Lord Beast (15 page)

“I should’ve known.”

“It’s not so bad, you know,” she
prodded gaily. “All you have to do is tell me a bit about your background.
Well, obviously your father was the old earl of Falmouth.”

He blasphemed savagely causing
Dani to frown.

“Is that really necessary?” she
reprimanded tartly.

“Now is not the time for this,”
he grated, annoyed.

“Will there ever be a time?” she
asked suspiciously.

“No.”

“Oh, stop being such a child!”
Huffing, she crossed her arms and glared at him. “You can’t close yourself off
from me forever.”

He didn’t say anything but rather
swallowed a hefty amount of coffee and Dani suspected he might be wishing it
were something stronger.

“I’ll keep prodding and prodding
until you cave,” she promised eagerly, grinning predatorily at him.

He mumbled something inarticulate
and although she couldn’t be certain, she thought it sounded like, “
Persistent
little hussy.
”

Dani narrowed her eyes at him
dangerously. “That better not be what it sounded like,” she scolded.

“If you like, I could repeat it
for you.”

“You wouldn’t dare-”

“Persistent little-”

“Rhys!” Dani gasped at the same
time Gabriel suddenly began to choke on his coffee while Victoria
simultaneously chimed, “What the devil is going on?”

And then something happened that
hadn’t in years. Rhys Ashcroft, Earl of Falmouth, laughed. A deep, throaty
sound that moved her soul, the earl shook with rumbling good mirth.

“Good God, Sinclair,” he
chuckled, “you’ve gone and married a harpy.”

“You don’t have to tell
me
twice- ouch!” Gabriel looked at his angry wife petulantly. “Bloody hell, woman.
Why did you kick me?”

“Oh, I suppose you think I enjoy
being called a harpy?” she asked snippily.

“Better than a hussy,” Dani
muttered cantankerously, casting Rhys a dark look.

“I beg to differ,” Victoria
argued.

Both women glared furiously at
the respective men, adopting similar stances and identical expressions.

“I think,” Ashcroft muttered
dryly to Rhys, “that the appropriate adjective to add here would be
‘blood-sucking’.”

“Blood-sucking hussy?” Rhys
asked, seemingly befuddled.

“Blood-sucking
harpy
.”
That earned him a look that could smoulder rocks.

“I am going to ignore you both
now,” Victoria told her husband snootily and swivelled towards Dani. “I think I
saw some roses in the back in dire need of some pruning.”

Taking the hint, Dani rose to her
feet, casting dark glances at the men when they rose with her, and followed
Victoria out the dining room and into the immense, unkempt gardens of Falmouth
Castle.

Immediately, the mood lightened
and Vicky stared admiringly at the bushes and blooms around her. “This is the
most amazing garden I have ever seen,” she said wonderingly.

“It’s not well-managed,” Dani
pointed out, noting a particularly sad-looking hyacinth.

“But just imagine the
possibilities,” Vicky breathed, doing a full turn-around and surveying the
lawns from each angle. “There is so much potential. Oh, he should really hire a
good grounds-keeper.”

“One step at a time,” Dani said
more to herself than to Victoria.

The other woman glanced at her
sharply. “Is that supposed to imply good or bad news? He was standing
inappropriately close to you when we arrived.”

“Preparing to throttle me from
behind, no doubt.” Dani smiled. “But yes, I suppose you could say good news.
He’s agreed to allow me to befriend him.”

“Hmmf.” Victoria made a funny
little moue with her lips. “Silly man. Silly cloak. Overall, he’s just silly.”

“Thank you,” Dani agreed amiably.
“That’s exactly my sentiments.” But she had to be honest with herself. She
thought she was lucky she even managed to get him to agree to that. Surely now
that she had his friendship, it would only be a matter of time before she broke
down his other barriers?

Vicky smiled at her. “You’ll get
through to him,” she said encouragingly.

Dani, however, wasn’t as
confident as her friend. The conditions he had set practically threw every
attempt to entice him to something else out the window. She would have to be
persistent despite the hurt it would cause and the emotional turmoil his
rejection would inflict upon her.

Victoria, bless her, was studying
Dani intently and saw the worry flash across her features. She reached out and
affectionately squeezed her hand. “I’ll have a footman deliver something to the
cottage tonight that might help you,” she said with a private smile.

A short while later, the small
group readied to depart from Falmouth Castle and Victoria insisted that Dani
join them in their ducal coach as the cottage would be on the way back to their
estate. She wasn’t averse to the idea, but did Rhys have to be so bloody
insistent that she accept Victoria’s offer? He practically shoved her through
the small door with a barely audible, “Until we meet again.”

He really didn’t have to seem so
eager to be rid of her. How rude.

 It was late in the day when a
package arrived for Dani. Two footmen bearing the crests of Hawthorne had to
carry the hefty trunk up the stairs and deposit it on the floor in her room.

When she opened the lid, it
revealed an array of beautifully made dresses. One or two were even black, but
the others- Dani had never been given the opportunity to adorn herself in such
fine attire. Hesitant to break her mourning period by wearing the lovely,
colourful gowns, she reached for one of the black ones instead and held it
against her chest. Soft muslin cascaded along her form and crumpled around her
toes. Being taller and skinnier than Dani, Victoria’s dresses would not fit. In
order for them to do so, they would have to be altered. The thought of doing
that to such wonderful creations that did not belong to her made Dani realise
that she would have to return them.

As she carefully placed the dress
back into the trunk, a note pinned to the interior of the lid caught her
attention.

I know what you’re thinking
, it read in Vicky’s
familiar cursive,
and don’t! Consider it a loan- you can repay me as soon as
you marry your earl.

