She knew then that she had gone too far. His expression closed as effectively as if shutters had been pulled.
He stalked to the door, then spun about.
“If anything, I kissed you as a way to gather information and I will not pretend that it wasn’t enjoyable. It was. Considering the circumstances, I made a reasonable assumption that you might welcome it. I’m sorry. But my word is inviolable. Your own actions have placed you in my power. It was your choice to pull a pistol on the local magistrate and risk the gallows. In spite of Lady Emilia, it is too late to turn missish. And because of Lady Emilia, I am bound to safeguard you. You cannot be known to have come here tonight, wounded. Judge Clarence’s ire needs time to die away. In the meantime, you must stay hidden. The only place that I can guarantee that you will not be discovered in the house is in my own room. There is another bed in the dressing room that will do for me. As of this moment, no one else knows of your arrival at Tresham other than Lord Steal, my own man, and two grooms. Lord Steal and Dover are, of course, to be relied on. I shall take care of the grooms.”
“What, will you dismiss them out of hand or completely dispose of them? The grooms are innocent of any wrongdoing in this little caper.”
“The servants are my responsibility, Miss Whinburn. What I do with them does not concern you.”
She set her chin in a way that promised mutiny, but there was no way that she could intervene.
“Tresham contains an army of other servants and they can’t be relied upon not to gossip,” he continued. “They shall not know that you are here. In a few days, when Lord Clarence returns to London, I will smuggle you out and bring you to the front door, where Peter’s mama, Lady Steal, can greet you in style. You may then stay here openly.”
Jessica swallowed. It would be distinctly uncomfortable to be forced to stay with this compelling man for several days. Nevertheless, the scaffold was probably a great deal more unpleasant.
“Very well, I capitulate. Hide me where you like.”
“A wise lady. Try to get some sleep, and when the servants have gone to bed, I shall come to fetch you. Good night, Miss Whinburn.”
* * *
Michael stepped silently into the storeroom. The candle had almost burned away. Jessica Whinburn slept quietly, her red hair tossed about her head. She looked disturbingly open and defenseless. Although the wound was minor, she must have been in considerable pain. Yet she had hardly complained.
How could she have been so foolish as to attempt to travel alone to London in such an extraordinary fashion? And what the devil had she intended to do when she arrived? Yet it was a brave thing to do. He couldn’t imagine any other lady of his acquaintance having either such courage or such resolve.
She wasn’t a classic beauty, but there was something very provocative about her. Her smooth skin shone with the delicate translucency sometimes found with red hair. Its tantalizing purity was only accentuated by a dusting of freckles over her nose, which faded away near the fine curl of her nostril. Her lashes were several shades darker than her hair, a deep auburn sweep against her pale cheeks.
But how innocent were those clear gray eyes?
Her response to his kiss was mystifying, for though it had seemed reluctant, she had not really been shocked. So how could her father be a respectable country gentleman, as she had claimed? God, he hoped nothing in his manner had betrayed how passionately he had wanted to undo all those tiny buttons and the ties of the linen shift underneath, nor how dismayed he was at the depth of his desire.
Yet she was Lady Emilia Shay’s great-niece. And he was as good as betrothed to the Incomparable Melton. This time his duty was painfully clear.
An open letter lay under her hand. He reached to move it away and saw the first few lines. We have a steady need for employees skilled in the classics, and for translations from the Latin and Greek. If you would kindly apply in person at our offices in Hunting Lane . . .
Good God! Michael shook the page open. It was from Bromley and Finch, well-known London publishers. The superscription at the top of the page told him exactly what he expected. They thought she was a man. The letter was addressed to J. Whinburn, Esq. Such staid old businessmen would never hire a young lady, however talented in the ancient languages.
What would have happened to her after they had refused her? She’d have been lucky to find a protector instead of a brothel.
Thoughtfully he set the paper aside and moved her gently by her good shoulder. The gray eyes opened.
