Before Catryn could embarrass herself by saying the sharp words already burning on her tongue, Orion spoke quietly to the woman. The serving woman blushed but nodded. When she turned to leave, however, she gave Catryn a look of such anger that she was tempted to quickly hide the knives on the table.
“What did you say to her?” she asked Orion when the woman was gone.
“That she should take more careful notice when a man is not alone nor wishes to be,” he replied, and smiled at her even as he filled his plate with food.
“Oh. Well, if this is how she behaves with the men who come here, I wonder why the innkeeper allows her to continue to work here.” She frowned. “Did I just sound as pious as I think I did?”
Orion laughed. “It was a little pious sounding. You have not traveled much, have you?”
“I have been places with my father and a few times with my husband. I have stayed at an inn or two before this adventure.”
She frowned as she thought back over those times. Women had flirted with Henry and even with her father, but she had paid little heed. Her father had been oblivious, at least until he became a widower, and what Henry did had quickly become of little importance to her. Now, however, she could recall a few exchanged smiles and looks, after which there would be no visit in the night. He would not even bed down in the room to sleep. And suddenly Catryn knew exactly what had been happening right beneath her nose.
“That bastard,” she hissed. She stabbed a piece of cheese and shoved it into her mouth.
“Henry has returned, has he?”
She sighed and then laughed briefly as she saw his grin. “So I am naïve. There was no need of him taking advantage of that. I knew quite soon after we married that he did not hold to his vows, but to break them while I was traveling with him seems an even more egregious sin. Why, ’tis rude.”
The scowl she tried to give him when he laughed was weak, and she had to smile. It was foolish to get angry now, when the man had been dead for almost two years and their marriage had been dead for far longer than that. It stung her pride that he would sneak away with a serving maid while she was in the same inn, but she suspected he had just been behaving as he always had, never giving her a passing thought. She could not continue to let that anger her. Henry was gone and she needed to be completely free of him. Now that she understood that some of the maids at the inns served up far more than meals, at least her father had behaved himself. The moment she thought that, she knew differently, could recall times during a trip to or from London when he had undoubtedly answered an invitation from one of the maids. She was horrified.
“Oh, dear heaven, my father, too?” When Orion burst out laughing, she had no trouble managing a scowl for him this time. “This is not funny.”
“Not to you, I can see that.” Still struggling with the urge to laugh, he reached across the table and took her hand in his. “Did he, let us say, indulge while your mother was alive?”
“Of course not.” She thought on that for a moment and then nodded, certain she had a right to that conviction. “He loved my mother.”
“Then why so shocked? The man did not die with her.”
“But he is not a young man.”
“My father was still chasing women when he was three score and ten. Last one was one too many and his heart gave out. So long as a man is healthy enough and all his parts still work, he will be wanting a woman.” He shrugged. “’Tis just the way of it. Probably has something to do with the need to reproduce, go forth and multiply and all that.”
“Oh.” She thought on how lonely her father must have been after her mother was gone, and sighed. “I believe I do not wish to think on it any more, at least as concerns Papa.”
“That is what most children prefer to do, no matter how old they get.” Having eaten all he cared to, he sat back and drank his wine. “I need to go out now. I want to do a little hunting before all the light fades.”
“But if Morris has this shield you mentioned, how can you do that?”
“The way all other men do. I rely on my gift, true enough, but I learned all the other ways to hunt a man down. Although I was arrogant enough to believe I would never have to use them, I learned them all the same. The man I work for in the government insisted.”
“He knows about your particular skill?”
“There are ones in the government who know a lot about the Wherlockes and the Vaughns and have no qualms about calling upon our particular gifts when they need them. I begin to think the man also knew that there are times when our gifts might fail us. So, I learned. I will put those skills to use now.”
“And if you find Morris?”
“We will keep close on his trail and I will send for some of my kin. Your kin, too, now.”
“But very distant.”
