Piper rocked her head from side to side, reviewing her rambling rant in her mind. “Well, yes. Now that I think about it, I am. It’s your own fault, really.”
“Ye’re a rare befuddling lass, to be sure,” he drawled. “I dinnae ken how I’m to maintain my ire when ye so sweetly exalt my sexual prowess.”
“I didn’t…” She frowned.
“Aye, ye did.” He chuckled and spread his arms wide. “Come here, lass.”
Since that was where she’d longed to be from the moment she’d opened the door, Piper let him enfold her in the strength and security of his embrace.
“Muddled yer thoughts, did I?” he whispered into her ear, a huff of laughter brushing her hair. “My pride is swelling to godlike proportions.”
Piper swatted his back with a smile. “Rein it back in, Hedone.”
Connor lifted his chin and raised a brow. “Ye ken Hedone was a lass, aye?”
“Hedone was the daughter of Eros and Psyche,” she informed him. “Largely considered the goddess of sensual pleasure.”
A wicked grin touched his lips and his eyes reignited with amusement. “She admits to sensual pleasure? Ah, my bonny lass, it is ye who is such a goddess to me. My Hedone. I? If it dinnae venture to the incestual, I would be Eros instead.”
Eros was Hedone’s father. If he knew a portion of that information, surely he was aware that Eros was also the god of love. Piper shook the thought away, along with its inferences. He teased, nothing more.
Connor bent his head and sucked lightly on a sensitive spot beneath her ear, reminding her vividly of all the forms love could take, many of which he had introduced her to the previous night. She’d proven herself a true wanton, embracing what she wanted without shame. Choosing to pursue her desires with vigor and producing admirable results. What she’d done may have left her shy and awkward in his presence afterward, if it hadn’t likewise proven to be most liberating.
Not that she would flatter him further. She’d been rather sore this morning when she awoke and had considered walking up to the manor in hopes of cajoling a full, hot bath for herself.
She couldn’t do that now.
Leaning away from Connor, she contemplated him with a fretful frown. “You said my mother has come to Dinton Grange?”
The haze of arousal cleared from his gaze. “Aye.”
“It’s been more than two years since she was last here. Did she say why she’d come?”
“I dinnae ask her,” he admitted. “Mrs. Davies thinks that she’s come to rob Harry blind before he returns home for good.”
Withdrawing from his embrace, she paced her small parlor, considering the possibility. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“So Mrs. Davies said.”
Mounting nerves had her wringing her hands. “In the years after she married my stepfather, Mother would bring me to the Grange under the pretense that this was my home, and hence, I should be welcome here. She often came away with some piece of art she claimed was a gift from my father before he died. Or some small trinket. I know she sought a way into by brother’s safe. She wanted the marquisate jewels. Maintained that they were hers by right. Or mine, depending on her argument du jour.”
She came to a stop and squared her shoulders, glancing at Connor with more poise than she felt. “It’s fine. She’s come and she’ll withdraw soon enough. She won’t think to leave the house, therefore, as long as I don’t venture beyond the service hall while she’s here, she’ll be none the wiser.”
“Piper.”
“No. It’s fine. Really,” she assured him, although all the confidence and optimism that had thrived within her over the past few weeks shriveled inside. “It’s been some time, but I’ve walked this road before and I can do it again.”
He shook his head. Whether it was because he disagreed or because he thought it an imperfect plan, she didn’t know. Nor did she want to. There’d be sermons aplenty waiting for her from Hilde or Mrs. Davies when she went to the house. She didn’t need one from him.
“Nae matter. Harry will be home soon enough to send her on her way, aye?” When she didn’t answer him, Connor stared at her. Surprise became stupefaction. “My God, Piper. He does ken ye’re here, does he no’?”
“No, of course not.” His shock sent a pang of heartbreak streaking through her. “He’s never even mentioned me, has he? I knew he didn’t care.”
