by Anne Stuart
Elizabeth chose that moment to sneeze, three times, quite loudly. Gabriel moved out of the way, an enigmatic expression on his face, and Elizabeth looked across the room into the astonished face of the man called Peter. A man she recognized as one of the grooms from the manor house. “I’m not a flighty southern miss,” she said with some dignity, then spoiled it by sneezing again. “I was riding a wild horse, and she ran away with me.”
“Marigold?” Peter echoed. “She’s the gentlest mount in the stable.”
“Not with me, she wasn’t.”
Peter looked at her, and his expression softened a bit. “You’re afraid of horses, aren’t you, Miss? That will make all the difference. They sense when you’re uncertain, and they’ll take advantage.»
“Don’t listen to him, Lizzie. He thinks his horses are perfect, and it’s only us wretched human beings who muck things up,” Gabriel said with a drawl. He moved over to the fire, holding out his hands to warm them.
“I’d take a horse over most humans any time,” Peter said calmly. “Let me get you a blanket, Miss. You’re soaked.”
“Perhaps you can find her something dry to wear. I wouldn’t want her catching the ague while she’s under Sir Richard’s protection.”
“I’m not about to change my clothes,” Lizzie said in a dark tone.
Gabriel smiled. “No, to my regret, I imagine you’re not. Find her a blanket then, Peter, and then if you insist, you can go running off looking for Jane. Though I know it’s almost impossible for you to believe, but Jane is more than capable of taking care of herself.”
Peter approached her with something that looked suspiciously like purple velvet. “But she’ll be searching for Miss Penshurst, all the while she’s here with you, safe and sound.”
“Convince Lizzie of that, would you, Peter,” Gabriel murmured. “She thinks I’m some sort of lecherous demon, out to despoil her.”
“You are,” Peter said flatly.
Gabriel threw back his head and laughed. And then, to Elizabeth’s mingled fascination and horror, proceeded to strip off his sodden shirt and toss it over a chair.
Elizabeth stood frozen in the doorway, too shocked to move. It wasn’t as if she had never seen a man without a shirt before; after all, she had five brothers, and she lived in the country. But she’d never seen a man like this. One with smooth, golden skin that stretched like silk over bone and muscle. He turned to face the fire, seemingly unconscious of her embarrassment, and she could take no comfort in his back. It was as distractingly beautiful as his chest had been.
“Don’t worry,” he said without turning back to her. “I don’t intend to take off the rest of my clothes with you watching me. You look as if you might faint as it is.”
Any momentary dizziness vanished in the heat of annoyance. “I’m not quite that missish,” she snapped.
“True. You didn’t faint when I kissed you.”
“You kissed her, Gabriel?” Peter demanded, profoundly shocked. “Are you out of your mind? You can’t just go around kissing properly brought-up young women . . .”
“Why not?” he said casually. “You ought to try it. I can heartily recommend it, even if Lizzie here isn’t certain how much she liked it.”
“Don’t be a fool,” the man said shortly. He draped the warm throw around Lizzie’s shoulders, and she caught it before it slipped to the floor. It was velvet, thick and lustrous and wickedly sensuous.
“Jane, for instance,” Gabriel continued. “I think she might enjoy being kissed quite a bit. I’d go so far as to say she needs to be kissed.”
“Sod off.”
Elizabeth’s dizziness had returned full force, and with great presence of mind she walked across the room and sank down in a chair, holding the velvet around her. The two men sounded more like arguing brothers than servant and master.
“Now you’ve done it, Peter,” Gabriel said in a lazy voice. “Lizzie doesn’t know what kind of bedlam she’s wandered into. She’s obviously trying to figure out why a servant would tell his employer to sod off, and whether she ought to warn Jane that she’s in danger of being kissed by a sturdy young man.”
“By a servant,” Peter supplied.
“And, of course, she could always go running to my putative father and tell him that you’re conspiring to seduce my sister. That might force you to take some action.”
“I doubt he’d care. He’d probably be more concerned with losing a good servant than anything that might befall Jane.” There was no missing the bitterness in Peter’s voice.
