“That shows you how little you know about my fortitude.” Melwyn raised her chin, accepted the kerchief to swath around her throat, pinched her cheeks to give them color, then returned downstairs.
In the front hall, her father stood with the Widow Whale and the lean, wind-blown, nefarious form of Lord Lambrick.
He tipped his hat when she approached. “My lady. I am dubiously honored to see you again.” His dark eyes drank her in and she couldn’t stop a tremor.
“I am somewhat displeased to see you, as well,” she replied, her mouth growing dry.
“Oh, they really like each other,” the widow cooed as she chewed on a slice of cheese. She nudged Melwyn’s father. “You can see it in the sparkle in their eyes. They’re trying to hide it, but they are extremely attracted to one another. And he has such a gorgeous patrician profile.”
“Mrs. Whale, you are much mistaken.” Melwyn frowned, fighting the lift of her heart at Lambrick’s hungry assessment of her. “Lord Lambrick and I are tremendously mismatched, and he knows well my feelings.”
“I must agree. I have come to the conclusion that a wife, especially one of such inexorable tendencies, would only deter me in my personal plans.” Lambrick’s voice came out in a monotone. “I will free you with all due respect from the contract.”
Melwyn felt the strangest sinking in her stomach. He was rejecting her!
“Oh my. I don’t know if I should be elated or disheartened. Your father, sir, put great stock in this arrangement.” Her father looked at her with sad eyes—though his eyes were most often melancholy. “Now I will have to search for another, more appropriate beau. And with my daughter’s, shall we admit, less than malleable deportment—and her insistence on not marrying at all—it may be an impossible feat.”
Melwyn smiled. When it came to her, her papa was far from delusional.
“I shall remain a spinster, as detestable as that word is, and continue with my own plans.” Melwyn glared at Lambrick, insulted that he dismissed her so easily, but a part of her was relieved. Yet she saw the uncertainty in his eyes, and her confusion added to the complexity of the situation.
“Heaven forefend. If you marry me, Pencavel, I’ll take this girl of yours under my thumb and find her a formidable husband to squash that independent will of hers.” The widow shook her cheesy finger at Melwyn.
“Leave her be, Madam whoever-you-are.” Lambrick glared at the widow. “She is a free spirit, whose wings should not be clipped. Her very truculent, and saucy, nature is what attracts me to her…unfortunately.”
Melwyn sucked in her breath. His defense of her weakened her knees. “I appreciate your accolades, I think.” Then she turned in reluctance to her father and the widow. “Papa cannot marry you! He is already married!” The words spewed out before she could stop them. She slapped her hand over her mouth and rushed into the parlor.
Lambrick followed her. He hovered close, too close, the fresh air and bergamot scent of him tickling her nose.
“You defend me, yet I’m not good enough to be your wife? How perturbing you are, sir.” She said this to keep him at bay; to fend off the effect he had on her. Her heart thumped. He filled out his wide-lapelled frock coat and button-legged pantaloons like a Greek god.
“You are a contrary creature. You warned me you’d never marry me, now you complain because I’m releasing you.” He leaned near her face. “However, on this other subject. Your father doesn’t realize that his wife ran off with your under-butler?”
“Second under-butler. Why does no one ever get this straight?” Melwyn’s anger stifled her sadness. She touched a finger to the expensive navy blue wool of his frock coat. “I think Papa retreats into his illusion to help him cope with her desertion.”
“A befuddled man; a travesty.” Lambrick glanced away; the lines at the corner of his eyes crinkled. “A man should never subordinate himself to a woman.” He grasped her hand and held it tightly, massaging her fingers. “It’s a terrible weakness.”
“I need to point out, sir, that you are standing far too close for a man who just rejected me as his future spouse.” She struggled to take an even breath. “Or if you think I will spend the night with you out of wedlock and sacrifice my virginity, you are a brazen fool.”
He moved even closer, his gold buttons pressing against her breasts through the flimsy silk of her bodice. “As tempting as that would be, if I wished my face scratched off, I –”
“What finally convinced you to refute the betrothal?” The pressure from his buttons was driving her crazy. She stroked the soft white cravat tied handsomely around his neck. “Not that I don’t totally agree with you, and would love to scratch off your face. I only ask out of curiosity.”
