Etiquette With The Devil (24 page)

“Nonsense,” she said with a warm timbre.

He stood, licking his lips to taste her. Clara rolled over and smiled into her pillow. She was porcelain in that bed—fragile and cream. Her long golden hair tangled over her shoulders and swept across her back. She made no movement to cover herself up.

Propriety and etiquette were forgotten here between them. At long last.

“Clara Dawson.” He traced her shoulder with the tip of his index finger. A storm had taken hold of him inside, one that threatened to sink the Devil for good. Words that he never thought he would ever say to a woman sat on his tongue. He swallowed them back. “What a remarkable woman.”

She bit on her lip, gazing up at him if he had become God himself. She should have known better. He might be quickly tumbling into changing his life for her, but he would never be a good man.

“Friends do not leave friends behind,” she teased, tugging on his arm.

He wrinkled his nose at her, and chuckled. “I’ll do it again if you keep making protests.”

“Very friendly indeed.”

It was then that the weight of what they had done struck him. It was then that the early morning hours darkened and despair clutched at him once more. He shrugged on his shirt and began to button it, avoiding her pleading eyes as she sat up and clutched the sheets to her chest.

“Please stay.”

He feared that he would become a villain to her as well. He feared his leaving would shatter her, and for that matter, him as well. He feared it was too late to reverse the course of his heart. He had fallen in love with Clara Dawson weeks ago over a dusty crate.

Falling in love, it seemed, was an endless drop. He fell quicker and harder, whirring ahead in the dark without any sign of stopping. But he knew the ground was quickly approaching, that at some point something would break his fall. He never handled the unknown well.

“Get some sleep before your day must start as well. It’s time for me to leave, I’m afraid.” He leaned over the bed and kissed her, his fear pouring forward from his mouth in such urgency.

Why did it feel as if everything had ended when they had just begun?

*

Since her arrival, his aunt insisted upon formality. He was to eat breakfast in the breakfast room even though a leak had collapsed one corner of the ceiling. Repairs hadn’t been made because breakfast was eaten in the kitchen or the nursery before she and her servants conquered Burton Hall.

A footman waited by the table for him. Bly asked for some coffee, then walked to the sideboard he remembered his mother had loved. The panels were pained in pastoral murals. She had told him once it was gift from the empress of Austria. She had told him a great many grand tales while she was wrapped up in silks and pearls. The crown she had insisted on wearing was once of paste gems Bly had bought for her. Two days after she had received it, she insisted it was made of rare diamonds and was a gift from his father in India. His father hadn’t written his mother since Bly had moved with him to India twelve years earlier, never mind sent her gifts.

He grabbed an apple from the sideboard, then grabbed the coffee from the table, and bolted out the rusty-hinged French doors out into a jungle of dying weeds before the footman could protest.

Why his aunt fired Ned Nash was beyond him. The park of Burton Hall needed the attention of a fleet of men, never mind one gardener. Between the gardens and the lawn, there was months and months of work to do to restore it back to the vision it once had been.

The bricks underfoot wobbled as he pushed through the overgrown tangle. Stalks of sunflowers stood sentry, blackened by the frost that claimed the early mornings now. He should have grabbed his coat before walking out. The cold stiffened his hand and seeped into his skin, sinking deep until he remembered England was always cloaked in the miserable weather.

He chucked the apple core over his shoulder and gazed out over the park of thinning tree leaves and decay, then tilted his head up to the sky. Light flicked through his closed eyes, and he dragged in a deep breath of air, the cold rushing in and shaking him awake. He was sore from his brawling yesterday. Hell, even his knuckles were split open. Nothing mattered now, not when he smiled to himself and pulled out his pocket watch, knowing full well Clara would be stealing away for a few minutes to the music room.

He had no ring, but if he left Burton Hall to find one, he was afraid he would be swayed. He did not wish for a taste of freedom from the burdens of this place. He simply wished to ask the woman he had found himself suddenly in love with to marry him. He would worry about the rest after hearing her answer.

The sound of a hammer being pulled back clicked behind him, and he froze.

“I didn’t want to have to do this, Bly.”

“Then put down the gun,” he answered coolly, keeping his back to Graham.

Bly watched as Clara floated into the music room, wearing that white dress of hers with lace about the collar. She held Grace in her arms and peeked back out into the hallway before shutting the door behind them and taking a seat at the piano bench.

Graham circled around him, holding a pistol aimed straight for his heart. “A lot of men have died at your hands, but if you think I won’t pull this trigger, you are gravely mistaken.” His mentor’s face was tinged red, as though he had waited out in the cold for some time. “And after yesterday’s brawl at the tavern, you are going to have the villagers storming the house to make you pay for the damage you did, never mind the man they claim you crippled.”

“Then do us both a favor, and kill me.” Bly sidestepped, trying his best to shield himself behind a hedge so Clara would not notice him.

Graham stepped closer, a sneer spreading across his thin lips. “That has always been your problem. I knew when I met you as a young solider you carried around an unfathomable amount of resentment. And because of that hatred, you became unstoppable. I will say this plainly and for the last time. You are going to pack and get on a fucking boat with me for Cairo. This isn’t a choice. It’s a mission and I’m telling you it must be done.”

