Black Sheep

by Maren Smith

  Black Sheep

  by

  Maren Smith

  Black Sheep

  by

  Maren Smith

  A Red Hot Romance Spanking Novel

  Originally published through Newsite Web Services

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright 2006 © by Maren Smith

  This book may not be reproduced in

  whole or part, by mimeograph or any other

  means, without permission of the author.

  thetarantularanch@yahoo.com

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  This book is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, places,

  and events are purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Sarah-Jane Lehoux

  Other books by Maren Smith

  Angel of Hawkhaven

  B-Flick

  Bippity-Boppity-Boo

  Daughter of the Strong

  The Diva

  Enemies

  The Great Prank

  Jinxie’s Orchids

  Kindred Spirits

  Life After Rachel

  The Locket

  The Miner’s Wife

  Mistress

  Morogh the Demon

  Mountain Man

  My Lady Robin Hood

  The Next Ex

  Saga: Constance’s Story

  Spanking Tails I thru X

  The Suffragettes

  Treasure

  Varden’s Lady

  Chapter One

  Leverton sat at the massive mahogany table, with his mother on his right side and his twin younger sisters, Harmony and Hope, on his left. He blinked uncomprehendingly at his late father’s solicitor. He even angled his head, not at all certain that he’d heard Edgar Walshmunt say what he was pretty sure the pompous know-it-all really had said. Leverton’s hands shot up to his head, briefly grabbing what fistfuls he could of his own short, brown hair, but it didn’t stop the room from spinning. His belly had shrunk in on itself; he felt almost sick to his stomach, and yet his voice was low and calm and unwavering as he asked, “I beg your pardon, but did you just say—” His throat buckled in around the syllables of the unsavory word. “—destitute?”

  Edgar looked up from the assorted papers he was signing. He neither smiled, nor winced in sympathy. He was, as all good attorneys should be, completely business-like. Indifferent. Cold, even. As icy as the slate grey stare he pinned Leverton to his chair with. “Yes, I did.”

  Beside him, his mother, the newly widowed Lady Georgina Strathsford of Montecrest, swayed. With a soft mew, which she quickly smothered behind her handkerchief, she caught his forearm with a trembling hand.

  Leverton automatically covered it reassuringly, patting her bejeweled fingers even as his mind raced. “There must be some mistake. Mr. Walshmunt, we can’t possibly be... poor. We have four estates.”

  “Mortgaged,” the solicitor succinctly informed them.

  For the second time in the short span of five minutes, Leverton’s brown eyes rounded and his jaw nearly hit the table.

  His mother, just as stunned, still had the presence of mind to remind him, “We are not a fish.”

  Leverton automatically shut his mouth. He tried to swallow. “All of them?”

  Walshmunt’s eyebrows arched. “Oh, yes,” he replied, completely serious. “As is everything within those homes.”

  “Oh, dear Lord!” His mother broke, her normally regal tone seeming so strange, soft and quavering as she moaned and clutched desperately at the massive ruby brooch pinned to the front of her bodice.

  At the end of the table, a veritable mountain of darkening disapproval, Uncle Albert sat with his hands crossed upon the top of his ivory-handled cane. He was the only one on this side of the solicitor’s table not squirming in his seat. His jaw clenched and held tightly, but he kept himself firmly in check, much too much of a gentleman to embarrass himself with a volatile show of emotion. Leverton didn’t need to witness it, however, to know a volcanic explosion of temper was lurking just beneath his uncle’s rapidly reddening face. In the thirty years that had been the stretch of Leverton’s life, he had heard just about everything his uncle had to say on the subject that was his father. And every single one of those discussions had been very explosive indeed.

  “What does this mean?” Hope asked, her thin voice trembling.

  “It means we have no money anymore,” Harmony softly replied.

  Swiveling in her chair, her long, mahogany braid fell over her shoulder as Hope looked first to her mother and then back to her very pale, identical sister. “D-does this mean we aren’t going to the Averley’s ball tonight?”

