“If you ask me,” Gavin shot back without thinking, “you wouldn’t know a good match if it slapped you in the face like your rotter of a husband. What’s Nancy doing torn between a decrepit bag of bones and a vagabond French tutor, of all people? She should be in a London ballroom, taking her pick of eligible young bucks with educated accents and all their teeth.”
Rose’s mouth fell open. “You don’t know anything about it!”
“And why’s that? You returned my letters, not the other way around. And then you show up here and expect me to help match her up with that ancient lecher? Where’s the wedding going to be, by his plot in the family cemetery so he can tumble right in when the ceremony concludes?”
“You’re an ass.” Her hands fisted on her hips. “I should never have come to you.”
“So I’m an ass,” he scoffed. “That’s not news to either of us. Heatherbrook was one, too, and he finally got what was coming to him. Need I fear the same fate?”
“I didn’t kill my husband,” Rose hissed, “but I’m definitely considering killing you!”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Gavin raked her with a speculative glance. “What were you doing before you discovered his body? Wandering the halls alone?”
“No, I…” She hesitated. “I was with Nancy.”
“Where?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did you just ask Nancy? I saw you talking to her a moment ago.”
Gavin crossed his arms. “Actually, I did. And if you were together, you’ll tell me the same thing. Where were you?”
“The nursery?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” His voice rose so loud his sister backed up a step. “God damn it, Rose, be honest! I thought you thought I offed the rotter.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Did you?”
“No!”
“Well, neither did I!”
“Er, excuse me,” came the Stanton chit’s unwelcome voice. “You’re standing in the path of my ball.”
Gavin kicked it out of his way.
“Er, fair enough,” the Stanton chit mumbled. “I’ll just hit it from here, then.”
“You’ll never change,” Rose snapped before sweeping off in the opposite direction without a backward glance.
No?
He stalked over to where he’d kicked the Stanton chit’s ball, swiped it from the grass just in time to avoid having his knuckles shattered by her swinging mallet, and tossed it to its original location a few feet to the left. She stumbled at the sudden lack of resistance. He caught her by the shoulders, righted her, and aimed her toward her ball.
“Sorry,” he muttered, earning an even more startled glance. “I have a feeling I’m going to become fairly adept at apologizing before this party concludes.”
The Stanton chit shot him a wary look before rearranging herself behind her twice-displaced ball.
Gavin sighed, stepped behind her, and placed his hands over her wrists. “Not like that. Like this.” He kicked at her feet until her stance improved. Somewhat. “Now swing.”
“I made it through the wicket,” she cried, turning to flash him a brief grin before chasing off after her ball.
There. He’d spent at least thirty seconds not being an ass. That should count for something.
He spun to track down his own ball and found himself face-to-face with Miss Pemberton. The expression she wore indicated she’d just caught him very much being an ass, not the other way around.
“Nice of you to help Susan,” she said evenly. Something in her eyes suggested she planned to aim her ball toward his crotch, not toward the wicket.
“She’s a featherbrain,” he said quickly. “I hated every moment of it. May I help you?”
“No.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I ordered you around again after just apologizing for ordering you around.”
She gazed at him for a moment, then nodded. “Accepted.”
He leaned for her mallet. “May I—?”
“No.” She jerked it out of his reach. “I don’t need you.”
“Fine.”
He glared at her. She glared right back.
Then: “Why did you shave?”
He faltered. “Why did I what?”
“You’ve appeared every other morning as though you couldn’t be bothered with your toilette unless the mood struck you otherwise. So why now? Today? To look like Quality? To show off the scar along your jaw? To impress Susan? To—”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her to his chest. Their mallets tumbled to the grass, ignored. “To impress you, if you must know. If I seemed careless with my appearance before, it was because I had no reason to be careful.” He tilted his face forward, gentled his tone. “I treated you badly this morning. I wished to make amends, and I thought—foolishly, it now seems—if I looked better on the outside, perhaps you’d think I was better on the inside.”
