Seducing the Beast (12 page)

“At least in my case,” she added firmly, “I was justified.”

What was she babbling on about? “Would you stop your chatter and apply your energy to this letter?”

“If I wrote to you, what would you want me to say?”

If she didn’t keep her lips still, he might be obliged to occupy them in some other way.

“What is it?” she demanded. “Are you ill?”

He straightened up abruptly, releasing her hand. “Need some fresh air,” he murmured, walking away. As she twisted around to see where he went, her sleeve caught the ink pot and sent it crashing to the stone floor. Ink spilled in a great glossy black blob at her feet.

He glared at her, arms swinging at his sides, tongue tucked into his cheek.

“It was an accident?” she offered timidly. “Truly.” Lifting her shoulders, she smiled sweetly, all wretched innocence and dubious concern.

Speechless again, he tried making sense of her and decided she was the most perplexing conundrum of his existence.

“Shall we go for a walk now?” she chirped. “We have nothing else to do.”

* * * *

The concept of a stroll was clearly unknown to him and therefore, like her, to be regarded with suspicion. Instead, he groomed his horse while she watched. “Do not cross that threshold,” he bellowed rudely when she began to follow him into the sun-bathed yard. “Stay where I can see you.”

So she leaned in the doorway, watching him with his horse. His long fingers combed through the gelding’s mane with a gentleness that shocked her, especially after his treatment of
her
. Eventually she grew restless again, unaccustomed to staying put, just as he was to walking purely for pleasure. Since his back was turned, she crossed over to the water trough and perched on the edge.

“What do I do if
I
want a bath?” she asked.

“You must wait for your ablutions, Lady Shelton, until you’re back in London, surrounded by your luxuries. There, see? You write that letter…” She watched him look for her by the door.Finding her gone from it, he swung further around, apparently in a pique, until he rediscovered his captive there on the trough.She smiled and turned her face to the sun, feet swinging.

“I thought your ankle was broken?” he snapped.

She opened one eye. “It got better.”

He shook his head and turned his attention to brushing the horse’s tail.

After a pause, she said nonchalantly, “When will you get more ink?”

“I’ll send Gregory to the house tonight.”

“What house?”

“Starling’s Roost.”

Ah yes, the earl’s manor house. “Is it nearby?”

“Near enough,” he answered.

If she was in Dorset, she was a long way from her home in Norfolk. Sliding from the edge of the stone trough, she crossed the yard to where he worked. “Is the earl there now?”

Moving around his horse, brushing its flanks with a firm, steady rhythm. He stopped abruptly as they almost collided.With a loud curse, he tossed his brush into the bucket, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. “I’ve endured as many questions from you today as I mean to answer in an entire lifetime.” He propelled her toward the house. “Go! Inside.” The moment his hands left her, she spun back to face him.

“Don’t you care to talk? Don’t you want to know anything about me?”

Regarding her as they would a fallen tree across his path, his eyes smoldered. At any moment they would burst into flame. “I know all about you, Lady Shelton, already.”

“Aha!” Gleeful, she held up one finger. “You know only what you hear from vicious slander. You claim the earl is misunderstood by folk who think they know him, yet never will. Can the same not apply to me?”

He pointed at the house. “Woman…for the love of all saints…go… inside!”

“But…”

“Now! Do as I say, damn you.” Arms out, feet apart, he towered over that little yard, trying to frighten her.

“Has no one ever argued with you before?” Maddie inquired, genuinely curious.

In answer he pointed again, thrusting his quivering finger over her head.

Lips pursed tight, she turned on her heel and limped back inside. “I’m hot in the sun,” she said crisply, “that’s why I’m going in, not because of your blessed orders.”

Again he swore.

“And I don’t care for your language,” she added. “It is unbecoming in the presence of a lady.”

He stayed outside with his horse for some time and when he came in she sat by the window, pretending to be absorbed in a dull book on fishing and trapping. Knowing he looked her way a few times, she stubbornly kept her eyes down, deeply enthralled in the book’s goodly advice.

Pacing up and down, scratching his head, he exclaimed, “I don’t know which is worse--your endless chatter or your stubborn silence. Very well, what will you tell me in your defense? What have you to say for yourself?”

