. And that Barrett was entrusting her with a long-held and most valuable secret.

  "I would have shot the bastard from twenty paces and
been done with it," he continued with a shrug. "Carden, on the other hand, made sure he knew that every blow was on behalf of a man who died because of his incompetency and pomposity."

  "He made it personal."

  Barrett nodded. "Death is very personal for Carden. Not his own, of course. Some of the men who have worked with him would tell you that heights don't bother him.

  Others-the slightly more observant ones-would tell you that he actually likes them. But the truth is that it's not about heights at all. It's about edges. Carden enjoys danger."

  "He flirts with death," she observed softly, uncomfortable with what she was hearing. but not overly surprised by it.

  “An excellent way of putting it. Sometimes, he even taunts it. The things I've seen him do ... " He shook his head and chuckled as a wide smile brightened his face.

  He leaned against the doorjamb again and crossed his arms over his chest.

  ''The first task when building a span is to establish a pulley cable between the two anchor points. Men and materiel move out and back and across in a basket that hangs from the cable. If the cable slips from the pulley or jams ... It's often a very long way down.

  "I was in the basket at the midpoint and over fifty meters up when the cable jammed. I hadn't taken a harness out with me and I was too far out for one to be flung to me. Carden disappeared and came back with one of Cook's rolling pins. I sat-exceedingly bored when not horribly embarrassed-in the basket while the rope fell short time after time, a vicious storm rolled in on us, and Carden sat on a truss, calmly whittling on that rolling pin."

  "He whittled while you hung over an abyss?"

  With a low laugh, Barrett nodded. "The lightning was cracking all around us when he finally put his knife away, walked to the end of the cable, dropped the harness for me over his shoulder, settled the rolling pin on the cable, and stepped off the edge. He laughed all the way out and dropped into the basket with me as though he'd done nothing more than ride a horse down Rotten Row and then hopped off."

  "He wasn't wearing a harness himself, was he?" Sera guessed.

  "Carden never wears a harness."

  "It would take away the edge," she observed with a sigh. "How did he get back to the point?"

  "With my weight lowering the point end of the cable, he rode back on his rolling pin."

  "Laughing. "

  "He's not completely foolhardy," Barrett assured her.

  "He simply sees risk differently from most men. For him it's a grand game."

  Carden's life, as much as she'd seen of it, was a far cry from the one Barrett had described. ''There's hardly any great danger in building houses and conservatories.

  He must be terribly bored these days."

  "He's had some practice for it," he countered with another shrug. "Military life is frequently more tedious than it is exciting. One has hours on end to fill as best one can.

  We invented a great many games to amuse ourselves and pass the time. In fact," he said, stepping away from the jamb with a wink, “I’ll show you one of them. Wait right there."

  He went to the parlor and returned a few seconds later with an apple. "Here, toss this," he instructed, putting it into her hand and then pivoting to stand beside her. "In any direction you'd prefer and whenever you're ready."

  She had no idea what he was going to do - perhaps catch it in his mouth - but she adjusted her hold on the heavy piece of fruit, tossed it straight up into the air above their heads, and then instantly stepped back so that she could more easily watch him. He moved so quickly that she wasn't quite sure what he'd done, but there was a most definite flash of silver just before the apple tumbled out of the air and landed on the marble tiles by the door. She could only stare in openmouthed amazement as Barrett strode over, snatched it up, and pulled the knife out of it.

  "Carden would have cut it cleanly in two," he supplied, wiping the blade on the sleeve of his suit coat. The entire knife disappeared up his left sleeve as he added, "He's much more proficient with knives than I am. With a sword, he'd have quartered it."

  "Of course," she said, shaking off her surprise. "Swords and knives have dangerous edges."

  "I've never thought of it that way. You're right."

  "Since I haven't seen any chopped fruit lying about ... What is Carden doing for diversion while he endures the tedium of his life?"

  "When he's not drinking far more than usual to dull it," Barrett replied, his eyes twinkling, "he's engaged in an exquisitely civilized and highly refined variation of hunting."

  "In other words," she rejoined, "he's finding his danger and excitement in being a rake."

  "There is a definite edge to it."

  "Particularly when you encounter a woman who doesn't appreciate being viewed as game."

  ''That's very true," he admitted. ''There was a-" He swallowed the rest of the story and shot her an apologetic look. "Never mind."

