A slight indrawn breath. Benedict estimated it at perhaps twenty feet away.
“Truly,” he added in a bland tone. “Let us chat if you’ve a mind to. I’m quite ready. I’ve beautiful manners. What do you want to talk of? My money? You may try to take it, though I doubt you’ll succeed.”
Two footsteps, another breath. This one sounded closer on the night-silent street. There seemed no one else about, no one else awake in the world.
“You must be shy.” Benedict flexed his fingers on the bone hilt of the stiletto. “Fortunately for you, I am not. Maybe you want to talk about the inquest, but you can’t quite summon the courage to broach the subject. Were you there today?” In his other hand, he held the head of his cane lightly, ready to swing it. “Did you play a part in it? Or in the death of Nancy Goff?”
“What do you want?” The voice was closer still; male, hoarse, and rasping. Obviously disguised.
“I might ask you the same, shadow.”
But the figure following Benedict said nothing.
After a moment, he took a step back. And another. The figure did not follow.
And then in a rush, it came at him, a flurry of footsteps for which he was ready but somehow still unprepared. Dropping his knife, he laid both hands on his cane, top and midpoint, making of it a bar before him.
The man rattled into him at full speed, jarring his bones and making his teeth clack together. A grunt and wheeze told Benedict that the cane had caught the assailant across the midsection, but he wasn’t slowed for long. Snick came a clean sound, and then a pressure and a rip of cloth. Cool air touched Benedict’s arm before a hot liquid flowed down it.
His arm had been slashed, he realized dimly.
“You,” growled Benedict, “just ruined the undress uniform coat of a lieutenant of the Royal Navy. Bad decision.” He swung the cane, its tip connecting with the long resistance of a limb bone.
The knife came again, but off target; it hacked into the cane. Benedict cursed, and in the moment the assailant took to pry the blade free of the precious hickory staff, he freed one hand and drove a fist into whatever he could reach. Midsection again, but the fellow must have guts of iron. He absorbed the blow and gave the same back, making Benedict gag. He sucked in air, eyes watering, not allowing his body to bend and shield itself. If he bent, if he fell, he was certain he would never rise again.
Staggering a little as he planted his feet, he held the cane lightly at his side. The crunch of gravel sounded from his right—now from right before him, and without thought, he drove the solid metal tip forward, hard as he could.
He hit something.
There came a whimper and a curse, and the knife-wielding shadow fell to his knees with a gritty thump. He’d caught the man in the belly, then, or the groin.
Had the attacker dropped the knife? Could Benedict find his own stiletto? Heart in a thunder, he allowed himself three seconds to feel about on the ground for whatever he could grasp.
One. Nothing but mud and something sticky—his own blood? It made his fingers slippery.
Two. Grass, another clump of grass, pebbles, pebbles, pebbles.
Three. Nothing . . . nothing . . . a tip of something that he knocked away with his clumsy fumbling.
Three and a half, then. He patted for it with a flat palm, then closed his hand gently about a thin blade. He slipped it into the customary spot in his boot, then straightened, tucking his cane solidly under his arm.
And he sprinted for the vicarage as if he were being chased by the devil himself.
* * *
Breathing hard, he shut the door behind him. “Charlotte,” he whispered. “Charlotte. I need you.”
“I am here,” came the answer after a second, from the direction of the parlor. “Papa returned hours ago, but I waited up for—my God, you are bleeding.”
“I’m all right. Lock the door.” He tucked his hickory cane in the corner, within easy reach of the doorway. “And then let us put something heavy against it, and against any other way in or out of the house you can think of. I may not be the only person in Strawfield who knows his way through a locked door.”
“I—yes, all right.” Then followed the sounds of scraping metal, of a key turning and a bolt being thrown. “One moment. Your cut—it looks very bad.” A cloth was wrapped about the cut on his arm, then tied off snug. At once, a burning pain was eased that he had not realized he felt.
