by Jade Lee
Unfortunately, he was right. She’d punched her thumb clean through the straw brim of her bonnet.
“Yes, I have,” she said as she stepped directly in front of him. He would not pass around the rock. He simply wouldn’t. “And that is one more crime I lay at your feet.”
“A crime?” he replied. “To poke a hole in that ugly thing? Really, Miss Smithson, I call it more a mercy. The sun should not shine on something that hideous.”
It was hideous, which was why it was her gardening bonnet. “The sun is not supposed to shine on my face either, so it is this ugly thing or stay inside.”
“Come now, Miss Smithson,” he said as he held out his arm to escort her. “I am well aware that you have dozens of fetching bonnets—”
“But this was the one at hand.” She ignored his arm and stared intimidatingly at him. Or at least she tried to. But he was a good six inches taller than her. Average for a man, but for her he was quite the perfect height. Not too tall as to dwarf her, but large enough to be handsome in his coat of bottle-green superfine. It brought out his eyes, which were made all the more stunning by the sunlight that shone full on his face.
“Shall we amble up your beautiful drive and fetch you a pretty bonnet?”
“No, Mr. Anaedsley, we shall not. Because you shall not come to the house today. Any other day, you will be very welcome. But not today.”
His brows drew together in worry. “Is your father ill? Is there something amiss? Tell me, Miss Smithson. What can I do to help?”
It was the right thing to say. Of course it was because he always knew the right thing to say. Her father’s health was precarious these days, a cough plaguing him despite all attempts to physic him. She might have ignored his words as simple politeness, but she saw genuine worry in his eyes. She couldn’t help but soften toward him.
“Papa is the same as before. It’s worst at night—”
“The gypsy tincture didn’t help then.” He took her arm and gently eased her hand into the crook of his elbow. Her fingers were placed there before she even realized it. “I’ll ask a doctor friend I know as soon as I return to London. He may—”
She dug in her feet, tugging backward on his arm. He raised a perfect eyebrow in query, but she flashed him a warm smile. “An excellent idea. You should go there right now. In fact, pray fetch the doctor here.”
His eyebrows rose in alarm. “I shall write down the man’s direction and a message. You can send a footman—”
“No, sir. You must go yourself. Right now. It is most urgent.”
He flashed her his dimple. Damn him for having such a very attractive dimple. “Now why do I get the feeling that you’re trying to rush me away?”
“Because the first thing I said to you was go away!”
He cocked his head, and his expression grew even more delightful. She would swear she saw a twinkle in his eyes. “Miss Smithson, I thought you were a scientist. The first thing you said to me was, ‘Oh no, Mr. Anaedsley, not today.’”
“Well, there you have it. Go away. We are not receiving callers.”
And then, just to make a liar of her, her uncle’s carriage trotted up the path. Four horses—matched chestnuts—stepping smartly as they pulled her uncle’s polished, gilded monstrosity. And inside waving cheerily was her cousin Ronnie. Half cousin, actually, and she waved halfheartedly at the wan fop.
“It appears, Miss Smithson, that we have been spotted. I’m afraid politeness requires that I make my bow.”
“No, we haven’t!” She’d used the distraction to pull them back from the rock. They were, in fact, completely shielded from all windows of the Smithson residence including the laboratory. “Ronnie doesn’t count. And he certainly doesn’t care if you greet him or not. The most powerful snub only seems to inspire him to greater heights of poetry.”
“A poet is he?”
“Yes,” she groaned. “A good one too.” Which made it all the worse.
“Ah. Your suitor, I assume?”
“Suitor” was too simple a word for her relationship with Ronnie, which involved a lot of private family history. “He’s my cousin. Well, half cousin, as my father and uncle had different mothers. But he has convinced himself that we are fated to be wed.”
“And as a practical woman of science, you do not believe in fate.”
She didn’t believe in a lot of things, but at the top of the list was Ronnie’s fantasy. He thought fate had cast them as prince and princess in a make-believe future. She thought her cousin’s obsession with her silly at best, but more likely a dark and dangerous thing. “I do not wish to wed the man,” she said baldly.
