Black Sheep

by Maren Smith

  “I’ve seen this before,” Elspeth said thoughtfully, turning the coin over from head to tail. Her brow beetled and her voice softened, almost as if she were talking to herself. “This can’t possibly be this old.”

  Not finding anything more in this spot, he glanced up at her. “How old?”

  “If I’m right, as old as the Roman structures that once stood here.”

  Math he was good at. History, not so much. “A thousand years?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “Twice that. Welcome to bog country. The acidity and anaerobic conditions of the ground here are perfect for preserving all sorts of things and for a very long time.”

  He was shocked. “Yes, but not for eighteen centuries, surely.”

  “I wouldn’t think so, but here it is.” She bounced the coin in her palm, thinking as she studied the bits of wood he had unearthed. Then she slipped everything he had given her into her coat pocket before bending over, hands upon her knees again as she searched the grass. “Is there anything more?”

  “Not here.” Still half squatting, he slid a step forward and promptly changed his mind. “Yes. Look, here’s another one.”

  She hurried to join him, peering excitedly over his shoulder while he retrieved the coin out of... she wrinkled her nose. “I admire your dedication, Mr. Strathsford, but you do realize you just put your hand in sheep droppings.”

  “I did notice the smell, yes.” He wiped his hand and his newest prize off as best he could in the dew-soaked grass. “This is not a coin, though.”

  “No, it’s not.” Her smile was gone as Elspeth reached over his shoulder and cautiously took the ruby from his fingers. Larger than the coin, it shone and sparkled in the morning light. “How many pretty pennies do you think this might be worth?”

  “Sheep really will eat anything, won’t they?” Leverton stood up, pushing the toe of his boot through the poop pile, but not uncovering anything else of value. Turning, he returned to where Elspeth had dropped her strip of burlap-like cloth. He picked it up, fingering the frayed edge before reaching back to gather the well-nibbled hem of his own coat.

  Noticing his expression, Elspeth limped back to join him. “Are you thinking what I am?”

  “If you are thinking your livestock might have nibbled something they haven’t been able to pass, then yes, we might be of one mind in the matter.” Leverton glanced surreptitiously around, his gaze sweeping the distant tree line for... he wasn’t sure what. Nothing moved. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. And that was when it suddenly occurred to him how quiet their surroundings had become. Even the birdsong had stilled.

  “Get behind the fence,” he told her abruptly. “Right now. And get your head down.”

  Shielding her eyes with her hands, Elspeth tried to follow the direction he’d been staring in. Otherwise, she didn’t move. “Why?”

  “Woman, for once in your life, do as you’re told!” he ordered. “Go! Now!” Grabbing her elbow, he hustled her quickly to the closest fence. As fast as she could move when she wanted to—as fast as she had walked all the way out here this morning—there was no doubt in his mind that she was dragging her feet now.

  “Mr. Strathsford!” she protested, pulling at her arm the whole way.

  He picked her up the second they reached the wall, dumping her unceremoniously over the side. “Get down and stay down until I tell you.”

  She popped upright almost immediately, hands on her hips, to glare at him. There were leaves in her hair and the bun that she had hastily constructed on the back of her head had tangled in the branches of a bush and was now hanging slightly askew and over one shoulder. “You said we would do this together. Not with me in hiding and you hoarding all the fun and excitement for yourself!

  “Down,” he told her again, more sharply. “And stay down!”

  “I am not a porcelain doll! I will no—”

  He grabbed the nearest handful of bush sticks and yanked them free of their parent shrub. As far as birches went, his attempt was a laughable mess of dried out switches that would have shattered harmlessly against the back of her dress and likely on the very first stroke. But she read his intent clearly enough and it was enough to silence her with a squeak. She dropped back out of sight beyond the wall.

  “And stay there,” he warned.

  “I’m taking this out of your pay packet,” she hissed.

  That was an argument for a different hour.

