Just This Once

by Jill Gregory

  Josie stood with her hands leaden at her sides, her feet seemingly planted into the floor. Both Mrs. Fielding and Devon were watching her expectantly.

  Say something. They expect you to say something.

  “Th-thank you, Mrs. Fielding. I hope it’s no trouble.”

  “Trouble?” The housekeeper beamed at her. “Of course it’s no trouble. Not a bit of it.”

  If the woman thought it strange that the earl’s bride seemed stiff as a board and her shoulders were trembling beneath the fine blue-gray faille traveling dress with its black lace trim, she gave no sign of it. Josie smiled gratefully and allowed herself to be led to the comfortable chair by the fire. Sinking down upon the soft cushions, she couldn’t help but think that the less she said to Mrs. Fielding or anyone until she was more sure of herself, the better.

  Actually, though Josie did not know it, the housekeeper was already forming a favorable opinion of her. Mrs. Fielding had a sympathetic heart, and she had already concluded it must feel strange for a lady to come to her husband’s home for the first time. Especially when that lady was no doubt fatigued and half frozen. And, the housekeeper thought regretfully as she threw her drained-looking mistress one last glance and headed toward the door, my own foolish tale of Pirate Pete and his men probably frightened the poor fragile thing to death.

  “You just rest a bit and let the fire warm you, my lady. I won’t be but a twinkling.” She went out, thinking how good it was to have a master and mistress here at Stonecliff Park once again, and imagining the happy day when children would once more race through the nursery wing and play hide-and-seek in the gardens.

  For perhaps the next hour Mrs. Fielding and Devon fluttered around Josie, serving her, seeing to her every wish—or what they perceived as her every wish. Her real wish was to be alone. To have a chance to take in what was happening to her, around her.

  This house, for one thing. Ensconced in surroundings far more luxurious even than Mr. Latherby had prepared her to expect, more than anything she could possibly have imagined, she felt swallowed up. The enormous four-poster bed had pale yellow silk hangings and masses of deep, gold-fringed pillows. The dressing table with its white lace antimacassar was made of carved ivory, the mullioned windows were wide and high and draped in white and yellow floral silk. There was a silk sofa in the sitting room, and deep comfortable chairs, and seascapes on the walls and vases of roses, bowls full of floating lilies.

  And then there were the servants.

  A short time ago Josie had been scrubbing pots and pans in the grimy kitchen of the Golden Pistol. She’d fried eggs, boiled coffee, made soup and steak and bread for an endless succession of strangers—a servant herself. And before that, she’d once worked as a chambermaid in a seedy Kansas hotel, changing soiled bed linens, sweeping floors, dusting old, scarred furniture in musty little rooms.

  Now she was to be waited on. Pampered in this lovely bedchamber, helped into a lilac silk wrapper, her hair brushed till it shone. The shock of it worked its way strangely through her stunned system.

  She was being readied for her husband, Josie realized belatedly, as her tired and stunned mind clicked onto the careful ministrations of Mrs. Fielding and Devon. It was the newly returned master’s first night at Stonecliff Park with his bride.

  “That will be all, Mrs. Fielding,” she said abruptly, jumping up from the chair before the dressing table and twisting her hands together. The heady scent of roses from the vase on the dressing table filled the room, sweetly at odds with the sudden unease in her stomach. “It’s late. I’m sure you and Devon are ready to get some shut-eye... I mean to retire,” she added, remembering Latherby’s careful coaching in Things to Say to Servants.

  Devon smiled and bobbed a curtsy. Mrs. Fielding smoothed one last chair cushion on her way to the door.

  The housekeeper thought she knew just what was unsettling the new lady of the house. She guessed that the lovely young countess was anxious for the Earl to come to her, to draw her into his arms and lead her either to his own massive bedchamber, which adjoined the sitting room, or else to the bed in her ladyship’s own room. It was growing late—well past time for the Earl to officially welcome his bride to her new home.

  Mrs. Fielding, always a romantic, though she herself had been a widow for the past nine years, blew out a gusty sigh as she closed the bedchamber door behind her and the maid.

