“The duke’s been acting as magistrate since the last one died,” Pascoe finally said just before they reached the men hauling the kidnappers. “Even if he appointed me, I’d have to abstain or I’d have the rogues transported this minute.”
“You can burn them at the stake for all I care,” Will said callously. “I just want to know who sent them and why.”
“Dare is a viscount. Let’s nominate him as acting magistrate, take them to his place, away from the women, and pretend we’re objective for a little while.”
“What about Lady Dare?” Will had to ask. He could tolerate the duke’s reasonable daughter. Lady Aurelia seldom made demands except when others were at risk. But city-bred, over-educated Emilia was a nag like her Malcolm mother—and a healer. She’d peel paint off their hides if she saw the condition of the rogues.
“Emilia is tending to Rose’s mother and Bridey’s impending hysteria,” Pascoe said with a dark chuckle, understanding the reason for Will’s question. “There’ll be none but us to interrogate them. Although looking at their conditions,” he added as they rode closer, “I don’t think we need do much more persuasion. What the hell did you do to them? Take them apart and put them back together wrong?”
“I think I only broke one bone,” Will said in indignation. “Maybe cracked a few ribs.”
“We can give the cads to Harrogate physicians to fix later, but we’ll talk first. A little pain should speed the process.” Pascoe didn’t look the least objective or diplomatic as he said that.
“It’s a good thing you left the king’s employ, old man. You’d be starting your own Inquisition with that attitude.”
“You’d be amazed how bloodthirsty one becomes when your own flesh and blood is harmed. I’d strangle them with my bare hands if I could.” Pascoe kicked his horse to a trot and joined the groom and Mr. Mapleton, directing them to Dare’s abode.
They sent the groom back to fetch the viscount for the illusion of objectivity and fairness. But by the time Dare arrived, Pascoe and Will had the information they required.
“We was just arter the bitch,” the villain with the broken arm protested as Will flung him toward Dare’s farmers. “If she’d a’come when the brats started cryin’ and the dogs hadn’t howled, we’d of let them alone.”
“They’s just whelps,” the larger of the villains whined as Dare’s men prepared to haul them to Harrogate to await trial. “It ain’t as if we hurt nothin’ val’able.”
Will rolled his eyes as his diplomatic, educated, sophisticated uncle plowed his fist into the lack-wit’s jaw, probably knocking out what remained of his teeth. The nit slumped in the hold of one of Dare’s grooms.
“Payment on Emma’s nightmares,” Pascoe muttered. “What hole do creatures like that crawl out of?”
“Better yet, how do creatures like Crockett find them?” Will asked. “Crockett was there. He’s the one who stabbed the puppy, even if he didn’t lay a hand on the children.”
“And got clean away, again,” Pascoe added in disgruntlement.
“Do you believe them when they said Crockett meant to exchange them for his son?” Will asked, troubled by the varied information obtained from the mind of dogs, children, and villains.
“First off, we don’t know that Crockett is his name, since Bess disavowed it,” Pascoe replied. “Second, we don’t know that whoever hired the scoundrels is actually the boy’s father. Third, I don’t believe anyone would have walked away alive if Pseudo-Crockett got his hands on Bess and her son. A man who beats a woman heavy with child doesn’t strike me as the polite sort to leave witnesses. I’m just irritated that no one knows how to find this bane on the rump of existence so I can hang him from a high limb.” Pascoe was practically foaming at the mouth.
“Well, whatever you do to find him,” Will warned, “it has to wait until Bess and her family are removed from the abbey. Word spreads fast in a village this small. Once the infirmary is empty and you spread the rumor that the infant and his mother died, your family should be safe. Then you can hunt your villain.”
Hunting a lord, if that’s what Crockett was, was better done by his city family. Will was ready to return to Yatesdale, finish his task of training Ajax, and move on.
As much as he had enjoyed Lady Aurelia’s kiss, he knew it had only been because she needed comfort, and he was a lust-addled reprobate. He couldn’t take her bit of familiarity with any seriousness, even if he’d enjoyed having her feed him buns and rooting in his pocket. Thinking of a duke’s daughter was madness, and he was above all, sensible.