  He tossed the sticks harmlessly across the grass at his feet, eyeing her to make sure she was going to stay down while he brushed the dirt from his hands with a few brisk claps. He probably should have dropped those switches next to her head so she could have seen them and perhaps remembered the warning. As it was, he was halfway back to the muddy hole where he had found the coin when a man emerged from the woods on the opposite end of the pasture.

  Lean and lanky, the man walked along the far fence, his eyes on the ground. He paused at one point, squatting down to pick something up when Leverton heard the bushes behind him rustling.

  “Oh,” Elspeth declared, halting Leverton mid-step. “It’s Jack Holcomb.” He snapped around but the damage was already done. She had stood up, waving one arm as she hailed, “Jack! Over here!”

  “I am going to thrash you to within an inch of your life!” he swore, stalking back to her, ostensibly to help her over the wall again, but one look at his face had her unwilling to take any chances. She climbed over on her own, giving him a wide berth as she hurried out to meet the other man, who had stopped frozen where he was the second he saw the two of them.

  Again, for a lady with such a pronounced limp, she certainly could move quite spryly when the need took her. And with Leverton stalking—hands flexing ominously all the way—right behind her, she must have felt the need to be a strong one. Heaven knows, if he could have got his hands on her, third party in the field or not...

  “Jack!” she called again, and broke into a slight hopping jog that helped to scoot her that much farther out of harm’s way.

  Leverton forced himself to slow his step lest she hurt herself.

  She was smiling. Beaming, really, and probably solely for Jack’s benefit, but it was that and the next hailing wave of her arms that finally turned the other man (rather reluctantly, to Leverton’s eye) and he began walking towards them, coming out into the field to meet Elspeth halfway. His eyes, however, remained suspiciously fixed on Leverton.

  A Strathsford born and raised, Leverton managed to swallow his simmering anger, banking the coals of it behind a mask of polite civility that would have made his mother proud, were she only there to see it. “Good morning, old chap. Hunting?”

  His mother would have been equally impressed by Jack’s unreadable returning stare, although perhaps not by the dirt that covered his face, hands and clothes. The man looked as if he lived in—considering the preoccupations of the countryside—a muddy paddock. “Walkin’ the fences,” he said slowly, his stare shifting from Leverton to her. “Miss Wainwright, what are yer doin’ all the way out ‘ere then?”

  “Looking for clues,” she replied.

  Would it not have been so unforgivably revealing, Leverton might have slapped a hand over his eyes. Better yet, he should have slapped it over her mouth. Somehow, he managed to contain his exasperation. He comforted himself instead with thoughts of getting her alone somewhere. Of throwing her across his bent knee. Of tossing her skirts up over her head and yanking her lily-white knickers all the way down to her knees, and of walloping her pretty little backside until it positively glowed. And when he was done with that, when the swollen summits of both nether cheeks had come to resemble hot little, quivering sunsets in shades of red, purple, black and blue then, by God, he was going to throttle her silly.

  “Clues,” Jack echoed.

  “Yes, you see—”

  “An animal went missing last night,” Leverton interrupted, smoothly halting her before she could launch into a more revealing explanation of her titillating mystery.
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  The unreadability of Jack’s expression didn’t exactly shatter into open concern, but for just half a tick, Leverton could almost have sworn he saw a glimmer of... calculation?... flickering in the depths of the other man’s eyes.

  “Missing,” he echoed again.

  “Wolves, we think,” Leverton supplied.

  Elspeth turned all the way around and looked at him. But she kept her mouth shut for a change, following his lead with little more than a flicker of curiosity narrowing in her eyes.

  “There ain’t been wolves in these parts, not for years,” Jack told him, hawk-eyed and thinking.

  “Wild dogs, then,” he corrected, then shrugged. “Being a city boy, myself, I really don’t know, but something tore that animal apart. There was blood everywhere.”

  “Guts,” Elspeth added. “Bits of wool scattered all over the grass.”

  Jack looked Leverton slowly up and down. “Yer don’t say.”

