It smelled like . . . snuff.
More specifically, it smelled like Miss E’s snuff.
Bloody hell, what was going on?
Choking, he dropped to his knees, clawing his throat for relief. The snuff assault was followed by a blow that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Whack.
His head jerked backward against the scratch of straw against his cheek. “What the devil?” he managed to choke out. He searched through the murky darkness until his gaze landed on a white ghost of a girl. Lucy was wielding a broom in both hands, brandishing it like a sword.
And she was dressed in little more than a dream.
He coughed long and hard, doubling over, then lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender, forcing his eyes to keep to the prescribed path of her huge eyes and pale face, rather than the rounded, full shape of her breasts beneath her slip. “Lucy,” he croaked out, “it’s me.”
The broom lowered. “Thomas?” came her agonized whisper.
He nodded, the sound of his name sounding like heaven on her lips, no matter that her voice was strained with terror. He climbed awkwardly to his feet. So much for defending her to the death. He’d barely managed to survive his own entrance. He glanced around the dark room for evidence of whatever had sent her to arm herself with a tin of snuff and a broom.
“Do you . . . ah . . . need my help?”
He half expected her to fly into a rage at the question. At the evidence he was still here, despite her order to leave.
Instead, she flew into his arms.
He caught her up as the broom fell to the floor with a loud clatter. His eyes and nose were still burning, but his arms proved entirely capable of closing about her quaking body. He’d seen this woman angry on more occasions than he could count. He’d seen her square her shoulders, stronger than any soldier. He’d seen her skin warmed by candlelight, that tempting mouth begging for a kiss. But he’d never seen her so . . . vulnerable.
“You came,” she sobbed, her hands clutching at his oilskin.
“I never really left,” he admitted. She was trembling—shivering so hard, in fact, her teeth were chattering. He forced his arms to loosen, though it was a battle to get them to follow orders, given the screaming knowledge that she was dressed in nearly nothing.
“I . . . I don’t know why you are here.” Her breath hitched, and he could feel her warm tears soaking through his frockcoat. “I don’t deserve it, given how foolish I have been. But I am so, so glad of it.”
Though his eyes were still stinging from the snuff, Thomas smiled above her head. Well. He had finally received a word of thanks from this sharp-tongued girl. But instead of feeling self-satisfied, guilt crept in. She wasn’t aware of all his motives regarding Heathmore yet.
And apparently she wasn’t aware of the very inappropriate direction of his thoughts.
He cleared his throat, still smelling snuff with every breath. “Well, you armed yourself admirably. I am not sure you need my help after all. You seem capable of handling yourself in the event of vandals.”
“I’m not so worried about the vandals,” she said, shaking against him.
His hand crept up to the nape of her neck, brushing the short, damp strands of hair aside until his fingers touched skin. Christ, but she was cold. “What, then?” he asked, lowering his hands. He began to briskly rub her arms, shoulder to elbow. “What has you so frightened you needed to whack me with a broom?”
She buried her face against his chest but didn’t pull away. “Didn’t you hear it?”
“The wind?”
“The ghost.”
His hands stilled. “There’s no ghost, Lucy. No matter the superstitions of the townspeople, ’tis only the wind, as I’ve always said. It blows hard on this part of the coast.”
She pressed tightly against him. “Well, something ran across my leg.”
“Ah.” Understanding settled into the cracks of his thinking. “You’ve met the rats, I see.”
She breathed in and out, then pulled back, her eyes meeting his through the darkness. “If they insist on living here, too, I am afraid we aren’t going to get along.”
In spite of himself—and in spite of the absolutely not humorous feel of her in his arms—he chuckled. “Then you’ll just have to bring up some cats from town. If you brought the males, I suspect you might even solve two problems at once.”
