by Anne Stuart
She was going to have to go out and fetch the stupid dress, but first she’d have to put on the blue one. She picked up her corset, one of Madame Mimi’s finest creations. Thank God she’d had her design one with the hooks and laces on the front. She’d had Gertie as a maid at the time, but she hated being at the mercy of anyone, and she wanted to be able to get dressed and undressed on her own if need be. She’d had no idea how soon that would be the case.
She cinched herself in, so angry with herself that she tightened it past the point of pain, so that she had to catch her breath. While working she’d been leaving a little space to breathe, but not today. She yanked at the ribbons and fastened them, then moved over to fetch the bunched up blue dress from its ignominious heap in the corner with the other laundry. She hated the dress—she and Bryony had retailored it so she could put it on by herself, but it required squirming and shifting to get it to sit right. She started to pull it over her head when she heard the sound of footsteps on the narrow attic stairs and she panicked, the hooks from the dress caught in her hair. She struggled desperately, making the tangle only worse, when she felt strong hands catch her wrists over head. Strong hands, with rough skin, and she knew who it was. Of course. Life couldn’t get much worse.
It had been quite a way to start a morning, Luca had thought, leaning against the brick wall that enclosed the garden. He’d been talking with Billy, about to ask his opinion of the cuckoo in his nest, when the attic window had opened and she herself had appeared, some dark cloth in her hand.
She was wearing absolutely nothing. Or close to it. A thin cotton shift that was damp in places, and he could clearly see her breasts beneath it, the darkness of her nipples, and he groaned softly.
“What’s she doing?” Billy had asked, unmoved by this glorious display of feminine treasures.
It didn’t matter that Billy had no interest in the female form—for some reason Luca didn’t like him looking. “Go back inside,” he said. “I’ll come by and talk to you later.”
Billy had looked from him to the girl and back again, and Luca expected some ribald joke. The fact that Billy said nothing was even more disturbing. Billy was always ready to mock the women who tended to cluster around Luca, but for some reason Miss Madeleine Russell seemed off-limits.
So Luca had leaned back against the wall and enjoyed the view. She had no idea she was being watched, and her long, dark hair hung down around her as she shook the dark object. It was an inspiring display for the first thing in the morning, watching the movement of her breasts beneath the thin cloth, the way her dark hair rippled in the morning breeze. How would she look aboard a ship, her hair long and loose and tossed in the sea wind? A ridiculous thought—he never brought women on board with him.
When she finally realized she had an audience he was almost disappointed, until she dropped what she’d been holding and it had floated down, landing at his feet. It was unmistakably a dress. She’d already retreated, slamming the window behind her, and he laughed. Life was hard, full of bad luck and challenges, but on rare occasions things just fell his way. Like the dress of the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about, the woman who had invaded his household in some misguided attempt to blame him for her father’s crimes.
He picked it up and shook it. It smelled like her. Odd, that he would know her scent already. It was lavender, mixed with lemon wax and lye soap. If she weren’t working hard for doubtless the first time in her life, she’d probably smell of perfumes and powder. He preferred this scent.
He folded the dress over his arm and started back toward the house. The sunrise had been a glorious thing, in shades of red and pink, a clear warning of stormy weather on the horizon. He’d never been afraid of a little bad weather—in fact, he loved the challenge of it. A perfect day to go sailing.
There was no sign of the Croziers in the kitchen. Gwendolyn would be shocked he’d entered that way, but it was the most direct route to the servants’ staircase. He took the narrow steps two at a time, hoping to reach her while she was still in her shift. What he found at the top of the stairs was even better.
Maddy Rose was trapped in a dusty blue dress, her arms overhead as she tried to wriggle into it. He could pull her into his arms; he could do anything he wanted to her. It was tempting, but he’d much rather have her be a willing participant if she were going to be tied up.
He caught her wrists as she flailed. “Stop struggling,” he said. “You’re only making it worse.”
