“Who is ’e?” Mrs. Mullins spoke for them all as she leaned closer to stare down at the man’s bloodless face. His head was turned slightly toward Anna, and she could see the bruise already darkening his temple. Wincing, she tried not to think that she might have done him a permanent injury.
“He’s a bloody thief, that’s who he is, ’tis clear as the nose on your face! What else would he be doing skulking about the house in the middle of the night? We should be searching him for his booty, not standing around gawking like a bunch of bloody imbeciles!” Beedle had finally dared to edge closer, but he stood poised as if for attack, axe at the ready.
“Did you see ’im take anythin’, Miss Anna?”
Just then the cause of all the commotion groaned and stirred. All of them, Anna included, gasped, their gazes fastening fearfully on the intruder.
“Here, now, don’t you be movin’, you, or it’ll be off with your head!” Davis shook the poker threateningly, but the housebreaker was already still once more. If the man heard, he gave no indication of it. Anna was conscious of a moment’s deep relief that she truly hadn’t killed him after all. Then, as Mrs. Mullins repeated her question, Anna slowly shook her head.
Perhaps if they found no evidence of thievery, they wouldn’t be able to hang the man after all. She could hurry up to the library, replace the jewels in the hidey-hole, tidy up the mess, and no one would be the wiser as to what he had been about.
Suddenly the jewels inside the cloak she wore seemed to burn. Never before in her life had Anna told such a monstrous, deliberate lie.
But what was a man’s life worth, when all was said and done? Surely more than one small lie!
“Somebody go summon the master! You, there, ’Enricks, don’t stand about lookin’ as stupid as can be! You go!” Mrs. Mullins gave the order over her shoulder, her tone a decided snap.
“Henricks takes his orders from me,” Davis reminded the housekeeper glacially. Even in the face of an emergency, the butler was not about to forget his long-standing feud with his rival for power in the household. Mrs. Mullins harrumphed. Davis looked at the footman, who stood hesitating behind the housemaids, with triumph. “Go along with you, Henricks, and fetch his lordship.”
“Yes, Mr. Davis.” Henricks nodded and departed. The maids, reassured by the housebreaker’s continued prostration, formed a small circle around him.
“Miss Anna, did he—scare you?” Polly asked in a thrilled whisper.
Anna, knowing very well what the maid longed to hear, managed to shake her head. She still felt very odd, almost boneless, and she had to clamp her teeth tightly together to keep them from chattering. Even sprawled unconscious on the floor, the intruder looked huge, muscular, and unnervingly tough. Impossible to believe that she had emerged the victor in their battle. Impossible to believe that that firm mouth had taken hers, or that long-fingered hand caressed her breast.
“Oh, well, that’s a blessing,” said Polly, clearly disappointed. At that moment the intruder stirred again, lifting his head from the floor and shaking it, then getting his arms beneath him as he tried to rise. Anna gasped and scooted back. The maids jumped.
“Oh, no you don’t!” shouted Davis, and to the accompaniment of a cacophony of shrieks and shouts, he clouted the man over the head with the poker. The resulting thump made Anna wince. The housebreaker immediately collapsed again.
“We’ll have to tie him up,” Davis said, looking around him as though hoping a rope would miraculously appear.
“Why don’t you just sit on ’im, Mr. Davis? That’d ’old an army down, it would!”
Mrs. Mullins’s suggestion, referring as it did to Davis’s substantial girth, was maliciously meant, but the other servants seized on it.
“Aye, Mr. Davis, you sit on ’im. We’ll all sit on ’im! That’ll hold ’im right and tight for the master!”
Anna felt her composure, and with it her sense of humor, start to return as that suggestion was carried out. Davis, poker held stiffly in front of his chest, straddled the housebreaker’s back while Beedle sat on his shoulders, brandishing the axe. Polly and Sadie perched on his legs, and Mrs. Mullins, muttering, hovered over all. An elephant would have had a hard time moving under that combined weight.
“Don’t you be afeared, Miss Anna, we’ve got him fast,” Beedle assured her, seeing the way her eyes fixed on their prisoner.