“Well, the solution is obvious then, isn’t it? I shall join you today as an afternoon caller, and Ronnie will not be able to press his suit upon you.”
“That would be lovely,” she said sourly, “if you actually did as you say. But we both know what will really happen.”
“We do?” he countered, all innocence.
She tossed him her most irritated, ugly, and angry look, but it did absolutely nothing to diminish his smile. “Oh leave off, Mr. Anaedsley, I haven’t the time for it today.”
“But—” he began. She roughly jerked her hand from his arm and stepped away to glare at him.
“Five minutes after greeting everyone, my father will be excited to learn about your latest experiment.”
“Actually, it is your father’s experiment. I only execute the task he requests—”
“Two minutes after that,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “the two of you will wander off to his laboratory. Uncle will follow, and I shall be left alone. With Ronnie.” She spoke her cousin’s name as she might refer to one of her father’s experiments gone horribly wrong.
“Perhaps your uncle will remain—”
“Uncle desires the union above all things.”
Clearly, she’d flummoxed him. He didn’t even bother denying his plan to disappear with her father. And yet the more she glared at him, the more his expression shifted to one of charming apology. That was always the way with him. She’d even taken to calling him Lord Charming in her thoughts, and as she was not a woman prone to fairy tales, the name was not a positive one.
“I see your problem, Miss Smithson,” he finally said. “Unfortunately, when I said we had been spotted, I wasn’t referring to your half cousin.”
She blinked. “What?”
His eyes lit up with genuine warmth as he gestured behind her. Then, before she could spin around, he opened his arms in true delight.
“Mr. Smithson, how absolutely wonderful to see you out and about. Why your daughter was just telling me that she feared for your existence. Was begging me to bring in a London physician—”
“What?” her father said as he strolled down the drive toward them. “Mellie, I’ve told you I’m right as rain.”
“Papa? Where did you come from?”
“Down at Mr. Wilks’s barn. Been looking at the sheep to see if the lice powder worked.”
Damn it all! She should have known he’d be inspecting the neighbor’s sheep. They were the subjects of his current experiment, after all. And naturally he’d be there instead of in his lab where he’d promised to look at what she’d done. “But you have been ill,” she said, rather than snap at him for ignoring her latest chemical experiment. “You complain of the rain. It makes your joints ache.”
“Well, that’s what old men do, my dear.” Then her papa turned to Lord Charming and embraced him as if the man were a lost son. It had always been this way between them, starting from when her father had been Mr. Anaedsley’s tutor more than a decade ago. The two adored each other, and it was so pure a love that she couldn’t even be jealous of it.
Well, she shouldn’t be jealous, but she was. Especially as she knew that her plans for the day were doomed. The two would go off with her uncle and lea
ve her with Ronnie. And worse, the main purpose of the day—the sole reason she had asked for her uncle and cousin to visit this afternoon—was completely destroyed.
And it was all Mr. Anaedsley’s fault.
And don’t miss the second book in the Rakes and Rogues series!
Bramwell Wesley Hallowsby missed the great love of his life because he was listening to the tale of his first kill. She was right in front of the inn in a blue dress and a bonnet with a matching ribbon. But his attention was on the inside as Dicky spoke of his Brave Deed. Not Bram’s assassinations of vicious men and once of a woman spy, but his very first kill at the age of twelve.
It had been a rabid bear, according to Dicky, escaped from the local fair and still wearing a bright red and green ruffle around its neck. Horribly, this only made it more terrifying to the onlookers as the young Bram stepped forward to defend a child.
“A child?” gasped Dicky’s wife, Clarissa. “Boy or girl?”
“Both!” cried Dicky, gesturing with his cheroot. “Twins with kittens. One in each hand and completely defenseless!”