“I already liked you on the inside,” she whispered, brushing the tips of her fingers against his recently-smoothed cheeks. “I liked your outside, too. But now if you kiss me, it won’t feel the way I remember it.”
“If I kiss you?” he echoed disbelievingly. “Woman, it takes every ounce of my willpower not to bend—”
“Um, Uncle Lioncroft?”
“Jane. Yes.” Gavin cleared his throat, set down Miss Pemberton, and turned to his niece with a forced smile. “I’m sorry. Was I in the way again?”
“No, I wondered if you could help me like you helped Miss Stanton. I can’t make my ball go through the wicket unless it’s up close, and look at it—the pink ball is really far. It’s impossible. For me. Can you help?”
“Yes. Yes, I’d love to help you. One second. Miss Pemberton, I—” But she was shaking her head and backing away, her reclaimed mallet already in hand. “Never mind.” He turned back to his niece. “Now, stand with your feet like this. No, like—yes, exactly. Bend just a little. Not that much! Yes, better. Put your hands here and here. Mind your grip. Now pull your arms back and swing.”
Thwack. The ball sailed several yards past the wicket. Unfortunately not through the wicket, but with considerably more force and accuracy than previously witnessed.
“Excellent shot,” he assured her. “Next time, you’ll get it.”
She grinned. “Thank you.”
“By the way,” he began casually, almost unable to make himself ask the question. “On the night your father died, you were in the nursery?”
“I’m always in the stupid nursery. Except today! Pall-mall is grand. And the kites, oh! All my friends will be so jealous. The picnic was excellent, too, even if I got marmalade all over my dress. But that hardly matters when I’ve a new wardrobe to look forward to anyway, right, Uncle?”
“Er, right. But that night in the nursery, Jane. Who were you with?”
“The twins, of course. I’m always with the twins.”
His heart skipped a beat. “Just the twins?”
“Yes.” She paused for the briefest of seconds. “Oh, wait, no. I forgot. Also with Mother and Nancy. Right. All of us. Can I go after my ball now?”
Gavin nodded and let her go, frowning as she danced across the grass. Had she really been in the nursery with her mother and sister? Or was Miss Pemberton right, and that was simply the story the girls had been instructed to tell if questioned?
Chapter 30
By the time the game ended, Gavin had no more answers than when he began.
He had, however, helped the twins to “win” the pall-mall game, and managed to stay as far away from the Stanton chit and her mother as possible while still remaining within shot of the wickets. The guests were now drawing nearer, with questioning looks in their eyes. He’d no sooner motioned a few servants to begin collecting the mallets and balls when his thirteen-year-old niece hurled herself into his arms, wailing as though she’d lost a limb to enemy fire.
“No, no, no,” she cried into his waistcoat. “This has been the very best birthday and I do not wish for i
t to end! You said there would be picnics, and there were picnics, and then you said there would be kite-flying, and then there was kite-flying, and you said we would also have pall-mall, and we did, and the twins won even though I’m pretty sure I really won, or maybe Aunt Rutherford because she never snuck in extra hits for her ball, but now all the things you said we could do are over, which means my birthday is over. But I don’t want to return indoors and resume an ordinary day when my birthday started out so extraordinary!”
“Jane.” By gripping her about the forearms, Gavin somehow managed to pluck her off his chest. He removed her to arm’s length, bent to eye level, and did his best to ignore the growing crowd. “What else do you wish to do? Kite-flying and pall-mall are the only amusements I have, and I must confess—I only have them because you requested them of me.”
“Not true!” She wiggled in place. “You have the maze! May we explore the maze? Say we can! The twins saw it, too. Didn’t you, girls?”
He glanced over his shoulder at two nodding, giggling five-year-olds. Was hysteria contagious?
“Jane,” he said again. “I do not have a maze. Nor do I have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“A huge maze! Behind the manor. All those hedgerows, taller than my head. I’m sure I saw the roof to a gazebo in the center. May we play in the gazebo? And race between the bushes?”
