Shameless

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “Now run away, little girl.” His voice held a jeer. “Run, while I’m still willing to let you go.”

  Beth’s eyes snapped open. As shaken as she was, she had not yet lost sight of the goal. She could not let him drive her into sending him away into the night.

  “Running away may be in your nature. It isn’t in mine.”

  Their eyes clashed.

  “You’re a fool, Beth Banning.” His expression was as unpleasant as his tone. She moved away from him, and he let her go. She could feel his eyes following her as she crossed the room on tremulous legs, feel the weight of his gaze on the sway of her bottom beneath the tangled fall of her hair, but she kept her back straight and refused to look around or try to cover herself in any way. The Butcher’s body still lay on the floor, she saw, and realized with a twinge of surprise that she had forgotten all about it. Sparing it only the briefest of shuddering glances, she snatched a quilt from the bed, wrapping it around herself as she turned to face him. The issue still hung in the balance, she knew, and whether he stayed or went would, she feared, be a perilously near run thing.

  “That’s as may be. And it’s Beth Severin now, as you may recall. There, you have shown me your worst and I still hold you to the marriage, so perhaps you could leave off trying to give me a distaste for you while we put our heads together and decide what’s best to be done about that.” A nod of her head indicated the body on the floor.

  “Your life is in danger every moment you’re with me.”

  “You’ve done a fine job of keeping me safe so far. From everyone except yourself, that is.” The merest hint of humor, with which she hoped to lighten the atmosphere, underlay that last.

  “I didn’t hurt you.” It was a statement more than a question, but there was something of penitence in his frown, and the curve of his mouth.

  “You know full well you didn’t. You took good care not to, in fact, which I am perfectly aware of.”

  His face darkened. “I wish you would rid yourself of this conviction of yours that a decent human being is lurking somewhere deep inside me. It’s no such thing, you know.”

  With his own glance at Bunn, he walked toward the window. Following him with her eyes, Beth was treated to an excellent view of his small, tight derriere. It was, as she recalled, wonderfully firm to the touch. The recollection of how she came to know that made her cheeks crimson, and she turned away.

  “I take it I may expect more visitations like this one?” she asked, her voice commendably composed, she thought, considering all she had recently gone through. Her heart was just now slowing to a normal beat, and her knees were just regaining their strength. Her body felt softer and more malleable than usual, and she still tingled and burned in the most embarrassing places, but that, she felt, was something she was better off ignoring. With his back still turned, she splashed water from the washstand on her face and gave herself the quickest of sponge baths. Her hair spilled about her shoulders in an unruly mass, and, once again tucking the quilt securely around her, she occupied herself with retrieving her scattered hairpins and twisting it up. The corpse on the floor was a problem, but it was one that was probably not going to fall to her to solve, so she ignored it in favor of concentrating on persuading him to stick to the plan.

  “I don’t know. I hope not. Bunn worked alone, so I believe we need not fear to encounter his confederates lying in wait in the shrubbery outside. He must have got on my trail yesterday and followed us here. Until the dogs have been called off, though, another attack is always a possibility.” He was, she saw with a quick glance, looking out the window, from which he had drawn back the shutter a crack. “The best course to follow would be for me to put you in the carriage and send you on your own to London, and perhaps meet you there.”

  “Oh, no.” Beth recognized prevarication when she heard it—if she got in that carriage alone, she was as certain as it was possible to be that he would head in the exact opposite direction from London, never to be seen again—and her voice was sharp. When he turned to look at her, she planted her fists on her hips and glared at him. “We’re going to London together. You’ll be safe in Richmond House, because that’s the last place anyone would look for you, and a message will be sent to Hugh, and as soon as he arrives and the situation is explained to him he will, as you put it, call off the dogs, and neither you, nor he, nor anyone else will be killed.”

  He looked pained. “Beth . . .”

  “That is what we agreed to!”

