by Maren Smith
Hiding his smile, Leverton fell quietly into step behind her. It would take more imagination than one sheltered country miss could devise to—pardon the pun—pull the wool over this Strathsford’s eyes.
* * * * *
Leverton had only laid his head upon his pillow for fifteen minutes or so when he was suddenly jolted wide awake by the kick of a foot stubbing into his side. Having bedded down in the hallway directly across her bedroom door, he sat bolt upright in time to catch Elspeth before she fell flat on her fanny just opposite of him. In the dark of the midnight house, he could barely make out the shadow of her in her black ‘bush’ dress. Apparently, not expecting to be trapped in her room for the night, she hadn’t seen him at all.
“Dash and bother!” she cried out, suddenly realizing who was propping her back on her feet.
“No more sneaking around the countryside at night,” he reminded as he climbed to his feet beside her. “And there will definitely be no exploring that hole in the ground. Not at night, and certainly not without me by your side. We talked about this and you agreed.”
“Yes, I know,” she snapped, thoroughly irritated at having been caught. “But how was I to know you’d hold me to my word! As if I haven’t been here all by myself, doing as it pleased me, and been quite safe about it long before you ever darkened my doorstep!”
He let her rail. He even let her thump her fist against his chest and then storm back into her room, slamming the door in frustration behind her.
A whole lot more imagination...
Chuckling, Leverton gathered up his bedding and made his way in the dark to his bedroom. He was sitting on the side of his bed just beginning to remove his boots when a thought occurred. Although vocal in her displeasure, she had given in awfully easily. Far too easily for any woman accustomed to the kind of self-sufficiency and freedom that Elspeth delighted in.
He got up and made his way back to her bedroom. He pressed his ear to the door and listened, hearing only the slightest of movements from inside. A rustling that didn’t quite sound like the fabric of soft bedclothes, or the swish of heavy skirts as she paced restlessly before the fire, no doubt scowling and chewing her fingernails to the quick.
No, that rustling... that rustling sounded more like... the dry, brittle rasp of... his eyes fixed and focused... of ivy leaves shaking under the movements of someone climbing down a window trellis.
For a woman with such a pronounced limp, she certainly did get herself into trouble rather quickly.
Leverton barged into her bedroom. Her head popped back up above the upper rail of her balcony, her eyes and mouth both rounding in surprise when she saw him, the comedy of it a contrast of colors that were lost amid the black shoe polish that once more covered her face. She took one look at him, striding purposefully towards her, already dropping his coat halfway across the floor and rolling the cuffs of his white-sleeved shirt up the muscular expanse of his forearm. With a squeak, she quickly dropped back out of sight again.
“Don’t!” she commanded when he reached the rail. She batted one-armed at his reaching hand, frantically kicking with her bad leg at where the hem of her dress was caught in the ivy. “Don’t you dare practice your... Eep!” She grabbed onto his wrist with both hands when he caught the scruff of her gown. “Your... your violent... Ooh!”
For the second time in one day, he put his back into hauling her bodily back up to his level. “Apparently, we are having a miscommunication.” He dragged her torso over the balcony banister before hooking his arm around her waist and picking her up like a cumbersome sack of potatoes. “Let’s see if I cannot remedy the problem.”
“Put me down!” she railed, elbowing him in the thigh as he carted her back through her bedroom towards her own dressing table.
Spotting a sturdy wooden hairbrush, he hooked the cushioned stool out with one foot before seating himself squarely upon it. She was struggling to scramble away from him the instant her knees hit the floor, but he shifted his grip from her waist to her arms and pulled, wrestling the frenzied, wind-milling, almost bonelessly squirming length of her up and across his lap. With near Olympian agility, he caught her flailing wrists and pinned both them and her down.
He didn’t take her skirts up. Judging by the volumes of her shrieking protests, the bite of the hairbrush was sufficient enough as it was to get his point across even over her clothes. With quick, wristy slaps, he let the brush do all his talking and didn’t stop, not until her voice turned from angry screeches to the most forlorn of full-throated wails.