“It is time to remove you to more comfortable quarters, Miss Whinburn. Everyone is safely abed.”
Jessica struggled awake and sat up. She felt a little faint and dizzy, but he should not know it.
“I am to follow meekly to the lion’s den? I’m afraid I cannot, Lord Deyncourt,” she said. “You see, in addition to being shot, I also damaged my ankle. I believe it twisted as I fell from the donkey cart.”
He knelt and took her foot in his hand, carefully feeling the bones.
“Not broken, I think. Yet you cannot walk on it. Why didn’t you mention this before?”
Because if I had, you would have touched me as you have just done, she thought.
But what she said was, “Because it is, damnably, the thing that makes it impossible for me to leave.”
“Then you must stay longer at Tresham.”
“And then what?”
“I will send you to your aunt.”
“I do not wish to go to my aunt.”
Lord Deyncourt stood. “Nevertheless you will do so. It is out of the question for you to arrive in London alone. I can assure you that Lady Emilia Shay will greet you with open arms and have you married off within two months.”
“I cannot—” she began in something close to panic, but then she stopped and looked down. “Lord Steal may be in your power, but you do not have the right to order my future.”
She was expecting another argument, but instead he said quietly, “Then I appeal to your chivalry, Miss Whinburn. Do you wish to see me hanged with you as an accessory who deceived Lord Clarence and tried to rob him of his rightful revenge?”
Without allowing her to answer, he swung her into his arms.
He carried her in silence through endless hallways and up several flights of stairs. Great marble columns soared away into the vastness of arched ceilings. Paintings of bewigged Steal ancestors in gilt frames crowded the walls and gazed at each other across paneled alcoves. Staircases swept in gracious curves of polished granite to innumerable other rooms and halls. Tresham was obviously a home of great age and matching magnificence.
Jessica barely noticed the grandeur. Her senses were filled with the disturbing presence of the Earl of Deyncourt. She had been forced to put her arms about his neck and lay her head against his shoulder. The sensation brought as much pain as pleasure.
A massive oak door opened. With a blank face Dover bowed them into his master’s bedroom, then left them together without a word.
Michael set her in a high-backed chair beside a roaring fire. In front of the hearth stood a bronze bathtub filled with steaming water. A stack of fluffy white towels hung on a rack beside it.
“Now, Miss Whinburn,” he said. “You will remove your regrettably bloodstained dress so that I may burn it, and perhaps you would like a bath. Here is my cane to lean on. You can manage with your sore ankle?”
He pulled a screen around the tub, and with a courtly bow, left her.
The hot water was the most inviting thing Jessica had seen in several days. Half an hour later, she was done. She had attempted to keep the bandage dry, but without success. In dismay she noticed blood beginning to seep once more through the cloth. She dried herself by the fire and looked around for something to put on.
There was only one available choice: a gentleman’s silk nightshirt and dressing gown draped over the screen. They smelt delightfully of fresh air and sunshine. She shrugged into the nightshirt, which not surprisingly was far too big for her, and wrappe
d the dressing gown around her body. Using the cane, she limped past the screen into the room. Deyncourt sat in an upholstered chair, his long legs crossed at the knee, casually perusing a newspaper. At her movement he looked up.
“You are about to bleed all over my dressing gown?” He rose and strode over to her. Setting the screen aside, he gestured her into a chair by the fire. “Like Pelops, perhaps you need a new shoulder of ivory.”
Jessica pulled up the sleeve of the nightshirt and allowed him to unwrap and replace the bandage. She was painfully aware that she was naked except for a thin garment of silk, in a gentleman’s bedchamber, with her disgraceful carrot hair, still damp, curling in reckless abandon about her head. With a man who had already stolen a most seductive kiss—a man who had offered to make her his mistress.
He knelt and with a strip of linen that she suspected had once been a cravat, bound up her sprained ankle. Pray that he didn’t offer her any more empty gallantry! Jessica Whinburn had no interest in charming rakes. In fact, she had no interest in men, at all.
