Dangerous to Kiss (15 page)

He laughed softly, and shook his head. “Don’t even think it, Deborah. Hart is not as civilized as I. If you try to escape him, I can’t vouch for what he might do.”

His words on Hart were well taken, but it shook her that he could read her thoughts so easily. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said.

He smiled that devilish smile of his and released her. “Oh, I think you do,” he said, and left the room.

She heard a muted conversation, just outside the door, then Hart entered. He wasn’t as tall as Kendal, but he was a good three stone heavier by Deborah’s reckoning. He was one of those men whose jawline would always be shadowed by the growth of his new beard, giving him a sinister appearance.

“Gray wants the place cleaned up,” he said.

She eyed him nervously. Those were the first intelligible words he had spoken to her. Perhaps, if they got a conversation going, she wouldn’t be so afraid of him. “I shall need hot water and lots of it,” she ventured.

He pointed to a wooden bucket by the sink, then indicated the barred window. “The pump is in the yard, right outside that door.”

Moistening her lips, she tried again. “There is hardly enough light to see what I am doing.”

Without a word, he moved to the window and grasped one of the boards across it. With one yank, it came away in his hands, as did the next, and the next. The man was as strong as an ox.

Swallowing, Deborah began to roll up her sleeves.

By nightfall, every muscle in Deborah’s body ached with fatigue. She paused in her labors at the sink, straightened, and rubbed the small of her back with one hand to ease the tension that knotted her spine. Her eyes strayed to the silent man who had been sitting at the fire for the last hour or two, staring at her as if he were a starving cat and she were a mouse in a cage. She had been a fool to think she could escape him. With his master gone, his vigilance had increased tenfold. She could
not even go to the privy but he stood on guard right outside the door, and when
he
went to the privy, he took the precaution of locking her in her room first.

She had cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom, and it had been all for nothing. Lord Kendal had had the foresight to take Hart’s horse with him when he rode out that morning. Just thinking about that scoundrel made her want to spit. While he was out gallivanting, she had worked her fingers to the bone, cleaning his house for him. Her eyes traveled the interior of the small room, noting the results of her labors.

Her cast-iron grate gleamed brightly, and an array of spanking-clean pots and skillets hung on their proper hooks from the oak mantel. The table was still scratched and rickety, but every speck of filth had been removed from it. The flagstoned floor had been swept and scoured. The slop pail was empty, and a tub of fresh water sat on the bench next to the sink. Even her own room had received its fair share of attention. There was a pitcher of fresh water on the washstand and, most gratifying of all, the iniquitous chamber pot had been immersed in a tub of scalding hot water.

She shouldn’t be so angry. Had she not agreed to clean up the kitchen, God only knew what he would have done to her. He had already murdered one man. He wouldn’t hesitate to punish her if she defied him. Yet, she was alive and unharmed, and though Lord Kendal had made many threats against her, he had not carried out a single one. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that she had Nick to thank for that. She had no way of knowing what had passed between them in private, but she was sure Nick would have taken her part. He liked her, was sorry for her, and looked askance at his brother’s rough and ready methods of subduing her. If it really came down to it, she was sure Nick would champion her cause.

The last thing she wanted, however, was a face-to-face confrontation between Nick and Kendal. Nick would lose, nothing was surer, then she would be worse off than before. Somehow, she must persuade Nick to help her escape, and it must be done quickly. She had to
find a way to speak privately with Nick. She had to escape Kendal’s power. She
had
to.

As she absently dried her hands on a coarse towel, she turned the thought over in her mind. She didn’t know what was the matter with her. She knew what Kendal was, yet she could not seem to hold on to that thought for more than a few minutes at a time. When he had asked her, so quietly and earnestly, to confide in him, she had been shaken to the depths of her soul. For a second, a fraction of a second, she had actually teetered on the brink of indecision. In that moment, there was nothing she wanted more than to lay her burdens on his broad shoulders. When it came to her that
he
was the burden she wanted to lay on his broad shoulders, her wavering had turned to outrage. All the same, she had come perilously close to betraying herself. She had to escape before she completely lost the use of her wits.

