“Gentleman,” she began, “I demand you return my valuables.”
“Don’t know what you’re jawin’ ‘bout woman.” The weasel-faced spokesman for the group dismissed her until he saw the black-haired, black-eyed giant loom up behind her. Clun enjoyed the man’s nervous laughter. They all cast anxious sidelong looks at him.
Well they should.
“I refer to my coins, my gold locket, and a pair of pearl earrings,” she said succinctly. One of those earrings apparently dangled from the closest man’s ear lobe. She snatched it from his ear with a swift yank.
The hapless thief screeched and grabbed his ear.
“That’s one. Where’s the other? My brother,” she flicked a nonchalant hand over her shoulder at Clun, “is not a patient man. Return what’s mine, if you please.” She thrust out a hand and held it palm up in front of the man with the bleeding ear lobe. He glanced at Clun again and reluctantly pulled the matching earring from his greasy waistcoat pocket. This she tweaked from his dirty fingers.
“Now, miss,” Weasel Face wheedled, his eyes shifting as if to calculate their odds, “Your big brover won’t relish a tussle wi’ alla us over a few fripperies…”
Oh no?
Clun cleared his throat and crossed his muscular arms over a chest half again as wide as any of the seated thugs. Other patrons left nearby tables to stand at a safe distance.
The thieves weren’t local, Clun concluded. Neither they nor the Valkyrie realized what the scampering tavern patrons and nervous innkeeper did: the lord of the manor, the very devil himself, Lord Clun stood before them larger than life — or rather, every bit as large as life.
Everyone in the neighborhood of The Graces had heard about the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ as the baron and three friends in the Household Cavalry were known during the war against Napoleon. Infrequent letters from his steward Tyler Rodwell mentioned the newspaper reports of his deadly efficiency on the battlefield against the French. These heroic accounts even penetrated Clun Forest in Shropshire apparently. According to Roddy, local men boasted of him as one of their own; their wives threatened naughty children with punishment by his hand when he returned. All in all, his legend was firmly established in neighborhood lore. Suddenly appearing as if in a puff of brimstone to intimidate brigands would only burnish his reputation once the witnesses dispersed to share the news of his homecoming.
Everyone in the tavern fell silent and awaited the mayhem.
“My locket, if you please,” Lady Elizabeth demanded with her hand beneath Weasel Face’s crooked nose. Clun admired the glint in her eyes. In a moment of inspiration, she extemporized, “For years, my brother has put Frenchmen to bullet and sword, so I wouldn’t give him an excuse to exercise his lethal skills on you.”
While Lady Elizabeth confronted the louts, shocked patrons whispered to one another that the baron had no sister, not that they knew of, only the one, bastard brother. Clun turned his head slowly. His incendiary look hushed all speculation.
Meanwhile, the locket appeared and was dropped into the hellion’s outstretched hand.
“My purse and money. Now!” She barked and slapped the table, making the louts jump in their seats. Each pulled coins from his pockets and Weasel Face produced her empty reticule and deposited his cut. She held it out to collect the rest. After weighing it in her hand, she nodded never taking her gem-hard green eyes off the men at the table.
From the diminutive purse she withdraw a few pence and threw them onto the table, “Have a round with our compliments, gentlemen,” and added pertly, “but remain seated until we’re on our way. Or he will hunt you down and pull your arms from their sockets one by one. Come, brother.”
With that she turned and stalked out through the door. Clun remained a moment longer, as if to commit their faces to memory. He fixed Weasel Face with his special to-the-depths-of-Hades glare. Then he strode after her. Once outside, his stomach growled.
Just my luck.
Clun had been looking forward to eating there all day. The hoyden capered at his side as they returned to the stable. The baron was hungry, tired and in no mood for her dancing jubilations. She patted his back and tugged on his sleeve to claim his attention.
“You were magnificent, sir! However may I thank you?”
“Who are you? Who were they? And what in blazes was that…” he flung out a hand, “that farce about?”
She dismissed his question with a shrug and said, “It’s a long story. Very tiresome.”
