Cheryl Holt (3 page)

She planted herself in a chair. “I’ll wait.”

“You most certainly will not. I’ll have the footmen escort you out.”

She shot him such an evil grimace that he flinched. “Do you really suppose they could?”

He sputtered, then blustered, “It might be hours before the viscount is free.”

Standing, she pointed an angry finger at his chest. “You tell that bounder for me that if he hasn’t sent for me in fifteen minutes, I’m coming in to find him.” She sneered malevolently. “And heaven help the man who tries to stop me.”

The retainer harumphed and scampered off, destined for his master with the dreadful news that she’d arrived.

J
OHN
Clayton, Viscount Wakefield, sat up in his chair and frowned at Rutherford, the butler he’d brought with him from London since he’d been positive that none of the provincial staff would be able to tolerate his proclivities. Rutherford wasn’t shocked by John’s bad habits. Or if he was, he hid it well.

“Did you say there’s a woman from the village? With a petition?”

“Yes, milord.”

“Are you sure you heard her correctly?”

“Definitely.” Rutherford sniffed, offended at having his competency maligned. “She demands an interview without delay.”

“Bloody hell.”

Balancing his elbows on the desktop, he buried his face in his hands. After a solid week of excessive revelry, he was tired, hungover, and grouchy. His head pounded unmercifully, a painful throbbing behind his eyes, and his stomach roiled, protesting his aborted attempt at eating some food. He’d be damned lucky if he didn’t pass out from exhaustion and immoderation.

Now this. As if he’d agree to being confronted by some . . . some . . . woman. He’d already gone a few rounds with Georgina, and it wasn’t even noon. He wasn’t about to compound his annoyance by engaging in verbal fisticuffs with a pushy, determined commoner.

“Tell her no, Rutherford. Send her packing.”

“I tried, sir. She won’t go.”

“What do you mean, she won’t ‘go’?”

“Well, I informed her that you were too busy, but she just barged in.”

How bizarre. “Have her forcibly removed.”

Two spots of color marred the servant’s cheeks. “I wouldn’t recommend it, sir.”

“Why not?” John chuckled. “Is she too large to carry? Is she brandishing a weapon?”

“No,” Rutherford answered hesitantly, “but she seems quite aggrieved. And a bit mad. I do believe she’d be capable of bodily harm if provoked.”

From one corner of the room, his half brother, Ian MacDonald Clayton, laughed uproariously. “This is a woman I’m dying to meet.”

“Shut up, Ian,” John grouched. A renewed hammering shot through his head, so potent that he began to worry that the top might fly off.

“Oh, chat with her, Wakefield,” Georgina chimed in from the other corner. “It might be amusing. We could use some entertainment in this dreary domicile.”

John glared back and forth, at his only sibling and his mistress, wondering if there was some way he could magically vanish. Would either of them notice if he simply disappeared? Wouldn’t it be fun to find out where he’d end up?

Anywhere but here would be a vast improvement.

“What do you suppose she wants?” he asked Ian. His brother had a unique insight into the lower classes, being a member himself, a fact he took great relish in flinging at John on a regular basis. As if commonality were a noteworthy boon.

“Your assistance. What do you think?”

“I knew that,” he grumbled. “But on what topic?”

“Obviously, there’s some injustice afoot that she
feels only you—as the lord—can put to rights.”

At Ian’s mocking emphasis of the word
lord
, John glowered. Ian loved to sarcastically remind John of his exalted position, one that would have been Ian’s in a fairer world, and one that John, himself, had never desired. The issue was an implicit wedge between them, and Ian could be so caustically derisive.

John could hardly alter the British laws of inheritance and entailment.

During numerous quarrels, he’d told Ian and their ass of a father that, if it was possible, he’d have dropped it all in Ian’s lap, would have gladly let him assume the whole, damned nuisance.

If Ian had been in charge, John could have been in London where, at this very moment, he could be playing cards and wooing gorgeous women. Instead, he was stuck in the country, cleaning up the estate books after years of neglect by dear old da, and about to be challenged by an excitable, hysterical female.

“It doesn’t sound as if she’ll leave without making a fuss,” Ian injected rationally. Always rational. Always reasonable. That was Ian. “You might as well see her.”

