Octavius and the Perfect Governess: Pryor Cousins #1

by Emily Larkin

  Lord Octavius blushed an adorable shade of pink. “I’m not a hero.”

  “I think you are,” Pip said. She released his hand. “The next room’s mine.”

  Lord Octavius didn’t try to come in with her; he waited in the corridor like a guard and Pip found that she didn’t care what the servants might think. Mr. Donald scared her and Lord Octavius made her feel safe, and that was all that mattered.

  She went through her wardrobe swiftly. She didn’t have a great many gowns. She selected the plainest one, sniffed the armpits to make certain they smelled of nothing other than clean cotton, and folded it neatly. “Here,” she said, stepping out into the corridor and giving it to Lord Octavius.

  He tucked it under his arm. “Stay in your room ’til I get back.”

  “Do you really think that’s necessary?”

  “I don’t think you should be in the schoolroom, not if Donald knows you’re up here alone. It’s too isolated.”

  Isolated? Yes, it was isolated. If she screamed, it was unlikely anyone would hear her.

  Pip repressed a shiver. “All right.”

  “I won’t be long,” Lord Octavius said.

  Pip watched him disappear down the corridor. Lord Octavius was intending to wear one of her gowns tonight, and that was . . . disconcerting, and also a little embarrassing. The gown hadn’t smelled to her, but perhaps it would smell to him?

  He’d barely vanished from sight when two footmen arrived, lugging her trunk between them. “Set it down there, please,” Pip said, pointing to a spot by the dresser.

  The footmen deposited the trunk on the floor and departed.

  Pip opened the trunk. Her valise was inside, but her hatboxes weren’t. It took her a moment to remember where she’d put them: in the cupboard across from her bedroom.

  She went out into the corridor, found the hatboxes, and brought them back to her room. As she laid them on the bed, someone stepped up behind her. A hand clamped over her mouth and an arm wrapped around her waist, lifting her off her feet.

  It happened so fast that Pip didn’t have time to turn her head and see who it was. She didn’t even have time to scream. One moment she was placing the hatboxes on the bed, the next she was caught up in a tight grasp, struggling to breathe.

  Panic swept through her like a river bursting its banks. She clawed at the hand over her mouth.

  “You’ve been watching me,” a man’s voice rasped in her ear. “I’ve seen you, you little slut.” He didn’t smell like Lord Octavius smelled, didn’t breathe like he breathed. His grip was crushing, merciless, his muscles straining with a terrible, taut eagerness. “You’re begging for it, aren’t you? Like a bitch in heat. Giving me those looks, enticing me into your room.”

  Pip couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She clawed again at the hand covering her mouth.

  The man shook her roughly, then released her, shoving her onto the bed, sending her sprawling. Pip inhaled a ragged, desperate breath. Fight! a voice cried in her head.

  Pip rolled off the hatboxes and kicked at her attacker. It was Mr. Donald, but he didn’t look unremarkable and ordinary anymore; he looked terrifying, more demon than man. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in a grin that was savage and gleeful, a grin that said he was going to hurt her—and that he was going to enjoy doing it.

  Pip’s heart punched in her chest. Terror froze her to the bed—and then the voice in her head cried Fight! again. It sounded like Lord Octavius and Mr. Pryor and Lord Newingham all yelling at once.

  Mr. Donald reached for her. Pip kicked, catching his arm, but the blow was glancing and seemed only to amuse him. His grin became even more gleeful. “Feisty, aren’t you?”

  Fear had stolen the strength from her limbs. Pip scrambled off the far side of the bed, fell to the floor, and floundered to her feet. She grabbed the nearest object: the ewer in her washstand. She swung it at Mr. Donald as he came at her and tried to scream, but the scream was short and weak and breathless.

  Mr. Donald caught the ewer in one hand, wrenched it from her grasp, and threw it aside.

  Pip tried to dart around him. Her legs moved too slowly, as if she was running through water.

  Mr. Donald grabbed her wrist. His fingers bit in deeply.

  Voices were screaming in her head, a panic-stricken cacophony, but that grip on Pip’s wrist was familiar. She knew what to do when a man held her like that. She’d practiced it.

