After the Abduction

by Sabrina Jeffries

  So it was with some surprise he heard himself say, “As you wish. I’ll do what I can to help.”

  “When can we begin?”

  “Cook is preparing a light luncheon for two o’clock. Why don’t we begin after that?” It would take him that long to brace himself for an afternoon of “lessons” with his lovely nemesis.

  “Excellent. I’m eager to learn, my lord.” She started toward the door, then paused, though she didn’t look at him. “One more thing. Under no circumstances will these lessons include any…er…intimacies.”

  A laugh escaped him before he could prevent it. “You’ll have to be more specific. What kind of ‘intimacies’ do you mean—the kind you claim to have shared with my brother? Or the kind we shared last night?”

  Darting an annoyed look at him, she snapped, “I mean kissing, sir. There will be no kissing.”

  How very interesting. “I don’t see why not. If my kisses move you so little, they shouldn’t annoy you. And how else can I teach you to distinguish between the kisses of a scoundrel and those of a respectable gentleman?”

  She colored from her dainty hairline down to the soft swell of bosom peeping above her bodice. “That’s one part of the lesson I’ve already learned sufficiently.”

  “Are you sure?” With a lazy smile, he leaned back and let his gaze drift over her trim form all rigged out in a fetching pink gown. “Because you didn’t give me a fair chance to demonstrate the full range of ‘adequate’ gentlemanly kissing last night. There are infinite variations, and I’d be delighted to demonstrate every single one.”

  Alarm filled her face. “If you even so much as attempt it—” she burst out, then caught herself. “I see what you’re about. You’re toying with me. But I am in earnest, sir.”

  “So am I.” He cast her a wolfish smile that made her swallow hard and glance away. He found himself feeling decidedly more optimistic about his chances with her.

  Wanting to test the waters, he threw her challenge back at her. “Of course, if you’re afraid that my kissing might improve upon practice and thus tempt you to behave improperly, do feel free to retract your proposition.”

  “Not at all, my lord.” Her sudden smile was honey drizzled over steel. “If you insist upon kissing me, then by all means go to it. I should like nothing better than an excuse to slap you for your impertinence.”

  Turning on her heel, she flounced toward the door.

  “Juliet?”

  She stopped. “Yes, Lord Templemore?”

  “I’ll risk a little pain to get what I want.”

  She cast him a taunting look over her shoulder. “What makes you think it’ll only be a ‘little’ pain?”

  With that she sailed out the door. And for long moments after she left, he sat there laughing.

  Chapter 6

  Revenge is a dish best served cold.

  English proverb written on a list once mounted on the Templemore schoolroom wall

  D rat it all, she’d made an enormous tactical error. When Juliet had proposed spending time alone with Lord Templemore for the silly reason she’d given him, she’d thought it a good method for unmasking him. Though she didn’t like playing such games, she saw no way around it when he was so infernally stubborn. What she hadn’t considered was how he’d regard the matter.

  He’d clarified that in the study. He regarded it as any good sportsman would. As open season. On her.

  So now as she sat at luncheon with him and her family two hours later, she couldn’t help fretting over what was to come. This was far beyond her experience with men, to be sure. Oh, why had she thought criticizing his ability to kiss would help her cause? Why had she laid down a gauntlet he seemed more than eager to take up?

  If he did, she was in deep trouble. Because if Lord Templemore set out to prove himself any better at kissing than he already was, they’d have to scrape her off the floor when he was done with her.

  She shot a furtive look to where he presided over the table in the overbearingly magnificent dining room. Officious and formal, he hid well his rakish character. Gone was the sensual smile caressing her from tip to toe. Gone the challenging gaze, black and secret as a cave promising treasures beyond imagining.

  As they ate from a light spread of sausages, bread, and a local cheese, he offered her the same remote courtesy he offered Rosalind and Griff. But she knew it for a farce, even if nobody else did. It contrasted too sharply with his teasing comments in the study and last night’s kisses.