The accursed scapegrace was grinning, anxious for the pending fracas, ecstatic to witness John squirming and on edge, and John seriously considered strangling him, just leaping over the desk, grabbing him by the throat, and . . .

“Oh, do, Wakefield,” Georgina added, her sultry tone grating on his shredded nerves.

He scowled from one to the other, sighed heavily, then said to Rutherford, “Show her in. But caution her that if she creates a disturbance, I will personally pick her up and toss her out on the lawn.”

“Very good, sir,” Rutherford droned as he deferentially backed out.

“And you!” John spun on Georgina. “Keep quiet. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you.”

“But that will take all the fun out of—”

“Not a peep,” he sternly repeated.

Shortly, footsteps reverberated in the hall, and Rutherford halted at the library door, announcing, “Milord, might I present Miss Emma Fitzgerald, daughter of the recently deceased Vicar Edward Fitzgerald, the longtime pastor of the Wakefield parish.”

A vicar’s daughter? John could barely stifle his groan of displeasure. Could the morning get any worse? Would afternoon never arrive?

A tiny woman, who couldn’t have stood more than five four in her shoes, tromped across the threshold, and he choked down a guffaw at Rutherford’s fear of the petite virago. From the retainer’s description, he’d been prepared for an armed Amazon, who was ready to do battle on behalf of her minions.

In reality, she looked as if a stiff breeze could blow her over.

She was too skinny, as if she never had enough to eat. He despised thin women, preferring them to be voluptuous and buxom, although he had to admit that her breasts were shapely, plump and appealing, and just the size to fill a chap’s hands. The slenderness of her waist emphasized her bosom, making her appear more busty than she actually was.

A pretty thing, she had the air of a fresh country maid: pink cheeks, ruby lips, bright brown eyes, unblemished skin, white teeth. Her hair was probably spectacular, but it was difficult to discern. Riotously curled, it seemed to be brunette, with streaks of auburn shooting through it, but she’d pulled it back in a tight chignon and capped off the wild strands in a confining snood.

Her gown did nothing to accentuate her innate comeliness. Drab and black—mourning clothes?—it dulled the sparkle in her eyes, and it was buttoned to her chin, with the sleeves clenched at the wrists, as if she daren’t expose a hint of naked flesh.

A vicar’s daughter, all right. She dressed the part. She looked the part. Would she be a devout shrew? A whiner? A complainer?

How he loathed contrary females. They were the bane of his existence, Georgina and his purported fiancée, Caroline, being the two most striking examples.

He examined her more rudely than was necessary, and as he did, he realized that his butler had had adequate cause to be wary. Though she was small, there was an arrogance about her that was disconcerting. Her poise and confidence made her seem bigger than she truly was, an ethical, honest woman with equity and justice as her banner, and he detested her on sight.

“Miss Fitzgerald.” He nodded and rose, flashing her his most captivating smile, which was guaranteed to melt feminine restraint, and that had never failed to coax a reticent lover out of her undergarments.

To his colossal amazement, it had absolutely no effect.

“Viscount Wakefield.”

She had a seductive, lusty voice that was at odds with her diminutive figure. It was the sort of voice that made a fellow fantasize about silk sheets and soft mattresses, candlelit bedchambers, and steamy sexual intercourse, but the arousing result was spoiled by how she was staring down her pert little nose at him—as if he were a putrid type of insect.

Stumbling to regroup, he inanely commenced with, “How nice of you to visit. What can I do for you?”

With a massive amount of evident disdain, she studied
him, and the perceptiveness of her gaze was unsettling. Probing and astute, she seemed to rummage through a secluded area near the center of his heart where his wicked character and corrupt disposition rested just out of view.

She saw more than she should, as though she’d been apprised of every flaw and defect in his constitution, and there was nothing he could say or do that would surprise her.

Suddenly nervous, and needing to occupy his hands, he circled his desk and went to the sideboard, pouring himself three fingers of the Scottish whisky that Ian’s relatives were kind enough to supply. He tipped the glass to his lips when she spoke sharply.

“I won’t do business with a man who’s prone to strong drink in the middle of the day. I insist that you be clearheaded.”

“Well, I . . . I . . .”

He was at a total loss. In his entire thirty years of living, he hadn’t had another soul tell him not to imbibe—no one except his father, but he didn’t count.