That part was new. Last time it had been piglets. Bram looked out the inn window, idly scanning the street. Though Dicky had easily a dozen men who’d vowed to kill him, none of them would bestir themselves this far north of London. They were in Hull now, nearly to Scotland. If it hadn’t been for Clarissa’s tetchy stomach, they would be there, and he could get paid. That’s all he wanted. To get them to Scotland so he could get paid.
He narrowed his eyes. There was a thick brute of a man coming toward them, but then the man stopped to talk to the woman in blue. The man bowed only slightly, then spent his time ogling the woman’s impressive bodice. Bram labeled him the local lecher and let his attention wander back to Dicky.
“And there he stood, one tiny boy against a rabid bear,” continued Dicky as he patted the small treasure chest on his lap. The heavy thing must have flattened even Dicky’s massive thighs, but the man would not give up his gold even to sit in an inn with his sick wife.
“Terrifying!” gasped Clarissa. She always gasped whenever she spoke. “Did it attack? Did it hurt you? Are there scars?”
Bram barely stopped himself from rubbing his forearm. He knew the shape and the texture of the scars there from memory. The origin of the bizarre tale that had become his legend.
“Horribly disfigured, my dear,” Dicky said, clearly gleeful at the thought. “You shan’t see it, of course. He keeps it well covered.”
“Oh my!” Clarissa’s eyes grew sultry. Then she pressed her sapphire necklace to her lips at such an angle that her husband wouldn’t see her lick it. But Bram saw—as she had intended—and he idly wondered if he would take advantage of what was offered tonight. It wouldn’t be the first time he had used his own mystique to open a woman’s bedroom door. And Clarissa was stunningly beautiful, as was her husband. Of course, they were both rotten to the core.
As the bastard son of a duke, Bram had to make his own way through the world. Thanks to the connections of an elite education, he’d been able to hang on the outskirts of the moneyed ton, but it had cost him. Humiliation was the smallest price he’d had to pay as he played bodyguard and general strong arm for the peerage. He’d also had to split his mind into two pieces. One half hoped for goodness and beauty in the world. He couldn’t shut it up no matter how he tried. The other half saw with clear, bitter eyes what went on and hated the world for the disappointment.
Meanwhile, Dicky continued the tale. “People were running about screaming, you understand. Everywhere was chaos as grown men dropped to their knees in terror. But not Bram. At the tender age of ten, he stood up for those poor children.”
“Ten? I thought you said he was twelve.”
Both husband and wife looked to Bram, and he knew they would stay like that until he answered. “Eleven,” he said, choosing to split the difference.
“Eleven then. But you’d just had the birthday, right?” Dicky asked.
“Right.” Wrong, but who was he to argue? Dicky was paying him to be mythic.
Something jerked in the window, and he glanced quickly back. It was the woman in blue as she’d twitched away from a grinning man. Oh. Likely she’d been pinched as she’d passed the thick-jowled man.
“The beast gave out a tremendous roar!” Dicky bellowed as he leaped to his feet, one arm holding his gold, the other waving about while his wife squealed in mock terror.
“Uh, Dicky, you really shouldn’t be so loud…” began Bram, but he needn’t have bothered.
The door to their private room burst open as the innkeeper rushed in. “My lords! My lady! What is amiss?”
Dicky let his arm drop, not even embarrassed. “I was being a bear, sir.”
The innkeeper was understandably flustered, and though Bram enjoyed a flustered innkeeper as much as the next man, he hardly thought it fair. But rather than point out Dicky’s error—a sin for any paid servant—he redirected the man. “Have you got the posset yet? For my lady’s stomach?”
“Oh, sir, not yet. But I’ve sent my son to find her—the woman I told you about—and not return until such time—”
“Oh, but I am so wretched!” gasped Clarissa as she pressed a limp hand to her brow, her sapphire earbobs waving wildly on their gold chains.
“A hot towel, milady? Perhaps a blanket?” Not much of the peerage traveled through here, and he was making the most of these two.
“I won’t put you to the bother,” she said, her voice fading.