“I’m not afraid,” Anna answered in a voice that was rapidly growing stronger. Her mind was beginning to function normally as well. In a very few minutes Graham would appear. The confrontation she had been dreading since the previous night was at hand—although perhaps he would be too caught up in the drama to worry about her. In any case, if she were to carry out her plan, she must get up to the library at once.…
And then she would sleep the rest of the night with Chelsea. Even if she must give in to Graham eventually, it would not be this night.
“I—I’m going up to bed,” Anna said, forcing her still jellylike knees to stiffen so that she could stand.
“But, Miss Anna, won’t you be wishful of telling ’is lordship what ’appened? After all, ’twas you who captured ’im!”
“O’ course she wants to go ter bed, ox-brain! Miss Anna’s a lady, she is, and she’s ’ad quite a shock! She can talk to ’is lordship in the mornin’!”
This exchange between Beedle and Mrs. Mullins left the footman looking mulish. Davis clenched the matter with a silencing glare at his fellow servants.
“You go along now, Miss Anna. I’ll tell his lordship what’s needful, and then you can tell him the rest in your own good time.”
Anna, with a wan smile at the butler and a last, quick glance at the motionless housebreaker, picked up the overlong skirts of the cloak and started to hurry from the room. The best she could do for him now was to replace the emeralds and disclaim all knowledge of what he had been about at Gordon Hall. Could they hang a man merely for breaking into a gentleman’s residence? She didn’t think so.
But she was too late. Already, approaching rapidly along the very passage she meant to take, came the heavy tread and deep voice that she had learned to dread. Seconds later her brother-in-law filled the doorway.
Graham was a large man, tall and stocky in a way that promised considerable girth later in life. His once-fair hair had darkened to an indeterminate shade of brown, and his blunt features would not have been out of place on a pugilist. The only things that he and Paul had in common were the same pale blue eyes that Chelsea had inherited. Dreamy and thick-lashed on Paul, they were hard and keen in Graham’s face. Where Paul’s jaw had been round, and perhaps softer than a man’s should be, Graham’s was square and jutted. But the difference in the brothers was not only physical: Graham possessed not a whit of Paul’s sensitivity or kind nature. Graham was about as sensitive and kind as a hound on the hunt.
“Good God, Anna, what mad start is this?” With Henricks fluttering in obsequious attendance, Graham strode through the door, still tying the knot of his dressing gown as he surveyed both her and the scene. Anna had come to a dead stop just a few feet from the arched doorway and stood clutching the housebreaker’s cloak closely about her person as she looked at Graham without replying. How she had come to despise him—and fear him too! She could barely be in his company for a matter of minutes without feeling her skin crawl.
“ ’Tis a thief, my lord. Miss Anna’s caught ’im!” Mrs. Mullins’s shrill voice drew Graham’s attention.
“A thief? Is this true?” Graham caught Anna’s arm in passing and dragged her along with him as he moved to stand staring down at the housebreaker. Anna resigned herself to the fact that, for the moment, escape was impossible. With Davis, Beedle, and the maids still straddling the housebreaker’s back, it was difficult to see much of the man himself. Graham’s hand around her arm, even with the material of the cloak and her nightdress to protect her from his actual touch, was making her feel faintly sick. All she could think of was getting away.…
“
Anna?” When she said not a word, Graham shook her arm, his eyes narrowing on her face. “What happened?”
After the way he had tried to force himself upon her the previous night, she could not bear to be so near him. She had awakened to find him crawling naked between her sheets, his hand already groping along her thigh.…
“Anna?” His hand tightened on her arm, and he bent so close that his breath fanned her cheek. Anna averted her face. For the housebreaker’s sake, she could not tell the unvarnished truth. She must prevaricate—but it was hard to lie when she could barely even think!
“I came upon him … by accident. He meant to carry me off, and I… I tried to shoot him with your papa’s dueling pistol, but I missed, and then I hit him with that candlestick.” She nodded toward the object in question,
“He tried to carry you off?” Graham’s voice was shrill with incredulity. “Who the devil is he? Do you know him? What did he want here?” His rapid-fire questions were accompanied by another shake of the arm.
