Clun purred.
* * *
Lady Elizabeth Damogan, only child of George Damogan, second Earl of Morefield, examined her potential savior. She noted with satisfaction that his enormous size alone would suffice to serve her purpose. He wore expensive boots, well-made clothes and a decent greatcoat. From the neck up, however, he had a wild, berserker-like look about him and an even wilder mane of black hair that badly needed a trim. But he would do. She looked at him again. Better than do. He had a ferocious scowl, which he was employing to no effect on her. She must regain her valuables and required his help.
Perhaps she ought to warn the gentleman what she intended. Then again, Elizabeth concluded, he was just a temporary henchman. He need only stand by while she retrieved what the robbers took earlier that afternoon. Given his intimidating presence, physical violence seemed most unlikely.
She heard a low rumble from the craggy, hair-strewn summit of the mountain standing before her. She fixed him with a stern look. “Are you a gentleman, sir?”
His black brows shot up and his fathomless black eyes blinked. “At times.”
“Would you help a lady in distress?”
“That would depend.” His eyes glinted in a way that should’ve given the distressed lady pause, if only she’d taken the time to consider.
“Not very chivalrous of you to quibble, sir,” she said. “It will be nothing for you to help. I require very little. If you’ll accompany me—for moral support—I can sort out a misunderstanding with a few men in the tavern.” She took a step back and to the side to regard him from that angle. “You’re an immense man, aren’t you? You needn’t say a thing to help me. In fact, I must insist you don’t.”
“I’m not—” he began.
“Off we go, then,” she said. She hooked her hand through the crook of his thick arm and, when she tried to give it a reassuring squeeze, could not help her little “Ooh!” She chose to ignore his smug chuckle.
She spun him on his feet and remarked, “Magnificent mount.”
* * *
During her inquisition, Clun held the reins of his favorite horse, a large gray with sculpted head and well-muscled chest.9 Clun draped the reins over a stall board knowing Algernon would remain there until he returned. He had ridden at a leisurely pace this last leg of his journey. Still, he wanted his horse tended, fed and watered.
“Where is the ostler, Miss—?”
“No time for that now, good sir, come along. Just inside the tavern, if you please.” She pulled him, to the degree she could exert influence on his great mass without his whole-hearted cooperation. “Must you dawdle? Come along.”
They entered The Sundew, a coaching inn where Clun hoped to have a pint of ale and a hot meal on his way to The Graces, his residence of choice among the de Sayre estates in the Welsh Marches. He ducked through the tavern door behind the harridan and allowed himself to be tugged to a table where four unkempt ruffians sat laughing and drinking.
“Gentlemen,” she began, “return my money and jewelry this instant.”
“Don’t know what you’re jawin’ ‘bout woman,” the weasel-faced spokesman for the group dismissed her.
Then Clun loomed up behind her. The baron enjoyed the man’s nervous ‘heh heh.’ They all cast anxious sidelong looks at him.
Well they should.
“I’ll have my money, my gold locket and a pair of pearl earrings,” she said succinctly.
One of those earrings apparently dangled from the closest man’s earlobe. She snatched it from his ear with a swift yank. The hapless thief screeched and clapped a hand to the side of his head.
“That’s one. Where’s the other? My brother,” she said, flicking a nonchalant hand over her shoulder at Clun, “is not a patient man. Return what’s mine, if you please.” She thrust out a hand and held it palm up in front of the man with the bleeding earlobe. He glanced at Clun again and reluctantly pulled the matching earring from his greasy waistcoat pocket. This, she tweaked from his dirty fingers.
“Now, miss,” Weasel Face wheedled, his eyes shifting as if to calculate their odds. “Your big brother won’t relish a tussle wi’ alla us over a few fripperies.”
Oh no?
Clun cleared his throat and crossed his muscular arms over a chest half again as wide as any of the seated thugs. Other patrons left nearby tables to gawk from a safe distance.
The thieves weren’t local, Clun concluded. Neither they nor the Valkyrie realized what the scampering patrons and nervous innkeeper did: the lord of the manor, the very devil himself, Lord Clun stood before them larger than life—or rather, every bit as large as life.
Despite Clun’s long absence, everyone in the neighborhood recognized him immediately. Moreover, they had long celebrated him as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Newspaper reports of the cavalrymen’s deadly battlefield exploits had penetrated Clun Forest, according to letters he received overseas from his steward, Tyler Rodwell. As a consequence, local men boasted of him as one of their own, and mothers threatened naughty children with punishment by his hand when he returned from war. In short, the baron was firmly established in neighborhood lore of dark, devilish beasts.
Suddenly appearing as if in a puff of brimstone to intimidate brigands would only burnish his fearsome reputation, once witnesses dispersed to share the news of his homecoming.
Everyone in the tavern fell silent and awaited the mayhem.
“My locket, if you please,” the Amazon demanded with her hand beneath Weasel Face’s crooked nose. In a moment of inspiration, she extemporized, “For years, my brother has put Frenchmen to the sword, so I wouldn’t give him an excuse to practice his skills on you lot.”
