Linda Needham (5 page)

And at its center was a tester bed so tall that a two-step stair was tucked against it, so broad and piled with pillows, so utterly inviting, that she wanted to climb up and lose herself beneath the sleek, silver-gold silk counterpane, lofted by the finest down.

The whole room smelled of bay and rare raw spices and…

And—bloody blazes—it smelled of—

Him!

She whirled on the man and his oppressive height, stuck her finger into the middle of his chest, and instantly regretted it because of the pulsing heat she found there. “This is your chamber.”

“It is.”

“I’m not sharing your bed.”

“No, madam, you’re not. To my eternal sorrow.”

“What?” Her ears were burning crimson, muddling his words.

“If you recall, we have just left Mumberton, madam. Your bed isn’t ready yet.”

“It was when I got into it five hours ago. I should be fast asleep there now, Everingham.”

“You have your husband to thank for that.”

“My—” My what? she’d almost said. She gathered back her senses and left the heat of him for the hearth, and found it lacking. “If I ever see my husband again, I’ll tell him how you abducted me.
If
he’ll accept me back to the marital bed after my reputation’s been so casually tainted by you.”

“Believe me, madam, I have no intention of inviting you to my bed.”

His outright dismissal shouldn’t have stung, shouldn’t have made her blush or worry that she was lacking; she should have been grateful.

“Good, my lord, because I certainly wouldn’t accept the offer, being as happily married as I am. I’ll scream the house down if you try.”

“I assure you, madam, that I don’t take women against their will.”

“As if I’m going to trust you.” But in the back of her traitorous mind, Hollie knew without a doubt that the beast wouldn’t need to force any
woman into his bed. They probably went there gladly, great hordes of them, standing in line to…well, to do whatever it was exactly that men and women did in bed together. She knew only which part went where and why and that by all accounts it was best done without clothing.

And just now she was having no trouble at all imagining Everingham’s hands sliding across her bare skin. Starting with her ankles, rucking up her hem, ever upward—to the back of her knee, her thigh—

“Give me your hand, madam.”

“What?” Her heart took off with her pulse.

“Your hands.” The firelight played across the planes of his face, down the broadness of his chest and the flatness of his stomach, caught the firm, bronze shadings of his hand outstretched to her.

Wondrous hands.

“Why?” she asked, her throat dry.

“Do you mean to sleep in these, madam?”

“Sleep? Oh.” A sultry band of fire burned around her wrist when he took her hand in his, and a zip of pure lightning raced up her arm, out of place and staggering.

Then she realized her shackles were gone, just like that. Her heart hammered in gratitude that she damned well shouldn’t be feeling.

“I’d say thank you, my lord, but we both know I wouldn’t mean it at all.” Shouldn’t, because he was the enemy.

That made him frown as he bent over her wrist. “What the devil is this?”

He ran his very capable fingers along the underside of her wrist and up her forearm, lighting more of his exquisite little fires as he went. Pleasure and promise, an astonishing trail of blue sparks and dizzying lightning that would make any blushing young bride forget that she was married, happily or otherwise.

She found breath enough to say, “The price of your justice, my lord.”

“Bloody hell,” he growled, then turned to the fire and examined her wrists in more detail, cursing under his breath. Then he glared down at her, more angry than she’d ever seen him. “You’ve brought this on yourself, madam.”

“
I
have, my lord?” She yanked her hand out of his, though his warmth still wrapped her fingers like a glove. “You’re blaming me for your highhanded mistake? You had no right to break into my home and bring me here and certainly no right to hold me.”

“I have the right of law, madam, as magistrate of the county. And as far as legalities are concerned, since habeas corpus has been suspended—”

“Conveniently suspended—”

“I have not only the right to arrest you for no reason at all in these times of trouble, but I can also hold you for protecting an enemy of the king’s peace. In fact, I have the obligation to do so until—”

“Until Lord Liverpool has crushed every breath of liberty out of innocent people who—”

“Until I damn well see fit to
give
you liberty, madam, when I’m satisfied.”

