In the Arms of the Heiress (A LADIES UNLACED NOVEL)

by Maggie Robinson

  “Why not? You’re not attracted to your own sex are you?”

  “Jesus Christ.” He laughed in spite of himself. “Not guilty of that.”

  “What are you guilty of?”

  She was like a terrier after a rat. Charles supposed he qualified as the rat. So she thought she wanted to know more about the man she’d hired to debauch her? She wouldn’t like what she would hear.

  He’d never spoken of what happened, not to his friends or his doctors or his family. It was all there in his journals, though, which were now buried beneath his new underwear in the top drawer of his dresser. Maybe he should fetch them and she could read a paragraph or two. Charles would watch her fascination turn to disgust, then horror. She would understand why he had to leave, why Maximillian Norwich, and certainly Charles Cooper, had to die.

  He would tell her, and then he would go. She’d push him out the door herself.

  “There was a woman. A girl, really. In the concentration camp I helped to administer. You’ve heard of the Fawcett Commission?”

  Louisa nodded, her face grave.

  “You cannot imagine the conditions the women and children endured there until it was turned over to the civilian authorities. It was—it was hell on earth. Sickening. You don’t know the barbaric cruelty that permeated the army. Scorched earth. Britain’s glory days are well behind us all. No wonder people want revolution.” He would never believe anyone in authority again.

  “Did you love her, this girl?”

  Charles shook his head. That was really the worst of it. He hadn’t known Marja at all. “She was dying. And she didn’t want to die a virgin.”

  “Oh, Charles.” She reached to touch his hand, but he snatched it away.

  “I fucked her, Louisa. Oh, not fucked. She was too weak and I was too frightened of discovery. We were quiet. Quiet as death. I was consorting with the enemy, don’t you know. A girl in my care to boot. Someone I was responsible for, though God knows no one truly cared what happened to the women in that camp. I’m a man with no honor, a man who did nothing to change the circumstances I found myself in.”

  “What could you do, Charles? You were just one person.”

  “That’s no excuse. I should have killed myself rather than take part in it all. Instead, I killed her.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did. Or may as well have. She died minutes after we had sexual congress. Had a heart attack. She was so tiny. Skin and bones, but stronger than I was.”

  Marja once must have been a beautiful girl. She was a rich Boer farmer’s daughter who had been educated—she spoke English better than half of Charles’s men. He hadn’t been in the camp ten days when she sought him out, her yellow hair in broken tufts around her skull. Her eyes were the color of the endless African sky, and they bored holes straight into Charles’s soul. She had been moved from camp to camp, watched her mother and sisters die. When she’d made her proposition, Charles knew she had doomed them both.

  “I can’t forget the look on her face when she—when she died. Almost . . . happy. Lucky to have escaped the disease and degradation. I envied her.” He ran a rough hand over his head, forgetting the bandage. Louisa was quiet beside him, staring into the fire, her profile limned like an Italian cameo.

  “No one knew what had happened—I covered my tracks well. She was just another dead Boer. But I knew. I—I did things. Said things my superiors didn’t want to hear. They put me back in the hospital, then shipped me home. I couldn’t stay in the army, so I resigned.” His bitterness curled inside him like a living thing, tainting everything he touched. How could he have let himself get into Louisa Stratton’s bed?

  He took a breath. “So you see, the fabled Mrs. Evensong made a terrible mistake hiring me. You have made an even worse one bedding me. There’s no excuse for what I’ve done. What I am.”

  “I agree.” Her voice was clipped, devoid of the sympathy she’d shown all night. It served him right. “You are surely the stupidest man in creation! You did a kindness to that poor girl at the expense of your career, and now you’re going about like the bloody voice of doom. War is awful, Charles. Everyone knows that, even ‘silly society girls’ like me. I read the papers and know they don’t tell the whole truth. Is this story what’s in those journals you were clutching at your boarding house?”

  Charles’s jaw went slack. Perhaps she wasn’t so silly after all.

