What a Rogue Desires (9 page)

But then again, what did it matter? Everything he said to her would be in strict confidence simply because there was no one she could tell. And he doubted he could shock her if he tried. He leaned back, made himself more comfortable, and, keeping a watchful eye on her at all times, began to talk.

Vivian was shaking with fury. How dare he sit there and talk and talk and talk, while the smell of meat filled the room? Wasn’t it driving him out of his mind with hunger, as it was doing to her? Her mouth was watering at the thought of how tender and succulent it would be on her tongue, probably smeared with herbs and tangy with salt. Whoever cooked his food was simply an angel from heaven, to Vivian’s hungry soul. Last night there had been ham and a treacle tart, and the night before some sweet custard. She had never had such delicious, sweet things before, just an occasional stick of hard candy. She couldn’t imagine what would be on the tray tonight, and her hands were twitching from the effort of restraining herself from running across the room, tearing off the cover, and devouring every last crumb.

But instead he was sitting on the bed, his tongue running twelve score to the dozen about God only knew what. Even though he spoke in a light, conversational tone, she could feel his eyes on her, as if he were just waiting for her to lose her temper. She certainly was not so hen-hearted as that. She could sit here and ignore him for longer than he could sit there and talk, she was quite certain.

Or perhaps…not. The smell of the food was driving her wild. She pressed her lips together to keep from licking her lips in anticipation. She still hated him with all her heart, but she had to admit he had fed her well. Very well. And now if he would just leave, she would enjoy her dinner and only go back to hating him once it was gone.

But on and on he talked, about horses and gossip and other useless topics she barely listened to. Her dinner was getting cold, curse him! She tried turning her nose in the air and pretending to ignore him. It had no effect. She tried closing her eyes and feigning sleep. No effect. She tried shooting an angry look at him, but he just gave her such a sinfully wicked smile she had to look away.

“Do you know, I’ve never known a woman so resistant to polite conversation,” he remarked at length. “It’s quite lowering to a fellow’s vanity.”

Vivian scowled, but didn’t say anything. Perhaps this meant his tongue was finally tiring. Lord above, he talked more than a fishwife. He sat up, swinging his feet to the floor, and her heart—and stomach—took a leap of excitement. “This dinner is going to waste,” he said, looking at the still-covered tray. “Such a pity. My brother’s cook is excellent. I confess, I’m quite peckish myself, and the smell is rather tempting.” He lifted the cover and inspected the plate—oh Lord, it looked like beef!—and then, to Vivian’s outrage, he picked up a roll and took a bite.

She sprang to her feet. “You’ve decided to starve me, then, have you? You wretched lying filth! First you lock me in here and refuse to listen to reason, now you eat my dinner?”

“So,” he said, sounding pleased, “she can speak after all.”

“Get out,” snarled Vivian, “else I’ll hurl myself out the window. Being smashed on the ground would be better than having to listen to your prattle!”

He laughed, and got to his feet, replacing the cover on the tray. “Never fear, my dear. I should hate to see such loveliness injured. I shall take my leave.” He gave her a brief bow, his eyes still glittering with amusement. “My happiness is complete, now that I have heard your voice again. I bid you good evening.” He strolled to the door and let himself out. She heard him whistling as the key turned in the lock.

Vivian didn’t care, though. She dragged her chair across the room and leaned over the tray, inhaling deeply. It was a stew of some kind, beef with vegetables, and it smelled unutterably good. He had taken only one of the rolls, and she sank her teeth into the other. Even the bread here was lovely, as tender and soft as a cloud, nothing like the hard wheat bread she was accustomed to. She scooped up a bite of the stew, and moaned in delight. It was thick and juicy and so good. Colder than it should have been, no doubt, but now that she was eating, Vivian could overlook that.

As she spooned every last bite of the stew into her mouth, her thoughts turned back to
him
. He was trying to break her will, she decided. For the past few days he’d only asked a few questions when he brought her meals. It had been easy to ignore him. This new tack of his would be harder to ignore, especially if he meant to hold her dinner hostage every night.

She wished she knew something about him. My lord, the servant had called him, so he was nobility. He had a broken rib, and she wondered how he’d come by that. And tonight it had looked as though he had a bad leg, too. How she’d like to give him another broken bone, perhaps his head.

