The Courtesan's Daughter (35 page)

Ash looked askance at Caro and said, “Your wifely devotion knows no bounds, does it? I suppose I should be flattered.”

“You should be,” she said. “I told John quite clearly that I would kill you myself.”

“The Iroquois in you, no doubt.”

“I certainly hope so,” she snapped. “If you’re so interested in my ancestry, let me enlighten you. My grandmother was English and my grandfather a Mohawk of the Iroquois Nation. They had two children, John and Sophia. There. Satisfied? Oh, and let me add since you are so particular about bloodlines, that my mother is a cousin to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Is that rarefied enough for you?”

“Blast it, Caro, that wasn’t at all what I meant!”

“Of course not,” she said sarcastically. “By the way, Uncle John, how was France?”

“Full of Englishmen,” John said.

“You rounded up my brother without too much trouble?” she asked.

“Trouble is entertaining in the right circumstances,” John answered. “He’s home, as is Josiah Blakesley.”

Ash didn’t need any explanation to understand the gist of the situation; having been up at school and chafing to be free of it in his own day, he deduced that Markham, the ninth Earl Dalby, and the youngest Blakesley had run off for France a few hours after the Treaty of Amiens had been signed. Uncle John, as the oldest male relative in Sophia’s household, had been called upon to bring him to heel. Though called upon from where? Surely Sophia’s brother did not reside in England. It wasn’t possible that he should have been kept a secret for so many years if he had. Ash didn’t quite have the energy to focus on his newly realized uncle by marriage, not when he had a bristling wife seated next to him.

The landau slowed to a stop. The only sounds surrounding them were the call of night birds and the soft lap of the Serpentine. They were not far from the palatial houses of Mayfair in miles, but in the soft dark of deepening twilight, it felt almost as if they were on another continent. Or perhaps it was the savage look in John’s black eyes that gave Ash that impression.

From far off, through the wood, came the sound of footfalls landing lightly on soft spring grass. John motioned for him to get out of the carriage, which he did, instructing Caro to remain within. Ash did not want her out here. Something was amiss. She must have felt the same for she obeyed him, and they both knew how unlikely that was. Yet the very air was pregnant with hostile expectation. And suddenly from out of the darkness came the shapes of three men running. They ran lightly, effortlessly, and nearly silently.

In a heartbeat, they were upon him. They gathered in silence around John and as a body, they turned to him, studying him. John spoke softly to them in Iroquois. Caro cried out, “No! Don’t!”

John barked a command at Caro and she stilled instantly. Ashdon tensed, sensing what was coming. A man did not attend Eton without learning what was surely coming.

“You must prove yourself, Lord Ashdon,” John said slowly, and then he pulled a long, curved knife from out of his boot.

Twenty-seven

“DO I at least get a knife?” Ash asked, taking off his coat and waistcoat. His white linen shirt glowed softly in the darkness. He was, as far as it was possible to be, a perfect target.

“If you want a knife,” John said softly, “come and get mine. If you can.”

Ash grunted and nodded, untying his cravat and pulling it from his neck. It fell in a long tangle of white to lie atop his coat. The linen of his shirt gaped open to reveal a tautly muscled chest. Fat lot of good muscles would do against a blade.

Caro felt the muscles in her stomach clench in protest, but she didn’t quite know what to do about it. When she’d protested, John had reminded her, starkly, that she was a daughter of the Wolf Clan, granddaughter of a Mohawk sachem, and to remember what was expected of her. Which was true, of course, and which she did, but which didn’t help Ash much. And she wanted to help Ash. She just didn’t know how; she wasn’t even sure why. That bet still chewed at her. When had he made the bet? When he was arguing that he still wasn’t going to marry her?

“Ash? ” she called out. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Really?” Ash said calmly. “I’d like to know how you think I should avoid it.”

“Relinquish her,” John answered. “I test your worth, that is all. Relinquish her and you may walk away.”

“Never,” Ash said softly.

“Then you will be cut. Many times,” John said. “I will make you bleed for her.”

“Go to hell,” Ash answered, facing John.

