“He may find some trouble doing so. This ghost has a mean spirit to it and it is very angry.”
“Sounds like Old Belle. She could make trouble, could she?”
“Oh, yes, once she gains the strength and knowledge. Yet, I am puzzled as to why she is still here. From what you have just told me, she is not one who sounds as if she is headed to a better, more beautiful place. And . . .” Iago blinked and stared at the floor. “Well, that solved that problem.”
“Gone, is she? By the way you are looking at the floor, I must assume she did not fly up to heaven. You can actually see that, can you?”
“Not always. And some ghosts who should have been dragged right down to hell have lingered longer than anyone would have liked. It is rare, though.”
“Huh. Devil is not a patient man.” He shared a grin with Iago.
Olympia shook her head. “You have no trouble with the fact that he can see ghosts, do you?”
“No, m’lady,” replied the squire. “Do not see why I should. Church says we all have a soul. Makes sense they might not rush off to heaven when their time comes and also makes sense that some people can see them. Cousin Roland, the duke, says one must always have an open mind and be ready to accept things we might not understand. Grew up with him, so some of his opinions stayed with me.”
“Of course.” Olympia could not help but think how this was the perfect family for her brother to marry into. “Is there anyone around here who might know more about the man who owns this house?”
“I can give you the solicitor’s name and direction, but he is in London, too. As you can see, no one pays heed to what is happening to the house and the steward only comes down now and then to collect the rents and profits.”
“Then I suppose we may as well make our way back to Sundunmoor,” she said. “I thank you for your assistance, sir.”
Argus silently cursed and rubbed his hands over his face. He sat in the duke’s library along with the duke and Lorelei, going through books, letters, and papers trying to find something out about a family named Cornick. It was not a terribly common name, yet they had already followed several trails and gotten nowhere.
He knew some of his frustration came from the fact that he was sitting in a room sorting through piles of the written word while the others were out actually following the trail of his kidnapper. Argus knew the tedious work he was involved in could actually lead them somewhere, but he hated it. The fact that his sister was at the house where he had been imprisoned, reading all the violent, sordid memories of that time, did not soothe his rising temper either.
“It is as if the man does not exist,” he grumbled. “I think you have the family lines of nearly every man, woman, and child in England here, Your Grace, yet we cannot find one idiot named Charles Cornick.”
“Is it possible that the man is not really named Charles Cornick?” asked the duke. “He was, after all, involved in a criminal venture. It would not be beyond the realm of possibilities that he would use a false name or alter his real name in some way.”
“Then this would make all this work useless.”
“Not really. It but worked to send one in a different direction.”
“You have far more patience than I, Your Grace.”
“Research requires it, and an acceptance that, at times, you might follow the wrong path.” He frowned when someone rapped on the door. “Come in. Ah, Max, what is it?”
“You have company, Your Grace,” Max announced. “The widow Benton and her daughter.”
The duke looked horrified. “Tell them I am not here.”
“Your Grace, they have come because last week you had me tell them you were not here, but that you would be here now and they were to come back today.”
The duke’s shoulders slumped and he nodded. “Do remind me never to do that again, Max.” He stood up. “Well, I had best go and play the host for a while. How long?” he asked Max. “Ten minutes?”
“A half hour, at least.”
“Purgatory,” he grumbled and started out the door.
“Do you intend to greet your guests looking like that?”
The duke looked at his ink-stained vest, shrugged, and combed his fingers through his hair. “She is the one who keeps coming to my home. She can take me as I am.”
The moment the door shut behind her father and Max, Lorelei laughed. “Poor Papa. The widow makes no secret of the fact that she would very much like to be his fourth wife.”
“Would you mind?”
“If she caught him in her net? Yes, but only because she would make him utterly miserable and he has already suffered a miserable marriage twice. He married when he was only fourteen, his bride the same age as he. She saw the marriage as her path to all the delights in London, Paris, and anywhere else she could spend buckets of his money. He just wanted to stay here. She gave him three sons and three daughters and died. His second wife, my mother, loved the country and he was, for a short time, very content, according to Max, but Mama died bearing twins. His third wife entrapped him, easily getting poor Papa into a compromising position that honor demanded he marry her. She, too, wanted to play the duchess all about London.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died in a carriage accident shortly after giving Papa his thirteenth son. She was running away with an artist.”
The first thought that went through Argus’s mind was that one obviously did not have to be a Wherlocke or a Vaughn to end up in a miserable marriage or be left behind. He and Olympia had suffered badly during their parents’ miserable marriage, but Lorelei and her siblings had been blessed with one constant in their lives—the duke. Argus’s constant was Olympia and, with that thought, he was back to being frustrated and angry at being left behind.
Lorelei watched as Argus got up and strode to the large windows that overlooked the garden. Something in the tense way he held himself told her he was troubled. She could think of many reasons why he would be, but wished he would simply tell her what troubled him. Biting back a sigh, she got up and walked over to stand beside him.
