by Connie Lane
Somerton’s motives might be a mystery, but there was suddenly no secret as to what his body was urging—and all too ready to accomplish. Wilhelmina’s confusion dissolved in an instant, drowned beneath a pulse-pounding wave of fear.
She flailed her arms and kicked her feet but as if he knew all along that it was a useless show at best, all Somerton did was laugh.
“Settle down!” He sidestepped a kick that would surely have damaged more than just his pride and though he looked at Wilhelmina with new respect, he did not relax his grip. He back-stepped her against the door of the church and slid one hand over her mouth to assure her silence. At the same time, he pressed himself close against her to hold her in place.
Wilhelmina’s breath caught.
Except for the Reverend Mister Smithe who had once forced a kiss on her that she had neither encouraged nor enjoyed, she had never been so near a man. Even so, she needed neither experience nor the memory of Madame’s bawdy tales to know she was in danger.
Surely it must be dangerous to breathe in the heady scent of spirits that wrapped this gentleman like a cloud. It was, no doubt, the reason her head suddenly spun like a child’s top.
It had to be dangerous to allow him to hold her so, his body fitted tight against hers. It must certainly be hindering her ability to breathe because she heard herself laboring to do just that, each of her breaths as quick and as shallow as Somerton’s.
“You have my word as a gentleman. No one’s going to hurt you, Miss Culpepper.”
Somerton’s assurance might have been far more heartening had he not hiccupped at the end of it. Wilhelmina twisted beneath his weight but he would have none of it.
“We don’t need a crowd,” he said, darting a look around. For the first time, she realized there were other men there as well; not just the one she’d bitten, who was standing nearby watching the whole thing with a foolish and quite fuddled look on his chubby face, but others as well. Three, four, five or more of them as far as she could tell. Her hopes of flight faded and for one panic-stricken moment, she gave in to her fear and screamed.
An act of defiance that might have been far more effective if Somerton’s hand wasn’t over her mouth.
“Oh, bother!” Somerton mumbled a curse. “Let’s not turn this into a commotion. “If you’ll simply come along quietly…” As if he did not expect that she would, he spun her around and one of the others tied a cloth over her eyes. A second later, Wilhelmina felt herself lifted off her feet.
“Blackguard!” Wilhelmina cried out. She flailed like a windmill and kicked for all she was worth. It mattered little. With her father booming inside the church with the voice of salvation, no one heard. Somerton carried her to the street and deposited her into a waiting closed carriage. He settled himself beside her and before she could move, a number of the others staggered in to join them.
The horses took off at a furious pace and Wilhelmina pitched forward. She might have taken a tumble if it wasn’t for Somerton’s arm around her shoulders.
“Nothing to worry about, m’dear,” he said, and she heard him uncork a bottle and take a long drink. “You’ll be right back where you belong soon enough, the Dashers will be one thousand pounds richer, and I…” He chuckled, his voice heavy with spirits and the sound of pure satisfaction. “I will finally have my revenge!”
3
Wilhelmina wasn’t sure when her fear melted into anger.
It may have been when she attempted to remove the cloth over her eyes and Somerton stopped her. Without reproach, without warning and certainly without dropping a single word of the conversation in which he was engaged, he slipped one of his hands neatly around both her wrists and held them in her lap.
Then again, her anger may have blossomed when the other gentlemen in the luxurious carriage began a boisterous recounting of their night’s adventure. They congratulated themselves mightily—though Wilhelmina could not imagine why—and passed their bottles from man to man, drinking deep and punctuating their story with much vigorous laughter and so much elaborate detail, she suspected it was already on its way to leaving the realm of truth and crossing the threshold into legend.
When the bottle went around for a third time, she realized she had had enough.
“Excuse me!” Wilhelmina did her best to sound as level-headed and polite as she knew herself to be but when her comment caused not even a ripple in the conversation, she had no choice but to raise her voice. “Excuse me! This is intolerable. You speak like gentlemen and act like rabble. Would someone like to explain…” With the cloth tied over her eyes, she could see nothing, yet she knew Somerton was seated at her side. She turned and hoped she gauged the distance right so that she was not directing her comments to thin air.
“Explain yourself, sir. Now that you’ve bagged me, so to speak, the least you can do is explain why.”
“Why?” He was closer than she thought; Somerton’s voice rumbled near her ear. “You’ll find out soon enough,” he promised. He went back to the conversation at hand.
As if she wasn’t there at all.
By the time the carriage came to a stop, Wilhelmina’s anger had solidified like a rock between her stomach and her heart. The other gentlemen piled out of the carriage and Somerton hooked one arm around her waist.
“Come on,” he said, his words as unceremonious as the way he latched on to her. He hauled her across the leather bench and lifted her into his arms. “It’s nearly time for the Blades to arrive. Let’s move, woman!”
Her feet never had the chance to touch the ground. Somerton bundled her mantle around her and heaved her over his shoulder.
Caught once again in a grip that was as unyielding as it was embarrassing, Wilhelmina screeched with frustration and tried her best to twist free, but even she recognized the plan as not only ineffective but quite possibly dangerous. The more she squirmed, the more likely it was that this drunken lout would drop her. Somerton tightened his grip, one arm around her legs, the other settled quite naturally, and quite too familiarly, on her buttocks.