Though not because she didn’t find him attractive.
His lips were only inches away. It was only too tempting to lean forward to touch them with her own. What would it be like to kiss him again? No doubt many ladies had already found out. No doubt, for a while at least, she wouldn’t have to worry about making a living.
But he set down her foot as if it burned him.
“Now, it is extremely late and I have to cope with Judge Clarence in the morning. Until then!”
He bowed and strode across to the dressing room door.
It closed behind him with a thud. With the help of the cane, Jessica limped to the fresh, sweet-smelling bed and curled up beneath the covers. He had made no bones about his prowess with the female sex. What would he think of her, had he known her reaction to his casual flirtation?
Of course, now that he knew that Lady Emilia was her great-aunt, he wouldn’t try to find out. He would assume a concern for convention and propriety.
Alas, Jessica Whinburn knew nothing of either. Yet she dismissed the memory of those fascinating lips, and fell into an exhausted sleep.
The thick walls and heavy oak door prevented her from hearing the footsteps of the earl as he paced in the small dressing room.
Eventually he stopped and eyed the empty bed. Then he tugged off his jacket and cravat, and ran a hand through his hair. The movement drew his attention to his reflection in the mirror. With distaste Michael looked at the familiar features for a moment—the straight nose and dark brows, the sun-touched hair falling over his forehead.
The words he had said to his manservant echoed in his ears: Do you think I am sold and contracted to the devil?
Very deliberately he pulled off the rest of his clothing and flung himself onto the narrow cot. The sleep of Michael Dechardon Grey, eighth Earl of Deyncourt, was a great deal more troubled that night than that of his unexpected guest.
* * *
Jessica sat up in the bed and looked around the chamber. A beam of sunlight crept in between the curtains. Someone had been in while she slept, built up the fire, and swept and tidied the room. Her meager possessions had been placed on a table. Her dresses had been sponged and pressed and hung from the front of the large wardrobe. It must all have been done by Dover.
Thoughtfully, she shrugged into the dressing gown, then winced at the movement. A memory of gentle fingers binding her hurts came flooding back. She could not stay here with Lord Deyncourt, and she would not be sent to Lady Emilia Shay to be offered on the Marriage Mart.
She climbed out of bed and limped to the window. A thaw had set in during the night. The snow was gone. The landscape dripped water.
The door opened and Dover appeared carrying a tray. She breathed in the scent of hot rolls, with butter and eggs, mingled with that of a jug of steaming hot chocolate. The manservant set the meal on a small table.
“Where is his lordship this morning, Dover?” Jessica asked as she buttered a crusty roll.
“Lord Deyncourt is about to greet Lord Clarence in the drawing room, ma’am.”
Jessica gave one glance at Dover’s impassive face.
“Then for all our sake’s, I hope he has his wits about him,” she said.
There was the slightest lift of the manservant’s eyebrows as he bowed and began to leave the room.
“But of course, ma’am. I have never known his lordship lacking in wits.”
* * *
“Oh, heaven save us! We shall all be murdered in our beds!” The frantic voice of Lady Steal echoed into the hallway.
“Hush, Mama,” Peter said. With a flourish of invention he went on, “We are quite safe. The fellow slipped away, even though he was horridly wounded. Lord Deyncourt shot him, you know.”
Thus as Michael appeared in the doorway, he found disaster awaiting him in the drawing room, for Lord Clarence was already there with Lady Steal and her son, and hysteria ran loose in Tresham.
Lady Steal turned to Michael and threw up her hands.
“Deyncourt! Lord Clarence tells me you brought a desperate villain back to Tresham last night. A highwayman! How could you?”
With a small scream she collapsed onto the drawing room sofa. The gentlemen looked at her with varied expressions of dismay.
“But the man escaped,” Peter insisted.
Several voices spoke at once.
“Escaped, you say, sir?” Lord Clarence turned purple. “He won’t get far, wounded.”