  “But strangely enough, no sheep.” Leverton could have been blind and he still would not have missed the visible jump as Jack’s attention snapped back to him.

  “No carcass?”

  “The dogs must have dragged it off.”

  “And ate it,” Elspeth added, ghoulish with exuberance. Her face was alight with mischief. A professional liar she was not, but Jack seemed not to notice when she offered, “Want to join us?”

  Jack looked from her to him and back again. “I ought t’ walk the fences. Wild dogs, yer said?”

  Leverton nodded. “Looks that way.”

  Backing up a step, Jack nodded his head slowly once. “I’ll keep a weather eye, eh? Should I find anythin’ suspicious, I’ll let yer know t’ be sure.”

  Leverton’s smile was all teeth. “Good show, man. You do that.” He hooked his hand around Elspeth’s elbow, pulling her in close to his side when Jack turned away. They watched him go without moving or speaking, but Jack did not vanish back into the woods. When he reached the stone wall, he paused to glance back at them. Furtively. Trying to keep from being noticed doing it by bowing his head and pretending to study the stone wall.

  They both waved.

  “Take care,” she called, a sweet final touch that for some reason set his teeth on edge. If he didn’t like Jack before, Leverton really didn’t like him now. Leaning sideways towards him, from the corner of her smiling mouth, Elspeth asked, “Do you suspect him?”

  “Oh, yes,” Leverton replied in kind. He really wanted to take a look at what Jack was eyeballing on the opposite side of the pasture. Unfortunately, that would have to wait until after Jack was gone, and then whatever he was searching for would probably be gone as well.

  Seriously annoyed now, Leverton turned Elspeth fully around and gave her a push towards home. “Let’s go. I won’t feel right until we get those things locked up somewhere safe.”

  “Is it Jack you think will rob us, or the sheep?” she joked, but her smile vanished when, after casting one last glance over his shoulder, Leverton fixed her with a grim, hard Look. “What?”

  “Don’t you ‘what’ me,” he replied, irritated. “Did I or did I not tell you to stay put?”

  “I am not a dog!”

  “What you’re going to be is sore as hell when I get you home.”

  Digging in her feet, Elspeth pulled her arm out of his grasp. “I am all done being threatened by you, you... you... overbearing... chest-beating—woman beating!—Neanderthal!”

  He caught her elbow, pulling her in close all over again. “Go ahead. Dig yourself in deeper.”

  “But it was just Jack!” she cried as he started marching her again. “I can understand staying down for people I don’t know, but I grew up with him. He practically lived with us at Motteldine.”

  “How many people in this area do you not know?” Leverton demanded.

  She opened her mouth, but then closed it again without a word and her eyebrows quirked together as she considered the answer.

  “None,” he guessed. “Exactly my point. Penny’s Weight is not a thriving metropolis, and those sheep aren’t switching themselves! So now while you are considering that, I also want you to consider how long it’s going to be—once I get you home, of course—before you can sit in comfort again! Then add at least three days.”

  He pulled her along with him when he started walking, his hand under her elbow forcing her almost into a march.

  She tucked her chin, and her eyebrows came crashing down crossly over flashing blue eyes in a dark, sullen line. “Something tells me I’ll not sit comfortably again until you become employed someplace else!”

  “Or until you learn to follow directions!” he countered.

  “Take your sack and go,” she huffed. “I’m not going to let you practice your walloping tendencies on me anymore.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. You need me. Right now more than ever.”

  “Ha!” she scoffed. “I need you like I need a... a hot bottom!”

  “My point exactly.” Switching her elbow to his other hand, he gave her a stiff-armed swat to the fanny, hard enough to jolt her hips forward and quicken her step.

  They were over the first wall, with the small village of Penny’s Weight coming up on their right, when Elspeth grumpily observed, “Your finding employment elsewhere is far and away the more likely solution to our mutual problem.”

  Leverton laughed, low and determined—he couldn’t help it—and began looking for likely switches the instant he reached the next wall.

