Fall of the Lyon
Page 9
Roger glowered and huffed but, in the end, there was little he could do other than comply. “Neville, get up! I won’t remain in this room and be treated this way. When the papers have been drawn up—and the funds should be generous, Niece—I will return to sign them. Leash your dogs in the meantime!”
“Where the devil should we go? This whole house is a dead bore… just like Sir William!” Neville added, passing a petulant look in their direction, as if it were somehow all Meg’s fault.
“Anywhere but here. I can’t abide the company any longer! Come on!”
When the door slammed behind them, the solicitor cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Viscountess, for losing my temper.”
“Not at all, Mr. Linley,” Meg replied. “Seeing my uncle taken down a peg was good for my soul. Thank you for taking care of that and for dealing with this little issue for us.”
“Sir William was afraid to act against them until you had a husband to protect you from them,” the solicitor explained. “He feared their reprisal against you would be swift and very sharp. I’m not certain it still won’t. I know you need to remain here, especially to deal with Sir William’s collection, but I fear it won’t be a pleasant endeavor.”
“He was likely correct in that assertion,” Leo said. “I’ll make certain she’s safe here. In the meantime, there are certain transfers of funds that have to be made to my estates. And the sooner those funds are out of Roger Snead’s reach, the better. Can you see to that?”
“I’ve been managing the estates as best as possible, undoing all that Roger Snead had done,” the solicitor agreed. “And you’re right to be concerned. He’s run it into the ground already. The profits for this year won’t even be half what last year’s were. He’ll make a play for more money if you let him. In the meantime, I can have an expert in antiquities come here to catalogue everything.”
“That won’t be necessary… I only need to send for my books. I’m rather an expert myself in that matter.”
Mr. Linley blinked at that. “How fortuitous!”
“Indeed, it is,” Leo stated. “I assume there will be documents to sign?”
“Indeed,” Mr. Linley said, digging in his bag for a moment. He emerged with several documents in tidy rolls. “If you’ll review those and sign them, when I return to London, I can initiate the transfer of the funds. The papers may be delivered to me at the inn in the village.”
“In light of our current predicament, I will not leave Meg alone in this house. I also do not feel it would be wise to leave the house, lest we should be barred re-entry. Would you return to collect them tomorrow?” Leo asked.
Linley nodded. “Certainly, Viscount Amberley. I shall arrive in the morning to collect them.”
When the solicitor had gone, Leo turned to Meg and asked the question that had been buzzing about in his mind for so very long. “I find it curious that your stepfather was aware of my status as a collector.”
“I do not. When you came to his attention, no doubt due to Roger’s misdeeds, he likely sought out every bit of information about you possible,” Meg answered. “It was his way.”
“Then let’s get these documents sorted out so that we might begin our search for whatever it is he knew. We need leverage, now more than ever.”
Two hours later, Meg paused as she sorted the desk drawer’s contents. The remains of a dozen quills worn down to nubs remained, but in their midst were also toys from her childhood when she had played in that room before the fire while her stepfather worked.
“I spent so much time here,” she said, reflecting on how much of her life had been encompassed by those four walls. “I shall miss this room.”
Leo looked back at her, a sad smile curving his lips. “It’s not out of the question to see if Snead would consider petitioning to have the entail broken so that we might buy him out. I’ve little doubt he’d have more use for the cash than the estate.”
“And how many estates do you have?” Meg asked, shutting the drawer and opening the next one.
“Four,” he replied. “I sold off one of the lesser ones that was not part of the entail. That’s how I’ve been keeping a roof over Julia’s and Louisa’s heads for the time being,” he admitted.
“We do not need a fifth estate. Also, the less involvement we must have with Roger and Neville over time, the better off we will be.”
“How is it that he, as your stepfather’s half-brother, came to inherit entailed property?”
“The entail was fairly new, actually,” Meg said. The drawer had slid open partially but seemed to be stuck on something. “Sir William’s grandfather created it. He had only daughters, you see. So he set up the entail to keep his lands from being divided up by husbands of his daughters. Each one inherited one of his three estates and that estate would only be passed to her eldest surviving son or his legal heir.”
“Unusual,” Leo commented. “But not entirely without merit. After all, one could hardly foresee giving birth to such a vile creature as Roger Snead.”
Meg laughed at that, the quip catching her off guard. “Oh, goodness! I needed that. What a horrid day this has been! And now I cannot get this drawer open!”
Leo approached the desk then, leaving the stacks of ledgers he’d been poring over. “Let me help.”
Meg watched as he leaned forward and tugged on the drawer handle. When he tugged at it, the entire desk shifted, but the drawer itself didn’t budge. “There must be something jammed inside it.”
