She clutched the blanket firmly in place with one hand and looked up at the men who towered over her. “What is the meaning of this?”
“We’ve come for the little brat.” The shorter of the men knocked her away from the door frame. “Where is he? What have you done with him, eh?”
Gemma looked at Andrew. Only Andrew. Her voice softened. “He is dead, Mr. Ross. You remember he was unwell when you left. He died of a fever. I am so sorry.”
Andrew’s blue eyes had been beaten nearly shut, but he blinked and then stumbled backward, nearly taking down the brute who kept hold of him.
“No.”
“I did not know how to reach you, or when to expect you. He’s buried in the churchyard. I can take you there when morning comes.”
“Che dice?” What did she say? This from the man who had a knife at Andrew’s ribs.
“Il ragazzo è morto. Bene. Un meno di uccidere.” The boy is dead. Good. One less to kill. Gemma shivered but pretended not to understand. She twisted her hands in the fringe of the blanket, not having to pretend distress.
“Who are these men, Mr. Ross? What do they want?”
Gemma hoped Andrew would understand what she was doing. But he was so brutalized it was impossible to tell.
“Did he not tell you what he really is, mia cara? A man who sticks his pene into anything. He sold his own son to my cousin to pass him off as a duca, to rob me of my inheritance. My birthright. I am the true duca now.” Gianni spat on the floor, far too near Gemma’s bare feet. “I heard your ‘Mr. Ross’ and the child had escaped after I sought my vengeance. That is not even his name, you know. He has deceived you as he has deceived everyone.”
Gemma feigned shock. “How horrible. But poor little Marc is dead. You have nothing to worry about now. You can leave the island today and take me with you. If he is what you say he is, there is no reason for me to stay.” She gave Andrew a contemptuous look. “I suppose you never planned to marry me, either.”
Gianni laughed and lifted a strand of hair from her shoulder. Gemma willed herself to stand still and look the young man in the face. His black eyes were soulless. “Oh, he did. He had a special license in his pocket when we took him. It was his mistake. His undoing, the trip to get it. Errore stupido. I had my spies on the lookout for him everywhere. You are Miss Bassano, yes? Lei parla l’italiano?”
Gemma did not fall for the trap. “I am Miss Peartree. Artemisia Peartree. Who is this Miss Bassano, Mr. Ross?” He’d gone to get a special license. He would have had to give her true name to the archbishop’s representative, but by calling her Artemisia in front of the duca and his minion upstairs, he had tried to protect her. Distance himself from her. The lies they were both weaving for each other made her head ache.
“The woman I love,” Andrew mumbled.
“Well!” Gemma stamped a foot. “I should have known better than to believe such a pretty face! But you’re not very pretty at the moment, Mr. Ross. Even if you are a liar, you need some bandaging. You,” she said to the man guarding Andrew, “bring Mr. Ross downstairs and tie him to a kitchen chair so you can sit down and relax. I think we can all do with some tea. Perhaps even a dram of whiskey. Our Scottish whiskey is considered very fine, Your Grace, but I imagine you’re used to wine. We haven’t any, I’m afraid. But I can make you all a sandwich and we can wait for the sunrise. You can see for yourself the boy’s grave, and then we can leave this place. And good riddance, I say. Did you come by a private boat, Your Grace? Is your crew waiting for you? We should get a message to them.” She paused for breath.
Gianni stared at her as if she were a bedlamite. And if things went bad she would be. Or dead.
“È una donna matt. È troppo stupida di sapere che siamo qui per,” Gianni mumbled to his cohort. Yes, she was a crazy woman, but knew perfectly well why they were here. “Andare di sotto, Paolo. Vuole cucinare per noi.”
She had not promised to cook, merely make sandwiches, but an idea began forming that was rather compelling. She brushed by the men in the hallway and bounded down the stairs, hoping no knives would be thrown at her back. She practically raced to the kitchen, where she shoved the poker behind the pantry door. The men were on her heels—at least Gianni was. It took a bit longer for the other fellow Paolo to get poor Andrew down the stairs.