Hollie caught her unrepentant tongue between her teeth. A short hour ago, she’d been nearly doomed to a trial and prison for sedition; then Everingham had handed her this miracle of a husband.

If she could keep her opinions to herself long enough to allay Everingham’s suspicion, then she could fly back to her shop and pack it and cart it away to a place where she could continue her campaign in safety.

A half-day’s head start was all she would need.

Oh, Papa, look what I’ve gotten myself into!
A price on her head. A phantom husband. And now an earl breathing down her neck.

Which wasn’t actually the case; he was standing at the foot of his magnificent bed in his linen shirt and waistcoat, bronzed and breathlessly handsome.

She closed her eyes to keep her focus. “I’m sorry, my lord. It’s been a long day.”

“Interminable, madam. And just so that you realize the extent of the jeopardy of your situation, you’re being held here as a hostile witness who is withholding vital evidence in a serious investigation of sedition and high treason.”

High treason too? A shiver tumbled down her spine. “I don’t know what more I can tell you.”

Except to claim the right of a criminal not to be forced to bear witness against herself.

The man lifted a small blanket off the end of the bed and thrust it at her. “I think you’d best wear this, madam. It’s cold. And you’re much too—”

“Too what?”

His eyes glittered as he stood there, frowning darkly as he studied her face. “Compromising,” he said finally, the word tangled in a growl.

Not at all certain what he meant by that, Hollie took the cover and wrapped her shoulders, wondering why her heart was beating in wobbling circles.

Everingham strode away from her, clasping his hands behind him, the legalist once again. “So, madam, you say you’ve been married to this Adam MacGillnock for two months?”

She was pretty sure she’d told him two months. Because that was just after Peterloo, when everything in her life had gone so impossibly wrong. But Everingham had been firing his damnable questions at her so precisely, she’d had trouble keeping track of her answers at the time.

“As I told you, Adam and I—” Great heavens, was that the name she’d given him? Yes, Adam. “We were married almost exactly two months ago.”

His gaze darkened considerably. “How long did you know MacGillnock before that?”

“A week.” Let him think her recklessly, pas
sionately, in love with her radical husband. That she’d do anything for him, an innocent, dutifully gullible bride. She turned a treacly sweet smile on him and wondered why he was asking.

“A week?” He raked his hand through his hair, then blew out a breath as though he’d been holding it for days. “Tell me, madam: before this marriage to MacGillnock, did the printing shop belong to you?”

“Why?”

“Is that when Mr. MacGillnock began printing his sedition on your press?”

The man was at his parliamentary best: the grand inquisitor. “What do you mean?”

“Where did you meet him?”

Dear God, where? Her answers would have to hold up to all of his questions. “In…my shop.”

“And did he only begin courting you after he’d seen your printing press?”

Why, the arrogant bastard! “How dare you! If you mean to imply that my dear Adam married me solely for my printing press, then you’re greatly mistaken. We love each other. Madly. Joyously. We always will.”

“How wonderful for you both,” he drawled, his dark smile anything but congratulations to the happy couple. “Where did he come from, madam?”

Oh, hell.

“From your village? Weldon Chase, is it?”

“No. He’s from…” A place far, far away; the farther the better. “He’s…Scottish, of course. MacGillnock.”

“He’s what?”

“From an old clan of wool weavers. A burr you can cut with a knife. But your spies must already have told you that.”

“Madam, I’m—” Everingham suddenly went utterly still. His brows knit as he fixed his focus on something behind her. “What are you doing here?”

Hollie turned around to see what had so thoroughly caught his attention, and her heart melted on the spot.

A little boy stood in the center of the room, his face ghostly pale in the dimness, his eyes huge, his dark hair sleep-mussed, the hem of his nightshirt dragging on the carpet. He peered at Hollie, then at Everingham, and back to Hollie again with a worried little smile.

“Are you my mama?” It was the dearest, sweetest voice she’d ever heard.

“Me?” She was afraid to blink, certain the child was nothing more than a spirit, while the earl stood glaring at the apparition.

“Are you, ma’am?”