She pulled back and offered him a hesitant smile, though in the dark it was difficult to see anything beyond the blinding, transparent whiteness of her chemise. “You are being so kind. Kinder than I deserve. But the presumption I can fix this with a few cats . . .” She glanced around the dark room. “You were right. The parlor might be clean and put to rights, but the rest of Heathmore isn’t what I expected. I . . . I am not sure I am meant to keep it after all.”
That plucked at his conscience. He ought to be glad to hear her say it, given all that was at stake. But after the terrible row where she had shoved him outside, after all the shouted accusations, he felt as though he understood better now what drove her. She was searching for a handhold, a peg on which she could hang her future. Something to define her, beyond what Society expected of her. She wanted someone to love her, to share her life, but she wanted to be able to trust that person.
He could understand the need. And because he understood, he found himself wanting to help. Even at his own expense, and even if it meant losing this worthy fight.
Somehow, he held out hope it might yet become her worthy fight as well.
He offered her his hand. “Well, you’ve not given it a proper chance yet. The cottage has its own charms, in the daylight.” When she hesitantly placed her hand in his, he tugged her toward the kitchen. “Come on, then. Let’s get a fire started.”
SHE WATCHED AS he lit a candle, using a match he pulled from a tin in the kitchen cupboard. The flickering light made Lucy feel marginally better, but it was his sure, solid movements that calmed her the most. He pulled a kettle down from the same cupboard, then filled it with water from a rusty pump she’d missed on her first frantic inspection of the kitchen.
“There’s a well?” she asked, feeling sheepish.
“Yes, a nice deep one. You’ll be glad of it come summer. Some of the villagers have shallow wells that run dry in the warmer months and flood in the spring.”
Lucy bit her lip. She wasn’t at all sure she was going to be here come summer. The truth was, she wasn’t sure she was going to be here tomorrow. The reality of what she was facing here was sobering. It wasn’t only the rats. The sheer physicality of the experience overwhelmed her. She didn’t know how to make a fire. She couldn’t dry her clothes, much less know how to wash them. She’d imagined inheriting a cottage in Cornwall would be a simple thing.
But this was no ordinary cottage, and nothing was as simple as it seemed.
And her hesitation wasn’t only about feeling woefully underprepared for the business of taking proper care of herself. She could learn how to do laundry, if need be. Build a fire, given time and the proper tools. But in the time she had spent in the echoing silence of this house, she discovered a very important fact about herself, one she was not sure she had understood before. She didn’t like solitude. Already, she could feel herself missing London. She missed her family and the warm, well-run house full of servants who cared for her.
Missed her parents, even her blustering father.
And she missed, especially, Lydia.
The thought of living here at Heathmore, alone, and never seeing family or friends, was untenable. Everyone in Lizard Bay presumed she was just like her aunt, but Lucy was beginning to suspect she was not nearly as brave.
Thomas gathered two china cups and a tin full of tea. “Let’s do this in the other fireplace,” he murmured, balancing the items in both hands. “The rats still have the run of this one.” He moved smoothly and methodically, as if it was an ordinary thing for a marquess to make a spot of tea. The man might be a peer, but it was clear he knew what
he was doing around a kitchen.
The house seemed slightly less terrifying now that the candle’s light touched the corners and she had someone else here with her, but there was still the moaning wind to contend with, seeping between small cracks beneath the window frames.
She stayed close by his side as they made their way back to the parlor.
“Hold this, please.” He handed her the candle and set the kettle down beside the fireplace. “Will you be all right until I return?”
“Where are you going?” She shivered. Surely he didn’t mean to give her a single guttering candle and a cold teakettle and then tuck himself back to town?
“To the shed out back. I thought we might sleep in the parlor tonight, given that it is the only room that has been properly cleaned. But I need to start a fire to get you warm.” His eyes swept over her. “And get your clothes dry.” He swallowed. “As quickly as possible.”
“There’s a shed?” she moaned out loud, embarrassed to have not known that. It was another reminder she knew close to nothing about this property she had inherited, and less than that, even, about how to take care of herself here. “And how can there be wood? There are no trees within two miles.”