Bly ducked his head down, rubbing his hand through his hair and over his neck. “A mission or a theft? No, don’t answer. I’ve told you I am done with that work, with working for you, for that matter.” He pointed at his mentor, rage igniting a fire within himself. “I know you get a cut of everything I steal. I’m not—”

He sprang for Graham, knocking the pistol out of his hand. The two men landed hard on the garden path. Bly fisted a handful of pebbles and dirt and threw them at Graham’s face. “I’m not leaving.” He shoved the other man’s face against the ground, then punched his side, close to his kidneys.

Graham squirmed, curling into a ball. Bly rose to his knees, his arm in the air as he was ready to strike again, but Graham sent a boot into his knee, toppling Bly. His mentor, though years older and struggling for breath, gained the advantage over Bly and struck him across the face with the butt of the pistol.

The world spun around Bly. Flesh split and ripped across his face, the taste of fresh blood seeping into his mouth as he spat and cursed at Graham.

“You want to stay because of her?” Graham struck Bly across the face again.

Bly’s head snapped to the side. For a moment, his vision blurred as he tried to keep the music room in focus.

“You want to know her truth? She’s a murderess, Ravensdale!”

He took another hit not because he needed to, but because in that instant, Bly wanted it to happen. Everyone had a past, even his Clara. “I don’t believe you.”

They both struggled for air as they lay sprawled out in the walkway, bruised and bloody.

“You are coming with me to Cairo. Today.”

Bly lunged for Graham. The wrestled, both trying to rise to their feet to gain an advantage. Bly circled Graham’s throat, and squeezed. He would not believe the lies; he would not fall prey to Graham and his stories. His grip tightened around Graham’s throat until the man’s face purpled and his eyes bulged. Air wheezed through his open mouth.

Bly shoved him forward. “I will not. Get off my property and don’t show your face again. I’m through with working for criminals. What I’m stealing belongs in museums—”

“But you aren’t above marrying one, are you?” His voice croaked past each letter as though his voice box had been broken.

Bly swung at Graham once more, but Graham stepped out from behind the hedge, then stepped closer to the door to the music room, holding his gun to his shoulder. “Killing you is impossible, Ravensdale.” Then he leveled the gun to the figure of Clara and Grace at the piano. “But killing them, I think, would be enough to bring you to your knees to do my bidding.”

On instinct, Bly held his hands out. “No.” He bowed his head, his voice quiet. “Step back, hide behind the hedge so Clara will not see you. I will…I will do what you want, but uncock your damn gun first.”

“Good.” Graham lowered his gun and stepped behind the hedge. “You have an hour to pack your things. We are catching the morning train out of here.”

*

Clara arrived at the schoolroom to find two sobbing children. Grace shrieked from down the hallway in the nursery in between the stern lectures of the nurses.

“Whatever is the matter?” she asked Minnie and James. “I promise the lessons I planned for today are not so bad that you need to cry.”

They rushed her, throwing their arms tight around her waist. “Uncle,” they both whimpered between sobs.

“What did he do now?” She sank to her knees and gathered the children into her arms.

“He has come to make his goodbyes,” an icy voice announced from the doorway. “Children, stop clinging to your governess like weeping babes.”

It’s time for me to leave, I’m afraid.

Clara stood, but did not remove her hold on Minnie and James’s heaving shoulders.

“He’s leaving?” she asked, meeting Lady Margaret’s icy stare with one of her own.

“Presently.”

“Go with Nurse,” she whispered to the children. She brushed past Lady Margaret, strode down the hallway, and brazenly opened the door to his bedroom. His room was empty.

Clara from went room to room, opening and closing doors with no regard to the judgment of the others in the house. She would hunt him down and wring his neck. She finally flung the door of his study open and found him standing behind his desk.

“You have left quite a wake with your news. The children are beside themselves.”

Bly looked up from shuffling through a stack of papers for a moment, then glanced back down.

“Did I not warrant a goodbye?”

“You had two, I believe.” His voice was low, full of disinterest.

She slammed the door shut, stormed across the office, and slapped him. She refused to be spoken to like a whore. Clara pulled herself back from the desk and balled her fists. At least now she had his attention.

“The children need a father. You cannot abandon them.”

“As their guardian, not their father, I can,” he said. “I have seen to their care. When they are of age, they’ll be sent to the best boarding schools in England. Their lives, Dawson, won’t suffer from my absence.”

Dawson
? So, he was going to be cruel again.

“If you believe that, then you are a foolish man. They need you. You are all they have.”

I need you.

“I have done what was required of me. They’re looked after and the house is to be restored. I’m not needed here. I have my own life to continue.”

“Burton Hall is your life now.”

“Don’t interfere.”

“Funny that when it suits, you insist on propriety. I implore you to reconsider,
sir
,” she bit out. “They need you. You are what they have for family, not that ghastly woman upstairs who’s chastising them for being upset to see you go.”

He looked up for a moment, burning her with that strange empty stare that possessed him from time to time. It left her rather empty, as well.

“You’ll do fine,” he said, looking back down at the stack of papers. His hands shuffled things madly, searching for something that was not there.

“I am not their family.”

“No, but that can be remedied if you need to see to their care.”