by Maren Smith
Chapter Four
Elspeth had washed her face, and it only took one half glance for Leverton to realize just how much trouble he was in. Who could have possibly guessed that beneath all that shoe polish, she would be beautiful? She was younger than himself. All azure blue eyes; full, kissable lips; and long, blonde hair that waved and flowed down the length of her back right until she twisted it up into a sloppy bun set high upon the back of her head. She’d changed out of that shapeless black dress, as well. And when she first came limping back into the den to grab another biscuit, he took one look at her in her cream-colored morning gown, cut lengthwise by thin blue and green alternating stripes that only served to amplify her feminine figure, and just about fell out of his chair.
The swells of her breasts rounded above the low, square neckline, and every time he looked at her, that was precisely where his gaze eventually fell. It made his palm itch all over again. Not because he wanted to spank her again (although there was a certain irritability to being this unbelievably attracted to a woman he knew he couldn’t touch), but because he could feel the phantom fullness of the night before, when he’d grabbed for her shoulder in the dark and drastically missed.
“How completely excellent!” she enthused, snapping her napkin out upon the desk, so she could fill it with biscuits and slices of ham. “Between the two of us, we should have this mystery solved in no time and the perpetrators brought into the full light of the law! Are you done eating?”
Taking his cue from her, Leverton filled his pockets with the remaining biscuits and stuffed the last piece of sausage into his mouth whole.
“We should bring you up to speed,” Elspeth said, as she slipped into a dull brown jacket that in no way matched the loveliness of her dress, but which failed to hide her bosoms from view since she made no attempt to button up the front. “The best way to do that, I suppose, is to take you back to the beginning. Sheep’s cotes, ho!”
And off they went, leaving the house behind and venturing down that winding dirt road all over again. Thankfully, it was a whole lot easier to navigate in the daylight, but Leverton had to work to keep up with Elspeth. For a woman with such a pronounced limp, she moved surprisingly fast, following the road only until the first bend before cutting across the dew-swept grass towards a grove of dead trees.
“Step where I step,” she called back cheerfully, sending a ripple of alarm tickling through his gut.
“Are we going into the bog?” he asked, his gaze dropping abruptly from the lilting sway of her hips to the watery footsteps appearing out from beneath the trailing sweep of her gown as she passed over the wet and getting wetter by the second grass. It all smelled very earthy here, almost vinegary, but the ground looked solid enough. Small puddles of muddy water segmented the earth into islands here and there, but to his eye, it all looked easily traversable.
“This whole place is a bog,” Elspeth replied, waving off his concern. “Never fear. I know where the ground is. Just step where I step and you won’t—”
“Get swallered whole?” Leverton asked, impersonating the thick accent of last night’s coach driver as best he could.
She barked out a sharp laugh, but kept right on walking, turning sharply left, her footsteps trodding upon thick tufts of solid looking grass and raising small puddles of water, which he then deepened with his passing. “Afraid you’ll get sucked down with the Bog People, are you?”
“Bog People?” That stopped him.
“Yes.” She glanced back at him over her shoulder, her smile still teasing but not in a misleading sort of way. “There are bodies all over in the bogs. We find them when we cut for peat.”
“Bodies?” He tried to laugh, waiting for her to join in and reveal the joke. He sobered quickly, however, when she only glanced back a little, her smile turning quizzical as she tried to find the humor. Leverton stopped walking instantly. “This is what you meant when you mentioned dangerous, isn’t it? Exactly how many bodies are we talking about here?”
“Hundreds,” she said. “They’ve been found here for centuries.”
“Centuries?! Who’s putting them there? And more importantly, where are they now?” He turned nearly in a full circle, his eyes sweeping through the grove of dead trees. “Good Lord, I should think that mystery would rank far and above switched sheep!”
