Yours Until Dawn (15 page)

“Um…Miss Wickersham?”

“Hmmmm?” she responded, still lost in her dreamy reverie.

Gabriel’s voice shook with barely suppressed amusement. “If this is a walking stick, shouldn’t we be walking?”

“Oh! Of course we should!” Jerking away from him, she smoothed a strand of hair away from her burning cheek. “I mean, of course
you
should. If you’ll step right over here to the corner, I’ve devised a set of paths and obstacles where you can practice your skills.”

Without thinking, she seized him by the forearm. Gabriel stiffened, resistance coiled in every muscle. She tugged, but his boots showed no sign of budging. Samantha realized it was the first time she’d ever tried to lead him anywhere. Even when Beckwith escorted him around the house, the butler never actually dared to touch him unless it was to briefly point him toward his desired direction.

She waited for him to shake away her hand, to bark that he wouldn’t tolerate being led about like some sort of helpless child. But after a moment, she felt the tension begin to melt away beneath her firm, but gentle, grip. Although his reluctance was still palpable, when she moved, he moved with her.

With Peter and Phillip’s help, she had arranged a pair of Grecian sofas, three chairs, and two ottomans into a grouping that closely approximated a cluttered parlor. Interspersed throughout that grouping were two or three occasional tables and twin Doric pedestals bearing the marble likenesses of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and Diana, the goddess of the hunt. Samantha had even arranged a few china figurines and other breakables on the tables, believing that Gabriel needed to learn to navigate his way around small obstacles as well as large ones.

She positioned him at the mouth of her design. “This is really quite simple. All you have to do is use the walking stick to make your way to the other side of the drawing room.”

He scowled straight ahead. “If I don’t succeed, are you going to cane me with it?”

“Only if you don’t keep a civil tongue in your head.”

Although Samantha forced herself to step away from him, she could not stop her hands from making helpless little fluttering motions around his shoulders.

Instead of sweeping, Gabriel thrust the walking stick forward in more of a poking motion. As the cane glanced off the first pedestal, the smirking bust atop it began to teeter. Samantha rushed forward, catching Diana before she could go crashing to the floor.

Staggering beneath the bust’s weight, she said, “That was a fine first effort! But you might try just a tad bit more subtlety. Try to think of it as one of the topiary mazes at Vauxhall,” she urged, referring to the legendary pleasure gardens in London. “You wouldn’t just go stabbing your way through one of those, would you?”

“Usually when a gentleman is successful in navigating a maze, there’s some sort of reward waiting for him at its center.”

Samantha laughed. “Theseus found only the Minotaur waiting for him.”

“Ah, but the young warrior’s boldness and courage in defeating the beast won Princess Ariadne’s heart.”

“He never would have dared to be so bold if the clever girl hadn’t given him an enchanted sword and a ball of thread he could follow to the exit,” she reminded him. “If you were Theseus, just what sort of reward would you fancy?”

A kiss.

The answer rose unbidden to Gabriel’s lips, setting his nerves even more on edge. He was already beginning to regret the noble promise he had made that morning. If only his nurse’s husky courtesan’s laugh wasn’t so at odds with her prim demeanor…

Perhaps it was just as well he couldn’t see. If he could see her lips, he would constantly be thinking of how sweet they had tasted beneath his.

He had already wasted an inordinate amount of his morning wondering what color they were. Were they a tender pink, like the inside of some delicate seashell half buried in the sugary sand? Were they the dusky rose of a bloom growing wild on a windswept moor? Or were they the lush coral of some exotic island fruit that made your tongue and your senses sing with pleasure? And what difference did their hue make when he already knew they were deliciously plump— perfectly fashioned for the pleasures of kissing?

“I know what your reward will be!” she exclaimed when he made no reply. “If you practice with enough diligence, you’ll soon be so proficient you’ll no longer have any need of me.”

Although Gabriel acknowledged her jest with a grudging smile, he was beginning to wonder if that day would ever come.

