Jo Beverly

by Winter Fire

  Lynchbold winced at the tone. “No, no, milord! If you would be so gracious, there is a mattress already set up in the lady’s parlor upstairs. I gather it was for a maid, but it’s a good thick mattress, milord, and a maid can sleep in the kitchens.”

  Genova braced herself for a tantrum, but the marquess sighed. “It will have to do.”

  The innkeeper left, almost quaking with relief. Genova was weary of battle but had to make one more foray. “Would it be possible for Sheena to sleep with us, Thalia? With her speaking no English, it would be frightening for her to be put among strangers.”

  “She’s already among strangers,” Lady Calliope snapped. “Stop pampering her. She probably sleeps in an earth-floor hovel in Ireland.”

  Lord Ashart looked wry. “You truly do think I should sleep in the stables, don’t you, Miss Smith?”

  “No, my lord, but…”

  “But the girl can share the trundle bed with Regeanne,” said Thalia with a careless flutter of her hand. “Enough interruptions. Back to the game!”

  The trundle bed was almost as big as the one it fit under, but Regeanne would not like it. It was the better option, however, so Genova dealt the next hand.

  Ashart, however, rose. “Your indulgence, my dears, but I must check tomorrow’s arrangements. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Thalia didn’t pout. Instead she beamed after him. “Isn’t he the dearest boy?”

  Genova couldn’t stop herself. “He’s a rake, and he’s Charlie’s father, and he plans to abandon him like a worn-out shoe!”

  Thalia looked at her, eyes wide and serious. “Oh, no, dear. A Trayce would never abandon his responsibilities.”

  “And you said yourself that the supposed Mrs. Dash was not a reliable woman,” Lady Calliope pointed out. “Why believe her?”

  “A point,” Genova conceded, frowning, “but what mother would abandon her child to strangers in this way?”

  “It’s exactly what she has done, though, isn’t it? Whatever the truth behind this story, Lady Booth Carew is not here.”

  Genova couldn’t argue with that.

  Thalia gathered in the cards and laid out a game of patience, though her manner could not be called patient. She twitched for whist like a whippet eager for a walk. Genova felt more like a ship caught in a maelstrom, spinning out of control.

  They would arrive at Rothgar Abbey, home of the possibly deranged and murderous Dark Marquess, with a mysterious, misbegotten baby in the party. And, she now realized, with Lord Rothgar’s cousin Ashart, who was apparently his mortal enemy!

  She looked at the two old ladies, wishing she could see their unconcern as reassuring. Instead, it seemed like further evidence of family insanity.

  Ashart returned and the game resumed. Seeing no alternative, Genova focused her mind on the cards. The one thing guaranteed to irritate was careless play. After a while, Ashart ordered rum punch. It was delicious but Genova only sipped at it. She had no intention of growing tipsy in this company.

  Both old ladies drank deeply, but it had no noticeable effect until Lady Calliope slipped into sleep between one trick and the next. Genova sent for her menservants to carry her chair into her bedroom, relieved that the evening was finally over.

  But then she recalled that Ashart would be coming upstairs with her and Thalia. Could he not sleep in this parlor? A question revealed that Lady Calliope’s two menservants slept here in order to be to hand.

  That left no choice. A nobleman would not deign to sleep with lowly servants. While Ashart helped tipsy Thalia up the stairs, Genova followed with assorted items.

  They entered the parlor, which was now a bedroom. A plain mattress was made up with sheets and blankets. A punch bowl and glasses sat on the hearth. Lynchbold was doing his best to make up for the inadequate room, but Genova didn’t think anyone needed more spirits.

  The table had been turned into a washstand, with bowl, mirror, and towels. Leather saddlebags lay nearby, and the great cloak was spread over a chair, damp fur giving a predatory presence.

  Thalia wove toward the table. “Three-handed whist?”

  Oh, no. Genova dumped the things in her hands in order to steer Thalia into the bedchamber. When she finally shut the door, she sagged against it in relief.