  She bent her head and bit Mr. Donald’s hand as hard as she could. The taste of blood blossomed on her tongue.

  Mr. Donald gave a yelp and released her, shoving her violently away. Pip stumbled and fell backwards, full-length on the floor, smacking her head. She tried to roll over, to scramble to her feet, but it was too late: Mr. Donald was looming over her, rage twisting his face. He grabbed at her with claw-like hands, catching the neckline of her gown, ripping the bodice open, exposing her chemise.

  The voices in her head shrieked even more frantically than before. Fight!

  Pip drew back her knees and kicked Mr. Donald in the nose with both feet.

  This time panic didn’t steal her strength. Her kick landed with a satisfying crunch.

  Mr. Donald gave a howl of pain. He stumbled back, clutching his face. Blood spurted from between his fingers.

  Pip rolled and scrambled to her feet. She flung the door open, tumbled out into the corridor, and ran, her feet pounding on the uncarpeted floor, past the schoolroom, around the corner—where she collided with someone so violently that they both fell over.

  They landed on the floor in a tangle of arms and legs and even though she hadn’t seen the person’s face yet, Pip knew it was Lord Octavius. It wasn’t just that his smell was familiar, the very feel of him was familiar.

  Lord Octavius sat up. “Pip?” he said, and then more sharply, “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” He saw her ripped bodice. Alarm flashed across his face. “Are you all right?”

  Pip sat up, too, and tried to pull the ruined bodice up with shaking fingers. Her arms were shaking, too. Her whole body was. She knew that if she tried to speak she’d burst into tears, so she answered with a nod.

  Lord Octavius moved her hands aside, then pulled the bodice up and tucked it into her chemise. His fingers brushed her skin, but here was nothing sensual about it. He was gentle, careful. “Did Donald do this?”

  Pip nodded again.

  “Is he in your bedroom?”

  She nodded again.

  Lord Octavius stood and helped her to her feet. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

  Pip inhaled a trembling breath. “I’m fine,” she managed to say without bursting into tears.

  Lord Octavius cupped her face in his hands and brushed one thumb lightly over her lower lip. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I bit him.”

  Lord Octavius lowered his hands and drew her into an embrace. Pip pressed her forehead into his shoulder and closed her eyes. His arms were warm and strong. They made her feel safe.

  The panic and the terror began to recede. The shaking eased slightly. She could stand like this forever, being held by him, but even as she formed that thought, Lord Octavius released her and stepped back. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll see to Mr. Donald.” His gaze fell to her mouth again and his lips tightened. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.

  Pip took it and dabbed at her mouth. The handkerchief came away smudged with blood.

  “He’ll never touch another woman again,” Lord Octavius said grimly. “I promise you that.”

  He was gone before Pip had time to wipe her mouth properly, vanishing around the corner, his footsteps quite martial, an aggressive slap-slap-slap of well-shod feet on wooden floorboards.

  Pip moistened the handkerchief with her tongue and tried to scrub away the blood. Mr. Donald’s blood. Mr. Donald of the savage grin and the sudden, terrifying violence.

  Abruptly, Pip found herself concerned for Lord Octavius’s well-being. He was younger, taller, and
stronger than Mr. Donald, but the valet was possessed of a terrible, demonic madness. What if he hurt Lord Octavius? What if he killed him?

  She headed for her bedchamber, the handkerchief clutched in her hand, but before she was halfway there she heard a choked cry of pain and the smack of a fist striking flesh.

  Pip dropped the handkerchief, caught up her skirts, and ran. She burst through the open door to her room and halted, horrified.

  The men were on the floor, grappling with one another. Lord Octavius was ascendant, straddling the valet, one hand gripping the man’s throat. As Pip watched he drew back his fist and struck Mr. Donald in the face.

  Neither man noticed her. Mr. Donald was trying to fend Lord Octavius off, and Lord Octavius . . . Lord Octavius now had both hands wrapped around the valet’s throat.

  “Stop!” Pip cried.

