Since when had she become his Caro?
“Stephen? Is something wrong?”
“No,” he began, then changed his mind and lifted her now ungloved hand to his lips. “Actually, yes. I didn’t thank you. For waiting, I mean.”
Her eyes widened. “Where else would I be? For better or worse, husband. Sickness and health. Townhouse and prison.”
“Not sure if I recall hearing that last combination during the ceremony, but you certainly take your vows very seriously,” he said, rubbing a thumb over her knuckles.
“Yes. It’s called love.”
Tightness clenched his chest and that damned boulder re-lodged itself in his throat. Love? How could someone so practical say something so ridiculous? Love was foolish and fragile and temporary. Caroline was solid. Real. Clearly he hadn’t done enough to demonstrate how important a fixture in his life she had become, but he certainly wouldn’t cheapen what he felt by calling it something as flimsy and erratic as love.
“Caroline,” he began, just as the front door swung open and his butler appeared, silver candelabra in hand to light the way.
“Good evening, my lord, my lady,” intoned Innes. “I hope you had a pleasant…hell and damnation!”
Stephen raised an eyebrow at the unseemly outburst.“Never believed hell and damnation to be pleasant, Innes, but each to their own.”
“My lord! Your clothing. Your hair. What has happened?”
“It’s been an extremely long and eventful evening, Innes,” said Caroline, like him, choosing to ignore the butler’s shocking lapse in decorum. “But Lord Westleigh requires a hot bath immediately. And food. I don’t care who you have to rouse to make that happen, just make it so as soon as possible.”
His cheeks beet red, Innes bowed low. “At once, Lady Westleigh. Do you require other supplies? Linen bandages? Poultices? Thread for stitches?”
“Calm down, old man, it’s not my blood,” said Stephen.
“Not your…oh. Oh. Oh my.”
On another occasion it might have been amusing watching his butler pantomime a fish out of water, but not right now. “Innes. The bath. Food.”
Innes blinked, and suddenly the unflappable, experienced professional returned. Bowing again, he turned and hurried towards the kitchens.
“Oh dear,” said Caroline. “I think you frightened ten years from his life.”
“He needs to be kept on his toes.”
“Perhaps, but if we keep ordering baths like this it will soon be all over London that we’re quite mad.”
“Or just very fastidious.”
She snorted and took his arm. “Come along then, let’s get you out of these clothes so they can be burned…oh for heaven’s sake remove that glint from your eye.”
“What glint?”
“That glint. After I’ve scrubbed away every drop of blood and whatever else is coating your hands, clothes and hair, I will be doing nothing but alternately sleeping and eating. My shoulder hurts, my feet hurt and quite frankly you could be the world’s most irresistible man and I’d still turn you down right now.”
“Are you trying to say I’m not the world’s most irresistible man?”
“Not even in the top ten,” she replied, dragging him the entire way to his bedchamber.
Stephen sighed and sat gingerly on a wooden stool. “Now you’ve crushed my ego to dust, I presume there is nothing to do but wait for the hot water.”
“You could fill in the time by telling me exactly what Mr. White said. Apart from not being allowed to leave London. Why is that, by the way, if he is satisfied you didn’t kill Major Rochland?”
“Because it is far easier for White’s men to keep an eye on me in the city, than in the country. From tomorrow…I mean today, a twenty-four hour watch will be posted outside.”
“For what purpose?”
“I believe they want to make note of who comes and goes. And who loiters with intent perhaps. Actually, there is nothing I want to do more than line up every single person who works for me and begin a Spanish Inquisition, but White said not to.”
“Why?”
“He needs a few days to consider the next stage of the plan. And like I said, gather information on my staff. If any possess large debts or have unexpectedly come into a sum of money, that sort of thing. Ack. I still can’t believe one of them would steal my dagger and attempt to frame me for murder. Most of my people were here with my father, men and women I would have previously considered one hundred percent loyal.”