“Why, I came to call on you, brother,” came the reply, in a gravelly voice that was familiar to Anna. She started, even as the servants gasped and Graham’s head swung sharply around. All eyes fixed on the housebreaker, whose eyes were open. Despite his ignominious position and the great bruise purpling his temple, his gaze was both fearless and mocking.
“You!” Graham sounded as if the work choked him. His face had turned an alarming shade of puce.
“In the flesh. Were you not expecting me? You should have been.”
“Summon the magistrate! Quickly!” Graham sounded more agitated than Anna had ever heard him. The servants were looking from one man to the other, their expressions as baffled as Anna felt. They were so bemused, in fact, that not one of them made so much as a move to obey.
“Did you hear me? I said summon the magistrate! Now!” Graham was practically screaming, his fists clenched at his sides, his face purple.
“Yes, your lordship!” Henricks responded to that shouted command with a hasty bow and a flurry of feet. As he ran, hatless and coatless, out the front door into the December night, the housebreaker spoke again, drawing all attention back to himself.
“And here I thought you’d be glad to see me,” he said, and laughed softly. “As your last surviving male relative, you know.”
Standing beside Graham, Anna could hear the grinding of her brother-in-law’s teeth.
“You’ve overreached yourself this time, you bastard! You’ll go to gaol for this! Search him! Let’s see what the thieving gypsy bastard tried to steal! Search him, I say!”
“But my lord …” Davis tried to protest, Graham, his mouth contorting and his eyes bulging with fury, made an angry gesture.
“I said search him!” he screamed.
“Yes, my lord. Move, you idiot.” This last, muttered in an undertone to Beedle and accompanied by a shove on his underling’s shoulders, caused the footman to rise hastily to his feet. Davis put down the poker and shifted his position, clumsily patting his hands over as much of the housebreaker’s person as he could reach. As Davis scooted backwards, the maids stood up to get out of the way. Graham moved closer, an expression midway between a gloat and a snarl twisting his face as he stared down at the housebreaker—who chose that moment to make his move.
His hand snaked out, and with a quick, powerful grab he caught one of Graham’s ankles, jerking it from beneath him and flipping him backwards as neatly as a card through space. Graham yelped, Anna and the maids screamed, Beedle jumped back and cursed, and the housebreaker let out a mighty roar. Then he shoved himself to his feet, toppling the bellowing David like Humpty Dumpty from the wall.
“Get him! Get him!” Beedle charged, swinging the axe—and the housebreaker, ducking, felled him with a right to the jaw that lifted the footman clear off his feet. The axe went one way, skittering harmlessly along the floor, and Beedle went the other, cannonballing into Anna, who was knocked flat. Beedle fell on top of her, his weight driving the breath from her body with an audible whoosh. She lay there for a moment, stunned, as Beedle, gasping apologies, at last managed to roll off her.
“Catch him, damn it! Don’t let him get away!” Graham’s shout reverberated through the hall as Anna, winded, lay motionless. When she was once again able to move, the housebreaker had already disappeared out the door. Davis and Graham, the latter waving Beedle’s recovered axe and cursing like a stevedore, were after him like baying hounds after a fox.
VI
Anna, shaken, had just gotten to her feet when Graham came barreling back through the door with Davis trailing unhappily behind him. Graham was scowling ferociously as Davis quietly shut the door. Davis, in response to a discreet look from Beedle, darted a glance at his lordship and shook his head.
“You lot clear out of here,” Graham snarled, glaring at the gaping servants as though looking for someone upon whom to vent his wrath. The maids and Beedle, needing no more than the expression on the lord’s face to give the command emphasis, immediately melted away. Mrs. Mullins, a hardier type, offered to make tea. She was shooed away with a peremptory movement of Graham’s hand, and left looking offended.