  “I never realized until this happened what danger I’m putting you in. If you’re with me and something goes wrong . . .” He slowly shook his head. “Well, I won’t do it. The risk to you is too great.”

  The finality in his voice awoke something very akin to desperation in her. With every ounce of strength and cunning she possessed she would fight letting him ride off to an almost certain death.

  “If I travel alone to London, what’s preventing the carriage from being attacked by someone who mistakenly thinks you’re in it with me, pray? If he”—she gestured at the dead man—“could find us here, what makes you think that someone won’t learn that you hired the carriage and come after it? Without you beside me, I would be defenseless. Or if, perchance, they discovered that you had married me, could they not then hold me as a hostage in hopes of luring you to come after me?”

  Neil’s arrested expression told her that her words had struck home. Encouraged, she didn’t wait for him to reply but pushed the advantage.

  “Our best course of action—the one that is safest for me as well as for you—is to stick to our original plan. We have only to get to London, and Richmond, and the thing is done: there will be no more danger for either of us. For any of us.”

  “Damn it to bloody hell and back!” He ran his fingers through his hair and frowned at her. “Was there ever such a damnable coil?”

  With that she knew she had won. Relaxing a little—she was only just realizing how dreadfully afraid she’d been that he would disappear, leaving her behind—and thinking it better not to reply, she watched him come toward her again with some interest. But he stopped before he reached her, picking up his pantaloons from where they lay crumpled by the side of the bed and pulling them on.

  “Get dressed,” he flung at her as he sat on the side of the bed to pull on his stockings and boots. “I want to be on the road at the first crack of dawn, which doesn’t give us much time.”

  Thus adjured, clinging to the shreds of her modesty because she was simply unable to help herself, Beth retired behind the one high-backed chair and, using it as a makeshift screen, exchanged the quilt for the fresh chemise and petticoat that had been laid out for her, then slipped into her stays. The laces on these proved difficult, and no amount of jerking sufficed to loose the tangle they’d worked themselves into. Though his back was turned to her, Neil must have seen her struggles through the dressing table mirror, because, fully dressed now except for his coat and standing in front of the mirror as he tied his neckcloth, he made a disgusted sound under his breath and came to her assistance.

  “Turn around,” he directed, his eyes sliding over her as he stepped behind the chair that she’d hoped would serve to shield her to some degree from his view.

  It was ridiculous to feel shy after all that had passed between them, but she did. Trying to disguise it, she presented her back to him.

  “You must just get the tangle out, then start at the top and tighten—”

  “You’ve no need to tell me. I’m a dab hand at stays,” he broke in, and she could feel him separating the component parts of the tangle as he spoke.

  Surprised to discover that she didn’t particularly like what that implied, Beth stiffened and cast him a narrow-eyed look over her shoulder. “Are you indeed?”

  He must have felt her eyes on him, because he glanced up from what he was doing to meet her gaze. For a moment he looked surprised. Then he grinned.

  “As I believe I told you before, I am skilled at any number of thin
gs.”

  The reply that sprang to her lips was, she discovered to her disgruntlement, on the order of the landlord’s disapproving “hmmph!” But she bit it back, not caring to reveal that she had just been pierced by a stab of something that she feared must be very akin to jealousy. The emotion was wholly new to her. She was accustomed, rather, to provoking jealousy in her admirers. Certainly she did not like it.

  “How very handy!” she said brightly instead. Having succeeded in remedying the tangle, he was already tightening her laces for her. She waited until he secured them with a knot, then stepped away from him with a brief “thank you” to put on her gown. It was high-necked, long-sleeved black bombazine, probably laid aside when a recent widow had put off her mourning, and was loose where it should have been tight and tight where it should have been loose. But under the circumstances, she realized she was lucky to have a fresh gown to wear at all, and so she accepted it in that spirit. The tiny buttons at the back were difficult to do up without assistance, and she half expected to feel his hands brushing hers aside at any moment. When he didn’t come to her rescue, she glanced around to see what he was doing.