“Arrgh,” Caroline spat, the sound an alarming combination of hiss and growl. But before he could query the status of her health, a sharp knock sounded and footmen converged into the room with a large copper tub and buckets of steaming water.
As soon as they were gone, Stephen sank into the tub’s welcoming embrace and sighed in pleasure. Until his wife got to work with the washcloth, and sandalwood soap.
“You know, my dear, I quite enjoy having skin. Keeps all those pesky bones and muscles and gallons of fluid in one neat package.”
She scrubbed harder. “Bite your lip, milksop.”
“Is something wrong?” he asked mildly, trying not to wince.
“No. Yes. I don’t understand, Stephen, how anyone so intelligent, so logical, could be so damned stupid.”
“Excuse me?”
“Why can’t you grasp the obvious explanation for the dagger? Taff!”
“Taff? For God’s sake, Caroline—”
“No. You listen to me,” she interrupted fiercely. “Your servants are loyal and love you, a blind man could see that. But Taff is a stranger you met in a clearing. You don’t know him or his family or his life up until this point. He says he was hurt during a skirmish, but where? When? How long was he in the army? What was his wife’s name? Where did they live?”
“That is none of our business.”
“Yes, it is! Those details are hardly classified information and the man is living under your roof. With, I might add, full access to your library!”
Stephen stilled and stared at his bright pink hands in the water. His first instinct was to roar a vehement denial. Taff had saved his life. Taff was a friend. And yet…and yet it was true. He really knew very little about his houseguest, or his comings and goings. And Taff did have full access to his entire house.
“But why?” he snarled, smashing his fist into the side of the tub. “Why would Taff perform a rescue only to do something as vile as frame me for murder?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly. ‘Perhaps you should ask him. Right now.”
“Fine.”
Hauling himself out of the bath, he quickly dried himself and yanked on a fresh pair of trousers and a loose shirt. Then he stalked from the room, Caroline trailing behind, and made his way to Taff’s guest chamber.
He knocked firmly on the door. “Taff? It’s Westleigh. I need to speak with you about an urgent matter. Can I come in?”
Silence reigned. No answering words, no heavy, limping tread of footsteps.
“Knock again,” said Caroline.
Stephen glared at her over his shoulder. “He might be deeply asleep, is all.”
“Then wake him up! For heaven’s sake, this is far more important than sleep.”
“All right, all right.”
Carefully opening the door, he peered into the room. Neatly pressed clothing hung in an armoire, polished boots stood in a row beside the chaise and a half-full bottle of brandy sat alone on a plain writing desk. But the bed, with its numerous pillows and thick eiderdown quilt, was empty.
Anger swirled and leapt in his belly like a badly cooked meal.
“He’s not there, is he?” said Caroline.
“No,” he bit out, turning and pushing past her to storm down the corridor.
“Stephen! Where are you going?”
But he ignored
her, his legs moving faster and faster until he rounded a corner and discovered an upstairs maid attending to a pile of linen.
“You there!”
The girl jumped a foot in the air at his tone, and casual dress. “Y-yes, m’lord?”
“Have you seen Mr. Taff? Did he take an early breakfast? Is he reading in one of the small libraries?”
“Why no, sir,” the maid replied, blinking in confusion. “We thought perhaps he’d met a nice lady somewhere, because he never came home last night.”
A vicious curse escaped, followed by a sense of profound dread. Something terrible was about to happen, and as with the runaway cart, he couldn’t get out of the way.
Chapter Twenty One
Caroline’s nerves were stretched to breaking point.
An entire week since Rochland’s murder. Six days since they had written Mr. White a comprehensive note informing him of Taff’s disappearance and all prior events including the kidnapping attempt at the Bruce estate and the cart incident.
The intelligence coordinator sent a brief reply, virtually ordering her and Stephen to remain inside Forsyth House. So as Taff remained unaccounted for, she spent her days wondering who might be discreetly loitering outside and her nights counting the ancient ridges and cracks in the cream plastered ceiling.