“What the hell are you doing in my room?” she demanded furiously, her voice muffled by the folds of cloth.
“That’s ‘what the hell are you doing in my room, sir,’ ” he corrected her. “Since you were dangling out the window in your undergarments and flinging your clothes at me I presumed you wanted me to visit.”
The sounds she was making from inside the dress were unintelligible, which was a shame. They were sounding impressively profane, and he wondered just how far her bad language went. That was one of the things he liked about her, he thought. Her very unlady-like cursing was almost as delectable as those soft breasts that had been on partial display this morning.
“Just hold still,” he said, tightening his grip as she kept fighting him. “You’ve got your hair caught on the fastenings, and the dress is twisted around backwards. Behave yourself and I’ll get you out of it.”
Her response was derisive and unintelligible, and he was glad she couldn’t see his grin. Her dark, silky hair was wrapped around the jet buttons, and he carefully unwound it, the curls slipping through his fingers. He’d forgotten how much he loved dark hair. Cats were all gray in the dark, but he preferred women you could see in the daylight as well, talk with, banter with. Gwendolyn wasn’t much for banter, and he knew women well enough—too well, Billy would say—to know that her hair would be fine and straight when let out of its elaborate arrangements, not this luxuriant mass of curls.
Madeleine Russell couldn’t keep her thick dark hair under control, no matter how hard she tried. He released one strand, and then another.
“Just tear the hair,” she muttered from within her fabric prison.
“Now that would be a tragedy,” he said lightly. The last piece was free, and before she could realize what he was doing he’d grasped the heavy dress at the sides and pulled it down. He was holding her at the waist, the dress open down the front so that all he could see was a combination of ribbon and lace, until she shoved him away, stepped back, and pulled the dress around her. It was a mess, he realized belatedly. There was mud along the hem, splotches of dirt all over it, and a tear in one sleeve. He remembered how that sleeve had gotten torn—the brute who’d been holding onto her in the alleyway had done it.
He’d viewed that encounter with detachment at the time, and he’d kissed her because he’d been in such a foul, frustrated mood. He wasn’t nearly as sanguine looking back on it, and some illogical part of him wanted to track down the three men who’d tried to hurt her and beat them bloody. Which was simply madness on his part.
But then, Miss Madeleine Rose Russell, his own Maddy Rose, tended to make him completely insane.
He wanted to kiss her again. She was watching warily, as if she fully expected him to, but he’d never enjoyed doing the expected. He stepped back, releasing her, and had to resist smiling as he saw the crestfallen expression flash in her eyes.
She started busily buttoning the front of her dress, a damned shame. “Thank you, sir. You’re very kind. I should be down in five minutes.”
“Are you dismissing me, Mary?” he drawled.
Faint color stained her cheeks. “I can think of no reason why you’d wish to stay in the servants’ quarters,” she said primly.
Ah, she opened herself up for that one. “Can’t you? You show an alarming lack of imagination. Have you forgotten last night so quickly?”
The flush deepened, but she remained obdurate. She really was practically fearless, he thought. She would have made an excellent pirate queen, one of those lege
ndary creatures who no longer existed.
“Sir, it pleases you to tease me, but I need to be in the kitchen or Mrs. Crozier will be very angry.”
“Mrs. Crozier scares you about as much as she scares me.” He needed to leave her. She was breathing deeply, from her struggle with the heavy dress, or from stress. He wanted to rip that ugly dress right off her again, carry her over to that narrow, sagging bed, and…
He had to stop thinking like that. He wasn’t going to take her with lies between them, not if he could wait. “I think we should talk,” he said abruptly.
The bright color on her cheeks had faded at that. “Now?” It was almost a squeak of dismay.
He shook his head. “There’s a storm coming up, and I’ve been on land for too long. I’ll be taking a boat out before things get bad. We’ll talk this evening or tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, sir.” She sounded docile enough, and he wondered if she would try to run. He could find her, of course, if she did. Fulton was her partner in crime, and he didn’t trust the solicitor to keep a secret. No, he’d find her wherever she went.