Defense? She thought, for one dreadful moment, her secret was out, exposing her as a counterfeit.

“You catch me in a tolerant mood, willing to hear your case. Make the most of it, Lady Shelton, it doesn’t happen often.”

Relieved she still had him fooled, more than a little surprised to see a nuance of good humor so close on the heels of his anger, she closed her book with a snap. “What would you like to know?”

“Let’s observe the salient facts.” He drew up a chair, turning it to sit astride, as he would on a horse, his forearms resting along the back. “You’ve known three husbands, is that not so?”

She nodded.

“All three now dead, all within months of the wedding.”

“Yes,” she said gravely. “Poor souls. I’ve been unlucky.”

“Unlucky? Is it not a great coincidence?”

“They were elderly and not in the best of health.”

“You wore them out, perhaps?” He was smug, eyes gleaming.

“Never heard them complain.”

His face fell into another scowl. “And how many lovers have there been? More than five? Less than fifty?”

“Fifty?” She laughed. “Where would I find the time?”

“Between your marriages. And during, no doubt.”

She shook her head, still chuckling. Eustacia spent too much time preserving her beauty with strange rituals and it seemed unlikely she would get herself hot and disheveled on a regular basis, neglecting her carefully arranged appearance for too many passionate trysts.

He relaxed his shoulders a fraction. “You deny knowing so many lovers?”

“If Gabriel does not concern himself with the lovers in my past, why should you?”

Resting on the edge of the chair back, his fingers curled under, the knuckles turning white.

“If I was a man,” she added, “you would, no doubt, congratulate me on my conquests. Profligacy is a luxury for men only.”

Sweat glistened in a fine sheen across his brow. “Where did you first meet Gabriel? There are few people of rank who would invite you to their house, Lady Shelton. Certainly none my…master’s brother would know.”

“Mayhap your precious master’s brother has a life of his own, a life about which your precious master does not know every detail.”

“The earl,” he said succinctly, “knows everything.”

She groaned. “I suppose you have no life of your own either, like Gabriel. The earl rules over people with a stern, unyielding hand.”

He crisply pointed out that no one had asked her for them and no one would, so she might keep those opinions to herself.

“Are you done now then?” she demanded.

“I wager ’tis what you say to all your lovers.”

With that self-satisfied twitch pulling on his lips, he looked like a man in need of a good slapping and a firm set-down, both of which Maddie decided she would give freely and soon enough.

“Perhaps,” he added, “if you knew one who kept you satisfied, you wouldn’t require so many.”

“I daresay. Would you volunteer for the post?”

That wiped the arrogant smirk off his face. She watched his fingers flex, his shoulders stiffen. The air in that cottage was suddenly oppressive, warm and thick. Her own heart drummed so hard she feared he would hear it.

“So,” she said breezily, “it’s a good thing you and I will never be lovers, for I don’t take kindly to lectures and you can’t tolerate a disobedient woman.” She stood hastily, fingertips cautiously touching the back of her neck where it was damp with perspiration.

“Sit,” he commanded.

“I tire of sitting,” she said, striding around the room, aware of the steam virtually coming out of his ears. “Continue with your questions.” She waved her hand carelessly, as she’d seen Eustacia do many times to her servants.

Only his gaze followed her back and forth. “So, you do not even remember where you met Gabriel. How soon was it before you realized his brother is the Earl of Swafford?”

“Immediately, of course! I said to myself, ‘There now is your next provider, make haste and draw him in with your seductive charms, so you may bleed him and his villainous, foul-tempered brother dry of every penny.’” It seemed as if he believed her for a moment, not knowing she teased, so she laughed. “Fool!”

He showed his teeth in a wolfish sneer. “You wouldn’t tell me the truth, would you? I wonder why I bother.”

“Because you’re intrigued by me.” She’d only just realized it. Despite his loyalty to the Beast and even as he tried to act the part of inquisitor, he was rather too interested in the love life of his victim.

