Gillie saw at once that rage had caused her to reveal too much. Worse, now that she thought about it, even she had heard talk of the wicked baron. He’d fought duels before, was even rumored to have killed his man once and only been saved from the law by a lot of judicious string pulling. Under no circumstances could she let Bernard near such a predator.
“No, no, it wasn’t that bad,” she said hastily. “I was exaggerating from sheer temper. I could just see that was where it would lead, so of course I was angry at such an insult. But there, he is a stranger in Blackhaven and clearly misunderstood many things…Leave it to me, Bernie. I shall apologize and make it right. You mustn’t even let on that I’ve told you anything about this quarrel. Promise me.”
*
Lord Wickenden, deep in thought, had no sooner followed Danny, the burly watchman – or whatever he was – around the side of the house before the fellow came at him in the darkness. From pure instinct, perhaps leavened with a little luck, Wickenden threw up his guard in time to ward off two hefty blows that would almost certainly have felled him if they’d reached their mark. Since the man’s balance was all wrong, he stumbled and Wickenden was able to seize him in an arm lock.
“Damn it, you’re quick for a toff,” Danny panted. “Doesn’t mean this is finished!”
“There, I agree with you.”
“You’ve no cause to come here upsetting Miss Gillie!”
Wickenden considered. On the whole, he tended to agree, although he was well aware his judgement had been clouded by contraband French brandy and a pair of laughing hazel eyes.
“I’ve had a few,” he admitted, “so I’ll make a deal with you. Once I’ve had a chance to think about this, if I decide I was in the wrong, I’ll come back and let you hit me for free.”
Danny stopped struggling.
“In the meantime, I’ll go on my way and you go on yours,” Wickenden suggested.
Danny was really in no position to refuse. “All right,” he said grudgingly. “But you’re a bloody odd gentleman.”
“You’re a bloody odd servant.”
“I do what’s required,” Danny said with dignity, rolling his shoulders and straightening his lapels as Wickenden released him.
“Did she give you some signal to beat me?” Wickenden asked curiously.
Danny laughed with utter scorn. “Miss Gillie? God, no, it would never enter her head, let alone her soft heart. I decided that was required!”
“Hmm,” Wickenden said thoughtfully and strolled down the path and out of the front gate.
Blackhaven was not a large town, and Wickenden did not find himself spoiled for choices of entertainment. Braithwaite had heard tell of some new, extraordinary bordello, whose existence so close to his ancestral home seemed to amuse him. They’d been on their way there when, on impulse, Wickenden had suggested stopping first at “the Muirs’”. Although Braithwaite had looked slightly surprised that Wickenden had heard of the place, he’d made no demur. And indeed, it had proved to be some kind of genteel if illegal gambling den.
Miss Muir herself, however, was not at all what he’d expected. In fact, he rather wished he hadn’t got involved. He should have followed his original inclinations and stayed away from Lillian’s affairs. In fact, he should have stayed in London. Although it was true he’d found life there confoundedly boring, too. And uncomfortable.
A brisk five minutes’ walk took him to a tavern where he sat down and ordered more brandy.
Around half an hour later, Braithwaite walked in. The locals all tugged their forelocks, although not terribly obsequiously, and the earl exchanged a few words with a couple of them in passing before throwing himself down at the rickety table opposite Wickenden and placing two tall beaver hats between them.
“What do you need two for?” Wickenden asked.
“One of them’s yours, idiot. You left it at the Muirs’.”
“So I did.” He called peremptorily for another glass before sweeping the hat onto the seat beside him and fixing his friend with a frown. “It’s not a gaming hell, is it?”
Braithwaite blinked. “Good God, no. Who told you it was? They just do card parties rather well.”
“No, there’s more to it than that,” Wickenden insisted. “But she—Miss Muir—is no game girl. Nor even a scheming courtesan.”
Braithwaite’s jaw dropped. “Game girl? Courtesan? No! She’s the respectable daughter of an army officer. He died on the Peninsula a few months back. She lives in her family home with her brother and a scatterbrained but quite unexceptionable spinster aunt. Plus, she’s something of a friend of mine. She shared the schoolroom with my sisters for a few years.”
