Improper Gentlemen Bundle with Touch of a Thief & Mistress By Mistake

by Maggie Robinson; Mia Marlowe Diane Whiteside

  “Seems I let me cock lead me a merry chase.” He slanted her a crooked grin. “I shouldn’t have taken ye in such a desolate spot. I’m sorry, lass.”

  “Don’t you dare be sorry,” she said fiercely. “Do you think it matters to me one jot where we are so long as we’re together? And if you’ll recall, I’m the one who led you here on a merry chase.”

  A smile stretched across his handsome face as he tucked in his shirt and refastened his trousers. “Aye, lass. So ye did. Only next time, don’t be trying it on that big demon Balor.” He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on the neck. “I’m awfully fond of your sweet body just as it is.”

  “Agreed.” The horse’s power had scared her more than she wanted to admit. “But now that we’re here, I don’t suppose there’s any harm in snooping around, is there?”

  “Nary a bit. In fact, I’ve been meaning to come have a look-about.” He strode into the next empty room, sending a covey of quail scurrying through the underbrush. The tower rose around them, the open sky vaulting above its gray walls. “When Mrs. Fitzgerald showed me the secret passage between the master’s chamber and some of the others, it gave me pause. What’s to say that’s not something used time out of mind here at Stonehaven? There might be a connection between this old ruin and the grotto, I’m thinkin’.”

  Rosalinde followed. “Why would that be important?”

  “If there was, it would untie a knot I’ve been puzzling over. Might be how the killer got away without being found in the maze.” He walked around a sapling growing up in what used to be a long hall in the ancient keep. “There.”

  He pointed to a dark portal in the gray stone. The English oak was rotted away, but heavy iron hinges still jutted from the stonework.

  Aidan stepped into the doorway and looked down. “Might be it.”

  Rosalinde peered around him. A set of stone steps led downward. To the dungeon, perhaps? The scent of damp and rot and ancient misery rose to meet her nostrils. “If we’re going down there, we’ll need a torch.”

  “And some kind soul’s left us one, darlin’.” A pitch-daubed stick was thrust into an iron ring in the wall. Aidan lit the torch with a phosphorus match and started down the stairs. “Careful. They’re uneven and a little slick in spots.”

  He reached behind him to take her hand as they descended. The stairs ended in a long, man-height corridor stretching away into the blackness. The torch chased away the tunnel’s clinging dark and Aidan swept aside the long dangling cobwebs.

  “How long has this keep been abandoned?” she asked.

  “A couple hundred years or so.”

  “Then that torch shouldn’t still have been here.” The other wood about the place was gone or nearly rotted away.

  “And if nobody’s been about the place for even a hundred years, there aren’t near enough cobwebs,” he said.

  Rosalinde thought there were quite enough for her taste, but refrained from saying so. Clearly, Aidan was onto something. Someone had passed through this subterranean passage within at least the last few years.

  Which would correspond with the time of the upstairs maid’s death.

  In one place, the abandoned passage had partially collapsed. Plant roots tickled down from the ceiling, but they managed to squeeze themselves around the obstruction and continue on.

  The tunnel dead-ended into a cunning contraption of pulleys and levers that appeared to wedge an opening in seemingly solid stone. To Rosalinde’s relief, the old system still worked, though the grating of stone on stone strafed so loudly, she was sure someone would hear it in the main house.

  Then another sound came from behind them, a long, keening wail. It was the cry of a soul in extremis. The torch guttered and then flared. Rosalinde clutched Aidan’s arm.

  “ ’Tis only the wind,” Aidan said. “Now that we’ve opened this side, the passage acts like a long whistle.”

  Rosalinde wasn’t so sure. Then she remembered Liam saying he lit the lamp in the grotto for Peg Bass and that sometimes, she was angry when she came. Perhaps Aidan’s brother had heard the same disturbing sound and colored it with his own imagination.

  Aidan stomped on a slightly raised stone, triggering the complete opening of the exit. They stepped into the low-ceilinged chamber of the grotto. Its curved walls were pocked with shells and brightly colored stones. Shafts of daylight fingered through openings to the outside. The ceiling was frescoed with bacchanalian scenes, nymphs and satyrs in varying degrees of undress.