After her words sank in, Gavin straightened to his full height. “You want to play in my blackberry farm?”
The Stanton chit affected her fish impression again. “You have a blackberry farm?”
He shot her a pitying look. “Why did you suppose my home was called Blackberry Manor?”
She froze, blinked, and exchanged a glance with Miss Pemberton before muttering, “Better you not know.”
“So, can we, Uncle Lioncroft? Can we? Can we?”
“All right, but—wait!” He grabbed Jane by the arm and the closest twin by a blond braid. “This is important, so please listen very closely. You must be careful not to touch the plants. The brambles are sharp and will scratch you.”
Rebecca peered up at him. “Will it hurt?”
“Yes,” he answered solemnly, releasing Jane’s arm and Rachel’s plait.
“Why do you keep plants that hurt people?” Rebecca asked with a frown.
He hesitated, then dropped to one knee, mostly to give himself time to think of a way to explain his ownership of a blackberry farm. All of his nieces stared at him expectantly, as did a fair number of his houseguests.
“Well,” he began, half-wishing he’d inherited money or won his home on the turn of a card so he wouldn’t have to explain his choice to a crowd. “You may not think much of them, to look at the fields now. Lots of spiny shoots and arching stems and those prickly brambles I warned you about. But in the springtime, those branches are full and green, and covered in beautiful sweet-smelling flowers.”
Jane clapped her hands to her chest. “What color?”
“Er, white ones.” What was with her and colors? Gavin did his best to stay on topic. “Then, over the course of the summer, the flowers fade away to give the berries room to grow among the leaves.”
Rebecca’s eyes widened. “Are the berries tasty?”
“Very much so. And by late summer, the ripened berries smell heavenly. They’re delicious and sweet, but sharp and prickly when you try to pick them. It’s important to wear gloves so they don’t scratch you.”
Rachel nodded sagely. “They don’t like to be picked.”
“Perhaps not. Even in the summer with all the flowers and berries, the hedgerows are beautiful but dangerous. Blackberry bushes like to grow wild and are very difficult to tame. You must stay on the paths and not touch the plants.”
“Even if we see berries?” Rebecca asked.
“Especially if you see berries. We don’t pick them after Michaelmas—September twenty-ninth. They become very bitter and can make you ill.”
“Even I wish to see these mysterious hedgerows,” came an amused female voice.
He glanced up in time to see Francine Rutherford looking surprised by her own admission.
“As do I,” rejoined her husband, and offered her his arm.
By the time Gavin rose to his feet, his guests were already en route to the rear of his property, with the twins scampering several feet ahead. He loped forward until he reached Miss Pemberton’s side and was inordinately pleased when she accepted his proffered arm as well.
“You are wonderful with children,” she said after a moment. “I imagine you will make a marvelous father.”
Gavin nearly took a header into the stone siding of his house. “A what? Me?”
She laughed up at him. “Surely the thought has occurred to you before.” Her smile turned wry. “I’m sure the thought is occurring to Lady Stanton even as we speak.”
He slowed to a stop, allowing the chattering guests to continue forward and disappear behind the house before he turned to face Miss Pemberton.
“For the devil’s sake, any thoughts that woman has about me have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. Look at me. Truly look at me. I’m—I’m—” He ran a hand through his hair hard enough to hurt. “I’m not the marrying sort. I can barely hold a civil conversation with the guests of my own house party. I would be the worst husband. I couldn’t manage to be a good son or a good brother. I—” He turned away and resumed walking, increasing his pace with each stride. “I don’t wish to discuss my many shortcomings. I’d rather show you the blackberry fields. I wish you could see them in the spring, before the berries bud when the flowers are in full bloom. They’re beautiful.”
He swept her around the corner of his house to the rear of his property before she could comment on his inability to participate in successful, caring relationships.