“Maybe he’d let you have her, Peter,” Gabriel suggested. “You’re absolutely right—he values his horses more than he does his elder daughter.”
“He values his pride and position more than anything.”
“True enough,” Gabriel agreed. “That has always been his downfall.” He turned to glance at Elizabeth, who sat utterly still, listening to all this with astonishment. The moment she caught him looking at her she quickly lowered her gaze, but she could feel him watching her, and she knew the moment he started to move in her direction.
Don’t let him touch me, she prayed to her father’s stern, moral God. She held herself very still as he stood over her, and then she had no choice but to look up at him.
He had a faintly quizzical expression on his face. “You’re sitting on my shirt,” he said.
She sprang up as if she’d sat on a tack, smashing into his chest with unexpected force. He caught her arms as she fell against him, and the warmth of all that bare, smooth skin was even more unsettling than she could have imagined. She found herself wanting to touch him. To put her face against the smooth, silken flesh and taste him.
She tore herself out of his grip and stumbled back, overturning the chair as she went. He watched her for a moment, then reached down and picked up the shirt that had tumbled to the floor.
She turned her back on him, unwilling to look at him a moment longer. He disturbed her in ways she couldn’t even begin to understand. He wasn’t what she wanted in this life, he wasn’t what she needed. He was strange and unsettling and all she wanted was to get away from him and regain some sense of equanimity. To remember her promises to her father and to herself.
“I think Lizzie needs to get back to the manor house, Peter,” he said after a moment. “She’s had far too busy a day. I’d take her there myself, but we both know I’m persona non grata. Besides, I know Jane will want to thank you properly for rescuing her.”
“I might still be able to thrash you,” Peter said in a warning voice.
“You’re welcome to try.”
“Please,” Elizabeth said in a strained voice, “I need to get back. They’ll be worried . . .”
“You heard her, Peter. Unfortunately she’s not asking for anything I have to offer, much as it wounds me. You take her back to the house and tell them you found her wandering out in the woods. While you do that I’ll go take care of the latest offerings before someone else stumbles over them.”
“They’ve been at it again?”
“Why do you think the lady is covered in blood? I’m much neater than that, I promise you. She happened to trip over the freshly butchered corpse of a pregnant doe.”
“She was pregnant?” Elizabeth demanded, oddly shocked.
Gabriel glanced at her. “They prefer it that way. It doubles the value of the gift.”
She willed herself to meet his gaze. He was quite beautiful in the fitful glow of candle and firelight, and she’d never thought of a man as beautiful. She needed to get away from him, to put some distance between her odd, uncharacteristic emotions. The woods had always called to her. Not anything as ordinary as a man.
But then, she knew perfectly well that Gabriel Durham was no ordinary man.
She rose. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,
and I expect I’m better off that way.”
“I expect you’re right,” he agreed. He’d put the fresh shirt on, a rough, simple cambric shirt that looked oddly elegant on him, but he’d failed to button it. Probably because he knew it disturbed her, she thought grumpily
“You’re very kind to spare me,” she said.
“I would spare you a great deal, if I could,” he replied, his voice oddly calm. “As it is, I don’t think Peter will have to escort you back after all. Unless I miss my guess, my sister has arrived at the tower and will probably come tearing in here in a matter of moments. I’m guessing on the count of twelve. What do you say, Peter? You care to hazard?”
Peter was clearly not amused by Gabriel’s words. He’d moved to the door, opening it into the chill darkness of the tower, waiting patiently as someone raced up the stone steps.
Elizabeth watched in utter amazement at the change that came over him. One moment he was arguing with Gabriel, in the next he’d become self-effacing, silent, a perfect servant. But there was no missing the look of deep, desperate longing in his eyes.
Jane stopped at the door, momentarily distracted from her goal. “Peter,” she said in a hushed voice that told Elizabeth volumes.
Peter, obviously, was less observant. “Miss Jane,” he said, in properly subdued tones, “we were hoping you’d come. Miss Penshurst has met with a bit of an accident.”