“Oh, no. They’re very old, I’m told,” Elspeth replied. Glancing back at him, she noticed that he’d stopped following her and so paused where she was so that he could catch up. “Whoever put them there is long gone. You’re not squeamish, are you? I admit, it’s quite a thing to see one freshly dug up. They look—” she shuddered delicately, her eyes still bright and dancing in that thoroughly excited way of hers, “—melted. It’s all very exciting. I was writing a book about them, right up until my sheep got switched.”
“How lovely,” he said dryly, but once again fell into step behind her when she continued on.
“Yes,” she agreed, completely oblivious to his lack of enthusiasm. “It’s wonderful material for a book, but sadly, there is no mystery.”
It was a fifteen minute walk through the worst of the bog, but then they reached the edge where fresh growing trees signaled solid ground again. The winding stone fence of the first sheep pasture was only a stone’s throw further through a narrow wedge of the woods. He went over first, but when he turned to reach back for her, he was startled to find her, her dress hiked to her knees and one leg thrown over the top while she straddled the old stones.
They both stopped, staring at one another in equal measures of surprise: he, because despite the wood and iron brace that capped her limb from ankle to shin, it was a stunningly beautiful leg, all slim and pale and curved with muscles gained from a lifetime accustomed to walking; and she, as if she’d just suddenly remembered that she was a lady and therefore hiking one’s bare leg over a wall should probably be restricted, especially in the presence of a gentleman.
“Oh, dash and bother,” she said mildly, her surprise abruptly giving way to intense annoyance.
Determined not to laugh, lest she think it at her expense, Leverton caught her around the waist and lifted, pulling her the rest of the way over the wall. She reached for his shoulders to steady herself, and he couldn’t help himself. He brought her in much closer than necessary before setting her feet back on the ground. Even after she was down, his hands lingered at her waist, reluctant to let her go.
He was right on the verge of telling her how desperately in need she was of a jolly good kiss, when, blushing slightly, Elspeth stepped back. A half second later, they were mobbed by a flock of fluffy whiteness that sent all thoughts of kisses straight out of Leverton’s mind.
Elspeth’s mind, however, went straight to work. Her lips moved and her fingers waggled as she made a quick count of the constantly bleating sheep swarming around them.
“Ha!” she declared when she was done. “Just as I thought. Seventy-six. We’re missing two more.”
“How can you tell?”
“Here.” She bent over, catching the sheep nearest to her and turning it to face Leverton so he could follow her motions. “Feel the sheep.”
He started to follow suit. “Where?”
“The breast.”
He straightened abruptly. “I have not been a country boy anywhere near that long.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just do it.”
He bent again, grabbing onto the nearest animal. As he combed his fingers down through the thick wool in search of skin, he kept his eyes firmly glued to the mountainous mounds he’d much rather be fondling instead. He was in no danger of switching species. “What am I feeling for?”
“A knotted string.”
He combed his fingers from neck to front legs. Twice. “There isn’t one,” he finally determined.
“Ha!” Elspeth declared again. “That’s a switched sheep! Mine all have strings.”
Leverton started to straighten again, but stopped abruptly when he realized his coat was being nibbled from five diff
erent directions. Standing rescued all but the hem of it, and already he could feel light, nibbling tugs pulling at his back. He closed his eyes with a sigh and bid goodbye to his coat. That did give him an idea, however. “Maybe the strings got snagged in shrubbery, or—” he felt another tug at the back of his coat. “Or maybe they ate them off one another.”
“They would have to eat through a lot of wool to find those strings,” Elspeth said dubiously. “And besides, they don’t eat them off when freshly shorn. Why would they when the strings are hidden by a full and heavy coat?”
A careful tour of the entire pasture excluded his rational explanation.
“All right,” he said, conceding defeat in the face of suspicious evidence. “How many switched sheep have we?”
“Seventeen, now.”
“I want to double check.”