  Chapter Six

  Elspeth’s dress was a puddle on the floor not far from the hearth and the ottoman that he had spanked her over. Reclining in an overstuffed chair before the crackling fire, one ankle crossed over his knee, Leverton lightly tapped his makeshift birch against the side of his boot and watched as the wet spot left by her tears slowly dried from the cloth. Now and then, he glanced over at Elspeth, standing as silent as a ghost in the corner where he’d left her. Her head remained bowed, her hands dutifully held the skirt of her undershift wadded up around her waist, and her knickers were a puddle of silken cloth lying across her feet.

  Now and then, she still sniffled—softly, forlornly—but she wasn’t arguing with him anymore and, aside from the one try, she had given up trying to rub and soothe away the lingering pain.

  His gaze warmed as he visually traced those full, heart-shaped curves, the rounding summits of her buttocks a mottle of rosy redness and slightly darker, ridged stripes. He tapped the birch against the side of his boot again; a lot of life yet remained within these five supple switches. If she pushed him to, he was fully prepared to lay her back down across the ottoman and wear her out completely. Although, truth be told, he would much rather toss the birch onto the fire, lay her back down across the ottoman and still wear her out completely, but in a way they might both enjoy.

  Sadly, if she was still anywhere near as angry as she’d been when he’d first propped her into that corner, putting her bare bottom on full and fiery display, then she’d probably bean him across the head with the iron poker if he tried.

  “You know,” he said when she sniffled again. “I think it’s time we went down that hole.”

  That she didn’t instantly perk with excitement meant she wasn’t done sulking yet. She sniffled again, letting go of her shift with one hand long enough to swipe at her eyes, and then bunched the thin cloth back up off her bottom and hugged it to her waist again.

  “Are you ready to come out of the corner?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied. Definitely still sulking. She let go of the back of her shift to swipe at her face with her other hand now, and then half turned around, glaring back at him as she demanded, “What gives you the right? Who do you think you are, to—” her shoulders jerked as she hiccupped, her weepy gasp little more than a breathy hitch, “—spank me like this? My father was knighted for valor by the king himself! I am a daughter of privilege, and you, sir!” She hiccupped again, truly miserable and starting to cry all over again. “You are—”
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  “The son of a man arrogant enough to marry the only sister of a powerful earl,” he supplied easily enough, tapping the birch against his boot twice more. “And selfish enough to die only after squandering every last penny of her inheritance, leaving the rest of us nothing with which to pick up the pieces.”

  Blinking twice, for the moment forgetting she was supposed to be so put out, Elspeth turned all the way around to face him. “Liar,” she said without accusation. “You can’t possibly be a gentleman. You’re—”

  “A brute?” he asked, a corner of his mouth lilting into a small smile. It was a smile that never quite reached as far as his eyes.

  She blinked again. “I was going to say my estate manager, but potato, patato, really.”

  “Ha!” he laughed, and then pointed at her with the birch and made a circling motion.

  Again, her eyebrows came crashing down low over snapping blue eyes, but she huffily jerked around and put herself back in the corner. “I don’t like you very much at all.”

  He lightly slapped the birch across his chest, covering his heart as if mortally struck. “I am wounded! And here I’ve been, growing so very fond of you.”

  “Ha,” she echoed, a much grumpier version of his laugh. Letting the wad of her skirt fall free back down her legs, she bowed her head as her fingers ever so gingerly smoothed down to cup and hold her aching bottom. “If you like me so much, why do you spank me so hard?”

  Her voice cracked and her shoulders began to shake as she dissolved into tears all over again. She held her bottom while she cried, the only sounds she made, the soft gasps as she breathed through her mouth.

  Leaning forward, he tossed the birch into the fire and stood up. “Elspeth,” he said as he softly came to her, his hands sliding around her waist as he pulled her back into his easy embrace, “I do it only because I’ve become so very fond of you, despite all you do that makes me want to strangle you.”