“Nay.” He clasped her around her upper arms and gave her a little shake, as if it might dislodge the thought completely. “I shared few private conversations wi’ yer brother, fewer confidences. Mayhap he’d shared them with Moira? Or my other sisters-in-law. Most assuredly Fiona kens, however, I dinnae even ken he had a sister. Through nae fault of his, I assure ye. He maun be mad wi’ worry!”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Ye’ve never told him? Any of it?” he persisted. “Bugger it, that is what he was arguing wi’ Reginald Langston about at Lady Onslow’s ball. A friend of mine witnessed the quarrel but he dinnae ken what it was about. Did yer friend no’ tell ye about it?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about him!” Her volume rose with each word.
“Why the hell no’?” He rubbed his hands over his face as if it all made no sense to him. “He would keep ye safe. Ye could regain yer position. Be a lady of standing.”
Piper shook her head. She’d heard this all before. “My time of being a lady is over. I’ve seen too much to ever again be considered genteel.”
“Nonsense. Ye may be a hoyden but I kent well enough ye were a lady in truth.”
“And I know the truth well enough to know I cannot rely on my brother,” she shot back. “Not anymore.”
“Why…?” His eyes widened with comprehension. “Ah, I see. He’s the guardian who forsook ye.”
Desolate tears welled up in her eyes. It never stopped hurting to think it. It hurt even more to hear it spoken out loud. Her brother had failed her when she needed him most and in all the years since. Whatever qualms she’d entertained, she really couldn’t produce an ounce of guilt for losing faith in him. Let him…let them all, prove her wrong first.
“Whatever ye think, he maun be worried sick.”
“I sincerely doubt it.” Piper wrapped her arms around her waist, deflecting his assurances. It was nonsense to think Harry lamented her absence. “He’s never come here searching for me. Never inquired of the staff if they’d seen me prior to returning to the Grange for the wedding. That was the first time he’d set foot on this land in close to three years. He does not care.”
“I dinnae ken yer brother well, lass, but I’ve seen enough to ken he’s a caring man,” Connor insisted. “If nothing else, he’s a responsible one.”
She whirled on him, her ire overwhelming her sorrow. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to talk about it. I don’t need anyone else defending his actions to me.”
He shook his head. “I cannae believe he would neglect ye so.”
“Well, he did. I’ve heard this all before, you know? I knew his failure to come when I needed him most was uncharacteristic. I knew it was odd. I held faith and trusted in him until the very end because I knew my brother loved me more than anything!” Her words escalated until she was yelling at him. “Yet in all the time since, I’ve never seen any evidence to the contrary to refute the fact that I was wrong about him. Maybe he feels remorse. Maybe he feels guilty. Honestly, I don’t care what he feels now. I only know what I felt then. I can’t believe and trust and have faith anymore. All those things were trampled into the ground by the person I loved most in the world!”
“Piper, he maun have had good reason…”
He reached out to her and she swatted his hand away. “Haven’t you been listening? Whatever reasons he had…whether they were valid or justifiable, THEY DON’T MATTER! They stopped mattering to me the moment…”
The truth of it leapt to her lips and Piper faltered.
“The moment what?” Connor asked. “What happened?”
Swiping her tears away, she raced from the house. It hurt too much to remember. Right now, she wanted to run away from it all as she’d run before. Let the wind dry her tears and soothe her mind. Sweep it all away.
Holding her skirts, she blindly sprinted up the path toward the stables with Connor calling her name behind her. She didn’t want to talk to him any longer. Hear more of the same theoretical rationalization others had offered. The reasoning behind it all. Dandy never catechized or pried. He did nothing more than provide a comforting presence.
She bolted into the stable yard almost knocking Bram off his feet. He stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost. “M’lady, what are you doin’ here?”
Ignoring his horrified whisper, Piper spun away and ran toward the stable. An escape.
That’s what she needed right now. To clear her head, clear her mind. Subdue the pain in her heart, so that she could lock it away again.
Albert caught her before she reached the door, grabbing her by the arms. Through her tears, she registered his wide eyes and slack jaw.
