by Erica Ridley
In Bournemouth, however...
Here, she had no limitless credit. Here she had nothing. She could ask her parents for money, of course. But if they were aware she planned to use their funds in order to defy their wishes by returning home, the likelihood was high that no money would be forthcoming.
Bloody, bloody hell.
She would have to avoid all mention of just how disagreeable she found her exile. Best to act as normal as possible. She crumpled up her missive and began a new one.
“Dear Mother. Please send money. Yours, etc. Susan.”
There. Her monthly allowance should arrive within the week. Assuming she chanced to survive that long in haunted Moonseed Manor.
The sound of the heavy door scratching across the hardwood floor sent gooseflesh rippling up Susan’s arms. The figure that scampered inside made her gasp in horror. Was it terrible of her to hope this unfortunate creature wasn’t among the living?
The—maid?—stood less than four feet tall. Her body was nothing more than a jumble of elbows and legs poking out from a shapeless brown sack of a dress. Her face (and neck and shoulders and chest) hid beneath a gravity-defying mass of tea-colored frizz. A cockeyed bonnet perched atop the whole.
How the tiny servant could locate the guest quarters with her face buried behind a waterfall of thick hair was beyond Susan’s comprehension.
“Janey, mum.” As if jerked by marionette strings, the entire collection of wild hair and bony limbs collapsed in an awkward curtsy. “At yer service.”
Susan removed her spectacles, cleaned the lenses slowly and carefully in the folds of her skirt, then replaced her spectacles on her nose.
Janey was still there.
“Er, delightful,” Susan said at last. Was this what became of those who stayed too long within these walls? No wonder Lady Beaune could no longer venture out-of-doors. “I was hoping you could post this letter and help me lace up my gown.”
One of Janey’s bony hands shot out and snatched the folded parchment from the escritoire. The missive immediately disappeared into an unseen pocket.
“Quick as ye please, mum, and none the wiser.”
What the dickens was that supposed to mean? Susan prepared to rise to her feet, but on second thought, remained seated. Although she wasn’t much taller than the average Town deb, she towered over the spider-limbed lady’s maid. Instead, she leaned forward in her chair to allow better access to the laces.
Despite being possessed of bones so thin they looked ready to snap at the slightest pressure, Janey’s fingers made quick work of Susan’s vestments. In fact, Susan could scarce breathe, so inhumanly tight were her stays. Mother would be beside herself to see her daughter exhibiting correct posture for once.
Thank God she wasn’t here. Susan hated pleasing her mother.
She thanked Janey and sent her on her way before belatedly recalling she had no idea how to quit Moonseed Manor short of throwing herself from her second-floor window. No matter. She refused to sit in a cold, echoing bedchamber like a fairy-tale princess trapped atop a tower.
If she could escape her mother’s watchdogs long enough to make her way to the Frost Fair (even if that particular incident resulted in being banished from the only city in which she’d ever lived), then surely she could find her way out of a lonely country house in the middle of nowhere.
Spine straight and shoulders thrust back with resolution—or possibly due to Janey’s skill with laces—Susan pulled open the bedchamber door and stepped into the faded, lifeless hall.
Each passageway expanded endlessly before her. Myriad paths of pale nothingness.
Susan took a shallow breath. One of these identical corridors must lead to the spiral staircase. The spiral staircase led downstairs. And the downstairs antechamber led to freedom.
She just had to find it.
Several wrong turns later, Susan was forced to admit that at this point, she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the guest quarters. Nor had she stumbled upon the spiral staircase from the night before.
The upside, however, was that she now stood at the top of a very tall, very narrow, very non-spiral staircase that, while not being the precise staircase she’d hoped to encounter, still pointed in the desired direction. Down.
The only reason she was still hesitating at the top of said staircase instead of hurtling toward freedom was that at the bottom of the staircase, she could hear voices.
Male voices. Familiar voices. Angry voices.
Whenever Susan Stanton, undisputed queen of London gossip, found herself in a position where she could overhear conversation without being discovered herself—she didn’t move a bloody muscle. Particularly when the first words to waft upstairs were:
“Dead, you say?”
That deep, disinterested voice belonged to the giant who’d married his way onto the Stanton family tree.
“Shot between the eyes.”
And that rich, cultured voice had to belong to the dangerous “gentleman” from the night before. The one with the overlong chestnut hair, well-muscled figure, and devastating bow.
“Hm,” came the giant’s voice again. “That would do it.”
“Don’t provoke me, Ollie. I hate it when I have to kill friends.”
“Have you got a weapon on you, then?”
“Never mind that.” The smartly accented voice turned low, suspicious. “A better question would be: Why don’t you look surprised?”
“Of course I’m not surprised. You never have a weapon handy.”
A growl ripped its way up the stairs. “As luck would have it, I do not require one in order to commit murder. Stop dancing around the subject. What do you know?”
“Nothing.” Ice clinked, then sloshed. “Brandy?” Glass shattered against a wall. “I’ll assume that’s a no.”
“Dead, Ollie. Dead.”
“Right. My condolences.”
“Your con—ah, will you look at that. I do have my pistol with me.”
Dead silence.
