“Some wounds is worse than any got in battle, miss.” The housekeeper said wearily. “That’s all I’m going to say on the subject. Are you sure you want to leave? Where will you go? Who will care for you?”
“I shall manage. I’ll go to the Tinkers until I can make my way on my own again. I cannot stay here, Mrs. Laity. Surely you know that.”
“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to eat something before I go off to bed at least, a nice cup o’ tea, and one o’ Cooks scones… just a little something to warm you up and hold body and soul together ‘till morning. You should you know, especially since you plan on leaving tomorrow. You’ll not likely get fare such as Cook’s amongst the Tinkers, lass.”
“No thank you, Mrs. Laity, I’ve quite lost my appetite. I’ll have a bit of breakfast before I go… with you… in the kitchen. Go on to bed. It’s been a long day.”
“Very good, miss. But if you have need of me, if anything untoward happens like what you told me went on here with them door handles, you pull that bell rope there for all your worth, and don’t you stop ‘till I get up here.”
The housekeeper left her then, and Melly bolted all three doors, and said goodnight to Zoe, who was already settled on the cot and had begun to nod off. Then, closing the dressing room door between, she climbed wearily into bed herself.
There was only one candle burning, on the candle stand nearby. She decided to let it burn awhile, since she wasn’t ready to fall asleep. She was too keyed up. There was just too much weighing on her mind. All at once, a scratching noise at the bedchamber door vaulted her upright in the four-poster, her eyes flung wide toward a missive being slipped under the sill.
Springing from the bed, she snatched up the parchment and broke the seal. As she tore it open, bank notes fluttered to the floor at her feet. She glanced over the bold words scrawled across the parchment in her hands. She recognized the handwriting. There were only four words:
Go where you will
.
Snatching the notes up from the floor, she gasped. It was the hundred pounds.
She raced through the sitting room, plucked the contract from the gateleg table, and burst into the corridor, but it was vacant. The phantom had disappeared.
*
Drake padded back down to his second floor suite barefoot. He had left Griggs and the footmen preparing his bath—a cold bath. He had dined alone. James Ellery had repaired to his suite with a bottle of wine the minute they returned and, according to Griggs, was sleeping off a drunken stupor. No surprise there, considering the mood he was in returning, and the head start he’d gotten getting foxed on two bottles of the wine they’d brought home from Porthallow. How fortunate for him. In his present state, Drake would have planted him a leveler. He needed to hit something. Badly. He needed to confront his longtime friend, and sever their relationship. Permanently. He needed to exorcise a certain little toffee-haired, golden-eyed witch from his mind… and, God help him, from his heart.
How the devil had that happened? He had promised himself to keep heart and loins disjoined, until this cheeky, defiant little caster of spells ravished his body and ravaged his soul. He had denied it until that afternoon—excused it as petty jealousy in that Jim Ellery had once again gotten there before him. It had been a game in their Corinthian days, vying for the same ladybird, competing for the favors of this countess, that gentleman’s lady. But the minute he clapped eyes on Demelza Ahern in that meadow beside the wood, with the wreath of flowers in her hair, dancing to and fro like a fairy, a wraith escaped from the mists of time performing some ethereal pagan ritual on feet that seemed not to touch the ground, he was enchanted.
When he grabbed her arms and shook her, he had wanted to demand she tell him what she saw in Ellery. He had wanted to crush her in his arms and bury his hands in those toffee-colored ringlets combed by the wind. He ached to feel their soft silkiness against his skin, and inhale the sent of sweet lavender and peony that drifted from her at close range, until he’d drunk his fill and gotten just as foxed as Jim had done on his wine. And, what had he done? He had nearly frightened her out of her wits.
He would never forget the look in her eyes, or that he had put it there. She looked as though she expected him to strike her down. No, he would not have struck her anymore than he would have struck Mrs. Laity. He’d have broken every dish in sight before he would succumb to that, and he’d bruised his thigh before he would raise that hand to the frightened, little, doe-like creature at the edge of the wood who, even in her fear, defied him. He was striking out at everyone and everything that had ever betrayed him, and
he
headed the list, because he had betrayed himself. He had allowed her to slip under the crack in the door he’d closed, just as he had slipped the notes under her sill just now. Yes, he ached to hit something; there was no denying it. But sanity was returning, and with it the realization that he needed to order his thoughts and direct the blow where it was due.