  Ridiculous to think she was in danger. Be he wicked as Lucifer, the marquess would not try to rape her in his great-aunt’s bed. But that wasn’t the peril, and she knew it. The danger came from the sizzle in her blood, from the way she responded to even a look, from the way she lusted for another fight.

  Regeanne came over to help Thalia to bed and, thank heavens, didn’t look too put out over the baby. When the Frenchwoman whispered to be quiet, so as not to disturb the petit ange, Genova decided there might be hope of peace there, at least.

  Sheena O’Leary and Charlie Carew were already fast asleep on the trundle, looking like innocent angels. But, Genova realized, a wet nurse could hardly be innocent. Sheena must have borne a child—and that baby had almost certainly died.

  Some wet nurses fed two. Some gave their child to another mother’s care in order to earn the higher wages given to a nurse who devoted herself to her employer’s baby. Neither seemed likely here, and Genova’s heart clenched with pity.

  It seemed unlikely that Sheena was married, so the poor girl must have suffered the shame of carrying an illegitimate baby, then the grief of losing it.

  No wonder she’d seized the chance to escape and earn her keep this way. Poor, poor Sheena, especially as she seemed to have transferred all her mother love to little Charlie.

  That left Genova no choice. She vowed that Lord Ashart’s innocent son and Sheena would be safe and together, even if she had to use her pistol.

  Chapter Eight

  T he baby’s catlike warble woke Genova for the second time. She was hard to disturb from sleep, but something about the cry of a baby could do it. A soft Gaelic murmur beyond the closed bed-curtains would be accompanied by the presentation of a milk-filled breast. Peace returned.

  Genova settled back, but this time sleep eluded her. She shifted, trying to find a comfortable position on the pillow. She needed sleep if she was to have her wits tomorrow, and she would need all her wits to deal with Lord Ashart.

  A distant clock struck three—the goblin hour, when dark monsters invade even the most tranquil mind, and her mind was not tranquil. Her fretting bounced from journey to baby to marquess, then with a leaden thud to her deeper problem, her life now her father had remarried.

  She tried to smother it, but goblins have no mercy.

  If only her mother had lived.

  Mary Smith had been carried from health to death in a day by a sudden internal bleeding. It had happened in the middle of the Atlantic and she’d been buried at sea, which had been a particularly painful blow. Genova was practical by nature, but even so, pain burst in her every time she remembered her mother’s bundled body hitting the water with a splash.

  Thrown away. Like bad food and waste.

  She’d give anything to have a grave that she could tend. She’d been waiting for the right moment to suggest a headstone for her mother in Tunbridge Wells, or a memorial plaque in the parish church. It seemed simple enough, but she’d sensed it would be awkward, though how her stepmother could object she couldn’t imagine.

  Her stepmother. Hester Poole as was, Hester Smith now.

  If Genova could dislike Hester it might be easier, but she recognized a kind and gracious woman. Captain Smith would choose no less. Hester and Genova were simply different.

  It was a puzzle why her father had chosen a woman so unlike his free-spirited, lively Mary, but perhaps that was the point. A complete break, just as he’d broken from the past by first retiring, then moving to Hester’s house in Tunbridge Wells, far from the sea.

  Genova hadn’t thought the move would be so very difficult, but after three months she was ready to gnaw through walls to escape. Hester’s house was a very conventional house; her family and friends a very
conventional circle. If not for the Trayce ladies, Genova felt she might already be stark, staring mad.

  It had all come to a head on December 13 over a superficially simple matter—the presepe.

  The Italian Nativity scene was a family tradition. All Genova’s life it had been set up on December 13 to wait for the Christ child on Christmas Eve. Perhaps it was particularly important to Genova because Christmas Eve was her birthday. She’d not realized how important, however, until Hester had gently refused to have the presepe on display in her drawing room.

  “Forgive me, Genova dear, but it is a little popish, don’t you think? And a little shabby? Some of the finest people in the Wells pass through my house at Christmas.”