  The men paid her no attention. Mr. Donald was clawing at Lord Octavius’s hands quite as desperately as Pip had clawed at his—and with similar lack of success. He didn’t look demonic any longer; he looked frantic, his face growing purple beneath its mask of blood.

  “Stop!” Pip cried more loudly.

  Mr. Donald scrabbled urgently at Lord Octavius’s hands—to no avail.

  Pip tugged at Lord Octavius’s shoulder. “Stop! You’ll kill him!”

  Lord Octavius didn’t appear to hear her. His lips were pulled back in a snarl that was every bit as terrifying as Mr. Donald’s grin had been.

  Pip looked at his fierce, vengeful face and realized that she didn’t know Lord Octavius at all. This wasn’t the man who’d been courting her for the past week. The man who flew kites and told jokes and played with little girls. This was someone else entirely. A stranger. Someone bloodthirsty and violent.

  She knelt and grabbed one of Lord Octavius’s wrists and tried to pull him off the valet, but it was like tugging on an iron hawser.

  Mr. Donald’s struggles were growing weaker.

  “If you kill him I won’t marry you!” Pip cried.

  Lord Octavius was too caught up in his rage and his vengeance to hear her.

  Pip tugged futilely at the hands wrapped so strongly around Mr. Donald’s throat—and then she remembered the defensive techniques she’d been taught. She grabbed one of Lord Octavius’s fingers and yanked on it sharply.

  “Ow!” He released his hold and reared back, shock on his face.

  “I won’t marry you if you kill him,” Pip told him fiercely. “I won’t marry you!”

  He looked even more shocked. Some of the rage drained from his face. “But he attacked you.”

  “I won’t marry a murderer.”

  Pip climbed to her feet. Lord Octavius scrambled to his feet, too. Mr. Donald lay between them, gasping and bloody-faced. “But Pip—”

  “Please take him away.”

  “But—”

  “Please, just take him away.”

  Lord Octavius closed his mouth. He looked at her for a long moment, then bent and hauled the valet to his feet.

  Pip watched as he manhandled Mr. Donald to the door. The valet wheezed and stumbled and made no attempt to resist.

  Lord Octavius halted in the doorway and looked back at her. Unlike Mr. Donald, his face was quite pale. “Pip . . .”

  “Not now,” Pip said. She was shaking violently and she had an urgent need to cry. She hugged her elbows tightly. “I need to be alone.”

  Lord Octavius pressed his lips together and nodded. He headed down the corridor, hauling Mr. Donald with him.

  Pip watched him out of sight.

  She had thought she’d known who he was, but she hadn’t. She’d only known part of him. The whole man, the man she’d just glimpsed, wasn’t someone she knew at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Baron Rumpole was in his study. He didn’t look as if he’d moved in the past hour, but he must have, for he’d poured himself another glass of wine. The agreement that Rumpole and Newingham had signed, and that Octavius and Dex had witnessed, lay on the desk.

  The baron glanced up at their entrance. His brows beetled together in a frown, but it was a feeble frown, a mere shadow of his usual scowl.

  Baron Rumpole was a much meeker man than he’d been yesterday.

  “What’s this?” Rumpole said, his gaze going from Octavius to the blood-stained valet and back again.

  “Your man attacked Miss Toogood in her bedchamber,” Octavius said, shoving the valet forward.

  “She invited me in,” Mr. Donald hoarsely, his bloody handkerchief pressed to his nose. “Begging for it, she was.”

  Octavius experienced an almost overwhelming compulsion to hit the man. His hands clenched into involuntary fists. “She broke his nose fighting him off.”

  The baron’s gaze flicked between them several times and finally settled on the valet. “Don’t do it again,” he told the man.

  “No, sir,” Mr. Donald said, the handkerchief still pressed to his nose.

  “You may go,” Rumpole said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  The valet sent Octavius a malevolent glare, and departed.

  “That’s it?” Octavius said indignantly, once the door had shut behind him. “He attacks a woman in her bedchamber and that’s all you’re going to do?”

  The baron shrugged. “What else can I do?”

  “Dismiss him!” Octavius said. “Prosecute him!”

