“I don’t want to talk in the morning—I want to talk now!” Caroline removed his hand from her brow with some force, ignoring the renewed slab of pain the impulsive movement caused her. “How did you know I hadn’t regained my memory?”
Pierre thought quickly, searching his agile brain for some reasonably believable explanation that would fob her off—at least until he could come up with a more convincing fib. Then he sighed, letting her know he was giving in to her much the way a weary parent does when it can stand a child’s whining no longer. “Very well, brat,” he relented, “but you won’t like it. You see, it was your eyes.”
“My eyes? What have my eyes got to do with anything? You know, this is just like you, Pierre. You’re not making any sense.”
“On the contrary, I am making sense, or at least I do when I am allowed to speak more than two words without being interrupted by a mannerless infant.”
“I’m so prodigiously sorry,” Caroline spat, not sorry in the least. “Please go on with your explanation, I shan’t interrupt.”
“Yes, you will,” Pierre contradicted, lightly flicking his index finger across the tip of her nose. “You live to interrupt me. I imagine, in fact, that it has become one of your premier pleasures in life. But as I said, it was your eyes that told me. When you opened them they were still quite blank.”
“Blank! How dare you! As if it weren’t enough to relegate me to the role of puling infant, now you must make me sound like some brainless ninny!”
Pierre tilted his head in her direction and pointed a finger at her, wordlessly reminding her that he had said she would interrupt him. “You are never stupid, Caroline,” he corrected her. “But if the blow to your head had served to shake your memory loose, you would have awakened with your eyes filled with wonder, not blank with incomprehension. It’s simple, really, with no mystery involved, no hidden secrets.”
“And if I believe you, will you promise to let me jump Obtuse over a five-bar gate once I’m recovered?” she countered, letting him know she had not swallowed his obvious bag of moonshine. “However, I will allow myself to be satisfied with your explanation—for now. What really concerns me is the way the girth came loose the moment I put Lady into a gallop. I can’t bring myself to believe that the groom was careless. He is too good at what he does.”
Pierre surprised her with a small bow. “I make you my compliments, imp, and shall convey your high praise to the groom, who has been desolated by your tumble. Even with your brains addled from your latest injury you have been able to deduce the fact that your accident was—dare I say it?—no accident.”
All thoughts of her headache and painful back faded instantly as Caroline’s attention narrowed to exclude everything except the digestion of this latest piece of information. “No accident? But how—why?”
Pierre sat on the side of the bed, taking the hand she had impulsively held out to him. “The how of it is very simple. Both sides of the leather strap had been shaved, not so much as to be noticed by the groom, but just enough so that the cinch was not a true fit and would begin to slide open once you put Lady into a gallop. It was not a matter of if you would fall, but when. The method was woefully unoriginal, not the sort of thing to inspire my awe, but it was effective just the same.”
“Whoever committed the deed would doubtless be forever cast down to learn that the great Pierre Standish was not overly impressed with his technique,” Caroline pronounced in accents of disgust. “You would have been much more prone to voice your appreciation of his efforts had I been killed, I’m sure.”
Pierre squeezed her hand, smiling. “Poor little Caroline. Forgive me, brat. A disdain for mediocrity, even in villains, is my besetting sin. In truth, I should have been inconsolable had you died.”
“You say that with the same feeling you’d give to voicing your displeasure over the second remove at dinner,” Caroline complained pettishly, tugging hard to free her hand from his grasp, but he wouldn’t let her go.
“Think, my dear hothead. Don’t let your anger with me distract you from the point,” he warned quietly.
Her hand stilled in his, and she looked at him closely, her huge eyes opened wide. “Someone’s trying to kill me, aren’t they, Pierre?”
He nodded, his gaze not leaving hers. “Either one someone, or perhaps even two someones. It’s not exactly a revelation though, is it, considering the first attempt in the gardens?”
“Then you really do believe someone wants me dead?” Although Caroline had considered just such an idea many times since the incident in the gardens, hearing it spoken out loud, and by Pierre Standish, who didn’t seem to ever believe in anything, frightened her more than she thought possible. “But who—and why?”
