by Maren Smith
Feeling almost numb, I turned from her bed, ignoring her barely muffled screech to “Give over!”
I walked over to the windows, examining them one after the other until I found one that, although closed, was unlatched. Opening it, I poked out my head and looked down. God save me, there was a very sturdy trellis beneath, half concealed by a heavy cover of climbing ivy.
I heard a heavy thump behind me and pulled myself quickly back in through the window to find that Lady Victoria had toppled headfirst out of bed and was now clawing at the floor, crawling on her belly towards me, her useless legs dragging behind her as she grunted and strained to reach me. Fury burned in her eyes and for a moment I was so surprised that I almost backed myself right out the window.
“Give me that cufflink!” she hissed. “It belongs to me! You have no right!”
I put the link in my apron pocket and, frowning, went to her. “Not only am I not going to give this back to you, I am going to give it to your brother. So, you may as well stop your scheming. Battering yourself about to get me into even more trouble is the sort of black-hearted trick that only works once.”
Hands on hips, I stopped with my lady charge lying sprawled on the floor at my feet, panting and glaring futility up at me through her bed-tussled blonde bangs. “I have hardly begun to scheme,” she said, low and throaty, nowhere near as beautiful as she had seemed to me yesterday when first I’d set eyes on her. “If you give that to my brother, I will make your life a living hell.”
“Yes, I’ve already thought of that,” I muttered grimly, and then stepped over her.
Slipping my arms under hers, I lifted her upper body off the floor. For someone so slender, she was quite the heaviest thing I had ever tried to carry. By the time I got her to the bed, I was panting every bit as hard as she had been.
“Maybe we should forgo this morning’s chocolate,” I grunted as I heaved her halfway up on the mattress. And Lady Victoria, suddenly as boneless as an eel and making no move to help me, nearly slipped right back off onto the floor. I barely caught her shoulders before she fell, and I quickly pressed her into the mattress to pin her in place while I caught my breath.
“Get off me, you cow!” she snarled, elbowing me sharply in the side.
With equal cheek, I snapped back, “I should let you lie on the floor.”
But Hawkhaven would definitely not overlook that sort of slight, and I bent down to slide my arms under hers again. I huffed and heaved and eventually draped her back onto the mattress. Hooking an arm under her legs, I lifted and shoved until she was fully back up on the bed. Then I collapsed beside her, partially to keep her from falling back out of bed just to spite me, and partly because she had exhausted me. Ignoring her shriek of protest, I raised a hand to fan myself when for a moment I froze, absolutely stunned to see her foot… it was not quite enough to be considered a kick, but it surely did move enough to jostle the bed.
A sharp knock at the door caught my attention, giving me no time at all to consider the ramifications of what I’d seen before Bess marched into the room. A china cup of hot chocolate steamed on the breakfast tray she carried. I could smell the wonderful, mouth-watering aroma of freshly baked bread wafting out from beneath the twin plate-warmers of silver, and there was enough there for two. But worth even more than the prospect of breakfast, the interruption was enough to silence Victoria’s temper tantrum shrieks, be it ever so temporarily.
Bess arched an eyebrow at me, and I quickly got up off the edge of my lady’s bed. Smoothing my hands down over my apron front, I followed her around the canopy foot posts as she carried the silver breakfast tray to the larger of the two bedside tables.
“Good morning, miss,” she said, giving me a stern look. “I hope you slept well.”
“Go to hell,” Victoria snapped, her dark glittering eyes also glaring at me.
I pretended not to notice either stare and, as Bess marched back out the door and down the hall, set up Victoria’s bed tray over her useless legs. “Would you like to know what’s for breakfast?”
Lady Victoria’s eyes never left me. They grew narrow and cool as I fluffed an extra pillow to prop behind her back. “You need help learning your place.”
“My place,” I said, stamping down a pang of anger that I should even need to say such a word at all, “is to help you in your day-to-day, whether you want me to or not.”
“I will take my chocolate now,” she coldly ordered, her voice so painstakingly calm that it trembled.