“But milady, if it would ease your suffering—”
“Tut tut,” Dicky interrupted, oblivious to his wife’s need to be cosseted. “She said no. Get on with you. I was in the middle of my story.” Bram sighed. “Bring her hot stew.”
“I couldn’t eat a thing,” Clarissa protested.
“You will,” he said, keeping his voice stern. She liked it when he was bold. Yes, her legs shifted restlessly, and she shot him another coy glance that made him vaguely nauseous.
The innkeeper’s head bobbled yes as he rushed out the door in search of stew. Meanwhile, Dicky was annoyed that the attention had shifted off him. “Pay attention,” he ordered. “I was about to get to the good part.”
Pay attention to his own tale of derring-do? “Please, I adore this part,” he lied as he looked back out the window.
He saw a mob of boys—four of them—barely into their first beards. They were calling raucous comments aimed at the woman in blue. Really, why was she walking alone—moving from one house to the next to the next—seemingly unprotected by a husband, father, or brother? Didn’t she know better than to tempt the locals to harangue her?
“The bear attacked!” Dicky cried dramatically. He roared again, and Clarissa squealed. “Bram pulled out his father’s dueling pistol and shot it right in the muzzle! Bang!”
“Bang,” Clarissa echoed as she rubbed her thumb over and across the smallest sapphire in her necklace.
“And that, my dear, is the tale of how my dear Bram became the man he is today. And he will protect us, you see.” Dicky returned to his seat and curled his arm around the treasure chest. “If he could protect tiny children—”
“And their kittens! Don’t forget the kittens!”
“And their kittens from a rabid bear, then…”
“Then we are safe with him.” Clarissa’s gaze returned to him, her gaze growing more languid. “I feel so safe.”
Dicky frowned, his face turning red. On any other man, it would be a hideously florid look, but it only seemed to enhance Dicky’s easy charm. “That’s why I hired him, Clary. To make you feel safe.”
“You did a good job,” his wife said, her eyes not leaving Bram.
Bram pushed to his feet, needing to stretch his long legs. “You do know that story has grown over the years.”
“Tut tut,” Dicky said. “We all know it’s
true. Or most of it.”
Or none of it. When had his life become so absurd that he contemplated cuckolding a man—his employer—simply because he was bored? He despised himself, and by extension, he despised Dicky and Clarissa.
“There’s no danger, Dicky. No one will chase you up here. They will ruin your reputation in town, destroy your financials simply because no one will do business with you, and certainly, you will never be invited to a ton party again. But there won’t be a soul who offers you bodily harm.”
“Course not!” cried Dicky as he patted his treasure again. “That’s because you’re here. That’s because I had the foresight to befriend you as a child. I knew then that you would protect me. I knew then that you were a man who could save me from those blackguards…”
Bram stopped listening and headed for the door. Dicky noticed about the time he stepped into the hallway.
“Where are you going?”
“To have a look about. Just in case.” It was a lie, but it was one that would satisfy Dicky, which would make sure he got paid when this was all done.
So he left the room, choosing to wander through the inn. He made it through the kitchen and out the back, to the garden behind with two lazy hounds dozing in the sun. And once outside, he took a deep breath of the summer air and a greedy look at the green land around him.
That was the life he wanted: stretched out in the sun like those hounds, with his eyes drooping shut, while a pup or three gamboled nearby. He saw no puppies, but he imagined them, and they made him smile.
Then he saw her. The woman in blue again, this time without anyone pinching or ogling her. The sight was striking enough, but then she paused under a tree, pulling off her bonnet to raise her face to what breeze could be had. Fine blond hair blew back from her cheeks, and her perfect bow of a mouth curved in delight. Beautiful. A country miss complete with a basket on her arm. Her lush, unspoiled beauty was the kind that could only grow in the wilds. In London, she would be painted and sullen, her body trussed into dresses that maximized assets and minimized flaws. But this woman had a simple gown, and while he watched, those puppies he’d imagined suddenly appeared. Four of them, barking and leaping from somewhere he couldn’t see.