“M’lady, you shouldn’t be here,” he rasped and pulled her toward him. “Come away.”
“Let me go.”
“M’lady, please.”
She shook him off and rushed headlong into the stable, only to freeze in her tracks. Her breath caught in her throat. The shock that held her feet to the ground slithered upward with each word that reached her ears. Each arctic syllable turned her blood as cold as a serpent’s.
“I said this one, boy. Saddle him.”
“That’s Mr. MacKintosh’s horse, m-m-m…sir.”
One of the younger stable lads was flattened against the stall gate across from the one housing Connor’s horse. As immobilized as she, the horror in her heart reflected on his face as he stared ahead. What he cowered from, Piper couldn’t see.
But that voice.
“M’lady, come away,” Albert’s gruff whisper seemed a thousand miles away.
A tremor shook her, coiled down to her gut where it writhed. Bitter bile rose at the back of her throat. Feeling fled her fingers, then they clenched with the icy chill that pervaded her entire body.
The crack of a riding crop to solid wood thwacked and the whole building seemed to shudder. She flinched with it.
“I don’t care whose it is, boy.” Thwack. The cloying odor of patchouli swirled around her. “Do it now or suffer the consequences.”
Fight me, Lady Philippa, and you’ll suffer the consequences.
Chapter 21
I hear his voice in my nightmares. What I endeavor with all my heart to forget in the daylight hours, plagues my nights.
~ from the diary of Piper Brudenall, February 1893
Black, fathomless spots danced before her eyes. Terror struck, heart hammering. She swayed on her feet.
“Piper!”
Arms like an iron vise wrapped around her and blind panic seized her breath. She jerked left and right to get away, frantic to free herself and managed to wrench one arm loose.
“No!”
The scream emerged as a hoarse moan. Writhing against the unrelenting grip that held her, she kicked out as she was swept off her feet and carried out of the stable.
“No!”
She beat her fists on his back, her feeble efforts bouncing off him like a drum. Kicking again, she was rewarded with a low grunt but gained nothing more. Struggling, twisting, she fought for freedom. A far different flight than the one she’d fled only moments before.
Her feet touched the ground and she lashed out once more.
“Piper, stop,” the command was low and harsh. Another abrupt shake rattled her teeth. “Look at me.”
She stared up at him, unseeing. Dread veiled her vision in blackness. In misery. He’d drawn her in to deceive her.
“Piper, please. Look at me, lass.” The demand was soft yet unshakable. A quiet reassurance in the soothing brogue.
Brogue.
The shroud of alarm began to clear and the first thing that came into focus was Connor’s eyes. Harried, yet caring.
“Connor?”
“Aye, lass. It’s me.” He smiled at her, stern yet comforting nonetheless, and Piper flung herself into his arms, clawing at his back to get closer. Safer. She would have climbed right into him if she could have managed it. Soothing hands smoothed her hair, rubbed her back in small circles. “I’m here. I’ve got ye, lass.”
Then, “I’ve got her. See to it nae one follows.”
Blinking away the lingering darkness, Piper peered up into Albert’s sorrowful brown eyes. Of all the people, he knew what she’d run from. What she feared.
Not the unknown as some scolded.
He knew, as she did, precisely what she was afraid of. What oppressive darkness haunted her for years until Connor had come to show her the light.
“Albert.”
“I’m so sorry, m’lady. I tried to stop ye…warn ye.”
He shook his head sadly, as if it were all his fault. It wasn’t. It was hers for thinking any amount of time would dampen the memory of the threat behind her. Or the power of the one that continued to loom over her.
Slipping out of Connor’s embrace, she hugged the older man. “Thank you, Albert. I know you have always…”
Her words fractured, however, he nodded as if he completely understood. “Aye, m’lady.”
“Keep a weather eye on him,” Connor commanded, his voice dark with more menace and anger than she would have thought him capable. “Set a guard if ye maun. He’s to come nowhere near her, is that understood?”
“Aye, sir.” The groom nodded.