So he’d return the lady to her sisters, train Ajax, stay well out of the way until the duke came home, and then return to his schedule. His next post was in Scotland.
While Pascoe hurried to join his wife and children, Will rode to the stable to return the horses. His brother’s enormous traveling carriage had arrived, and he grimaced. Then remembering he’d wanted to send his new pup back to the kennel at Iveston, he headed for a side door that would take him to his chambers. He’d have to pretend he was civilized long enough to ask the new parents to add the deerhound puppy to their baggage cart.
Seeing Lady Aurelia hurrying down the hall in his direction, Will almost fled back out the door. When those beautiful sky-blue eyes lit with expectation, he knew he was doomed.
Aurelia sighed in relief at finding Will so easily.
The household rang with the cries of the very loud marquess and his party. There were now two infants wailing in the nursery, and the staff had more than doubled. The marquess did not travel lightly when escorting his wife and new heir.
Will’s blessed silence muffled all that. “I need you to go to London with me,” she told him, keeping the plea out of her voice by using her best duke’s daughter tone.
Will looked at her as if she’d just asked him to turn into a dragon. She would swear the solid bronzed jaw that had taken blows without bruising now paled in distress.
“London? Why?” he asked, stepping backward and acting as if she’d asked him to stop by Hades. “If you’ve taken a sudden desire to visit the city you said you hate, Ashford can take you. I need to finish training Ajax and return to my schedule.”
“I need you,” she admitted bluntly.
She had thought they’d developed a familiarity over this past week that left her comfortable enough with him to be honest. The morning’s events had given her confidence. Had she been too bold? Too hasty? She was fairly certain her conclusion about Will’s presence was correct. She’d read about such things in Malcolm journals. Perhaps she placed too much hope in ancient writings. At the very least, though, she needed to experiment.
She winced when he still glared at her in disbelief. “Somehow, you help me hear,” she said, willing him to understand. When he only narrowed his blasted thick-lashed eyes, she offered the best image she could summon. “Have you ever stood outside after a heavy snowfall when all sounds are muffled? No bird calls, no wagons creaking, so that the church bell in the distance rings with perfect clarity?”
Encouraged that he seemed to be listening—or at least hadn’t fled—she continued, “You are like that snowfall for me. Your presence blankets unnecessary noise and lets me concentrate on the important sounds. Do you have any idea what heaven that is to me?”
Instead of appearing pleased, his jaw ticked angrily. “You need me to be your wet blanket?” he asked in incredulity.
“Wet blanket?” Perhaps the unholy racket in the kitchen prevented her from hearing right.
“Wet blanket,” he repeated. “The ones people throw over the heads of horses to keep them from spooking in case of fire.”
She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t rid herself of the image. She’d been thinking lovely blankets of snow, and he was thinking dirty soggy horse blankets and fire?
“I will not be your wet blanket,” he declared adamantly. Without another word, he stomped back outside.
What had just happened here? Now that she knew she had some chance
of joining the real world, she had been counting on him to help her. She hadn’t expected flat rejection. No one had ever refused her requests—and certainly not behaved so rudely. She needed the wretched man. He hadn’t even given her time to explain why this was so important to her.
Stupid tears sprang to her eyes. She might be hopelessly unskilled in communicating, but he was being deliberately obtuse in understanding. He knew what she meant. He had to. Why wouldn’t he help her?
“That’s the wrong tactic to take with Will, I fear,” Sir Pascoe said from a doorway behind her.
Flushing that this humiliating argument had been overheard, Aurelia swung around. Her host was leaning one shoulder against the door jamb of the cluttered abbey office. She wanted to flee and hide her tears and frustration, but she couldn’t help asking “Why?” with a plea that made her cringe.
“First, you need to understand Will. It’s not as if he’ll tell you anything.” Pascoe nodded toward the office, gesturing her in.
