Scandal in the Night (39 page)

“You’ll be disappointed, Ham.” Thomas spoke over his shoulder, but he did not leave her side. “Haven’t touched the ribbons in nigh on fifteen years. But I did breed some superior horses while I was on the other side of the world, and this mare here is going to be the start of my stud. Out of the same great-great-great-great-grandsire as the Darley Arabian. Went to Arabia myself to pick stock, I’ll have you know. I’ve a notion to breed her to a racing Thoroughbred here and see what I can make of it.”

“Always good with the horses, you were. Good to see you’ve kept it up.”

“I have.” With one last intimacy of pressure against Catriona’s upper back, Thomas returned to the conversation. “Thought about it for years and years, starting a stud. The whole time I was in India. And I also thought about asking you to come, and take your chances with me as well, if you were still alive when I got back.” Thomas’s tone turned wry and familiar. “You must be getting too old to be driving my father’s carriages, out all times of the night, in all weather.”

The coachman was philosophical in the face of his master’s son’s friendly impudence. “Pays me well, the earl. Not many men can say they’ve been coachman to the Earl Sanderson. His grays have been famous, year in and year out.”

“I’m hoping it’s year out, and you’ll fancy your chances with me, Ham.” It was educational to see Thomas Jellicoe’s convincing charm working upon another. It made it easier to picture Tanvir Singh charming secrets out of horse-buying generals from Delhi to Lahore and Kabul. “A farm somewhere in the country around Downpark, I was thinking, or north a bit, closer to Epsom or Ascot. I’ve made my fortune in the east, Broad Ham—I’ll pay you in rubies, if you like. Not even the earl can pay you in rubies.”

“Now, what’d I do with rubies?” The big man shook his big head, but he was grinning. “And I don’t like to leave your father. Don’t like the look of some of these lads we’ve been getting nowadays. Veterans, they say they be, and your father, he’s too kind. He don’t like to turn a man who’s served the king away, but they’re not fit, them lads, like they need to be. Not fit.”

“You could be in charge of hiring our lads, Broad Ham. Manager of the stud, you’d be, like a gentleman. I’ll even deed you a farmhouse if I have to.”

“Don’t care about titles.” The big coachman raised his eyebrows, and turned down the ends of his mouth in an expression of consideration. “But a snug little farmhouse, now, that’s something I just might like to see.”

“I’ll see to it straightaway.” Thomas’s enthusiasm was a palpable thing.

A palpable, disconcerting thing. It was strange to hear him talk so openly about his future. A future he seemed to have been thinking about for years. The whole time he had been in India with her, perhaps, pretending to be Tanvir Singh. Knowing he would come back to this—to being the Earl Sanderson’s son—to start his future.

Had he always meant for her to be a part of it?

But it was not a question worth answering, because the bare truth of the matter was that, any moment now, he was going to put that future in jeopardy by chasing blindly after Birkstead.

“Well, almost straightaway.” Thomas turned to indicate Catriona, with an openly proprietary smile, as if he hadn’t another care in the world. As if he weren’t determined to go hunting men. “I’ve a thing or two to do first, Ham, but you mark my word—a stud in West Sussex or Berkshire. It’s all but a done thing. Promise me you’ll think about it.” He was nothing but sure, breezy confidence.

Broad Ham made another considering face. “I’ll have to talk to your father the earl first.”

“Yes, of course.” Thomas laughed and clapped the big man on the back. “I suppose I ought to do the same as well.”

“Ha-ha. Always were an independent one, you were.” Broad Ham reached out to shake Thomas’s hand. “Good to have you back, Master Thomas, good to have you back.”

“Thank you, Ham. It’s good to be back, at last. It’s been a very long time.”

“That it has.”

Daylight was fully up now, and Catriona could hear the rest of the stable workers, the grooms and lads, moving in their loft above. And the animals were getting restless for their morning feeding. The day was beginning to go on without them.

If only. Catriona glanced back at the house, wondering if she might be able to enlist Lord Jeffrey to help her convince Thomas not to go out alone.