If there was one thing Susan Stanton had learned as a result of the regrettable circumstance that had gotten her expelled from Polite Society the Season before, it was when to keep listening at keyholes and when to flee the premises.
This situation clearly called for the latter.
Unfortunately, as she could neither find her way to the original staircase nor back to her bedchamber, the stairs before her remained the only possibility of reaching the front door. They also provided the highest probability of passing madmen with loaded pistols.
“Easy, Bothwick. Killing me won’t bring him back.”
“But it’ll damn well make me feel better.”
A door slammed. Whatever the giant replied was too muffled to overhear. Good. She couldn’t hear them; they couldn’t see her.
The time to escape was now.
She hurried down the steps as fast as her booted feet could carry her and found herself in a spiderweb of colorless passageways identical to the unnavigable ones above-stairs. Now what?
A door banged open several feet ahead. The handsome gentleman she’d met the night before flew backward into the hall, crashed into the wall opposite, and landed in a crouched position. His pistol pointed straight ahead at the open doorway from whence he’d flown. The door immediately slammed shut behind him.
He didn’t move for several long seconds, as if deciding whether to kick the door back open or to start shooting straight through it. To say his dress was in a state of disarray would be a gross understatement. But costume was a lesser concern than his propensity for indulging homicidal urges.
Just when Susan had come to the conclusion that she’d be better off sneaking back upstairs after all, the would-be murderer straightened, snapped seaweed-laden boots together with military precision, and marched down the hall in the opposite direction.
His sandy footprints had to be heading out. Which left her only two options: stay in—and hopelessly lost—on the other side of the giant’s wall. Or follow
the ill-clad, well-armed gentleman to freedom, and pray to the heavens that he wouldn’t discover her trailing behind.
She wavered.
Now that he was no longer in the company of someone he wished to kill, following someone this intriguing would be a close substitute to the rush of discovering juicy London scandal broth. Provided she stayed well-hidden and far enough behind him that he not detect her presence.
The gentleman rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.
Decide, Susan. Decide right now.
She gathered up her skirts and dashed silently in his wake. After all, she’d been caught spying exactly once in the four fruitful years since her London come-out.
What were the chances lightning would strike twice?
Chapter 4
Damn it.
Bad enough the little blonde houseguest’s unexpected presence had thrown him enough off-kilter to miss taking a perfectly sound—if airborne—shot at Ollie’s infuriating head. The chit was actually following him.
Bollocks the size of barges or incurably featherbrained?
Possibly both.
Either way, she was now more than ever the exact sort of woman from which he should stay far, far away. He liked the freedom of leaving when he chose and going where he chose—without worrying about the possibility of anyone dogging his steps. Particularly a female.
Evan Bothwick tucked his pistol between his waistband and the small of his back before straightening his greatcoat and stepping outside into a brisk Bournemouth dawn. Usually the muted colors dancing in the waves’ reflection brought him peace. Today the pale pink glow looked like so much blood seeping up from the dark horizon to stain the wounded sky.
Timothy, you jackass. If only you had been in a brothel.
The incongruous scent of jasmine clashed with the salty air. Unbelievable. Rather than stop when he quit the house, the chit had actually trailed him right out the door and into the Beaunes’ rock garden.
Evan revised his initial opinion. Either Ollie’s houseguest was a cloister-raised schoolgirl who’d somehow missed the significance of the pistol altercation, or she was looking for trouble. Why else would an attractive young woman follow an armed man into the half-lit outdoors?
Men could be dangerous. He should know. He was one of the bad ones.
Evan made his way down the steep, twisted path to the beach, jumping the final few feet, as was his custom. He glanced up in time to see the top of a blonde head disappear from the edge.
Either she was smart enough to wait for him to walk away before continuing to pursue him, or she had enough common sense to give up altogether and go back inside the house.
He wasn’t more than thirty yards farther down the beach when an avalanche of falling sand indicated a certain houseguest planned to break her neck tracking him to the shore. That answered the question, then. Smart... but without a lick of common sense. The deadliest combination of all. Just look at Timothy.
Evan sighed and turned back.
There was nobody else around to save her if she came tumbling headfirst off a fifty-foot cliff. He’d catch her, throttle her, and be on his way. Just a minor delay.
She was more than halfway down before she noticed his presence. Most likely because that particular path was a suicide risk even for those born and raised in the area, and her gaze had never strayed far from the next step. For some reason, however, she glanced at the beach... and saw him.
He hadn’t moved. He was accustomed to holding perfectly still for hours on end. Perhaps she’d caught his scent on the breeze, although Evan couldn’t imagine he smelled like anything more the sea itself. Or perhaps it was his appearance that arrested her. His boots had stopped squishing, but he was still flecked with sand and seaweed.
In any case, the wide-eyed blonde had frozen on the jagged edge, arms outstretched for balance. If she stared at him instead of her feet for much longer, she really would hit the beach face-first. Of course, turning back around on a disintegrating sand path the width of a man’s hand would prove its own unique challenge.
If her panicked expression was any indication, she was weighing those precise odds.