It wasn’t only that moment of indecision that set her teeth on edge. She’d had time to reflect on the episode that morning, when she had awakened to find herself plastered against him. Just thinking about it made her go hot all over. It wasn’t as if she were attracted to the man or anything of that sort. He was the antithesis of everything she admired in a male. It pained her to admit it, but she had behaved with all the modesty of a wanton hussy. She was inexperienced, that was her undoing, and he was a man of the world. The intelligence on which she prided herself had not entered into it. It was one more reason why she had to leave this place as quickly as possible.

He was a murderer, she reminded herself. She hated him, feared him, wished with all her heart that he would meet with his just deserts. And if she ever again felt herself softening toward him, she would cut her own throat and save him the bother.

She was spreading out the dishcloths to dry on the sink, when she heard the sound of a horn blowing. There followed several more blasts on the horn and Lord Kendal’s voice raised in a rousing sea chantey. Deborah recognized the tune, but not the words.

“What shall we do with the wanton maiden?” roared his lordship at the top of his lungs.

Another voice answered him, Nick’s voice, and Deborah did not appreciate the tone or content of his lewd reply. By the sound of them, they were as drunk as lords.

Hart flashed her one of his forbidding looks, then rose and went quickly through the door that led to the front of the house. Deborah’s brows came down. She was almost tempted to reach for her rolling pin. Both voices now were loud enough to raise the rafters. Hart was trying to shush them, to no avail.

Crude
, thought Deborah. She had expected better of Nick. Drunk wasn’t the word for it. Hard on that thought came an electrifying flash of perception. She might never be handed a better chance to escape.

She gave a start as the door crashed open and Gray, one arm looped around Nick’s shoulders, came ambling into the room. In his free hand, he held a coachman’s tin horn which he proceeded to blow with great gusto. In that small kitchen, the blast of noise was ear-shattering.

Deborah crossed her arms beneath her breasts. Though both gentlemen were in a similar state of disarray, it was Gray she eyed with mounting ire. He was dressed in the same garments he had worn that morning, but he was anything but immaculately turned out. Her eyes moved over him slowly, missing nothing. His hair was windblown and damp from the rain. His neckcloth was askew, and both shirt and waistcoat were unbuttoned, displaying his sleekly muscled chest and the strong column of his throat. The breeches that sheathed his slim flanks and taut thighs were wrinkled beyond redemption. Her gaze dropped to his boots. Adorning each tasseled Hessian was a frilly lace garter garlanded with red rosebuds. Her eyes jerked back to his hair. Not windblown, she decided then, but disarranged by a woman’s fingers.

She prided herself on having hit on just the right combination of amusement and contempt in the snort
she emitted. “Is this how Lady Becket entertains her guests?”

Nick cleared his throat. “Actually, Deborah, we, um, left Lady Becket’s place some hours ago.”

Her gaze narrowed on Gray, and swept over him, making a more thorough inventory than before, then she sniffed and turned her nose up.

Gray’s face broke into a slow grin. “By damn, Nick, I can’t resist her when she flirts with me,” and shaking off Nick’s restraining arm, he crossed the room and enfolded her in a bear hug.

Deborah buckled under his weight, but before she could protest, his lips took hers in an openmouthed kiss that sent flashes of heat all the way to her loins. She felt the burst of something sweet inside her, and then she smelled him. The brandy she could tolerate, but the reek of cheap perfume on his bare skin set up a different kind of heat on the palm of her hand. She itched to slap him.

Dragging her head back, she glared up at him. “You smell like a, like a—” Her bosom was heaving.