  She groaned. She refused to think of his hot, hard mouth doing the most unnatural, intriguing things to hers. Bad enough that she’d lain awake half the night remembering his silky, masterful kisses, his hands anchoring her possessively against him—

  Enough of that! she reprimanded her too acute memory. Remember the plan. Don’t let him distract you.

  That was all that his sly flirtations were—distractions meant to disarm her. When she’d prayed for such attentions two years ago, all she’d received was a nearly ruined reputation and one insolent kiss. So this time she knew better than to let his attentions sway her. If he thought she’d melt into a puddle at his feet, he was sorely mistaken.

  “Where is your uncle today, Lord Templemore?” she asked when conversation dragged. His lofty lordship had probably warned the man off to prevent his speaking frankly. “I thought Mr. Pryce spent much of his time here.”

  “Rest assured, madam, if not for the snow, he’d be here. Once the lads have shoveled the walks and beaten down the paths, he’ll be in our pockets all the time. Especially at meals. He prefers my cook, you see.”

  “With good reason,” her sister put in. Rosalind looked blissful as she bit into an apple tart, her favorite. “Griff, we must get his lordship’s cook to write down the recipe for this. The cook at Knighton House makes ours too sour.”

  Griff glowered down the table at his lordship, as if it was all Lord Templemore’s fault that his cook made superior tarts. “I’ll make a note of it, darling.” He settled back in his chair and eyed his apple tart rival with the intensity of a man searching for flaws.

  Juliet couldn’t blame Griff for being envious. Charnwood would rival any estate with its amenities and obviously competent management. How odd that a man who’d recklessly involve himself with smugglers would also be a formidable estate manager. Why, she hadn’t found a single corner left undusted. The water in her washbasin was always fresh, the chamber pots always emptied. The maids even polished the undersides of the silver bowls, and nobody ever thought to look there. Except Juliet, of course.

  He must pay his servants very well. Either that, or terrify them into working like demons. From what Rosalind’s maid Polly had related, all the maids jumped when he spoke to them.

  But if he thought she would do the same, he was in for a shock.

  “Templemore, I’m curious about one matter regarding your uncle,” Griff said.

  “Yes?” His lordship ate his dessert with admirable calm, given the blistering looks Griff lobbed in his direction at regular intervals.

  Griff hadn’t touched his own apple tart. “Is Mr. Pryce married? He seems to spend a great deal of time at your house.”

  “Ah.” Lord Templemore flashed Griff a pained glance. “He’s widowed. My aunt died five years ago of a wasting sickness, and he sometimes grows lonely. But he isn’t often in Shropshire, so he doesn’t spend as much time here as it seems. He generally prefers to loll about at the townhouse in Bath.”

  “He has a house in Bath, does he?” Rosalind said.

  Lord Templemore smiled ruefully. “No, I do.”

  Rosalind straightened to attention. “It’s very generous of you to let your uncle use your house.” She darted a knowing glance at Juliet, obviously calculating how quickly she could yoke her sister to this wealthy paragon of generosity.

  Juliet ignored her sister and concentrated on dicing her own apple tart into bits.

  “Doesn’t sound so much generous as foolhardy,” Griff grumbled. “Let your re
lations take advantage of you, Templemore, and you’ll soon have no money left.”

  “Or they’ll drag you about the countryside on fool’s errands,” Juliet quipped, a little stung by Griff’s comment.

  “He didn’t mean you, dearest.” Rosalind shot Griff a warning look.

  “Of course I didn’t.” Griff stiffened. “And this was no fool’s errand. We found out some of what we needed to know.”

  Some of? Could Griff be as suspicious as she was? No, not given how he’d dismissed her arguments as frivolous. He simply couldn’t believe that a man of Lord Templemore’s stature could do something so heinous. Griff might not like his lordship, but he was impressed by the man’s apparent efforts to reverse the fortunes of a foolish father. Griff wouldn’t easily be persuaded of the man’s treachery.

  But she was not impressed, not in the least. Nothing was ever as it seemed with her nemesis. Just because he ran an efficient estate and was nice to his uncle and made her skin tingle didn’t mean he wasn’t every bit the scoundrel underneath. She merely had to figure out how to unmask his true character.

