A Woman Scorned (5 page)

“Hey, Stuart, d’you think he might be a spy?” asked Robert eagerly. “D’you reckon he’s the fellow who poisoned Papa? Perhaps we could trap him and catch him, if he’s the one.”

Stuart looked down with a scowl. “Shut up, dolt! We’re not to know about that! And this fellow in our mews is an army officer, I told you already. They just shoot the enemy. They don’t have time to go about poisoning folks in their bedchambers.”

But Robert was desperate for a little excitement.“Well, can you tell if he’s spying on us? Maybe that’s what he’s up to?”

“He’s snooping a bit, but he isn’t spying!” reported Stuart from his perch. He leaned closer to the window. “Anyway, I don’t think he’s the fellow who’s to come this afternoon. Not wearing those fancy regimentals.”

“What regiment is he from?” asked Robert enthusiastically, trying harder to scrabble up beside his brother.

Stuart hesitated, and Robert knew why. The sighting and identification of all things military was a source of constant dissent between the boys. And despite his being the younger, Robert accounted himself more of an expert in the field. His collection of toy soldiers was vast, much loved, and intently studied.

“
Umm
. . .
,
” Stuart hesitated. “Life Guards.”

At last, the smaller boy succeeded in scrambling up and squeezing into the dormer with his brother. He sighed sharply. “Oh, Stuart, you are an
ejit
and that’s a fact! That fellow there is a
Royal Dragoon
.” Robert pronounced the words with the same awe one might reserve for the heavenly host.

“Is not,” retorted Stuart, clearly affronted.

“Is too!” insisted the younger boy. “And that’s what I call a proper coat, too! D’you see any cheap brass buttons stuck all over it? No. And the trousers, Stuart! They are not at all the same.”

“Oh, it’s Life Guards and I know it,” insisted his lordship haughtily.

“Oh, Stuart! You are such a—a—” Lord Robert groped desperately for the new phrase he’d overheard in the stables yesterday afternoon. “A horse’s
arse!
” he bellowed triumphantly.

“Am not!” answered Stuart. “And you are just a—a
dog
turd
. A scrappy little dried-up dog turd.”

“No, I’m not!” wailed Robert, outraged.

His brother narrowed his eyes. “Are too!”

“Horse’s arse!”

“Dog turd!”

“Horse’s arse!”

“Dog tur—
yowch!
”

Abruptly, a meaty fist reached out and dragged his most noble lordship rudely backward off his perch. “Aye, an’ just what d’ye think yer aboot, my fine fellow?”

“Nanna!” cried the boys in unison.

“Doon’t ‘Nanna’ me, my laddies,” the plump old nurse said grimly, grabbing up Robert in the other hand and giving him a little shake. “ ’Tis no good yer up to, plain enough. Now, doon the stairs, w’the both of you, and we’ll see if there’s tae be any supper.”

 2 

After long years, How should I greet Thee?

P
erhaps it would have eased Cole’s mind had he known that his visit to the tall brick townhouse in Brook Street was as unwelcome an event from within as it was from without. But he did not know it, and as he laid his hand upon the cold brass knocker at precisely two minutes before the appointed hour, his faint curiosity began to give way to a grave sense of uncertainty, which was further heightened by the hollow echo of the knocker dropping onto the wood.

After a long moment, the door swung noiselessly open to reveal not one but a pair of ruddy-faced footmen, and not the tall, handsome sort of fellows that one would normally associate with the finer homes of London. The decidedly elegant gray and maroon livery aside, it appeared that the Marchioness of Mercer employed a couple of former pugilists as household servants.

“Aye, wot ’cher want?” grumbled the first, his language a dead giveaway. Apparently, Lady Mercer really didn’t give a damn about who opened her fine front door. Strangely enough, Cole’s assessment of the lady went up a notch.

With military precision, Cole whipped out his card. “Captain Amherst to see her ladyship,” he announced, shifting his weight forward to step into the hall.

“Aye, ’old up just a bloomin’ minute, gov’!” said the other, planting a handful of beefy fingertips in the middle of Cole’s chest. The footman glanced to his right where his sparring partner stood, squinting at Cole’s card. Together, they looked it over, silently mouthing the words. “Cap’n
Am
-Erst, eh?”

“Yes, and I believe I am expected,” said Cole, striving to keep a straight face. “You might just drop that card onto a little tray, take it up to her ladyship, and put an end to your troubles.”

“Oh, our
troubles
, is it?” The footman with the card flicked a rather suspicious look up at Cole. “An’ just wot would yer be knowin’ about ’em, sir?”

Cole glanced back and forth between them, more than a little confused. The second pugilist seized upon his hesitation. “No soldiers s’pected,” he announced, moving as if to shut the door in Cole’s face. “An’ the ’ouse is still in mourning.”

Cole should have been relieved by their refusal to admit him. In fact, at that very moment, had he possessed one grain of sense, he would have accounted himself the most fortunate of men, turned on his heel, walked right back down to Pall Mall, and gotten himself cheerfully drunk. Unfortunately, there was just enough muscular Christianity left in him to resent the affront to his dignity.

“I am expected,” he insisted, in the tone of a man who was accustomed to seeing soldiers snap to his command. “I come at the behest of Lord James Rowland to wait upon Lady Mercer. Now if you would be so good as to take my card and go up those stairs with it, I am sure all will be revealed to you!”

Invoking James’s name was a dreadful error. Eyes bulging, both men shifted their weight forward onto the balls of their feet, but Cole was saved from an almost certain death—or at least severe dental damage—by the sudden appearance of a tall young man in butler’s garb.