“Either go back or keep coming,” Evan shouted at last, impatient to be on his way. “But it’d be much easier to catch you from twenty feet than fifty.”
Her gaze never left his face, but she didn’t respond.
She was a pretty thing, all right. Pretty annoying, yes, but also pretty attractive, if one’s preference ran to slender blondes with high cheekbones and expensive taste in Parisian daywear. If it weren’t for the bronze-rimmed spectacles and the rather precarious way she wobbled on the narrow path, she could easily pose for a fashion plate.
He hated that look.
Such women symbolized everything that was wrong with the world today. Shallow, pretentious, self-centered. Women whose thoughts—when they had them at all—were focused on the ensnaring of a husband and the spending of his money. Evan much preferred his bachelordom, thank you very much, and the ability to take his pleasure wherever he fancied, without fear of the parson’s trap. The last thing he needed, at this or any moment, was to waste time with a London debutante.
Never mind that certain parts of his anatomy begged to differ.
“I probably won’t bite,” he called up, when it appeared she was willing to stand there all morning. The wind blew open her pelisse, molding her gown against her figure. He didn’t bother pretending not to notice.
She stared back at him dubiously, arms still stretched wide for balance.
“Or shoot me?”
Evan paused to consider. Now that both options were on the table, he had to admit he was more enthusiastic about biting women than shooting them. Nibbling, rather. Why, there was one saucy wench he’d met one night off the coast of—
“If it takes that long to decide—”
“Oh, calm down.” Evan held up his empty palms, to indicate peaceful intent. Not that he couldn’t have a pistol aimed and fired in less than a second. Nibbling her, of course... now that would take some finesse. No. Debutante, he reminded himself. Hands off. “I promise neither to bite you nor to shoot you.”
... Today. Unless she wanted it or deserved it. In that order.
She didn’t move.
“I think,” she said at last, “trusting you would be the height of naïveté.”
Evan had to agree. He inclined his head. Perhaps she had a dose of common sense after all. Even he was starting not to trust himself. His mind was positive he should stay far, far away, but his body seemed to think a few minutes alone with hers would do them both quite nicely.
“Unfortunately,” the dangerously comely blonde continued with a quick glance behind her, “at the moment, I seem to be without the luxury of choice.”
“Pity.” He held out his hand and flashed his most untrustworthy smile.
She scowled at him.
His smile widened.
“Scoundrel.”
“You have no idea.”
A frustrated sound escaped her lips. She glared at him, wobbled, then cast her gaze skyward as if hoping for divine intervention.
Attractive as the untouchable debutante might be, Evan did not have time to waste. He debated walking off while she wasn’t looking. Ungentlemanly, perhaps, but at least he could deliver himself from temptation.
“Look. I can’t stand around waiting to see whether or not you fall to your death. Why don’t you let me know if you’re going to be heading one direction or the other, or if you’re going to stand there all day? I’ve got things I really ought to be doing instead of—”
“What things? How can you have plans first thing in the morning? It’s a wretched, ungodly hour. Where are you going? Are you meeting someone? On the beach?”
Evan stared at the blonde’s suddenly animated face in disbelief. Here he was, undressing her in his mind, and she wanted to compose an interview? The only thing worse than a marriage-minded female was a nosy marriage-minded female. “I ta
ke it back. I hereby reserve the right to shoot you at will.”
Her pink lips rounded. “But you promised—”
“Or nibble you.” He flashed his hallmark can’t-trust-me smile. “Whichever I prefer.”
Her hands balled into fists. “I would never allow—Oh!”
A chunk of the sandy path dislodged beneath her feet, sending her arms flailing. She fell backward, still scrabbling for purchase on the crumbling slope. Instead of stabilizing, she slid down the side of the cliff on her rear, bringing most of the path with her.
“Christ,” Evan muttered.
There went his shortcut. And here came his blonde.
Despite the torrent of sand raining into his eyes, he rushed forward, arms outstretched, and managed to intercept his erstwhile pursuer’s rapid descent and swing her clear from the falling debris. He shook the sand from his hair. She clung to his neck, eyes squeezed shut. And she definitely smelled of jasmine.
“Next time,” he murmured, “don’t follow me.”
Her eyes snapped open. Blue fire burned behind the spectacles.
Still holding her soft body tight in his arms, Evan backed up a few paces to scrutinize the beach. Empty. Thank God. He wouldn’t want to be caught dead with a virginal London miss in his arms, regardless of the circumstances.
Even one who smelled like jasmine.
He glanced down at her. “At least you didn’t scream.”
“Why bother?” She relaxed her death grip. Slightly. “It never helps.”
“Very true,” he agreed. But why did Ms. Jasmine know it? When had screaming not helped a Society miss like her? This time, he gazed into her blue eyes looking for answers.
She wiggled in his arms. “You can put me down.”
“I could,” he agreed, irritated to realize he was still holding her. He was definitely going to put her down. Any second now. “But you’ve just gotten interesting.”
“Oh, now I’m interesting? Arriving in the dead of night, secretly following you, sliding down a cliff on my sure-to-be-bruised derrière—all that is perfectly normal in your world? What the hell did I do in the past thirty seconds that’s so bloody interesting?”