Clun admired the female’s commitment to her fiction, not that she was much mistaken. Shocked patrons whispered to one another the baron had no sister that they knew of, only the one, bastard brother.
Clun turned his head slowly. His incendiary glance hushed all discussion.
Meanwhile, the locket and chain appeared and was dropped into the hellion’s outstretched hand.
“My purse and money. Now!” She barked and slapped the table, making the thieves jump in their seats.
Each pulled coins from his pockets and Weasel Face produced her empty reticule and deposited his cut. She held it out to collect the rest. After weighing it in her hand, she nodded, never taking her gem-hard green eyes off the men. From the diminutive purse she withdrew a few pence and threw them onto the table. The sound of the rolling, spinning coins echoed in the silence of the room.
“Have a round with our compliments, gentlemen,” she said pertly, “and remain seated until we’re on our way, or you’ll regret it. My brother will pull your arms from their sockets one by one.”
With that, she turned and stalked from the room.
Clun remained a moment longer, staring as if to commit them to memory. He fixed Weasel Face with his special to-the-depths-of-Hades glare till the lout cringed. Satisfied, the baron strode after her. Outside, his stomach growled.
Just my damned luck.
Clun had been looking forward to eating there all day.
The hoyden capered at his side as they walked to the stable. The baron was hungry, tired and in no mood for her dancing jubilations.
She patted his back and tugged on his sleeve to claim his attention. “You were magnificent, sir. How may I thank you?”
“Who are you? Who were they? And what in blazes was that— ” he stomped to a stop and flung out a hand toward the inn, “that farce about?”
She dismissed his question with a shrug and said, “It’s a long story. Very tiresome.”
“Well, I will know the whole of it,” Clun roared at her.
She stilled and frowned at him.
“You are altogether too curious for a proper henchman,” she sniffed.
“Recall, I didn’t volunteer,” he growled, “I was conscripted. And I have every right to know where we’re going next as I’m now persona non grata at The Sun
dew. I was hoping to tuck into their steak and kidney pie tonight.”
“Oh, I can feed you a decent venison stew,” she said and looked him over again, “though I may not have enough. Come, bring—”
“Algernon.” Clun took up the horse’s reins and followed her out of the stable. She led him along a path through a hedge into a field he recognized in the fading light. They walked single file toward his Shropshire estate’s southern border.
“Algernon. That’s an old name. Derives from Norman French,” she said, “Aux Gernons means ‘with mustache.’”
He examined her at his leisure. She wore an odd homespun shift that fit quite snugly, with sleeves well above her wrists and a hem exposing a begrimed petticoat, trim ankles and incongruously fine, silk stockings with clocks. Her imperious manner and cultivated speech trumped her jumbled costume. She was a lady, albeit a passing strange one.
“Where are we going?” he asked her back. The view of her derrière swaying improved somewhat his foul mood.
“To a cottage on the estate just over there,” she said over her shoulder.
“Which estate?”
“Baron Clun’s estate, I live there.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I just said I did,” she replied and muttered, “Why must large men be so mutton-headed?”
He let her jibe pass.
“You’re not one of his tenants, are you?” With his luck, she’d be prancing and swaying in the neighborhood while he was obligated to wed an earl’s bracket-faced, ham hock-ankled daughter. For the first time in more than a year since his betrothal, the baron felt a twinge of regret for having arranged to marry a female he’d never laid eyes on.
“Do you work on the estate?” He presumed she was his half-brother Tyler Rodwell’s current ladylove. Women always made fools of themselves over the man’s buccaneer smile and blue eyes.
“No, I don’t work on the estate.”
“Why do you live there, if I may ask?”
She turned to walk backward and explained, “It’s a long story.”
He arched an eyebrow.
She swept a thick lock of hair from her face and turned to give him her back. “Well, in a nutshell, I’m in seclusion for a while. That’s all,” she said over her shoulder, still hiking away from him.
“Why?”
“That is none of your business, sir,” she replied with regal asperity.
Minx.
“For how long?”
“Until I reach my majority, I suppose.”
“And that will be—”
“When I am one-and-twenty, of course!” She also muttered to herself about the obtuseness of great, lumbering lummoxes, much to the baron’s amusement.
“And when will that be?”
“Not long, I’m twenty years old.”
“You’ll live here on your own for almost a twelve-month?”
* * *
The man’s smirk irked Elizabeth.
“I’ll manage. Hunt game. Barter at the market.” She was shocked how easily the lies tripped off her tongue. Still, if she did have to stay that long, she would find a way. She was nothing if not resourceful.
“You’re hiding in one of Lord Clun’s cottages and poaching his game for pin money?”
“It’s not poaching, really.”
“Oh no?”
“Surely, it’s not poaching, if I’m betrothed to Lord Clun.”
“Betrothed to—,” he said, stumbling to a standstill. His horse bumped his back, “Clun?”
Elizabeth kept walking and talking although her temporary henchman no longer followed at her heels. “My father arranged it with him. I’ve never met the baron, mind you. The marriage settlement’s been finalized for ages. Well, since last year or so. We’d just received word Lord Clun planned to carry me off next month. Disgusting, isn’t it?”
