Smuggler's Lady (27 page)

Damian, who had decided exactly how he was going to deal with this problem, fixed her with a grim eye. “Would you be good enough to explain to me why you saw fit to subject Arabella to such an awkward scene this morning?”

The color drained from her face. “I do not think you understand, sir. Your sister had some mistaken notions that I was obliged to correct. There was no scene, I can assure you. I do understand that poverty is considered a vulgar condition; nevertheless, it is
my
condition, and one for which I will not apologize. It was unfortunate that your sister did not fully understand my situation, but I would suggest, my lord, that it was your responsibility to have made her aware of it.”

Rutherford allowed the speech to continue without interruption, meeting the glaring, challenging sloe eyes with a level look. “Make no mistake, Meredith, Arabella is quite aware of your situation,” he said with careful deliberation. “She was merely doing what I had asked her to do.” He had decided that placation and cajoling would not achieve his object. They rarely did where Merrie Trelawney was concerned. One had to take her by storm, cut the ground from beneath her feet, set her spinning like a top, and then, when she was thoroughly off course, withdraw from the engagement and offer the peaceful solution.

“You dare to imagine that I would allow you to buy my wardrobe?” Meredith trembled with anger, an emotion exacerbated by her opponent's apparent calm.

“I wish you would sit down,” he requested casually. “Since, if you do not, I may not.”

Meredith set her teeth. “Pray be seated, sir. I prefer to stand.”

“Thank you.” Smiling, he took a seat on the sofa, crossed one leg over the other, and regarded her attentively. “I beg pardon, ma'am. You were saying?”

Meredith turned away from him and took two deep, steadying breaths. From the very first, he had had this ability to take control of their encounters by refusing to acknowledge her opposition. As a result, he usually won. This time, there was no question of his winning, but she must maintain control of herself and her anger, however outrageous the calculated provocation.

She turned back to face him, clasping her hands in front of her, lowering her eyes. “Lord Rutherford, I do not wish to appear ungrateful, and I am, indeed, most sensible of your many kindnesses, but I am afraid I cannot accept your charity in the matter of my wardrobe.” She offered him that humble, self-deprecating little smile and saw with savage satisfaction that she had broken through.

“Damn you, Merrie Trelawney!” Springing to his feet he gripped her shoulders. “I have told you before that you will not smile at
me
in that fashion.” Seeing the glint of triumph in her eyes, the contented lift of the corners of her mouth, Damian realized that he had fallen neatly into her trap. It were wise never to underestimate Meredith.

Releasing her instantly, he returned to the sofa. “ 'Charity,' my dear, is not the correct word,” he pointed out in a kindly tone. “I am merely fulfilling my obligations. Perhaps you do not fully understand the meaning of a carte blanche? Permit me to explain it to you.”

Meredith, realizing what was coming, looked at him rather in the manner of a rabbit facing a rattlesnake. “I am entirely responsible for your welfare, dear girl,” he continued. “And for all aspects of your living conditions.” He paused, made a minute adjustment to his cravat. “And that, ma'am, includes the clothes on your back.”

Merrie thought she would explode. Her palms felt damp and the blood pounded in her ears. They were not the symptoms of anger, she dimly recognized, but of incipient panic at the prospect of her imminent, impending defeat. Think, she told herself; for every trick, there was another. She looked around the room in search of inspiration and found it.

“I will agree, sir, that in a conventional arrangement, the obligations you describe would certainly fall to you. They would, after all, be payment for services rendered.” Her smile this time was honeyed and Rutherford began to feel uneasy. When he said nothing, Merrie continued in the same sweet tones. “Since I am lodged under your sister's roof, my lord, it is really impossible for me to render those services. I must, therefore, consider our contract null and void. I shall be perfectly happy to return to Cornwall in the morning if you so wish.”

To her consternation, she could read only relief on his countenance. Not an appropriate response to her
coup de grâce,
surely? But then that was something that had happened before, also. When she had thought she had said something that would leave him defenseless, he responded as if she had given him the one answer he craved.