After helping him muscle a chest from the parlor and stand it on end before the door—“where it will make a god-awful crash if anyone tries to break through,” she noted—she walked Benedict to the rear of the vicarage so he could do the same before the servants’ entrance. While he shoved furniture, she checked window latches, then crept down to the servants’ quarters, presumably to secure those windows or alert the servants.
When she met him again in the corridor outside the dining room, both agreed that no one would be getting into the house without being heard at once.
“By you or me, that is,” Charlotte said. “My father was ill at ease after the inquest, so my mother gave him a sedative. His sleep looked so peaceful that she and Maggie took one as well. They have both taken upon themselves some of his worry.”
“He has worry enough for several people,” Benedict agreed. But it still might not be enough. He flexed the fingers of his left hand; they tingled, a little numb from the pressure of the cloth about his biceps.
“Let me get a lamp and a few items for treating your wound”—Charlotte’s footsteps receded, then returned after a minute or two—“and now to your bedchamber.”
“Well, well. You certainly know how to comfort a man.” His wry tone fell flat; it was too shaky for humor. God, his arm was beginning to hurt again, and the blow to his belly made him ache straight through.
“I certainly do.” She preceded him up the eighteen narrow stairs. “In this case, I’ll clean your arm and give you a fresh shirt while you tell me what happened.”
He made his way to the bed and sat on its edge, letting her close them into the bedchamber and bustle about as he briefly described the attack. The timing; the surprise of it. “It was as though someone was waiting for me. I think it must have something to do with the inquest.”
“Perhaps, though there could be another reason. The fact that you are a guest at the vicarage? A friend to Lord Hugo Starling? The owner of a noctograph? Simply a man walking alone whose purse might be taken?”
He shook his head. “I do not think I was targeted because of who I am, but because of something I know. Which, unfortunately, I do not know I know—damn it. Er, sorry about that. I didn’t know you were about to untie the cloth about my arm.” His numb fingers were easier to move now, but the cut began to ooze again.
“He curses,” she murmured. “What a surprise for a sailor. I thought they were meant to be so elegant.” She plucked at the torn edges of his coat sleeve. “You will have to take off your coat and shirt. Would you like my aid?”
“I’d be a fool to say no.” Though he tried to sound roguish, in truth, he wasn’t sure he could shrug free from his garments without opening the wound wide again.
He planted his boots on the floor, set his teeth, and gave Charlotte a nod. She stepped into the cradle of his legs, a figure lightly scented of wintergreen, bracing and calm. “Shrug your good shoulder so we can slip this off of you—”
“They are both good shoulders.”
“Right. That’s what I meant to say. Shrug your brawny and handsome right shoulder, and we’ll get your coat free on that side—there. Now I can ease this sleeve over the arm that was hurt. Quickly, lift up your arm—and press at the wound with this cloth while you hold your arm in the air.” She stepped back, taking away the faint prickle of heat her nearness imparted. The coat fell to the floor before the bed, heavy as a sack of potatoes.
“Careful with that, please.” He began to lower his upraised arm until Charlotte exclaimed. “It is the mark of my rank. I earned that coat through years of effo
rt.”
“Doubtless you did, but I am sorry to say that it was the work of a moment to ruin it. The rend in the sleeve could be sewed, but the white piping will never be the same.”
Briefly, he considered stitching up the slashed fabric. Wearing the bloodstained coat as a sign of pride and achievement, as other men did after serving in battle.
He discarded the idea at once. It would be just another way to make a spectacle of himself. The uniform coat had become a way to dress without thought or expense, but maybe it was time to leave it behind. To take his chances with fashion, to wear the clothes of the everyday man he had become.
“Set it aside, then,” he said. “I shall decide later what is to be done with it.”
Buttons scraped and jingled as Charlotte picked up the coat. “I am hanging it over the chair at the writing desk.” Her footsteps returned, and she stood again before him. “May I take the rest of your ruined clothing, Mr. Frost?”