Hollie didn’t know what to say to this gallant little boy who didn’t know who his own mother was. She cast a glance at Everingham, who only bellowed out, “Mumberton!”

Then he strode coldly past the boy, past the
softly liquid gaze that followed him to the doorway and then found Hollie’s again.

“Mumberton, come here!”

The boy shivered, and Hollie ran to him, lifted him into her arms. He fitted perfectly inside her blanket and snuggled his cheek against hers as though he were trying her out for size and texture.

“Did you have a nightmare?” she asked, looking into all that worry. “Did we wake you?”

But the boy put two of his fingers into his mouth and turned his head to the doorway, to the man who shared his coloring and his strong profile—though she couldn’t recall hearing that Everingham had any children.

“Is he your son, my lord?”

Everingham whirled on her, startled, his jaw clenched as though he would say a hundred things but he’d thought better of it.

“Mumberton!” he bellowed again, making the child cling even tighter to Hollie’s neck, making her wrap him tighter in the blanket.

She heard Mumberton’s running and skidding footfalls before he appeared in the doorway. “Oh, I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t know he was out. Busy, you know, finishing Mrs. MacGillnock’s chamber. I’ll put him back.” Then he said to the boy in the stony silence, “You should be in your bed, young man. Not running around the halls. Come along.”

Mumberton took the boy’s hand, and Hollie
let him down softly, kneeling as she held his thin shoulders for a moment. “Sweet dreams to you.”

“And you,” he whispered.

And then he was gone with Mumberton, disappearing as quickly as he’d come.

Charles’s heart had stood still during the exchange between the boy and the woman, the pair of them looking so very domestic in his bedchamber.

This other man’s wife and the child he didn’t know, hadn’t claimed.

“Is he your son, my lord?”

To tell the woman or not? It wasn’t a secret. At least, it wouldn’t be one for much longer, thanks to the
ton
and its grapevine of gossips. Not that the opinion of that over-ornamented rabble mattered to him in the least. But telling Miss Finch seemed too much a confession of the reckless rakehell he used to be.

Yet it was better that she heard the truth from him. She already thought the worst of his character: breaking and entering, abduction, blackmail, coercion—what’s a question of paternity after that?

“His mother’s attorney says the boy is my son.”

She nodded slightly. “Oh.”

Oh
. The quick catch of her lower lip with her teeth, and an unexpected concern that puckered her brow and made her shift a glance at the doorway and then back to him. For some reason that
he couldn’t fathom, he wanted her to absolve him—or at least to understand the untenability of his position.

“Does he live here with you?”

Now that was the question, not yet answerable. “Probably so.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Though it’s none of your business, madam, I’d never heard of his existence before he arrived on my doorstep three days ago.”

She drew her brows together. “Along with his mother, I suppose?”

“His mother is dead.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

“A woman whose name I frankly didn’t recall, obviously from several years past.” A shooting party at Bagthorpe’s Manor, if he remembered rightly. The young woman was a chambermaid who had offered herself to him, and he’d taken exactly what she’d given, because that had been his way at the time.

Miss Finch offered a worried glower as she went to the door and gazed down the hallway, as though the boy would be playing there. “What’s his name? You never said.”

“Charles Stirling, of course.” Claimed as such in the parish records, with no proof to show for it. “Chip, apparently—according to his mother’s attorney.”

“But you said nothing to him just now, my lord. Not even a simple good night.”

He hadn’t been able to find the voice for it. “It’s not my habit.”

“It very well should be.” She was a raveled tangle of opinions that he didn’t need just now. “If you are his father, then he needs to be acknowledged—if not as your legal heir, then at least when you meet him in the hallways.”

As his father had acknowledged him? With the back of the hand, if at all? He wouldn’t do that.

“And if I’m not his father?”

“All the more reason to treat the boy generously.”

He didn’t want her notions of him to count for anything, this compelling wife of his enemy. But they did; they were far more significant than he ought to allow. “The matter is a legal one, to be straightened out in court.”

“That’s your answer to everything, my lord.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Compassion as a commodity to be quantified and categorized.”