by Anne Gracie
“And this was what—three weeks ago? And you haven’t called since?” Max inquired coldly.
Perkins twitched and began to mumble some feeble excuse.
Max cut him off. “So you left my elderly and possibly ill aunt in the hands of what you are certain is an impostor and her hired minions?”
Perkins shifted uncomfortably. “Well, what could I do? I have not the authori—”
“The authority? Damn it, man, in my absence you had complete authority over the staff of Davenham House!” Max thumped the table with his fist, making the crockery—and Perkins—jump. “The arrangement I made with this firm was that your father would assist my aunt in all financial and other matters, including the supervision of household matters on her behalf. And since your father’s death, his responsibility devolves to you. So how the devil have you let some blasted female impostor march in and assume command of my aunt’s affairs?”
“She’s a very difficult woman.” Perkins gave a helpless shrug that made Max want to thump more than the table.
“I’ll just bet she is!” The man was a fool; whether or not he was a rogue was yet to be seen. “Bring me the account books.”
Perkins scurried to fetch them. Max tucked them under his arm and rose to leave.
Perkins eyed him with dismay. “But, my lord, I shall need those—”
“Not anymore, you won’t,” Max said crisply. “My arrangement with this firm is hereby terminated. I shall send my own man around to make all the arrangements. After he’s gone over the books in detail.”
Ignoring Perkins’s babbled pleas and excuses, Max left the house and hailed a cab. He dropped the account books off at the London office of Flynn & Co. Oriental Trading, with a note to Bartlett, the head man there, that he’d be back later.
So much for waiting for a decent hour. He would call on his aunt this very minute. And her so-called niece.
Difficult woman indeed!
Max knew exactly how to handle women—difficult or otherwise. A firm hand, that was all that was needed.
* * *
Abby had just left Lady Beatrice’s room and was coming down the stairs when she heard the front doorbell jangling in the hall below. A visitor? At this early hour?
She heard Featherby answer.
A deep voice said, “I wish to see Lady Beatrice Davenham.” Abby peered over the balcony, but she couldn’t make out more than a tall, dark shape in the doorway.
Featherby said something—presumably a denial; it really was too ridiculously early for a morning call—but then the visitor snapped, “No, I don’t care to return at a more convenient hour, dammit.”
There was the sound of a scuffle, and she ran down the last few steps to the landing in time to see Featherby fall to the floor and a tall, dark-haired stranger push past him and enter the house. Before she could gather her wits, he’d crossed the hallway and was racing up the stairs toward her, taking them two at a time on long, powerful legs.
“Stop!” Abby braced herself, flinging her hands out to bar his way. “You can’t come up here.”
She fully expected him to shove her roughly aside, as he’d shoved Featherby, but amazingly, he stopped.
She had an impression of a hard, chiseled jaw, a bold nose, a firm, compressed mouth. And he was tall; even standing three steps below her, he was taller than she. Her heart was pounding. What sort of a man would shove his way into a lady’s house with so little ceremony? At this hour of the morning?
He was casually dressed in a loose dark blue coat, a white shirt, buff breeches and high black boots. His cravat was carelessly knotted around a strong, tanned throat. Despite the almost civilized clothing, he looked like . . . like some kind of marauder. His jaw was unshaven, rough with dark bristles; his thick, dark hair was unfashionably long and caught back carelessly with a strip of leather. Gray eyes glittered in a tanned face.
A dark Viking—surely no Englishman would have skin that dark, burnished by years under a foreign sun.
“Who’s going to stop me?” He moved up one step.
She didn’t move. “I am.”
The angle of his high, hint-of-Viking cheekbones was underscored by a thin scar on his left cheek. It gleamed pale against his tan. His eyes drifted over her in a leisurely masculine examination that scorched her to her skin even though she was wearing one of her thick gray governess gowns that morning.
A shiver ran down her spine.
He looked like a man who knew exactly who he was, who knew what he wanted and took it, without apology.
“Really? You?” He seemed amused. He moved up another step. A step closer. A step taller.