“Brilliant to see you again, Broad Ham,” Thomas was saying as he took note of the direction of her gaze. “Brilliant. I know my brother and I can count on you to keep a sharp eye out for our shooter. I’ve a mind he’s a blond man, about twelve stone or so. Military bearing. Very spit-and-polish. I’m headed out to check if there is anything left of his tracks after that rain we had last night, but first, if you don’t mind, I’m just going to take my bride here—” He caught Catriona’s hand and tugged her closer.

Oh, that was doing it a bit too brown. “I am not your bride, Thomas,” she insisted. “Not unless you are prepared to change your mind in the matter of Lieutenant—”

“I need to make sure my
bride-to-be,
” he clarified more loudly to the two fellows who smiled in return as if he were the most amusing chap in the world, “makes it back to the safety of the house.”

The big man called Broad Ham looked Catriona over as if
she
were a fractious filly who might need a firm hand. “We’ll just leave you to that then, young sir.”

And Mr. Farrell touched his hat brim, and said, “I’ll just be getting the mare for you, sir.”

Catriona put up her chin. “I can take care of myself, Thomas.”

“I know that now. But I will ask you, for me, if you will please do me the honor of returning to the house? Mind you, if you don’t agree I am just as prepared to pick you up bodily and tie you to the bedpost in my chamber—which will also serve to give me a rather extraordinary incentive to return quickly and in one piece—to keep you there. But I will take your promise instead. And don’t bother lying. I can always tell when you’re not telling the truth.” He smiled, that wide slash of white teeth that was all rogue, and he gathered her close again.

And with her hands clutched around his neck, she found that he smelled of rain and soap, and she had the strongest urge to put her lips against the skin of his neck where his pulse beat. The longing was a physical pang, ringing through her like a church bell.

She had to make herself think, make herself impervious to his charm and his promises and the intense knowledge of what they had shared between them that flared from his eyes.

She had to think of Alice.

“All right. I will return. But only—”

“No buts. Please. I’m not stupid or reckless, Cat. I know what I’m doing. Let me get the lay of the land, and then I promise you I will be back, and we can discuss then, with my brother and his men, what’s best to be done at that point.”

Mr. Farrell brought out Puithar, and before she could voice another objection, Thomas swung himself into the saddle.

Catriona didn’t think she had ever seen anyone so right, so completely relaxed and alert and at one with his animal, despite the wickedly long horseman’s pistol that he drew out of his saddlebag to bristle out of his belt in place of his missing knife.

“No dagger?” She tried for wit, but failed when her voice wobbled miserably.

He smiled and patted his waistband. “Oh, I’ve a knife, don’t you worry.”

“But I do worry.” Good Lord. That was almost all she did, had done for years—worry. It was too ingrained a habit to give up now. “Because there is plenty to be worried about. Birkstead is out there somewhere, no doubt lying in wait, just longing to get another shot at you.”

“Better me than you,” he affirmed instantly. “Let him wait. I assure you, Cat, I do know what I’m doing. I spent years and years traversing the land, with my head down and my eyes wide open. I know how to find him.”

“As long as he doesn’t find you first. This isn’t the Punjab, Thomas. Things are different here.”

“Things are different here,” he acknowledged. “But people are not. From one country, one landscape to the next, people are essentially, invariably the same. They have the same wants, the same needs, the same iniquities and virtues, the same pride and conceits that make them act in predictable ways. Trust me. Birkstead is clever, and had the advantage of surprise, but he’s lost it now.”

“Promise me you will be careful.”

“I promise you, on my life.”

Chapter Twenty-two

At the end of that remarkable speech, he leaned over and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, and kissed her with the same firm, overt possessiveness out in the open space of the stable yard as he had in the privacy of her bedchamber. He tasted clean and strong like water and hope and patience, and Catriona didn’t think she was ever going to be able to fill the well of longing for the very essence that was him.

And then he let her go.

Catriona felt her lips tingle and her cheeks blaze with heat, but there was no one but a few disinterested stablehands to see. The stable master and the coachman Broad Ham seemed to have left them to their privacy so she could attempt to keep from crying in peace. All she had left to do was pray for Thomas to come back in one piece.

It seemed rather a lot to trust to a God who had already proved his disinterest.