“Call me Benedict.” His voice seemed not to be working properly as she undid the buttons of his waistcoat. Fingers pressing, tugging at his clothing, traveling down, down. The skin of his abdomen shivered, and not because it was bruised and sore.
He squeezed his eyes shut, a meaningless gesture—but it was enough to remind him to keep control of himself. Don’t get fuddled. Again. An unwilling smile touched his lips. If he let his injured arm sink down, it would rest on Charlotte’s back and pull her into an embrace.
“Benedict,” she repeated, undoing the bottom button of his waistcoat. “All right, then.” Closer, she leaned, slipping the doubtless-bloodstained white waistcoat from his right side. He lowered his injured arm to shrug free on the left—and he encountered a curve, soft and strong.
“That’s what the Greeks call a derrière,” she said wryly. “You’ve got one yourself. Move your hand, please; we’ve got to get that shirt off before I can clean the wound.”
“I’m not sure that’s Greek,” he replied. “I know most of the interesting words, and what I had hold of deserved an interesting word indeed.”
“I am honored that you find my derrière worth resting your injured arm upon. Last layer, now.”
Linen was whisked over his face, faintly smelling of soap and starch, of perspiration and the metallic odor of wet blood. When the sleeve slid over the wound on his arm, the injured skin burned. The shirt was tossed aside, landing with a light flutter on the floor several feet away.
Though a low fire burned in the grate, casting warmth through the night-cool room, his nipples pulled flat and tight. She would see him now, half-bare, and he had no idea what he would look like in her eyes. He was naked from needing help, not begging for seduction.
But if he had been a begging man, his every fiber would have been crying out for her touch.
When it came, it was the cooling touch of a damp cloth on his cut skin. “Your mysterious friend left you with a narrow wound,” she observed, “but a deep one. It ought to be stitched, but I’d get sick if I tried.”
“What will happen if it’s not stitched?”
“It will heal if you keep it bound and don’t move your arm much. I think. Though you might be left with a scar.” She dabbed at the wound. “I’m sorry, I don’t know much about this sort of thing. I’ve far more experience driving men to madness than cleaning their wounds afterward. It is clean, though, or as clean as it can get with water and—”
“Damnation! What was that, acid?”
“—brandy.” She wiped his hands too, lightly abraded by his scrabble on the ground.
As she wrapped bandages about his biceps and tied them off snug, a lock of hair brushed his bare skin. Was her hair unpinned and tumbling down, ready for sleep? Was she undressed? Ready to be taken to bed?
He clenched his free hand and tried not to think about the fact that they were here, right here by a bed. Again, he planted his boots, trying to ground his thoughts.
When he shifted his right foot, the boot felt odd.
He wiggled his foot as much as one could within the stiff leather bounds of a tall boot. It was the sheath for his stiletto causing the problem; it wasn’t flat against his calf as it ought to be.
He jerked, realizing at once what had happened. “My knife—Charlotte. The knife in my boot. It’s not my knife.”
A flurry of tiny noises as she set down everything she was holding; then the mattress sank as she sat to his right on the bed. “It’s your attacker’s knife? You escaped with the knife that cut you?”
“The particular gift of a blind man under attack. Do not tell The Times or I shall have to fight every notable in the country.” He tried to smile, but he wanted the thing out of his boot. Now. Giving the handle a tug, it slid free, heavy and sleek as a snake.
Repulsed, he stretched down to set it on the floor next to the bed. “What does it look like?”
She shifted closer to him, her sleeve against his bare arm. “It’s a dagger. A thin one, with a straight blade and a tarnished silver guard. The handle is pearl and . . . some sort of stone, though I cannot tell what. The light of the lamp isn’t sufficient.”
And apparently she didn’t want to touch it, to examine it more closely. Nor did he. “It is a rich man’s toy, then.”
“And it might be the knife that killed Nance.” Her voice was low and tinged with sorrow.
“Yes, I am afraid of that, too.”
What do you want? the assailant had asked. Not why are you here, or leave off the search.