His hand caressed her upper arm, his fingertips sending delightful sensations throughout her body. His troubled gaze softened and he bent and kissed her heatedly. She gasped at the surging warmth in her chest and lower—much lower. She shivered and was about to hug her arms around his neck.
Then he pulled back. “I cannot tell you, but it happened four days ago. My life is too violent to involve a well-bred, or should have been well-bred, young woman. Especially one as intelligent as you.” He grimaced in pain. “I have a bullet in my shoulder.”
Chapter Nine
Merther Cove, four days earlier
Griffin stood above the shingle beach as the wind whipped about him. His lantern light flickered as the shadows enveloped the landscape. The salty air felt thick, the cold cutting like the knife that gunrunner had wielded through Griffin’s caped coat. The sun had set an hour ago and his impatience grew to see the signal that the ship had arrived.
“What could be keeping them?” he grumbled at last.
“Can’t predict the waves an’ ocean streams. They should be here soon, sir.” Jacca thrust his hands in his jacket pockets. Griffin’s trusted bailiff pulled out a clay pipe and struggled to light it in the wind. “Hopefully the revenue men won’t be sniffing up our arses.”
“That’s part of the game, now isn’t it, Jacca?” Griffin shifted in his jackboots. He held out his cape flap to shield his bailiff, who finally raised a spark with his steel and flint and lit his clay pipe. “The excitement of the sneak, the chase, the undermining of the local authorities.”
The surf swooshed against the edges of the cove. A Nightjar trebled as a tamarisk willow whipped its branches.
“Pardon me for mentioning it, sir, but don’t ‘ee feel a mite guilty not payin’ the import taxes?” Jacca puffed on his pipe, the tobacco smell pungent. “Bein’ a gentleman an’ all.”
“Haven’t we had this conversation numerous times before?” Griffin raised his spy glass, but could see little out on the dark sea. “George III overtaxed his colonies, and he lost America, didn’t he? Then he overtaxed his gentry, which includes me, to pay for the war to bring those rebels under control. Rather, he taxed us before he lost the colonies, to pay for his army and navy to secure the colonies, but you understand my meaning. No one likes too many taxes.”
“But what’s in it for a poor blighter like me?” Smoke swirled about the bailiff’s balding head, which was hidden under his round beaver hat whose edges rippled in the gusts.
“You know full well the Cornish profit from smuggling.” Griffin wrapped his cloak close. “And you call yourself ‘poor?’ Are you insinuating that I don’t pay you enough?”
“‘Tis only a figure o’ speech. Damme, ‘ee quality is too touchy.” Jacca hunched his round shoulders. “An’ me wife complains we don’t has enough blunt to buy her what she’d like to buy if she was richer. I get an earful o’ that every night.”
A cormorant screeched off to the right.
“Women, they are a trial to any right-thinking man.” Griffin frowned as the face of Lady Pencavel slipped into his mind: her soft pouty lips, golden hair, bright blue eyes, and even softer, svelte body. Why did she disrupt his life? He clenched his fingers around the spy glass. “Why should we tie ourselves up in knots and marry at a
ll?”
“To pass on our name, so to speak.” Jacca took another long puff from his pipe. “O’ course, ‘ee has more reason to want a son, to pass on Merther Manor, an’ the hoity toity name o’ Lambrick.”
“Ah, deuce it all, don’t distract me with common sense.” Griffin sighed and scuffed his boot along the ground. A pebble skittered down the rocky slope. “Lambrick was lan-bron-wyk, my father told me. An ‘enclosure of hill wood’, of all the bucolic things. The illustrious name is traced to a knight in the thirteenth century.”
“Me ancestor were a horse thief in the fourteenth century.” Jacca chuckled.
Griffin laughed for the first time in a long while. “Now ‘Merther’ means a place claiming relics...a saint’s relics it’s said. And I’m far from a saint.” He stared off over the dark sea again, his thoughts in turmoil. “If I can’t eradicate the devil from my soul, what right do I have to drag a frail woman into this morass I call my life?”