It took Jane a moment to come to her senses and pull her gaze away from Peter’s tall form. “Lizzie, are you all right?” she demanded as she spied Elizabeth standing near the fire. “Are you hurt?”
“No one calls you Lizzie?” Gabriel murmured in a soft voice that only reached Elizabeth’s ears. “She’s fine, Jane,” he said in a louder tone. “She’s merely had an adventure. I take it that wild steed Marigold made it safely back to the stables?”
“Marigold isn’t wild,” Jane said automatically, and Elizabeth resisted the urge to scream. “Dear Elizabeth, let me get you back to the manor, and we’ll get you taken care of. Is that blood on your clothes?”
“She scared off some poachers,” Gabriel said easily.
“I’m still not convinced that’s what they were,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t care what you say—poachers don’t leave good food behind.”
Gabriel cast her a warning look. “You’ve been remarkably silent for the last few minutes . . . pray continue to be.”
But Jane had already turned pale. “They’ve done it again, Gabriel? I thought they were through with that sort of thing.”
Elizabeth had had enough. “Who? What sort of thing?” she demanded.
“No one knows for certain,” Jane said. “Though the Chiltons are the logical choice.”
Elizabeth stared at her in disbelief. “You aren’t going to tell me that those overdressed creatures have been tramping through the woods killing rabbits and pregnant deer? Why in the world would they do that?”
“Not for the sport of it,” Jane said in a grim voice. “I told you, they believe they’re Druids. They probably believe in blood sacrifice and all sorts of nastiness. They think Gabriel’s some sort of high priest who’ll lead them in their horrid ways.”
“In point of fact they aren’t actually Druids,” Gabriel said in his lazy drawl, “but some sort of odd religion they’ve concocted on their own, taking bits and pieces of various arcane rituals and elaborating on it. Unfortunately Francis Chilton is quite bright and very well read beneath that useless exterior, and he’s studied almost as widely as I have. He just happens to interpret things a little differently.”
“Differently?” Elizabeth echoed, thinking of the pale, effeminate man who’d dismissed her with an elegant smirk.
“Francis and his coterie think by sacrificing animals they’ll bring favor to their various financial and romantic exploits. They also try to tell the future by the way the blood falls to the ground. But I wouldn’t dignify them with the term Druid, Jane.”
“All right, they’re not Druids. They’re evil,” she said. “And don’t bother coming up with any philosophical arguments about whether or not evil actually exists, Gabriel. It does, and the Chiltons are evil.”
Elizabeth chose that moment to start another sneezing fit. She could feel Gabriel’s strange eyes watching her, but she was too involved in trying to control her sneezes to read his expression.
“I’m not going to fight with you, Jane,” he said after a moment. “I think the important thing is to get Lizzie back home.”
“Lizzie?” Jane echoed, turning her wondering gaze back to Elizabeth.
“I’ll make sure they get back safely, Mr. Gabriel,” Peter said in that sudden, submissive tone he’d taken on the moment Jane had entered the room.
Gabriel’s smile was mocking. “I expected I could count on you, lad,” he said, his emphasis on the condescending term deliberate.
And Peter tugged his forelock with an exaggerated subservience.
“Are you able to walk, Elizabeth?” Jane asked. “We’re actually not that far from the main house if we follow the most direct route, but I’m afraid there’s no path wide enough for a carriage. I could go and bring back some horses if you’d prefer to ride . . .”
“No!” Elizabeth said in a heartfelt shriek. “And don’t anyone dare tell me how gentle Marigold is. I’d prefer the safety of my own two feet.”
“It won’t take long to walk, Miss,” Peter volunteered, holding the door.
Elizabeth stood up, pulling her sodden clothing around her and attempting to look energetic.
“You look like a drowned rat,” Jane said, casting a critical look over her. “Your clothes are soaked.”
“I tried to divest her of them, but she proved tiresomely resistant,” Gabriel murmured. “And Peter was a disapproving hindrance as well. But I don’t think she looks the slightest bit like a rodent. More like a wet, exhausted kitten.”