“We burn peat in our fireplaces here.” He cocked his head, looking impossibly handsome in the candlelight. “Unless you would like to burn some of the furniture instead?” He grinned. “We could start with the dining table. It has a wobble on its right side, one I haven’t been able to fix. But we might want to hold off breaking it apart for firewood until we’ve had breakfast in the morning.”
Her stomach churned. He planned to spend the night here with her. And apparently eat breakfast in the morning. For her safety, she told herself. It was clearly too dangerous to go back down the path tonight, given the foul weather. She forced a smile. “If there is dry fuel somewhere, by all means, carry on.”
So he brought in two armfuls of peat logs, then shrugged out of his oilskin and frockcoat and crouched in front of the fireplace in his shirtsleeves. She watched as he laid the fire, the dark bricks of peat propped in a pyramid and a handful of straw on the bottom. He took his time, showing her how to do it, patiently waiting for her to assemble some of the pieces herself. “Starting the initial fire is the hard part,” he explained, holding the candle to the straw. “Once it is started, you shouldn’t let a fire go completely out, just stir the hot ashes back to life and add fresh kindling.”
It took a few moments for the flame to take hold. The peat gave off a smoky, acrid smell, quite different than the coal fires she was used to in London. But fire was fire, and when the orange flames began to lick through the darkness, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where did you learn to do all this?” she asked, sitting down cross-legged in front of the fire in the vain hope it might help her stockings dry faster.
“Not Eton.” He chuckled as he put the kettle on the grate, then rocked back on his heels and dusted off his hands. “Nor university either. In London, I had scores of servants to do this sort of thing.” His eyes met hers. “Your aunt showed me how, actually.”
“My aunt?” Lucy echoed.
“I arrived in Cornwall imminently ill-suited for the environment. Tea was something that had always been brought to me by servants, and I had no idea how to go about the mechanics of it. Whisky was far more convenient to pour, and I made a habit of pouring it early and often.” He sat down himself, one leg stretched out, the other bent lazily at the knee. “Miss E recognized a fellow Londoner set adrift, having once been in my shoes. She also disapproved of spirits, in all its forms. So after she punched me, she showed me how to make tea.”
Lucy choked on her surprise. “She punched you?”
“Well, she’d honed her instincts for self-preservation, I guess, living up here alone all those years.” He stared into the flames. “I stumbled across her property during a long walk, quite by accident, mind you, and she punched me in the eye for trespassing.”
Her gaze lingered over his strong profile, the curve of his cheek below his eye, where Aunt E’s fist must have struck him. “I am sure you deserved it.”
“Probably.” He leaned forward and busied himself with their meager place settings, fiddling with her cup, not quite looking at her. “Looking back on the man I was, I could almost punch myself. I still don’t know what she saw in me to prompt her to try to help. I wasn’t good company. I’d . . . well, I’d dealt poorly with the loss of my sister and a broken betrothal.”
“You were engaged?” Somehow, in all their flirtations, in all their arguments, it had never occurred to her to question his seeming lack of attachment. But she should have considered it. An unmarried man of his unique persuasion would be considered quite a catch on the marriage market—whether it be London’s or Lizard Bay’s.
He nodded. “For a time. Miss Highton broke off our engagement at my sister’s wake.”
Lucy sucked in a breath. “That’s . . . terrible.”
“She had her reasons.” He pulled the kettle off the grate and added a measure of tea leaves. “I was unfit to be anyone’s husband at the time.”
“I rather think you’d make a brilliant husband,” Lucy protested. She laughed. “A wife would never want for tea.”
He offered her a thin smile. “Well, I was rather different back then. Useless, really. I’d spent four years studying plants and rocks, only to discover that sort of knowledge provided no advantage for someone in my position. I should have studied other things as well, as you enthusiastically pointed out yesterday.”
Lucy flushed. “Sorry.”