“Damn,” Wickenden said without heat. “I shall have to get a black eye.”
“What?”
Wickenden sighed. “Nothing. I’m afraid I insulted your friend.” And be damned to Lillian Grantham who’d involved him in this. He was fairly sure it had been Lilian’s son who’d greeted Gillie as soon as they’d re-entered the gaming salon. In which case, it was clearly their first meeting in months and any affection of longstanding. Hardly the whirlwind seduction of a wicked temptress digging her claws into a man for his money. On the contrary, Wickenden had detected nothing terribly lover-like in their greetings at all. Especially not in hers, although sticklers might fault her friendliness and somewhat free manners. Wickenden rather liked them.
Braithwaite eyed him uneasily while he sloshed brandy into the glass which had been plonked onto the table in front of the earl. “You didn’t…hurt her, did you?” he said uneasily.
Wickenden raised his annoyed left eyebrow which had been known to shatter lesser men. “What do you take me for?” A killer, a man of pointless violence, he thought savagely. It seemed to be what he’d become. Irritably, he seized his glass and threw off the self-loathing, which served no purpose to anyone. “Though I do owe her an apology,” he admitted.
“Well, she’ll be at my mother’s wretched ball tomorrow night, so do so then. She won’t really black your eye, you know. She’s a very forgiving soul is Gillie. Has to be, really. She’s quite used to young officers misbehaving in their cups.”
Wickenden stared at him, then uttered a short laugh and threw back the rest of his brandy. “That does not,” he said standing up, “make me feel better. Come on, show me the rest of this benighted town of yours.”
*
Before midday the following morning, Lord Wickenden knocked on the door of the Muirs’ house. He’d already dashed off a hasty missive to Lillian, informing her that the girl concerned was not of the class or style she’d imagined and, that so far as he could tell, she’d no more intention of marrying Kit than her own brother. For the sake of the softer feelings he’d once harbored for Lillian, he added that he would keep an eye on things for as long as he stayed in Cumbria. Leaving the letter with others to be posted from the castle, he cleared his slightly heavy head with a brisk walk into Blackhaven.
Although small by the standards of his own Grosvenor Square mansion in London, the Muirs’ house was a decent, detached property, well-spaced from its neighbors along the crescent. Blackhaven was growing, burgeoning with new, large houses on the outskirts, thanks, he’d been told, to the discovery of a local spring’s almost miraculous health benefits. But this house was long established, at least fifty or so years old. He suspected it had been here longer than the 44th Regiment’s barracks.
The front door swung open and a burly man of some sixty winters stood there, scowling at him. Wickenden knew him at once by his shape, if not by his gnarled old face, which had been veiled in darkness before. From his blank expression, Danny didn’t recognize him.
Wickenden sighed in a resigned kind of way, took off his hat, and pointed to his jaw.
Danny’s eyes widened at once. “You!” He drew back his arm, his large hand fisted at the business end. Then he paused and slowly lowered it. “Not the same when you let me. Doesn’t feel right. You’re still barred, though.”
&nb
sp; “Who is it, Danny?” came a slightly breathless voice that Wickenden recognized at once. In spite of himself, his heart lifted.
“Gent we ejected last night,” Danny replied, without removing his gaze from Wickenden. I’ve told him he’s still—”
“No!” There came a distant thud and a patter of rushing footsteps before, much to Wickenden’s amusement, the closing door was wrenched from Danny’s grip and the girl from last night stared at him in something very like alarm.
She was still mouthwateringly lovely in the daylight. He’d gazed at her a lot last night, at first trying to work out exactly what kind of a woman she was, and then what it was about her appearance that moved him. For her dress had been both drab and unfashionable, her hair should have been better cut, and there was no modish languor in her posture. Provincial beauties and ingenues didn’t normally interest him, and yet something about this girl’s natural vivacity and friendliness had made her shine. It didn’t hurt that she had fine, fair skin and sparklingly bright hazel eyes that were almost green. Or that her auburn hair shone with more health than artifice. He wouldn’t have been remotely surprised if Kit Grantham had succumbed to her undoubted charms.