  Yes, it was easy to see that the Earl and his Countess were perfectly made for one another. Their love must be quite sublime. The young man they had last seen so many years ago had grown even more handsome over the years, with a keen, almost dangerous edge to him that somehow only added vastly to his appeal, to her way of thinking.

  And his bride... Well, the Countess was so beautiful with her gleaming hair and those dainty features and mesmerizingly brilliant eyes.

  Mrs. Fielding experienced a tiny quiver in her throat as she reflected upon how lovely a moment that would be for both of them when Lord Stonecliff came upstairs to claim his bride.

  * * *

  The bride was quivering too. But not from heady anticipation. Alarm quivered through her bones and jangled her nerves.

  Would Ethan Savage dare come here tonight? Now that they were here in his ancestral home, safe in the world he knew and that was totally unfamiliar to her, a world where he was master and everyone here would scamper to do as he bade, would he honor his end of their agreement and leave her be?

  She’d scarcely seen him in New York, or on the voyage across the Atlantic. True to his word, he’d had Mr. Latherby arrange for separate staterooms, and they hadn’t even dined together, for he’d ordered most of her meals sent in to her stateroom—hiding her from society, she guessed, for as long as he was able. When she’d ventured out on deck, she’d been accompanied most everywhere by Mr. Latherby, who used every opportunity to teach and lecture her about the do’s and don’ts of proper etiquette.

  Don’t stare at people, Josephine. It’s rude. Vulgar. Don’t hunch your shoulders, Josephine. Stand up straight. Countesses don’t stoop.

  Don’t use a spoon for your peas, Josephine. Break your roll into pieces, Josephine. No, no, never dip it in the beef gravy! And don’t even think of licking your fingers!

  Cover your mouth when you yawn, Josephine. Better yet, don’t yawn at all.

  Stop fidgeting, Josephine. Ladies appear composed at all times. And countesses are never ruffled.

  Well, she’d be more than ruffled if Ethan Savage walked in that door right now. Somehow, just the sight of him ruffled her. And his touch. That moment when his hands had circled her waist and he’d swung her down from the carriage with such effortless ease.

  Ruffled was hardly the word for it, Josie thought, and felt her stomach tighten.

  Why did he have to affect her in any way whatsoever? It had been this way from the first moment he’d flicked those icy gray eyes over her. Something had started to burn inside her. And the flame hadn’t gone out. In fact, it had grown stronger since that afternoon in the parlor car when he’d come so dangerously close to kissing her again.

  She’d actually prowled the ship sometimes, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But, of course, she didn’t see him much. Because he didn’t want to see her—he avoided her. He loathed her.

  Which meant she was probably safe tonight, and every night. Ethan Savage was a complicated man, a man with secrets and much on his mind. He had made it very clear right from the start that he wasn’t interested in being bothered with her, that she was someone useful to him—useful for a while—but beyond that he would not give a second thought, or a second look, to the lying thief he’d been forced to ally himself with.

  He’d clearly made her Mr. Latherby’s responsibility. She ought to be thankful.

  Josie went to the wash basin and splashed cold water on her face. She was patting her skin dry with a thick, fluffy towel when she heard a step in the hall. The towel fell to the carpet. Her hands flew to her throat.

  But the steps w
ent clear past without wavering, and then, though she ran to the hall door and pressed her ear against it, there was silence. If it was Ethan Savage, he had gone to bed.

  Without disturbing her.

  As a curious disappointment rushed through her, she bit her lip and wondered with a flash of panic what was going to become of her.

  She had left everything behind, everything. Not that there was much to leave. The answers to her questions might well lie in England, and so she had come here but not at all the way she had planned when she’d grabbed Snake’s saddlebag containing the stolen loot and the letter and jewels he’d taken from Miss Alicia Denby, and run off.

  She’d come as the wife of the Earl of Stonecliff, a countess, and who ever could have planned on that?

  It will all work out, Josie told herself, as she had so many times before in her life when she was frightened of the future, uncertain how she would find her next meal, where she would sleep, how she would fare in yet another stranger’s home.