  Shabby? Genova could still feel the sting of that, especially as she’d seen it was true. The presepe was gilded for her by a lifetime’s memories, but the paint on the wooden figures had faded, and the gold was flaking in places. The embroidered white linen it sat on, which her mother had called the flowers-in-the-snow, had yellowed with age, and even become spotted with mildew. Some of the embroidery had frayed into tufts.

  She’d touched up the paint and was making a new cloth, but Hester’s words still hurt.

  She’d bundled it away, fighting tears, but the deepest hurt had been because her father had made no protest at all. He’d helped her, and even apologized after a fashion, but she’d known then that the presepe was something else he’d like to leave behind. And that the same thing might apply to her. He still loved her—she didn’t doubt that—but she was a cuckoo in his new nest….

  Genova jerked out of a restless sleep and sat up.

  The flowers-in-the-snow! The new one. She’d left it in the parlor.

  Before turning Thalia toward the bedroom, she’d dropped everything in her hands on the table, close by the washing bowl. What if it was already stained? She couldn’t lie here and wonder. She had to go and retrieve it. It was still dark, still the middle of the night.

  When she slipped out through the bed-curtains, however, she found that the fire had been started. It was only just beginning to catch the logs, so someone had crept in to light it not long ago. Perhaps that had woken her.

  Though dark, it was almost morning.

  She pushed her feet into her slippers and pulled her woolen robe from under the eiderdown, where she’d put it to keep it warm. Once wrapped in it, she found her timepiece and tilted it to catch the firelight. Ten minutes past eight! An hour later than they’d risen the other two days. Someone must have ordered a later start.

  She’d like to blame the marquess for doing it out of laziness, but in fact it was sensible. In these short winter days, they’d had less than eight hours of travel light and had been forced to rise early. Today would be a short day, so they could afford to lie in.

  She peeped through the window curtains, and scraped a clear spot through the frost on a pane. The pale light of dawn glinted off white on the ground. Heavy frost, not snow, thank heavens, but it promised another harsh day.

  She turned to look at the adjoining door. If she was up, the marquess might be up. She was not a highly skilled needlewoman, however, and the new presepe cloth had taken weeks of work. There was certainly no time to do it over again.

  It would do no harm to check. He might still be asleep.

  She crept over to the door, listened, then eased it open. By the light of the new fire, she saw a still figure on the mattress, covers pulled high against the cold. It looked as if he’d added his wolf cloak on top for extra warmth.

  Being a fair woman, she granted that he’d made little fuss over his situation. Whatever else he was, the Marquess of Ashart was not a pampered fop.

  Moving carefully, she eased into the room. The fire gave enough light to show her embroidery frame, still on the table, still next to the washbowl and jug. It looked unharmed, but it would be safer in her possession.

  She stepped carefully across the room, picked up her work, then checked the marquess again. The cloak was fur side up, which could be why the planes of his face looked so strong in the firelight. The line of his dark lashes seemed almost too delicate for that setting, like the sweep of a skillful Chinese brush.

  His hair was loose, and one long tendril lay along his jaw, close to his slightly parted lips. Her hand moved as if to clear it, though she went no closer. Deep, earthy longings stirred between her thighs.

  She’d retained both virtue and virginity, but her body had learned passion. She’d been engaged to marry, and had allowed Walsingham some license.

  They’d been in the Mediterranean at the time. In summer. Burning days and long sultry nights—a combination that always seemed perilous to English propriety, perhaps because common sense dictated the lightest possible clothing.

  But this man was covered by layers of cloth, so she could see only hair and the elegant bones of his face. How could they have such a potent effect?

  When his lashes flickered, she was caught staring.

  A pistol appeared in his hand, pointed at her.

  Genova stepped back, caught her slipper on something, and sat on the floor with a thump.

  They sat there for a heartbeat, staring at one another.

  Then he shook himself and put the pistol down, uncocking it.

  He’d cocked it?

  Had she been a hair’s breadth from death?

  He pushed tumbling hair off his face, sparks flashing from his emerald ring and gold earring. “I’m sorry if I alarmed you, Miss Smith. You require something?”

