“It does not speak well of my father that he would ill-use those who are at his mercy to earn their daily keep.”
“Hey, I’m with you on that.”
“Are you, Mick? Are you really?” Lettitia anxiously searched his face, thinking it too much to ask that he would feel a measure of compassion for those among them who were less fortunate. As she knew full well, most turned a blind eye to the plight of the poor.
“Well, sure. I mean, it makes us better people when we give something to those in need. And I’m not necessarily talking about throwing money at the needy. I’m talking about volunteering your time, whether it’s being a literacy tutor or a Big Brother. Like you volunteering at St. Ursula’s. When you give back to society, it makes you feel good about yourself. If you don’t give back, you’re just taking up space.”
While it was not the most eloquent speech she’d ever heard, it came from the heart. And as such, it had a profound effect on Lettitia. In the five days since making Mick’s acquaintance, she’d known him to be a brave man. An intelligent man. Most certainly, a sensual man. But now she knew that he was a good man.
Seemingly unaware that he’d made such a deep impression on her, Mick pulled his notebook out of his coat pocket; the little book was the repository of every fact and detail relating to their investigation.
“Without a doubt, Emmaline’s murder is connected to the blackmail letters that she sent. Which means that those letters are at the very heart of her murder,” he said abruptly, changing the subject. “What we know for a fact is that Emmaline was blackmailing her ex-fiancé, Lord Wortham. But what if she wasn’t blackmailing him in regards to his opium addition?”
As the carriage turned down the lane that led to her father’s estate, Lettitia adjusted her parasol, since the noonday sun was hitting her full in the face.
“After our visit to The Golden Dragon, you were quite adamant that was the reason behind Emmaline’s blackmail scheme,” she pointed out to him, annoyed that he’d inexplicably decided to change direction at this juncture of the investigation.
“That was my original theory. But I’ve been thinking about it. Maybe Emmaline had something else on Lord Wortham.” As he spoke, Mick leaned over and grabbed hold of her hand, pulling her over to his side of the carriage where the sun was less severe. “I’m wondering if there’s something here that we’re not seeing.” He paused. For several moments, he contemplatively tapped the open page of his notebook. “Is it possible that Emmaline and Wortham had a lover’s quarrel that led to—”
“I can assure you that at no time during the course of their engagement did Emmaline ever fancy herself in love with Lord Wortham.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I am not in love with Lord Wortham,” she declared emphatically.
Mick peered at her, an inscrutable expression on his face. “Well, I’m glad you clarified that. But how can you be so sure that your sister wasn’t in love with the man?”
“Because there are certain behavioral changes, mannerisms, if you will, that are indicative of the lovesick,” she replied in a lofty, authoritarian tone.
“Such as…?”
“Oh…” Lettitia gave an airy wave with her gloved hand. “There are an endless number of quick, little darting glances; a propensity to speak in a hushed whisper, and, of course, the afflicted have a tendency to laugh in a nervous, jittery sort of way.” Realizing that very sort of laugh was about to pass uncensored through her own lips, she clamped her jaw shut.
“Then how about this stable guy that she ran off with; did she love him?”
“Good heavens, no! At least… at least I don’t think that she loved him,” she amended in the very next instant. “Emmaline was a woman of strong passions.”
“So what you’re saying is that she lusted after the guy?”
“Yes, I suppose that is what I’m trying to say,” she conceded, well aware that, for too long, she’d seen her sister through rose-colored glasses.
“Hey, good, old-fashioned lust, nothing wrong with that,” Mick said, his tone surprisingly non-judgmental.
For her own sake, Lettitia hoped that he was right. Last night, she’d embraced her sensuality with wild abandon. But prodigal though her lust may have been, she could not envision partaking of that wanton feast with anyone other than Mick Giovanni.
Does that make my sin more forgivable than Emmaline’s? Quite honestly, she didn’t know. Emmaline’s lustful nature had led her down a dark, dangerous path, every misstep in her short life a direct result of her uncontrolled passions.
