by Diana Lloyd
“After?” Her mouth went dry as she eyed the bright metal edge of the blade. She had to lick her lips to continue speaking. “You mean I can’t just…” Her voice failed as she considered the alternative.
“Or we could just pull it out.” He walked to the back of the room to retrieve the candelabra, moved it closer, and dropped to one knee for a better look. “Stop moving your hand so. Your wrist is beginning to swell, and that will only make things more difficult.” He reached out and steadied her arm, trying his luck at the lunette as he eyed the blade warily. “I’ll summon a footman and see if he can get some grease from the kitchen. With a little lubrication, your hand might pop right off—out. I mean out, of course.”
“Very funny,” Elsinore said, frowning. “My sisters will never let me hear the end of this, you know. If they find out, all of London will know by the end of the week, and I’ll never get a season at all. I’ll have to marry an ancient marquess or live as a spinster.” She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes, becoming lost in them for a moment before continuing. “I don’t want to be the sad, dotty old auntie who’s passed around from relation to relation until she ends up alone in some wretched, smelly cottage with no company but her ten cats and her housekeeper.”
“Ten cats, you say?” He smiled fully now, but it was a warm smile rather than mocking, and she began to believe that maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out as it ought.
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “Dotty old aunties always have cats.”
“Ferrets.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My great-aunt kept ferrets,” he explained. “They bite.”
“I’ll remember that when the time comes.”
He nodded at that and placed his hands on his hips in a posture of male concentration Elsinore recognized from her father.
“Perhaps we could try some liquid for lubrication?” she asked hopefully. “There’s a decanter of something just over there.” Elsinore turned her head and pointed with her slippered foot to the sideboard. Her effort exposed her ankle, and she scrambled to tuck her feet back under her gown before it tempted him into any ungentlemanly behavior. He was, after all, Scottish. They were rumored to be coarse, weren’t they? Perhaps that was the French, because so far, other than his cheeky humor, he’d been quite the gallant.
He retrieved the decanter and placed it atop the table. “Relax, and I’ll pour a little bit right there.” He pointed to her wrist. “It may sting a bit since your skin is already rubbed raw. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“I’m sure it will hurt much less than being guillotined.”
With the minutes ticking away, she could imagine her mother and her four sisters desperately combing the ballroom and gardens looking for her and expecting the worst. The last thing she needed was to be found missing a limb. Her mother would scold her for getting blood on Lady Winchcombe’s marble floor, and her sisters would tsk-tsk a chorus of “I told you so” as she bled to death waiting for the family carriage to be brought around. If she managed to return to them soon, with all limbs intact, she’d only have to endure a stern lecture. Or three.
“As soon as it’s nice and slippery,” he explained, in a voice she decided would be perfect for poetry readings, “we’ll both give it a good tug and free you up, right as rain.”
He smiled again, and she noticed how much it changed his face. What might have been taken for stern and taciturn transformed to handsome and debonair with a simple curve of his lips.
“Thank you for pretending this isn’t ridiculous.” She studied his face intently as she spoke. He was a handsome man, in a rugged sort of way, and entirely masculine. In the candlelight, his eyes shone a rich hazel green against a sun-bronzed complexion. His long, straight nose suited him, as did his wide, expressive mouth. She guessed him to be thirty or so, certainly no more than ten years her senior. He was at least half the age and weight of the marquess.
“Will you be attending any other events in town this season?” Elsinore surprised herself with the bold question.
A crease of concern formed across his brow. “I don’t know yet. Why do you ask?”
His manner changed so abruptly that she stumbled about for a proper response. “No reason. I… Just making conversation.”
His response to that was a hard stare and a frown.
Just as she began to worry he meant to abandon her, he reached down and removed his left shoe and wedged it beneath the blade. “Just in case, ye ken,” he said. “Ready?” At her nod, he began to pour.
“Oh, that hurts!” She began to squirm as the alcohol burned a ring of pain around her wrist.
“I told you it would. Hold still, and it will stop soon enough.” He quickly splashed on another dose and gently moved her hand this way and that. “Should be slick enough to have a go at it now.”
“Please hurry.” Her voice cracked. “It hurts.”
“Relax a bit if you can,” he said. “And this should all be over soon.”
“I don’t think it will fit.”
A full-fledged grin escaped him upon hearing her protest. “Trust me,” he said with a wink and a trace of a chuckle. “It’s all in the maneuvering.”
The sound of laughter drifted in from the hallway, reminding Elsinore that she needed to return to her quest as quickly as possible. “Mind the time.”
He braced one foot against the table and grasped the death machine in one hand and her arm with the other. She whimpered again in anticipation of the pain. “Pull,” he ordered.
Elsinore obeyed. In the moment that her hand slipped free, the table shifted, the guillotine wobbled loudly, the blade fell with a decisive swack, the decanter tipped, and a generous splash of ruddy port hit her full in the face. As she sputtered and gasped, his stocking-clad foot slipped on the now wet floor, and she saw him begin to tilt. Blindly reaching out, she managed to grab a handful of his coat just as he toppled over.