Tears pricked her eyes in
fondness for her friend. Truly, she couldn’t have asked for somebody better in
her life.

Wonderingly, she lifted the dress
back into her arms and smiled, already locating Aunt Fiona’s sewing kit in her
mind.

Rhys cursed softly under his
breath as yet another knock sounded at the door to his study.

Grayson entered bearing a tray
heaped with correspondence and a beleaguered expression on his face. “More
invites, my lord,” he said flatly, “and you have more guests.”

Rhys began to rise from his
high-backed chair.

“
Not
the lovely Miss Carmichael,”
Grayson halted him mid-way out of his chair and Rhys dropped back down,
frustration consuming him.

The butler brought the
correspondence to his mahogany desk and left them in a neat pile. Rhys glared
at the envelopes with disdain. “Burn them,” he ordered succinctly.

“And the guests?”

“Tell them to sod off.”

“Would you not even care to know
who they are, my lord?”

Rhys sighed, agitated. This had
been going on all sodding day. The moment Dani had left he’d been plagued with
invites to parties and luncheons he had heretofore never been invited to. And
then the
guests
. When the hell had the ton decided that he was popular?
How did this happen?

When Rhys didn’t answer, Grayson
told him anyway. “Lords Watson and Pikes, my lord.”

Old acquaintances from back in
the day. Rhys groaned audibly. “Send them away,” he ordered. “I’m not at home.”

“Shall I issue the same edicts to
the other guests?” Grayson wanted to know.

“
Other
guests?” Rhys
hissed.

“There is a line of carriages all
the way up the drive, my lord.”

Rhys swore savagely. “How the
hell did this happen?” he demanded of the butler, who smirked and rifled
briefly through the heap of correspondence, locating a newspaper.

He turned to a page and set it in
front of Rhys with a know-it-all grin that grated his nerves. Scanning the
article- a senseless gossip piece- Rhys spied his name among the many present
on the page.

Lord Rhys Ashcroft, Earl of
Falmouth, made a rare appearance at the Worthwell Masquerade. Why his sudden
re-emergence into society now is cause for speculation, but some have it on
good authority that it was because of a girl that His Lordship chose to
appraise of his exclusivity. Could it be that this society will hear wedding
bells for the once- thought- of- as- deceased earl and his unidentified miss?

Rhys began to bequeath
foul-tempered expletives to the room at large. When he had fully exhausted his
extensive vocabulary, he looked at Grayson pointedly. “The key to the liquor
cabinet, Grayson.”

“I was warned by Miss Carmichael,
under pain of death by her father’s pistol, that I was not to give you the
key,” Grayson informed him haughtily and then, as an afterthought, “
my lord.
”

“You do realise that you are
employed by
me
,” Rhys fumed.

“Yes. What is your point, my
lord?”

“You do realise that I could
demote you?”

Grayson feigned to look
scandalised. “I shudder to think to what,” he told his master drolly.

“Stable hand!” Rhys growled.

The butler looked on blandly.
“No, I don’t think that’ll do. I must tell your guests that you are otherwise
engaged before they attempt to steal the good silver.”

Rhys watched him leave angrily,
thinking that he would quite like to wrap his hands around the scrawny neck of
a small, freckled brunette. It was amazing how often that thought crossed his
mind in one day.

Dani closed the voluminous tome
of Wordsworth with a little sigh, the poems achingly striking a chord that
mirrored the truer feelings of her own heart.

She shifted her position on the
blanket, attempting to find a more accommodating locus for her back, and found
her dress pulling tautly around her hips. Her old dresses never used to do
that. She stared down at the dark fabric contorted around her thighs and arched
upwards, arranging the material so that it didn’t lie so tightly. The few
dresses Victoria had ‘loaned’ her that she had managed to alter still did not
fit her correctly. They hugged her torso just a little bit too tightly and were
still too long for her. But she appreciated her friend’s generosity all the
same. Dani had never owned anything exorbitant, her dresses being especially
old hand-me-downs that her mother used to wear when she was younger. They were
faded and drab and had stretched and torn in all the wrong places so Dani
practically leapt at the opportunity to wear something as glamorous as what
Victoria wore.

The material was of a higher
quality, the design superior and the item had obviously been at the height of
fashion, if not now then definitely last season. Dani wasn’t sure. She hadn’t
paid much attention to clothing when she realised that she had no point for it.
Why long for something you would probably never attain? So she made do, like
she always did, and altered her drab gowns where she could- adding a shiny
ribbon there or a piece of lace here. She felt more in control of her life when
she made important and positive decisions rather than choosing the alternative
to drown in spirals of depression.

Like her mother.

Ugh and she had resolved to be
happy today.

Dani shook her head and forced a
smile on her face even though there was nobody outside to witness it. Her aunt
was inside the drawing room, snoring away, having unwittingly fallen asleep
doing her embroidery for the day.

And Rhys, the silly man, hadn’t
bothered to contact her for over a day and that just irked her. Under his
directive indeed! Had that just been a ploy to prevent her from visiting? She
resolved to give him one day
only
before she took it upon her shoulders
to visit him again. Stupid man.

Dani stretched the muscles in her
straining back thoughtfully, her arms stretched up towards the lowest branch of
the oak outside her window. Rose bushes were beginning to bloom around her,
surrounding the small grassy patch she had chosen to sprawl on. A blanket and a
few cushions lay under her, the cushions to ease the pain off her back.

A few quiet birds made their
presence known in the tree above her and the sun was bright and warm,
intercepted by a few lonely clouds that hinted at rain perhaps later that
night. It was, she mused, a perfect day. A pity that the only thing missing
from it was the appearance of a darkly mysterious cloaked man she was having
the hardest time getting to like her.