She was right, of course, he did up and leave her in sixes and sevens, but he couldn’t tell her why. It was her lover, after all, that he was hell-bent to expose, and he couldn’t have her running off to warn him. He couldn’t even apologize and tell her now, without the risk of that. He had done the only thing he could do—give her the means to walk out of his life just as easily as she had walked in. And if that distanced her from Ellery, all the better, because it would give him the freedom to act as he knew he must.
Griggs was not in his rooms when he reached them, he had sent the valet to the wine cellar to bring up a bottle of wine from each of the Porthallow vineyards so he could compare them with the varieties he’d brought back from Spain. Maybe he would drain them to the dregs. It was as good a time as any to get sauced, since that seemed to be the order of the day, and he sank into the tub to wait.
To his surprise, Griggs came back empty-handed.
“Where’s the wine?” Drake barked, when the valet entered some time later.
“I couldn’t fetch it, my lord, that is, I didn’t think it prudent.”
“Good God, man, it was hardly a difficult request, what has prudence to do with it?”
“Miss Melly… er, Lady Ahern is in the cellar, my lord. I didn’t think I should intrude. You did say I was to monitor her movements, my lord.”
“She’s down there now—at this hour?”
“Yes, my lord, at least she was when I came up. I was on my way to fetch the wine, when I saw her coming off the back stairs by the kitchen, and I waited to see where she was going. Once she entered the cellar, I came back directly.”
“Bloody hell!” Drake trumpeted, pounding the cold water with clenched fists. “Get me out of this!”
*
Melly couldn’t sleep. Having made up her mind to leave at first light, her mind was racing with plans. It would take time to arrange for a safe place for her money, since she didn’t have an account—and such a
sum
. Meanwhile, she would stay with the Tinkers, provided that they had come out of the deep woods by now. But she wouldn’t go seeking favors empty handed. It wasn’t exactly candied angelica, but the specimens hanging in the wine cellar, and the ointments she had already prepared of such rare finds would be offering enough for their hospitality.
It was late. Everyone would be asleep by now. She would borrow a marketing bag from the kitchen, steal to the cellar, and collect her herbs. Then, after slipping the contract under the earl’s door as he had slipped the notes under hers, for she wanted no further contact with him, the bargain would be sealed, and she would finally be able to sleep. In the morning, she would be refreshed and ready to leave before the household was up and about. It would be better that way. She couldn’t bring herself to face Mrs. Laity. She couldn’t bear more sadness in the housekeeper’s faded eyes at the prospect of her leaving. She couldn’t bear her tears, they might trigger her own, and she was no watering pot, though she had been on the verge of becoming one in private of late, and that wasn’t acceptable.
She only lit one of the candle branches. It was enough. She spread the marketing basket open on the table and began filling it, marveling that the phantom hadn’t been there before her and stomped these poor shriveling specimens to death as well. She would have thought it to be the first thing on his agenda when he returned to the manor.
“You never give it over do you?” said a voice she scarcely recognized, so close in her ear that she gave a lurch dropping a jar of mallow balm, which shattered with a splat, spraying the hem of her peach silk nightgown and wrapper—the countess’s nightgown and wrapper—the milky salve oozing over the floor at her feet.
The earl was standing over her barefoot, arms akimbo, wearing rumpled pantaloons, and a shirt so hastily buttoned only two had been fastened at the waist, exposing a well-muscled chest, heaving with rage.
“I have given it over,” she said, with a toss of her curls, meanwhile continuing to fill the bag. She stopped momentarily, reached into the pocket of her peignoir, and produced the contract. “Here,” she said,” offering it, “You’ve saved me the bother of sliding it under
your
door. I thank you for your prompt attention to the matter. I shall be on my way first thing in the morning.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he growled, letting his arms fall to his sides. “I merely wanted to prove to you that you aren’t a prisoner here. And I didn’t just go haring off on holiday. I went on urgent business. I cannot explain, though I do owe you an explanation. Suffice it to say, it couldn’t be avoided.”