  She paced across the elegant room in her bare feet, her wrapper whisking about her narrow ankles. Curling up on the window seat of that firelit bedchamber, she stared unseeingly out at the dense darkness of the estate’s grounds, with the mist just beginning to lift and clear, and reviewed in her mind every word of the letter that had been in Alicia Denby’s handbag. Starting tomorrow, she would question each person she met, ask if they knew of a young woman named Alicia Denby—

  “You’re not figuring out a way to make off with the silver, are you, bride?”

  Josie’s heart nearly exploded with fright, and she bolted to her feet. She’d never heard a thing. Not a footstep, not the turning of the doorknob. Yet there stood Ethan Savage, dark and powerful as always, though his face looked a bit tired and drawn beneath those frowning ebony brows.

  He came toward her slowly, and she held her ground with effort, but he paused at the edge of the Persian rug, his hands deep in his pockets, his tie and collar loosened.

  “That’s not it?” he mused, studying her enigmatically.

  “Then what has you so deep in thought that a bear could have roared in here and you’d never have noticed? Regretting your decision to keep our marriage in name only?” A slow grin almost touched his eyes. “If that’s what you want,” he said casually, “I could probably be persuaded to oblige.”

  Nine

  “Don’t you dare try anything of the sort.” Josie answered quickly, lest he come any closer. She wiggled her cold toes against the carpet. “I should tell you, if you lay your hands on me—or even try to so much as kiss me, I’ll scream.” She took a deep breath and met his gaze with a flash of blue fire. “What will your servants think of their precious earl then?”

  “It wouldn’t matter to them in the least. Plenty of servants have seen and heard plenty of black deeds done within such elegant walls,” he sneered. He cast himself down into a wing chair and grinned wickedly over at her. “But I’m not planning to lay hands on you again. For any reason. Unless you return to stealing. So, Josie, if not thievery and vice, or a passionate evening with me, what were you contemplating just now? You looked a thousand miles away.”

  She didn’t understand why he was here, if not to threaten and bully her—or to push his claims as a bridegroom. She shrugged and turned away from him, pacing to her dressing table, where she could watch him in the mirror. She paused before the vase of roses and brushed a finger across the fragrant petals.

  “I don’t recall that sharing my private thoughts was part of our bargain. I’ll keep them to myself, thank you.”

  He laughed. A harsh sound. Yet there was something beneath it, something wild, edged in pain. She turned quickly. He was raking a hand through his hair, a hand that was perfectly steady, yet she saw that in his eyes was a desperate ferocity on the verge of exploding.

  “What is it?” she asked quickly, forgetting everything but the anguish pulsing beneath his careless facade. She crossed to him without thinking, and knelt by the chair, instinctively touching his hand, which rested upon the carved arm.

  “What’s wrong?”

  His eyes fixed on her, hard and silvery as polished stones. “You don’t really give a damn, do you?”

  “Yes, I do. Why shouldn’t I?”

  ‘Why should you is more to the point.” His lip curled derisively. But as she continued to stare at him, moved by something she didn’t understand, by a sense of haunted pain that had entered the room with him and clung to him beneath the rakish facade, Ethan Savage’s features tightened. “You want to know what’s wrong, Josie? Being here, back here in this house. That’s what’s wrong.”

  “But why? It’s your home.”

  “Home.” He threw back his head and laughed bitterly. “It’s never been a home.”

  He was coldly, furiously sober, she saw, with a breath of relief. His eyes glittered, but not with the effects of liquor. They glittered with sorrow, with hatred, with feelings so intense and bitter, they must be tearing him in two.

  “They’re depending on me. Every person you’ve met tonight is depending on me. All those servants, and the tenants besides. And that means they’re depending on you. You’d better not let them down.”

  “I won’t. I promise you, I’ll do my best.”

  “If not for them, for the burden of all this...” He threw a quick, bitter glance around the glowing, lovely room, a glance that seemed to encompass far more than just its regal confines. “I’d never willingly set foot on this damned British soil again. Much less at Stonecliff Park. My ancestral home.” He gave another bitter laugh, and reaching out, cupped her small chin in his hand. She flinched, but his fingers didn’t hurt this time. They cradled.

