“Thank you.” He rarely said the two simple words. Not nearly as often as the overworked woman and her husband deserved. The shocked look on her lined face pleased him, especially when her cheeks wobbled before widening in a grin.
How many years had it been since he’d made a woman smile? Or even spoken to one other than Mrs. Teague? Months. Years. Too bloody long. He tried not to think of what else he missed about the company of a woman. Distractions and entanglements would only complicate the unencumbered life he craved.
A breeze lashed rain droplets against his face as he stepped into the grass surrounding the estate. Moisture fell from the dusky orange sky in a light mist. Tucking his coat collar up, he ducked his head and started toward the edge of Finsbury land, where Teague maintained a gamekeeper’s cottage for storage.
The thick knee-high field grass caught at Killian’s trouser legs. He’d need to find a scythe and mow it all down. The exertion would do him good. It was one of the aspects of army life he missed. The work, the busyness, the bone-deep weariness at day’s end. Then falling into a camp bed at night, too exhausted for memories and regret.
Movement ahead snagged his gaze.
Teague stood near his dilapidated cottage, waving his arms frantically in the air. His rifle bobbed on a strap across his shoulder. Killian couldn’t detect any injury, but even from a furlong away, one fact was clear.
Niall Teague had found trouble.
Chapter Four
The blasted old man had tied her to a post.
After she’d followed him back to the cottage and grappled with him to retrieve her bag, he’d slipped a thin, dusty circle of twine around her wrist. Quicker than she would have expected from his aged frame, he wrapped the length around her other wrist and waist, lashing her to a post inside the cottage door. The more she struggled to reach the knot and untie herself, the more the rope dug into her flesh.
“Mr. Teague!” she shouted for a third time.
He’d told her his name, bid her to remain calm, and then abandoned her to struggle. Perhaps he was waiting for her to exhaust herself.
She had to think.
Bending her left leg back, she stretched her fingers but failed to get to the cuff of her boot, where she’d concealed a small knife. Another, at her waist, was closer but still unreachable, no matter how she contorted her trapped hand. The old man discarded her satchel after removing the duke’s photograph. It slumped against the cottage wall a few feet away.
Sliding her boot forward as far as she could manage, Tavia stretched until she just touched the strap’s edge. Her skirt tightened across her thighs and her white petticoat blackened as it dragged across the dirt coating the cottage’s floor, but she strained until her muscles burned. Finally, she caught the strap around the toe of her boot. As she began to edge the bag forward, the cottage door creaked open.
“Told you so, me lord,” Teague announced from the threshold. “She’s a determined wee lass.”
“Leave her to me,” a rough voice commanded. Deep and smoky, the sound set off goose bumps across Tavia’s skin.
Straightening her back, she stood up tall, tension seizing her body tight. She had no chance to conceal herself now, to don a disguise or even consider what approach to use during this first encounter with the queen’s lost duke.
It was him. She had no doubt. Every investigative instinct she possessed told her the man approaching from behind was the mysterious Duke of Strathmoor.
“Who are you?” He was at her back, looming, waiting, his breath a heated wisp tickling her nape. During the scuffle with Mr. Teague, she’d lost Maggie’s hat and half the pins that held her chignon in place. Her hair was tumbling like a landslide, one tress loosening after another.
“The old man could have told you as much, sir.” Her northern accent was slipping, but the falsehood she’d already established seemed worth a try. “Looking for work, I am. You the master here?”
“You’re a housemaid?” he asked, ignoring her question.
“Aye, sir. Lost me last position and am desperate for another.” She held her breath, fighting the urge to turn and face him. At some point, she needed to verify he was indeed the man with the haunting eyes and sensual mouth in that old photograph. But if she stared into that searing gaze of his, she feared he’d see straight through her ruse.
“Can you sew?”
“The straightest stitch you’ve ever seen.” Tavia let out a breath and drew in another as a bit of her fear began to ebb. Giddiness rushed in to take its place. The thrill of the catch. She’d expected the search to be harder. For Strathmoor to be better at evasion. After a long day’s search, had she truly found the man Queen Victoria sought?