I handed her the china cup and saucer carefully, mindful not to allow any of the hot, steaming mixture to slop over the delicate rim. To be honest, I half expected her to pour it upon herself, landing me in trouble once again with her protective brother. I never expected her to throw it at me.
My instinctive reaction to turn away saved most of my face from being burned, but the room echoed with my shrill cry as I felt the hot liquid splash across my cheek, down my throat, and soaking through the front of my uniform to scald my breasts, belly and left arm. I fell back from the bed, scrambling to get my uniform away from my skin. But so dispersed, the hot liquid turned quickly cool and then cold, leaving every place that it touched me to sting and ache.
I gasped with the pain, staring at her first in shock and then an anger so hot and burning that it was all I could do not to slap that china cup out of her hands. Not to slap her, for that matter. I barely heard the thunder of running feet in the hall behind me a bare instant before Bess once more filled the doorway.
“What’s happened? What—” She froze when she saw me, her eyes and mouth gaping wide as she stared. “Oh Lord, miss… that was not well done of you!”
“Me?” Victoria asked with cool innocence, completely disregarding the cup in her hands. “The little fool is clumsy.” Her eyes flashed as they again met mine. “She has no one to blame but herself.”
I would rather whore myself on the streets of London than put up with this.
I turned on my heel and walked out of the room. Bess moved out of my way, but as I stalked stiff-legged down the hall and down the stairs, I could hear her crying out in frustration. “Wonderful! Now see what has happened? Who’s going to take care of you now, do you think? Not me, that’s for certain! I won’t do it!”
Bess chased me to the stairs. “Wait!” she cried, but I did not stop. If anything, my feet moved all the faster as I hurried unerringly for Lord Deverell’s study.
Without bothering to knock, I threw open the heavy door and stormed into his sanctuary with complete disregard for either my station or his. I was angry. I was scalded. My skin hurt from my cheek to my belly and all down my right arm, and when I saw Hawkhaven, standing by the fire with a crystal glass in one hand and a brandy decanter in the other, my mind just snapped. He was the only thing that I saw, and in that instant, he looked just like his spoiled brat of a sister.
Surprised, his gaze flicked from my cheek to my skirts and then back again. “What happened to you?”
I ripped at my apron strings, untying them in jerks. Yanking it off me, I wadded the cloth into a chocolate-stained ball and threw it at him. He almost dropped his brandy decanter when it struck him square in the chest.
To my utter chagrin, the very small part of me that wasn’t absolutely horrified by my actions felt a tiny measure of vindication as I watched the tie of my apron leech the costly liquor right out of his glass. It was too early in the morning to be drinking anyway; the man should be ashamed!
Hawkhaven blinked his huge eyes at me twice, and then stared down at the apron in his glass. His brows puckered in confusion as he asked again, “What happened to your face?”
That had me angry all over again. I fished into my pocket, my fingers closing around the cufflink so tightly that I felt the bite of the backing pin against my palm. “Here!” I showed it to him, and he blinked again.
“What?”
“Your sister’s injury did not occur in a fall,” I told him coolly. “This is why she ordered me go last night,
so she could meet her lover in private! Apparently, they must have argued, and she needed someone to blame for her blackened eye!”
Hawkhaven’s entire frame went as stiff as the trunk of a sturdy oak. He quickly put the apron and brandy glass aside. “Be silent, Ella. You—”
“I will not be silent!” I snapped. “I am done being silent!” When he came towards me, reaching out his hand to catch my arm, I flung the cufflink. Some distant, third person part of me watched in muted shock as the tiny silver link bounced off his chest and fell to the carpet. It was the same shocked, but growing quickly stormy, look that he was giving me in return. “There’s your proof! I was not the one who needed whipping for last night’s deed!”
“No, but I dare say you could use a good one for this little tantrum,” Hawkhaven said slowly, his entire countenance darkening before my very eyes.
“I would rather leave!”