Pierre took a deep breath, and let it out in a weary sigh. “We progress, I see, from how and why to who and why. Unfortunately, I have precious few answers for you. All I can say for now is that you obviously are a great deal of bother to someone—besides me, that is—and that someone would very much like to have you removed from the face of the earth. It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it, to have enemies?”
“You ought to know,” Caroline groused, as his words had only served to sink her spirits lower than before. “You must have acquired dozens of them over the years with your winning ways. But that’s nothing to the point, is it? What do we do now?”
“We don’t do anything,” he told her, ignoring her sarcasm. “You are to lie here until you feel completely recovered, and then you are to go about your business just as you have been doing, taking care not to outrun your groom or wander away from the house without Victoria in tow. That is why Father sent her here, you know, crafty devil that he is. I do not consider the so volatile Mrs. Merrydell sufficient protection no matter how ferocious her demeanor, so please do not consider yourself safe if you are alone with her. Leave it to Father and me to ferret out the bogeyman responsible for your ‘accidents.’”
Caroline was livid. “Do you really believe I can know what I know now and just stand back and put my safety into your hands, without lifting a finger to save myself? Well, I refuse to be treated as if I were incapable of defending myself. You must be out of your mind, Pierre Standish! How can you possible expect me to—oh!”
Pierre’s mouth swooped down on hers, effectively shutting off her tirade before, his lips still on hers, he lowered her gently onto the pillows by her shoulders, being careful not to touch her tender back before raising his hands to cup either side of her face. His thumbs worked gently against her soft cheeks, molding her to him and wordlessly urging her mouth to open beneath his so that he could deepen the kiss.
Against her will, if indeed she’d had any will left to summon, Caroline felt her arms sliding up around Pierre’s neck and gloried in the warm solidness of him as his firm body pressed lightly against her tingling breasts. His tongue was foreign to her, but a welcome stranger, introducing itself by way of quick, teasing thrusts, its slightly raspy texture stroking the roof of her mouth. She reached out to meet it, the touch of warm, wet flesh against warm, wet flesh causing an extraordinary explosion deep inside her.
Pierre felt her daring exploration and shuddered convulsively, longing to crush her completely against him in order to convince himself that she was truly all right.
Only that afternoon he had thought he’d lost her, had thought that his arrogant manipulations had failed to protect her. The possibility of losing Caroline had nearly driven him mad as he had ridden out on Obtuse, not caring for the animal’s safety as he urged the stallion to fly over the ground to where Caroline lay.
If there had been any questions, any lingering doubts in his mind as to exactly how he felt toward his Good Deed, they had all been laid to rest during the terrible ride.
He loved her. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know when; he only knew that she had come into his life unwanted, unlooked for, and had become the most important, the most valuable part of it. And he’d die before he let anyone hurt her.
E
ven himself.
This last thought brought Pierre back to a realization of what he was doing. He pulled away from her slowly, regretfully, looking deeply into her tear-washed eyes before closing his own for a sanity-restoring moment, shaking his head. He had said too much, frightening her, and now his ill-timed passion had frightened her even more.
“Pierre?” Caroline’s voice was very small, very confused.
He smiled, deliberately lifting his left eyebrow in the mocking way she had told him infuriated her. “Sorry, darling. I am a brute, but it’s the only way I’ve ever known to silence a beautiful female when she’s talking too much. I’ll leave you now so that you can get some well-earned rest. Victoria will be tippy-toeing in here as early as is decent tomorrow morning, to plague you with a million or more questions of her own.”
Caroline’s tears spilled over to run down her pale cheeks, but he ignored them, turning for the door.
“But—but—” she began, reaching out to him. Suddenly, reason rushed back into her brain and she flushed with shame. “I detest you, Pierre Standish,” she called after his departing back, knowing no other response except anger. “Do you hear me? I detest you!”
He didn’t answer.
Once Susan had satisfied herself that her charge was settled comfortably for the night, and only moments before Caroline was pushed to the point of screaming by the maid’s affectionate fussing, she was left to turn her head into her pillow and quietly cry herself to sleep while, downstairs, in the privacy of his father’s study, Pierre drank his brandy slowly, far into the dark hours of the night.