  “I can see from your face I am right. Be careful when you next play cards at Monte Carlo, Mr. Norwich—you will fool no one. You should publish your experiences so that nothing like it ever happens again,” Louisa continued, putting an arm into the sleeve of her discarded robe. “There will be other wars. There always are. Men make sure of that, don’t they? And we women have no say except to weep over our dead lovers and children.”

  “Louisa—”

  She held up a hand. “There is nothing more you can say to me unless it’s to tell me you have reconsidered and will be staying here at Rosemont. If you cannot promise me the month I’ve hired you for, you might as well slink away tonight. I can tell Aunt Grace about the attack on you. People will understand that you don’t want to lounge about, waiting to be assaulted again.”

  “You think I am a coward.”

  “Maximillian might be a coward. I don’t think you are, Charles.”

  She was covered up now. A damn shame. Her braid had come loose and a torrent of tangled fair hair fell to her waist. Louisa Stratton would need no false hair or pads for her pompadour, or any paint for her flushed face. She was lovely, and Charles had ruined their extraordinary moment. The woman had given herself to him, and he’d proven by every word and deed he was unworthy. What kind of man made love to a woman and then confessed to the death of another? What could he say now to dig himself out of this wretched hole?

  He’d been in torment for months, but somehow Louisa Stratton had cut right through it all. She folded her arms across the pink robe and watched him expectantly. He was going to disappoint her.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You dream about this girl.”

  Charles nodded. “Among other things. There’s no shortage of bad memories for me to mine.”

  “Then we need to give you good things to dream about. I’ll confess I don’t want you to go. I have need of you here to help with Aunt Grace. You needn’t come to my bed again if you stay at Rosemont—I agree this was probably very unwise. We can chalk it up as the capstone to a very odd evening all around.”

  It was ridiculous to feel hurt when she’d only expressed his own opinion. “Let me sleep on it. If I can.”

  “Perhaps you should go to your own room after all. We can talk at breakfast. I’ve arranged to have it delivered up here. Everyone thinks we’re still honeymooning, you know,” she said, wistful.

  She had not been shocked by his tale. Only . . . irritated. Annoyed that his past infused his present so thoroughly. She’d called him the voice of doom. Cheeky baggage.

  Louisa Stratton made it all sound easy—he was simply to forget the ugliness and move on. Write an account of the camp and publish it! As if he could purge himself of Marja’s ghost. He had tried to drink her away and that hadn’t worked.

  But when Charles finally succumbed to Morpheus sometime close to dawn, he dreamed of a cream and gold creature, her hourglass body beneath him. Above him. A kiss on her wicked lips and mischief in her dark eyes. The scent of violets and sex.

  He slept on.

  Chapter

  16

  Just his bloody luck. Mrs. Lang had gone off for her mother’s funeral, so there was no one to sheepdog after the maids to keep them safe in their own beds. And here was Kathleen in his. But would she let him stay there with her for a kiss and cuddle? Bloody hell, but no.

  Robbie Robertson crept back up the dark stairs to his little apartment over the garage. He was not feelin
g particularly proud of himself. Their little plan—really, Kathleen’s little plan—had been risky in the extreme. The damn house was like a giant rabbit warren, and any one of three dozen servants could have come upon him as he navigated Rosemont in the dark. What reason would a chauffeur have for being upstairs near the master suite? And holding a truncheon to boot?

  Kathleen was reading a green book by lamplight. “Did you see anything worth seeing? And did you put a stop to it?” she asked, turning a page.

  “Aye, you daft woman.” Robbie Robertson threw himself down on his narrow bed, where Kathleen had already made herself quite at home. Her freckled shoulders rose above the coverlet, and with a naughty smile she put down the book and pulled the coverlet aside, revealing a pale breast that fit perfectly in his hand. He’d missed that breast and its match. But now she was home and not going anywhere if he could help it.

  “Your reward.”

  “I’m not sure it’s enough. He was all by himself, probably minding his own business with not a thought to ravishing Miss Stratton. I may have hit him too hard. They could arrest me for attempted murder.”

  Her green eyes widened. “Hush now! You never meant to really harm him!”