Wincing, she rubbed gritty eyes. But even through the thick damask curtains rays of sunshine were already brightening the earl’s bedchamber.
“Not much point asking how you slept, wife. You’ve been staring at the same swatch of four poster fabric for hours.”
Caroline rolled onto her side and smiled half-heartedly at her husband. The one positive aspect of the current debacle was their increasingly intimate togetherness—including sharing a bed each night. He’d not said a word the day Taff went missing and she crawled in beside him and attached herself to his chest like a piece of dampened muslin. Nor any of the subsequent occasions.
Sometimes she reached for him in the candle-softened darkness, needing the reassurance of his touch, to feel him alive and inside her. Sometimes she woke to find herself tightly cradled in his arms, as if he needed her in a similar fashion. Either way, it was thoroughly addictive.
“Fabric?” she sighed. “Hardly. No, I’ve been studying a particularly fascinating crack in the ceiling. If you half-close your eyes and tilt your head a little it actually resembles…”
“A crack in the ceiling?”
“Exactly.”
“Perhaps White will be in touch today,” said Stephen running a hand through his sleep-rumpled hair, although his tone was less than convincing.
“You say that every morning. I don’t…I don’t honestly know how much longer I can remain housebound. People are going to become very suspicious soon if this, er, spring head cold we both came down with continues to drag on.”
“I don’t know, the looking glass reveals two rather eerie visages at the moment. If Mrs. Radcliffe stopped by for tea, she would be most inspired.”
“Be serious, Stephen. We need to go out in public, talk to people. See what they are saying. I know Mr. White promised there would be no adverse coverage of Major Rochland’s murder in the newspapers, but that won’t matter a jot if the gossips are in full voice.”
“We were very fortunate there were so few witnesses. Especially female witnesses.”
Caroline smacked him hard on the arm. “Excuse me, I’m a female. I was a witness.”
“Oh, come on, you’re hardly the average woman. Imagine if some silly debutante and her mother had seen what happened. One of the Almack’s patronesses. Or any one of Prinny’s set. The news might have been halfway around the world by the following day.”
“What do you mean, ‘might’?”
“True,” he snorted, tugging on her elbow until she collapsed onto his warm, bare chest. Then he curled a heavy, muscled arm around her shoulders, and for a long moment she allowed herself the luxury of snuggling against him skin to skin, to feel and hear the comforting rhythm of his heartbeat under her ear. Eventually she eased free of his hold, sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“Come on, husband. Get up.”
“Why? I was just pondering how pleasant it might be to stay in bed with my delightfully naked wife.”
Caroline bit back a smile at his irritable tone. “Perhaps later. But right now, we are going to get dressed, have breakfast and go for a nice, healthy ride in Hyde Park.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a nice, healthy ride here?” he murmured, sliding his hands around and over her breasts, stroking and plucking her nipples while kissing a wicked trail along her spine.
She closed her eyes as drugging pleasure teased her senses, luring her towards surrender. How on earth did he do that, make her respond so easily? For heaven’s sake, her body was still sticky and tender from when he’d had her hard and deep several hours before.
As if he could feel her weakening resolve, his hands left her breasts to slide down her body, over her hips and along the outside of her thighs. She shivered. Any closer to her already pulsing center and all would be lost.
“Yes…No,” she said breathlessly, pushing herself to a standing position far away from his luscious importuning. “Clothes. Food. Rotten Row. Now.”
Stephen scowled and grumbled the entire time, but an hour later, their stomachs sated with toasted bread, honey and strong cups of tea, they trotted side by side on horseback along Rotten Row. The popular riding track wasn’t overly crowded, mid-morning was too early for those who came here to see and be seen, but there were still plenty of people to greet, or stop and share a brief discussion of London on-dits with.
She couldn’t help comparing each man to Stephen. Despite slightly pale skin and circles beneath his eyes, he was still the best-looking in England. No one filled out fawn trousers and a slate gray jacket the way he did. Hopefully her lavender and cream-striped riding habit offered her figure a similar kindness, although a jaunty matching hat at least averted curious gazes away from her sallow complexion.