John had also removed his coat and waistcoat. They stood facing each other, their features cut by the dim lamplight from the landau. The driver sat upon the box, facing the darkness, his shoulders hunched up to his ears. He had driven John before, that was obvious.

“Is it to be between us, or will your sons also try for a piece of me?” Ash asked, his blue eyes gleaming like new steel in the night.

“They may partake of whatever is left of you,” John answered. “It is their right.”

“If they earn it,” Ash said, lunging at John.

Caro held her breath high in her throat, held herself motionless as Ash leapt through the air, his elbow aimed at Uncle John’s throat. John turned at the last moment, deflecting the worst of the blow, and slashed out with his knife, slicing through Ashdon’s shirt, slicing into the flesh along his left side. Ashdon twisted against the blow, keeping the blade along the ridged protection of his ribs. As he twisted, he wrapped his arms around John’s neck from behind, pulling his head back, exposing John’s throat. It was a killing position, except for the fact that John had the tip of his knife pressed to Ashdon’s belly. One move and either could have killed the other; Ashdon by breaking John’s neck and John by gutting Ashdon like a deer.

They froze, each breathing heavily, softly, patiently.

“What do you want, Caro?” John asked, staring at her from the darkness. “Say the word and I will rid you of him.”

Ashdon looked at her from behind Uncle John, his arms bulging with twisted muscle as he held John in a viselike grip. Ash stared. He did not speak. He did not plead or cajole or demand. He only stared in that solemn, penetrating way of his, mute, as always.

Words would have helped. Words would have been nice. But it suddenly struck her that Ash might not know the words to use to ask for what he wanted. Perhaps he’d never been taught those words. Perhaps no one had ever told him that he could ask for what he wanted, and perhaps no one had ever cared if he got what he wanted or not.

She cared.

“I want him,” she said softly, walking toward them. “I’ve wanted him from the first look, pathetic as that sounds. Do I want him now that he’s bled to have me?”

She stood in front of them, searching Ash’s face for … something. Why had he made her dance such a dance to have him? Why had he fought to keep her now? She could make no sense of it.

“Caro? ” John asked, prompting her.

“I want him more than ever,” she said softly.

Their gazes held, locked upon each other, swimming in depths of emotion and secrets that pressed against her heart. But that was all she could read. He would not let her dive deeper. With a cough, he lowered his gaze, releasing her.

“You’re a bloodthirsty bit of baggage,” Ashdon lightly said as he released his hold on John.

“Best you remember it,” she said, turning from him, her legs wobbly. “Are the boys to have at him as well? I would so love to get home and change into a proper pair of shoes.”

The boys
stepped forward out of the darkness of the wood and into the feeble light of the carriage lamps. They were, by some standards, on some continents, still boys. But not by any standards they recognized.

They were George, John the Younger, and Matthew, and they were her cousins. They were mostly older than she, but not by much, and they were much more like their father than Sophia was like her brother. Or at least it seemed so to her. She often wondered if her mother would agree with that assessment. She did not know them well, they did live on another, distant continent, after all, but they were her cousins, and as her cousins she felt it completely within her right to torment and tease them as she did her brother, also a John, but called Markham since infancy, even though he was legally Dalby now as the ninth earl.

“Take off your shoes, Caro, and I will let you walk in his blood,” George said. Ashdon turned to face this new challenge, but Caro kept walking toward the landau. George was always saying things of that sort. He had a rather tortured sense of humor.

“I am not going to walk around Hyde Park in my stockings, George,” she said. “It is quite bad enough that I am without a proper coat.”

“And a fichu. Try to keep them attached, will you?” Ashdon said. “I would hate to have to thrash everyone in town who has seen your fetching décolleté. As these are your cousins, I will allow some laxity.”

“How generous of you,” she said. “Now, shall we get in and get on? You are bleeding and might need a stitch or two.”

“Worried about me?” Ash asked.