Samantha came to him in the night. He no longer required light or color, only sensation: the lemony sweetness of her fragrance, the sleek tumble of her unbound hair gliding like raw silk over his naked chest, her throaty whimper as she nestled the softness of her body against him.

He groaned as she nuzzled his ear, boldly touched her tongue to his lips, the curve of his jaw…the tip of his nose. Her warm breath tickled his face, smelling of musty earth, overripe beef, and moldy stockings hung over a fire to dry

“What the—” Springing awake, Gabriel shoved the furry muzzle away from his face.

He sat up, scrubbing desperately at his lips with the back of his hand. It took his desire-and-sleep-fogged brain several seconds to absorb the fact that it wasn’t night, but morning, and the exuberant creature frolicking in his bed was most definitely not his nurse.

“Why, look at that!” Samantha exclaimed from somewhere near the foot of the bed, her voice brimming with pride. “The two of you have barely been introduced and he’s already taken a liking to you!”

“What in the devil is it?” Gabriel demanded, trying to get a grip on the thing. “A kangaroo?” He let out a muffled
oomph
as the interloper bounced across his aching groin.

Samantha laughed. “Don’t be silly! He’s a charming little collie. I was walking past your gamekeeper’s cottage yesterday evening when he came trotting out to greet me. I decided he’d be just perfect.”

“For what?” Gabriel said darkly, struggling to keep the squirming creature at arm’s length. “Sunday luncheon?”

“I should say not!” Samantha whisked the beast away from him. From the crooning that ensued, he gathered that she was actually cuddling the little monster in her arms. “Him is no wuncheon, is he? Not our pwecious wittle fewwow.”

Collapsing against the pillows, Gabriel shook his head in disbelief. Who would have thought his nurse’s acid-tipped tongue was capable of spouting such drivel? At least he didn’t have to watch her stroke the creature’s squirming belly or, worse yet, rub noses with it. The emotion seething through him was so foreign it took him a minute to identify it. He was jealous! Jealous of some mangy mongrel with coarse fur and the breath of a three-day-old corpse.

“Careful there,” Gabriel warned as the clucking and kissing noises continued. “He might give you fleas. Or the French pox,” he muttered under his breath.

“You needn’t worry about fleas. I had Peter and Phillip bathe him in one of Meg’s old wash-tubs out in the yard.”

“Which is where he should have stayed, as far as I’m concerned.”

“But then you would have been deprived of his company. When I was a little girl, we once lived next door to an old gentleman who had lost his sight. He kept this small terrier who was his constant companion. When his footmen escorted him on a stroll, the terrier would always trot ahead on his jeweled leash and lead him around the uneven bricks and the mud puddles. If a hot coal tumbled out of the hearth and onto the rug, the dog would bark to alert the servants.” As if on cue, the pup in her arms let out a shrill bark.

Gabriel winced. “How devilishly clever. Although I think burning to death in one’s bed might have been preferable. Did the poor gent end up deaf as well as blind?”

“I’ll have you know that dog was a loyal friend to him, a boon companion until the day the old man died. His underfootman told our upstairs maid that after they interred the old fellow, the poor dog spent days sitting outside of the family crypt, waiting for his beloved master to return.” Her voice was muffled for a minute, as if she’d buried that luscious mouth of hers in the dog’s fur. “Isn’t that the most touching story you’ve ever heard?”

Gabriel was more intrigued by the fact that Samantha’s family had been wealthy enough to engage the services of an upstairs maid. But when he heard her sniff and fumble in the pocket of her skirt for a handkerchief, he knew he was lost. He had absolutely no defenses whenever his sensible nurse waxed sentimental.

He sighed. “If you insist that I have a dog, can’t it at least be a real one? An Irish wolfhound or a mastiff, perhaps?”

“Too unwieldy. This little fellow can follow you anywhere. And everywhere,” she added, proving her point by dumping the creature back into Gabriel’s lap.