“If your sister didn’t want to marry Wortham, and really who could blame her—” Mick said in a pointed aside –“why didn’t she just break off her engagement and leave it at that? Why this business with the hired help?”
“It was no secret in our family that, being a peer of the realm, Lord Wortham had condescended to marry my sister because of my father’s vast fortune. A fact that Emmaline greatly resented.”
“What about you, Tisha? Do you resent that Percival has condescended to take you for a bride?”
The quietly spoken question hung between them. Lettitia had wondered when it would surface.
“I know where my duty lies,” she replied woodenly, unable to look Mick in the eye.
Mick grasped her by the chin, turning her head in his direction. In his heated stare, she saw a myriad of unspoken emotions. Anger. Disappointment. Jealousy. And most disconcerting of all, pity.
“Have you given any thought as to what’s in your heart?” he asked.
Lettitia suddenly intuited that they were no longer speaking of her and Lord Wortham.
“What is in my heart is beside the point,” she asserted. She knew her fate had been sealed the day she agreed to become Lord Wortham’s wife. She did not wish to dwell on the fact that, two days hence, Mick would be returning to the future. Or that she had no choice but to marry a man she did not love.
Mick took her gloved hand in his, entwining their fingers. “You know, Tisha, I hate it when we fight.”
Thinking it best to make light of the situation, Lettitia affected a teasing tone of voice. “We were not fighting. We were bickering.”
“I hate that even worse,” he countered with an earnest expression.
Because their conversation had veered down an uncomfortable path, she was actually relieved when the carriage turned onto the tree-lined drive that led to her father’s manor house. While many, if not most, visitors were duly impressed with the expansive gray stone house with its massive central building bracketed by two imposing wings, the sight of her father’s country residence always filled Lettitia with a sense of dread. For so many years, the house had been like a prison, one from which she had eagerly escaped. Since moving to London, her visits to Kent were always brief in duration and never voluntarily made.
At seeing Mick’s open-mouthed, thunderstruck expression, she said mockingly, “I bid you welcome to Stag House.”
“Stag House? That sounds like a triple-X porno joint.”
Since his remark was nonsensical, Lettitia chose to ignore it. “My father has—how shall I put it?—a passion for hunting.”
“Jeez,” Mick said in a stunned tone of voice. “To call this place a house is a stretch. The place is a damn palace.”
“Indeed.”
And as Lettitia knew quite well, her father was the self-proclaimed king.
* * *
There was no point pretending. He was lost. Bass-ackwards, turn around in circles, lost.
Although in his defense, Mick had never been in a residence that boasted, count ’em, twenty-six bedrooms. In addition to that, it seemed like there was a room set aside for every imaginable activity. There was a billiard room, a gun room, a smoking room, a drawing room, a music room, a breakfast room. The list went on and on.
Shit, they ought to issue a road map at the front door.
When the constipated-looking butler, Jeems, or whatever his name was, had gi
ven Mick directions to the gymnasium, it’d sounded simple enough. That was thirty minutes ago. At this rate, they’re going to have to send out a search team to find me.
Catching sight of a uniformed maid, Mick approached her.
“Excuse me,” he said politely to get her attention. The poor woman was on her knees with a scrub brush in her hands. “Do you know where I can find the gymnasium?”
“You mean where Mister Merryweather likes to ’old ’is sparring matches?”
“That would be the room.” Lettitia had mentioned that her father had been a pugilist in his younger days. Before he’d made his beer fortune.
“Down the ’all, then turn left,” the maid said before she resumed her scrubbing.
“Thanks.”
Turning left at the end of the hall, Mick finally located the gymnasium. The butler had informed him that was most likely where he would find Alfred. At a glance, he could see that the cavernous room boasted an impressive array of antique exercise equipment. The gymnasium’s sole occupant, a man dressed all in white and wearing a fencing mask, was performing a series of elaborate maneuvers with a foil. Although Mick couldn’t see his face, the masked man’s slender build indicated that it wasn’t the stodgy Alfred.
Suddenly realizing that he was being watched, the fencer came to an abrupt halt and yanked off his face mask.