  He was, she saw, at the window again, with the shutters fully open now. Indeed, the window was open to the night, with the sash thrown up and crisp air blowing into the room, and he was leaning out.

  Even as Beth saw that, she realized that there was no longer a corpse in the center of the carpet. Eyes widening at the discovery, blinking in dismay at the thought of what she must have missed, she hurried toward the window.

  “What are you doing?”

  Reaching him just as he pulled back inside the room, she didn’t wait for an answer but looked out and down herself, ignoring the purpling sky and the cold wind in favor of searching for the missing body. At first all she saw below the window was a thicket of leafy bushes, which were part of the shrubbery that hugged the walls. Then she realized that in the bushes she could see a boot and part of a leg, and withdrew into the room so swiftly that she almost bumped her head on the sash.

  “You dumped him out the window!”

  “Shh!” Clearly unabashed, he closed the window and the shutters over it. “What would you have had me do? If he’d been discovered in this room, we would have had hue and cry after us before we reached the border.”

  “You surely don’t mean to just leave him there!”

  “I don’t. I’m going to go down now and bear him off to the woods yonder, where, if and when he should be discovered, it will most likely be assumed he suffered some sort of accident. Certainly there will be no way to link him to us.”

  Beth couldn’t like the scheme, but she could think of nothing better, and she had to admit that in this area, at least, his judgment, due to vastly more experience in disposing of corpses, was likely to be better than hers. She said as much, in a decidedly acidic tone, as he shrugged into his coat and added the dead man’s cash and pistol to his pockets. Then, putting on her second shoe as she went, she hopped after him as he headed for the door.

  “Wait! I’m coming with you.” Just in case he had it in his head to flee once he was out of her sight.

  With his hand on the knob, he looked back at her. Whatever he saw in her face must have told him that arguing was useless, which it was because there was no way that she could see that he could prevent her from doing just exactly as she chose, at least not without risking a deal more noise than he wanted.

  “Be quiet, then, and stay close” was all he said, and left the room.

  At this very early hour of the morning, with dawn just on the verge of breaking, the old inn was full of shadows and creaks. Only a dim oil lamp hanging from the ceiling at the top of the stairs lit the way as they moved quickly but silently down the narrow steps toward the dark passage that ran between the taproom and coffee room and various private parlors, and led to the front door. Beth’s heart thumped at every sound. She was breathing way too fast. Following close behind Neil, she stayed hideously on edge lest they be attacked again, or, as seemed more likely, were discovered and called to account for themselves by the suspicious innkeeper or his wife. Even before they reached the foot of the stairs, they were swallowed up in gloom, and the drafty passage was dark enough to make her shiver and long to be out of it. Keeping close behind Neil, having to school herself not to take a firm grip on the tail of his coat, she already had her eyes fixed on the front door when a man unexpectedly stepped out of the taproom into their path.

  “Stop right there,” he growled, but in that first moment of heart-leaping shock Beth barely registered the words because her attention was riveted on the pistol in his hand. A glance sufficed to tell her that it was cocked and aimed at Neil’s head. His menacing words were addressed solely to Neil. “Get your hands in the air. Now.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “HUGH!” A SPLIT SECOND LATER Beth was almost giddy with relief as her worst fears vanished between one heartbeat and the next. “Oh, thank goodness! I am so glad to see you! We were coming to find you!”

  The instant she had looked past the pistol to the man holding it, she recognized her brother-in-law, looking handsome as always but tired and out of temper. Recovering from the fright he had given her, she beamed at him in delight. Feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders, she almost acted on her first impulse, which was to run forward and cast herself into his arms. The grim look on his face and the sight of that loaded gun pointed unwaveringly at Neil, who had, like herself, stopped short at his advent, reminded her that these two were deadly adversaries and held her back. Neil knew better than to try to murder Hugh, but Hugh as yet remained unenlightened about the change in the situation. Until everything was explained, wild horses weren’t going to drag her away from Neil’s side, so she executed a neat dance step that positioned her between the two men and faced Hugh even as, behind her, Neil slowly raised his hands.