“Make no mistake, ma'am, I intend that you shall have ample opportunity to fulfill your side of the bargain,” said Rutherford softly, the gray eyes suddenly hooded in the way that set her heart racing for reasons other than panic or anger.

“How?” she managed, as her throat seemed to close.

Damian made a steeple of his fingers, pursed his lips reflectively, and kept her waiting.

“Do not be so insufferably smug! ” Merrie yielded the dikes of control, wrenching his hands apart. “Tell me at once!”

He laughed, catching her wrists as she pummeled his chest. “No, do stop, Merrie!” Holding her arms at her sides, he stood up, towering over her as he looked down into her upturned face, shaking his head in a gesture of mild exasperation. “What an abominable girl you are. What am I to do with you?”

Merrie gasped at this blatant injustice. “It is you who have caused all this, and I will
not
make peace until this matter is resolved.”

“Very well then.” He gave her cheek a little pat. “It was a surprise I had intended to keep for a day or two until you were quite settled in, but, since you are so importunate—” She used her regained freedom to drive one fist into his midriff, meeting a rock-hard wall. Damian shook his head again. “I showed you yesterday how to hit me, Merrie. Eyes and nose are the only sensible targets. Now, put on your pelisse.” Picking up the discarded garment from the chair, he held it for her as she pushed her arms into the sleeves.

“Where are we going?” It was a question designed to return some sense of reality to the trancelike state in which Merrie found herself, but it received a wholly unhelpful answer.

“Wait and see. Put on your bonnet.” The chip hat went over the auburn knot, the ribbons tied beneath her chin. “Gloves.”

“Thank you, I am able to put them on for myself.” Meredith seized them when it appeared that he was about to manipulate her fingers into the holes as if she were a small child who had not yet learned to accomplish the task herself.

Rutherford pulled the bell rope and asked the footman to order his curricle brought around from the mews. He swung the caped driving coat around his shoulders, a handful of spare whip points thrust through one of the buttonholes, and drew on leather driving gloves. “Shall we go, ma'am?”

“I am amazed you are willing to be seen in public with one dressed so shabbily,” Meredith threw out with lamentable lack of wisdom.

“Oh, we shall avoid places where I might be recognized,” he returned airily.

The curricle stood at the door, drawn by a splendid team of grays. “They are magnificent,” Merrie breathed, diverted from the need to find a suitably cutting response.

“I am thought to be something of a judge of horseflesh, Lady Blake,” said Lord Rutherford, handing her up.

“And something of a whip, I presume,” she replied dulcetly. “Tell me, sir, are you perhaps what they call a Nonpareil?”

He shot her a suspicious look. To judge from her innocent-seeming expression, that suspicion was justified. “Put up your sword, Merrie Trelawney. There's been enough quarreling between us for one afternoon. I have something infinitely more pleasurable in mind for the rest of the day. Stand away from their heads, Harry.” He gave his horses the office to start as the tiger released the wheelers and leapt onto his perch.

Meredith decided to take the advice. She was in no doubt as to his meaning, in little doubt that the surprise was going to decimate what she had hoped was a
coup de grâce.
But, in all honesty, would she have wanted to be right in that instance? The answer was as plain as the nose on her face, as obvious as the now familiar fluttering of anticipation in her belly. She had asked for this from the first; somehow she must reconcile herself to the unpalatable aspects of an agreement that in its essentials was everything she desired.

Their direction took them rapidly away from the fashionable quarter. Meredith was granted ample opportunity to judge his lordship's skill with the team of high-couraged grays since their destination was clearly at some distance. They drove north, out of town, in the direction of Hampstead. Meredith was intrigued but, when she asked again where they were going, received the same amused answer as before. The grays easily took Highgate Hill, their stride lengthening as they came into the village. Rutherford turned them around the village green, past the Bull and Bear, and brought them to a halt in front of a pretty, thatched-roof cottage set in a garden of tall hollyhocks and gillyflowers.