Before she could ask what he was about, Leo was on the floor, the length of his body stretched out before her as he peered up into the desk from beneath it. The breadth of his shoulders, lean waist and long limbs were displayed perfectly by the posture and she couldn’t help but feel anxious. She’d told him they would consummate their marriage and she meant to follow through on that. To do anything less would be to hand Roger the ammunition he needed to use against them. But the reality of his nearness, of the overwhelming masculinity that he exuded, that was something she wasn’t truly prepared for.
“Hand me the letter opener from the desk,” he said.
Meg placed the tool in his extended hand and within a moment, the drawer slid free and he emerged from beneath the desk holding a cloth-wrapped bundle. “What on earth is that?”
“Let’s find out,” he said, his excitement much like a child with a treat. “Maybe it’s some sort of treasure!”
Meg cleared a space on the desk and he unwrapped the package carefully. Knowing Sir William, it was bone shards from some ancient creature or broken pieces of pottery that had interested him. But she didn’t want to douse Leo’s obvious excitement as he carefully peeled back the layers of fabric. When at last the item was revealed, she couldn’t hold in her gasp of surprise. Inside, nestled on a velvet pad was an intricately carved bracelet of heavy gold links, each one set with a large emerald.
“It’s lovely!” she cried.
“It’s a bloody damned mess,” he said.
Meg stared at him in confusion. “It’s a bit dirty, but a good cleaning would restore it entirely.”
He turned to her. “You don’t understand, Meg… this particular bracelet, is not simply a pretty, ancient bauble. It’s much more. It belonged to Julia Drusilla… the sister of Caligula.”
Meg blinked at that. “The emperor’s sister?”
“And allegedly his lover. These are part of a set gifted to her, according to legend, by the emperor. There should be a necklace and a ring, as well… but without having the documentation to establish their provenance, their worth is significantly diminished. Still, it really is a treasure.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about it,” she mused.
His expression turned grim. “I should. I spent most of my inheritance as a young man to purchase it. They, along with the documentation I mentioned, were stolen from me in Rome the night your uncle and his thugs attacked me. If we could locate the remaining pieces and the documents, then it truly would be a treasure.”
“This has to go back in the desk,” he said.
“Why?” Meg demanded.
“Because right now, we don’t know who hid it there, whether it was Sir William or Roger. If it was Snead, and he knows that we’ve discovered it, I hesitate to think what he might do,” Leo said.
“And if he moves it? If he hides it elsewhere?”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take. I’d rather lose a hundred jeweled bracelets than risk seeing you come to harm.”
And that was when she felt herself falling. Not in love, but certainly in like. “I thought today would be so difficult, that I’d just be a mass of emotions and I’d be constantly struggling to hold myself together. And I’m not. For the better part of the day, I haven’t felt much of anything at all. I’m just rather numb.”
He carefully wrapped the bracelet back into its fabric bundle and then lowered himself to the floor once more. As he was wedging the package back under the desk drawer, he said, “Grief is a tricky thing.”
“I am grieving… and I know that. But I also think I’ve grieved so much already. For the better part of a year, we knew he was dying. We just sat there together, marking time and waiting for it to happen… I’ve dreaded this moment. And now that it’s here, it seems that dreading it for so long has now inured me to it.”
“We all think that,” he said, “until we’re blindsided by it when we least expect it.”
“Did you grieve your father?” she demanded. It was an impertinent question, and yet she felt compelled to ask.
He paused and looked back at her. “I grieved because there would be no more opportunities to make things right, that any chance of salvaging our relationship died with him.”
Meg digested that for a moment. It was different. There was nothing to make right with Sir William. He’d been the best father she could have ever asked for, and she hoped, fervently, that she’d been the best daughter. “I’m so terribly sorry for that. It shouldn’t be that way.”
“It shouldn’t,” he agreed, climbing to his feet once more. He perched there on the corner of the desk for a moment, as if in contemplation, then he added, “I stopped saying things I don’t mean. And I stopped holding back the things I felt I ought to say to others. If I’m direct to the point of discomfort, that is why. I don’t ever want to feel that I’ve wasted time with someone again.”
“There’s something to be said for that, isn’t there? That we learn something from the people we love.”
“There is,” he agreed. “I’m sorry that you’ve lost him. I cannot imagine the kind of grief you must feel.”
“I wish that I felt it,” she said. “I loved him so much. For the last eight years, he’s been the only family I’ve known. And I can’t really cry for him, I can’t even really feel like he’s gone. The truth of it is that I’m not really feeling much of anything at all. And I feel horrible for that… as if I’m failing him in some way.”
“You are not failing him, nor yourself. All those feelings will come in time, I’m certain… once the shock of everything has worn off.”
“I want to feel something though… anything. I haven’t felt—” she stopped abruptly and looked away. It was a terrible thing to admit. Humiliating and wicked.
“You haven’t felt what?”
“I haven’t felt anything since you kissed me last,” she said. “It’s like I’m walking through a fog, every sense dulled.”