But she had underestimated both his size and the precariousness of her perch on the settee and found herself following him down to the floor as her gown glided against the leather upholstery with barely a whisper of resistance. In a final, frantic effort to right herself, Elsinore kicked out with her feet but was rewarded with nothing more than the sound of tearing fabric as the heel of her dancing slipper caught in her hem.
“Ooof!” The breath left her body as she landed on top of him.
His hopefully thick skull bounced hard against the floor with a sickening thud, and she opened one eye in time to see him blink slowly as he struggled to remain lucid. As she pushed herself up to a sitting position, a loud shriek cut through the air, and Elsinore turned to face this new intrusion. The door that they had most properly left ajar was now wide open. Astonished faces stared back at her, eyes wide, mouths hanging open—and there, in the back, was the tall and unmistakable silhouette of her father parting the crowd like Moses through the Red Sea.
“Daingead,” she heard the man beneath her mutter.
Confusing as the situation was, her brain quickly processed several truths. Her dress was ruined. She was soaked with wine. She was lying on the floor with a strange man.
An odd memory floated to the surface of her consciousness—she was six and playing outside in the garden at sunset. The governess had given her a glass jar to catch faeries in, and she was looking under flower petals where she’d been told they liked to hide. Her brother laughed at her and explained there was no such thing as faeries. Shocked, she confronted the governess with her newfound knowledge. The woman explained to her that once you stopped believing in faeries, nothing is ever the same again.
Elsinore looked back down at the man beneath her. Nothing would ever be the same again. So she did the only thing any girl with intelligence would do.
She leaned down and kissed him.
Chapter Two
“Mark your chosen hound with a simple collar if not yet ready to leave the whelping box. Resist the urge to notch the pup’s ear until you are r
esolute in your selection.” Oglethorpe’s Treatise on the Obedient Canine
Quin Graham felt unconsciousness clawing for a foothold and tried blinking it into submission. There was a pretty young lass sprawled across his chest preventing, for the moment, his assuming a less scandalous upright position. She smelled strongly of a winery. And, there, peeking out from her bodice…was that…a nipple? So it was. And a bonnie one, at that.
And shouting. Who was shouting? Was he shouting? No, of course not. He considered, briefly, just closing his eyes until it all went away. But there was something in the back of his mind trying desperately to form itself into a coherent thought. Something important.
“Daingead.” Oh, hell. He nearly had it when… Lips? Kissing? Well, hello there, lassie!
“What is the meaning of this?”
The voice came from somewhere near and sliced through the fog in his head like a saber. Oh, shite.
“What have you done to my daughter?”
Quin forced himself to turn away from the sweetest kiss he’d ever tasted. The doorway was filled with a large gentleman staring down at him in bug-eyed, red-faced outrage. They’d met earlier that evening, and Quin’s addled brain scrambled to put a name to the outrage-contorted face. Wallingford. Apparently, he was kissing the daughter of the Duke of Wallingford.
Considering the circumstances and, more importantly, his circumstance, Quin did the only thing an intelligent, sensible gentleman could do.
“Your Grace,” he choked out. “Would you do me the honor of accepting my offer for your daughter’s hand in marriage?”
His query put into motion a flurry of activity. The girl was hustled from the room without being allowed to speak a word, while her father kept Quin pinned to the floor with a steely gaze. Winchcombe, owner of the house and the guillotine, was summoned. Only then did Quin trust that there would be no bloodshed this evening.
He searched for his shoe as Winchcombe shooed his other guests from the doorway. He pushed it shut with authority, shielding them from prying eyes and wagging tongues.
An angry Winchcombe was a sight to behold. A scar, which ran diagonally across his face from right eyebrow to left jawline, endowed him with a fierceness that was difficult to overlook. Quin had heard that the damage had been done by the man’s own sire, but it wasn’t a subject that came up in polite conversation, leaving everyone to wonder in private. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Nothing is going on,” Quin began.
“I say, compromising my youngest is hardly nothing,” Wallingford sputtered. “Or do the Scots make a sport of young women?”
“We do not, Your Grace. If you would allow me to explain—”
“Are you bleeding, man?” Winchcombe cut him off and pointed down to Quin’s stockinged foot.
The spilled port left a ruddy stain blooming across Quin’s white silk stockings. It rather looked as if he’d stepped into a bucket of blood. “No. I, um, you see, there was a decanter of wine…”
“Do you mean to say you plied my daughter with wine before accosting her?”
“No. Absolutely not.” His dismissal of bloodshed before morning may have been hasty. It was clear that Wallingford was spoiling for a fight in any fashion he might have it. There would be nothing Quin could say that would explain the situation away to a sufficient degree for an angry father.
“I stand by my offer, Your Grace.” Quin extended his hand for the gentleman’s agreement. “While I confess to no wrongdoing, I agree that the situation, however innocent, demands your satisfaction. With your permission, I shall call on your household tomorrow. Shall we say three o’clock?”
“I should call you out.” Wallingford forced the words through gritted teeth and turned from the offered olive branch.
“Hold up, man.” Winchcombe insinuated himself between them. “Did you not just mention to me earlier this evening that you were willing to entertain offers for your daughter’s hand this season?”