Davis, his face wooden, bent to retrieve the pistol and the candlestick from the floor. He replaced the former gently in its case and the latter in its customary position on the table, and looked around to see if he could discover any other offenses against tidiness. There being none, he took himself off, the dignity of his bearing almost making up for the shambles the night’s work had made of his appearance.
Quickly recovering her wits, Anna made a move as if to follow him. Not for anything in the world did she wish to be left alone with Graham. But she was too late.
Even as she murmured a hasty good-night, Graham came up behind her and caught her arm.
“I want to know what happened. Everything.” There was a harsh edge to his voice that made it totally unlike his normal hearty tone. Caught by his hand on her arm, Anna had no choice but to stop and look up at him.
“I told you. He—I saw him, and he tried to carry me off, and I shot at him. Then I hit him with the candlestick, and he was knocked unconscious. Then Davis and the others came and—you know the rest.”
“How did he get in? What did he want?” The question had an urgent undertone that bewildered Anna.
She shook her head. “You heard what he said— that he came to visit you. Graham, who is he? What did he mean by calling you ’brother’?”
Graham’s mouth twisted. “He’s a low-life bastard who’s been trying to pass himself off as my father’s by-blow for years. My father never acknowledged him, and I mean to follow that example. His mother was a gypsy whore; his father could have been anybody. He hates us all, every living Traverne. I suppose we must count ourselves lucky that we weren’t all murdered in our beds.”
The expression on Graham’s face was so dark that Anna involuntarily shivered. If the housebreaker hated all Travernes, then it was clear that Graham returned the favor with interest. Hatred shone from his pale blue eyes.
“He was up to no good, you may be sure. It was fortunate that you came across him.” Graham’s expression changed. His eyes sharpened as they looked down at her. The hold he had on her arm tightened too. “What were you doing from bed at such an hour? I was on my way to visit you.”
Anna lifted her chin. Her eyes as they met his were unflinching. She was small-boned and fragile next to his bull-like frame, and his hold on her arm was tight. He could break her in two with a minimum of effort—but still she meant to stand her ground.
“That was why I was from my bed,” she said steadily, and for a moment his grip on her arm tightened so cruelly that she winced. Then his hold eased, and he began instead to subtly knead her arm. There was something obscene about the almost gentle caress, and something obscene too in the tiny smile that played across his mouth as he watched her face, feeding on the revulsion she could not quite manage to hide.
“I meant what I said, Anna. I mean to be repai
d for my kindness in taking you and your gel in.”
“Chelsea is your niece! You have a moral obligation to provide for her!”
Graham snapped the fingers of his free hand.
“That’s how much your moral obligation means to me. But don’t worry, I don’t mean to abandon the brat, unless you make it necessary. I just want to be recompensed for her upkeep. Something for something, you know. A business transaction, pure and simple.”
His head dipped toward hers. The hand on her arm tightened again, and his eyes were on her mouth. Anna, shuddering, realized that he meant to kiss her. Summoning her last reserves of strength, she managed to jerk her arm free and step back.
“You make me sick!”
Graham’s eyes glittered at her. His expression was not pleasant as he surveyed her. “And you make me— But you know what you make me, don’t you, my dear sister-in-law? You’ve always teased me, batting those big eyes at me and then running away like a skittish virgin. But you’re no virgin any longer, and the time has come to pay the piper. You’ll bed me, my dear, or get the hell out of my house. You and your brat.”
“I’ll tell Barbara.…” She made the threat in sheer desperation. Graham laughed.
“And thus cut your own throat. Barbara doesn’t care for having a widowed young sister-in-law in her house constantly taking the shine out of her. She’d welcome the excuse to throw you out on your pretty ear. I don’t want you to be under any illusions about that.”
Anna stared at him. The smirking smile on his square face made her long to slap him; she had to close her hands into fists to resist the impulse. Reading defeat in her face, Graham smiled wider and reached out as though to catch her arm again. But before he could touch her the front door burst open. Through it hurried Henricks, followed by a short, greatcoated stranger. Both stopped just beyond the doorway as they became aware of Graham’s presence.
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