“‘Ee need a hale an’ hearty woman, sir. One who wouldn’t be afeared o’ nothin’. But still can be gentle now an’ then, unlike me wife.” Jacca snorted in irony. “Not too sure what ‘eradicate’ means, but ‘ee quality like to hide behind them big words.”
“And you minions duck behind your vulgar tongue, to keep the rest of us unsure of what you’re up to,” Griffin muttered.
A light blinked out on the water.
Griffin jerked up the spy glass, thankful to take his mind off of the desirable but atrocious—though admittedly quite hale—Miss Pencavel. “There is a ship, I’m certain of it. God be hoped it is the one we await.”
“Why do we care about these ruins from them other countries?” Jacca asked. “Don’t we has enough ruins here in England? Me cousin’s house is quite the mess, all tumbled down.”
“Ancient items bring good money on the black market. I pour that money back into the people here. I don’t need it myself, I only enjoy the derring-do.” Then why shouldn’t he take on a volatile woman for a wife? No, blast it; that would be too precarious. He must let the chit go. Set her free; rid himself of her influence that boiled his blood to a temperature he couldn’t handle.
“‘Ee could ride the highways an’ rob people like that there Robin Hood.” Jacca blew a stream of smoke out through his large nostrils.
“Ummm, a little too risky, and hard on the horses, and women and children would be put in danger.” Griffin knew he was getting a bit too long in the tooth for such a strenuous venture. Besides, smuggling was a step above a common highwayman.
The light on the water flickered again. Then it blinked three times, paused, and three more times. Griffin pulled up his lantern and repeated the signal.
“That must be her; that were the signal,” Jacca said in his infinite wisdom.
“What are we waiting for? Man the skiff,” Griffin ordered, his blood thrumming through his veins. This is what life should be about, exhilaration, danger, not bedding some spoiled girl who would nag his ears off and spend his money on fripperies.
Jacca called to the men standing by, and they all tramped down the slope into the cove. A glowworm glimmered greenly in the rushes. The stink of rarely washed bodies wrinkled Griffin’s nose. He’d have to donate soap to his tenants and insist on better hygiene.
The shadows lengthened, shortened, the swish of a skiff being pushed out followed. One man grumbled when he got a splinter in his finger. Griffin helped beside the men, his boot toes dampened by the surf.
Oars dipped in water. The ship downloaded crates into the skiff, which almost toppled the boat over. Finally the loot was steadied, the ship’s mates paid, and the skiff rowed back into the cove. Griffin raised his lantern to inspect the crates. They were marked with exotic markings confirming they’d come from a foreign port.
“Quickly, pry it open. I want to make certain it contains the correct items.”
Rustling came from the hill above them. The sound of footsteps.
A cracking sound. Gunfire!
“Bury the crates in our secret hiding place,” Griffin hissed.
Jacca doused his pipe and instructed the men. They lifted a patch of grass that hid a dug out space for just such incidents, and lowered in the crates, replacing the grass, smoothing it down so it resembled the rest of the landscape. Griffin arranged cowslips around the edges.
“Stay where you are!” a gruff voice shouted from above. “We’re the king’s men!”
“Ignore them, and run and hide,” Griffin whispered urgently. His pulse hammered, a smile curving his lips. He reveled in this death-defying occupation. Was this how his brother had felt while facing the French in battle? “I’ll hold them off.”
“‘Ee must save yourself, too, sir.” Jacca grasped his arm. “If you’re tried an’ hanged, I’ll lose me position. An’ then me old woman won’t have no coin at all. I’ll never hear the end o’ it.”
“I’ll be fine. Hurry, away with you at once.” Griffin pushed the bailiff, who almost lost his footing and toppled into the sea. “I won’t see you harmed. My father would roll over in his grave.”
“Now there were a level-headed bloke, your old man. I respected him, I did.” Jacca finally shrugged and vanished into the bushes.
“We know you’re down there. Halt in the name of the King!” the gruff voice shouted. “We’ve muskets and aren’t afraid to shoot them.”
Griffin stood alone in the bleak darkness, the wind whipping his cape about his legs. He waited until his men’s footsteps faded. But the tread from above grew louder. Sweat gathered around his collar. He decided to make a break for it himself, instead of standing here like an idiot.