“And shoot him is he tries to take my horse.”
“With pleasure, sir.”
Albert touched the brim of his cap and trotted back up the path to the stable. A second later, Piper’s feet were swept from under her as Connor picked her up as if she were an invalid child.
“I can walk.” She wished the assurance emerged in a firmer manner. The clean, masculine smell of him banished the lingering scent of cologne. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she rested her cheek on his shoulder and stole more of the comfort and assurance she craved. “Where are you going?”
He wasn’t headed back to her cottage. Rather, his long strides followed a winding footpath through the trees that led toward the main house.
“Yer house may be well-sheltered but it may no’ be entirely safe any longer. There’s one spot we can be assured nae one will happen upon ye, where nae one will enter wi’out permission,” he told her. “My rooms.”
She wanted to argue, but didn’t. Despite the haven provided by Connor’s firm hold, she had little conviction in her safety. The precarious existence she’d built for herself was flipped upside down, leaving her woozy and battered. As if she’d tumbled along with the landslide when her world went askew.
Panic subsiding, she was left with quivering, nauseating tremors in her stomach. The shock was taking longer to recede. Her chin quavered. She clenched her teeth to subdue it. “He’s never come here before. Not in all this time.”
“Yer merchant?”
“That man in the stable is the Duke of Rutledge.” The raspy words barely made it past her lips. There was a hitch in Connor’s step before he hefted her higher in his arms and hastened his pace. “I take it you’ve heard of him?”
“Aye.” The word was tight. “And his son.”
Connor hadn’t spent long in London, a single Season while Fiona was courted by a curious conglomeration of suitors before settling on the Marquis of Aylesbury. Regardless, a fistful of months had been long enough for him to be familiar with the Duke of Rutledge’s fearsome reputation. A man condescending of lords and servants alike. Who scorned any who offered him no advantage. A man of unpredictable temperament, political and financial power, and perverse proclivities.
The duke should have been banned from polite society. Would have been, if he didn’t have the Prince of Wales’s ear.
The son, Viscount Dormer
, was rumored to be far worse than the sire. Years back, he’d ruined one earl’s daughter rather publicly. Although there’d been the obligatory offer of marriage to douse the scandal, the girl’s father argued he’d rather a ruined daughter than let her wed a man like Dormer.
The viscount had been banished from London for it. Connor hadn’t heard much more on the matter. That alone spoke volumes.
That was the man Piper’s mother arranged for her to wed?
I suppose I should have known selling her only child to the devil to obtain her goals would rank low on a list of my mother’s sins, she’d said.
Och, the man was far worse than the devil himself.
Her body quaked in his arms. Like a whipped dog. She nearly strangled him with her hold around his neck. “I hadn’t thought I’d react so. It was the shock. I never expected…”
Connor held her tight as he could, hoping to convey enough strength and security to soothe the tremors away.
Her tepid distress when he’d first happened upon her unexpectedly months ago was nothing in comparison to the blatant fear he saw when he carried her out of the stable. Eyes wide, nearly black with her pupils dilated. Blankly staring as if she saw nothing before her, seeing only the past.
What had Rutledge’s son done to her?
* * *
“Put me down,” Piper whispered when they reached the gate to the kitchen court and he fumbled with the handle. “I can walk.”
His head shook of its own accord. “Nay, I’ve got ye, lass.”
“Please. I…I don’t want to worry Hilde.”
Unwilling to argue with her soft plea when his main goal was to see her safe from Rutledge’s notice, Connor set her on the ground. Her hand was like ice in his hand as he gripped it, towing her through the service hall.
“Mr. MacKintosh!” a stern voice boomed as they passed the housekeeper’s office. They stopped as Mrs. Davies appeared in the door. Her gaze softened on Piper, then mutated into a scowl when it settled on him. “Whatever are you thinking? She cannot be here. Not now.”
“I’m well aware of the threat, Mrs. Davies.”
A Question for the Ages (Questions for a Highlander Book 7) Page 19