THE SOUND OF THE SLAP, the sharp sting of flesh connecting with flesh, echoed through the small clearing, scattering a pair of birds who had been resting in the branches of a nearby tree.
“Ouch!” Ursley Merrydell exclaimed in a high, whining voice, his hand flying to his cheek to rub the tingling skin. “I knew you were going to do that, from the minute I found out that the stupid girl didn’t die. You always do that. Why do you always do that?”
His mother, who was feeling only slightly mollified by her physical display of temper, shot back angrily, “Why do I always do that, Ursley? It’s a wonder you should ask. I always do that because you always fail—that’s why. I beg one simple favor of you, one simple little murder, but do you do it? No, you don’t. ‘As simple as falling off a horse,’ that’s what you said. Only it wasn’t so simple, was it?” She slapped him again, on the shoulder, just for good measure. “I had such high hopes for you, Ursley, I really did. But you’re just like your father. He could never get the straight of anything, either.”
Panic invaded Ursley’s stringy body, turning his bony knees to water. He didn’t want to be compared to his father. His father had failed once too often—and his father had been eliminated. “No, Mother, don’t say that!” he protested on a sob, dropping to his knees at her feet. “Didn’t I do just as you said at the cobbler’s?”
Amity softened, for Ursley was her son, and she loved him. Really she did—at least most of the time. It was just at times like these, when she was on the hunt, that she tended to conveniently misplace her motherly instincts.
She bent down to pat his cheek affectionately, ignoring his involuntary wince. “Of course you did, my darling boy. You were just wonderful at the cobbler’s. I was very proud of you. It’s just that I had so hoped she would die when the saddle slipped. It was just an unfortunate accident; you couldn’t have known she’d be able to throw herself clear of the horse’s hooves, now could you?”
“No, Mama,” Ursley agreed hurriedly, clambering to his feet, knowing from experience that the worst was over and they would be able to talk now. “I couldn’t know that. But—but what do we do now? I won’t be able to get near the stables again. Standish is sure to post guards.”
But Amity wasn’t listening. She was still suffering from one of her increasingly rare bouts of motherly affection. She inspected her son for signs of illness, turning his face this way and that as she held his cheeks painfully tight between thumb and forefinger. “Are you sleeping well, my dear boy? You look a mite pulled. You aren’t letting that cheeky serving wench have her wicked way with you, are you, while Mama’s not close by to watch out for you? You could catch something, you know, and a whopping dose of the pox wouldn’t do either one of us a dram’s worth of good.”
Ursley hid his eyes, knowing they would reveal the fact that the ungrateful wench at the inn was still turning down his every offer. She’d even poured an entire pitcher of ale over his head the last time he had tried to win her favor with a well-placed pinch. “I wouldn’t have anything to do with the slut, Mama. I’m a good boy. You know that. Besides, we’re here on business.”
They were in the middle of a piece of business, and Ursley’s reminder brought Amity’s mind back to the matter at hand. She released his face, leaving Ursley to gratefully massage his cheeks, and began to pace as she thought out loud. “Standish is getting suspicious. He’d have to be dumb as a redbrick not to be, I suppose, but I don’t much like the way he’s been looking at me. And he makes sure I’m never alone with her. I’m beginning to have a bad feeling about this. We have to move fast or lose everything.”
Ursley nodded, happy to step in and take charge now that his mother had admitted she had been feeling some qualms of her own. “You’ll have to do it yourself,” he said, beginning to pace in step with her. “Slip something nasty into her tea, or something. We can’t count on her not remembering you sooner or later and setting up a hollering that will bring Pierre Standish on the double. Then there’ll be the very devil to pay, and I won’t be able to help you.”
Amity turned on her son, cold fury in her eyes. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? You’d be on a coach heading away from here just as fast as you could. You’d go to America, wouldn’t you? Oh yes, I’ve seen your face when you talk about those golden streets over there. Well, let me tell you a thing or two, my fine young man. If I go to prison I won’t go alone. You’ll be right there beside me!”