“Be careful,” was all she could say.

“I always am.” And with one last kiss, he let her go, and was off, wheeling Puithar to set off down the drive in a spray and clatter of gravel.

Catriona watched until he disappeared out of sight behind the corner of the gatehouse, before she turned back for the house, where she would no doubt worry and fret, and think of vile, loving names to call him if he didn’t come back to her in one—

Her way was blocked by a Downpark groom. At first, she registered only the distinctive buff and blue-trimmed livery of the footmen and groomsmen who had come from Downpark to serve the Earl Sanderson and his countess.

“Begging your pardon, miss,” he said in a tone laced with exaggerated, ironic politeness.

His nearly rude tone made her take a step back, to go around him, but he moved again in front of her, and reached to take her by the wrist, as if she were weak and might fall, or had lost her way.

That was when she raised her glance higher, and found herself staring into the malevolent blue eyes of none other than Jonathan Birkstead.

No. Please God, no.

She reared back away from him, toward Thomas disappearing down the lane. And she opened her mouth to let loose the scream that was clawing its way out of her throat, but the jackal grabbed her face in a hard pinch that covered her mouth before anything more than a garbled sound of surprise could make it past her lips. He had her backed around the corner, with her head twisted and furled silent and tight against his chest, before she could do anything else.

“You weren’t expecting me now, were you, mousie?”

Catriona felt a chill crawl across her skin at his use of the detestable nickname, and she tried to scream anyway, though the raw sound only vibrated out of her muffled mouth, and drew no attention to them as he began to drag her down the shadowed little alleyway between the stable and the orchard wall.

She clawed at his hands, trying to find purchase, trying to catch hold of anything that might stall their progress as he continued to drag her backward, into the dank alley behind the carriage house. His hand across her mouth smelled of horse and muck, and manual work with brass and leather—no longer the begloved, refined limbs of a privileged officer. But he was real. She had not conjured this particular devil out of her vision of hell. And the panic pounding in her veins was as real as it had been the last time she had seen his face, straining to identify her through the thick smoke and flames of the residency.

But he looked so different from the man she remembered. From the corner of her searching eyes, she could see that his seraph’s golden looks had been marred by an ugly broken nose, and his elegantly tousled locks had given way to the rough, sheared crop of a man who was accustomed to wearing wigs.

A servant.

Despite the disbelief and panic stealing her wits and chilling her breath, she tried to make sense of it all—Birkstead, with rough hands and rougher looks, a servant in Downpark livery at Wimbourne.

Was he really a servant at the Earl Sanderson’s estate? He could have come to Wimbourne several days ago with the Sanderson coach bearing the visitors from the Earl Sanderson’s estate at Downpark—as a footman or groomsman or outrider. Not to find her, but trying to find Thomas—the Honorable Thomas Jellicoe, the third son of the Earl Sanderson. It would have been a relatively easy thing for him to find out about Thomas’s family—their estate at Downpark in neighboring Hampshire was well-known.

He might have had no idea that the governess Miss Anne Cates was Catriona Rowan—if he had even heard of the lowly governess at all. But he would have heard in the stable that the master’s brother had come home, and he would have seen the highly recognizable mare for himself. And he must have come looking for Thomas, but he had found her as well—another wretched, unhappy accident of fate.

But it didn’t matter if he had sought Thomas—she was the one he had now.

He had dragged her, flailing and fighting, down the stable alley, past the steaming piles of sawdust and manure, and into the walled orchard beyond, muffled with thick, deep green grass and swathed in obscuring, blossoming trees.

Catriona fought and kicked and twisted with every step, clawing at the hand across her throat, doing everything she could to impede their progress away from the crowded stable.

Birkstead grunted a filthy curse when her boot found his shin, but he was as strong as he was diabolical. He wrestled her to the ground easily, and put his boot across her windpipe, so he could pull a double-barreled carriage pistol from beneath his coat and press it down hard between her eyes. “Maybe this will help you decide to keep still.” Catriona felt the hammer cock back with sickening metallic efficiency. “And keep your mouth shut.” His fetid breath poured over her. “Not a word, mousie. Not if you’d like to live beyond the next five seconds.”