As he shifted behind her, another strand of hair slipped its pin and plopped onto her shoulder.
He cleared his throat and queried, “Can you iron and dust and mop?”
“Of course, sir.” Tavia frowned. What housekeeper couldn’t?
The photograph shot out before her eyes, held midair by a set of long, thick fingers attached to a disturbingly large hand. More disturbing, his arm pressed against her side as he stepped closer, his boots unsettling the hem of her skirt. “The housemaid gambit won’t do. Try another.”
Tavia racked her brain to recall details from the dossier. Women he might have known or been related to. She couldn’t recall his female cousin’s name, and her mind was suddenly blank on the list of women he was rumored to have seduced. A few noblewomen. A handful of widows. Lady Bexnall? Bexley?
“It’s Elizabeth,” she blurted. There’d been an Elizabeth on the list. “You disappeared from London, and I’ve missed you terribly.” She tried for a sharp upper-crust accent and a simpering tone. Which was a challenge, since she’d never had cause to simper in her life.
Her heart began racing again, and Tavia swallowed against an enormous lump in her throat. What kind of investigator couldn’t recall details she’d studied for hours? Or pull off a simple ruse?
The duke made a noise. A low breathy rumble. Tavia didn’t know if he was disgusted or amused.
“Lizzy?” One step and he drew nearer, the lapels of his coat brushing her arm. He was huge, a broad, hulking, man-shaped blur in the periphery of her vision. “Is it really you?”
She refused to face him. Not yet. Not until he believed her. Not until he was willing to let her in.
“Your hair is different.” He caught a loose strand between his fingers. “How could I have forgotten this color?”
Of course it would be her oddly colored hair that ruined her disguise. For the thousandth time in her life, she wished she'd been a forgettable blonde or an common brunette.
Tavia felt the vibration of his touch from her scalp to her toes. No man had put his hands on her in years. Certainly not a stranger. A potential murderer. She longed for Margaret’s discarded hat.
Strathmoor took one more step and positioned himself in front of her. Far too close for her to breathe easily. Too close for her to smell anything but his scent—an odd mix of apples, rain-soaked wool, and male. She stared at the buttons of his shirt until the circles blurred into the swath of white linen. One inch higher and she could see the dusting of hair on his chest, just below the hollow of his neck, where he’d left his top buttons undone. His beard came into view, trimmed to curve around a hard, square jaw. Wavy strands of dark blond hair hung over the shoulders of his overcoat. Burnished, like the antique coins her father used to collect, with a patina of copper and gold.
When she offered him no answer, he lifted his hand, easing his finger under the edge of her jaw. His skin was cool against hers. He nudged upward until she lifted her head to meet his gaze. “I wonder,” he murmured, “whether anything else has changed.”
“Untie me, and I’ll show you.” She looked straight into his eyes. And forgot how to breathe.
They were the most extraordinary shade she’d ever seen, cool gray wrapped round with sapphire and burning with an intensity that set her pulse racing. They were
searching eyes. Seeking. Studying every feature of her face. Reading the secrets behind her eyes. If he was at all a clever man, he’d know she wasn’t a brazen noblewoman who’d come seeking him in a sleepy corner of Yorkshire. Tavia had only seen the woman’s name in the dossier and had no notion if she looked remotely like her.
He leaned closer and lowered into a crouch, his gaze locked on hers as he moved down her body. Slipping two fingers inside the shaft of his boot, he retrieved a short thin blade. In two swift moves, he lifted the knife, cut the rope, and set her free.
Tavia tugged at the twine around her arm, letting it fall to the ground as she rubbed her wrist.
“You’re bleeding.” He rose and gripped her palm, twisting it from side to side to examine the abrasions. Either she was burning up or he was made of ice, for his skin was so cool, it made her shiver. He touched her gently but insistently, though his manner was irrelevant. The man shouldn’t have touched her at all.
“It’s just a scratch.” Snatching her arm from his grasp, Tavia started toward her satchel, attempting to sidestep past him.