“Why, here now!” he said in a light brogue. “What’s all this trooble?”

“Gent ’ere says he’s to see ’er lay’ship, Donaldson,” answered the first footman a bit defensively. “I tole him she weren’t receivin’ but I reckon ’e finks ’e can stroll on in.”

“Right,” the second footman chimed in. “Claims ter be another o’ that Lord James’s chaps wot keeps coming ’round ter bother ’er la’yship.”

Donaldson’s eyes skimmed down Cole’s length, mild surprise lighting his expressive blue eyes. “Gads!” he said softly. “Are
you
Amherst?”

Despite the fact that for the first eighteen years of her life Lady Mercer had been an innocent, provincial miss, she realized that she had become—out of necessity—a woman who was rather indurate and cold. At times, her very heart felt like a chunk of winter’s ice that had been hacked from a frozen pond, packed in sawdust, then dropped into a deep, dark pit for storage. After a decade of such an existence, she was now rarely caught unprepared by anyone or anything, and certainly not by the vagaries of fate.

Nothing, however, could have prepared Jonet for the man who came striding down the hall toward her drawing room at five minutes past three on that fateful afternoon. She had expected a man to arrive, certainly. Someone who would look at least marginally like a tutor of young men, she had assumed. But from the very first, she had doubted that Lord James’s lackey would be the usual impoverished Milquetoast of a fellow in a rumpled frock coat and a scraggly haircut.

Well—at least she had gotten that much right, Jonet weakly decided, watching her caller walk inexorably nearer. With a gait that was long and lean-hipped, Cole Amherst moved with his shoulders set rigidly back, his heavy boots echoing through the corridor. He wore the fine red coat of a Dragoon’s officer, turned back into facings of midnight blue, and covered in a shade of gold which perfectly matched his hair.

As he paused formally at attention in the frame of her doorway, the army captain looked more like a work of portraiture than a man of flesh and blood. As if the painter, in the way of some so-called artists, had looked at a normal man, then imbued him with all the artistic license reality might allow. Amherst’s shoulders were just a little too broad, his jaw too elegantly chiseled, and his chin too deeply dimpled to belong to a mere mortal. And his mouth! Sinfully full, rich with promise and passion, Amherst’s mouth was that of a profligate, yet Jonet was sure he was anything but.

He was tall, too. At least six feet, and most of it looked to be legs. Long, lean, very fine legs that seemingly went on forever. Or was it chest? Jonet swallowed hard again. Yes, there was a great deal of chest there as well. Her eyes skimmed up his length. Only a brow which was lightly furrowed and a nose which was a touch too aquiline saved Captain Amherst from what might have been ruinous beauty.

Jonet had told herself she would not stand when James’s spy entered her drawing room. She had schooled herself to be as haughty and disdainful as her late and unlamented husband had unwittingly taught her to be. She was a lady, she tried to remind herself. Moreover, she was this man’s superior. And yet, curiosity got the better of her. Jonet was out of her chair and halfway across the drawing room before Charles Donaldson finished announcing him.

“Captain Cole Amherst, my lady,” he said, pulling shut the door with a hearty thump.

Jonet was not sure just how long she stood in the center of the drawing room ogling the strapping, golden-haired officer. As she stared, Amherst swept out of a graceful, fluid bow, drawing back one of his very fine legs with an elegance befitting the Regent’s court. His warm, golden gaze flicked up at her. “Lady Mercer?” Amherst’s voice was rich, and it held a hint of dry humor. “I find myself at your service, ma’am.”

His lightly mocking tone served to jerk Jonet back to cold reality. A purposeful rage swept over her like a brush fire. “Why, how droll you are, Captain,” she coolly retorted, a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Deliberately, she turned her back on him and returned to her seat. “I somehow fancied you to be at my brother-in-law’s service. Sit down.”

Without looking at him, she pointed to the chair opposite her own. Then, feigning every possible indolence as she struggled to gather her wits, Jonet settled back into her seat, taking a moment to arrange each pleat in the dull black fabric of her skirt. However, when she lifted her eyes, she was stunned to see Captain Amherst still standing near her doorway, ramrod straight and impossibly large.

“May I take it from your almost total lack of manners, ma’am,” he said very calmly, “that you are not amenable to my uncle’s plan?”

Forgetting her vow to show him nothing but disdain, Jonet came out of her chair and stalked back across the length of the room. “Keep a civil tongue in your head, Captain Amherst,” she snapped. “I dislike impudence above all things.” Jonet fixed him with her most quelling look.

But her quelling look had obviously been wasted. Other than stubbornly setting his perfect mouth and chiseled jaw, the captain did not so much as twitch. “Then perhaps you might take it upon yourself to learn civility, ma’am,” he smoothly returned.

Jonet knew then and there that she had badly underestimated James’s strategy. She prayed to God this man—
this soldier
—could be either intimidated, charmed, or otherwise rendered ineffectual by some clever form of manipulation. Most men of Jonet’s acquaintance certainly could, for they were a vain and transparent lot, but this situation already looked distinctly discouraging. Deliberately, Jonet narrowed her eyes. “I know nothing of your uncle, nor of any plan,” she answered scornfully.

“I understood from my uncle, Lord James Rowland, that you were in need of an instructor for your children.” His words were still soft, but clipped and demanding. “And I believed you to be wishful of my providing such assistance, madam, else I should never have wasted my time and yours by coming here.”

Jonet merely looked at him, trying to assimilate his words.
His uncle?
This officer was no one she had ever seen before, of that she was certain. And cavalry officers did not tutor children.