It was probably a figment of his own imagination to think that hairbrush smoked when he at last dropped it back upon the tabletop. Releasing her hands, he caught the scruff of her dress again and heaved them both back to their feet. He marched her to her bedside, pausing at the nightstand just long enough to pour water from the pitcher into the waiting bowl. Then he scrubbed her face. He was neither harsh, nor particularly very gentle, but she was too busy stomping her feet and rubbing at her opposite and fiery end to protest.
Tossing back the bedcovers, he dropped her onto her hot fanny, ignoring her sharp gasp as she was forced to settle her weight on a mattress that probably felt nowhere near as soft as it ought to.
“Brace,” he said, and held out his hand expectantly.
Breathing heavily, she stared in dismay first at his open hand and then crossly up at him.
He beckoned with his fingers, still waiting and completely implacable. He was also not going to ask again, and eventually she must have realized that because her eyes slid back to the hairbrush resting on her dressing table. She shifted enough to bring her bad leg up onto the mattress. She glanced sideways at him, hiding her grimace of resentment behind the curtain of her blonde hair, and unlaced the brace. She lay it across his waiting palm, a surprisingly heavy contraption of smooth wood, cool metal and strategically placed padding.
It wasn’t difficult to tell how she came to require such a contraption. Scars traveled the length of her foot, up over and around her misshapen ankle and ended jaggedly at her shin. He sat down on the edge of the mattress next to her, holding the brace in his other hand, and then he touched her ankle. He traced the scars; she smoothed her skirt down over her shin but didn’t pull away.
“How old?” he finally asked.
“I was five,” she replied. She looked at her brace, and then she looked away.
“Did you know the person driving the carriage?”
She drew a deep breath, frowning tensely before meeting his steady gaze again. “My uncle. It wasn’t his fault. I was someplace I shouldn’t have been and he couldn’t stop in time.”
Leverton caressed her ankle again. “My uncle ran over my dog. Dogs, actually. He hit three of them. In three different accidents. It was somewhat intentional, I fear.”
It was an odd look for her, that expression of anger and sympathy all rolled into one. Leverton patted her ankle one last time and then stood up. He held up the brace. “You’ll get it back in the morning, I promise.”
He paused on his way out, glancing back at her from the doorway to find she hadn’t moved. She remained exactly as he’d left her, one leg drawn up before her, head bowed and one hand pressed to her hip behind her, holding rather than rubbing her aching bottom. By the sag of her shoulders, she looked forlorn; her expression, however, remained equal parts sympathy and petulance.
“Do you need help getting into bed?” he asked, trying his best not to laugh, thereby rubbing her nose in his victory.
She shook her head.
“Good night, then.”
As he gently closed the door between them, he could have sworn he heard her mutter, “Go hang.” So softly and sullenly spoken, he might have been mistaken, though.
Then again, knowing her, probably not.
He chuckled all the way back to his room.
Chapter Five
Leverton awoke bright and early the following morning. He shaved and dressed, and quietly walked Elspeth’s leg brace back down
the hallway to her bedroom. After rapping twice upon the door, he cracked it open to see that she was still in bed, fully dressed, lying on her back with her hands folded primly over her stomach. She was also glaring at the ceiling, still angry.
“Are you awake?” he softly asked, and saw her blink once. Pushing the door open, he entered far enough to extend the brace to her. When she made no effort to take it (or even to look at him for that matter), he laid it upon her stomach just above her hands. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”
Then he left again, closing the door just as softly so she could ready herself in private. He supposed she could have remained in bed and sulked the day away, but personally, that just didn’t strike him to be very Elspeth-ish. And he was right. He was seated at the table, transferring a hefty portion of potato hash, eggs and sausages from the heavily laden tray that Mrs. Brody had prepared, when he heard the step-thump, step-thump of Elspeth limping down the hall.
