Chapter 37

Hearing Belle's voice, Devorlane cursed foully. All he wanted was to get back up the stairs to his bedroom. Not all, exactly, in terms of there being one thing. Shut the door, reconstruct himself, also featured there, not to mention removing the hand that had unwelcomely fastened about his heart. It was still all though in terms of regaining his tranquility. Belle, in terms of that, was the last person he wanted to see.
"Devorlane-oh, Devorlane, there you are."
Gritting his teeth, he turned and glowered. "What?"
Of course Belle didn't know that the damned Sapphire woman was his mistress. Had she, she was unlikely to greet him with quite that degree of simper on her drably dull face, or widen her already bulging eyes in joy at clapping them on him.
"I'm so sorry to trouble you, Devorlane."
He turned to go. "So why do you keep doing it?"
"I didn't think that I wa--"
"What do you want?"
"I was just wondering where Cassidy is."
Devorlane hesitated. Whilst saying, the library but I don't think she's dressed, would doubtless swipe off the simper, was a doubtless swipe what he wanted? A week ago he'd have said yes, confidently, without losing a wink of sleep over the matter. Now he was drowning in a sea of treacle. Drink, drugs, women, all these life rafts he'd clung to for longer than he cared to remember, all so damned useless to him in terms of keeping his focus intact, he'd to ask himself if he really needed more of them. Might need-heaven forbid-to wean himself off.
He was getting lost in a sea of night sweats and that constant thrum in his thigh.
He was always able to walk away from a woman. Christ, it was why he'd done this. Damn well brought her here. It could not possibly have backfired. The woman was a thief. A guttersnipe underneath the refinement, who had stolen ten years of his life. He could surely harden his heart about that? And yet, there it was. He straightened his spine.
"Why?"
"Oh ... well, Devorlane ... " As her powder-blue skirt swished across the floor, conspiracy gleamed in Belle's bulging eyes. "That-that woman is here. You know the one."
Did he? He knew a lot of women. He imagined it might be any one of twenty dozen. And not just that. The one. The one that had always been called the one by Tilly, by Belle, by his mother, his father, by damned Ardent, in those short but tortuous days following his arrest, was already here, wasn't she? Did Belle know this?
"Which one?"
"Goodness, Devorlane, don't look so fierce. Obviously I'm not meaning that one, although it would be nice for you, for us all, if it was and she was to finally come clean."
He set his jaw. If Belle were to know that for him Sapphire already had, she'd collapse at the foot of these same stairs she now reached the bottom of.
"Go on."
"No. No. I'm meaning the one at Barwych. Ruby, I think her name is. And she's come looking for Cassidy."
His heart sunk like a stone. When his philosophy was to ignore what his women did behind his back, how could he be troubled about the fact this harridan had arrived at Chessington to see her partner in crime?
What the hell did it matter if Sapphire invited the entire Starkadder Sisterhood to lodge for the Christmas season? Held meetings where they planned the systematic plunder of every country house in the vicinity, while the rest of the household merrily sang carols and drank themselves senseless-Tilly anyway-on punch? It was no more than anything these same neighbors deserved, disbelieving him all these years ago, treating his protestations about Sapphire as stuff and nonsense.
What did Sapphire's damned harridan friend plan on doing exactly? Was she here alone, or had she brought the broom handle in order to batter him even harder for demanding Sapphire be his mistress?
"Etti put her in the sitting room to wait. She thought Cassidy was perhaps still in the library. But she wasn't sure. The door was locked, you see."
He strove not to let even a twitching facial muscle betray him. And no doubt Etti had heard everything. But the sitting room? Alone? Her?
"Etti did what?" He cursed beneath his breath as his gaze swept to the sitting room door.
"Well, yes." Belle's face reddened. "There is something wrong with that? Of course I know the woman is only a companion, and so does Etti, but Eudora was there and we did not think-and you-"
As he thundered down the stairs, Belle faltered.
"We couldn't find you."
"Eudora?"
It could have been worse. It could have been Tilly, by which time she and that harridan would be through a port bottle. They would be riding round the room on that damned broomstick. It might all come out who Ruby was, who Sapphire was, and then he was going to look immeasurably stupid installing her here unless he could make the case for doing it to humiliate her.
"Of course Eudora's there. What's wrong with you? You don't think we'd give some companion run of the house, do you, just because Cassidy is here under your protection? Looking through these boxes?"
He didn't. He was giving a jewel thief though, and he needed to understand this feeling, the one that had him by the gut. Sapphire was all sorts of things, so he needed to keep an eye on her. That much went without saying.
She was setting up residence here though, wasn't she? And not just in his home. In a place he didn't think he possessed-his heart.
How else could he explain that he didn't want Sapphire talking to Ruby? Not about him. Above everything else, worse than hatching some scheme, worse than stealing the dining room candlesticks, he feared one thing.
Her being persuaded to leave.
And at all costs he must do something about that fear.