“See,” said Caroline as they left another young couple with a cheerful ‘good day’ ringing in their ears, “isn’t this nice?”
Stephen harrumphed and shifted on his polished leather saddle. “I suppose it’s pleasant enough to see people and get some air. Still know what I’d rather be doing though.”
“Drinking?”
“No.”
“Visiting Tattersall’s?”
“No.”
She put a finger to her lips as if deep in thought. “Aha! I’ve got it. You want to create a chart about something. Well, it has been a wee while.”
“How true,” he mused. “I have just the topic. All the places you like to be stroked and sucked and a corresponding graph on the likelihood of you screaming the house down for each.”
“Stephen,” she hissed, heat scorching across her cheekbones.
“What?”
“Don’t you ‘what’ me in that choirboy voice. Somebody might hear.”
“Damned horses and their delicate sensibilities. Not to mention propensity for gossip. But you did insist on coming here, Caroline. I’d rather be coming in my bedchamber.”
“Stephen! Oh that’s it, we’re leaving.”
“So soon?” he asked, his brown eyes glinting like liquid chocolate.
“Not for the reason you think, you terrible man,” she replied, leaning sideways to rap him with her riding crop, “I…”
“Well, well. If it isn’t London’s favorite recently-weds, the Westleighs.”
Caroline jerked her head around at the horribly familiar drawl and she repressed a shudder. She saw Sir John Smythe, in a startling combination of puce jacket and pale yellow trousers, on a dappled gray stallion. Lord Avery Wynn-Thorne’s black trousers and jacket were infinitely more muted as he sat astride a beautiful dark brown mount, but
their expressions were identical.
Freezing cold hatred.
“Sir John,” said Stephen, inclining his head the merest inch. “Wynn-Thorne.”
‘We’ve just returned from Northamptonshire,” said Sir John.
“Private burial for our dear Rock, but a beautiful memorial service,” added Wynn-Thorne. “Terribly difficult for his mother and siblings, naturally. Don’t remember seeing the two of you amongst the mourners, though.”
Caroline shifted her horse closer to Stephen’s, hoping the two Society members couldn’t hear the frantic pounding of her heart. “Regrettably we’ve both been unwell, my lord. But Westleigh would be the first to sympathize over losing a sibling in terribly tragic circumstances.”
“Terribly tragic circumstances, Lady Westleigh?” snarled Sir John, tiny drops of spittle flying from his mouth. “Is that what you saintly folk call murder nowadays?”
“Keep your tone civil in front of a lady,” said Stephen coldly.
“A lady? Ha! No matter how fancy the jewels and clothes, she’s still as common as they come. Especially considering her dubious parentage. But a perfect match for a cowardly scoundrel, yes?”
Acute tension practically emanated from Stephen. She felt it, his glossy black stallion clearly felt it, the way it was tossing its head. Unfortunately it appeared the small crowd beginning to gather could feel it too. No one scented impending high drama from a mile away like a Londoner.
“Excuse me—” Caroline said stiffly, furious at the slur.
“Sir John,” interrupted Stephen. “If you wish to discuss a certain topic, then let’s by all means go somewhere and discuss it. In private. Not here.”
“What is wrong with here?” shouted Sir John. “Perfectly decent setting to talk about how you stabbed Major Lionel Rochland to death!”
Scandalized gasps rippled through the ever-growing crowd.
“That is complete nonsense,” said Stephen angrily. “If I were a murderer I’d be in the Tower awaiting trial, not riding along Rotten Row.”
“The Tower for some minor peer, perhaps,” scoffed Wynn-Thorne. “But who would dare arrest the great and powerful Earl of Westleigh? And to compound the crime, despite the blood on your hands you have the gall to accuse others behind their backs. Are you going to murder me next?”
To Love a Hellion (The London Lords Book 1) Page 25