With any other man, she’d be nervous when he closed the door behind her, but Bridey’s husband was a diplomat who knew how to create privacy and a sheltered space where she might have a chance to think straight.
She could still hear the shrieking argument in the kitchen and the nurses soothing the infants along with the rumble of all the other voices Will had muffled, until he got angry, anyway. But the journal-lined walls at least dulled immediate sounds, and she gratefully accepted the chair he offered.
“What is there to understand?” she asked in puzzlement. “He’s helped me until now. What did I say wrong?”
“Until now, he’s been rescuing you,” Pascoe said, pouring her tea from a steaming pot on the desk.
“He has not,” she said indignantly. “He’s been rescuing Rose.”
He shrugged. “What you just asked had nothing to do with Rose. You asked him to be your tame lap dog.”
“I did not,” she said in outrage. “I would never think of him that way.” Lap dog, indeed! A man who could knock down and truss up kidnappers, tear down doors, and still carry a child with tenderness—lap dog? Never.
“That’s because you’re not seeing through his eyes.” Taking a seat, Pascoe pressed his fingertips together in a steeple and studied her over them. “First, I must point out that if you are not interested in Will, in particular, and simply need a protective companion, then there is no reason to discuss this further. My nephew is a man with a mission, and I will not help you distract him from it if all you need is company to keep you amused.”
A man with a mission. Aurelia swallowed. She’d never met a man with a mission before, although she supposed her father and brother came close, but she sensed Pascoe was correct. Will meant to save the small pieces of the world that touched him—as she could not. Still, she did need Will in particular for protection. How could she explain that? Will certainly hadn’t understood. And if Pascoe had overheard their conversation, apparently he did not either.
“I do not understand,” she admitted. “I apologize, but it’s hard to think with so much noise.”
Now that Will had apparently left the vicinity, Ashford’s bellows echoed down the stone corridor, and the twins squealed in mock horror loud enough to sound as if they were in the room.
She winced, and Pascoe immediately looked concerned. “I apologize. I sometimes forget what Will calls your disability. Let me restate this. You are accustomed to every man of your acquaintance falling all over themselves to do your bidding, are you not?”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste but nodded. “Although I usually only ask them to do things so they’ll go away,” she said honestly.
His mouth curled up at that. “But you don’t want Will to go away? Why is that, do you think? And if you give the wet blanket explanation again, I’ll tell you the same as he did.”
She rubbed her temple and tried to think, but the answer wasn’t in her head, it was in her heart. She simply didn’t want to admit it. “Because I can hear him,” she said in a whisper. “He hardly ever speaks, but when he does, I hear. Only my father and Rain can reach me like that.”
He sat back in surprise and studied her. “You are hearing me now, aren’t you? How is that different?”
She rubbed her temples and tried very hard to concentrate. “Because what you are saying is important, I think. If the noise grows any louder, or you start mouthing platitudes, I may start turning you off at any minute. But not with Will. I hear every word he says, no matter the circumstances, just like normal people must.”
She couldn’t admit how refreshing and wonderful that was, because she couldn’t exactly say that was the only reason she enjoyed his company. She craved his presence for many reasons, few of which she could say aloud.
Pascoe grinned. “You could have any nobleman in the kingdom at your feet with the wink of an eye—and you are interested in a man who trains dogs because you can hear him? Or because he says what you want to hear?”
Aurelia laughed wryly at that. “He seldom says what I want to hear. We argue as often as we agree.” And then she lit up with excitement. “Because he argues with me! No one but Rain and my father will do that.”
“Malcolm perverseness,” he said with a chuckle. “But if you’re telling the truth and honestly want Will, then you’ll have to change your approach. My nephew will never fall on bended knee and do your bidding. In fact, he will run as fast as he can in the opposite direction. He is probably packing right now. I fear if you must seek this misalliance, you will have to pursue Will.”
Shocked, Aurelia nearly spilled her tea. Steadying herself, she sat back and sipped while she tried to comprehend what he was telling her. When she thought she did, she didn’t know how to respond. Pursue Will? As her suitors pursued her? Was a misalliance what she wanted?