He said nothing. But the air between them shifted. It became charged with a tension that she was coming to recognize.
“Will you kiss me again?” The request surprised her as much as it did him. She hadn’t meant to ask it. It was hardly appropriate given the day they’d had. But she wanted to feel something, to feel anything. To feel alive. She’d certainly never felt more alive than when he’d kissed her before. It was a distraction, she knew. Something to focus on other than the icy cold that had been spreading inside her.
Chapter Eleven
Leo stared at the beautiful woman who’d become his wife without him ever having to make any attempt to win her. She’d literally fallen into his lap. And now she was asking for his kiss, sweetly and without an inkling of the lust that roiled inside him for her. If she knew, if she had any notion of just how much he desired her, she’d run from the room and never look back.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he warned.
“I do, actually… perhaps not the particulars of it, and certainly not as well as you seem to know what I’m asking, but I’m not completely ignorant. I know that if I ask you for a kiss, it will likely be much more than that which I receive,” she admitted. There was no shyness in her. She didn’t blush and stammer while she looked away. Her gaze was focused and direct.
“I told you I’d wait. I meant it. This isn’t something that should occur on someone else’s schedule regardless of our circumstances.”
Her lips curved upward, the barest hint of a smile there. “Are you actually trying to dissuade me? Should I be thankful for your sensitivity or insulted by your lack of impatience?”
And with that teasing comment, Leo did what he’d wanted desperately, too. He closed his hand over her wrist and pulled her gently toward him. He didn’t stop with just her nearness. No. He continued until she was pressed fully against him, her breasts crushed against his chest and her hips nestled firmly against his. Her eyes widened and her breath escaped her in a soft whoosh of sound. She might be a virgin, but she wasn’t some innocent, wide-eyed thing who didn’t understand the hardness of him against her yielding flesh.
“Tell me, Margaret, do you doubt my impatience now?”
She looked away then, lowering her lashes to half-mast, and she admitted tremulously, “Perhaps I was hasty in my estimation.”
An amused chuckle escaped him then. “Perhaps you were. Let’s go upstairs. I doubt there is anything left to find down here.”
Leaving the library, he kept her hand in his as they walked toward the stairs. He caught the butler gracing them with a speculative eye but Leo ignored him. Let them speculate all they wished. At the end of the day, what transpired between him and his wife was no one’s business but their own.
Climbing the stairs, he used his cane to balance and also because it was better for them if everyone thought him dependent upon it. Being underestimated could well work to their advantage later. As they neared their borrowed chamber, Roger emerged from one of the rooms down the corridor.
“What were you doing in my room?” Meg asked. “You’ve already ransacked it once!”
A moment later, one of the housemaids stepped from the room, as well. She had clearly been crying and there was a rather suspicious looking red mark on her cheek.
“Bullying the servants, Snead?” Leo demanded. “I know you like your victims helpless and captive, but beating up on servant girls is a bit much even for you!”
“She’s a clumsy oaf. Your imaginations are running away with the both of you,” Snead said. With a wave of his hand, the maid slinked away, clearly terrified of him. “As for this being your chamber, Niece, you hardly have one here anymore, do you? You are a guest in this house. You and your husband. I’d advise you to remember that.”
“And I’d advise you,” Leo replied, stepping forward, “to recall that while you may hold the property, you don’t have the money to keep it. Inheritance taxes will see this place firmly in the hands of the crown before the year is out… unless you show us a significant amount of hospitality and we feel inclined to be generous during our stay here.”
Snead was silent for a moment. Then with a
n arrogant sniff, he turned and strode away.
“He really is very, very easy to hate,” Meg murmured.
Leo opened the door to their chamber and steered her inside as he said with wicked intent, “Stop thinking about him. It’s not conducive at all to the things I have in mind for you, Wife.”
Roger Snead made his way to the end of the corridor, but he didn’t go far. When the couple disappeared inside their room, he doubled back and made for Neville’s chambers. No doubt, he’d cornered another maid to torment since he couldn’t lay hands on his cousin just yet. His son’s obsession with Margaret had been to his advantage before when he meant to force a marriage between them. But now, with her wed to Amberley, it was inconvenient. Neville had lost focus on what was most important—they still had debts to pay and without an appropriate bequest from his half-brother, they were treading deep and treacherous waters.
Roger didn’t knock when he reached Neville’s room. He just threw the door open and stepped inside. Neville had one of the maids cornered, tears streaking her face and her clothing ripped. Roger shook his head. “Let the girl go. We’ve more important matters to deal with than your libidinous urges!”
Neville disentangled himself from the weeping servant who offered no hesitation in fleeing his advances, her clothing still askew and a sob breaking from the girl as she exited the chamber. Roger sighed. With his temper and Neville’s lecherous ways, they’d never keep any servants.