“No, you were right.” His smile faltered. “After university, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was a bloody marquess, not the botanist I wished to be, and I truly had no idea what that meant. I drifted through London and fell in with the wrong sort of crowd, friends who spent their nights bent over bottles instead of books. So I was drunk that day Miss Highton left me. Drunk, too, the day I met your aunt.” His head moved slowly, side to side. “I had no business traipsing about the moors like that. It was a wonder I didn’t fall off the cliff.”
Lucy winced to hear the raw pain in his voice. She thought back to how he’d smelled faintly of brandy, three days ago on the train. She hated to . . . but she needed to ask.
“Are you still tempted by such vices?”
He stared straight ahead. “I thought I’d gotten over all of that. Three years, after all, is a long time to go without a drink. But the trip to London proved me wrong. I was so . . . angry. Everything I saw reminded me of her.” He pulled a hand across his face. “I’ve been telling myself I stayed here in Cornwall because I didn’t like London, but now I can’t help but think staying away has simply been an excuse to avoid facing my fears.” He lowered his hand to stare again into the fire. “To avoid facing her, and what she might think of me now.”
Lucy’s stomach contracted. It sounded as though he was still a little bit in love with the silly girl who had left him, even after she’d treated him so callously.
God, men were stupid.
“If you ask me, you shouldn’t think of her at all,” she told him. “Miss Highton should have stood by you, not left you. She should have helped you the way my aunt did. If someone really cares for you, they stay.” She hesitated, thinking of how he’d not gone back to town, even when she’d ordered him to. “No matter what.”
His head jerked up, and she gamely met his gaze.
Heat crackled across the space between them, heat that had nothing to do with the crackling fire or the warming kettle. She swallowed, her gaze lingering on the sensual curve of his mouth, the compelling little quirk on one side.
And then the kettle began to whistle, making Lucy jump.
The moment slid by. He poured tea into her cup, then his own, the picture of gentlemanly behavior—if one overlooked the fact that she was unmarried and he was wearing little more than a damp shirt and trousers. “There’s no sugar, I’m afraid,” he said.
�
�I am simply happy to have it hot,” she assured him, accepting the cup he offered. She took a gulp, wincing as the hot black tea burned her tongue. “Damn it!” she gasped, choking for air. She rocked backward, wishing now for a sliver of ice.
Thomas laughed, and then blew gently across the surface of his own cup. “As impatient as Miss E, I see. She was forever burning her tongue.”
In spite of the pain, Lucy laughed, too. “Yes, well, I have trouble believing she would have been quite as impatient tonight as I have been.” She cupped her palm around the cup, waiting for it to cool. She thought of how terribly she’d acted earlier. Screaming at this man who was now pouring her tea. Shoving him out the door into the rain.
Putting both their lives in peril.
She looked down at her teacup, swallowing. “Knowing my aunt, she would have had the foresight to tie you up here, just to make sure she had a handy accomplice to start her fire.”
“Ah. So her diary mentioned the incident with Mr. Jamieson, I take it?”
Lucy looked up in surprise. “Has she told you all her secrets?”
He shrugged. “She seemed to trust me, for some reason.”
A notion struck her. If he’d been something of a confidant to her aunt, was it possible he knew about the package? “Thomas,” she began, surprised to realize how comfortable his given name was beginning to feel on her lips. “Did you perchance mail a package for my aunt after she died?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I would have, of course. It would have been the least I could do, after all she did for me. But she didn’t ask me to do anything of that sort.”
“Oh.” Lucy felt disappointed. “It’s just that . . . well, you seem to know an awful lot about my aunt.” She looked back down at her cup. “It doesn’t seem fair that you knew her better than I did.”
There was a drawn-out moment of silence, where the crackling fire held sway. Finally, he sighed. “I am sorry for what I said earlier, about not visiting her enough.” She looked up to discover he was watching her intently. “That was not kind of me.”
The Spinster's Guide to Scandalous Behavior Page 21