  “Hullo, Richmond.” The unmistakable note of mockery in Neil’s tone was not, Beth felt, what the situation called for.

  “Walk toward Hugh, Beth,” said another, deadly voice behind her. Beth glanced around in surprise to discover Nick, possibly even handsomer than Hugh but looking equally tired and every bit as unpleasant. He was standing a yard or so behind Neil, holding a pistol on him, too. The shadows lining the passage seemed to move. As Beth blinked at them bemusedly they resolved themselves into more armed men, a half dozen at least, fanned out behind Nick. Every gun was trained on Neil.

  “Nick! I’m so glad to see you, too! I declare, I could hug you both! But you don’t need those guns, so you might as well go ahead and put them away. Neil isn’t going to hurt anybody, I promise you. Oh, Neil, this is Gabby’s husband, Nick DeVane.”

  “Oh, ho, the fabled spy-catcher! Well, well! No wonder you were able to find us, Richmond! Rather beyond your powers, I would have thought it,” Neil said.

  “You are not helping,” Beth told him, aggravated.

  “Come here to me, Beth.” Hugh’s voice was sharp. “You’re perfectly safe now. There’s not a thing in the world he can do to hurt you. And as for you”—his tone changed, becoming fierce, making it obvious he was now talking to Neil—“though I’d hate to kill you in front of her, all you have to do is breathe wrong and I will.”

  “You really think you could?” Neil made the words an obvious challenge.

  “With all of us here? I know it.”

  “No one is going to kill anyone!” Beth took a step back so that her back pressed protectively against Neil’s chest. Conscious of Nick and the others behind Neil, terribly aware of how inadequate a shield she was, suddenly uncertain of the outcome, she glared at Hugh. “Do you hear me?”

  “Step away from him, Beth!” Hugh ordered.

  “You won’t persuade her to leave me, Richmond.” At the continued baiting note in Neil’s voice, Beth was conscious of a strong desire to box his ears. He was being the opposite of conciliating, which under the circumstances she considered plain foolish. The two men b
ristled at each other like angry dogs, and she knew that if she hadn’t been there one of them probably would have been dead already. “She’s mine now. You may be sure I took good care to make her so.”

  “What?” Hugh and Nick barked almost in unison. Hugh’s face, already hard, turned to stone. His eyes blazed with outrage. Although she couldn’t see Nick, she could imagine he was having much the same reaction. The most maddening part about it was, she had no doubt that infuriating them was exactly what Neil had intended.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake! Neil, would you stop being so provoking? What he means is, we were married last night,” Beth said. “We—”

  “By God, you slimy bastard!” Hugh interrupted, starting forward. “That tops everything! To force an innocent—”

  “Mind yourself, Hugh,” Nick warned sharply. “Keep well out of reach.”

  Hugh stopped. The pistol was now aimed directly between Neil’s eyes. Beth felt a shiver of alarm at her brother-in-law’s expression. Although she didn’t dare glance back, she had the most lowering suspicion that Neil was answering that murderous look with a taunting one of his own.

  “Of course he didn’t force me! He didn’t force me to do anything! Getting married was my idea, because—” She broke off, suddenly remembering the many listening ears that did not belong to family members. “You are a pair—no, a trio!—of complete idiots, and I am fast losing patience with the lot of you! Hugh, Nick, please, if you love me, put your guns down, and Neil, you keep your tongue between your teeth. What we are going to do, all four of us, is repair to a private parlor, just there”—she pointed toward the room she and Neil had dined in the previous night—“where I will explain the whole thing.”

  “Purely in the spirit of brotherly cooperation, I give you my word that I won’t kill either of you for at least the next half hour. Plenty of time to hear the lady out.” Mockery still laced Neil’s voice. Out of patience, Beth elbowed him smartly in the ribs.

  He flinched. “Ow!”