“Only that you’ll bleed on my dress. I rather like this dress,” she said loftily. “I do suppose a proper introduction is in order.” She stopped at the door to the landau. Her cousins trailed her like hounds, Uncle John at the rear. She would not be surprised if they had some final blow against Ashdon in mind; it would not be unlike them. “Lord Ashdon, my cousins: George, John the Younger, which has been shortened to Young for the sake of simplicity, and Matthew. Cousins, my husband, Lord Ashdon.”

It was then that they did indeed thrash Ashdon. She supposed it was a point of honor for them, but whatever the cause, Ashdon gave as good as he got. At least there were no knives involved.

It was a quick scuffle, a few punches thrown, a few caught. They all kept their feet, which was the important thing in a fight. It was also important, perhaps of equal importance, that a woman watching men fight not react in any way that would cause a man embarrassment. They were rather particular about that she had learned, and so Caro watched Ashdon get a bit pummeled, do some pummeling in return, which would surely result in some rather nasty bruising, but little else. She held her tongue, her posture, and her composure. All in all, she was more than a little proud of her performance.

“All finished, then?” she said when the four men stood heaving in breath after breath, staring at each other in what she could only call amiable hostility. Men were so odd, so often, yet so charming in their oddity. Quite irresistible, really. The way Ash looked just now, his shirt torn, his hair mussed, his muscles taut and glistening with sweat … Caro’s own breath started to heave just looking at him. “I’m certain Mother must be twitching with worry over me having been gone so long. And without the proper shoes.”

“She’ll be twitching with something,” Uncle John said with a wry twist of his lip.

“Just out of curiosity,” Ash said, picking his cravat up from the ground and throwing it over his shoulder, “I understand the knife bit, just, but why the rest of you?”

“Two weeks ago, right before we left for France, none of us had heard of you,” George answered. “Now you’re married to Caro. You must have done something to have met and married that fast. Figured we owed you for that something.”

“Yes, well,” Ash said, throwing his waistcoat and coat over his left arm, “it was something, but perhaps not what you imagine.”

“Like what?” Matthew asked. Matthew was the youngest, a full year younger than Caro, but not so much a boy that he couldn’t imagine quite a bit. She didn’t like this conversation at all.

“I am not at liberty to say,” Ashdon said stiffly, offering Caro his arm.

“Then let Caro tell it,” Matthew said, stepping forward. Good lord, but he looked to have grown an inch in the past two weeks. His shirtsleeves didn’t quite cover his wrists, and she was certain that he’d been properly attired when he’d set out for France.

“What are you wearing, Matthew? That can’t be the right shirt,” Caro said.

“It’s the one you gave me,” Matthew said, “but that’s not what I’m waiting for you to say.”

“So sorry,” she said, climbing into the landau with Ashdon’s assistance. He was still bleeding. She was not going to say a word about it. She had her pride, too, and she was not going to be one of those women who fussed about every little thing. “That’s all I’m going to say.”

The cousins stared at her as she arranged her filthy skirts; really, she hadn’t dressed at all properly for a jaunt through the woods and fields of Hyde Park. Her shoes were going to have to be tossed out and she had always rather favored these shoes. Except for getting married, it had been a dismal sort of day. Being stared at by her cousins wasn’t helping. Now that she thought about it, they had the same sort of focused and intense stare that Ashdon was so fond of displaying. It was altogether unnerving and completely irritating. When her Uncle John joined in with his killing stare, she quite gave it up.

“Oh, all right!” she said. “The short version is that I made a bargain of sorts with Lord Ashdon and the result was that”—she coughed and looked out the landau window, which was ridiculous as there was absolutely nothing to see at this time of evening—“was that …”

It might have helped if just one of them had said something, some small thing to ease her into it. But they didn’t. They all sat, all five of them, as if they could not deduce what it was she was trying to say. Blast men for their blindness in the most obvious of situations.

“Well, to hear Lord Ashdon tell it,” she snapped, out of patience with the lot of them, “I attacked him with my breasts. Absurd, naturally, but there you are.”

To which they all shifted their stares to Ashdon. Upon which Ashdon nodded fractionally. And after which they all, every one of them, stared at her breasts.

Not at all what she had intended, but that was just the sort of day it was.