Ursley frowned, for this was a sobering thought indeed. He was convinced he would not like prison above half, and a ride to prison shared with his free-swinging mother could prove to be an extremely painful journey. “Nothing will go wrong,” he assured her as he tried to reassure himself. “The third time’s the charm, as they say. You’ll find the perfect thing to do and we’ll be on our way to wealth and a life of ease. Just you wait, Mama. We’ll have the best of everything, exactly like you always promised. It’ll be grand!”
Amity Merrydell smiled and allowed herself to be mollified. Her son was right. She was forgetting that he was his father’s son, a born bungler. It was her turn now. The girl was as good as below ground.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“EN VOILA UNE AFFAIRE!”
“Jaw bangin’ ter yerself in that froggie croak agin, are yer?” Jeremy commented, looking up from the boot he had been polishing with more energy than effect as the valet stormed into the workroom, slamming the door shut behind him in a show of temper. “Yer always gripin’ ’bout somethin’, like some ol’ biddy leanin’ over a washtub. Now wot’s stickin’ in yer craw?”
“I have not the cat in my throat,” Duvall denied angrily, abruptly grabbing his master’s favorite riding boot from the young boy’s hands and taking up a clean polishing rag, intent on demonstrating the correct way to put a mirror finish on the costly leather. “And do not dare to speak to me so of my language, mouffette. Your language, it is of la poubelle, the garbage.”
Jeremy eyed the valet narrowly, knowing he wanted to learn how to be a gentlman’s gentleman, yet hating the fact that his beloved guv’nor had seen fit to place him under Duvall’s tutelage. His short sojourn as a fledgling groom having come to a bad end—a circumstance having much to do with a certain, truly unlikable groom (who had endeavored to administer his instructions to the former chimney sweep with the toe of his boot) having discovered a prodigious amount of ripe manure in his cot—Jeremy knew his master�
��s hopes were aimed a smidgeon too high, but he longed to make the man proud of him anyway.
Jeremy’s loyalty to Pierre, always strong, had increased tenfold with the rousting of Hawkins the sweep, and the thought of failing his guv’nor again distressed him mightily; so much so that he now said, “Oi’m sorry, Frenchie, truly Oi am. Oi’ll do better, ’onest Oi will.”
“It is not of your miserable self that I speak,” Duvall informed him, shoving the shined boot under Jeremy’s nose and turning it this way and that, so that the leather would gleam in the sunlight. “It is this affair of the nameless lady, this Miss Addams. She will be the death of my master. I feel it here,”—he beat the polishing rag against his breast for emphasis—“in my heart.”
Jeremy, who had heard of Caroline’s fall from a horse the day before, seemed to be of the opinion that, if the lady persisted in tumbling onto her head it would be she who would be carried to bed on six men’s shoulders, not his beloved guv’nor. He said as much to Duvall, who immediately cuffed him across the top of his short, golden fuzz.
“Ow! Yer villain!” the lad exclaimed, rubbing his head. “Wot yer do that fer? Yer always after m’ ’ead, ain’t yer, some ways or otter?”
“I only hope for to knock some sense into it,” Duvall answered reasonably, pulling a short stool beside the boy and squatting down on it so that he could see Jeremy as well as talk to him. “I don’t mean the master will die, you fool. And it won’t be the girl who will perish, so much the pity. Didn’t you listen with your fat cabbage ears when the master told us to watch with both eyes the Merrydell woman who is trying to harm her? No, it is not an end of life of which I speak. It is my master’s heart I worry for.”
Jeremy’s head snapped up, and he looked straight at the valet, grinning wickedly. “Billin’ an’ cooin’ are they? Yer’d better watch yer steps, Frenchie, or she’ll toss yer out on yer ear when she snags ’im. Guv’nor won’t take kindly ter yer iffen yer bad-mouth ’is missus. Me, Oi like ’er fine, an’ guv’nor knows it. Oi’m safe, Oi am. Yer won’t find Jeremy ’Olloway back in Piccadilly!”
The anonymous Miss Addams Page 14