“I think that we should continue this conversation—” She stifled a shriek as a stable boy pounded past, splashing wet filth on her best cloak. She shook herself in dismay.
“Mind where you’re going, you lout!” the coachman called after the offender, who stopped, thumbed his nose, and laughed.
The coachman straightened in an aggressive stance. “I’ll show you where to stick that thumb—”
Lily grasped his wrist in grim resolve. She would wrestle him to the ground before witnessing another act of violence. “While I appreciate the sentiment, Mr. Coachman, I would prefer you not express yourself in such a disconcerting manner. The master would not be pleased that you had fought over me in public.”
He grunted. “You do not know him very well.”
“I do not know him at all,” Lily admitted, nonplussed at the suggestion of a ruffian employer. “I do trust, however, that he is not given to common brawls.”
He slapped his hat back on and stared at her with an unsettling smile. “I’m afraid that he is.”
Lily released his wrist, suddenly realizing how dangerous it was to maintain physical contact with a man who appeared to enjoy making mischief. “I do not believe you,” she said. “I was assured that he was a gentleman.”
“A gentleman always protects a lady,” he countered.
“A good servant never causes a public disturbance,” she said, looking away.
“I shall remind you of that,” he said, grinning shamelessly.
A post chaise rolled into the courtyard, depositing a lone male passenger directly behind them. The traveler charged toward the inn. Lily moved off to the side to avoid his splashing boots.
Before she could manage another step, she felt a firm hand bracing the small of her back with an audacity that almost made her drop her reticule. “I can manage—”
His arm locked around her knees. She gasped. “Mr. Coachman!” And then she found herself flattened against his hard chest.
His gaze met hers. The bedevilment on his face took her breath. Indeed, he looked far too dashing for a country servant. He was an experienced rogue if ever she had encountered one. “I am a housekeeper, not a piece of luggage!” she exclaimed, blinking rain from her eyes.
“You’re light as . . . a feather.”
“A feather?”
She could not believe how far she had fallen. Last spring she hadn’t a care in the world. Choosing a flattering style for her wedding dress had seemed to be her only problem. Her betrothed was to have protected her for the rest of her days. And now here she was, in icy gray rain, with a coachman sneaking his hand around her posterior.
It was a novel impropriety. He was an unashamed rascal whose voice might have played a chord in her memory had she not been preoccupied with keeping his misconduct to a minimum.
Lily, the light-spirited flirt, had become Miss Boscastle, the ill-humored housekeeper with a grudge in her heart. Well, the pendulum had not swung quite that far. She seemed to be caught halfway. A gentlewoman trying, literally, to stand on her own feet.
“Do
not
tell me that the master encourages you to behave in this liberal fashion!”
“I’m sorry to say that he does.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
“He must be . . .” She wriggled her arm up to tap a forefinger to her temple.
“Oh, he is. You should hear him go on about how beautiful the moon is when it’s reflected in a moorland pool.”
“I imagine that it is,” Lily said impatiently. “However, being poetic is not a tragic flaw. As long as he is kind, I don’t understand why you would mock him.”
“He’s awfully kind to animals,” he confided, laughter lurking in his eyes.
She frowned. “That is a good sign.”
“He doesn’t eat them, either.” He lowered his voice. “He follows a natural diet.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Bloodless banquets.”
Lily went pale. “I hope you aren’t saying what I’m afraid you are saying.”
“I’m afraid that I am. He will not allow animal flesh to be served in his house.”
She was to plan menus for a man who ate no meat? “That
is
disturbing,” she said. “A poet is one thing, but a vegetable eater. What kind of suppers am I to arrange if I cannot serve beef? Fish, I suppose, but only in season.”
He shook his head. “He won’t eat fish.”
“Why not?”
“Because one looked him in the eye once when he was swimming in a pond. Their souls touched.”
“For goodness’ sake,” she said before she could censor her reaction. “No wonder he had to send all the way to London for a housekeeper. I suppose the local women are wary of his peculiar ways.”