She finally looked over her shoulder to find empty space where a lumbering lummox should have been. She spun round to find him gaping at her.
“It’s shocking, I agree,” she cried. “I’ve been bartered away like a prize heifer with no regard for my wishes. None. I had to run away and hide until I’m safely one-and-twenty or I’m released from this ludicrous arrangement.”
“And then?” the dark-eyed giant asked as he walked slowly to join her.
“I shall do as I wish. When I reach my majority, I inherit an independence from my mother. Nothing so lavish as my dowry, but then, my dowry would’ve never been mine, would it? The inheritance will afford me self-sufficiency.”
“And what of Clun?”
“He’ll find himself another prize heifer, if he wants an heir and a spare. It needn’t be me.”
“And if he wants you?”
“How could he possibly want me in particular? We’ve never met. Never danced. Never so much as exchanged a how-do-you-do.”
“You objected to the betrothal?”
“Well, no, I didn’t, but only because it was too preposterous to take seriously. The earl told me about it, swore me to secrecy and then nothing happened. More than a year passed and we heard nothing more from the baron. So, I assumed it came to naught and my father hadn’t mentioned it, for fear I’d become ‘emotional.’ As if I’d care a jot—a spangle —if I didn’t marry a man I’d never clapped eyes on.”
“No, of course not,” he said in a bland tone, “not a whit or a fig. And now?”
“To insist that I marry him after all this time would be peevish, don’t you think? We live in an enlightened age. What gentleman with all his faculties would take a bride sight unseen?”
“Perhaps Lord Clun is old fashioned.”
“That’s not old fashioned, sir, that’s medieval. Lord Clun would have to be a hoary, desiccated old—”
“Now, how could you possibly know what he is or is not?” said the man walking behind her.
She found his testy tone a little odd but carried on as before. Heedlessly.
“Well, I do know that if he weren’t completely awful, there’d be any number of young ladies eager to be his baroness,” she retorted and only then felt badly seeing him flinch at her blunt assessment.
Outspokenness was one of her besetting sins.
Perhaps he knew Lord Clun, she reproached herself. But then if he did, it was bad manners not to say so before she committed the blunder. Besides, the whole business was infamous. She refused to feel too badly for the ancient baron or his nosy acquaintance.
* * *
“If he weren’t completely awful,” she’d said. Unfortunately, the chit had a point. Although he towered over every female except this one, Clun knew his size was the least off-putting of his attributes. His reputation and demeanor had proved inconvenient while prowling the Marriage Mart soon after returning from the continent. Granted, Clun never made much of an effort. He’d grown disgusted quickly.
Was it his fault he had heavy black brows and a propensity to glower from under them? Or to issue monosyllabic responses to silly chatter? Or to dress with monochromatic austerity, as his valet reproached him? Well, yes, most of it was. But it was certainly not his fault that his supposed ‘ferocity’ had became firmly fixed in the minds of querulous Society debutantes.
Thanks to hyperbolic newspaper tales about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, men respected him, virginal women feared him and even experienced women treated him with trepidation. Put simply, he was too big, too dark and too daunting. In bed play, merry widows wanted to be teased and seduced, not overpowered, plundered and practically left for dead. Not that he would do that. He took great pains to be a generous lover. Still, only a female with considerable intestinal fortitude could overlook the former attributes to discover the latter.
In any event, another Horseman of the Apocalypse, his well-informed friend, the Hon. George Percy,10 had suggested the Earl of Morefield might consider an arranged match for his daughter, as it was three years since her come-out, and the elderly earl wanted her settled. Thus, Clun’s betrothal to Lady Elizabeth Damogan w
as contracted sensibly, with a minimum of fuss and bother, between two rational men of sound character and ample means.
After finalizing the betrothal, he heard nary a squeak of protest from that quarter. So he assumed either Lady Elizabeth accepted her father’s arrangements stoically, or she had no notion who he was.
Ah well, it could never be that simple for a de Sayre, could it?
“And what if the baron is a beast?” Clun asked his betrothed finally.
“Why must I be the virgin sacrifice?”
Clun burst out laughing, to her evident chagrin. He threw his head back, leaned into his horse and let his deep chuckle rumble up like lava from a fault in the earth’s crust. Her disgruntled look sent him into higher-pitched howls of laughter. The baron eventually wiped his streaming eyes and calmed himself enough to say, “Perhaps Lord Clun isn’t decrepit, merely a sensitive soul who fears rejection of his suit.”
“Which would make him a spineless coward. Is he man or mush? The more we talk of him, the less I like the baron,” she concluded and marched off in the direction of an old cottage on the edge of his home wood.
“Aren’t you afraid of being recognized and handed over to the hoary, old baron?” Clun called out after her.
“Not at all. No one knows me here. I’ve only ever lived in London and Devonshire, and visited Bath a few times. I’ve never set eyes on the baron, or he me. What’s more, he isn’t expected here for some time. He planned to collect me in London, where, it so happens, I am not. And this,” she said, spreading her arms wide, “is the very last place on earth my father would ever think to look for me, don’t you think?”
She crossed her arms over her chest with a self-satisfied smirk that Clun wished to kiss off her lips.
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