“Signorina,” Gianni said, a bit breathless, “we have not come here for a tea party.”
Gemma dropped the blanket and smiled as coquettishly as she knew how. “Why of course you haven’t. You came to teach Andrew Ross a lesson, and I believe you have. You’ve beaten him to a pulp.” Andrew had been dragged to the kitchen bench, where he was slumped over the table. His minder stood over him, the knife shining in the lamps that Gemma was lighting as she flitted about the kitchen like a drunken butterfly, giving the men a show of her too-slender body. “But the man has just lost his only son. I think that’s punishment enough, don’t you? He won’t bother you about dukedoms in Italy or anywhere else. Look around you, sir. He has nothing. He lives in the middle of nowhere. How did you get here, anyway?”
Gemma chattered, undoing a few buttons of her nightgown. She pumped water into a kettle and filled the stovebox with coals and anything else she could bring to hand, including one of Marc’s ragdolls that had somehow wound up in the kindling. As she shut the damper, she prayed the duke had lived such a life of privilege that he’d never been near a kitchen range before and would have no idea what it was she was doing.
“Fermare per parlare! Be quiet, you foolish thing. I have come to kill my enemy, and I will kill you, too!”
“How positively banal. We are not in some melodrama, Duke. Andrew Ross is not your enemy, and you are most certainly not going to kill me. I have nothing to do with any of this. Tell me, do you want ham or chicken?” She batted her eyelashes, feeling rather desperate. Her mother would be doing this far better than she. “Help yourself to the whiskey on the sideboard. I’ll just go into the pantry to get the soup—”
“Stop!” Gianni roared. “Sit down and shut up.”
Gemma turned to him, eyes blazing. “How dare you, sir! Forgive me for taking umbrage, but I am not one of your Italian subjects to order about! You are in my country now and have no authority over me whatsoever. I’ve offered you sustenance, and perhaps something more—” She slid her hand down the worn linen of her shift in a provocative manner. “And what do I get but uncouth behavior? No wonder your cousin sought to exclude you from his line. You come into my home in the middle of the night with threats and knives. Why, you’ve probably got a gun, too!”
As she feared, Gianni pulled a pistol from his breast pocket. It was small, but lethal enough.
“How smart you are for a governess.” There was a loud popping sound behind her, and Gianni startled. “What have you done with the stove? There is smoke.”
“It is an old stove. Temperamental. There is always a little smoke in the beginning.” Billowing black clouds belied her words, and she grinned inwardly. They would not be sitting in the kitchen for long, or indeed anywhere in the house. “There is a tool in the pantry I use when it acts up like this.” She looked pointedly at the gun. “If you will permit me to get it?”
“I will go with you.”
Even better. Then she wouldn’t have to run across the kitchen floor, wielding the poker like a bayonet.
The pantry was as dark as the underside of hell. “Now, where did I put it? Perhaps you should fetch me a candle, Duke. I cannot see a thing.” Gemma could feel him hesitate behind her. “I swear I won’t hit you on the head with a crock of pickles. I’m not ready to get myself shot quite yet.”
“La sparerò comunque. Dopo che la violento.” I’ll shoot you anyway. After I rape you. Lovely. Well at least her flirtation had been successful, or he was attracted to crazy, angry women.
She positioned herself behind the door, the cool metal of the poker shooting through her blood as she raised it as high as she could. She would have just one chance to get this right. Gemma w
aited for the telltale flicker of candlelight. Her job became easier as Gianni coughed and sputtered entering the storage room.
“Where are you, you bitch?”
Well, that kind of language was unnecessary. Gemma drove the spike end down as hard as she could against the back of Gianni’s dark head. Both the candle and gun slipped from his hands as he fell to the floor. An alarming quantity of blood gushed from the wound, but he rolled on his back, his face murderous.
It had been too much to hope that she had killed him, but he screamed in pain as the fire from the fallen candle licked at the sleeve of his coat. She did not bother to stamp it out. Gemma snatched the gun up and bolted him into the pantry. The latch would not last forever—it was not meant to keep criminals incarcerated, but small boys from helping themselves to too many sweets.