He was saved any reply, for Gregory timidly called out from the yard to see if he might enter. Instantly her captor replied that he may, then warned her, “Don’t speak to Gregory and remember, you’re the prisoner here. If you think to play your games with me, you sorely underestimate your opponent.”

In the next instant, the steward was on the doorstep, cap in hand, and Maddie, ignoring her orders, went to the old man and shook his hand. “Gregory, is it not?”

Poor Gregory looked over her head to where Griff stood, swearing under his breath.

“Don’t worry about him,” she whispered to the old fellow. “He knows nothing of manners.”

Gregory’s jowls trembled, his mouth forming a round, black hole through which he uttered a tiny querulous squeak.

“Gregory, go to the manor house tonight and fetch ink.” Griff strode up to them, separating their hands with unnecessary force. “Before nightfall. Quick as you can.”

“Aye, Master Griff.”

“Really, there is no haste,” Maddie interrupted.

“There is every haste.” He glowered down at her with what was supposed to be menace, but only reminded her of John, her little brother, in one of his temper tantrums.

“Are you bored with my company already? What a pity, I was beginning to enjoy myself.”

His chest heaved with another exasperated breath. “Is there anything I can do to convince you to behave?”

She said the first thing that came to her. “You know the answer.” What she meant was she would never obey him and he should know it by now. As she turned away from him, his hand moved. His fingers found the back of her neck, and in that one intake of breath, as he stood behind her, impulsively touching her in the same way he caressed his horse earlier, she knew the trouble she was in. The gauntlet was thrown down. Now he surely felt the goose bumps along the nape of her neck and knew what his touch did to her.

As she stood there in a strange cloud of euphoria, that single brush of his fingertips awoke a scandalously wanton imp, previously slumbering within, and it stretched now, lithe and limber, waiting for more of his touch.

“Sally baked a rabbit pie for your supper,” Gregory mumbled. He waited, but there was no reply. Griff was distracted, looking at Maddie. She felt his licentious gaze inside her, still prying, demanding answers. Her corset was itching intolerably.

“Come in, Sally,” Gregory croaked over his shoulder.

His wife entered, beaming, her face pink. She gave an odd movement, part bow and part curtsey. Maddie quickly assured her neither was necessary. The old lady handed her the pie with great reverence and whispered, “For your supper, my lady. ’Tis his favorite.”

Maddie thanked her, warmed by the old lady’s kindness.

“He’s never brought a young lady here before,” Sally burst out, only to be silenced with a frown from her husband. Stupidly pleased by that news and also quite dumbfounded as to why she should care, Maddie glanced over at her captor as he ran his fingers across his lips, those same fingers with which he’d touched her. She trembled, almost dropping the pie.

“My lady, are you well?” Sally asked.

Rather than answer, she turned away, setting the pie on the table. Hot and bothered, she was definitely not “well”. True, there was a great deal of vitality surging through her, none of it was the sort to which one referred when inquiring into a person’s good health.

Griff herded them out in haste, but she found one last burst of courage and ran to the door, shouting. “Don’t forget the ink, Gregory.”

A large pair of hands hauled her back into the house and the door slammed shut.

Wedged between his tall body and the door, she blustered, “Do you want some rabbit pie?”

His size, in comparison to hers, made him feel very male. And very powerful. “
Do you want some rabbit pie
?” he mimicked her.

The wench had the audacity to ask, “What ails you now?”

He leaned closer, wedging her in as he did before in his apartments at Whitehall. Tonight they would not be disturbed. His hands rested against the door, palms flat, arms bent. “Now, where were we? Ah yes, I remember… you asked me to volunteer my services, your ladyship.”

“Oh, don’t start that again!” She turned her head away. Was she laughing? Hard to tell with her sometimes and he had no experience with this. Whatever it was.

Brief warnings flickered through his mind. She was his brother’s lover, a woman of dangerous allure. He should back away now. The blue of her eyes was deceptively light, suggesting shallow waters, yet there were treacherous depths, waiting to drag him down with the current.

And her fingers curled around the armholes of his leather jerkin, clinging rather than pushing him away.

She must know his identity, he thought suddenly. She could have made a great deal more fuss than she did when he stole her away in the night, but she went willingly even encouraged it.