His eyes danced. “It’s hard to understand why, but a few of them actually pursue him. I’ve had to turn a dozen at least away from the door.”
She arched her brow. “Of the coaching house?”
“Love can render one a resourceful suitor.”
“Love can make one a sapskull. Which I think I am to listen to this nonsense.”
“You are a cynic, miss. The master is a romantic, possibly even what one would call a visionary.”
“You
do
give yourself airs.”
He nodded, clearly amused that he’d disconcerted her again. “He’s a challenge, I will confess. He’s a radical, too. The Crown has declared him a subject who holds subversive beliefs against England.”
Her spirits flagged. “So what you are telling me, in your indelicate manner, is that he is truly off his head.”
“Am I familiar yet?” he asked softly.
“You are
too
familiar. And far too free with your hands.”
“Believe it or not, I’ve been told that I have a welcome touch.”
“By your horses and fast women?” Her breath hitched as he carted her unceremoniously around a wide-eyed porter who had just exited the inn.
Against her will she placed her hand around his neck.
Am I familiar yet?
“Let me down!”
“It is pouring to float an ark, miss,” he replied. “The master would not want you to slip and spend a week bedridden when he has need of your help around the house.”
“Bedridden—you rogue.”
She could only guess how much he was enjoying himself as he strode casually through the rain. She was jostled every step against his firm body. His warmth, though it pained her to admit it, was not unpleasant at all.
And those unfathomable eyes—
Am I familiar yet?
A wet gust of wind blew off his hat. “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “It’s going to be ruined.”
“Never mind that,” he said with dark cheer. “There’s plenty more of those where it came from. Our concern is to get you out of your damp things and into a nice bed.”
“Listen to you,” she said incredulously. “As if gold coins dropped from the clouds. I cannot imagine why anyone would keep such an impudent person in his employ. I vow that if you make one more reference to bedding me—”
“I never said anything of the sort.”
“The devil you did not.”
He feigned an injured look as one of St. Aldwyn’s footmen left the shelter of the gabled roof to open the inn’s oaken door.
“I will thank you not to put words in my mouth, Lily.”
Lily.
Shock lanced through her.
She barely realized that he had entered the smoke-enshrouded taproom and was lowering her to the floor. She glanced around in embarrassment. Several patrons in the bar had set down their ale mugs to assess the situation. It seemed to Lily that their curiosity subsided the moment they noticed her brash companion. She assumed he had a reputation with the locals for causing trouble.
“What are you all looking at?” the coachman asked with a cocky grin. “Haven’t you ever seen a villain with a lady in his arms before?”
Someone laughed.
A villain. No.
No
.
She shook her head, denying the memory of kisses shared in a moonlit garden. It could not be. Slowly she looked up at his face, the hard-chiseled cheekbones that had been half-hidden by a mask the night of the literary masquerade. The sensual mouth that had seduced her curved in a slow, penitent smile.
“I thought you would know me sooner,” he said with rue.
The copper-orange flames in the inn’s massive hearth leaped higher into the chimney. Her blood simmered until it blazed through her numbed awareness.
“You,” she said in soft condemnation. “You . . . you have
abducted
me.”
“I have not,” he said quickly. “I wanted—”
Her voice interrupted him. “I know what you want.” She backed away, feeling so betrayed that she hit her hip against a table, unbalancing a gentleman’s glass. Ale foamed to the table’s edge and dripped into the folds of her cloak.
He caught her hand. She wrenched it free. “You told me,” he reminded her, “how very much you liked the abduction scene from
Wickbury
.”
“Then I was a fool to confide in you and a bigger fool to believe that those stories could ever come true.”
He swallowed hard. “There’s only one fool in this tale. And I will make this right. I only wanted—”
She picked up her damp cloak and skirts, her voice surprisingly composed. “You have deceived me, but I am starving and too tired to even care. Furthermore, Your Grace, it is impossible to conduct a conversation in a taproom.”