  “Don’t be stupid!” her twin snapped back, her bottom lip beginning to quiver. “Of course, we’re not going! How can we possibly go now?”

  “Girls, that’s not helping,” Georgina whispered. She touched her temples with two shaking fingers, the knuckles of her other hand turning white as she gripped her brooch even tighter.

  For the first time in all their young lives, the twins paid her no mind. Great, watery tears filled her wide green eyes as Harmony exclaimed, “We’ll not have a Season now! No fancy dress parties, no flirtations, no dancing and no Coming Out!”

  It only took one tear falling down her sister’s cheek for Hope to begin crying as well. “We have to have a Season. How else are we to find suitable husbands? I don’t understand! We had money yesterday. Where did it go?”

  “Girls!” their mother snapped, her voice rising with growing distress. “Be still, please, that’s enough!”

  But Harmony jumped to her feet, sobbing wildly. “We’ll be forced into Debtors’ Prison! We’ll be factory seamstresses!”

  Nearing hysteria, Hope leapt up next to her, her shoulders shaking as she cried, “I hate sewing!”

  Tears flooded Georgina’s eyes as well, though she struggled to blink them back. “Girls!”

  A cold, tight desperation wound through Leverton’s innards as he heard himself ask, “What if we sold it all?”

  His sisters wailed, high-pitched sirens of absolute despair just at the thought of it.

  “If no other notes come due, and if you are extremely fortunate at auction,” Walshmunt made a number of calculations on a piece of paper, “You’ll still owe perhaps nine thousand pounds.”

  “I’ll get a job,” he heard himself saying. But even before the words were out, he knew, best intentions aside, there wasn’t a whole lot of demand for someone who could revel all night, sleep until mid-afternoon, and say ‘If we’re quiet, my darling, your husband need never know,’ in six different languages.

  He used to be very good with sums in his school days—perhaps he could find work as an accountant. Or a secretary, of some sort. He knew how grand houses were run; he supposed he might even buttle for a living, preferably for someone who had never heard of, much less met, a Strathsford. But how much money could he possibly expect to make doing any of those things? He couldn’t imagine it being enough to ensure a roof over his own head, much less that of his mother and sisters. Oh Lord, and this was to be their Coming Out. How in the world could he provide for that, much less one-tenth of the debts his father had left them to drown in?

  Elbows bracing against the table, he covered his head with his hands. How? How could he possibly make this right?

  He couldn’t. There was just no way in hell.

  At the other end of the table, Uncle Albert’s chair squealed as he shoved it sharply back, thunked his cane hard against the floor and stood. In all the days of his life, Leverton had never once heard his uncle raise his voice in public, and yet he silenced the room when he snapped out, “Leverton, get your head up off your hands!”


  Thirty-years-old suddenly going on twelve, Leverton’s spine went as straight as his uncle’s cane in an instant. “Yes, sir!”

  Albert Caldwell’s ice gray eyes snapped from nephew to nieces. “Be silent!”

  Both girls shut their mouths with an audible clattering of teeth and they promptly latched onto one another under the ferocity of his stare.

  “And you, Georgina,” the old man turned to give his younger sister a sharply reproving glare. “Stiff upper lip, girl! What are you thinking? You are a Caldwell, you’re made of sterner stuff than this!”

  Last but not least, when his icy glare came full circle to the solicitor, it was Edgar Walshmunt who blinked first, shrinking a scant inch back in his chair. It was the only hint of submission that he showed before the aristocrat. A lesser man might have missed it, but not his uncle. No, Albert’s hawk-sharp eyes rarely missed anything, and his tone when he spoke dripped ice. “My agent will call upon this office in precisely two hours. Be prepared to provide a full reckoning of all accounts.”

  Mouth pressed so tightly that his lips were almost completely nonexistent, Albert rapped his cane twice upon the floor, summoning the rattled members of his family to gather themselves, and then he turned for the door.