  “You know, Lord Templemore,” she said blithely, “I’m still puzzled by one matter. If your brother is dead and you knew nothing of his actions, then who started the rumors about the kidnapping? And why?”

  “I told you before, it was undoubtedly a servant.”

  “Not one of mine,” Griff said. “My servants are paid well not to gossip.”

  “Yes,” Lord Templemore said, “but considering your profession—”

  “You mean ‘trade’?” Griff snapped.

  “I mean dealing in smuggled goods,” his lordship said smoothly.

  Griff bristled. “I don’t do it anymore. My business has been legitimate for years.”

  He shrugged. “Still, the connection undoubtedly made you enemies. Someone might have paid your servants even more money to be disloyal.”

  “For what reason?” Griff sounded offended at the thought that the gossip might be his fault. “How could an enemy benefit from sullying my sister-in-law’s reputation?”

  Lord Templemore retreated. “It was merely a conjecture.”

  “And a bad one, too,” Griff retorted.

  This didn’t suit her purpose, Griff’s sniping at his lordship. It would only put Lord Templemore on his guard. “It wasn’t Griff’s servants,” she put in, “nor ours. Helena covered all that up very well. Since she alone saw my note, she told everybody—the servants, the townspeople—that we’d been summoned to London by Griff and Rosalind, who were returning early from their honeymoon and would meet us there. Then before she set off after me, she told everybody that she’d had to send me on first because she’d had to deal with some last-minute estate matters.”

  “And they swallowed that?” Lord Templemore said incredulously. “They didn’t connect your sudden departure with Morgan’s?”

  “If they did, they’ve never said anything to me or my family. Everybody in Stratford knew that ‘Captain Will Morgan’ expected to return to his supposed regiment soon. And Helena always had the reputation for being the soul of propriety. They’d never dream she’d countenance any impropriety in her family.”

  “Ah, but young ladies don’t always listen to their older sisters on matters of propriety. Didn’t they suspect you might ignore your sister’s stellar example?” When Juliet glowered at him, he added with the merest hint of a smile, “Forgive me, but even well-bred young women can be impetuous enough to run off with ‘dashing rogues’ like my brother.”

  How dared he echo her own words? “I was never regarded as impetuous or brave by the townspeople.”

  “Yet you must have possessed a little of those qualities to have risked eloping.”

  “I eloped because your brother deceived me into thinking him a worthy suitor.”

  “If you’d thought him a worthy suitor,” Lord Templemore said coolly, “you would have sent him to your father to ask for your hand.”

  Goodness gracious, but the man knew how to provoke her. Remember the plan, she cautioned herself. Don’t lose your temper. “I did try to do so, but Morgan convinced me it would be pointless. He said Papa would never approve of my marrying a mere army captain.” All of that was true, as he well knew.

  “Morgan was right, even if it was only an excuse to lure you from home,” Rosalind interjected. “Papa wouldn’t have approved at all. He’d wanted better for you. These days, however, he’d be delighted if you wished to marry the butcher.”

  “He would not,” Juliet protested weakly, grateful that her sister had changed the subject. It sounded uncomfortably as if Lord Templemore had been blaming her for his actions. She didn’t need him echoing her own self-reproaches. Especially when he knew perfectly well that he’d prevailed upon her to misbehave.

  “Papa wants you to marry, you know,” Rosalind persisted. “We all do.”

  “I say Juliet has been right to refuse her suitors heretofore,” Griff put in. “A sad lot, all of them.”

  Bless her gruff brother-in-law for taking her side. He usually acted as if she couldn’t think for herself. When he followed his defense with an amiable wink, she beamed at him.

  “Don’t encourage her, for pity’s sake,” Rosalind remarked. “I liked several of her suitors. How about that nice Lord Havering? You couldn’t have objected to him, Griff. He’s young, he’s handsome, he’s kind—”

  “He’s a bloody idiot,” Griff said. “I once compared Prinny to Falstaff, and he asked me who Falstaff was and why he hadn’t met him in society.”

  “Not knowing Shakespeare doesn’t make him stupid,” Rosalind grumbled.