He released a breath. “You are not exactly as I remembered you,” he said after an intense silence.
She curtsied mockingly, her response promising revenge. “I wish I could say the same of you.”
Chapter 17
The Wickbury Tales
BOOK SEVEN
CHAPTER LAST,
VERSION FORTY-EIGHT
I
n one heroic leap Lord Wickbury slashed the bindings at Juliette’s wrists and swung from the bed to confront Cromwell’s men. He was outnumbered, not only fighting for the woman he worshiped, and because he had sworn to protect their rightful king, but for his life. He engaged in vigorous swordplay. Three soldiers fell at his hand.
He drove the fourth Roundhead back toward the balcony. His blade parried. Steel rang against steel in the silence. In the back of his mind he sensed the two remaining soldiers closing ranks at his back.
Fight to the death. Fight for the lady fair.
Again that sense of being manipulated, ordained to play a role he was beginning to resent. He lunged. His sword sank into the Roundhead’s shoulder. He drew it free, blood dripping on his boot, and pivoted before his opponent staggered back through the door into the gallery railing. Michael heard wood splinter and the whickering of his horse in the courtyard below as the man fell.
He raised his sword.
Too late. A blade pressed into his neck. Another targeted his heart. Baffled, he wondered why in God’s name he was dressed in a ruffled white linen shirt and buff trousers when he should have worn a padded vest as protection.
The shadow of his death was at hand.
What had gone wrong?
Had God abandoned him? How could it be? As far back as Michael could remember he had been considered the defender of the defenseless, noble and undefeated. He fought the chivalrous fight.
“Drop your sword, Lord Wickbury,” his half brother, Sir Renwick, said from the hearth where he stood, Juliette trapped in his arms. “Do it now, or she will suffer.”
Fury welled inside him as Juliette raised her face to his, except . . . He blinked, lowering his sword. That was
not
his lady. Had he lost his senses? Juliette did not have dark blue eyes and hair the color of pale fire. This was another woman, one more beautiful than his own.
Her lips curved in scorn. “You have lost, Lord Wickbury. I will not be yours.”
“Kill him,” Sir Renwick said succinctly. “Let my lovely captive witness his shame.”
Lily regarded her chamber dispassionately. It was a superior room, furnished with a dining table and a spacious bed that the duke had undoubtedly intended to put to use.
What had she done? She picked at the supper tray a maid had delivered to her room. What would she do now?
She was too practical to take flight from a place she could not even name. She would indeed appear to be deluded. She finished the flagon of wine that accompanied her hot soup and bread, a Rhine wine with a delicate flavor that masked a deceptive strength.
In the rooms below she could hear a fiddler playing in the bar, waiters bustling about. From the hall she could hear the duke knocking persistently and demanding she admit him until finally, her patience frayed, she reached into her reticule for her book and threw it across the room.
There was quiet then.
She waited.
He did not knock again.
She glanced at the book on the floor.
How dared he presume to think he could act out Sir Renwick’s part?
She would never read another
Wickbury
book. She would give up yearning for courtly love and liars.
She unstrapped the trunk on the floor and found her night rail and robe and undressed for bed. She was too exhausted to think about the duke’s deceit or to wonder what had possessed him to think that he could ever understand a complex character like Sir Renwick Hexworthy. Or that he could take charge of her life when she was at her most vulnerable.
So much for the gentle squire she had hoped would provide her with a haven from her woes.
It appeared, instead, that she had made a bargain with the devil, and as hideous as the situation might prove, for now, at least, she had no alternative but to calm herself and get a decent night’s sleep.
Samuel pulled a chair to her bed and studied Lily’s sleeping form in the firelight. She did not stir. Perhaps the miserable rain had muffled his entry into her room. He had knocked at her door for hours, to no avail. Finally he had asked for and been given the innkeeper’s master key.