It was terribly unfair that such a nodcock was so handsome. That smile he’d given her…It brought back something he’d said before, that he was good at persuading ladies. Persuading them to lift their skirts, most likely, she thought with a sniff of contempt. He wouldn’t persuade her to do so much as lift her finger. Vivian knew well enough what happened to girls who let gentlemen under their skirts for nothing more than a smile. More than one person had suggested Vivian could earn her fortune with her face—and on her back—but even a thief had to have standards. Vivian refused to do murder, and she refused to go whoring. This made her significantly more delicate in her sensibilities than most people in the rookeries, but she didn’t care. It had served her well so far, and the day it didn’t…well, she would reconsider the question then, but not until then.

And if this bloody rogue thought to change her mind about whoring, she’d just have to change her mind about murder, too. No one forced Vivian Beecham to do anything, and she’d die resisting any efforts to that end. For a moment she sat and reviewed her captor’s known weaknesses: a bad leg, a broken rib, whatever sense of honor he thought he possessed. But then she was forced to review his strengths as well, notably brute strength, a marked size advantage, surprising reflexes and daring, and that smile. And that face. And the breadth of those shoulders—Vivian cursed at herself and jumped to her feet. She, of all people, knew not be swayed by a handsome face and a tempting smile. Not she, who used her face and form to her own advantages when she needed to; she would surely be able to recognize and ignore all his attempts to charm anything out of her.

All
of them.

David’s leg continued to ache through the night, even after he soaked in hot water for over half an hour. He lay awake until late at night, kept from sleep as much by the crashing thunderstorm outside as by the dull pain in his calf.

It was still sore in the morning. He felt like an old man, moving gingerly about the house. Dr. Craddock, the Reece family physician, was expected that morning, to examine David’s broken rib and see if it had healed completely. David rather thought it had, no thanks to Mrs. Gray, but he was privately glad the doctor was already planning to call.

It bothered him that the leg injury still hurt. He had broken an arm twice, and both times it seemed but a few weeks before the arm was back to normal. He’d once won a hundred pounds from Percy for driving a demanding pair of bays with a broken arm. And he’d even broken his leg before, as a boy. He’d had to spend two weeks in bed, translating Latin passages as penance for trying to walk the roofline of the stable, but at the end of the month he was running and swimming and riding as if the bone had never broken. Yet now, here he was, still hobbling three long months after breaking his leg in a carriage accident. It was rather alarming to someone who had always taken his body, healthy and sound, for granted.

The doctor arrived soon after David finished breakfast. He examined David’s ribs thoroughly, and pronounced them healed. “Although I do see a slight bruise here,” he remarked, indicating the lower edge of David’s ribcage. “Have you been taking proper care? It wouldn’t do to re-injure yourself.”

Mrs. Gray had left her mark on him. David pulled his shirt back over his head. “A slight collision. Nothing worth fretting over. It’s hardly sore.”

“Well, very good, then.” He leaned back and gave David a smile. “You seem recovered from your injuries. I think my work here is done.” David drew breath to speak, then stopped. The doctor’s keen eye must have caught it, for he asked, “Is there anything else, my lord?”

David hesitated, then nodded. “My leg,” he said. The doctor’s brows arched.

“It has healed, I am quite certain. I examined it the last time I was here.” He shook a finger good-naturedly. “You’ve been a terribly demanding patient of late, sir.”

David grinned. “Always have been, as I recall. My father didn’t retain you as his personal physician just for himself.” Dr. Craddock might as well have lived at Ainsley Park when David was younger, so many times was he summoned to deal with injured limbs—from falling out of trees and off horses and once, out of a window—scrapes and bruises, including a magnificent black eye Marcus once gave him for cheating at cards, and the numerous fevers and chills a boy catches while swimming naked in the lake, hiding out in the rain to avoid his tutors, and one infamous stunt to hang his father’s nightcap from the steeple of the local church at Christmastide.

The good doctor must have remembered it all as well. He just sighed and shook his head. “Boys. But your leg…?”

His grin disappeared. “Yes. It still aches.”

Dr. Craddock frowned. “Let’s have a look, then.” David sat down on the chaise, stretching out his leg for the doctor to examine and staring blindly at the ceiling as he tried to ignore the poking and prodding.

“Well, I can see no signs of infection or other weakness,” said the doctor at last. “You are older, my lord, and your body will take longer to heal.”

“But four months?”

Dr. Craddock pursed his lips. “Can you walk on it normally? I did not notice a limp when I arrived.”

“Yes, I can walk on it,” David said. “It doesn’t always hurt.”