He turned to run. Another volley of gunfire. A sharp pain cut into his shoulder. Deuce it all, he’d been hit by a bullet. He grabbed his arm, where warm blood pooled, and staggered through the earthy scent of gorse.
Footsteps scrambled down the path above, growing closer. The yells of men chased him as Griffin stumbled around trees and bushes, ducking stray branches, his shoulder on fire. His breath rasped in his throat as he silently cursed his heedlessness.
****
“So you were shot in a hunting accident?” Melwyn wondered if he sought her pity. Lambrick’s face looked drawn, and her sympathy did rise, fie! She fought the urge to trail a finger down his chiseled cheek, to hold him close to her breast. “What were you hunting so abysmally?”
“A very rare Italian grouse.” He smiled, and her vulnerable heart fluttered.
“What other leisures do you partake of at your estate?” She moved away from him and his appealing cheeks, his infinitely arousing scent. “Murdering innocent creatures couldn’t take up all your time.”
“That is private, and the reason I don’t wish a prying wife in my business.” He averted his gaze.
Now he intrigued her. People called him a rogue, but in what way did he deserve that moniker? She’d heard a few whispers as to the truth in London. “You are up to something...illegal, not quite above-board, perhaps?”
Lambrick’s dark eyes flashed, his mouth tightening. “Have a care, my dear. Ignorance is bliss. What have you heard, exactly?”
“Nothing specific.” She had touched a nerve, and his fierce look sent shivers up and down her spine. She ached to know more about him, before she let him disappear from her life. “Everyone calls you a rogue, or infamous, and I was only wondering why.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, my lady. In your case, the hellcat.” He arched a dark brow, his expression half amused. “Again, more reason to not want a snooping spouse about me, particularly one with your eviscerating tongue.”
“Then we are in agreement, our betrothal and any connection between us is null and void.” A strange emptiness that he would no longer accost her in parks and pleasure gardens seeped through her. She breathed slowly. “You should be on your way now.”
“Do I detect a hint of reluctance on your part?” His voice came out soft, searching.
“You are wishful thinking, sir.” Melwyn moved toward t
he parlor door, ignoring the tingle in her flesh at the timbre of that voice. She prayed she wouldn’t stumble. “Do you spend the night, or take a room at the local inn where you may rape a village whore?”
“The whore sounds delectable. I need a warm form in my bed to temper the frigidness here.” He sounded almost angry as he followed her back out into the hall.
“What did your daughter mean, Pencavel, that you’re already married?” The widow nibbled on a chicken thigh, the conversation out here —if not the food—apparently stalled in their absence. “Aren’t you a widower these many years?”
“She was distraught, Madam Whale, that’s all.” Her father sighed deeply. “What shall I do with her? A girl with few prospects now.”
“Forgive me, Papa.” Melwyn rested her hand on her parent’s shoulder. “I spoke out of turn; it was nothing but chagrin at my brusque and cruel rebuff by this knave of a man.” She turned to Lambrick, who watched her carefully. “Though, of course, I wholeheartedly agree with his decision.” Her throat tight, she turned back to her father. “Please, don’t waste your time finding me a husband. As soon as I’m one and twenty, I’d like my inheritance and will procure passage to Italy to join in the continued excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum.”
“That is preposterous! You will scandalize the region, and bring shame upon your poor father.” The widow licked her greasy fingers. “Not to mention ruin your fingernails.”
“I worry about your safety, my dear. I wish you would rethink this folly, though I’m under no illusion that you will,” Lambrick said, his tone genuine.
“I’ll be fine. Don’t trouble yourself.” Melwyn’s words came out stilted. She moved several steps back in case he might touch her, and she’d fall into his arms.
“You’ve shaved years off of my life already, my girl.” Papa nodded in agreement with the viscount.
“If you insist on this road to perdition, an older woman of sound character is accompanying you, I do hope?” The widow narrowed her already squinty eyes. She brushed a chicken bone from her generous bosom. “For your father’s sake.”
The Defiant Lady Pencavel Page 8