  “Oh, it’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Rosalinde said as she recognized Titania and Oberon, the Queen and King of the Fairies, and their court jester, Puck, cavorting on the sloping walls and ceiling. Perhaps she would keep reading Shakespeare, after all. “And look. There’s poor Bottom with an ass’s head.”

  “The grotto’s not easy to find, owing to the maze being a complicated one,” Aidan said. “But I expect these frescoes provided a bit of an incentive for randy fellows to keep trying.”

  “Women would find it fanciful. Or would claim to,” she added with a sly smile. The lascivious artwork with bared breasts and rampant satyrs made her belly tighten a bit. It was easy to see the place as a trysting spot for lovers. Less easy to imagine it as the scene of a grisly murder.

  “Where . . . was she found?” Rosalinde asked.

  Aidan led the way past a sludge-clogged fountain and out into the bright morning. “Here. Right at the entrance to the grotto. Still warm, she was, when Liam found her. And when the servants came running to see why he was caterwauling so, they met no one else in the maze.”

  “So that’s why your brother was accused.” Rosalinde slipped her hand into Aidan’s, taking comfort from its warmth and strength.

  “And in the confusion, the real killer disappeared out the secret way.” Aidan narrowed his eyes and did a slow turn, taking in the spot.

  Rosalinde realized he was visualizing the scene, imagining the last moments of the poor girl’s life, when the one she looked to help her deal with the child growing in her belly had only helped her to the next world instead.

  “And we’ll have to return that way, too, love.” Aidan extended a hand to her.

  “Must we?” Damp, dark places were low on Rosalinde’s list of happy spots.

  “We rode toward the woods this fine morning. I could send a groom after the horses, but if we’re discovered walking out of the maze bold as brass, the killer might figure out that someone else knows about his back door.”

  “You’re right,” she admitted.

  “I’m right, ye say. Best we mark this day down then. Good to know it does happen on occasion.”

  “Only on occasion.” She took his hand and led the way back into the grotto. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  Chapter 10

  Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?

  Was ever woman in this humour won?

  —SHAKESPEARE, King Richard III

  The next day, while the men fished, Rosalinde talked the women into tackling the maze. By the time they discovered the secret to the convoluted pathways and reached the grotto, Rosalinde’s great-aunt declared herself completely done in. Not even the ghoulish prospect of visiting a murder site would budge Lady Chudderley into the shady interior of the grotto to rest. So they all trooped back to the main house, being treated to a litany of woe about her great-aunt’s bunions as they went.

  But Rosalinde made a mental map of the twisted lanes and blind alleys. When she returned to her chamber later, she drew out the path that led to the center of the maze on a piece of foolscap and stashed it among her folio of poorly executed watercolors.

  After that, the women’s days were spent playing cards or reading aloud while the men rattled about the grounds shooting at every hapless hind that wandered into their path. Rosalinde suggested archery or lawn bowling, but her great-aunt vetoed such “sweaty pursuits.”

  Evenings were dedicated to parlor games and impromptu recitals. Lady Sophia never missed an opportuni
ty to try to ingratiate herself with Aidan by gushing over sentimental Irish poetry. If Rosalinde was forced to listen to the viscount’s sister play The Last Rose of Summer on the piano forte one more time, she wouldn’t be responsible if she boxed the woman’s ears.

  She badgered Aidan mercilessly whenever they could snatch a moment alone, but he wouldn’t tell her how he planned to expose the true killer. He would only confirm the trap was being set, but would give her no details on how or where, or even whom, he suspected. It was maddening to think that someone she dined with was a cold-blooded killer.

  After all Aidan’s insistence that she trust him, it was infuriating that he didn’t trust her. Baiting someone who’d already done murder was a game of brinksmanship, at best. She couldn’t bear the thought of Aidan in danger or the idea of being helpless to do a thing about it. For tuppence, she’d plead illness and beg her father to return the family to London.