“Late in the evening? When you are tired?” David nodded to the doctor’s questions. “Then most likely it is still weak within the flesh, and needs more time to grow strong again. There is nothing I can do.” Irritably David flipped the dressing gown back over his leg. “My lord, you had a very serious injury,” the doctor went on in reproof. “There is nothing I can do to change that.”

“Yes, yes, but ought it not be healed by now?”

The doctor finished packing his instruments in his bag before he replied to David’s peevish question. “It has healed, sir. The bone is sound again. I know not what care you took whilst it was healing”—he shot a stern glare at David, as if he suspected some of the carrying on that had dulled David’s memory of his convalescence—“but it is likely as healed as it ever will be. Some aches never go away.”

“Never?” David exclaimed. Without thinking, he rubbed his palm down the outside of his calf, where the ache was most painful. “Are you certain?”

“No, not at all.” The man put his head to one side and studied David’s leg again. “It was well-set, and healed straight. You are fortunate in that, my lord. It may well fade in time. You are a strong, healthy man, and I give it an excellent chance of healing completely. You simply must give it time.”

Time, time, time. Always more time. It seemed as though he could invent chaos and disaster in an instant, but everything he tried to do right took an eternity. David sighed.

“Perhaps a cane might help,” Dr. Craddock added. “It might relieve the stress on the limb.”

David closed his mouth into a firm line and shook his head. He would not walk around like an old man with a cane, not even if he walked in pain for a year. He thanked the doctor and the man took his leave.

His failings had never come home to David in such a physically painful way. He had always managed to escape his capers with mere flesh wounds, not lingering disabilities. And this ache in his leg was like a private punishment. He could walk normally; he wasn’t obviously incapacitated. Only he knew when it felt like a barbed spur had been embedded in his calf, twisting and burning painfully with every step.

He got to his feet and began what had become his daily ritual lately, pacing the room with firm, measured steps. He flexed his foot each time it struck the floor, feeling the twinge deep within his lower leg and ruthlessly ignoring it. Surely if he worked the muscle enough, it would grow strong and steady again.

Five circuits of the room, ten, then twenty. Around he went, pushing his foot through a full range of motion even when it started to throb. When he was breathing heavily and his foot felt weighted with lead, David stopped, bracing one arm against the mantle. He hoped this was helping, but all he felt from the exercise was pain. Without thinking where he was going, he left the room and continued walking, only stopping when he came to Mrs. Gray’s door.

David paused. For some reason he wanted to go in and talk to her again, not that he had much hope of her speaking to him. He didn’t feel like browbeating her today. He just wanted to talk to someone, and she was the only person available. As he had told himself the previous day, it was rather safe to confide in her. She knew none of his acquaintances, and couldn’t repeat any of his remarks to anyone.

He heard footsteps, and Bannet shuffled up, carrying a tray. “She’s not had breakfast yet?” David asked, knowing as he asked that of course she hadn’t. He hadn’t brought it to her yet.

“No, sir,” said Bannet. “You were occupied with the doctor.”

David took the tray without another word, reaching for the key. He gave Bannet a curious glance, noticing the weight of his burden. “Quite a large meal for one small woman, don’t you think?”

“She’s a healthy appetite,” replied Bannet. “The dishes are always near licked clean, no matter how large a meal it is.” David’s eyebrows went up. “I expect she’s hungry, sir,” Bannet added in his same bland tone. “A poor lass like her.”

David had never thought of that. He glanced thoughtfully at the tray again, then opened the door and let himself in.

His captive scrambled out of bed in a flurry of bed linens and skirts. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, and she held a corner of the blanket in front of her chest. She blinked at him in confusion for a moment, then her expression cleared, and she turned her back on him as usual.

David put down the tray. “Good morning.” His leg still hurt a little, although just the dull ache. He was fairly accustomed to that now, but took a seat in the chair as a preventative measure anyway. “I apologize for being so late this morning.”

She sniffed, her short, jerky motions indicating she was adjusting the front of her dress. After a moment she turned around, her mouth in a flat line. She glared at him a moment, then stalked across the room and inspected the tray. She grabbed a piece of toast and took a bite, then her eyes narrowed on David—no, he realized, on the chair. Her soft blue eyes shot daggers at him, then she turned her attention back to the food. He watched the way she attacked the meal, with a concentration he’d never seen a woman eat with before. As if it were her first meal in days, when he knew very well she’d had two large meals a day for nearly a week.

“I’m delighted to see breakfast meets with your approval,” he remarked. She sniffed again, reaching for the plate of bacon. “I hope to hire a new cook soon,” he went on. “It shall be so nice to have hot fresh meals again, instead of picnic fare sent over by my brother’s cook.”