  His nightshirt gaped open in a vee down his chest. Any woman who spends time on board ship sees men’s naked torsos. Most are not constructed in heroic style, but she knows a fine one when she sees it.

  Genova moistened her mouth. “No, my lord. Except my needlework, that is.” She waved it as feeble excuse.

  “Isn’t the light poor for stitchery?”

  Perhaps it was the cloak that stole her wits. His admirable torso rose from fire-gilded fur like some sea-god from the foam.

  She was running mad! She could weep, however, to be in her plain, practical nightclothes, her hair in a dull plait.

  She was in her nightclothes!

  What must he be thinking?

  She scrambled to her feet, almost falling again as her slippers tangled with her robe. She grabbed a chair back for balance.

  “What is that?”

  “What?” Dazed, she followed his eyes and saw the hoop and cloth in her hand. She grasped the answer as if it could explain everything. “My needlework.”

  “Yes, but what is it? I was admiring it last night, but it’s not a handkerchief. All that gold thread in the middle would scrape a nose raw.”

  He was sitting there, one knee raised, an arm resting on it, as if talking to a night-clad lady in his bedroom was nothing.

  What had she expected?

  He was a rake.

  “It’s the cloth for beneath a presepe, my lord. A presepe is a Nativity scene. The gold represents straw.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Ah, yes. I saw such in Italy.”

  They might have met in Italy?

  Hot Mediterranean sun.

  Long sultry nights.

  That earring winked at her in the firelight like a wicked invitation.

  Chapter Nine

  H e frowned at her, seeming puzzled. Of course he’s puzzled. He’s wondering why you’re standing here like a statue!

  “Is there any connection between you and Molly Carew?”

  “What?” It was as much a bump as when she’d tumbled. He still thought her a wicked schemer? “None except your baby, my lord.”

  “It isn’t mine. I mean,” he went on with edged patience, “did you know of her existence before yesterday?”

  Fury certainly cleared the wits. “Are you still on that road, my lord? Just because you’re a villain doesn’t mean that I must be, too!”

  “I am not a villain!”

  “You want to cast that innocent baby on the parish,” she hissed, w
aving her embroidery frame toward the other room, but remembered to lower her voice.

  “I thought we’d settled that. If I can believe you about Molly—”

  “If?”

  “All right! I believe you.” He was almost shouting, too, but managing to keep the noise level low. “In which case she is the enemy, and we are allies.”

  Genova wanted to deny it, but as far as the baby went, he might be right. “Perhaps, my lord.”

  “Stop my lording me. I’m sure it chokes you. Why, Miss Smith, do you dislike me so?”

  “You assaulted me, sir!”

  “Oh, that.”

  Genova looked for the chamber pot. She’d upturn it over his wretched head!

  “It was a stratagem, Miss Smith. As they say, ‘All strategies are allowed in love and in war.’ Then, we were at war. Now…”

  “…we are playing at love?” she completed sweetly. And most unwisely. She knew that when the look in his eye changed.

  “What a delightful thought.” He held out an elegant hand. “Come, join me.”

  She met his eyes. “My lord, I would rather hang.”

  His brows rose, and his lips—damn him—twitched. “Truly?”

  Unconquerable common sense ruled. “Very well, no. But by Hades, you would suffer from it as much as I.”

  “Are you a virgin, then?”

  Genova felt her color flare. “That has nothing to do with it!”

  “I doubt you’d suffer in my bed otherwise. But if you’re not inclined to dalliance, let’s continue with plain alliance. You must help me persuade Thalia not to take that baby to Rothgar Abbey.”

  “Must?” she asked, deliberately imitating his tone from yesterday.

  A full smile touched his lips. “Touché. My dear Miss Smith, I humbly request your assistance in persuading Thalia not to take that baby to Rothgar Abbey.”

  “But what would become of him?”

  “I will reunite him with his mother.”

  “The woman abandoned him!”

  “She left him to my tender care.”

  “Which proves her insanity.”