This morning, her hair was escaping its pins and she wore a drab day gown, but she was no less beautiful, the hectic flush in her pale cheeks just as adorable as when he’d made her blush last night.
But that was a route best avoided for both their sakes.
He bowed and curtly presented his card. “I won’t stay or even speak. Good morning.”
“No, no, wait!” she uttered in what sounded like panicked accents. She snatched the card without looking at it. “Please, wait. Won’t you come in?”
Behind her, Danny scowled and further behind him, someone groaned in pain. Danny immediately looked furtive.
“Danny, get Bernard to help you take Jack to his room,” Miss Muir said hastily, and to Wickenden. “One of our servants has been taken ill. Please, come up to the parlor.”
Since she turned and tripped across the hall to the staircase, Wickenden shrugged in Danny’s direction and followed her. He couldn’t help one curious glance at the sick servant who lay on a makeshift stretcher covered in blankets from neck to toe. He seemed to have been abandoned at the top of the basement steps.
The basement again. A lot seemed to go on in that cellar and he certainly hadn’t forgotten Miss Muir’s almost panicked efforts to keep him out of it.
Wickenden stopped. If the brother had been up and abroad, or if, perhaps, they’d trusted any other of the servants, Miss Muir would not have been carrying stretchers. “Where do you want him?” he asked.
Miss Muir paused at the foot of the main staircase, one hand on the bannister. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your—er—sick servant.”
“Um…oh no, I don’t think—”
“First attic room,” Danny said, bending to one end of the stretcher. Clearly, he hadn’t approved of his mistress carrying the stretcher in the first place. “Lead the way, Miss.”
Although she made no further objection but merely led the way up two flights of stairs to the servant’s quarters, it seemed to Wickenden that she was distressed. It was in the tense rigidity of her shoulders and the stiffness of her movements as she climbed.
The patient himself looked terribly pale as Wickenden helped lift him from the stretcher onto the newly made bed indicated. The bedchamber, small and bare, was devoid of any possessions, even a comb. This was not, clearly, the sick man’s usual resting place. He was no more a servant here than Wickenden.
“What’s wrong with him?” Wickenden asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Danny said shortly. “Thanks for your help. Don’t think any more about him.”
“Guaranteed to whet one’s curiosity,” Wickenden murmured as he followed Miss Muir back downstairs. “Is he the reason you spent so much of yesterday evening in the basement?”
She laughed without looking at him, the first unnatural sound he’d heard her make. “That was about the brandy,” she said lightly. “And breakages.”
It may have been. Partly. Had they been on the south coast rather on the north west, Wickenden would have suspected dealings with smugglers. In fact, with a little less certainty, he still did.
On the first floor landing, Gillie opened a door into a bright, sunny parlor, where a middle-aged lady in spectacles sat knitting.
“My aunt, Miss Muir,” the girl murmured, then raising her voice, “Aunt Margaret, Lord Wickenden is here.”
“How lovely,” beamed the aunt. “Ring for tea, Gillie.”
Wickenden chose the sofa as the sturdiest looking piece of furniture, leaving the elegant armchair for the younger Miss Muir. She, however, surprised him by pulling the bell and then promptly seating herself on the sofa beside him.
“My aunt is a little deaf,” Miss Muir said, a shade nervously. “She won’t hear us…I have to apologize,” she said in a rush.
He raised both his brows. “For your aunt being deaf?”
“For last night,” she blurted.
He couldn’t prevent the faint frown twitching at his brow. He eased further back into the sofa, resting his arm along its back as he tuned to face her. He could easily lift his fingers and touch her shoulder, her elegant neck where delicate blue veins just showed beneath the pallor of her skin. “Last night?” he prompted.
She drew in her breath. “I am not used to the ways of fashionable society,” she said in a rush. “I should not have been so angry that you were misled by my manners.” She was no longer looking at him but at her hands clasped tightly together in her lap. “I was unforgivably rude to you and, I suspect, so was Danny. I apologize for both of us, and of course you are welcome to join us on Friday and any other evening during your stay at Braithwaite Castle.”