“Bawdy house?” he supplied. “Oh, that was Nick’s doing. The Jewel Box, do you know it? It’s right behind the King’s Arms.” His face fell. “It didn’t work. I told Nick it wouldn’t.”

Over Gray’s shoulder, Deborah saw Nick shrug eloquently as he pulled out a chair at the table and seated himself. “I don’t know, Gray,” he said. “It seemed to me that you were tolerably well amused.”

Gray leered down at Deborah. “Amber and Garnet do very well in their way. I’ll even go so far as to say I found them quite inventive. But their tricks are tainted. You can’t blame a man for wanting the fresh meat that’s keeping in his own larder.”

Nick gave Deborah a very direct look and shook his head.

Deborah knew well enough that Nick was trying to reassure her. The crude drunken sot who was a deadweight around her neck was so worn out with his amorous exploits that he posed no immediate threat to any woman. She was glad to hear it, and exceedingly grateful to Nick for his timely intervention. All the same, it
was galling to discover that while she had been working her fingers to the bone, cleaning his house for him, he had been amusing himself with ladies of easy virtue.
Inventive
ladies of easy virtue, whatever that meant. She knew she was badly out of her depth with this man, and it irked her. It damn well infuriated her.

Her move was so ferocious, so sudden, that even she was surprised by the result. Gray staggered back on his heels, did a little half-turn, and went spinning toward the open fire. Nick sprang to his feet. Deborah got there before him. With a squeal of fright, she made a dive for Gray and caught him by the coattails not a moment before he went sprawling on the hot coals. One yank brought him teetering back on his heels to fall with a thump on his rear end.

“I say, Deborah,” began Nick.

Gray waved a hand airily above his head. “No, don’t meddle, Nick. That’s her love play. She’s quite the Amazon once she gets started. No, really, I’m coming to appreciate the strong, masterful type of woman. It makes a man wonder who is going to come out on top.”

This was evidently a huge joke, for both gentlemen chortled into their hands.

Glaring furiously from one to the other, Deborah took a few quick paces around the room. “You are a disgrace to your rank and class,” she stormed at them.

“Yes, so you have already told me,” said Gray, looking more like a mischievous schoolboy than a thoroughgoing degenerate. “Look, I’ve brought you a present.”

She took the garters from him without thinking, then gasped.

He flashed her a cozening grin. “I was sure you would like them, you know, because your own things are so plain and serviceable.”

Her voice rose alarmingly. “And you thought to please me by giving me another woman’s cast-offs?”

“They’re not cast-offs. I won them in a game of dice.”

He stopped speaking when she stomped to the fire and threw the garters with great deliberation on top of the glowing coals.

There was a silence, then Gray said sulkily, “If they don’t suit, perhaps something else will. That’s not all I won, by any means.”

When he began to fish in his coat pockets, and Nick made a warning sound, Deborah stamped her foot. “Have you no sense of—” She stopped in mid-sentence, suddenly struck by her own stupidity. This conversation was ludicrous. She was berating him as though he were an errant husband and she were a jealous wife. He was her
abductor.
She was his
captive.
Moments before he had entered the room, only one thought had possessed her mind. Escape. Yet here she was again, going off like a rocket over something that could not possibly be of any interest to herself. Worse than that was the fact that she had saved him from toppling onto the hot coals. If she had been in her right mind, she would have given him a push. She must be mad. Oh God, she had to escape before she completely lost her senses.

Ignoring the frilly piece of underclothing Gray held out to her, she said to Nick, “Where is Hart?”

“He’s taking care of the horses, and, um, lighting the way for the company we are expecting.”

“Company?” she repeated carefully.

“Mostly for Hart’s benefit,” said Gray, “though not entirely.” He pulled to his knees, then to his feet, and with a helping hand from Nick, managed to seat himself at the table. As he stuffed the article of female clothing back into his pocket, he watched her from beneath the concealment of his lashes. “Like myself, Hart is a connoisseur of fine jewels. He will appreciate the gesture.”