  She looked past him and down the hall to the open doorway of Carden's study. How much longer would it be, she wondered, before he couldn't stand the boredom any longer and went back to dancing on high edges? As much as the thought of his casual -risk-taking concerned her, she couldn't help but think that it was a better way to go through life than drinking himself into oblivion.

  "Barrett?" she began softly. "If it wouldn't be prying to ask or a betrayal of a confidence to answer . .. Why is Carden drinking so heavily today?"

  "Ghosts, I suspect," his friend answered quietly, also looking at the open door. "He's never said why he does these dives, but in all the time I've known him, I've never seen him at a funeral sober. We've been to far too many funerals together, Carden and I.

  "I think he sees a death as the consequence of a failure on his part. That if he'd tried harder or done something differently, it would have been averted. He hates to fail at anything and takes it hard when he does. Not that he's ever talked about all of this, you understand. Carden holds his secrets like he does his cards, close to the vest."

  How very sad, she thought, to have secrets that you couldn't share with anyone, not even your best friend.

  There couldn't be any kind of loneliness deeper than that.

  Laying her hand on Barrett's arm, she waited until he looked down at her before saying, "You're a very good friend to understand and accept that, Barrett."

  "He doesn't ask about mine, so we're even," he countered with a most dismissive shrug. He cocked a brow and added, "And then we also share a good number of secrets between us."

  "Such as who might have attacked your commanding officer," she supplied.

  "That would be one. And all things considered, a relatively minor one among the bunch."

  Minor? Good Lord. She didn't want to know what they might consider major. "You're both lucky you aren't in a jail somewhere, aren't you?"

  He laughed and grinned. ''They haven't built one that could hold us. If you'll excuse me, I think I'll go see if he's still standing."

  She nodded her assent, thinking that men were the strangest creatures; they'd risk their lives for each other, lie for each other, follow one another around the world to keep each other from stupidly getting themselves killed, and never feel the least bit put off by the fact that what they knew about each other didn't go any deeper than the experiences they'd shared. They really were altogether another species of animal.

  "Oh," Barrett said, stopping and turning back. "The reason I came out here looking for you in the first place . . . Lady Hatcher's ball is in a few days. As the son of a prominent financier, I'm considered useful to know and so I'm invited to these sorts of affairs. Mother always insists that it's my duty to attend. Might I prevail on you to make the evening a pleasant one for me?"

  Her instincts squirmed, suggesting that accepting was an unwise thing to do. But Honoria had cornered her into accepting an invitation from Aiden and to turn down Barrett's would likely embarrass him. She couldn't do that to him. Sacrificing good judgment to kindness, she summoned a smile and replied, "I'd be pleased to attend wi
th you, Barrett."

  With a smile of his own, he bowed, said, "My sincerest appreciation, Seraphina," and then turned and went on his way.

  She frowned down at the walking stick, an odd mixture of exhilaration and disquietude stealing over her in the silence. The source of her concern was patently obvious: she was not only contemplating an affair with an admitted rake who had a penchant for living boldly and recklessly, but she had-in the span of less than a single hour accepted invitations out from both of his friends. Friends who were every bit as rakish, bold, and reckless as he was. It all very strongly suggested that she'd forgotten to crate up her good sense when she was leaving Belize.

  Her sense of elation wasn't equally discernible in any respect. There was a bit of a hopeful feeling to it. And an undercurrent of what almost felt like contentment. Or perhaps it was a sense of homecoming. At least as she'd always imagined what a homecoming would feel like.

  Whatever it was, there was certainly no reason for any of it. She had no home. She had nothing whatsoever to be hopeful about beyond the likelihood that she'd have something to eat tonight. And content? No woman attempting to juggle relationships of one sort or another with three men had cause for anything approximating contentment.

  Not a sane woman anyway .

  Sera shook her head and decided that she had better uses for her time than trying to solve elusive puzzles. It had been days since the girls had done an arithmetic lesson.

  On slates the numbers were as defined as the sums and differences were always clear and certain. At the moment, she could truly appreciate that kind of predictability and assurance.

  CHAPTER I2

  Sera stopped in the kitchen doorway, lamp in hand, not at all certain what she should do. She'd come to check on the puppies and hadn't expected to find Carden with them at this late hour. She wouldn't have thought that he would be in any condition to put one foot in front of the other, much less able to get himself down the stairs and into the kitchen. But there he was, sitting on the floor beside the bed they'd made for the dogs, his back against the hearth surround, a puppy in his lap, both of them seemingly sound asleep.