Well, she’d certainly taken him by surprise again. But this latest disappointed as well as appalled him. After a few moments of silence while he searched her averted face, she lifted her nervous gaze to his face.
“Lord Wickenden, I—”
“Of course.” Understanding struck him like a blow to the head – as it should have earlier, for this was the second time this morning that she’d used his title. And yet, he’d never told her it, and she hadn’t so much as glanced at his card. She’d asked his name last night and on impulse, that’s what he’d given her. Mostly, he’d been sure she knew exactly who he was, hence her friendliness. But she hadn’t known.
She did now. Inevitably, someone had told her, along with his infamy, deserved and otherwise.
“Interesting,” he interrupted her without apology. “I entered your home without invitation, insulted you in every conceivable way so that you were forced to have your loyal henchman throw me out, and yet you apologize to me? What on earth possesses you to do such a thing?”
He caught the faintest glimmer of still-present outrage before the fear shut it out. Well, he was probably glaring. He’d been told his unblinking gaze could cut out a person’s heart and shrivel it.
She tried to smile, though it wasn’t a good effort. He was used to social, insincere smiles, and yet for some reason, hers infuriated him.
“Manners,” she said with false brightness, “and the desire to do the right thing.”
The almost painful rage intensified, because she hadn’t been afraid of him last night. Beneath his own stupid misunderstanding, born of Lilian’s ill-informed gossip and too much excellent brandy, there had been a genuine connection between him and this girl, a genuine and rather sweet attraction that he had spoiled.
And now she had. Irrevocably.
He stood, brushing an imaginary spec from the cuff of his elegant coat. “Am I to understand you regret rejecting me last night? Believe me, I am sensible of the honor. However, that time is now past and it is I who respectfully decline. Good day, Miss Muir.”
He was savagely glad to see the appalled expressions flit across her face—at least they were honest—before he strolled fr
om the room, remembering to bow most stylishly to the old lady on his way past.
It was fortunate, perhaps that there was no sign of Danny in the hall, for he would probably have knocked him down just to relieve his inexplicable fury.
*
“That man is utterly detestable,” Gillie muttered in a voice that shook as she paced up and down the parlor.
“That man? He seemed most civil to me,” Aunt Margaret returned. “Though he didn’t stay long, did he? Who did you say he was?”
“Lord Wickenden,” Gillie replied with searing contempt.
Aunt Margaret heard that without difficulty, for her jaw dropped and her needles stilled. “What, the Lord Wickenden? The wicked baron?”
Gillie paused to blink at her. “Even you know of him?”
“I read the newspapers,” Aunt Margaret returned with a dismissive wave of one hand. “But if he’s coming here, Gillie, that is a great thing, for he will have made us fashionable already! In fact, to have called upon you… You do know he is not married and that he has a quite vulgarly large fortune?”
“I hope he loses it all in one game,” Gillie said ferociously. “Right down to his last sheep which he affects to know nothing about!”
Mattie, the young housemaid, entered with the tea tray. Gillie had to bite her tongue to prevent herself ordering the girl to take it away again since she’d have nothing in this house even remotely associated with such an odious man who would never, ever, drink tea, brandy, or anything else in her home ever again.
Instead, she merely sniffed, thanked Mattie, and picked up the letter propped against the tea pot. It was addressed to her in a beautiful, looped hand that she didn’t recognize. However, when she tore it open in the hope of distraction, she discovered that apart from her name it made no sense.
Scowling, she endeavored to concentrate by calming her fury with Lord Wickenden and realized, eventually, that she couldn’t understand the words because they were written in a foreign tongue.
“I can’t read this,” she said in frustration, thumbing through it until she came to the signature – a hugely long name she had no hope of pronouncing. “It’s in Spanish, I think. Why would someone write to me in Spanish?”
Barons, Brides, and Spies: Regency Series Starter Collection Volume Two Page 3