“Y-yes. Me.” Just one step remained between them. Abby braced herself. She was shaking; she refused to let him see how intimidating she found him. She would not retreat. Lady Beatrice was counting on her. William would be here soon—Featherby would have gone to fetch him.
She thought she could see a lurking smile in the gray eyes, as if he were amused that she thought she could stop him. There was brazen masculine challenge there as well as he took another step. Now they were almost touching.
In an instinctive reaction she put her hands on the broad, deep chest to push him back. Her palms tingled. Beneath the fine linen of his shirt, he felt warm and hard and powerful.
The lurking amusement deepened. Pure male arrogance, counting her as no threat at all. He was so close she could see each individual bristle on his unshaven chin. He smelled of the sea, of something dark and masculine.
She pushed. He didn’t budge.
“Who are you?” she said. She couldn’t imagine. What would such a dangerous-looking—and acting—bandit want with Lady Beatrice?
“Who are you?” His voice was deep and smoky dark. It shivered through her.
The contact between them was too unsettling. Abby took a step back to break it. Marshaling her defenses, she said, “How dare you come bursting into my house like—”
“Your house?” The gray eyes hardened. “I was under the impression this house belonged to Lady Beatrice Davenham.” He took another step. It was like being stalked by a big, dark panther.
Abby held her ground. “I speak for Lady Beatrice. What do you want with her?” Who could he possibly be?
“That’s my business.” His gray eyes narrowed to a slash of ice in his tanned face. Two slashes. They glittered with hostility.
Abby put up her chin. “No, it’s mine.” Viking or not, she would not be intimidated.
“Out. Of. My. Way. Madam.” Spoken with each word bitten off like an Englishman in a rage, the Viking leashed tight . . . for the moment.
He made to push past her on the stairs, but Abby stepped in front of him again and shoved hard against his chest to keep him back. “I said, stop!”
His gray eyes smoldered down at her. Black brows forked in a frown.
“I demand to know—Eek! What do you think you’re—” Powerful hands seized her by the waist. In the same instant William and Featherby emerged from the domestic region. “William! Help!” she shrieked, and heard William start thundering up the stairs.
The Viking’s grip tightened. Without warning he lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all, turned and thrust her into the oncoming William’s arms.
William caught her and staggered back down a few steps to recover his balance, and in the seconds it took for Abby to untangle herself, the intruder had mounted the remaining stairs and was striding down the passage toward Lady Beatrice’s bedchamber.
Abby flew after him.
She reached him just as he threw open the door to Lady Beatrice’s bedchamber, entered and stopped stock-still.
Jane and Damaris leaped to their feet and arranged themselves on either side of Lady Beatrice’s bed. Daisy, in the act of painting Lady Beatrice’s toenails, froze, staring up at the stranger, her mouth agape.
Abby pushed past and placed herself between him and Lady Beatrice. Over her shoulder she said, “I’m sorry, Lady Beatrice; I don’t know who—He
just burst in—”
William arrived at the door, followed by Featherby, panting.
“Max, my dear, dear boy.” Lady Beatrice, beaming, held out her hands to the Viking, just as William and Featherby were about to seize him. “You’re home at last.”
William and Featherby froze.
“Max?” Abby looked from Lady Beatrice back at the Viking. “Your nephew, Max?” She glanced at the watercolor painting. That sensitive-looking young boy had turned into this big, brutal Viking?
Ignoring her, the Viking bent down, took Lady Beatrice’s hands and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Aunt Bea. How are you, my dear?” He spoke quietly, with rough, deep-voiced affection. Abby felt a lump in her throat. The way he spoke to his aunt was quite touching. At the same time she wanted to smash a vase over his head for the fright he’d given her.
Lady Beatrice patted his jaw. “Left your razor in India, dear boy?” Half caress, half reproof.
He straightened and gave her a crooked smile, an oddly appealing slash of white against the darkness of his face, and said without a trace of apology, “My ship just docked and I was anxious to see you.”