“Escaped!” Lady Steal screamed again. “Oh, then he may be hiding about the premises. The house and grounds must be searched. I insist upon it. I insist. Everywhere must be turned out. You have your men with you, Lord Clarence?”
“I have more than men,” the judge replied with triumph. “I have dogs.”
Within minutes the Watch was scouring the house and grounds, accompanied by several of the local yeomanry who had tagged along to enjoy the sight of a felon being dragged away to his hanging.
With such a wonderful excuse offered for a holiday from their labors, the household staff joined in the search, and the stable boys ran whooping and laughing after Lord Clarence’s hounds as they cast about for a scent in the muddy yard.
Lord Clarence attached himself instantly to Michael and plied him with suspicious questions. Where had the fellow been held? How could he possibly have escaped? How could he run far when he was so badly wounded?
It was impossible to get away, impossible to get a message to Dover or to Jessica. Michael steadily reinforced in the judge’s mind that they were looking for a boy. There was nothing else he could do. It took only half an hour for the hue and cry to reach the second floor and begin turning out the bedrooms.
“You will not need to search any further, Lord Clarence,” Michael said with a calm that was far from his emotions as they reached one particular door in the guest wing. “This is my own room.”
“No, no, Deyncourt!” It was Lady Steal, hurrying up behind them. “Lord Clarence must look everywhere. They say the dogs have found nothing outside.”
“The dogs cannot possibly find a scent with half the county trampling about in the mud,” Michael said with an air of regret, but secretly he thanked God for it. “We must assume that the fellow had accomplices who helped him get away.”
Yet any scent from the room where Jessica had first been held would lead them right here.
“But supposing the villain is hiding in the house? I have let them bring a brace of hounds inside, Deyncourt. The rogue must be captured. Oh, what a disaster this is!”
As she spoke, a man in a leather cap and gaiters ran down the hallway, two hounds coupled together coursing in front of him. The excited dogs were barely under control.
“For God’s sake, I hardly need my bedchamber trampled over by hounds!” Michael snapped. “In fact, I forbid it. They are only following my own scent, which they picked up in the storeroom where I left the miscreant.”
“But the man may have come into the
house through a window,” Lady Steal wailed. “And we have looked everywhere else. Pray, go in and search, Lord Clarence! I shall never sleep sound again, if you do not.”
In spite of his rank and a frown that made most of the servants hang back, Michael was only a guest in the house.
Lord Clarence grasped the handle and thrust the door open.
Lady Steal, Peter, and the judge tumbled into the room with the hounds, their handler, and a cluster of servants.
Michael suppressed a sudden desire to knock them all to the ground, as he tried to invent a plausible reason why Miss Jessica Whinburn should be found in his bed.
* * *
Chapter 4
She was not there. There was no sign that she had ever been there. The room lay innocent of anything feminine, and the bed was empty.
Michael watched the men and dogs rampage about for a few minutes, before they all tumbled back into the hallway.
Meanwhile, he picked up a sheet of paper that lay on the table. The hounds had snuffled ecstatically around the table legs, and one of the searchers had glanced at the paper, then set it down again.
It was written in Greek with a scattering of Latin quotations. Beside it lay a copy of the Odyssey and a little pile of other books.
“Now,” Michael said calmly, folding the paper and putting it into his pocket. Hounds, for God’s sake! There were hounds after her. “Are you satisfied? No doubt the fellow died in a ditch, and his friends have buried him. Even if he lives, he will not survive long if he is hiding outside. He is wounded, and it has begun to pour.”
There had been a steady drumming of rain for several minutes. No one but Michael had noticed it, but now Lord Clarence looked out of the window.
“This sits very ill, Deyncourt,” he said, scowling. “But there’s no sign of the villain at Tresham. I’ll scour the countryside and put a guard on every road and at every tollgate. He won’t last long in a cold rain like this.”
Valor's Reward Page 4