  “It was never a home, Josie. I loved this place when I was a boy, it was all I had, but it was never a home. Not the way you’d want a home to be. Not like yours probably was.”

  She said nothing, merely stared at him, watching the scowl tighten his beautiful, sensual mouth, the way his gray eyes seemed to glint like frosted starlight as the firelight flickered over that hard-planed face. “Tell me about your home. Did your mother darn socks by the fire on some farm? Your father carry you about on his shoulders? Your brothers and sisters race you to school in the mornings?” There was mockery in his voice, and perhaps a tinge of envy.

  “No.” She spoke quietly. He still held her chin, and his fingers burned gently into her skin. How strange to be kneeling beside his chair like this, him touching her, not harshly, but softly. Listening to her. Yet that coiled tension was still rippling through him. “I never had a home either. Not anyplace... permanent.”

  “Parents. Brothers and sisters.”

  “No.”

  He frowned. He let go of her and straightened in his chair. “So where the hell did you grow up?”

  “Nowhere. Well, everywhere. I’m an orphan,” she explained, sitting back. His black hair had tumbled over one eye and she resisted the urge to brush it back. She kept her hands clasped in her lap. “I was adopted by various people. It never worked out for very long. Until I was older and I lived on a ranch in Montana. That was sort of a home. But Pop Watson...”

  Her voice trailed off. How could she explain Pop Watson to a man like him? Pop Watson was the one who taught me to pick pockets, she would say, and he would remember all over again why he couldn’t trust her. And besides, Pop Watson had been shot during a getaway two days after she’d married Snake. She didn’t want to discuss that either... didn’t want to remember any of that awful time after she met and married Snake.

  “It’s not very interesting,” she finished lamely.

  She was hiding something from him. Maybe the truth, Ethan reflected, his gaze hardening. Maybe this whole orphan story was a scam, something to win his sympathy, make him less careful around her. He steeled himself against the interest that had begun to tug somewhere inside him. He switched it off, the way he would extinguish a lamp when dawn’s light flooded into a room. She had a lot to learn about him, if she thought she could
get to him that easily.

  Ethan’s gaze shifted from her dainty, deceptively vulnerable face to the lilac wrapper. It had draped open as she knelt upon the floor. The creamy swell of her breasts rose modestly above a silky matching lilac gown. He was amazed by how intrigued he was by the sight. He’d seen women much more generously endowed, and he’d seen them stark naked. But he was fascinated by the glimpse of her slender, femininely curved body, and was disappointed when she, noticing the direction of his gaze, hastily yanked the wrapper tight and stumbled to her feet.

  If he were a gentleman, he’d have helped her rise. But he was no gentleman, and he suddenly didn’t feel it would be wise to touch her in any way, and he let her struggle up by herself. Then he rose, towering over her.

  “I’ve kept you long enough. Get some shut-eye. Some sleep,” he amended, with a brusque laugh. “I’d best get used to talking like an Englishman again since I’m stuck here. We’re both stuck here,” he told her, shooting her a warning look. “You’ll need to be on your toes tomorrow and every day after. Latherby will continue to teach you, but we’ll probably go to town in a few days. I have business to see to once I’ve tended to a few things here, and we’ll have to see Grismore. And you’ll have to meet people.”

  “I know.”

  “Scared?”

  She shook her head quickly, then knew that the quick color in her cheeks betrayed her. “A little,” she admitted, tossing back her hair.

  “You ought to be. There’s some civilized aristocrats on this side of the ocean who would think nothing of gobbling you up alive. You’ll have to be on guard all the time. And don’t expect me to charge in and rescue you if you get into hot water.”

  “I wouldn’t expect that.” Yet he saw her gulp, before she straightened her shoulders. “I’ll pull this off without a hitch,” she assured him, her tone very definite, and against his will, something in him responded to the courage that must have taken, to the way she just stood with her head up and her hands still, though he sensed his words had struck fear in her, indeed saw it in the way her lips trembled after she finished speaking. But even as sympathy flashed through him, he doused it.