Strathmoor pressed a hand to the post she’d been tied to, blocking her way. “Come, Lizzy, weren’t you going to show me that nothing’s changed between us?”
He looked at her as no man ever had. As if he was parched, and only she could quench his thirst. Did he really think she was his discarded lover? He couldn’t. With her disheveled hair, mud-splashed boots, and wrinkled traveling gown, only a fool would mistake her for a lovesick aristocrat.
“How shall I prove it?” Tavia loathed the little tremor in her voice. Not to mention the quiver rippling down her body.
His mouth stretched in a devastating grin. “A kiss would do quite nicely.”
* * *
Killian bent his head, his body firing like a howitzer gun. Alive as he hadn’t been in months. Colors shone brighter—the chocolate brown of a beauty mark at the edge of her mouth, the moss green of her eyes, the unique red blaze of her hair. The woman, who was most assuredly not the petite, blonde Elizabeth, Lady Delamere, was long and lithe and smelled like Christmas pudding. Sweetness and spice, with a touch of greenery, as if she’d rolled through the grass on her way toward the estate.
Kissing her would be a mistake. Dastardly. Dishonorable. The gravest error he’d made in years. But he was so bloody hungry for a woman’s touch. So starved for any softness and color in the world.
And, in truth, impulsive errors had often been his calling card.
Kiss. Taste. Mine. A drumbeat of need pulsed in his brain. And lower, in parts of his body he’d thought long dead.
Her lips parted when he lowered his head, close enough to feel her breath fanning against his face. There was no fear in her eyes. He read curiosity, questions, uncertainty. And something more. She wasn’t just looking into his eyes. Her gaze kept straying to his neck, his jaw, his chest. She searched his body as if she expected to find some answer tattooed on his skin. Then she dropped her gaze to his lips, studying them with an intensity that made his skin burn.
“What are you looking for?” He whispered the words, hoping she’d whisper her secrets back to him. Who was she and what on earth had led her to this musty old gamekeeper’s cottage?
Her lips parted. “You.”
He took her mouth. A brush of his lips at first. Tentative. Uncertain. She jolted as if shocked, but then emitted a breathy sigh that set his blood on fire. He tasted her gently. God, she was sweet. And soft. And warm. He tangled a hand in the hair at her nape. Gorgeous red tresses feathered across his skin. Were all women this soft? He’d forgotten anything could be.
Lowering a hand to stroke down the narrow slope of her waist, he froze. All the heat and need extinguished as his fingers brushed past her belt and over the outline of a knife strapped to her hip. Hidden in the folds of her skirt.
“Who sent you?” When he lifted his head, thick-lashed green eyes stared back at him.
“Are you the Duke of Strathmoor?” Her softly spoken question seared through him more effectively than any blade.
“He’s dead.” Killian backed away from her. “You’ve wasted a journey.”
After brushing past him, she retrieved the battered leather satchel slouching in the corner of the cottage. She hugged the bag to her chest as if it contained the crown jewels and she’d been tasked with protecting them. Lowering her gaze to his neck, she gestured toward him. “That scar on your neck. Major Killian Graves sustained an injury there during the Battle of Maiwand.”
“I’ve plenty of other scars.” Killian began unfastening a button below his neck. “Would you like to see those too?”
“No.” She stared at the wall past his head. As if she was prim and proper. Shy. As if she wasn’t the same woman he could still taste on his lips. “You are the Duke of Strathmoor, aren’t you?”
“I’m Graves. My brother is the man you seek.” He turned away from her, and doing so proved harder than it should have been. She was an unexpected bright spark in the long doldrums of empty days. “I told you. He’s dead.” He’d give anything to have Dorian back, but no one knew the futility of wishing better than Killian.
Keeping his back to the woman seemed best. She was far too much temptation for a starving man who’d never been good at doing the right thing. “Have a safe journey back to wherever you came from.” Ducking out the low door, he started toward the house. The first few steps were hard. As if he was wading through the sands around Kandahar again. The next steps were easier, and he lengthened his stride, focusing on the burn of his muscles rather than her scent still clinging to his skin. The sweet and spice smell of home and holidays and all that he’d never have again.