He sniffed at the lemony sweetness of its fur, confirming his suspicion that the footmen had bathed the dog in Samantha’s favorite fragrance. The animal wriggled free and bounded to the foot of the bed. Growling deep in its throat, it began to gnaw on Gabriel’s toes through the eider-down quilt. Gabriel bared his teeth, growling back at him.

“What would you like to call him?” Samantha asked.

“Nothing that can be repeated in front of a lady,” he said, wresting his big toe from the dog’s mouth.

“He is quite a tenacious little lad,” she observed as the dog thumped to the floor. Feeling the quilt going with him, Gabriel made a frantic grab for it. A few more inches and Miss Wickersham would discover the shocking effect both his dream and her husky crooning had had on him.

“He is rather stubborn and intractable,” Gabriel agreed. “Hard-headed. Utterly impossible to reason with or please. Set upon having his own way even if it means trampling over the needs and desires of everyone in his path. I believe I should like to call him…” Gabriel’s lips curved into a smile as he relished her expectant silence, “
Sam
.”

In the days that followed, Gabriel would have occasion to call the dog everything
but
his name. Instead of trotting along in front of him to ferret out obstacles and potential dangers, the infernal creature seemed to delight in bounding around him in circles, weaving in and out through his legs, and knocking his walking stick out from under him. Had she possessed any motive beyond perpetual exasperation, he would have suspected his nurse of trying to arrange a fatal fall.

At least no one could accuse her of exaggerating. The dog was certainly a
constant
companion. No matter where Gabriel went in the house, its eager panting and the steady click-click of little toenails on the parquet and marble floors followed. The footmen no longer had to worry about sweeping the dining room after Gabriel ate. Sam would sit directly beneath his master’s chair, catching every spilled morsel in his gaping mouth before it could strike the floor. When Gabriel went to lay his head down on his pillow at night, he would find it already occupied by a warm, furry ball.

If the dog wasn’t panting down his neck, it was snoring in his ear. When Gabriel could no longer bear its huffing and wheezing, he would drag the quilt off the bed and stumble into the sitting room to sleep.

He awoke one morning to discover that the dog had vanished. Unfortunately, so had half of his finest pair of Hessians.

Gabriel made his way down the stairs, using the walking stick to navigate each tread. In truth, he was rather proud of the progress he was making with it and eager to show off his growing mastery to Samantha. But the elegant cane did nothing to prevent him from stepping right into the warm puddle at the foot of the stairs.

He lifted his stockinged foot, struggling to absorb what had just happened to him in more ways than one. Throwing back his head, he bellowed, “
Sam!
” at the top of his lungs.

Both the dog and his nurse answered his summons. The dog scampered around him three times, then plopped down soundly on his dry foot, while Samantha exclaimed, “Oh, dear! I’m ever so sorry! Phillip was supposed to take him for a walk in the garden this morning. Or was it Peter?”

Shaking the dog off of his foot, Gabriel advanced toward the sound of her voice, his wet stocking squelching with each step. “I don’t care if the archbishop himself was supposed to come down from London and toilet the little beast. I don’t want him underfoot for another minute. Especially not under
my
feet!” He flung a finger in what he hoped was the direction of the door, although he feared it was only the hall tree. “I want him out of my house!”

“Oh, come, now. It’s not really the little fellow’s fault. You should know better than to wander about the house in your stockings.”

“I might have been wearing the boots Beckwith had laid out for me,” he explained with exaggerated patience, “if I could have found both of them. But when I awoke, the right one had mysteriously gone missing.”

A masculine voice, cracking with excitement, came from the direction of the door. “You won’t believe this. Look what the gardener just dug up!”

My darling Cecily,

Perhaps my bashfulness has prevented me from speaking as boldly as I should—I mean to have you for my own…

“W
hat is it?” Gabriel demanded, his sense of foreboding growing.