  But when she looked across the music room at Aidan, his dark head lit by the soft amber gaslight, she knew she wouldn’t leave. Not if it meant she couldn’t snatch a glance at him whenever she wished.

  And when the approach of nightfall meant he’d come through her wall and love her to exhaustion.

  This evening, Viscount Musgrave was seated next to Lady Chudderley on the window seat. For most of his sister’s little concert, Rosalinde’s great-aunt provided a buzzing, whispered accompaniment directed at Edwin. He didn’t respond in kind, but from the corner of her eye, Rosalinde caught him nodding in agreement from time to time.

  When Lady Sophia finished a tortured bit of Schubert, Edwin stood and walked over to Rosalinde while the rest of the party clapped politely.

  “It’s a fine soft night. I’ve been told his lordship has a lovely patch of night-blooming jasmine.” Edwin extended a hand to her. “Will you do me the honor of a turn about the garden, Rosalinde?”

  Her gaze darted around the room. Sophia had latched onto Aidan’s arm and was persuading him to sit beside her on the bench for her encore.

  “Your sister isn’t finished playing.”

  Edwin smiled and leaned down to whisper, “But I’m finished listening. I saw you stifle a yawn during that last piece. You’re no music lover either.”

  Rosalinde could see no way to decline gracefully when he put it like that. She accepted his arm and let him lead her out the open French doors and into Aidan’s riot of a garden.

  “How do you like country life?” Edwin asked as the pebbled path crunched under their feet.

  “I like it well enough,” she said. “If I’m allowed to enjoy it.”

  Beyond her morning rides on a sturdy, pleasant mare instead of Balor, Rosalinde felt trapped inside with the other women. It was virtually the same as being in London, but with the benefit of an occasional breeze.

  “If you were the mistress of your own place, that would doubtless change. Fresh air is good for a body. Children especially,” Edwin said.

  “Doubtless.” It was difficult to disagree with conventional wisdom.

  “Fengrave Hall, my own country house, is smaller than this, of course, but it’s also much closer to London. It means that even when the House of Lords is in session, I can easily travel home for a few days each week,” he said, as if that should matter to her.

  “It sounds convenient.” Honestly, if he wanted conversation, he ought to hit upon a subject open to debate. It was almost as if he proposed that everyone enjoyed good weather and dared her to dispute it.

  “Truth to tell, it’s a bit shabby at present,” he admitted. “But I believe I’ve a remedy for that.” He stopped walking and dropped suddenly to one knee before her. “Fengrave Hall is in want of a mistress and I’m in want of a wife, Rosalinde. You have impressed me in recent days as one who could admirably fill both posts. Will you do me the honor of becoming my bride?”

  She blinked hard. Even though her great-aunt had been pre-occupying him all evening, she hadn’t suspected what was truly happening. Everyone knew Lady Chudderley had the means to make Rosalinde a great heiress, in coin if not in title. Evidently, her great-aunt had finally named a figure that got the viscount’s attention.

  “Edwin, I don’t know what to say.” She tried to gently tug away her hand, but he clasped it tighter and pressed a wet kiss on it. “This is a bit of a surprise.”

  “Yes, I know. For me too.” He looked a bit chagrined by his kneeling posture. Edwin was always mindful of his dignity and soiling the knees of his trousers was wholly out of character. So were his next words. “But when Cupid cocks his bow, a man must . . . follow so.”

  Male laughter rose from behind them.

  “Whisht, would ye listen to that? If ye want my advice, Musgrave—” Aidan came toward them—“a man who has no poet in his soul ought to at least stick to quoting the masters instead of mangling his own verse.”

  Edwin scrambled to his feet and glared at Aidan over Rosalinde’s shoulder. “This is a private conversation, Stonemere.”

  “In my private garden,” Aidan said. “Have ye found the jasmine yet?”

  “No, but that’s neither here nor there.” A small muscle ticked under Edwin’s left eye and his lips were set in a hard line.

  “Ye mean to say ye didn’t really have the flora in mind when ye spirited Rosalinde out here?” Aidan said with a charming smile. “And ye so almighty proper all the time, Edwin. ’Tis shocked, I am.”