Thus trussed like a Christmas goose, he carried her up what felt like a broad and endless flight of stairs, through what was certainly a large and stately doorway and from there, up yet another flight of steps. At the top, they stepped into what could have been nothing other than a room of enormous proportions. The laughter of his companions echoed all around and Somerton’s footsteps rapped against first marble floor and then, plush carpet.
Without warning, he stopped and set Wilhelmina on her feet.
It took a moment for her head to stop spinning and for her stomach to settle back where it belonged and it wasn’t until it did that she realized that she was surrounded.
When she turned from side to side, the conversation faded into a hushed and expectant hum.
One man cleared his throat. Another coughed. She heard any number of pairs of feet shift anxiously against the carpet.
Wilhelmina took a deep breath. She shook out her mantle and straightened her gown. Because no one thought to do it and this time no one tried to stop her, she reached behind her and worked at the back of the blindfold. Her fingers were stiff and she fumbled over the clumsy knots.
She worked at them the way she worked at everything else, with a single-mindedness that—had they not been so foxed as they obviously were—would have given the gentlemen assembled around her a moment’s pause.
The last of the knots loosened, finally, and Wilhelmina whipped the cloth from her eyes and threw it on the floor.
The first person she saw was Somerton.
“Sir!” Wilhelmina’s voice was as frosty as the look she shot his way. “I have had quite enough of this tom-foolery. From all of you.” She cast a gaze around the gentlemanly cavalcade and the rest of the men pulled in a collective breath of wonder. As if by design, they took a step back.
Somerton, however, kept his place. “Miss Culpepper.” He dropped her a bow that was far more showy than it was steady.
If he’d bee
n drunk when he arrived at the Church of Divine and Imperishable Justice, he was doubly drunk now.
Somerton’s hat was off and his golden hair was tousled. His neckcloth was undone. A silly smile sat upon his handsome face at a cockeyed angle. Like the perfect host he no doubt thought himself, he looked delighted to see her. He also looked thoroughly pleased with himself.
It was all too much for any woman of sound mind and able body to abide.
In the second before she cocked her arm, Wilhelmina remembered her Old Testament: Judges 15:13–16.
In the second before she closed her fingers into a fist, she thought of Samson and his righteous anger against the Philistines.
In the second before she curled her thumb over her fingers, she thought that her own cause might benefit as did God’s, from a strong arm and the jawbone of an ass.
She didn’t have a jawbone but one look at Somerton and his friends and she knew there was no shortage of asses.
Wilhelmina reached back and with all her might, punched Somerton square on the nose.
Much to her surprise, her attack was met with a general cheer of delight and a great deal of laughter. Even Somerton joined in.
“Damn me for an idiot!” Staggered but largely undamaged, he shook his head and dabbed one finger under his nose, checking for blood. There was hardly more than a trickle. When Somerton looked her up and down, the dull glaze of drunkenness was gone from his eyes, replaced with a gleam of admiration. “You are more lively than I imagined you would be, Miss Culpepper. And so willful, I think we shall dispense with your Christian name and take to calling you Willie. And damn, Willie!” He grinned. “You have a right cross worthy of Mendoza himself.” He fished a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his hand and cleaned the blood from his face. “If I were a betting man—”
The comment was met with jeers and laughter from his friends.
“If I were a betting man,” he said again, challenging his friends to dispute his assertion with one artless and completely innocent look, “I would wager that you could take on any one of us, Willie. And win inside three rounds.”
Wilhelmina could not be so easily mollified. In spite of Somerton’s seemingly good humor, she bristled like a hedgehog. “Well, what did you expect of me? You are insufferable! The least you deserve is a sound thumping. You snatch me away from my home and bring me here…” She glanced around, taking a good look at the salon for the first time. It was a grand and glorious place filled with light and crystal, damask and velvet. Not far away, tables were set with food and drink, as if for a celebration.
She pulled her gaze back to the blue and bleary eyes of the man before her. “I don’t know where I am and I don’t know who I am with. Only the good Lord knows what you intend to do next.”
Most of the crowd had the good sense to meet the comment with the silence it deserved.
Except for one man.
One fellow standing somewhere behind Wilhelmina dared to snigger at the unspoken suggestion and she turned to aim a withering look in his direction.
She needn’t have bothered.
Before the last snicker was even out of the man’s mouth, Somerton had the fellow by the throat. He dragged him across the room. There were tall French windows along the far wall and seemingly impervious to the man’s sputtered protests, Somerton yanked open one of them and pitched the fellow outside. He disappeared into the darkness, the last sign of his presence a muffled yell, a sharp screech and a whimper that had something to do with rosebushes.
Somerton brushed his hands together. “That’s the last the Dashers will ever see of Monteford,” he said, and it was apparent from the glint in his eyes and the lift of his chin that he expected no objections.
There weren’t any.
Somerton strolled back to where Wilhelmina was standing and if his steps were a little unsteady, the look in his eyes no longer was. He stationed himself directly opposite her, linked his hands behind his back, and regarded her much in the way she had seen her father eye his wayward flock.