Whoa. Bonus.
Lettitia hadn’t mentioned that her fiancé, the esteemed Lord Worthless, had been invited to Stag House.
“Hey, Percival. How the hell ya doing?” Mick exuberantly called out.
While clearly bewildered, the earl quickly hid his surprise behind his trademark arrogance. “What the deuce are you doing at Stag House?”
Mick plastered a shit-eating grin onto his face. “Guess you didn’t get the updated guest list. Hey, if you’ve got a minute, I’d like to ask you a few questions about Emmaline.”
“That topic is most unpalatable.”
“I bet. Particularly since Emmaline was blackmailing you,” Mick countered, figuring he’d show his hand at the outset.
Wortham’s washed-out blue eyes narrowed, and the man glared down his aquiline nose at him. Raising his foil, he prodded the tip into Mick’s frock coat, right above his heart.
“I have half a mind to call you out,” he snarled. “But seeing as how you’re a mere Italian guinea, it would be beneath me to do so.”
Mick let the ethnic slur fly past. He surmised that Wortham was purposefully baiting him, trying to get a rise out of him.
Keeping his cool, well aware that he had the upper hand, Mick pushed the foil away from his chest. “When I saw you the other day at The Golden Dragon, it wasn’t beneath you to have some naked Chinese girl give you a hand job while you got your opium fix.” Because Lettitia had enough on her plate, what with finding out that her fiancé was a junkie, Mick hadn’t bothered to give her the full details of Wortham’s transgression.
The earl’s jaw tightened. The man looked like he was about to blow a gasket. “In my father’s day and age, such insolence would not have been tolerated.”
“Yeah, I know. These days, there’s nothing to be done about us insolent upstarts, huh?”
Before Mick realized what was happening, Wortham slashed the tip of his foil down the length of his neck, drawing blood.
“You bastard!” Mick hollered in disbelief, the open cut hurting like a mother.
The other man’s lips curled in a sneer. “Nothing to be done, eh?”
Without thinking, Mick snatched a foil from the rack mounted on the wall. Seeing the excited gleam in Wortham’s eyes, he figured that’s what the other man had wanted him to do all along.
“You want to get it on with me? Fine,” Mick bellowed, angrily swinging his arm. The foil made a hissing sound as it sliced through the air. Having sized up the competition, he reckoned he could take the wimpy-ass Brit with one hand tied behind his back. The man was a junkie, for God’s sake.
In the next instant, Mick lunged, jabbing the foil in the direction of Wortham’s chest. Catching the earl off guard, he made solid contact. Unfortunately, because Wortham wore a protective vest, he didn’t feel a thing.
“Touché,” Wortham taunted.
“Smart ass.” Mick consoled himself by imagining how good it was going to feel to make one of those Zorro marks smack dab in the middle of the other man’s forehead.
Sighting his target, Mick took another swing. To his chagrin, his foil made contact with nothing but thin air as Wortham executed a graceful feint to the right.
“While I commend you for your enthusiasm, your style lacks a certain finesse. Perhaps you will fare better going on the defensive.”
With that snide warning, Wortham came at him with a series of lightning fast moves. Mick, at a clear disadvantage, deflected the thrusts as best he could. When Wortham’s foil made contact with the left sleeve of his frock coat, putting a ten-inch slice in the fabric, Mick began to worry that he might have bitten off more than he could chew.
Needing to rethink his strategy, Mick decided to hit Wortham where he was most vulnerable.
“Hey, Percival. I’ve been meaning to ask—” he ducked to the left, just barely escaping a swipe at his ear –“what do you know about Emmaline’s disappearance? Seeing as how she was blackmailing you, you’d have a damned good motive for, I don’t know, making her permanently vanish.”
“What are you suggesting, guinea?” The question was delivered with a jabbing thrust.
“Don’t play dumb, Wortham. I know, and more importantly, Lettitia knows, that you’re not the man you appear to be.”
Wortham’s eyes narrowed. “Just how much time have you spent in Lettitia’s company?”