  “Tell that to the poor bloke’s head when he wakes up. And will you testify in my trial, lass? No, they’ll be arresting you, too.”

  “No one is getting arrested,” Kathleen sniffed. “As long as he couldn’t have his wicked way tonight with Miss Louisa, we’ve both done the right thing. I heard all about that kiss at dinner from the footmen. Shocking, it was, in front of all those people when he’s being paid to behave. He’s a dangerous man—I can feel it.”

  “You may be right there. Look what I almost tripped on.” Robbie pulled the captain’s gun from his coat pocket.

  Kathleen’s freckles stood out against her white cheeks. “Is it loaded?”

  Robbie shrugged. “Not anymore. Why would the gentleman bring a gun to Rosemont?”

  “You see? He is dangerous! And he’s no gentleman. I saw where he lived, remember. What kind of decent man would hire himself out as he has? He’s after something. For all her wild ways, Miss Louisa is such an innocent. Look what happened with that rat Delacourt. It was before my time, but everyone knows how hurt she was. She needs a keeper.”

  “And you’ve appointed yourself to that role. Who will take care of her after we’re married?”

  Kathleen sprang away. “Why shouldn’t I still work for her? Don’t tell me you’ll forbid it! I’ll not take orders from you or anyone!”

  “Didn’t you say she’ll leave Rosemont again if she can’t get rid of her aunt? I’ll not have my wife gallivanting all over creation in someone else’s motorcar. I might get so lonely I’d have to find a sweetheart.”

  Kathleen punched him in the chest with a little fist. “Damn you, Robbie Robertson! Don’t joke about such a thing.”

  He grabbed her arms with both hands and looked into her face as earnestly as he knew how. “Kat, you were gone thirteen months, two weeks, and four days. I was true to you even when my cock ached so bad I was afraid to bring myself off. I put up with that bitch of an aunt sneering at my car and my driving all that time, twiddling my thumbs while she had Thomas hitch up the carriages. I got so bored, every inch of that car was like a mirror, it was so damned shiny.”

  “I know. You wrote me.”

  He dropped her back into the pillows and stared out the tiny dark window. “I’ve got no reason to stay here, Kat. We could go somewhere else, make a good life for ourselves. Cars are the future, you know. I can fix them. I can drive them. Maybe even build one of my own someday. I’m a fair mechanic. I don’t have to be a chauffeur forever. You don’t have to be a maid.”

  He felt a soothing hand on his back. “There’s nothing wrong with being in service, Robbie. I’m not ashamed I work for Miss Louisa.”

  “No one’s saying you should be ashamed. But don’t you ever just want to be free? Have the wind in your hair and the sun on your face?”

  “What, and get my hair all ratty and even more freckles? You’re a dreamer, Robbie.”

  His Kathleen was tart-tongued and invariably sensible. He sighed. “Aye, I am.”

  “And you’re a man. It’s fine to talk of freedom, but if we marry I’ll be bearing one baby after another like my mother did, and who will be free then? Neither one of us.”

  “If we marry? It’s when, Kat. When. You talk to Miss Stratton. I’m ready to call the banns.”

  “First we’ve got to make sure she’s safe from that man. Just because he’s got a pretty arse—”

  “Kathleen Carmichael!” Robbie spluttered.

  “I’m not blind like he is. He’s a good-looking man, and my mistress is vulnerable. No one’s ever treated her right, not even her own family. Poor girl. So, tell me. You hit him with the truncheon?”

  “You are a bloodthirsty little thing.”

  “Was he in bed?”

  “No, sitting up in a chair in his room. It was an awful mess, stuff everywhere. A gun on the floor! Imagine. I did him a favor picking it up. He never saw me, but I’m worried just the same. What if he’s dead?” Robbie didn’t think he hit the man that hard, only enough to prevent him from enjoying Miss Stratton’s bed, but he had fallen face-first on the floor. Robbie had been too scared to check for a pulse.