“Well, I will know the whole of it. Now!” Clun roared at her. She stilled and glared back at him.
“You are altogether too curious to be a proper henchman,” she sniffed and made her way out of the stable.
“I didn’t volunteer,” he griped. “I was conscripted and I have every right to know where we’re going next as I’m now persona non grata at The Sundew. I was hoping to tuck into their steak and kidney pie tonight.”
“Oh, I can feed you a decent venison stew,” she said, paused and looked him over again, “though I may not have enough. Come, bring…”
“Algernon,” he bit out. He took up his horse’s reins and followed her. She led him along a path behind the stable through a hedge into a field he recognized in the fading light. He followed her walking toward his estate’s southern border.
He examined her now at his leisure. She dressed in an odd homespun shift of some sort that fit quite snugly with sleeves well above her wrists and a hem exposing trim ankles. But her imperious manner and cultivated speech trumped her humble costume. She was a lady, albeit a passing strange one.
“Algernon. That’s an old name. Derives from Norman French, I believe,” she said, “‘Aux Gernons’ means ‘with mustache.’”
“Where are we going?” He asked her back. The view of her derriere swaying with each step improved somewhat his sour mood.
“To a cottage on the estate just over there,” she said over her shoulder.
“Which estate?”
“It’s the estate of Baron Clun. I live there.”
“Do you.”
“Yes, I just said I did,” she replied and muttered “Are large men all so mutton-headed?”
He let her jibe pass.
“You’re not one of his tenants, are you?” Just his luck she’d be prancing and swaying in the neighborhood while he was obligated to wed an earl’s horse-faced daughter. For the first time in more than a year of his betrothal, the baron felt a niggle of regret for having arranged a marriage to a female he’d never laid eyes on.
“Do you work on the estate?” He asked, assuming she was his half-brother Rodwell’s current ladylove.
“No, I do not.”
“Why do you live there, if I may ask?”
She turned to walk backward and explained, “It’s a long story.”
He arched one heavy brow and gave her a look. She swept a thick lock of hair from her face and turned once again to give him her back. “Well, in a nutshell, I’m in seclusion for a while. That’s all.”
“Why?”
“That is none of your business, sir,” she replied with regal asperity.
He chuckled, “For how long?”
“Until I reach my majority, I suppose.”
“And that will be…”
“When I’m one-and-twenty, of course!” She muttered to herself about the obtuseness of great, lumbering lummoxes, much to the baron’s amusement.
“And when will that be?”
“Not long. I’m already 20 years old.”
“You’ll live here on your own for a year?”
• • •
His smirking skepticism irked her.
“I’ll manage. Hunt game. Barter at the market.” She was shocked how easily the lies tripped off her tongue. Still, if she did have to live here that long, she would find a way.
“You’re hiding in one of Lord Clun’s cottages and poaching his game for pin money?”
“It’s not poaching really because I’m bet
rothed to Lord Clun.”
“Betrothed to Clun?” He came to a dead standstill, his horse bumped his back.
Elizabeth kept walking even though her temporary henchman no longer followed at her heels, “My father, the Earl of Morefield, arranged it with him. I’ve never met the baron, mind you. The marriage settlement’s been finalized for ages. Well, since last year. We just received word Lord Clun planned to carry me off next month. Disgusting, isn’t it?”
She finally looked over her shoulder to find empty space where a lumbering lummox should’ve been. She spun, her long, loose braid swinging, to find him gaping at her dumbfounded.
“It’s shocking, I know,” she cried. “I’ve been bartered away like a prize heifer with no regard for my wishes. None! I simply had to run away and hide until I’m safely one-and-twenty or I’m released from this ridiculous arrangement.”
“And then?” Clun asked as he rejoined his betrothed.
“I shall do as I wish. When I reach my majority, I inherit an independence from my mother. Nothing so lavish as my dowry but then my dowry would never be mine, would it? My inheritance will allow me self-sufficiency.”
“And what of Lord Clun?”