  Juliet laughed. “Really? But isn’t that why you disparaged a certain Lord Andrew to me? Because he attributed to Marlowe one of your precious Shakespeare’s plays?”

  “That’s different.” She sniffed. “Lord Andrew actually is stupid.”

  “Lord Havering is indeed a nice man,” Juliet went on. She really had liked him. She just couldn’t conceive of marrying him. “But we wouldn’t have suited.”

  “Havering,” Lord Templemore mused aloud. “Isn’t he the man who accidentally shot himself in the foot while handing his friend the pistol to be used in a duel?” When Griff looked surprised, he added, “I heard about it from Uncle Lew. I understand it made Havering the laughingstock of London.”

  Griff’s eyes sparkled with humor. “It put a damper on the duel as well.”

  Rosalind sighed. “All right, so perhaps Juliet was better off without Lord Andrew or Lord Havering, though I didn’t realize Havering was quite that cork-brained. But what about the Marquess of Kinsley?”

  “Isn’t Kinsley already married?” Lord Templemore remarked.

  “Widowed,” Griff explained. “With three children. Apparently, my wife thinks Juliet ought to jump at the chance to inherit a family half grown.”

  “It wasn’t the children that bothered me.” Juliet stabbed a piece of apple. “I liked them a great deal. But I found Lord Kinsley…er…distasteful.”

  “Distasteful?” Rosalind snapped. “Why?”

  “I’d rather not discuss it,” she mumbled and ate the apple sliver, praying they’d drop this embarrassing subject.

  She should have known her brazen sister better. “Wait, I know why,” Rosalind said triumphantly. “Because of his cigars. You can’t abide men who smoke.”

  “That’s not why,” she protested, though she did find smoking a disgraceful habit. The smell was so very hard to get out of the linens.

  “You can’t deny it. It’s always something like that—smoking or snuff dipping or ragged fingernails or—”

  “It was not that, Rosalind!” Why must her sister always think her the silliest creature in Christendom?

  “Then what?”

  She threw down her napkin and blurted out, “Because he never looked anywhere but down my bodice when we danced. I daresay he didn’t even know I had a face. There, are you happy now?”

  Juliet regretted her outburst when a
painful silence ensued and Rosalind colored.

  Finally, her sister whispered, “Oh Juliet, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “You should have told us,” Griff remarked sternly. “I would have run him off.”

  Judging from Lord Templemore’s thunderous expression, the man shared Griff’s sentiments. Given how he’d eyed her bodice himself earlier, it was quite hypocritical.

  “What was there to say?” She shot Lord Templemore a pointed glance. “It’s not as if he was the first man to do it.” He raised an eyebrow unrepentantly, and she jerked her gaze back to Griff. “It’s just that Lord Kinsley was so very…obvious. He clearly had only one thing on his mind.” When Griff puffed up his chest in apparent outrage, she snapped, “And you shouldn’t be so self-righteous about it either. I’ve seen where your gaze lands when Rosalind wears one of her French gowns.”

  Rosalind’s laugh turned into a cough when Griff glowered at her.

  Lord Templemore hid a smile behind his napkin. “Really, Knighton, do you allow just any old fool to court your sister-in-law?”

  “Allow?” she hissed before Griff could retort. “I’ll have you know, sir, that I’m perfectly capable of handling myself with men.”

  “Are you?” His smug tone reminded her that she’d complained earlier about her lack of instincts in that respect. Not to mention that she’d let his lordship kiss her quite shamelessly last night.

  He flicked his gaze over her. “When you’re accepting the attentions of men like Kinsley and Montfort, I have to wonder.”

  “Montfort?” she echoed. “How did you know about him?”

  Rosalind mumbled, “I…er…may have mentioned something earlier—”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” Juliet said with heavy sarcasm. “Do go on, Rosalind. Why stop at telling a perfect stranger about my courtship disasters? Why not relate all my silly childhood peccadilloes, too—the time I got stuck in the butter churn, or the time I—”

  “She merely told me you’d refused the Duke of Montfort’s suit,” Lord Templemore broke in, his voice oddly gentle. “And I told her you were right to do so.”