For a moment he just stood and looked at her. The light was dull in the attics, both from the early hour and the coming storm, but she looked beautiful, even in the ugly dress, with her hair down to her wrists and her face in a mulish expression. Damn. Why did she have to be who she was? He’d give ten years off his life if she was an ordinary girl, the milliner’s assistant she’d said she was, or even a solicitor’s daughter. He wouldn’t have to rush things. There could be a slow, delicious build-up to finally taking her, in a bed with clean sheets and all the time in the world.
Not now. Not until she came to him with the truth.
But soon.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS FULLY AN awful day, starting with the disaster of losing her dress out the window, followed by the captain’s appearance in her room, his hands on her, holding her. He wanted to talk with her, did he? How was she going to avoid that? Oh, she could put off just about anyone, and nothing could make her say anything she didn’t want to say, but she still felt edgy.
So far she’d found next to nothing to explain how the captain would have profited from killing her father. The locked closet had proven stubbornly resistant to her lock-picking efforts. Granted, she’d had little time, daylight, or energy to give it her full attention—it was all she could do to wash herself and tumble into the hard, narrow bed. And Mrs. Crozier hadn’t let her get anywhere near the study. She needed some kind of proof, either of guilt or innocence, before she ran from this place and never looked back.
Admit it, Maddy, she told herself. You’re running from the man, not the place.
It wasn’t that she was a coward. She was simply wise enough to know when she was out of her depths, and with Captain Thomas Morgan she was floundering, weakening. Longing.
It was hard to think of him that way. He wasn’t a Thomas—it felt artificial, and she wondered if he had a pirate name, like the Dread Captain Morgan or Morgan the Black. In fact, she wasn’t even sure he was a Morgan—wasn’t that already the name of a famous pirate from centuries ago? Of course it was probably her own guilty conscience—she was the one with a false name, not the captain. But she really couldn’t think of him using that name.
She didn’t have to think of him using any name at all, except as a possible thief and murderer. Supposedly her father had driven the carriage to the edge of the cliff—he’d been found at the bottom, his neck broken, the carriage and horses abandoned. The one thing the solicitors had been able to do was quash any suggestion of suicide, and Maddy knew it was an impossibility, because Eustace Russell didn’t know how to drive. He always hired a driver. And there had been no one else out there on the windswept heart of Dartmoor. Had he died alone? Or at the hands of a killer?
She couldn’t afford to brood; she’d been brooding for too long. That was why she’d come here. She could take action, and that was exactly what she’d do, she thought, moving down the narrow staircase to Mrs. Crozier’s kitchen lair.
By late afternoon the sky was dark with clouds. The housekeeper had been at her, all day, criticizing, making her do things over and over again, which, Maddy well knew, was entirely unnecessary. Nanny Gruen had believed that a lady should know how to accomplish any household task in order to properly direct the raft of servants she would one day employ, and Maddy never did anything halfway. When she scrubbed a floor it was spotless, when she polished something it gleamed. Mrs. Crozier was simply venting her spleen, and clearly she had a great deal of it to vent.
The captain had been right—there was most definitely a storm coming. Maddy could practically feel the electricity in the air. The sun was nowhere to be seen—all day the sky had been dark and threatening, and she’d heard the rumble of distant thunder as an ominous accompaniment to the wind that rattled the windows and shook the trees in the back garden. Out front the waters of the harbor foamed, rocking the ships on their moorings, and Maddy tried not to think about the captain. He was already gone by the time she reached the kitchens, barely ten minutes after he’d left her. Her first thought had been a devout hope that he’d be on his boat for the entire day. Her second had been a fear that he’d do just that. This was no sort of day to be out on the open water, though admittedly she was no judge of the matter, having never set one foot on a boat. She might think the captain capable of heinous crimes, but she didn’t want him dead.