She stopped in the doorway long enough to look at him, but didn’t say a word. After a tense internal debate, she continued on to the chair directly across from him, seating herself primly with her hands folded before her. She didn’t look cross anymore, but neither was she smiling as she cleared her throat and said, “I would appreciate it, Mr. Strathsford, if you would never again be so free and violent with my person. Like it or not, foolish as you seem to think me to be or not, I am your employer. That makes you my employee, and with that distinction comes certain boundaries that should never be crossed. Except that you have. Three times now, in fact, but no more.” She unfolded her hands to press a single, demanding finger upon the tabletop. “It stops right here, Mr. Strathsford. And this time, I really, really mean it.”
He hummed, as if in understanding, and then stood up to fix her a plate as well.
“I’m not hungry,” she said testily.
“You’ll eat, anyway,” he replied, filling it at least half as heavily as his own. “I’ll not have you fainting from extreme hunger while we’re out roaming the countryside in search of clues to your maddening mystery.”
“Stop trying to insinuate yourself back into my good graces,” she snapped, her blue eyes flashing as he set the plate before her and sat back down again. “I am vexed with you, Mr. Strathsford. My...” she huffed. “My sit-upon hurt all night long. I can still feel what you did to me even now.” She shifted on her chair. “It is very tender, and hot, and I blame you completely. I never had this problem before you arrived.”
“You agreed—”
“Oh, I agreed, I agreed,” she snapped, throwing up one hand as if she could knock his argument flying out of her way. “Well, of course, I agreed! I didn’t know I was going to get caught!”
“Something tells me we’re going to have another spanking before the day is out.” He set her plate in front of her. “Stop trying to sneak out of the house. I’ve already told you, we’ll do these investigations together or not at all. If you don’t like having a sore bottom, stop breaking the rules.”
“But I’m the boss!” she cried, thumping her open hands against her chest and drawing his gaze to the delightful wobble of her breasts, partially framed as they were by the low cut of her bodice. “I have been the boss for years. Me! That means I can break the rules all I want to, and you should have no recourse!”
“You can break the rules,” he agreed, dipping his head in a ready nod of agreement. “And my recourse is that I will tan your lovely backside each and every time you do it.”
Her chin jutted stubbornly, and she glared. “I’ll give you the sack.”
“And I’ll give it right back because, like it or not, you need me. You need a strong man occasionally disposed towards a certain amount of violence to keep you safe. I’ve already kept you from breaking your neck once, and before this is over, I’ll likely be needed to do so again.”
“You’re an obstinate man,” she grumbled finally. “That should have been listed on your resume when you first applied for this position. Had I known of it, not to mention these dreadful disciplinary habits of yours, I never would have hired you.”
Picking up her fork, she bowed her head to her breakfast, venting her frustrations by spearing at bits of potato.
“At least I didn’t bare your bottom for last night’s bout of habitual discipline,” he said, smiling when she flushed a hot pink and shifted in her chair somewhat uncomfortably.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she groused, and ate her breakfast with her chin propped grumpily upon her fist.
* * * * *
“Twenty-one,” Elspeth announced, hands resting on her hips. She looked at her flock of sheep and shook her head, once.
“And there’s still seventy-six,” Leverton added, finishing his count and pulling the hem of his coat out of nibbling range. Fat lot of good it did him. Already, he could feel the sporadic tugging at his trouser legs as the sheep diverted their attention to what they could reach. Trying to ignore it, he turned in a slow circle, his gaze sweeping all four distant corners of the pasture until he found himself staring all the way down at the far gate. He stopped, blinking thoughtfully. “The hole we found yesterday...?”
Elspeth perked and instantly began wading through the sheep towards home. “I’ll get a length of rope!”
“We aren’t going into it,” he said, and disappointment promptly flattened her again before she even reached the outer edge of her flock. “But I was curious, that pasture is where the sheep were when you first noticed some had gone missing, correct?”
