“I’m sorry,” he said. “What did you ask me just now?”
Tessa gasped. All at once her focus shifted and her eyes flashed. From her position, she had seen what he could not from his vantage at the easel, until his head snapped toward the doorway and Master Monty standing barefoot in his soiled and wrinkled nightshirt.
Muttering a string of oaths, Giles slapped the palette down on the table, scattering paint and brushes, and made a lunge for the boy. But Monty darted straight for Tessa, who had vaulted to her feet, and threw
his arms around her waist, clinging fast with pinching fingers.
“I…I’m sorry. I’ve been bad, miss,” the boy hiccupped, tears streaming down his face. “I got locked in a room…It was dark, and…and…”
Tessa was just about to embrace the boy when Giles wrenched him away from her none too gently and propelled him toward the door, his white-knuckled fist wound tightly in the back of Monty’s nightshirt, out of the way of the boy’s deadly teeth.
“Mr. Longworth, please. He’s only a child!” Tessa shrilled.
Exasperated, Giles flashed her a look that backed her up a pace. “That is all we’ll do today, Miss LaPrelle,” he said, steering the boy through the door. “The light is soon gone in any case. You are dismissed.”
“You’re a clever little bastard, aren’t you, Master Monty?” Giles seethed, hauling the boy along the corridor toward a narrow staircase at the far end of the hall. “Trying to seduce the new governess, eh? You won’t send this one screaming from the Abbey. She’s onto you. You’ve met your match, finally.”
“I…I don’t know what you mean,” the boy whined. “Where are you taking me?”
“Where you can cause no harm until morning,”
“I’m hungry,” the child wailed.
“You will be fed.”
“I’m cold!”
“My hand will warm your bottom if you do not stop that infernal whining!” Giles warned him.
“It will be dark soon,” the child reminded him. Cold chills of a different breed riddled Giles’s spine with gooseflesh now, at the sound of that rasping adult voice coming from his nine-year-old ward. He needed no reminders. The sun was going down. Soon the moon would rise. The
full moon. There was much to do before then, and not a moment to lose.
They were nearly halfway up the back staircase when Foster came running at a pace Giles would not have believed unless he’d seen it himself.
“You’ve found him!” the valet cried, sagging against the wall. “He broke the lock on the tapestry suite bedchamber door. You will not believe the devastation in those rooms, sir!”
“Never mind,” Giles replied. “I’m taking him to the old tower room. Go down and fetch a tray of food for our little savage here, and bring bed linens for the cot up there. No candles. The moon will give off enough light for his shenanigans.”
The words were scarcely out when Foster was set in motion. Giles would see that the child’s creature comforts were met. The boy would have a full belly and clean bedding, but no candles to set the Abbey afire. The tower chamber was used for storage, and much of what was stored there was flammable. The boy could scream the house down and he wouldn’t be heard from there, and if his suspicions were correct and young Monty was a lycanthrope or fancied he was, he could not escape and threaten the rest in residence. The tower room door could be barred from the outside.
Foster soon returned with the food and bedding. The child made no protest when they locked him inside, but dosed them with his maddening half-smile until they’d shut the door, slid the bolt, and dropped the heavy wooden bar in place.
“Are you certain he cannot get out of there?” Foster asked, as they made their way back down to the second floor.
“No, he cannot. That bar is six inches thick. I only wish there was a way to observe him inside once the moon rises.”
“Not I,” said Foster. “And as to the rest, you haven’t seen the tapestry suite, sir.”
They had nearly reached those rooms, and the valet swept his arm wide. “Be my guest,” he said, standing aside to let Giles enter.
Giles burst through the door, taking note of the broken latch. The sitting room looked as if a Cornish flaw had ripped through and kept on churning until it had destroyed the bedchamber and dressing room as well. The rugs were rumpled in a heap on the floor. Everything breakable was broken, from serviceable pitcher and basin to priceless antiques. Drawers had been emptied, draperies half torn down, candle stands and fire screens toppled, and the bed curtains had been consigned to the dead hearth.
“Zeus afire!” Giles seethed, surveying the devastation.
“I shall have the maids put this to rights straightaway, sir.”