  “Now see here—” Edwin began, the hackles on his neck visibly rising. His hands balled into fists and one arm drew back to deliver a blow.

  “No, ye see.” Aidan raised a splay-fingered hand toward Edwin and the viscount froze in place. “Ye must go back into the house now.”

  The fire went out of Edwin’s eyes and a vague smile lifted his mouth. He turned to Rosalinde as if nothing had happened. “I must go in now, my dear. His lordship will show you the jasmine. Consider what I said, will you?”

  She merely nodded because she didn’t think she could force any words out her astonished mouth. Once his footsteps retreated beyond earshot, she turned to Aidan. “What was that about?”

  “Oh, ye’ve just got yerself another beau, love. Nothing to trouble your pretty head about.” He offered her his arm and started leading her along the path. “I really can’t blame the poor blighter. Ye’ll let him down easy, aye?”

  “No, I mean, what was this?” She thrust her hand forward, fingers spread as she’d seen Aidan do.

  “Oh, I had to knack him. He was about to start something he couldn’t finish and I’d hate to have to knock a guest on his backside in front of a woman he’s embarrassed himself before already.”

  His dismissive attitude toward his rival danced on her nerves, but she let that go for now. “You had to ‘knack’ him?”

  “I suppose ye haven’t ever heard of the Knack on this most civilized of islands, have ye?” Aidan said. “And to be fair, ’tis not well known beyond certain circles on the Emerald Isle either. ’Tis a trick I inherited from me da. If I need someone to do a simple thing, I . . . think it to him and off he goes.”

  Rosalinde huffed out a surprised breath. “How does that work?”

  “In truth, I don’t know. Me da used to say the family could trace its blood back to the Old Ones, to the Tuatha de Danaan, back to a time when a simple man had more magic in his little finger than there is in the whole of the country now.” Aidan stopped and looked back toward the house, a frown creasing his brow. “I wish I hadn’t had to do it to your beau. My gift loses potency with repetition. I’ll not be able to knack him again for another day or so, I’d expect.”

  Rosalinde swallowed this new information. “So you . . . knack people with regularity, do you?”

  “Not as often as ye might think.”

  “Have you ever knacked me?”

  He stopped and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “No, but ye’ve tempted me sore once or twice.”

  The more she learned about Aidan, the more a stranger he seemed. They walked on in silence toward the g
rowing sweetness that signaled the jasmine was near.

  “Why did you say Edwin had embarrassed himself before me?”

  “He asked ye to marry him, aye?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, did ye tell him yes?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’d say he was properly shamed.”

  At least Edwin had troubled to ask her formally. Now that she thought back on the matter, Aidan hadn’t truly asked. He’d more or less informed her she’d be his wife after loving the will to resist right out of her.

  What was that, if not wickedly close to being knacked?

  “I didn’t have time to give Edwin an answer, if you must know.”

  Aidan chuckled. “Are ye after seeing if I’m the jealous type?”

  Rosalinde pulled her hand from the sheltered crook of his arm and stomped ahead of him on the path toward the four-foot clump of jasmine sprawling near a stone settee. The small waxy flowers were not much to see by moonlight, but their scent was so heady and sweet, it made her slightly dizzy.

  “Rose, don’t be like that.” He came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist.

  “Or what?” She wiggled away from him. “You’ll knack me?”

  “No, lass. There’d be no point. If ye don’t love me willingly, ye don’t love me.”

  “And if you don’t trust me, how can you love me?”

  “I trust ye. Didn’t ye see how little I minded Edwin? I know you’re mine.”

  “No, I mean about your plans.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You won’t tell me how you intend to trap the real killer.”

  “For your own good. Ye’ve no need to know.”

  “I’m an adult. Why don’t you let me be the judge of what I need to know?”

  “Rose, now see—”

  “No, you see.” She raised her hand in a parody of his knack gesture. “Either you tell me what I want to know right now, or I’ll march right back into that house and tell Edwin I accept his suit in front of God and everybody.”