“He’ll have to find himself another heifer if he wants an heir and a spare. Wouldn’t any fecund young lady do? It needn’t be me in particular.”
“But what if he wants you?”
“How could he possibly have so specific a desire? We’ve never met! To insist that I marry him would be peevish, don’t you think? We live in an enlightened age, after all. What gentleman with all his faculties intact would take a bride sight unseen?”
“Perhaps Lord Clun is old fashioned.”
“That’s not old fashioned, that’s medieval! Lord Clun would have to be a hoary, desiccated old…”
“How could you possibly know what he is or isn’t?” Clun snapped.
“Well, I do know that if he weren’t completely awful, there’d be any number of young ladies eager to be his baroness.”
Unfortunately, the chit had a point. Clun’s size was the least intimidating of his attributes. His daunting reputation and demeanor had proved inconvenient while prowling the Marriage Mart last spring. Not that Clun made much of an effort, growing disgusted quickly.
Clun had an unfortunate propensity to glower from under his dark brows, to issue curt monosyllabic responses to silly chatter and to dress with severe, monochromatic austerity. Add to that, chilling accounts of his deadly skill as a warrior and his fearsome reputation became firmly fixed in the minds of querulous Society debutantes. Men respected him; virginal women feared him. Even experienced women treated him with trepidation. He was too obviously and enormously potent. In bed play, merry widows wanted to be teased and seduced, not overpowered, plundered and practically left for dead. Not that he would do that. He was, in fact, a tender, generous lover but it took a female with intestinal fortitude to withstand the former attributes to discover the latter.
In any event, one of the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse, his friend Lord Percy, had suggested the Earl of Morefield might consider arranging a match for his daughter, given she had spurned suitors for two seasons past and the elderly earl wanted to see her safely settled. Thus, Clun’s betrothal to Lady Elizabeth Damogen was contracted sensibly, with a minimum of fuss and bother, between two rational men of sound character and well-informed understanding. Apparently, Lady Elizabeth was one of the very few well-born females who had no notion of who Lord Clun was or his ferocious reputation.
“And what if the baron is an old beast?” Clun asked his betrothed.
“Why must I be the virgin sacrifice?”
Clun burst out laughing, much to the chagrin of his saucy companion. He threw his head back, leaned into his horse and let his deep bass chuckle rumble up like lava from a fault in the earth’s crust. Her disgruntled look sent him into higher-pitched peals of laughter. Algernon stood stoically by, accustomed to these sudden outbursts.
The baron eventually wiped his streaming eyes and calmed himself, “Perhaps Lord Clun isn’t decrepit, merely a sensitive soul who fears rejection of his suit.”
“Which would make him a spineless coward! Is he man or mush? The more we talk of him, the less I like the baron,” she concluded and marched off in the direction of an old cottage on the edge of his home wood that Clun hadn’t seen since he left for war.
“Aren’t you afraid of being recognized and handed over to the hoary old baron?”
“Not at all. No one knows me here. I’ve only ever lived in London or Devonshire. I’ve never set eyes on the baron and I can safely assume, he’s never seen me. I think this would be the very last place on earth my father would ever think to look for me, don’t you?” She crossed her arms over her chest, with a smirk that Clun wanted to kiss right off her self-satisfied puss.
“Obviously, you’ve thought of everything,” he chuckled. “Poor Lord Clun.”
Clun followed his runaway fiancée through the woods that stood along his estate’s southeastern border to a small, thatched cottage tucked in a copse of trees near a stream that flowed through the property. Autumn wildflowers dotted the open space around the cottage, a well-worn hard-packed dirt path led to its low, arched front door.
“Wonderful, isn’t it? So charming.” She spun to face him, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to eat cold stew. I’ve run out of firewood.”
“There’s a pile there.” Clun pointed out a jumble of logs near by. A large, flat stump had a large axe stuck in it and hatch marks from countless axe falls. Few split pieces remained stacked nearby.
“They’re much too big.”
“Would you like me to chop you some firewood?”