She certainly hadn’t considered it until now. She shouldn’t consider it. Her father would kill her. Or Will. Or Rain would join in, and they’d both die.
“It never occurred to me that a lady might pursue a gentleman,” she murmured, stalling for time as she thought about it.
She had thought she only wanted his company. Did she really want Will in that way? It was a truly shocking notion, but perhaps not as shocking as it would have been before their kiss.
“Let’s look at it from this angle—Will talks to dogs, not people.” He looked at her expectantly.
She frowned. “I don’t understand. He talks to me.”
“Exactly,” he said in triumph. “And that’s the reason we’re sitting here now—he talks more to you than any other person I’ve ever seen. He’s interested in you, and he doesn’t want to be. Which interests me.” He added more tea to his cup while he formed his next words. “It may not seem like it, but we Ives look out for one another. We have to. Like your Malcolm relations, we’re too different to fit in anywhere as comfortably as we do with each other.”
“Is that why so many of you marry into my family?” she asked, curiosity stirred.
Pascoe shrugged. “Possibly, but that’s not the point. The point is, Will doesn’t feel as if he fits in anywhere, not even with his family, which means he has no one to talk to at all. He’s younger than all of us but Jacques. He had a mother for longer than any of us, which meant he had another home where he truly belonged, so he didn’t have to put up with our depredations. Having another home made him painfully aware of the difference between the estate of a marquess and his mother’s rural inn.”
“Did the rest of you have wealthy mothers?”
He added a thimble of brandy to his tea. “Not particularly, no, but the rest of us were too young to be aware of status when we were abandoned in the dog kennel that was the Ives nursery. The difference didn’t stop there, though. Those of us raised from infancy at Iveston were tutored from a very early age. We competed as fiercely in the classroom as the playroom. Theo learned to show off by naming every star in the sky. Ashford followed his father around and learned how to balance books and calculate the harvest before
he could drink milk without spilling it. We competed on everything. If Ash excelled at Greek, I beat him at Latin. Erran learned both. Even baby Jacques, once he discovered the library, was reading at four and could quote Shakespeare at six.”
“And Will?” she asked uncertainly, realizing she never saw him with so much as a news sheet in hand.
“Will couldn’t read when he first came to us at seven. Although he was already as large as any of us, the tutors kept him in the nursery with baby Jacques while the rest of us went off to school. He seldom spent much time in the schoolroom even when we were there. Before his ninth birthday he was crawling out the window and down the vines. We’d find him training sheep dogs half a dozen miles away. His father, the late marquess, finally sent Will off to Harrow with me and Jacques just so he didn’t have to track him down.”
“Harrow?” she asked, simply because every man she knew had gone to Eton.
Pascoe shrugged. “We’re the bastards. Ash and his legitimate brothers were at Eton. I’m the same age as Ash, so I didn’t see much of Jacques and Will when they arrived at school. I daresay you haven’t met Jacques yet. He doesn’t look like an Ives. He’s small and fair and clever. Will spent their first year at school breaking noses of the boys who wanted Jacques to fag for them.”
“And getting sent down in consequence,” Aurelia said, trying to grasp all he was telling her.
“On the contrary,” Pascoe said with a laugh. “The threat of being sent down forced him to offer to study harder so he could stay and look out for Jacques. So he can read. He’s simply slow at it. After a while, the school kept him on just because he excelled at all sports.”
“That sounds perfectly normal to me. My little brother Teddy is more athlete than scholar. I don’t understand.”
He waved his teacup in dismissal of that comparison. “There’s almost a twenty year age difference between your little brother and Rain. They don’t have to compete. But in our household, we were all born within eight years of each other. Will was bigger than all of us except Ash, but in schooling, he simply couldn’t keep up. Besides that, he talks to animals. He spent more time in the barn than in the house. None of us thought anything of it until we met the Malcolms, and Will realized he’s not only big and dumb but peculiar.”
No Perfect Magic Page 14