“They should be back before dark,” she said, gambling that he was worried about his family.
“I should be with them,” he said, his anger at being left behind roughening his voice.
“You could not and that must be accepted. You still have your ribs tightly wrapped and bouncing about on the back of a horse could end with you being more a burden than a help to them. They can hunt him down as well as you can.” She was a little startled when he whirled around to face her, his expression tight with anger as he grasped her by the shoulders.
“I need to be the one to find him,” Argus said, giving the core of his anger and frustration voice. “I need to be the one to catch him, to face him as a whole man instead of the shivering, beaten, half-starved creature he made me.”
Lorelei reached up to stroke his cheek. “And so you will once you have healed more. You would not be able to accomplish what you want if there was a fight and your injuries caused you a loss of strength and agility at the wrong moment, would you? If you want him to see you strong, to see you as a real threat to his life, then finish healing.”
Argus placed his hand over hers. She spoke to him much as Olympia did, not really tempering the truth with pretty words. He liked that, liked it far more than he should. He also liked the way she was looking at him, a warmth in her gaze that drew his mouth down to hers, despite the warning bells clamoring in his head.
The moment his lips touched hers, Lorelei locked her arms around his neck. This time she knew there would be an abrupt end to their kiss for they were standing in her father’s library, but she saw no reason not to take what little he could give her. She savored the taste of him, shivered with the strength of the desire he stirred within her as he stroked the inside of her mouth with his tongue. Daringly, she returned that caress with her own tongue and he groaned softly, a faint tremor rippling through his body. His hold tightened briefly, and then he began to c
aress her.
Lorelei was no longer shocked by the touch of his hands on her backside; she just pressed closer to that hard ridge pushing out the front of his breeches. She murmured in disappointment when he moved his mouth off hers, but then sighed with pleasure as he began to kiss her neck. It was not until he dragged his hands up her body and caressed her breasts that she stepped out of the sensual fog he put her into, but only for a moment. Her surprise at such an intimate caress was washed away by the pleasure that rushed through her body, a pleasure that increased tenfold when his warm lips touched the swell of her breasts above the neckline of her gown.
He turned and pressed her up against the wall as he continued to stroke and kiss her breasts. When he tugged the neckline of her gown down to free one, then licked the hard tip, she almost screeched from the pleasure of it. She thrust her fingers through his hair and held on as he suckled her, each pull of his mouth tightening the knot of desire low in her stomach.
And it all came to an abrupt end. She was released, her gown hastily put right, and Argus already several feet away before she cleared her head enough to know that she had been pushed away—again. Anger bubbled up inside her, but before she could say anything, she heard her father’s voice and had to grit her teeth tightly to fight down the blush that threatened to flood her cheeks.
“That was a very childish thing to do, Your Grace,” said Max as he opened the door to the library and let the duke walk in.
“I suspect it was,” replied the duke. “And no surprise about that as I learned it from Cornelius.”
“Papa, what did you do?” asked Lorelei, pleased with how calm her voice sounded.
“He kept coughing each time she tried to speak to him,” replied Max. “The woman did not stay long, for I suspect she thought he had the ague or the like and feared catching it.”
Lorelei did not like the way both her father’s and Max’s gazes narrowed briefly as they looked at her and then glanced at Argus. She had the distinct feeling that they guessed that she and Argus had not spent the time alone just talking or looking for names in the reams of paper her father had. Neither of them said a word, however, so she began to relax, and smiled over her father’s trick to be rid of the woman.
“She will be back,” she said.
“I fear so, but not too soon, I hope,” said her father.
They worked for a little longer, searching for names, but Lorelei finally slipped away. She was not surprised to look out the window once she reached her bedchamber to see Argus striding toward the gatehouse. She supposed she ought to be grateful that he had retained enough sense to hear the approach of her father and Max, but she was only slightly so. She was getting very tired of being all stirred up and then tossed aside.
Roland stared at the door for a moment after it closed behind Sir Argus Wherlocke. “Tell me, Max, did my daughter look as if she had done more than talk while I was gone?”
“She did, Your Grace, as did Sir Argus, although an admirable attempt was made to hide the fact,” replied Max.
“Should I interfere?”
“Not yet, Your Grace. Wherlocke men have good reason for being hesitant about marriage. From what I read in your papers after he arrived at the gatehouse, Wherlocke and Vaughn marriages usually end up as a complete and miserable disaster. I suspect he has a deeply bred fear of that honorable institution. It will sort itself out, for he is besotted with our girl. He just needs to accept that.”
“Fair enough. I thought he was, too, but a father worries. I have no doubt she wants him and I did not wish to see her hurt.”
“Even fathers cannot always stop that, but, this time, if I judge that man right, she will end up quite happy.”