All that he did not deserve. Not when good, decent men like his brother and his brothers-in-arms were lying cold and moldering in the ground.
“Major Graves.” She caught up to him quickly, rushing past and planting herself in his path. “I offer my sincerest condolences about your brother, but surely you know the rules of primogeniture and inheritance.”
Killian sidestepped past her and continued on his way. “I don’t give a damn about rules.”
“But they give a damn about you.” She bounced along at his side, taking two steps for each of his long strides. “As do your tenants at Gravesend.”
That stopped him. He hadn’t heard another person speak the name of his family’s estate in years. Killian did his best not to think of its twisting halls and comforting nooks. Whichever ancestor had christened the old pile must have understood how that patch of Sussex countryside was just the sort of place a man would wish to end his days. Fresh, windswept, and close enough to the English Channel for gulls to circle overhead, beckoning to the sea.
But he couldn’t go back. He hadn’t even returned for Dorian’s funeral.
She waited at his side. When he turned to face her, a twinge pinched in his chest and his pulse picked up speed.
Lord, she was a lovely woman. Even under storm clouds, the waning glow of dusk lit up her eyes. He discovered they weren’t a simple green. There was a bit of amber and honey wound through the mossy hue. And her skin was sprinkled with freckles, some as light as the flecks in her eyes, others darker, bold and insistent, like the woman herself.
“What’s your name?” He suspected he’d think of her once she’d gone, and he wanted a name to attach to the memory.
Nibbling on her lower lip, she lashed her arms across her chest and cast her gaze at the ground. He didn’t understand her reluctance, but he understood resistance. The lady wouldn’t tell him anything. She’d only come to ask questions. He didn’t know who’d sent her, and it didn’t matter. This was where they would part ways.
“You don’t have to tell me. It’s of no consequence. We won’t ever meet again.” He started toward Finsbury Hall. “Be on your way, Miss Whoever You Are.” He stomped faster, eager to return to his dingy four walls. He could manage familiar nightmares better than an appealing, tenacious stranger.
“Octavia
,” she shouted at his back. “My friends call me Tavia.”
He jerked to a stop and cast a glance over his shoulder. She stood, hands perched on her slim hips.
“I’m not going anywhere, Major. Not without you.” After one long stride forward, she added, “I need you to return to London with me.”
Killian pressed two fingers to the spot between his brows where a hammer had begun slamming against his skull. He was a bloody fool. This wasn’t some benign visitation. She hadn’t wandered into Stokingham by accident. She sure hadn’t come to give him the sweetest kiss he’d ever tasted in his life. She’d come for the Duke of Strathmoor. “Which of them sent you? The Forsythes? The Bannisters? The Home Office?”
Her brow puckered, and she sucked in a long breath before straightening her shoulders. “Queen Victoria sent me.”
Bloody rotting hell. No. He walked away from her, following the path of trodden meadow grass he’d taken out to the cottage. He was not interested in ever facing his queen again. The monarch was mistaken. She understood only duty and allowed for no excuses. Worse, she wished to make him out to be a hero, a survivor of a battle that would remain a blot on the British Empire for eternity.
In truth, he was simply a failure, and he damned well would not take on a dukedom only to fail again. Let them give the title to his sniveling cousin, Bertram, or his brother’s steward. Heaven knew the man ran the estate better than anyone else ever could.
The woman’s footsteps weren’t echoing in his wake. Octavia. If he recalled his Roman history correctly, there’d been an empress by that name. The wife of Nero. No doubt, she’d been as fierce and tenacious as the Englishwoman at his back.
Perhaps she’d finally given up. The best Octavia could do would be to return to the queen and report that the man she sought could not be found. Disappeared. Irretrievable. Because he was. The failed Major Graves was all he’d ever be. Let the lawyers and Parliament settle the dukedom on another heir.
Her Majesty’s Scoundrels Page 4