Wallingford managed a curt nod.
“An illegal duel would only add fuel to the notion of a scandal, yes?”
Another begrudging nod from Wallingford.
“Your daughter is a friend to my own youngest, Your Grace. She is, perhaps, high-spirited, but she does not deserve the permanent blemish to her reputation that a duel would mark her with. I urge you to consider her future, Your Grace.”
“Since the day she was born, I have done nothing else.” Wallingford began to pace, leaving a trail of port-wine smudged shoeprints across the fine Oriental rug.
Quin opened his mouth to speak but was silenced by a stern look from Winchcombe. With a growing sense of unease as Wallingford considered his options, Quin once again began looking about for his missing shoe, leaving his own trail of wine throughout the room.
Giving them both a moment to think and tempers to cool, Winchcombe reset his guillotine. As if to cut short the deliberations, as soon as it reached its apex, the blade of the guillotine fell with a loud thwack that made them all jump.
“I really ought to get that thing fixed.”
Quin fought down a wave of nervous nausea at the reminder of how close the girl had been to bloody catastrophe. The distraction, however, seemed to galvanize Wallingford, and he approached Quin with a resolute frown.
“Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? Duel or interview? He was about to ask when Wallingford spoke again.
“My office. Three o’clock. If you are as much as a minute late, I will come looking for you, and I will have my satisfaction.”
“Your Grace.” Quin managed what he hoped was a sufficiently deferential nod of his head. But he needn’t have bothered, as Wallingford had already turned to leave the room.
“An honest answer, if you will.” Winchcombe closed the door and turned to Quin.
“I assure you the girl has not been compromised.”
“That is none of my concern. My question regards your other pressing problem.” Winchcombe walked to the sideboard and examined the remaining liquid offerings. He decided on a decanter of dark amber brandy and splashed a few swallows’ worth into two glasses. “You’ve hired my man?”
“Aye. He seemed competent enough.” While his meeting with the man of investigations that Winchcombe’s wife had recommended had been brief, it was her endorsement, along with the man’s assurances of absolute confidentiality that pressed his decision.
“He is.” Winchcombe handed Quin one of the glasses. “And whatever it is that you’ve hired this man to look into, it will not affect Wallingford’s daughter?”
“Strictly business,” Quin lied, as he took the offered glass. “A spot of trouble that will be quickly resolved once I discover its root.”
“Best not to let such things fester. I speak from experience.”
“It will be dealt with.” Quin swallowed down the brandy, hoping to drown the lie. Winchcombe would not react well should he discover the true nature of Quin’s spot of trouble. Having an ally in London was no small thing, and he carefully weighed his need against his desire to hide the truth.
Winchcombe nodded and swallowed down the contents of his glass just as a timid knocking sounded from the other side of the door. “Come in,” he called out.
“Begging your pardon, my lord. The carriage you asked to be brought around is ready.” The servant kept his eyes to the floor, following the blood-red footprints around the room with silent alarm.
“If you don’t mind, Graham, I’ll have my footman sneak you out the back. I think the less London society sees of you the better.”
“I share the sentiment.” Quin limped from the room and out to his carriage, having given up any hope of reuniting with his shoe. He rapped on the roof and the snap of the leather leads echoed sharply in the quiet street. As the wheels jerked the carriage into motion, Quin cast one last look at the Winchcombe manor. The odds of ever being invited to return were exceedingly slim.
What the hell had just happened? That poor girl. Or woman, rather, because d
espite the frothy ill-fitting schoolgirl frock, the body inside had definitely belonged to a woman. The thought gave him pause. Could it be that she wasn’t as innocent as she seemed? Perhaps it had all been an elaborate ruse to trap a titled husband. If so, she earned distinction for use of a guillotine but would soon enough realize that she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life.
Quin shifted in his seat, unsettled by the thought of being manipulated by a woman. He could claim, he supposed, that as a man in mourning any nuptials should be delayed. Of course, no one in London yet knew about the deaths. As for his late wife, well, the less anyone thought about her the better. Giving Wallingford more time to investigate the Graham family reputation would only lead to unpleasant revelations, leaving his daughter tainted by the scandal.
A wife might give the appearance of normalcy. And having a beautiful doe-eyed wife… Quin shook the thought from his head. How low had he sunk that his dearest wish was to be and appear as normal and boring as anyone else. Had he gone mad? Was he actually considering marriage to a silly lass who toyed with a guillotine? She wasn’t even that pretty.
No, she was beautiful. All evidence pointed to a sweet nature and a sense of humor. She’d need that.
What was he thinking? Quin pressed his palms against his weary eyes. Why had he told her about the ferrets? He’d never told anyone. In fact, he hadn’t thought about it for years. She had a power, this woman—the power to make him forget himself.
Once home, Quin paced the drawing room of his rented townhouse like a caged animal, fighting the urge to punch something—a wall, the fireplace…a duke. He snatched an open bottle of whisky off the writing desk on his next circuit across the room and took a long swig. The liquid burned a trail down his throat and settled into an angry puddle in his gut.