  The baron’s unwillingness to pursue either path was clear to read on his face. “You heard him. He won’t do it again.” He picked up his wineglass and drank. It was a more polite dismissal than the one he’d given the valet, but it was a dismissal nonetheless.

  Octavius stomped out of the study and only just managed not to slam the door behind him.

  Miss Toogood’s dismissal had been even plainer than the baron’s, so although the one thing Octavius most wanted to do was go upstairs and speak with her, he didn’t. He decided to climb the hanger instead. The events of the past half hour replayed themselves in his head as he strode down the lane. He saw himself burst into Miss Toogood’s bedroom over and over, saw himself confront the valet, heard the man’s words: The slut was begging for it. Like a bitch in heat, she was. And each time he heard those words, he felt the same surge of rage, the same fury.

  Hitting Donald had been the right thing to do. Knocking him to the floor had been right. Even throttling him had been right. The valet had deserved to choke and wheeze and fear for his life. It wasn’t as if Octavius had actually intended to kill the man—he would have stopped before that happened—but even if he hadn’t stopped, even if rage had carried him past that point, it still wouldn’t have been wrong. Donald was a rapist and the penalty for rape was death. Any jury in England would have acquitted Octavius. He’d just been protecting the woman he loved.

  At the bottom of the hanger, Octavius knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. By the time he’d labored his way to the top, his gut still insisted he’d done nothing wrong, but his brain was beginning to doubt it.

  What if he had killed the valet?

  He was fairly certain he would have stopped before the man had asphyxiated, but he wasn’t completely certain.

  Miss Toogood had been certain. She’d thought she was witnessing a murder. And perhaps she had been.

  He reached the top of the hanger and stood for a moment, catching his breath. Kites flew high overhead, bright splashes of color, their tails streaming joyfully in the wind.

  Octavius stared up at them and wondered how kites and almost-rape and almost-murder could exist in the same small patch of Hampshire at the same time. It seemed impossible that Miss Toogood had been attacked and that he had almost killed Mr. Donald, while these kites bobbed so gaily in the breeze.

  He made his way through the grass and the wildflowers to his cousin. Dex looked windswept and happy. He laughed when he saw Octavius. “These kites are first rate!” he said, and then he did a double take. “Is that blood on your neckcloth?”

  “Probably.” Octavius peered down at himself, b
ut couldn’t see any blood.

  “You all right, old chap?”

  Octavius grunted something that could be either yes or no. He unknotted his neckcloth. By the time he had the thing off and had discovered that there was indeed blood on it, Dex had reeled in his kite.

  “What happened?” his cousin asked.

  Octavius glanced over at Newingham and the girls. “Not here.” He jerked his head at the trees.

  They walked in silence. Octavius folded up his neckcloth and stuffed it in his pocket. “What happened?” Dex asked, once they reached the trees.

  Octavius told him. When he finished, his cousin was wide-eyed. “You almost killed him? Well done, old chap!”

  Octavius remembered the expression on Miss Toogood’s face when she’d hauled him off the valet. He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t well done. I should have restrained myself.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Females don’t like violence.”

  Dex gave a dismissive snort. “This isn’t about female sensibilities, you corkbrain, it’s about doing what’s right.”

  Maybe he was a corkbrain, because he was beginning to think that the difference between right and wrong wasn’t that clear-cut. Things that were right could also be wrong.

  He wondered if it was possible to explain this to Dex.

  “What if it had been Phoebe?” he asked his cousin.

  A savage expression crossed Dex’s face. “I’d’ve ripped the fucker’s head off his shoulders.”

  “No, what I mean is, what if Phoebe were there? What if she told you to stop? What if she didn’t want you to kill him?”

  “I’d still rip his head off.”

  Octavius looked at his cousin, saw the belligerent jut of his jaw, and decided there was no point trying to explain it to Dex, not when he didn’t properly understand it himself. He turned and headed back down the hanger, crushing grass beneath his boots.

  “Where are you going?” Dex called out after him.

  “Rumpole Hall.” He needed to find Miss Toogood and tell her that he hadn’t actually intended to kill the valet.

  “Lunchtime!” Newingham bellowed. “Who’s going to be first to the bottom of the hill?”