“No, you will not!” Giles said. “After our little test, I will fetch Master Monty, and
he
will set this to rights. I shall stand over him until he does. Is that clear?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
Giles raked his hair back roughly. “After nearly biting Tes—Miss LaPrelle, the little demon burst into the studio before and threw his arms around her—tried to seduce her into believing
he
was the injured party here, the poor, innocent, abused waif, with
this
”—he gestured—“in his wake! And she bought it—went all maternal up there!” He stared at the staved-in lock on the door. Not far from it lay the tool that had won the child his freedom: one of the pokers from the hearth. Squatting down, he snatched the iron and examined it and the shattered French porcelain figurine beside it. As he did, something stabbed him in the thigh, and he vaulted to his feet. Plunging his hand into his pocket, he produced the cause: one of Tessa’s hairpins.
Giles threw the poker down and darted into the hall. “
She
needs to see this,” he snarled. “By God, she will!”
“Sir, may I remind you, the light is failing!” Foster called after him.
“I know, I can see!” Giles snapped. “Meet me in the studio in half an hour!”
Chapter Nine
Tessa had locked her chamber door and opted for a tray in her room. She had no desire to be abroad in the house with a madman on the loose. That is what she assessed Giles Longworth to be after the scene she’d just witnessed in his studio. Her new employer was a multifaceted individual, there was no question. She’d seen him range from drunken lunatic, to gentleman, to soft-eyed little boy and back to madness again, this time without the inducement of alcohol.
For a moment in the studio when she saw his softer side, she’d hoped that, in her inexperience with the complexities of human nature, she might have exaggerated his other moods, hoped that there was hope. But there was none. Drunk or sober, the man
was
as volatile as blasting powder, as mercurial as the weather and as dangerous as any monster she could conjure from her imagination. She’d certainly never seen the like of Giles Longworth.
She flushed, recalling how he’d tried to draw her out with personal questions. It was only fair, she supposed, since he’d unburdened himself to her, and would have been acceptable if she hadn’t had to stretch the truth to answer him. It was later that her poise really became
challenged, when he’d caught the pose he was looking for. His whole face lit up as if the sun burst over his head. His childlike awe had melted her. She was so captivated by him in that guise she neglected to press the question of the body model. But that was Master Monty’s fault more than hers. For it was then that Monty appeared, and the boyish Giles Longworth died before her very eyes, usurped by the madman.
And then there was something else, something in his glazed eyes that flagged danger. It was as if he stripped her naked, for he was devouring her then. She hadn’t imagined it. Her heart leapt as she recalled that look, recalled how his eyelids slid half-closed, hooding the dilated pupils beneath. Those dark, heavy-lashed eyes were pure seduction.
When the knock came at the door, she nearly jumped out of her skin. It wasn’t a light rap but more closely resembled cannon fire, and she rushed to answer, but hesitated, her ear against the door, until the knock came again, vibrating the wood and extracting a stifled cry from her parched throat.
“W-who is it…?” she stammered, knowing full well who it was.
“It is I, Longworth!” came the gruff reply. “Open the door!”
Instead, she backed away.
“Miss LaPrelle, open the door!” he repeated. “I have your hairpins….”
Tessa’s hand flew to her hair. She’d totally forgotten the tortoiseshell pins, her only possession of value. A squeak escaped her as she rushed to the door and unlocked it. That squeak became a full-blown gasp at sight of Giles Longworth looming over her, brandishing the pins in the gloom of twilight that clung about the corridor, a dark scowl deepening the shadows collecting
about his deep-set eyes. The muscles were ticking along his broad jaw, and his handsome lips had formed that hard, crimped line again, just as they had done when first they’d met. His scent ghosted past her nostrils, musky and male, but there wasn’t a trace of brandy now.
When she reached for the hairpins, his free hand clamped around her wrist, and he pulled her over the threshold. “Come with me, I want to show you something,” he charged through clenched teeth, meanwhile rushing her toward the landing.
Tessa dug in her heels. “Give me my hairpins and let me go!” she cried. “I do believe you are mad, sir!”
“Very nearly, and it’s about to get worse. Let go of that newel post! I’m not going to harm you. I want to show you something—something you need to see.”