  The entire ride home was done in complete silence. Leverton sat across from his uncle, enduring a cold and heavy silence that seemed magnified a thousand times by the unwavering unpleasantness of his Uncle’s stare. Long before they reached his townhouse, Leverton was forced to accept a not too surprising conclusion: Uncle Albert really, honestly, did not like him.

  He was too much like his father. That was what it all boiled down to. Brown hair, brown eyes, little interest (at least, until now) in how his estates earned their money and more than his fair share of interest in the opposite gender. Leverton knew he wasn’t imagining things, and he knew also that it was more than just the stress of the situation. Although his uncle could hardly be blamed for not jumping up and down in ecstasy over having to shoulder the sudden burden of his newly impoverished relatives, looking back on things, Lev realized that his uncle had never liked him. Not one bit, and not from the very start.

  And yet it wasn’t until now, as he sat across from the fiercely scowling, heavily breathing Uncle Albert, both men swaying to the rocking of the carriage, a mere four feet of unprotected space between them, that Leverton realized just how much of a buffer his father had been.

  The carriage rolled through the wrought-iron gate of their uncle’s summer estate, and as it came to a stop at the marble steps, Georgina whispered, “What are we to do?”

  “Go inside and rest,” Uncle Albert told her, gruff and yet surprisingly gentle. With an uncharacteristic show of affection, he covered her hand and patted it once. “I’ll not let anything happen to you or the girls.”

  Neither his mother nor his sisters seem to realize Leverton was not included in that comforting promise of financial protection. They stepped down out of the carriage without a backwards glance, leaving the two men to stare at one another, his uncle with barely contained hostility.

  “I’ll get a job,” Leverton said again, when his mother was out of earshot. “I swear I will pay back every penny we owe.”

  “You’re damned right, you will,” his uncle growled. “Your father was a scoundrel and a bounder, and I knew him for exactly what he was. I knew it from the day he asked my father for Georgina’s hand. Look at you.” His tone dropped from a growl to a hiss. “That man is alive in every part of you!”

  Leverton just sat there, wondering if he should pretend to be more surprised than what he was. Truth be told, he was a little stung, but he didn’t try to defend his father. There wasn’t any point and if he made his uncle angry enough, the embittered old man might abandon his mother and sisters as well.

  As if reading his thoughts, Albert snorted, scowling. “I’ll give your sisters their Coming Out, and a modest dowry. I’ll see them wed and to good men! Not men like you or your blackguard sire!”

  A flush of uncomfortable heat rose to stain Leverton’s cheeks. His hands clenched, but he remained where he was, fists gripped upon his thighs, jaw tightly clenched. “Thank you, Uncle.”

  His gratitude seemed to anger Uncle Albert even more. Hardly leaning upon his cane, he swept down out of the carriage, turned, and shut the door firmly before Leverton could follow. His voice was hoarse and trembling as he snarled, “Be off with you! You have two days to find yourself a position, and for your sake, make it as far from London as you can get. I swear, should I ever see you again—”

  “You won’t,” Leverton replied, just as tightly in control of his rising temper. “I promise you won’t.”

  “The promise of a bounder,” his uncle sneered. “Set foot on my property again and, my sister’s child or not, I will set the dogs on you.” To the coachman, he snapped and impatiently gestured with his cane, “Go! I will send your things to you. Just go!”

  As the carriage rocked into motion, Leverton blew out an angry breath. His hands were shaking as he slid towards the window, looking back at the house for one last time. Through the branches of the old oak sentries, he could see his mother standing on the second floor balcony where she could not have helped but overhear. He was never going to see her again. Not while his uncle was alive, he knew. She must have known it, too, for she raised her hand, bidding him a voiceless farewell. Her eyes held all the misery of a mother losing her only son, yet they remained dry. She was a Caldwell, after all, and according to his uncle, no true Caldwell ever cried.

  Leverton was only half true, thanks to his father. He supposed that was why one tear managed to escape him, trickling unhindered down his face. The rest, however, he impatiently wiped away.

  * * * * *

  Dallyhone Bog was located smack in the middle of sheep country. Nearly everyone this far out into the middle of nowhere made their living on the production of wool and so, he supposed, would his new employer.