Here he handed the reins to Harry and alighted, reaching up a hand to Merrie, who, her curiosity running out of bounds, sprang lightly into the street. “Take them to the inn, Harry. I'll send for you when I am ready to leave.”

The tiger touched his forelock and led the team in the direction of the Bull and Bear.

“Who lives here? It is quite the prettiest house.” Merrie went to the white wicket gate and pushed it open. Smiling, Damian followed as she skipped up the narrow garden path to the green-painted door framed by a late-blooming Albertine climbing over a wooden trellis.

The door opened before she could knock. “I saw you from the front windows.” A pink-and-white young woman bobbed a curtsy. “Welcome, my lord, my lady. Is there anything I can get you?”

“Not for the moment, thank you, Sally. My love, this is Sally, who will look after the house and will look after us when we visit,” he said to the now clear-sighted Meredith. “Come into the parlor.”

Merrie went through the door held by Sally, who said she would be in the kitchen should they need her, bobbed another curtsy, and disappeared. “So this is your surprise,” Merrie murmured, looking around the cozy room where cheerful chintzes covered the furniture and hung at the small bow window. The scent of potpourri and beeswax filled the air.

Damian went to a little desk, opened a drawer, and took out a document. This he handed to Merrie with a quizzical little smile. It was the lease to the cottage made out in her name. Slowly she raised her eyes to meet his. “We have a love nest, it would seem,” Merrie whispered as a warm glow spread from somewhere in the pit of her belly. She could never have imagined anything more perfect, more delicate than this romantic hideaway far from town, where they could be themselves, for the first time ever, away from all fears of observation, could create their own universe where there were no intruders, no distractions. At that moment, she loved him, if it were possible, more deeply than ever. It showed in her eyes as she came into his arms.

“Let us go upstairs,” he said on a husky note, lifting her with his usual ease. “You must inspect the rest of your property.”

“If that is a double entendre, my lord, it is not very subtle,” she chided, kissing his ear.

“It is the best I can do in the circumstances,” he murmured, carrying her up a polished oak staircase to a small landing. “Unlatch the door, sweetheart, my hands are full.”

Meredith reached for the latch, lifted it, and pushed open a door onto a country bedroom that in style and furnishing matched the parlor.

“I love you,” Damian said, placing her on the patchwork coverlet of the posterbed.

“And I you,” she replied.

Much later, when the early October dusk filled the small window, Damian gently disentangled himself from Merrie's warm, clinging limbs and slipped out of bed. He drew the curtains against the encroaching gloom, struck a flint, and bent to light the fire set ready in the hearth.

“May we stay here all night?”

“I thought you were still asleep.” He stood up as the logs crackled, coming back to the bed where he drew down the covers, drinking in the nakedness, warm and glowing, firm yet soft, thus revealed. “We cannot this time, love.” When she pulled a comical face of disappointment, he touched her lips. “I cannot leave Harry with my horses at the inn all night. Next time I will drive alone. If you remember, I had not intended our first visit to be unplanned.”

A serious note had crept into his voice although his eyes remained soft and his fingers continued to trace the planes of her face.

“Dinner, at least?” Meredith inquired. She knew that he was now asking for her willing compliance in the matter that had brought them here, but she was not quite ready.

Damian nodded, accepting the delay, and drew the covers over her again. “Sally will have dinner prepared.” He pulled on britches and shirt to pad barefoot down to the kitchen from whence emanated the most enticing aromas.

Sally was standing at the range, stirring a copper saucepan. She jumped at his lordship's soft-footed arrival. “Oh, m'lord, you startled me.”

“I beg pardon, Sally,” he apologized with a disarming smile. “We are exceeding sharp-set and something smells delicious.”

The young woman beamed. “Will I lay the table in the parlor, m'lord? Or will you dine above stairs?”

Thinking of that glorious body beneath the covers on the wide bed, Rutherford said that they would eat above stairs for today and offered to carry the dishes. Sally making no demur, he bore a laden tray upstairs, entering the chamber to find Merrie sitting naked on the rug before the fire.