“Why on earth didn’t you simply say you were Lady Beatrice’s nephew, Max?” Abby said.
He turned and gave her a hard look, all charm wiped from his face. “Lord Davenham to you. And now leave us. I wish to speak with my aunt—alone.”
“But, Max, darling, you haven’t been introduced to these lovely girls yet. This is—”
“Later, Aunt Bea,” he said curtly.
“Left your manners behind with your razor, Max, dear?” Lady Beatrice said.
“He certainly has; he burst in like a . . . a Viking, and gave us all a fright.” Abby turned to Lord Davenham. “How was poor Featherby to know who you were when you didn’t even give your name? And did you really need to push him down?”
“He tripped,” the Viking said, not even bothering to feign regret.
“A gentleman would have offered him a card and waited,” Abby retorted.
One dark, winged brow rose in a sardonic arch. “Had a lot of experience with gentlemen, have you?”
Abby bared her teeth at him in a smile. “Not as much as I’d like.” As he absorbed the implications of that, she added sweetly, “And none at all in London so far.”
“Vixen,” Max said under his breath.
Aunt Beatrice watched the exchange with interest. “Now, now, children, behave. Max, Abby is quite right; you should have given your card to dear Featherby.”
Max could have sworn the butler didn’t move a muscle: Still he managed to convey to Max a look of deep reproach. With a faint suggestion of smugness.
Impudence. Her servants were in need of a firm hand too.
His aunt snapped her fingers. “Max, pay attention. I want to introduce you to these charmin’ gels. This is Miss Abigail Chance—”
He knew who she was, with her wide, innocent eyes and bold, pretty mouth. The woman who’d taken advantage of his aunt.
She was younger than he’d expected from the description Perkins had given. Prettier too, but then harpies came in all shapes and sizes.
Slender as a willow, but stubborn, from the jutting of that chin. Well, he knew that from the way she’d confronted him on the stairs. Stood up to him in a manner that had amused, even charmed him at first. Until he’d realized who she was. In that drab gown he’d taken her for a maidservant or companion, not the manipulative little baggage he knew her to be.
“Miss Chance.” Max gave the woman a curt bow. He wanted to throttle her. She knew it too, for those speaking gray-green eyes sparked with bright challenge as they met his.
One glimpse at Aunt Bea had told him that for all the seeming luxury of her bedchamber, she’d suffered badly. And not for a short time. She’d aged shockingly. Her face was thin and drawn and bore an echo of suffering and malnourishment that he’d seen before, in the beggars of Asia. The beggars of Asia! His magnificent, arrogant, beloved aunt! She was a ghost of her former self.
And this pretty, composed young woman with her creamy, smooth skin and her clear gray-green eyes was the cause of it. Miss Chance? Mischance, more like it.
She made him a curtsy, a study in insolence and indifference.
“Her sister, Miss Jane Chance.”
A girl just out of the schoolroom, a pretty blonde who blushed and smiled as she curtsied and said her how-do-you-do. Max made her a curt bow. He had no interest in schoolgirls.
“Miss Damaris Chance, another sister.”
Max bowed. Miss Damaris curtsied and murmured a greeting but did not meet his gaze. An oval face, dark eyes and long sable hair. A secretive expression. Full sister to the blue-eyed blonde? He doubted it.
“And Miss Daisy Chance.” The little one painting his aunt’s toenails gold. She had an angular heart-shaped face and the kind of pale skin that had never seen country air.
She bobbed a crooked curtsy and said in a broad Cockney accent, “Pleased to meetcha, m’lord.”
Max didn’t bother to hide his skepticism. The idea that this girl was a sister to the others was laughable. They at least sounded like ladies, even if they were harpies in disguise. He quirked a brow. “Sister?”
“Wrong side of the blanket.” Daisy gave him a cheeky look that dared him to deny it.
Mischance put an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “But she’s still our sister.” The blonde and the brunette stepped up too, glaring at him in a united front.