“My kingdom awaits.” He used his free arm to encompass the whole of his fields with a mocking, sweeping gesture, and then turned to grin at Miss Pemberton.
She had frozen.
Not the good kind of frozen, such as frozen in wonder, with eyes shining and lips parted and hands clasped and cheeks flushed with excitement.
The bad kind of frozen.
Her eyes were painfully wide, her skin devoid of color and sheened with perspiration. Her shallow breaths escaped from parted lips with a faint but unsettling wheeze. Farms were not for everyone, but the normally staid Miss Pemberton didn’t tend to overreact. In fact, the only other time he’d seen her in such a state was after she’d laid her hands on Heatherbrook’s corpse.
“Miss Pemberton?” He stepped forward and around, blocking her view of the blackberry bushes with his chest. He tilted her chin up until her gaze met his, and tried not to blanch himself at the terror in her eyes. “What is it? Tell me.”
“I can’t go in there. I can’t go in there. If I go in there, he’ll get me. Where is he? Is he here already?” She shuddered. “No. I won’t go in there.”
What the devil did that mean?
“All right,” he said aloud, retaking her arm and steering her away from both the blackberry fields and his house. “We’ll save the farm tour for another day. See that little cottage ahead? It’s a summerhouse. I never had a reason to furnish it, so I apologize in advance for its lack of seating arrangements, but we’ll be close enough to the other guests without actually joining them”—good Lord, he was babbling as bad as Jane—“and we’ll be able to talk privately. Come. Just a few more feet.”
He half-carried her up the last three steps and into the summerhouse, and kicked the big white door closed behind them. There really wasn’t any furniture. Damn.
He backed against a window facing away from the fields, leveraged himself against the sill as best he could, with his feet spread wide, and pulled Miss Pemberton into his lap. Well, more like he pulled her into his embrace, as he’d tugged her to him face-forward. He smoothed down the sides of her gown until his hands curved over her hips, securing her between his thighs. Her palms settled atop his forearms.
&nb
sp; After a moment, she gave a little half sob, half laugh and toppled forward, smashing directly into his cravat, and mumbled something that sounded like, “I apologize.”
“For what?” he asked the top of her head. He dipped his chin until his lips pressed against the softness of her hair. “I have no idea what just happened. Did you have a vision?”
She nodded without looking up. “Earlier. Days earlier. With Susan. She was running through what I now know to be your fields, screaming for me. And then my stepfather burst through one of the paths, with me limp in his arms. He tossed me in his carriage and took me away.”
“Over my dead body,” Gavin said, and then paused as a horrible thought struck him. “Do your visions always come true?”
“Yes. No. I think so. I don’t know. I’ve never known of them not coming true—they seem to be memories, even the ones that haven’t happened yet—but I thought…I thought if I just didn’t go in the fields, he couldn’t take me out of them.”
“Logical enough.” He tilted his face until his cheek rested against the top of her hair. “We’ll do our best to keep you as far from the fields as possible. When was this capture to take place? Today?”
She sighed against his chest. “I don’t know. My visions tend to be simultaneously useful and useless.”
“All right. Well, let’s keep being logical. We were just to the side of my property, were we not? And before that, in the front garden. The front garden is an excellent vantage point of the only means by which a carriage may come anywhere near us, and there were none. Trust me, I’ve been glancing over my shoulder ever since the Stanton woman first threatened to summon the constabulary.”
“It’ll be a race,” she mumbled with a hiccupy laugh. “Which one of us gets taken away first.”
“Not amusing,” he returned gruffly, pressing his lips to her hair again. And then suddenly it wasn’t enough. He threaded his fingers through what was left of her chignon, cradling the back of her head so he could gaze into her eyes.
Then he bent his head and kissed her.
He meant it to be a small kiss, a dry kiss, a chaste kiss. The merest brushing of closed lips against closed lips. The briefest of illicit contact.
Too Wicked to Kiss: Gothic Love Stories #1 Page 24