Was it possible that there might be more than one man behind their father’s destruction? What if the captain was merely a part of some larger scheme? There was only one problem with all this—what possible reason could anyone have to destroy the House of Russell? Stealing the money was one thing—why did they have to steal her father as well?
The Earl of Kilmartyn had managed to survive the debacle with his fortune intact, and he had seemed a logical villain. But Bryony was too smart to be tricked by some wealthy Irish rakehell, and she’d married him out of hand, despite the fact that he was suspected of murdering his wife.
So he was out of the question—she trusted her older sister’s judgment too much. But what possible reason could the captain have for killing his employer? To be sure, her father suspected him of something, had even relieved him of his command. But what could her father have done to him that would have justified murder? And what had her father suspected him of? Morgan could hardly have embezzled all that money from across the country.
Their third possibility, Viscount Griffiths, the man who now owned their country estate, Somerset, was an even less likely villain. But that scrap of paper and common sense were all that they had to go on.
“Why have you got the lass down on her knees all the time?” A deep, rumbling voice broke through her abstraction as she rubbed the scrub brush back and forth, back and forth beneath Mrs. Crozier’s direction. At least all the endless, mindless work gave her plenty of time for introspection. She looked up, way up, into the craggy, sea-worn face of the man who lived in the mews.
“Work must be done, Mr. Quarrells,” Mrs. Crozier said. “I’ll thank you not to interfere with my arrangements.”
Mr. Quarrells snorted in contempt. “I’d like to see you do a bit of work for a change. I don’t know why he puts up with you.”
“My husband and I are devoted to the captain and this household,” she said sharply, but Maddy could hear the trace of fear in Mrs. Crozier's voice. She longed to sit back on her heels, rest her aching arms during this argument, but she didn’t dare. Mrs. Crozier had taken to giving her sharp little kicks when she thought Maddy was slacking off, and she already had bruises.
“Ah, it’s his business and none of mine,” Quarrells said, disappointing Maddy, and she ducked her head. “And speaking of himself, where is he? Isn’t he back yet? He knows better than to stay out when a storm like this is brewing.”
“I have no idea, Mr. Quarrells. He didn’t tell me when he expected to return.”
The man shook his shaggy head. “I hope the
lad had sense not to take the small boat out on his own. He’s going to run into trouble if he went too far.”
“Jesus and Mary protect him,” Mrs. Crozier said devoutly, and Maddy would have given a silent snort if she hadn’t been filled with her own irrational worry. It was bad enough when she thought he’d gone out to sea in a large ship. If he were in a smaller vessel he’d be that much more vulnerable.
“More like the devil,” Quarrells said with a heartless laugh, and Maddy tried to feel encouraged. Surely a friend wouldn’t laugh if he were in any real danger. “Tell him I need a word with him when he gets back, Mrs. C.”
“Surely not about my household arrangements?” Mrs. Crozier said sharply.
The man laughed. “Not really worth my time, is it? I’ve got more important things on my mind. Just don’t kill the lass. You don’t find such hard workers every day.”
The housekeeper made a harrumphing sound, and Maddy kept scrubbing, not slowing her efforts as she heard the kitchen door close behind Quarrells. She half-expected Mrs. Crozier to deliver another sharp kick, but the woman didn’t move.
“Looks like you’ve got yourself a champion,” Mrs. Crozier said with a sniff. “If I were you I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He’s not going to be much help to you. You’re not his type.” The woman cackled to herself. “Have you got that floor clean yet? You’re taking forever.”
There was revenge and there was revenge, Maddy thought, plastering a sweet smile on her face. Mrs. Crozier was trying to defeat her, and the best possible response was sweetness and light. “I believe I’ve done it right this time, Mrs. Crozier.”
“Then clean it up, girl. I’ve got dinner to prepare, and that miserable Mon-sewer turned my kitchen upside down. I don’t know whether the captain is lying at the bottom of the sea in this storm or not, but if he gets back safely he’ll need his dinner.”