Andrew had lifted his head from the table, his expression dull. Gianni’s man held the knife to his throat.
“Fare cadere il coltello o la sparero.” The man’s eyes widened at Gemma’s command of Italian. But he didn’t drop the knife.
“You will not shoot me,” the man replied in his language. Gianni howled behind the door. “Let the boss out or I will kill your lover.”
“Parla l’inglese?” He shook his head.
Gemma had to make sure. “Your mother is a whore.”
There was no response.
“You can fuck me on the kitchen table if you let him go.”
“Jesus, Artemisia.” Andrew seemed to be repressing laughter.
“Andrew, Marc is safe. Alive. Do something.”
He didn’t have to be asked twice. He twisted on the bench, the knife skimming his throat. Droplets of blood appeared instantly, but he reared and butted Paolo backward. The goon landed flat on his back, his head making a grim chunking sound. The knife skittered across the stone floor. Andrew stumbled from the bench to grab it and ground Paolo’s hand into the floor with his boot. The man did not even flinch—he was out cold.
“Now what, Artemisia? You seem to have all this well in hand.”
She went to him, touching his ruined mouth. “I love you, Andrew Rossiter.”
“I love you more.” Andrew blinked. “My God, I do.”
“It took you long enough to say it.”
“I thought I would get us both killed. You were magnificent.”
Gemma waved the gun. “Enough of that romantic drivel. What are we going to do with them?” The kitchen was filled was foul-smelling smoke, and Gianni’s screams were quite distracting.
“They planned to burn the house down after they killed us.”
“You want to burn them alive?” Gemma asked.
“Well, yes, but I can tell from your tone you don’t think it’s a good idea. Tell you what. Give me the gun and run down to the village. Tell people what happened, however you can. Wake up Mary and she can translate. We’ll get Mr. MacLaren and some of the fishermen to deposit them on one of the uninhabited islands at daybreak.”
Gemma grinned. “The one with the witches.”
“We can only hope,” Andrew said grimly. “And then we’ll be leaving. Immediately. I had booked passage for us on a ship heading for the West Indies a month from now, but we’ll go to the mainland early. Get married. Have a honeymoon.” He was pulling curtain cords from the windows and tying Paolo to a leg of the iron stove as he proposed, but Gemma didn’t mind. She opened the damper and all the windows. Let Paolo freeze to death instead.
“You still have the special license?”
“It’s in my valise. In the rented boat I had to row out here, Gianni and Paolo holding a gun to my head for days. I tried to take a detour, but the bastards had sea charts. The boat’s beached in the cove below. We had to take the long way away from the settlement. I’m pretty tired, Gemma. Sorry if I was not more active in our rescue.”
“I’m so sorry about telling you Marc was dead. It was the only thing I could think of to slow things down.”
“It was brilliant. I admit I felt a terrible despair, agony, made even worse by the thought of losing you, too. I was formulating an escape plan, but you beat me to it.”
Gemma cloaked herself and picked up a lamp. “You’ll be all right?”
“I’ll shoot him if he gets out. Did you hear that, Gianni? I won’t think twice.”
Gemma didn’t bother to translate the Italian curses. She hurried out the kitchen door, down the path to the village. Scattered stars winked above, and her cloak billowed behind her. Spring was in the air, sharp, fresh, green. It would be light in a few hours. Whatever the day held, she was ready for it.
EPILOGUE
Antigua, 1822
The French doors to the veranda were open to the evening, a gentle sea breeze rattling the palm leaves in the garden. Andrew’s stars were out in force in the purple velvet sky, perfectly visible from the bed where he lay with his wife and children. A lantern flickered fitfully on the porch, casting just enough light for his ghost story—a very mild one, safe enough to send Marc to sleep in boredom while Gemma nursed Francesca against the pile of lace-trimmed pillows. She looked down happily as Francie suckled, her rosebud mouth pumping milk like a tiny pink machine.
“I have breasts now, Andrew! Isn’t it exciting?” she whispered in the shadows.