There was the oddest note in his voice. A foolish woman might almost have called it tenderness, but Elizabeth was not going to allow herself to be foolish. No man had ever had such a strange, unsettling effect on her in her entire life. It confused her, but she refused to give in to it. She squared her shoulders, giving him a stern look.
“I’m neither feline nor rodent,” she said flatly. “Merely in dire need of dry clothes and a fire.” And she sneezed again.
“Take her away, Peter,” Gabriel said with a wave of his hand, dismissing the three of them. “This is far too much company for a recluse.”
Elizabeth was halfway out the door when she remembered her manners. For all Gabriel’s outrageous behavior, he had rescued her in the forest and brought her to safety in his strange, ruined tower.
“Thank you,” she said in a stiff little voice. “I’m in your debt.”
His smile was brief and unnerving. “We’ll find a way for you to repay me,” he said sweetly. “I’m a very inventive man.”
JANE HAD SPOKEN nothing more than the truth—they were back at Hernewood Manor in a matter of minutes, the dark, rainswept woods fading into the mist behind them. Neither Peter nor Jane spoke one word as they made their way through the widening paths, and once they reached the courtyard of the massive building, Peter vanished, leaving the two women to make their way through a side entrance into one of the back hallways.
As luck would have it, Edwina was on her way down to dinner, a vision in pink-and-rose tulle. She took one look at the two soaked women and made a disgusted face. “Where in the world have you been?” she demanded. “You know Father detests having to wait for his dinner. He’s not going to want to hear that you’ve only just returned.”
Elizabeth sneezed again. She was miserably cold, despite the warmth of the house, and she couldn’t seem to stop shivering. Jane put a protective arm around her shoulder. “Tell Father we won’t be down for dinner. I’m certain we
won’t be missed.”
Edwina shook her artful curls. “Will you never learn, Jane?” she said. “At your advanced age you should know how to behave properly, but you’re an absolute hoyden. You’ll break poor Mama’s heart.”
“I doubt it,” Jane said wryly.
Edwina made a moue. “You’re doomed to be an old maid, Jane. You’ll never get a husband. You won’t be fit for anything but running stables. No one will want you, and you’ll spend the rest of your life alone.”
Elizabeth felt the tremor that shot through Jane at Edwina’s words, but Jane’s face was emotionless. “I expect I’ll manage, dear. It’s kind of you to be so concerned.”
Edwina flounced off without another word, and Jane pushed open Elizabeth’s door, her face pale and set.
“What a nasty piece of goods your little sister is,” Elizabeth said after a moment. The room was thankfully warm—someone had built up the fire, and she began fumbling with her cloak, her fingers numb from the wet and cold.
“She is, isn’t she? She’ll still manage to find herself some rich fool who’ll be totally besotted with her. She’s right, you know. I’m the one who’ll end up alone. Who would want me?”
“Any man with taste and judgment,” Elizabeth said. “Any man worth having, I would think.”
Jane laughed. “And how few of them exist. I want a good man, honest and true. Even harder to find.”
Elizabeth yanked off her bloodstained dress and left it in a wet heap on the floor. “We’re probably better off without them,” she said, suddenly remembering the feel of Gabriel’s hot mouth against hers.
“Perhaps,” said Jane. But there was a faraway look in her warm brown eyes, one of longing.
One that matched the expression in Peter’s eyes when he looked at Miss Jane Durham.
Chapter Seven
PETER BROWNINGTON took his mug of strong, hot, sweet tea and walked out into the early-morning sunshine. It was a cool April morning, and the rich smells of earth and manure filled the stable yard. Peter took a deep, appreciative breath and drank his tea. He loved the smell of the earth after a rainfall, the sound of the horses whickering in their stalls, and the faint cry of the woodland creatures that lurked in the forest beyond the ruined abbey. He loved the cool air of the morning, the thick slabs of bread and cheese Cook gave him and the other menservants in the morning. He loved the spaniels that followed at his heels, he loved the wild Yorkshire land.