  “He’s not dead. We’d know.” She was so stubborn in her righteousness. Maybe he’d be better off with Kathleen far, far away. She was bound to lead him a merry jig when they married.

  “How would we?” Robbie asked patiently. “Miss Stratton’s asleep. No one will find his body until the morning when they come in to light the fire in his room.”

  Kathleen bit a lip. “Oh, stop, Robbie. You’re making me nervous.”

  “As you should be. Wait! Where are you going?” Kathleen had scrambled out of bed, her slender body lovely in the lamplight. So many freckles—he’d like to lick each one.

  “I’d better go up and check.”

  “Now?”

  “Of course now. Neither one of us will be able to relax until we know he’s all right. Alive, at least. I’ll be right back.”

  She pulled her shift over her copper hair and was dressed before he could talk her out of going. “Be careful.”

  “I’m always careful.” She waved and disappeared out the door.

  Damn. The evening was in no way progressing as he’d hoped. When Kathleen had climbed his stairs, his heart had leapt with joy. Until she told him what she wanted him to do. Robbie couldn’t make her see sense. She was a loyal little thing, he’d have to give her that, so worried about Louisa Stratton it had been easy to promise to incapacitate Maximillian Norwich for the rest of the night. No, what was the man’s real name? It didn’t matter. Kathleen had sworn him to secrecy. The whole scheme was proof that Miss Stratton was light in the brain-box.

  Robbie undressed, folding his uniform carefully on a chair and locking the captain’s old pistol in his trunk. He fed a few coals into the stove in the corner of the room. He didn’t want Kathleen to be cold when she came back, though he planned other ways to warm her up.

  He’d been celibate for over a year. It was unnatural. The other men on Rosemont’s staff had teased him unmercifully, but he had an understanding with Kathleen, and he meant to keep his word. They’d fallen in love quickly last year—a risk for servants who were at the whims of their employers. But before he knew it, she was gone. Weekly letters were no substitute. She was finally here now, or would be once she’d determined he wasn’t a murderer.

  He should have gone with her, but he’d made one escape from the house and didn’t want to press his luck. It was very late, well past midnight. And colder than a witch’s tit outside with the wind blowing up off the Channel. Naked, he got under the covers and waited to hear Kathleen’s footsteps on the stairs.

  And waited. What was ke
eping her? Had she decided not to come back? Robbie hoped that was not the case—once the housekeeper Mrs. Lang came back, the maids would be locked in at night and let out in the morning only to perform their drudgery. He and Kathleen would have very few chances to be alone, and Robbie had been counting on tonight to last him for weeks.

  He heard the soft thud of the door below and smiled. At last. He was just sitting up when one of his boots sailed through the air, missing his head by inches.

  “Oi! What was that for?”

  “Well, the bastard is not dead, you’ll be happy to know.”

  Robbie felt the knot of worry unravel. “Isn’t that a good thing? How inconvenient it would be if I had to go to the gallows.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’d like to hang you myself. Captain Cooper is not asleep.”

  “Oh? Did he bother you?” Robbie was prepared to hit the fellow on the head again if that was the case.

  “He’s not bothering me. He and Miss Louisa are fornicating even as we speak.”

  Kathleen looked fit to be tied. It was too much to hope for that she’d been inspired by witnessing this unexpected event. “What? Are you sure?”

  “Quite. She is mewling like a cat. He is panting and grunting like a savage. The bedsprings are creaking like a badly tuned violin. I could hear them through the sitting room door. I didn’t go in, of course.”

  Her cheeks were as fiery as her hair. “Did you by any chance look through the keyhole?” he asked.

  “What if I did? The room was too dark to see anything, but I have ears. Robbie, how could you?”

  “I hit him; I swear I did.”

  “Not hard enough. Poor Louisa. We’ll have to get rid of him some other way.”

  “All you have to do is tell the truth to Mrs. Westlake. He’s not Maximillian Norwich, now is he? Not really her husband or anybody’s.”

  Kathleen sank down on the chair that held his clothes. “I couldn’t do that to her. She’d be mortified, and her aunt would never let her hear the end of it.”