Andrew cradled Francie’s head as she fed. It was his opinion that while Gemma was very slightly fuller, she was still his woodland nymph, tiny yet tough in every way. She had saved his life in too many ways to count.
“You’ve always had breasts, love.” And he’d always loved them, just as they were, from the moment she’d risen like a Fury from the bathtub on Batter Island.
“But not like this! I thought all normal men liked a bit more up top.”
Normal. His heart stuttered, corrected, and resumed its steady tick. “I’m not a normal man, Gemma.”
“No,” she said, “you’re not. You’re so much better.”
Andrew shut his eyes. He knew nearly perfect happiness at this moment, in bed with his wife, his newest child, Marc dozing next to him. He’d never trade one misstep of his past if it meant being robbed of this present. Present in terms of time, present in terms of the gifts that had been bestowed upon him. He’d been bent and hammered, torn and mended. With Gemma beside him, he’d been given another life. In this new incarnation, anything at all was possible.
“It’s time to put the children in their own beds, wife.”
Gemma’s gilt eyelashes flicked. “What do you have in mind, husband?”
He stroked his daughter’s cheek. She had fallen asleep at Gemma’s breast, a bubble of milk in the corner of her lips. All the work to feed herself had been exhausting. It was Andrew’s turn now, to feast not upon his wife’s breast but on every other delicious inch of her. He raised a brow. “I think you have some idea. You did tell me you were a courtesan’s daughter.”
“And an earl’s. How odd it was that Barrowdown remembered me in his will.”
Gemma would never need any pin-money from Andrew again. The unexpected bequest had only sweetened their plans for their children.
And there would be more of them, perhaps one even begotten tonight, once Andrew carted off his son to the nursery and Gemma laid Francie in her bassinet in the dressing room. Andrew’s reformation was thorough indeed.
But one thing would never change—his lust—his love—for his wife’s slender brown body beside him. And he had hours—a lifetime—to prove it to her. Have you tried the other books in Maggie’s Courtesan Court series?
Mistress by Mistake
Scandal is only the beginning ...
Charlotte Fallon let her guarded virtue fall once—and she’s paid dearly for it ever since. She swore she’d never succumb to men’s desires again. But even a village spinster’s life miles from temptation can’t save her from a sister with no shame whatsoever. Or a heart that longs for more, whatever the cost ...
Sir Michael Bayard found more than he expected in his bed when he finally joined his new mistress. He’d
fantasized about her dewy skin and luscious curves, assured her understanding that what passed between them was mere dalliance. But he didn’t expect the innocence and heat of her response in his arms. Nor her surprisingly sharp tongue once she was out of them ...
A few days of abandon cannot undo the hard-learned lessons of a lifetime. Nor can an honest passion burn away the restraints of society’s judgments. Unless, of course, one believes in nonsense like true love ...
Mistress by Midnight
First comes seduction ...
As children, Desmond Ryland, Marquess of Conover, and Laurette Vincent were inseparable. As young adults, their friendship blossomed into love. But then fate intervened, sending them down different paths. Years later, Con still can’t forget his beautiful Laurette. Now he’s determined to make her his forever. There’s just one problem. Laurette keeps refusing his marriage proposals. Throwing honor to the wind, Con decides that the only way Laurette will wed him is if he thoroughly seduces her ...
Then comes marriage ...
Laurette’s pulse still quickens every time she thinks of Con and the scorching passion they once shared. She aches to taste the pleasure Con offers her. But she knows she can’t. For so much has happened since they were last lovers. But how long can she resist the consuming desire that demands to be obeyed ... ?
Mistress by Marriage
Too late for cold feet ...
Baron Edward Christie prided himself on his reputation for even temperament and reserve. That was before he met Caroline Parker. Wedding a scandalous beauty by special license days after they met did not inspire respect for his sangfroid. Moving her to a notorious lovebirds’ nest as punishment for her flighty nature was perhaps also a blow. And of course talk has gotten out of his irresistible clandestine visits. Christie must put his wife aside—if only he can get her out of his blood first.
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