Flabbergasted, he held on to the glass, not sure of what to do with it. Abruptly, it felt as if it weighed ten stone. He wasn’t about to abandon the welcome libation merely because she’d ordered him to, but she was scrutinizing him in a derogatory fashion that made him incapable of swallowing any down.

Affecting nonchalance, he strolled behind his desk, once more, setting the liquor off to the side as though that’s what he’d intended all along. Ian, wretch that he was, was chortling with mirth over her autocratic condemnation, a hand pressed to his mouth to prevent his jocularity from slipping out.

“Miss Fitzgerald,” Georgina snapped. “How dare you condescend to the viscount. Remember your place.”

Miss Fitzgerald didn’t bother to glance at Georgina, keeping her keen assessment linked with John’s, as she said, “Nor will I consort with any of your loose London strumpets.”

Georgina gasped with affront, and Ian laughed aloud. John, himself, was stunned and impressed. Only a person who was very brave—or very stupid—would tangle with a tigress like Georgina. Miss Fitzgerald wasn’t stupid, so she had to be made of steel.

“She’s got you pegged hasn’t she, Georgie?” Ian poked. Their animosity was legendary, and he deliberately goaded her by using the nickname she abhorred.

“Shut up,” Georgina hissed. “Wakefield, you’re not going to allow her to insult me so terribly, are you? I want her whipped—then thrown out.”

As though neither Georgina, nor Ian, had made any comment, Miss Fitzgerald humbly proclaimed, “I’m a respected gentlewoman in this community. I shouldn’t be compelled to fraternize with any of your doxies.”

“Of all the nerve.” Georgina leapt to her feet. “Listen here you pious, sanctimonious harridan . . .”

He appraised the two combatants—Miss Fitzgerald calm and composed, Georgina fit to detonate—and Ian who was snickering, and he longed to be in a salon of sane men, enjoying a cheroot and an amiable game of dice.

How he hated scenes. Yet, Georgina was so upset that she might render a slap, which he couldn’t permit.

“Enough!” he roared. His shout was like a bolt of lightning blasting through his aching head, so powerful that it temporarily blinded him. Frantically, he gripped his scalp, as though he could keep his skull from exploding.

When his vision cleared, he was relieved to note that Georgina had heeded his command. Ian too was speechless.
John never raised his voice, because ordinarily, he didn’t care enough about events to be perturbed, and he’d startled them both.

“Georgina,” he decreed, his attention fixed on his adversary, “you’re excused.”

She bristled, dying to remark, then she thought better of it and swept out in a dramatic huff.

“Ian, you, too.” When the man didn’t move, John scowled at him. “Begone.”

“You need me,” Ian infuriatingly pointed out, “so I can remind you of what was discussed.”

With that veiled reference to John’s tendency to overindulge, he tried to recollect why he and Ian had ever become friends. The cocky lummox could be overly vexatious, particularly in cases when John’s reckless deportment bumped up against Ian’s irritating sobriety and equanimity.

Ian came across as a virtual saint, while John was perpetually perceived as a sinner.

John had initially sought him out at the tender age of eighteen, and he’d been delighted at locating an unknown brother because he’d presumed that a cordial relationship would thoroughly exasperate their father.

Two years older, Ian was the scandalous love child, the dirty secret, of the illustrious Douglas Clayton. Consequently, Ian had been a temptation John couldn’t resist. As soon as he’d been out on his own as an independent adult—an immutable terror raging through London—he’d befriended the man who had the same sire and who carried his same name, though a slightly foreign version of it.

He’d established the connection solely to incense their father but, as both the wife and the mistress involved in birthing the pair of sons had been deceased,
Douglas hadn’t minded, and John had gained the only genuine friend he’d ever had.

So much for petty revenge.

“Fine,” he barked at Ian. “Stay if you’re so bloody interested.”

“Don’t curse in front of me,” Miss Priss dictated.

“Miss Fitzgerald”—he struggled for patience—“you’ve invaded my home, slandered my companions, and made a general nuisance of yourself, and you haven’t been on the premises for ten minutes. I’ll curse in my own damned house if I feel like it.”

There! He’d let her have it. But the nag didn’t possess the discretion to hold her tongue.