“Yes, please.” She gave him a dazzling smile and disappeared inside the cottage. Algernon was content to crop the grass.
“May I have my stew hot?” Clun called after her.
“Of course you may!” She sashayed out again to a crude bench and watched him remove his greatcoat, coat and waistcoat.
• • •
It was utterly improper. She knew dining with this man would give the earl and any number of Town tabbies spasms if ever they heard of it. Being alone with a strange man, much less sharing a meal without benefit of chaperone, guaranteed a speedy engagement or some ridiculous early morning duel to preserve her honor under normal circumstances. There would be dire repercussions in Society. But this wasn’t London. One needn’t put too fine a point on social niceties in a wilderness. Besides, this man rendered an invaluable service, a service moreover, which might have endangered him. Lady Elizabeth quickly determined that here, in the western reach of England hard by the wilds of Wales, she could safely ignore the nitpicky strictures of Polite Society.
Nitpicky strictures aside, she knew full well that she ought not watch any man undress, even if it only involved removing outer layers. She simply could not pass up the opportunity to see more of this particular man. As he rolled up his linen shirtsleeves, she fixed on his sinewy, well-muscled forearms. He hefted the large axe effortlessly in big hands. He braced long, strong legs and bent down (Oh my!) to snatch up a log. Standing it on the stump, he swung the axe in a smooth, blurred arc, splitting the wood in one stroke. His arms bunched, his shoulders bulged and his back tensed with efficient movement. He split log after log. The pile of firewood grew, as did Elizabeth’s agitation.
“I don’t see why I have to marry some decrepit old aristocrat,” she picked up where she’d left off. “I’d rather marry someone who can do, er, useful things.” She couldn’t pull her eyes from his body moving, swinging and striking with a mastery that heated her fair skin from head to toe.
“I doubt very much you mean that.” (Thunk!) “And stop saying Lord Clun is decrepit.” (Thunk!) “For all you know, he’s a man chock full of practical skills.” (Thunk!)
She harrumphed. Her henchman cum woodsman had the cultivated speech of a gentleman. Yet, he spoke in a deep voice sweetened with the dark honey of Welsh. He subtly r
olled and caressed the hard r’s and tr’s of English. Each time he rumbled ‘LoRrd’ Clun, she shivered. She could listen to him all day.
He glanced at her over his shoulder, “It’s hard not to conclude that Lord Clun has the poorer part of the bargain!”
“Is that so?”
“What practical skills do you offer, my lady?” (Thunk!) “Needlepoint-pillow making? Flower arranging? Menu selecting? Singing?” (Thunk!) Clun snorted as he struck another log apart with a solid blow.
“I can’t carry a note,” she chuckled. “But I have managed an earl’s household for years. I can cook, bake and hunt game among numerous other useful accomplishments.”
“Is that so?”
“Is that so hard to believe? Oh, never mind, there’s enough to heat our meal.”
She got up, strode over to him and touched his back low at his waist so he stilled. She could warm her hands on the heat he gave off. And the scent of the man! Fresh air, leather and muscular male effort with a top note of horse, she sighed, just as a practical gentleman ought to smell. She plucked up half a dozen good-sized pieces of wood and carried her armload away without trouble. She, too, was capable. This, she wanted him to know for some inexplicable reason. As soon as she stepped clear, he began swinging the axe with vehemence.
A little while later, she returned and sat once again behind Clun to watch his body twist, heave and move as he split wood. Now, she noticed dreamily, the damp shirt lay pasted to his sculpted body, across his broad shoulders and down his wide back…narrowing to his waist. Below were his trim hips and hard buttocks, like a sculpture of a Roman athlete. Or Hercules. Oh, she thought, here is a man. He was overpoweringly male. She found herself enthralled by the interplay of his muscle, sinew and bone.
Then he opened his mouth and ruined everything.
“Yes indeed, I pity the baron.” (Thunk!) “Even a doddering old man deserves some peace and consideration in his dotage.” (Thunk!) “You will undoubtedly drive him to an early grave.”
The Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order Page 26