Mick ducked his head as he parried what would have been a wicked slice to his cheek. “Hard to say,” he answered, wondering what Sword Boy would think if he knew that last night his fiancée had given him the best sex of his life.
“Be forewarned, guinea. I don’t take kindly to anyone trying to take what is mine.”
“She ain’t yours yet.” Unbidden, a vision of the slimy bastard in bed with Lettitia exerting his husbandly rights flashed across his mind’s eye. The image, startlingly vivid, enraged him. “Be forewarned. I’m gonna make damn sure Lettitia never becomes yours.”
“I shall enjoy bringing you to your knees,” Wortham sneered before executing a rapid-fire series of thrusts.
Starting to feel more comfortable handling his weapon, Mick ably fended off the attack. Then, with the urge to draw blood so fierce he could taste it, Mick came at his opponent with everything he had, throwing his superior upper body strength into each swing. When he caught the momentary look of surprise in Wortham’s eyes, he came at him that much harder and faster.
Seeing an opening, Mick lunged. His foil penetrated Wortham’s upper pant leg, and the cut stained the white fabric red. Wortham hissed with pain, a look of disbelief on his face as he glanced at his bloodied trousers.
That ain’t nothing, Sword Boy. Before this bout is over, I’m gonna have you pissing in your pants.
Seizing his advantage, Mick zeroed in on Wortham’s upper cheek bone, thinking that’d be a nice place to plant his mark. Just as he was about to follow through, Mick halted in mid-motion, startled by a loud, outraged screech.
Glancing at the door, he caught sight of Lettitia storming toward them, a furious look on her face.
“I demand that you put down that foil. This instant!” she railed, her imperious tone making her words sound like some kind of royal command.
“This doesn’t concern you, Tisha. This is between Wortham and me.” Okay, maybe it did concern her in that she was the prize they were fighting over. But he wasn’t about to admit to that any time soon.
“While I’m loathe to agree with Giovanni, he makes a valid point,” Wortham remarked, much to Mick’s surprise. “We were engaged in a bit of manly sport. Really, my dear, a gymnasium is no place for a woman.”
Mick could have told the gu
y that was the wrong thing to say to Lettitia. Not to mention that it was damned condescending.
“Apologize to the lady,” Mick rasped, shoving the tip of his foil into Wortham’s chest.
“Whatever for?”
“How about for just being you?” He twisted his wrist from side to side, digging his foil tip into the padded cotton of Wortham’s protective vest.
Busily engaged in humiliating his opponent, Mick was shocked when he suddenly felt a sharp object being pressed against his own chest.
“What the hell are you doing?” he roared at Lettitia, thunderstruck to discover her calmly jabbing a foil into the woolen fabric of his coat. Evidently, she’d seized the weapon from the wall rack.
Doesn’t she know that I’m defending her honor?
“Put down your weapon, Mick,” she ordered, fury simmering in her eyes.
Mick glanced at her foil, the tip unerringly pressed against his heart. “You wouldn’t.”
“That is what Bill Sweeney thought… and you know what happened to him.”
Realizing that he was trapped in a no-win situation, Mick yanked his weapon away from Wortham’s chest. Lettitia, in turn, withdrew her foil, angrily flinging it to the floor.
“I had no idea that you were such an Amazon, my dear,” Wortham said mockingly.
“There are many things about me that you don’t know, my lord.” That said, Lettitia turned on her heel and strode toward the door.
“Hold up, Tisha.” Mick rushed toward her, grabbing her by the elbow.
“I have nothing to say to you,” she rasped. Her gray eyes glistened with the sheen of unshed tears.
“Can’t you at least give me a chance to—”
“Dinner is served at eight,” she said, cutting him off. “I shall see you then.”
Mick watched her leave, his heart in his throat. While it had seemed like a good idea at the time, picking a fight with Wortham was the worst thing he could have done.
“No matter the outcome of the match, I would have still taken the field,” Wortham remarked languidly as he strolled past.
So tell me something I don’t already know.
Well aware that he had never had a chance at winning the prize, Mick dejectedly headed for the door.
A Love For All Time Page 19