“I shall get your wages ready for you,” he replied, and turned sharply on his heels, stalking back across the room for his desk. “Two full day’s wages. Minus, of course, the cost of your uniform.”
I have never felt anger so hot inside of me as I did right then. I snapped the threads of two buttons right off the front of my uniform, sending them bouncing to the carpet in my haste to get it off of me. Shucking down to nothing but my chocolate-stained shift, I waded that ugly gray dress into another ball and flung that at him as well. It struck him in the back and completely enveloped his head for the half second it took him to snatch it off again. He swung his snapping ice-blue stare back on me, but his anger did not survive his shock at seeing me half-naked before him.
“You will take the cost of the uniform from your sister’s allowance since she is the one who sullied it,” I told him, softly, shaking. “And then you will add a half pound to my two day’s wages for the injury she has done me, or I will report the both of you to the local magistrate.”
Exactly where I got my gall I haven’t an inkling, but there was more bluster to my threat than bravado. I shook so badly in my anger, that even my voice trembled, and Hawkhaven could not help but notice it.
Removing my uniform from his head, Hawkhaven dropped the whole mess onto his desk. “Look behind you,” he said, his voice the very epitome of gentle calmness, despite the outrage that bubbled in the darkness of his eyes. “What say we save ourselves some time, and you can tell him your grievance right now.”
Now it was my turn to blink. At first, I could not even move. All I felt was a cold vipers’ pit of writhing humiliation in the depths of my belly as I, in only my threadbare shift, turned around to meet the carefully neutral stare of my lord Hawkhaven’s until that moment totally unseen guest. A man of perhaps only a few years Hawkhaven’s senior, the dark haired and eyed magistrate watched me from the comfort of the hearth. In all likelihood, he had been seated in the overstuffed chair behind him up until I stormed my way into the room. But now he was standing, ready to be of assistance should the situation degenerate further. There was not the slightest doubt in my mind to whom that aid would be rendered, either.
A bit belatedly, my hands flew up to cover my near nakedness, but there was simply too much of me for two small hands to hide. My face flamed even hotter, and I quickly turned back to Hawkhaven. I glared at him as if all this had been his fault.
“My wages,” I finally choked out, and then turned to run.
“Ella, wait!” Hawkhaven called after me, but I fled his study anyway, darting past the incredulous butler as I raced up the stairs for my room. Soon to be mine no longer. I would be well rid of this house, I told myself even as I burst into angry tears and slammed the door behind me.
Chapter Six
As I slammed the door to my tiny room, I once again found myself thinking it a good thing I had not yet unpacked. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the tin mirror and the splotches of red on my scalded skin shocked me into immobility. Most of the damage was to my left cheek and the length of my neck directly beneath. Where my clothes had soaked up the liquid, spreading the burning heat over a wider area and holding it to me longer, the pinkness was brighter, the wounded area less defined and much wider.
I touched the tenderest part, just above my left breast, and the discomfort only helped to spur my anger onward. Suddenly, the life of a server in a tavern didn’t seem so terrible after all. If I had to, I was ready to walk all the way back to Derbyshire… No! Further than Derbyshire. I would go south. So far south that I could start over where no one knew me, and I would never run into Hawkhaven again. At this point, even Australia was starting to look appealing.
I grabbed my bag and dug into it until I found my still muddy dress of the day before. No sense in mucking up two dresses in the long walk back out of this horrible place. And after the disgrace I had just caused him, exposing Victoria’s secret shame in front of someone who now had the power to either keep it secret or expose it to the merciless Ton, bringing his family into public disgrace, I knew better than to hope for any favors from Hawkhaven.
I was just beginning to struggle my way into my dress when I heard the muted thunder of footsteps coming fast down the outside hall to my room. My head and arms were still trapped in bunchings of cloth when my door exploded inward and struck the wall. I turned, spying only a glimpse of a very angry Hawkhaven through the open neckline of my gown.