Her eyes flashed his way again, bright with disbelief. She obviously found the food delicious, from the way she was systematically cleaning plate after plate. “I admire your forbearance,” he went on, for some reason driven to poke at her until she said something, anything. It was beginning to annoy him that she was so stubbornly silent. “I find it virtually inedible.” He shuddered as if in horror. In reality the food was perfectly fine. David wasn’t such a gourmand that he discriminated much about food, so long as it was hot, decently prepared, and plentiful.

She looked at him in scornful disbelief. “Daft,” she mumbled, applying the spoon to the bowl of porridge.

“It absolutely is, isn’t it?” he agreed, purposely misunderstanding. “As soon as the new cook turns up, the food shall be much improved, I swear. No more of this…” He grimaced. “Porridge. Ugh. Ham steak, I should think, and perhaps some fresh kippers. Properly prepared eggs. Those tender little muffins ladies are so fond of, with sweet marmalade on them. My sister is particularly fond of those, although I have been given to understand they’re not good for the figure. Far be it from me to worry about a lady’s figure, but I confess, I’m quite happy to consume any of those little muffins as an assistance to any females at the table.”

She had stopped chewing at the mention of the little muffins, her eyes perfectly round. She looked at him with rapt seriousness. David hid a grin, and leaned forward to inspect the tray. She liked sweets, it seemed. He pulled a frown, and exclaimed in disgust.

“Here, and no chocolate! My mother and sister swear by the little pots of chocolate they drink for breakfast. Too sweet for my taste, but woe betide the cook if the ladies have no chocolate. And now you have none.” He looked up at her, his expression grave. “That shall be remedied as soon as possible. You are a rare woman to have endured the lack of chocolate so long without a word of complaint.”

Vivian choked down the mouthful of porridge, her mind filled with images of delicacies she’d only ever seen in shop windows. Muffins. Pots of chocolate. He thought she was accustomed to such things, and promised to provide them in the near future. Just a bowl of hot porridge in the morning seemed a luxury to her. Chocolate! She had smelled it once, while shadowing a fancy gentleman through St. James’s with an eye to lifting his purse. The smells from the coffeehouse he entered had stopped her cold, and she’d completely lost him as she just stood and inhaled the warm, rich aroma.

She shook her head. “Keep your chatter to yourself. Unless you’ve come to tell me I’m to be free, you might as well spare yourself the effort of speaking.”

“It would be my pleasure to escort you out of my house forever,” he said, his eyes lighting with that devilish light. “You have but to tell me what I need to know, and it shall be done.”

She sniffed again. After all this time, quite likely she couldn’t tell him anything useful even had she wanted to. Flynn, if he had any wits at all, would have moved on by now; it would take some doing for her to find the gang again. Even if she could say their whereabouts, so the rich cove could go looking for his bloody ring, she still had Simon to think of, and what might happen to him if this bloke fingered him as the one who’d rapped him on the head.

Besides, she wasn’t really suffering here. She no longer lived in fear of imminent rape and murder. Sooner or later her chance to escape would come, but until then she saw nothing to gain by answering his questions.

David could tell by the change in her face that she was done talking to him. He sat back with an inexplicable sense of disappointment. For no good reason, he liked this woman. She was nothing but trouble, and had done a masterful job of giving him a very cold shoulder, but David found her just as intriguing as he had that day on the stage coach. He was growing more and more determined to get her to talk to him—hopefully about where to find his ring, but any topic would do at this point.

He stretched out his bad leg and relaxed in the chair. “Oh, dear. You’ve gone silent again. I must have put my foot in it somehow. That always seems to be the reason ladies refuse to speak to me: I’ve said something wrong, or forgotten to say the right thing, or not said anything when I ought to have said something, even though I seldom know what I ought to have said, let alone that I ought to have said it.” She made a funny little noise, and David heaved a sigh. “Yes, that must be it. I’m quite accustomed to the fact that these little misunderstandings are always my fault. I do wish someone would write a primer on the subject:
How to Handle a Lady
. Not that I’m the most studious chap, mind, but that manual I could most certainly read.”

The food was gone. She was fussing with the spoon, scraping it along various plates and bowls, but he could tell she was listening to him.

“The trouble is,” he went on, “you’ve become a challenge. I don’t normally have trouble getting ladies to speak to me—at the beginning, that is. Yet you, my dear, are most hard-hearted. I cannot make you smile. I cannot make you laugh. I cannot tease one polite word from you.”