Just This Once (13 page)

Don’t stare at people, Josephine. It’s rude.
Vulgar. Don’t hunch your shoulders, Josephine. Stand up straight.
Countesses don’t stoop.

Don’t use a spoon for your peas, Josephine.
Break your roll into pieces, Josephine. No, no, never dip it in the
beef gravy! And don’t even think of licking your fingers!

Cover your mouth when you yawn, Josephine.
Better yet, don’t yawn at all.

Stop fidgeting, Josephine. Ladies appear
composed at all times. And countesses are never ruffled.

Well, she’d be more than ruffled if Ethan
Savage walked in that door right now. Somehow, just the sight of
him ruffled her. And his touch. That moment when his hands had
circled her waist and he’d swung her down from the carriage with
such effortless ease.

Ruffled
was hardly the word for it,
Josie thought, and felt her stomach tighten.

Why did he have to affect her in any way
whatsoever? It had been this way from the first moment he’d flicked
those icy gray eyes over her. Something had started to burn inside
her. And the flame hadn’t gone out. In fact, it had grown stronger
since that afternoon in the parlor car when he’d come so
dangerously close to kissing her again.

She’d actually prowled the ship sometimes,
hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But, of course, she didn’t see
him much. Because he didn’t want to see her—he avoided her. He
loathed her.

Which meant she was probably safe tonight,
and every night. Ethan Savage was a complicated man, a man with
secrets and much on his mind. He had made it very clear right from
the start that he wasn’t interested in being bothered with her,
that she was someone useful to him—useful for a while—but beyond
that he would not give a second thought, or a second look, to the
lying thief he’d been forced to ally himself with.

He’d clearly made her Mr. Latherby’s
responsibility. She ought to be thankful.

Josie went to the wash basin and splashed
cold water on her face. She was patting her skin dry with a thick,
fluffy towel when she heard a step in the hall. The towel fell to
the carpet. Her hands flew to her throat.

But the steps went clear past without
wavering, and then, though she ran to the hall door and pressed her
ear against it, there was silence. If it was Ethan Savage, he had
gone to bed.

Without disturbing her.

As a curious disappointment rushed through
her, she bit her lip and wondered with a flash of panic what was
going to become of her.

She had left everything behind, everything.
Not that there was much to leave. The answers to her questions
might well lie in England, and so she had come here but not at all
the way she had planned when she’d grabbed Snake’s saddlebag
containing the stolen loot and the letter and jewels he’d taken
from Miss Alicia Denby, and run off.

She’d come as the wife of the Earl of
Stonecliff, a countess, and who ever could have planned on
that?

It will all work out,
Josie told
herself, as she had so many times before in her life when she was
frightened of the future, uncertain how she would find her next
meal, where she would sleep, how she would fare in yet another
stranger’s home.

She paced across the elegant room in her
bare feet, her wrapper whisking about her narrow ankles. Curling up
on the window seat of that firelit bedchamber, she stared
unseeingly out at the dense darkness of the estate’s grounds, with
the mist just beginning to lift and clear, and reviewed in her mind
every word of the letter that had been in Alicia Denby’s handbag.
Starting tomorrow, she would question each person she met, ask if
they knew of a young woman named Alicia Denby—

“You’re not figuring out a way to make off
with the silver, are you, bride?”

Josie’s heart nearly exploded with fright,
and she bolted to her feet. She’d never heard a thing. Not a
footstep, not the turning of the doorknob. Yet there stood Ethan
Savage, dark and powerful as always, though his face looked a bit
tired and drawn beneath those frowning ebony brows.

He came toward her slowly, and she held her
ground with effort, but he paused at the edge of the Persian rug,
his hands deep in his pockets, his tie and collar loosened.

“That’s not it?” he mused, studying her
enigmatically.

“Then what has you so deep in thought that a
bear could have roared in here and you’d never have noticed?
Regretting your decision to keep our marriage in name only?” A slow
grin almost touched his eyes. “If that’s what you want,” he said
casually, “I could probably be persuaded to oblige.”

“D
on’t you dare try
anything of the sort.” Josie answered quickly, lest he come any
closer. She wiggled her cold toes against the carpet. “I should
tell you, if you lay your hands on me—or even
try
to so much
as kiss me, I’ll scream.” She took a deep breath and met his gaze
with a flash of blue fire. “What will your servants think of their
precious earl then?”

“It wouldn’t matter to them in the least.
Plenty of servants have seen and heard plenty of black deeds done
within such elegant walls,” he sneered. He cast himself down into a
wing chair and grinned wickedly over at her. “But I’m not planning
to lay hands on you again. For any reason. Unless you return to
stealing. So, Josie, if not thievery and vice, or a passionate
evening with me, what were you contemplating just now? You looked a
thousand miles away.”

She didn’t understand why he was here, if
not to threaten and bully her—or to push his claims as a
bridegroom. She shrugged and turned away from him, pacing to her
dressing table, where she could watch him in the mirror. She paused
before the vase of roses and brushed a finger across the fragrant
petals.

“I don’t recall that sharing my private
thoughts was part of our bargain. I’ll keep them to myself, thank
you.”

He laughed. A harsh sound. Yet there was
something beneath it, something wild, edged in pain. She turned
quickly. He was raking a hand through his hair, a hand that was
perfectly steady, yet she saw that in his eyes was a desperate
ferocity on the verge of exploding.

“What is it?” she asked quickly, forgetting
everything but the anguish pulsing beneath his careless facade. She
crossed to him without thinking, and knelt by the chair,
instinctively touching his hand, which rested upon the carved
arm.

“What’s wrong?”

His eyes fixed on her, hard and silvery as
polished stones. “You don’t really give a damn, do you?”

“Yes, I do. Why shouldn’t I?”