Tessa let go of the post and let him lead her down to the second floor. It was strange. She had no true fear of him, though he projected a bestial aura that was not just his outward appearance, which could only be described as disheveled. No, it went far deeper than that. It was in his pulse, in his very breath puffing through those flared nostrils that brought a fire-breathing dragon to mind. Still, she humored him, watching the nuances of expression as his face showed checked rage and courted shadows from the candles in their sconces which they passed.
When they neared an open door on the south side of the east wing hall, Giles took up a candle branch from the hall table and lit Tessa’s way inside. She gasped, and gasped again.
“Oh, this is nothing,” he said, leading her into the bedroom. “The bed curtains stuffed in the hearth were a nice touch, don’t you think? And that broken piss pot there was not empty when it broke upon the rug. No, no, we aren’t finished. There’s more…”
He led her into the dressing room, where the cheval glass stood wounded with hundreds of spiderweb cracks radiating from a central dent, the andiron that had caused the damage at her feet. Tessa turned away from her distorted reflection in the broken mirror only to collide with an upturned hip bath. Giles shot his free hand out to steady her, but she quickly righted herself and moved past him back into the bedroom.
“What happened here?” she murmured, her eyes snapping in all directions toward one desecration after another.
“Master Monty ‘happened’ here, Miss LaPrelle,” Giles said. “And then the little blighter broke in on us and threw his arms around you, playing the poor abused innocent!”
“Good God, you make it seem like a lover’s embrace,” she retorted in disgust.
Giles slapped the candle branch down on the chiffonier and faced her, arms akimbo. “It was nothing less than a seduction,” he said hotly. “He was playing upon your sympathies, winning you over to his side, getting close enough to sink those vicious fangs of his into you. But you are right. It wasn’t a lover’s embrace.
This
is a lover’s embrace…”
Seizing her in strong arms, he wrenched her against the bruising bulk of the arousal challenging the seam of his buckskins. Burying one hand in her hair, he took her lips with a hungry mouth, his warm tongue gliding between her teeth, tasting her deeply, while his other hand roamed the length of her spine, followed her curves and came to rest upon the swell of her breast, his thumb grazing her hardened nipple through the crisp bombazine fabric. For a moment, Tessa was too stunned to react, though her traitorous lips responded to his sultry kiss. It wasn’t until his hand cupped her breast and fondled her nipple, igniting her loins with drenching
fire, that she reared back and struck him a shattering blow with the flat of her hand against his startled face.
“How dare you, sir!” she shrilled. “Stand out of my way!”
Giles stared down at her, his eyes misted from the blow, and wiped the corner of his mouth. “Forgive me,” he said, sketching a stiff bow. “I did not mean for that to happen. I mean…it wasn’t why I brought you here. I wanted you to see exactly what you’re dealing with in Master Monty for yourself. Now that you have, I trust you will be more careful in your dealings with the boy. No ordinary nine-year-old could have inflicted this devastation. Good God, woman, look around you. He has destroyed every beautiful thing in these apartments out of sheer viciousness. There was no need. He wanted out. The poker freed him. He broke the lock with it. That was all that was wanted to free him.” He gestured toward the entire circumstance. “All this was naught but fiendish vindictiveness.”
Tessa marched past him into the sitting room without a word. Heaving a sigh, Giles took up the candle branch again and followed her.
“Miss LaPrelle,” he said softly. She turned toward him from the threshold. “I give you my word as a gentleman…what happened here just now will not occur again. I am a cad and a jackanapes, and any other foul name you wish to confer upon me, and I have no excuse except that your beauty overwhelmed me. But I swear to you, it will not happen again.”
“No. Indeed it will not, Mr. Longworth,” Tessa got out, her voice atremble, “because if you ever put your hands upon my person again—in any manner, sir—I will set the authorities on you!”
“Understood.”
“What have you done with that child?” she demanded. “Have you killed him, then?”
Giles popped a humorless laugh through a smile that did not reach his eyes. “He is confined to an upper room, where there are no priceless antiques for him to destroy. He has a full tray of food and a clean nightshirt, and will meditate upon his misdeeds this day. It is more than he deserves. And to answer your next question: no, I did not lay a hand on the boy. His punishment will be cleaning these rooms until one might eat off the floor, and at that he’s getting off cheap.”