They groped the sheep together at first, but Leverton quickly gave up and let Elspeth take over when she noted he was fondling the same sheep more than once. How she could tell them apart, he had no idea, but the last thing he wanted was for her to think it deliberate. So he wandered a short distance away, taking up a position against a nearby stretch of stone wall, coat gathered close to defend it from nibblers, and watching while she worked her way through the flock.
Her bottom bobbed and weaved above the backs of the sheep and more than once, when she turned towards him, her breasts seemed perched on the verge of popping delightfully free of her bodice. Sadly, gravity never did gain its wicked way, and in the end, she straightened unmolested—more’s the pity—to brush her hands briskly together before bracing them upon her hips.
“All right, I was wrong,” she said, and then looked at him. “We’re missing nineteen now. Four more than yesterday.”
“You know your sheep,” he conceded, and she smiled. The animals plucked and nibbled at her skirts as she waded through them on her way back to him. Pulling his attention from the slight bounce and wobble of her breasts as she moved, he turned his mind to the mystery at hand. “Let’s start from the beginning then, shall we? Where were you when you first realized you had a problem and, more importantly, where were they?”
They crossed the pasture together, the flock of sheep swarming them all the way to the gate that divided this block of greenery from the one on the other side of the dividing stone fence. The ground here was a little more rocky than the previous pasture, and they were much closer to the small village of Penny Weight. Just across the eastern fence was the local cemetery, and although he couldn’t see the village through the distant trees, he could hear a rooster crow upon occasion and, even more faintly, the metallic ping-ping of a blacksmith’s hammer on anvil.
“You know, that reminds me—the majority of my belongings are still waiting for me at the inn.”
“I’ll have Jack bring them up the next time I see him,” Elspeth promised, but as Leverton approached the fence, he still eyed the cemetery and wondered how disrespectful it might be to simply dash across it long enough to request that his things be brought to Motteldine. He looked at the grave markers, most simple crosses of wood but roughly half of which were made of stone. Glancing back into the sheep pasture, he looked at the squarish stones poking up through the grass all around his feet.
“Good heavens,” he said mildly. “Was your pasture part of the town cemetery?”
“Dear me, no!” Elspeth laughed.
“What are all these bricks, then?” He squatted to pry one up out of the dirt. It was heavy, as long as the length of both hands together and wide enough to have been used as a foundation block in someone’s house. But though he ran his fingers over it, brushing away the dirt did not reveal a name or any dates.
“There are old ruins all over the bog,” Elspeth told him, limping a short distance into the pasture, just far enough to climb to the top of the slight hill before them. “There used to be houses here, dating all the way back to the Roman occupation. Now and then, we still stumble across old wells and foundation stones, but these scattered bricks are all that’s left of any recognizable structure. In fact, my great-grandfather used many of these old stones in the construction of our existing fen—”
A loud crack stopped her where she stood, and they both looked down in surprise at the sudden dent that had appeared in the close-cropped grass around her feet. Another louder crack and suddenly the ground gave way completely.
Leverton dropped the brick at the same time Elspeth flattened herself to what ground remained around the hole that had appeared directly beneath her feet, her arms flailing wildly to catch hold of something—anything—as the ominous sound of stone striking and bouncing on stone echoed up from a fair distance below.
“Leverton!” she squeaked and slid backwards, her fingers raking deep furrows in the earth as she sank into the hole all the way to her chest.
He threw himself after her, scrambling to catch her reaching hands and clasping tightly onto her wrist a bare second before her shoulders fell into the mouth of the hole. Her other hand flailed wild and free for half a second before she managed to latch onto his arm. The full weight of her suddenly dangled at the end of his arm as, with another ominous, splintering crack, the hole widened again, swallowing the rest of her all the way up to his shoulders.
“Good Lord,” he grunted, his legs splaying for balance in the grass and his other hand frantically searching for stability along the ragged edge of the hole. “What have you been eating?”
