Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden. Nicola Cornick
is a poor neighborhood,” Garrick said, “and free beer is free beer no matter how it is delivered.”
Merryn was quiet. The darkness wrapped about them dense and malty and hot. In the silences, Garrick thought, he could sense Merryn slipping away from him, feel her fear creep closer, feel her thoughts turning dark. A moment later she caught his sleeve. Her fingers brushed his wrist, sending a deep shiver of awareness through him.
“You saved my life,” she said. She took a breath. “I wish it had not been you.” She sounded very unhappy. “I wish it had been anyone but you.”
Garrick gave a short laugh. “I’ll take that as gratitude,” he said. This time he did reach out and touch her cheek. It felt soft and dusty beneath his fingers. She drew back sharply.
“When it comes to life and death,” he said slowly, “you cannot afford to be too particular about who saves you, Lady Merryn. That is something I do know.”
There was a silence. He could hear Merryn breathing again, quick and ragged. He knew she was fighting a battle with herself against the fear that oppressed her. She gave a juddering little hiccup and Garrick felt her raise her hands, scrubbing away what must have been tears from her face. His instinct, fierce and immediate, was to reach out to try to comfort her but he held back. He knew his touch would be the last thing she wanted. Besides, he was having trouble keeping his own mind from plumbing the depths of disaster. He knew that their prospects were not good. No one knew that they were there. They could be walled up until they starved to death, they could be crushed by another fall of masonry, they could drown, they could run short of air and be smothered or they might simply go mad. Garrick closed his eyes and forced away all the images of death and catastrophe by sheer force of will. The effort made his head pound all the more. He tried to think about Merryn, about the need to reassure her. It distracted him from his own pain and discomfort.
“You do not need to be afraid of the dark,” he said. “It cannot hurt you.”
“I know.” Her voice had eased a shade, as though talking made their captivity a tiny bit easier to bear. “I was locked in a chest once when I was young,” she said. “It was so small and dark and hot, just like this. I could not move and I thought I would never be found and that I would die like the girl in a Gothic novel I had read.”
“Which just goes to show how dangerous reading can be,” Garrick said. “Why were you in the chest in the first place?”
“I was playing hide-and-seek with Joanna and Tess,” Merryn said. He could hear her voice warm into amusement. The memory was distracting her. “I wanted to hide somewhere they would never find me,” she said, “just to prove that I was cleverer than they were.” Her amusement died. “Unfortunately I chose too well.”
“Presumably they were cleverer than you had anticipated,” Garrick pointed out, “or you would not be here.” He paused. “Why did you feel you had something to prove?”
Merryn did not reply for a moment. Garrick waited. It was odd not being able to see her. He had nothing on which to judge her responses other than hearing and intuition. But the darkness seemed to have sharpened his senses other than sight. He could read all the little nuances in Merryn’s voice. Her emotions were reflected in her breathing: her fear, her unhappiness and her determination not to crack and give in to weakness. He could smell her, too, the faint scent of flowers mixed with dust and beer in her hair and on her skin. He ached to touch her.
After a moment Merryn answered his question. He could hear reluctance in her voice, as though she were confiding a secret almost against her will.
“Jo and Tess were both so pretty,” she said ruefully, “and I was not. All I had was my book learning.”
Garrick remembered her telling him that he should address his gallantries to her sisters because she had no interest or experience in the art of flirtation.
“You look just like they do,” he said. “No one could doubt that you are related.”
He could feel her amazement. “No, I do not! I don’t look like them at all! I am short where they are statuesque.”
“You are smaller than your sisters, perhaps, but more of a perfect miniature.”
She did not appear to have heard him. “And I am fair whereas Jo is dark and Tess has dark red hair.”
“Blond hair is just as pretty,” Garrick pointed out. “Prettier.”
“And my eyes are not violet-blue.”
“No, they are more like sapphires.”
“And my nose is snub.” Merryn sounded defiant, as though this were the clinching argument.
“True,” Garrick agreed.
“Which ruins everything.” Now she sounded fierce.
“What a good job,” Garrick said, “that you do not value appearance in the least.”
There was a silence. “I was jealous,” Merryn said in a very small voice. “They had each other. They were friends. I was younger and I had no charm. Not a scrap of it.”
Garrick found that he wanted to pull her into his arms. The impulse grabbed him fast and violently. He forced his hands to his sides. To touch Merryn now just as they were starting to build a tentative alliance to see them through this ordeal would be madness. He had to keep his distance.
“It is true that you are not in the common style,” he said carefully, “but that does not mean that you are not …”
He stopped. What, Farne? he thought. He could scarcely tell her that she was exquisite, desirable, ravishing, even if he believed all those things to be true.
“Interesting in your own way,” he finished. It sounded lame. It was lame. His address had clearly deserted him. He wanted to kick himself.
But Merryn was laughing. “No one could accuse you of flattery, your grace,” she said dryly.
“I can see that having two sisters who are incomparables must be somewhat trying,” Garrick said.
“I felt like a cuckoo in the nest,” Merryn said. “You have brothers and sisters,” she added, taking him aback. “Why are you estranged from them?”
Garrick laughed ruefully. “You are unfailingly direct, are you not, Lady Merryn?”
She sounded surprised. “I ask things because I want to know.”
That, Garrick thought, summed Merryn up precisely. She had never learned the art of compromise, never seen why she should adopt all the little accommodations, lies and deceits that made life run so much more easily. When Merryn wanted to know something she asked a straight question.
“I am not estranged from Ethan,” he said, taking her question very literally to avoid addressing the more painful truths about his family and their appalling lack of sibling spirit.
“Ethan is your half brother, is he not?” Merryn said. “The one who married Lottie Palliser?”
The word brother seemed to dance on the air between them for a moment and the atmosphere thickened with emotion. Garrick could sense the fragile pact between them slipping away when it was barely begun. How could it not, with Stephen Fenner’s death always lying between them? And yet suddenly, fiercely, he was not prepared to accept that. He and Merryn had to survive this disaster together and he would fight for that against all the odds.
“Unfortunately Ethan is the only one who does not hate me,” he said conversationally, trying to distract her. “The others refuse to speak to me.”
“Oh …” Merryn almost laughed. Garrick could feel the huge effort she was making not to allow Stephen Fenner’s memory to come between them. It was the only thing that she could do, trapped alone with him in the dark. She needed comfort and reassurance, someone to talk to, and he was the only one there with her.