“I have told you more than once this evening, Willie, no one is going to harm a hair on your God-fearing head. You have my word on that and though you hardly know me, I can assure you that these fine fellows will vouch for me.” He glanced around the room and his look was met with nods and smiles that were hardly more sober than his own. “We simply need your assistance.”
“My assistance?” Wilhelmina could not help herself. It was an astonishing revelation and it deserved all the skepticism she could pack into her words. “How would I ever be able to provide assistance to you? And why should I? You have treated me badly. Now you say you want me to help? How can I possibly help you?”
Now that the time had come for him to lay out his plan in all its endless glory, Nick found himself singularly tongue-tied. He knew it wasn’t the daunting size of his audience that left him dumbstruck.
It wasn’t the claret, either.
It wasn’t the hour of the night or the temperature in the room or the fact that his neckcloth was constricting either his breathing or his voice, for it was hanging so loose as to be nearly completely undone.
It was Willie Culpepper.
The realization burned through Nick as effectively as did his last drink.
He had expected Wilhelmina Culpepper to be the rigid and foreboding pasteboard figure he’d seen with her pretentious papa that afternoon. He had expected her to be cold. He had expected her to be unassuming and unemotional, sanctimonious and stiff.
He hadn’t expected a real woman at all.
Steadying himself for a better look, Nick let his gaze wander from the tips of Willie’s slippers to the top of her sensible, perfectly plain and just-this-side-of-out-of-fashion poke bonnet.
She was not a pasteboard figure. She was a real woman, and if he needed any more reminder, he need only recall the warmth of her body against his back at the church. He had expected her to be self-righteous and he wasn’t wrong there. Somehow, he knew she would be stubborn and again, he had not been disappointed. But he had never thought she would be so warm. He had not expected the well-shaped nose, either, or the perfect chin, the mouth that looked ripe enough to kiss. In spite of her drab clothing, he could see that her breasts were full and high, her hips were nicely rounded, her waist was made to be circled by a man’s arms. He had not expected such attributes. Certainly, he never expected her to have a wicked right cross.
Gingerly, Nick touched his nose.
It wasn’t that he thought his plan any less brilliant now than he’d judged it earlier. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to take a well-earned one thousand from the Blades. And, damn it, it wasn’t as if he were reluctant to show the world that he could pull off a caper as easily as he could be made the butt end of one.
It was simply that it was difficult to think with any clarity when Willie was looking at him so.
“You. Help us.” Nick screwed up his face and fought to find the right words, as angry at himself for feeling so embarrassed by the whole thing as he was at his inability to lay it out as the logical, fiendishly clever plan it was. “You see, we have this wager and—”
“Wager?” Willie’s chin came up. Her shoulders shot back. Her gray eyes, which Nick imagined were as placid as pussycats most days, looked more now like threatening thunderclouds. “You abducted me as part of a wager?” As regal as an empress, she turned and headed for the door. “Well, you can simply un-abduct me. Right now. Your carriage must still be here about. Call it, and—”
“But, Willie!” The last thing Nick wanted was to look desperate but he could hardly help himself. He pictured Willie slipping out of his grasp along with one thousand pounds.
He darted forward and stopped her, his hand on her arm.
He was saved from doing any more when the double doors snapped open.
“Excuse me, m’lord.” Newbury coughed politely behind his hand. “There are some gentlemen here to see you.”
Whatever pangs of conscience Nick felt disappe
ared in a flash of exhilaration. This was it, his moment to cut a shine.
“Well, what are you waiting for, man?” he asked. “Show them in!”
Newbury’s grizzled brows snapped together with worry and he darted a look down the passageway before he turned back to Nick. “Are you certain, m’lord?”
Nick grumbled an oath beneath his breath. Had he been more sober and less anxious to give the Blades their just and well-deserved due, he might have questioned Newbury’s hesitancy. Instead, he slapped one hand against his thigh.
“Of course I am certain,” he said.
“But, m’lord, they’ve brought—”
“Damn it, Newbury! I don’t care what they’ve brought. It hardly matters, at any rate. They cannot top our offering. They could have Julius Caesar himself, dressed as the Archbishop of Canterbury and sporting a purple peruke and they would not have anything nearly as splendid as we have.”
“Yes, m’lord.” His expression as blank as a sheet of foolscap on the first day of Michaelmas term, Newbury retreated. Willie might have gone right along with him if Nick hadn’t noticed her fall into step behind Newbury. “Oh, no!” As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he hooked an arm around her waist. “We’ve nearly bested the blighters. You cannot leave now.” He glanced around, planning his strategy.
“You!” He handed Willie off to Hexam. “You keep her out of sight. And you…” He pointed to the Dashers standing behind Willie. “You get there near the door. You…” He waved to Latimer and Palliston. “You stand in front of her so they cannot easily see her from the doorway.”
“Stand in front indeed,” Willie protested. Nick paid her not the least amount of mind. His brain already working over how the Blades would look when they realized they’d lost the wager, he stepped back and waited for Newbury to return.