“More secrets? It’s a wonder you can keep abreast of them. You owe me no explanations, and if this is supposed to be your idea of an apology, it’s too little, too late. I thank you for your contribution to my welfare, and your kind invitation, but I cannot stay where I’m in danger of being struck down should I stoop to pick a dandelion.” She thrust the last of her gleanings into the bag. “Do you want these, too?” she scourged, shaking the bag. “Will you call Bow Street in if I leave with them in the morning? I’m going to you know. You may as well know it. I have no bank account, my lord. I’ve put on tick remember? I have to sort myself out and find a safe place for the notes you’ve given me, and a means of cashing them. I thought to buy hospitality with these gleanings elsewhere meanwhile, so I shan’t have to throw myself upon the parish while I order my financial situation. But if you’re going to have me carted off to jail for stealing, I shan’t need them after all, shall I? I shall have a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, and food to eat that I shan’t be obliged to pay for. Or maybe you just want to stomp the goodness out of them as you did my other gleanings this afternoon. Will that slake your blood lust over gathering?”
“Demelza,” he said, taking a step toward her.
“Have a care, my lord, the
glass
!” she warned, backing away.
“The devil take the glass,” he murmured huskily.
Slivers of the broken jar crunched beneath his bare feet as he reached her in one stride, seized her in his arms, and covered her lips with his warm, trembling mouth. It was the last thing she expected him to do, and she wasn’t prepared for the way her body reacted. She had longed for this moment—dreamed of those strong arms around her, those lips tasting her own. He hadn’t shaved since he’d come home, and the roughness of his skin excited her, sending shockwaves to regions of her body that had never been awakened before.
At first she strained against him. It was what she ought to do after all—resist, but when he deepened the kiss and his tongue slid between her teeth and mated with hers, her hands slipped beneath his shirt as though they had a will of their own, and she pulled him closer, clinging to the fantasy that had suddenly become real.
He moaned at their touch. All at once he buried his fingers in her hair, sliding them down the length of her throat, slipping them beneath the wrapper, following the contours of her body through the fine French silk gown that was cut so low it had exposed her charms to his touch. She scarcely breathed. His passion overwhelmed her. She moaned as his thumbs grazed her breasts. He tasted of brandy and of something very male, the same something that had aroused her in his scent. It was his chemistry alone, a hallucinogen, mesmerizing, intoxicating, drawing her deeper and deeper toward a place she dared not go, could not go—would not go if she were in her right mind. Her heart was pounding wildly against him in concert with his own. Ragged, thudding heartbeats hammering so frantically, she could no longer tell them apart.
All at once his lips left hers and slid along her throat. Then lower, the roughness of his budding beard excruciating ecstasy grazing the tender skin along the swell of her breast. She groaned as his tongue probed deeper, and his body responded, pulling her against an anxious hardness in that lean, corded physique that took her back to the night of the fire.
“Drake? Is that you?” said a thick, slurred voice from the wine cellar doorway. “What the deuce are you doing down here at this hour?”
It was Ellery.
The earl let her go, raking his hair back from a moist brow with both hands. His eyes were cold, feral lights gleaming from beneath the ledge of his brow.
“I see, my lady,” he panted, his broad chest heaving. “Another assignation, eh? And I’ve interrupted it. You should have taken what I had to offer just now, because you’ll get nothing from him this night.”
The words were scarcely out, when he spun, lunged, and delivered a blow to the jaw that sent the steward backpedaling into the dust covered wine rack beside the door. Then grabbing him by his wine-stained neckcloth, he drew the deadly clenched fist back again and delivered another that sent Ellery sprawling unconscious on the floor, before quitting the cellar without a backward glance.
Melly stood trembling, her eyes flung wide toward the thoroughly foxed steward out cold in the doorway. Her heart was racing, her head spinning with shock and confusion, not the least of which over something the earl had said: “
another assignation
“. What could he have meant? Could he have imagined that she came there to meet James Ellery? And why
another
assignation, what had put it into his head that she had done such a thing before? It didn’t matter. As much as she hated to admit it, she owed the fallen steward a debt of gratitude. If he hadn’t come in on them when he did, she would have surrendered herself totally to a passion that she never even knew existed.