  It had taken nine days for Leverton to find this job, that of an estate manager for one Motteldine Hall, located three days out of London and down the most ill-maintained roads in all of England. The carriage bumped and bounced, jostling roughly from side to side until Leverton felt almost seasick from the constant, unrelenting motion. He held himself gripped between the two coach windows, bracing stiffly to avoid being bounced right off the seat as the carriage wheels climbed in and out of one spine-jarring rut after another. It was night now. After three days of this, his arms ached from holding himself so stiffly, and he honestly didn’t know how much more he could take before getting out and walking (yes, even in these boots) became his overwhelming preference.

  No sooner had that thought scampered through his mind, however, than did the carriage pull to a sudden, bumpy, swaying stop. After a moment, Leverton leaned his head out the window—and not, surprisingly enough, so that he could throw up. At least, not this time.

  Empty, gently rolling pastures, sparsely populated by the occasional tree, spread out all around him. In the dark, he could barely make out the ghostly whiteness of the sheep, flocked tightly along the stone-stacked fences and upon the rolling hillsides. Shadowed trees bordered the far sides of the pastures to both his right and left, the blackened branches as jagged as teeth where they cut against the only-faintly lighter skyline, a forest unbroken by lights or any sign of human habitation.

  “Why have we stopped?” he finally asked.

  “Can’t go no further, m’lord.”

  Leverton twisted around on his seat to ask why not, but that question was promptly answered when he noticed the thick, black trunk of a very dead tree lying across the road. Were they closer to the tree line, his first thought would have been to get his empty purse ready for the highwayman. But they were still fairly much in the open, with only old stone fences hemming them in on either side and the inquisitive sheep moving closer to get a better look at him.

  “Ye’ll ‘ave to walk from ‘ere.”

  The perfect end to a perfe
ctly lousy nine long days.

  Disgusted and trying not to take it out on the coachman, Leverton got out of the vehicle. He stretched—his legs and back both protesting the abuse of the day—all the way to the back of the coach where his meager luggage awaited him. Lord, how was he going to move that trunk?

  “What yer can’t manage, I’ll leave at the inn,” the driver offered. When Leverton stuck his head around the back of the carriage, he pointed out across the field, back the way they’d come and slightly to the left. “Three miles east o’ ‘ere. Dead center o’ Penny’s Weight.”

  Leverton obligingly followed the direction of his hand, but it was too dark to see anything. No houses, still no lights. Nothing but ghost-white sheep, open pastures and that jagged border of more trees, hungrily eating up the star-strewn sky.

  At least that would make his walk lighter. If there really was an inn, that is. If not, well... he said goodbye to everything he couldn’t carry and selected only a carpetbag of personal items and a canvas sack of clothes, which he slung over one shoulder. “Where do I go?”

  Swiveling forward on his seat, the coachman pointed out ahead of them. “Cut west ‘cross this pasture, yeah. Into the trees and keep on ‘bout five miles more, ‘til yer find the road. Then follow that ‘nother half mile further. Yer can’t miss it. Motteldine ‘All’s the only place out there. ‘Cept, be mindful yer don’t go crossin’ no bogs. Swaller yer whole, they will.”

  Leverton stood corrected. That would be the perfect ending to this perfectly lousy past nine days. He managed a wry smile. “Thanks.”

  “Good luck t’ yer.”

  Scooping a few pebbles from the road into his empty purse, Leverton prepared himself to be robbed. Then, hefting his carpet bag and shouldering his clothes’ sack, he started walking.

  By coach, five miles on roads like these were still a good hour’s worth of very rocky travel. By foot, tripping over sheep in the middle of the night with only the faintest sliver of moonlight to guide him, it took twice as long. He almost twisted his ankle because he couldn’t quite see the dips and holes in the ground before stepping off balance into them. He wasn’t even sure, as he cut across one pasture after another, that he’d be able to recognize a bog before stepping off solid ground into one and possibly sinking in straight up to his neck.