What do you want? It was the question of a man fearing blackmail or exposure. The question of a desperate man, afraid of something Benedict knew.
Whatever that might be. He knew only what everyone at the inquest knew, no more. Surely not everyone would be attacked. No, there had been traffic to and from the public room for much of the evening. If anyone else had been hurt, a cry would have been raised at once.
So. Almost certainly, the other inhabitants of Strawfield were not in danger from this assailant. That was a balm for Benedict’s ragged emotions.
Another was Charlotte, pressing against his side, sliding an arm about the bare skin of his waist.
How quickly a pain could be forgotten; how quickly a body could wake. “Intriguing,” he said thickly. “Is this part of the treatment for my wound?”
“For mine, if you do not mind.” She rested her head on his shoulder; long hair fell in a ticklish waterfall over his arm, his back. “I . . . I don’t want to hear about the inquest. Not yet. She reminds me of me, you see. So quickly, everything changed.”
“All right. That’s all right. We won’t talk of it.” Charlotte might never have been hurt with a knife, but something had nevertheless cut her to the heart. He did not ask what, or when. He only put an arm around her, and they were in darkness together.
For a minute, no more, her chest hitched with tears that were completely silent. Then she hooked a leg across his lap.
Benedict sucked in a sharp breath, heart thudding at the unexpected touch. “Miss Perry . . .”
“You called me Charlotte downstairs.”
“I should not have done so until you gave me permission.” In his rush to the vicarage, his worry to secure it, he had called her the name by which he’d thought of her since she first revealed it.
“You have it.” Again, she tucked her head into the hollow beneath his jaw, resting on his shoulder. “Please. Say my name again.”
“Charlotte.” He cradled her in his unhurt arm as he said her name slowly, tasting each sound. The secretive beginning, the saucy flip at the end. Now, on his lips, it was as erotic as a kiss. “Charlotte.”
Her response was a hand trailing down his abdomen, coming to rest on the fall of his breeches. “Benedict.”
His body responded at once, cock growing thick and hard as his hickory cane. Don’t get fuddled.
But she kept touching him, slow and unmistakable, and he had to ask before he was fuddled beyond all reason. “Do you really want this, or are you using me to forget something?”
“Must it be all of one or all of the other?”
Her nails teased the sensitive flesh about his navel until he could have groaned. “It is a bit of both, then? I can live with that.”
And he sank to one elbow, rolling her over him onto the bed. He was all ready to ravish her—but then she spoke.
“Before you touch me, there are a few things I ought to tell you.”
Chapter Ten
“You are lying atop me,” Benedict groaned, “and you want to talk? How many secrets have you?” It would have been funny had she not removed her hand from the fall of his breeches.
“More than my share. But somehow you’ve learned the biggest of them—that Maggie is my child. This is . . . the second biggest.”
“If it is a secret smaller than the existence of a human being, I am quite sure I can accept it.” Benedict could hardly think with a solid, sweet, wintergreen-and-seduction bundle of woman atop him on the bed. “I can’t imagine what it could be. Last time you told me there was something I ought to know, you revealed a secret identity.”
She raised herself up onto her forearms, which had the interesting effect of pressing their hips together. She still wore her gown from the day, and he took the opportunity to undo a few buttons at the back of her bodice before realizing what her silence meant. “Oh, God. You do have another secret identity? Please tell me your name is at least Charlotte. I’ve already got used to calling you that.”
She laughed, as he hoped she would. And then, in a rush, she blurted, “I was a courtesan in London for ten years.”
“All right.” He raised his head to kiss her. “That makes sense. I didn’t really think you’d been a traveling missionary.”
She permitted a quick press of lips, then pulled her face back. “That’s . . . does that not matter to you?”
“Does it matter to me that you are intelligent and intriguing enough to earn a living by fascinating men?” He let his head fall heavily to the mattress. “I admit, it does. I think it is rather wonderful.”
Fortune Favors the Wicked Page 10