Argus was still cursing himself for an idiot as he walked into the gatehouse. He had been pressing a duke’s daughter against a wall as if she was some common trollop and nearly got caught doing so by that duke. Insanity had obviously taken root in his mind. Or his groin, he thought with a touch of self-disgust.
He stepped into the parlor and quickly pushed aside all thoughts of Lorelei and how sweet her skin tasted, as well as how close he had come to finding himself dragged before a vicar. His family had returned, and, by the look on their faces, they had either failed to find anything or there was some bad news. He poured himself a brandy and sat down next to a slightly pale Olympia.
“Not successful?” he asked.
“Aye and nay,” she replied and sipped at her own brandy. “I know what the fool looks like as well as his trained dogs. I also know that he has something to do with that house but is not the owner. His contempt for the place was there, but no sense of ownership. It was what else we found when we got there. There was a body there.”
“One of his men?”
“Sadly, no,” replied Iago. “An old woman. According to Squire Dunn she was a wandering herb woman who was not above making potions that had nothing to do with healing.” He briefly related all the squire had told them of Old Belle. “She was a very angry ghost, but, fortunately for whomever ends up living there, she could not stay. She was shot between the eyes and just left there, so the one who shot her must have felt there was little chance of her being found.”
“She must have been the witch Charles claimed he was going to bring,” Argus said. “He was going to try and get the woman to spell my gift out of me and put it in him, or some such nonsense.”
“She was fool enough to demand the money he owed her, telling him it was not her fault he had lost his prisoner, and then he shot her between the eyes. I would have thought belief in witches and spells had died a quiet death.”
“I do not think Charles believed in it all, but someone wished to try it.”
“We also discovered that the house is owned by a man Mr. Wendall and he lives in London, as does his solicitor. Dunn did not know who the steward was or even if there was one, for the only purpose the property is put to is to bleed away all profit from the lands and rents.”
“I will have my people look for him,” said Leopold. “The squire said he thought the man’s Christian name was Henry, so I will add that with a caveat about it being just a guess.”
“And once I have time to think over all I learned, I may uncover something else I did not see clearly, not right away at least,” said Olympia.
For over an hour they discussed what little had been learned until Olympia suddenly excused herself. Argus hurried out of the room after her, catching her part the way up the stairs. “Are you unwell?”
Olympia looked at him and smiled sadly. “Nay, just weary. I find the cruelty one man can inflict upon another very hard to bear at times. It also made me think on the past, on the tales of those unlucky ancestors who were taken up as witches. I cannot help but wonder if attitudes have really changed all that much and it makes me sad. My fury at Cornick also tired me. If he had been within my reach I think I would have tried to kill him with my bare hands.” She kissed his cheek and started back up the stairs. “I will recover. Do not worry o’er me.”
Argus shook his head and began to return to the parlor, to his cousins and the brandy. He did worry about Olympia, for a woman should never have to see such things, but she was too strong a woman to hide behind the protection of the men in her family. He also worried about himself. He was losing all control when it came to Lorelei, he could not find his enemy, and his enemy could well be a threat to his whole family. Stepping into the parlor, he went right to the stock of brandy. It was, perhaps, time to drown a few of his troubles.
Chapter 9
Argus breathed a sigh of relief as Max removed the binding from around his ribs. “It is good to have that off.”
“Do not celebrate yet. I may have to wrap it back around you,” said Max. “It is only because you whined so that I agreed to take the wrapping off today. Nor can you now leap on a horse and gallop round the countryside.”
As Max pressed the area around his ribs, the bruising there now a sickly fading yellow color, Argus prepared himself to hide
any pain he might feel. To his surprise he felt very little. He followed all Max’s orders, turning, bending, coughing, and taking deep breaths, but suffered little or no pain as he did so.
“It appears that you are a fast healer or your ribs were not as badly damaged as we had thought they were. Rest, drink, and a lot of food did not hurt, either,” added Max as he assisted Argus back into his shirt.
“I am healed then.”
“You are better. No more than that. You should not do anything too tiring or exert yourself too vigorously for at least another week. I cannot see inside you so I cannot say with a certainty that you are completely healed. If your ribs were badly cracked you should not be feeling as good as you appear to be. I will say that much. Yet, the bones could also have merely healed just enough to end the pain and give you a greater ease of movement, so take care. The fact that the ribs were injured at all means that the bones there will be weaker for a time yet. The healing needs to go a lot deeper than it has had time to.”
Argus nodded. Being cautious was a great deal better than being unable to do anything. Now he could more fully aid his sister and cousins in finding Cornick. Now he might not be so confined that he found it almost impossible to avoid the temptation Lorelei constantly provided by her mere presence. Now, a little voice in his head whispered, he could give in to cowardice and run.
It was humiliating, but he had to admit that that little voice was right. Having Lorelei so close all the time had brought his control to the breaking point, something he did not like at all, for he prided himself on his control in all matters. With Lorelei, all he wanted to do each time he saw her was pull her into his arms. He could now put some real distance between them.
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