She shook her head firmly. “No. We were just cutting across there to avoid the really bad part of the bog. This time of year, I usually pasture my sheep on the back twenty acres and bring them in closer towards the house as winter approaches.”
Spreading his hands, Leverton gestured for her to proceed. “Take me to the back twenty, then.”
Apparently, Elspeth’s ‘back twenty’ really was located on the absolute backside of her property. It took nearly two hours of walking, something he was not all that accustomed to, and by the time he lifted Elspeth over that last stone fence, he had what felt suspiciously a lot like blisters on his feet where they rubbed against his boots.
“This is it,” Elspeth said.
It looked exactly like all the other pastures that he’d walked through, fences of stone rectangling off a long expanse of green, well-grazed grass, dotted every few feet with more Roman-era bricks.
“Have you spoken to the villagers?” he asked as Elspeth walked beside him. “Perhaps someone saw something.”
“I did,” she admitted. “They didn’t. At least, nothing they would admit to.”
They were only a few feet from the fence when he paused to pick up a piece of unusually smooth-looking stone. What he uncovered was a part of a statue, a hand to be precise, with a stretch of the wrist and forearm still attached. The tips of the fingers like elongated dingy white pebbles, stuck up through the grass like curious little beacons.
“Is that a statue?” Elspeth asked when he dug it out and picked it up.
“Either that, or someone is using your back pasture to expand the local cemetery.”
Elspeth wrinkled her nose at the thought. Standing only a few feet away, she also bent to dig out a rock. Another part of the same statue, judging by the color and oddly ovular shape. “I think I found the breast,” she said, brushing it off.
He was only too happy to take that from her when she held it out. Sure enough, rough and jagged on the broken side, the other was round and smooth, a perfect handful crowned by the pebbled tip of a pale, stone nipple.
“Huh,” he said, brushing away some of dirt. He slipped the breast into his coat pocket for later. “Paper weight,” he said when she looked at him.
“Uh huh.” Her look turned knowing, but she took the hand when he passed it to her in exchange, looked at it with a grimace and then dropped it again.
Continuing on, Leverton made it another few feet before spotting something else that made him stop. It lo
oked like a chewed up piece of cloth. Almost like burlap, he realized, as he squatted down for a closer examination, but old. Very, very old. Moldering and frail, it practically fell apart in his hand when he tried to dig it out of the earth caked around him. Bits of wood came out with the muddy cloth, and Leverton picked those up as well. Digging a little deeper, he pulled up the surrounding clumps of grass and found bits of metal.
“What is it?” Elspeth asked, leaning over his shoulder, her hands braced upon her knees.
“Looks like a box, a chest of sorts.” Leverton turned the pieces of rotting wood over in his hands, revealing what looked like a corroded metal hinge still clinging to one overlarge sliver. “Or at least it used to be. This must have been inside.”
Leverton handed her the muddy wad of burlap-like material. While she turned it over in her hands, the woven fibers quite literally falling apart at the slightest of touches, he found another wedge of cloth and pulled it free of the mud. It turned out to be part of the same wad of coarse burlap, a decomposing sack that promptly disintegrated into pieces as he tugged it from the earth. Clumps of mud rained down into the grass around his feet, along with a glint of something shiny that caught his eye.
“Hello,” he said, as he picked it up. Thin and round, made of metal, he turned it over between his fingers, wiping the mud away with the pad of his thumb until the face of the coin was revealed.
“It wasn’t just a chest,” Elspeth said, taking the coin when he passed it to her. “It was a treasure chest! Like pirates bury.” She straightened and looked around her. “Except that we’re nowhere even close to an ocean.” She blinked as she looked at him, one corner of her mouth curving upwards as she recognized the ludicrousness of what she was about to say. “Bog pirates?”
Leverton chuckled. “Perhaps not, but it could have been a money box.” He dug into the ground a little further, but found only splinters of rotting wood and the curve of an elaborately forged silver handle. “I don’t recognize the coin, but clean it up and the handle might be worth a pretty penny.”