Any other woman he knew would have either screamed or fainted; Elspeth was too practical for either. She simply clung to him, her hands like claws and her eyes like azure blue tea saucers against her too-pale face. Her knuckles whitened where she gripped him, looking very much like his knuckles, come to think of it. Thank goodness the hole seemed content with its present size, else they’d have found the bottom together, landing one on top of the other and himself face first!
She whimpered. “I should very much like to be pulled up now, Mr. Strathsford, if you please.”
“I don’t suppose your feet touch ground?” he asked hopefully, shifting his weight very carefully as he searched for the leverage with which to avoid accidentally sending them both into a one-way trip to meet the stone-lined floor. Heaven only knew how long it would be before—if—anyone found them down there.
Twisting back her head, Elspeth looked over her shoulder, then down under one arm, and then her wide eyes returned to him. She shook her head. “I can’t even see it.”
“All right, then. Up we come.” Muscles jumped and rippled across his back and shoulders as he pulled. “Bad Persephone,” he grunted, winning a faint if slightly panicked laugh from her as her head reemerged above the grass and into the sunlight. “No pomegranate seeds for you.”
He wrestled her back onto stable earth by slow degrees and didn’t think anything at all, as he landed the main weight of her flat upon the ground, of grabbing her bottom—that convenient handhold between her legs becoming the safest and easiest way to grip her—before pulling the lower half of her out of the hole. Elspeth strangled on a squeak of protest, although that might just as well have been a squeak of relief to be once more fully on the grass. But then she twisted, her sudden scramble to get his hand off her bottom and out from between her legs causing the top of her head to crack against his chin, and they both fell over; Leverton flopping flat on his back, holding his chin with one hand.
Elspeth landed across him, her arms grabbing reflexively at his shoulders as she tucked her face against his chest and shook. He forgot his chin and held her instead, and for the briefest time, that was how they lay, clinging to one another, panting and motionless, before she raised her head and stared at him.
“Excuse me.” Slowly relinquishing her hold on his shoulders, Elspeth was the first to crawl back up onto hands and knees.
“Your breasts really are magnificent,” he admired, his mouth curling into a smile as he watched her rise.
She did not reply but crawled the rest of the way off him and turned ba
ck to the hole.
His smile vanished and he made an unsuccessful grab for her ankle. “What are you doing?”
“There’s bricks here,” she replied, dragging herself back to the gaping hole in the ground on her stomach. “It’s man made,” she said, her voice echoing as she peered down into it. “It’s very dark, but I think I see a stone-built floor. It must be a cellar of sorts.”
“Very interesting,” Leverton said, unimpressed. Clambering onto his own knees, he grabbed her uninjured ankle and dragged her stomach-down completely off the short mound of earth.
She rolled into a sitting position the instant he let her go. “We should go down there.”
“Why?” he countered.
“Because it might be fascinating.” Whatever fear she might have experienced while dangling over that hole had been completely replaced by excitement now that she no longer stood in jeopardy of breaking her neck.
He, on the other hand, was much slower in recovering. “Unless you think your sheep might be using their missing strings to go underground-cellar spelunking, I suggest we stick to one mystery at a time.”
She frowned, looking back over her shoulder at the dark opening, but he offered his hand to help her back to her feet and did not allow her obvious curiosity to change his mind.
“Are you hurt at all?” he asked, fully intending to turn around and head back home, the sheep mystery done for the day. “Can you walk?” Born into the cutthroat world of Polite London Society, Leverton had suckled at the breast of manipulation and cut his adult teeth on the back-biting intrigues of courtiers and the ambitions of lesser nobility. He recognized in an instant that glitter of deception that trickled through the calculating blue of her eyes, and probably knew it for what it was before she’d even fully formulated the intent to lie.
“I could carry you,” he offered, skillfully crushing her chance to lie before she could offer to sit here and wait for him to return with help.
“Oh, dash and bother!” She scowled and then sighed, yielding to defeat with little more than a ‘tsk’ and a slightly vexed shake of her fists. “No, I’m fine, hang it all.”