‘Why
should
you is more to the
point.” His lip curled derisively. But as she continued to stare at
him, moved by something she didn’t understand, by a sense of
haunted pain that had entered the room with him and clung to him
beneath the rakish facade, Ethan Savage’s features tightened. “You
want to know what’s wrong, Josie? Being here, back here in this
house. That’s what’s wrong.”

“But why? It’s your home.”

“Home.” He threw back his head and laughed
bitterly. “It’s never been a home.”

He was coldly, furiously sober, she saw,
with a breath of relief. His eyes glittered, but not with the
effects of liquor. They glittered with sorrow, with hatred, with
feelings so intense and bitter, they must be tearing him in
two.

“They’re depending on me. Every person
you’ve met tonight is depending on me. All those servants, and the
tenants besides. And that means they’re depending on you. You’d
better not let them down.”

“I won’t. I promise you, I’ll do my
best.”

“If not for them, for the burden of all
this...” He threw a quick, bitter glance around the glowing, lovely
room, a glance that seemed to encompass far more than just its
regal confines. “I’d never willingly set foot on this damned
British soil again. Much less at Stonecliff Park. My ancestral
home.” He gave another bitter laugh, and reaching out, cupped her
small chin in his hand. She flinched, but his fingers didn’t hurt
this time. They cradled.

“It was never a home, Josie. I loved this
place when I was a boy, it was all I had, but it was never a home.
Not the way you’d want a home to be. Not like yours probably
was.”

She said nothing, merely stared at him,
watching the scowl tighten his beautiful, sensual mouth, the way
his gray eyes seemed to glint like frosted starlight as the
firelight flickered over that hard-planed face. “Tell me about your
home. Did your mother darn socks by the fire on some farm? Your
father carry you about on his shoulders? Your brothers and sisters
race you to school in the mornings?” There was mockery in his
voice, and perhaps a tinge of envy.

“No.” She spoke quietly. He still held her
chin, and his fingers burned gently into her skin. How strange to
be kneeling beside his chair like this, him touching her, not
harshly, but softly. Listening to her. Yet that coiled tension was
still rippling through him. “I never had a home either. Not
anyplace... permanent.”

“Parents. Brothers and sisters.”

“No.”

He frowned. He let go of her and
straightened in his chair. “So where the hell did you grow up?”

“Nowhere. Well, everywhere. I’m an orphan,”
she explained, sitting back. His black hair had tumbled over one
eye and she resisted the urge to brush it back. She kept her hands
clasped in her lap. “I was adopted by various people. It never
worked out for very long. Until I was older and I lived on a ranch
in Montana. That was sort of a home. But Pop Watson...”

Her voice trailed off. How could she explain
Pop Watson to a man like him?
Pop Watson was the one who taught
me to pick pockets,
she would say, and he would remember all
over again why he couldn’t trust her. And besides, Pop Watson had
been shot during a getaway two days after she’d married Snake. She
didn’t want to discuss that either... didn’t want to remember any
of that awful time after she met and married Snake.

“It’s not very interesting,” she finished
lamely.

She was hiding something from him. Maybe the
truth, Ethan reflected, his gaze hardening. Maybe this whole orphan
story was a scam, something to win his sympathy, make him less
careful around her. He steeled himself against the interest that
had begun to tug somewhere inside him. He switched it off, the way
he would extinguish a lamp when dawn’s light flooded into a room.
She had a lot to learn about him, if she thought she could get to
him that easily.

Ethan’s gaze shifted from her dainty,
deceptively vulnerable face to the lilac wrapper. It had draped
open as she knelt upon the floor. The creamy swell of her breasts
rose modestly above a silky matching lilac gown. He was amazed by
how intrigued he was by the sight. He’d seen women much more
generously endowed, and he’d seen them stark naked. But he was
fascinated by the glimpse of her slender, femininely curved body,
and was disappointed when she, noticing the direction of his gaze,
hastily yanked the wrapper tight and stumbled to her feet.

If he were a gentleman, he’d have helped her
rise. But he was no gentleman, and he suddenly didn’t feel it would
be wise to touch her in any way, and he let her struggle up by
herself. Then he rose, towering over her.

“I’ve kept you long enough. Get some
shut-eye. Some sleep,” he amended, with a brusque laugh. “I’d best
get used to talking like an Englishman again since I’m stuck here.
We’re both stuck here,” he told her, shooting her a warning look.
“You’ll need to be on your toes tomorrow and every day after.
Latherby will continue to teach you, but we’ll probably go to town
in a few days. I have business to see to once I’ve tended to a few
things here, and we’ll have to see Grismore. And you’ll have to
meet people.”

“I know.”

“Scared?”

She shook her head quickly, then knew that
the quick color in her cheeks betrayed her. “A little,” she
admitted, tossing back her hair.

“You ought to be. There’s some civilized
aristocrats on this side of the ocean who would think nothing of
gobbling you up alive. You’ll have to be on guard all the time. And
don’t expect me to charge in and rescue you if you get into hot
water.”

“I wouldn’t expect that.” Yet he saw her
gulp, before she straightened her shoulders. “I’ll pull this off
without a hitch,” she assured him, her tone very definite, and
against his will, something in him responded to the courage that
must have taken, to the way she just stood with her head up and her
hands still, though he sensed his words had struck fear in her,
indeed saw it in the way her lips trembled after she finished
speaking. But even as sympathy flashed through him, he doused
it.

She’s a thief. A scam artist. You never know
when she’s acting, when she’s got a plan spinning beneath that
gorgeous exterior. She’s already picked your pocket twice. Because
of her you landed in jail, and needed Latherby to get you out. She
deserves neither sympathy nor admiration. Treat her like you would
a rattler.