“My nieces, Max,” said Aunt Beatrice with a smile that had a lot in common with the look the little cockney had given him. Lying through her teeth and daring him to deny it.
But why? “Damn it, Aunt Bea—”
“Later, Max,” she said airily. “Thank you, girls. My nephew and I have much to catch up on. Featherby, perhaps a cup of tea in half an hour.”
Max waited with folded arms as the girls bustled about gathering things—magazines and bits of lace and fur and fabric lay scattered all over the counterpane—and examining him surreptitiously from beneath lowered eyelashes.
No sidelong glances from Mischance. She met his gaze full-on, with brazen confidence. Butter wouldn’t melt in that soft little mouth.
She’d be out on her ear by the end of the day, he vowed.
She passed the tray that had been resting on his aunt’s knees to the butler. The remains of her breakfast: sweet pastries and hot chocolate. His aunt’s usual breakfast. Something that hadn’t changed. Some small comfort in that.
Guilt lashed at him. Aunt Bea looked so worn and old. Why hadn’t he listened to those twinges of concern earlier?
The butler passed the tray to the footman, who was like no footman Max had ever seen. He looked more like an aging prizefighter—not a successful one either, by the damage done to his face. The kind of hoodlum you wouldn’t want to meet down a dark alley. Now working as a lady’s footman—his aunt’s footman—thanks to Mischance.
A motley crew indeed. What hold did they have over his aunt?
He glanced again at Mischance. No sign now of the little virago who’d challenged him on the stairs. With his aunt she was all soft, pretty words from a soft, pretty mouth. Gentle, ladylike manners hiding a heart as hard as nails.
If he didn’t already know she was the kind of woman who’d take advantage of an old lady when she was ill and helpless . . .
Why the hell had his aunt claimed them as her nieces? Was it some kind of blackmail? Or threat?
The women were still fussing over the bits of fabric, sorting them in a manner calculated to annoy him.
“That will do,” Max snapped. “Collect it later.” He moved to sit on his aunt’s bed.
As he did so, five women and a butler shrieked.
“What the—”
Lady Beatrice snatched up a tiny white kitten from the spot where Max had been about to sit and cradled it to her bosom. “Max, you could have killed her.”
“Well, how was I to know you’d taken to keeping cats? I thou
ght it was a bit of fur.”
“It is—attached to a kitten. This is Snowflake, and over there is his brother, Marmaduke.” A small tortoiseshell kitten emerged from under a magazine, regarded Max and yawned extravagantly. “Say how do you do, Max.”
Max stared at her. He was not about to talk to a kitten in front of a gaggle of giggling girls. Not that they were giggling yet, but he could tell from their expressions that they weren’t far off. He reached out to pat the white ball of fluff, and a small black missile flew out and attached itself to the fabric of his sleeve. It clung determinedly, growling.
“What the—” Max picked his assailant off his sleeve. Black as soot, black as sin, the tiny piece of fluff sat on his palm and stared back at him, undaunted, then clamped needle-sharp teeth down on his thumb.
“Ouch!”
“This is Max,” his aunt said. And then, bewilderingly, “Stop it, Max! That’s a very bad habit.”
Max frowned at her. “I beg your pardon?”
Mischance, repressing—not very successfully—a smile, came forward and removed the kitten from his grasp. “Yes, Max,” she said sternly addressing the kitten, face-to-face. “A very bad habit.” The kitten gave her nose a few exploratory pats.
“You named that kitten Max?” Max said.
“Yes.” His aunt beamed up at him.
“Why?” He looked at the small, scruffy kitten, now resting against the soft bosom of a deceitful woman. The creature was too young to know the dangers of that.
“Because he is bold and dashing and handsome, of course,” said his aunt.
“Because he is always off adventuring and never where he ought to be,” said Miss Abigail Chance at the same time. With a pointed look, damn her cheek. What did she know of his business?
She held the small black kitten against her bosom, caressing it behind the ears. Max the kitten purred blissfully, like a rusty little coffee grinder.
Max the man glowered.