“Get out!” I ordered, struggling like mad to get my head up through it, but he only slammed the door behind him and marched right for me, vanishing out of my view just as quickly as he’d come into it. I panicked when he caught hold of my waist, lifting me off the ground and bending me toward the floor. I came belly down, sprawling half on and half off the edge of my own bed with a very hard lump directly beneath my hips. A flash of utter panic drilled all through me as I suddenly realized that ‘lump’ was one of his thighs. His other captured my left leg, vising it between both of his and instantly stopping half of my kicking struggles.
“No!” I gasped as he threw up the draping shield of my skirts, exposing my already tender bottom, scantily clad as it was only by my thin shift.
‘Yes’ was the flat of his hand as it cracked down across those defenseless nether cheeks, flattening them in his outrage. ‘Yes’ was painful and unstoppable, and with a bottom already so very sore, it had me reduced to tearful sobs before Hawkhaven laid the first six hard swats upon me.
My arms flailed inside my dress, but with one of his arms pinning the hem of my skirts even as he locked my waist into position over his knee, I could not get myself free. All of my struggles came down to one-legged kicks and the mad-dash scrambling of my tiptoes as my shoes slid futility across the uneven floorboards.
“Stop!” I shrieked, begged, pleaded.
He ignored it all, laying into me with a furious volley of hearty smacks that spurred me into a franticness I had never felt before. And still he did not stop, not until I was a mass of wailing remorse, lying limp in the vise of his powerful thighs, unable to do anything but accept the discipline he meted out without a single scolding word to distract from the punishing fire he lit in my backside. By the time he was done, my anger had died in the heat of that fire.
Hawkhaven unclamped my captured leg and let go of my waist. He picked me up off his knee only to set me right back down again to sit upon his other. My poor belabored bottom! I couldn’t bear the slightest touch much less to have to sit, and I immediately struggled to stand.
“Ow!” I elbowed his ribs in my fight to get out of his grip. “Let me go!”
Down I went once more, back over his knee and this time not only did my skirts come up, but once again he stripped me of my bloomers and spanked me on the bare. And here I had thought it could not possibly hurt any worse. Oh, how very foolish of me!
Every fiber of my being zeroed in on the burning, fiery, painful slaps of his hand as he spanked me, first one round buttock, then the other, and back again. Repeatedly. Until no inch of me felt unscorched. Until every thought in my head became one word: ow. I
shrieked it. I sobbed it. I clawed at the bed and at his leg, pushing stiffly against his knee and his side as if I could pry myself out of his imprisoning grip.
Again, his wrath came to a stop, and he let me go, picking me up before I could get away and sitting me sharply down upon his knee. With my bloomers around my ankles, I grabbed his pants leg with both hands and I clung to it, hunched down upon his half-lap, fighting myself for everything that I was worth not to stand up.
“Look at me,” Hawkhaven commanded.
Gasping, my face streaked with tears and my nose running, I obeyed. The hand he had spanked me with was pressed hot and hard and feeling very large to the small of my back, not three inches from where the heat was beginning to pulse and throb beneath my skin.
“Do not ever,” he said, dark and unsmiling, “deride me in front of anyone else again. Ever. That is number one, do you understand?”
“Yes,” I whispered, gripping and re-gripping the cloth of his pants. More than anything in the world I wanted to hold and rub my bottom, but I dared not move. I doubt I could have survived another trip across his lap with skirts up and bloomers down, my bare bottom bouncing under the hard, flat weight of his hand.
“Number two, do not ever throw anything at me again. Is that also clear?” His blue eyes had the burning intensity of the sun as they bored into mine. I could not look away. I could not even attempt it.
“Yes,” I whispered even softer than before. Hiccupping and choking on my shaking breathes, I had nothing but the dangling sleeves of my dress, half on and half off of me to wipe up my tears and blow my nose. I was about to make use of them when he took the handkerchief from his pocket and snapped it open. Still obviously angry, his touch was nevertheless as gentle as any I’d felt when he wiped beneath my eyes, down to my chin and around my mouth. He then cupped the back of my nape with that warm, hard hand of his and put the handkerchief to my nose.