“Yes, and is that not a good thing,” he murmured as he stood up.
Catryn could not think what to say to that. He kissed her on the forehead and left her. She stared at the food, decided she could eat a little more before seeking out her bed, and reached for some of the bread. Perhaps before he returned, she could make up her mind about him. Would she cling to propriety or would she become a daring widow and explore that desire he so easily stirred within her?
Orion sighed as he left the alehouse he had traveled to in the hope of gaining some useful information and got his horse. Morris had been sighted by everyone but him, it seemed. He was always just one step behind the man as well. If the man had been known as some sort of brilliant criminal, Orion could more easily accept his inability to find and stop him from ever being a threat to Catryn and Alwyn again. Yet, the man was a fool and still managed to slip through his fingers.
“Sir?”
Orion turned to find a stableboy behind him. “I can manage my own mount,” he said even as he dug in his pocket for a coin to give the boy, who looked to be on the cusp of manhood.
“I heard you be looking for that fellow in the hideous carriage.”
“Yes.” He idly wondered where such a boy learned the word hideous but knew it would be insulting to ask. “You had dealings with the man?”
“I did, and he is a right bastard, he is. Tight with his coin, too.”
And that was why he was about to hear something that could be useful, Orion thought. It always amazed him how so many of his class did not understand what servants were worth. Or what making a servant angry with you could cost you. Servants knew everything, saw everything, and often overheard things you would wish they had not. Treat them badly enough and a few coins could be enough to loosen their tongues. Treat them really badly and, as this boy was about to do, they would go looking for someone to tell.
“Did he still have four big men with him? The men in the alehouse were not certain.”
“Aye, he did. Dumb oxen they were, but quick with their fists and enjoyed using them. My brother will be a long time healing.”
“What did your brother do that drew their attention?” Orion asked even as he tried to think of any of his family’s healers who might be in the area, even one who just had a gift with potions and salves.
“Tried to help the kitchen lass one of them was bothering. She is a good lass with a man wanting to wed with her, so she were not looking to make any coin on her back. Not that that bastard would pay anyway. Could see he was the sort to just take it and not even leave behind a ha’pence. But he would not leave her be, though she was saying no clear as a bell. So me brother tried to get him to leave her. She got away, but my brother got beat on quite a bit before others came and stopped the pig. Toddy, he be the owner, told the whole lot of them to get out.”
That was news he had not been given. Could be the owner did not let anyone aside from those involved know, he decided. The man might have thought it bad for business or he could even have thought to protect the maid.
“Do you know which way the hideous carriage went when they left?”
“Headed out north, toward London, I am thinking. Headed back from whe
re they came, aye? They looked and sounded like London folk.”
Orion inwardly cursed. Somehow Morris had gotten around them. The man was becoming a true thorn in his side. Yet, it could prove to be a good thing, for he had a lot of family in the city.
“Do you know a Mistress Lonee Tantum? She resides in the next village, I believe.”
“I do. Her husband owns an inn there and Toddy sells him his ale. Best ale in the county, it is.” He sighed. “I did hear once that she has a gift for the healing, but she costs and is reluctant to do it often, though she will sell some salves and the like.”
“Take your brother to her.” Orion gave the boy more than enough money to pay Lonee for her work. “If you cannot move him safely, ask her to come here to see to his care. This should cover even that. Tell her that her cousin Sir Orion Wherlocke asks this favor of her. That should ease any hesitation she might have.”
“I always thought she was gentry,” the boy muttered as he finally tore his wide-eyed gaze from the money in his hand and looked at Orion. “She speaks real fine, she does. I listen real careful when I am round her so I can learn the better way of talking and all. You planning on dealing with that bastard in the hideous carriage?”
“If by dealing with you mean making him pay for a few wrongs, then yes, I am.”
“Good. Maybe you could add my brother’s hurts in amongst all them wrongs.”
Orion promised he would and then mounted his horse. As he headed back to the inn where he had left Catryn, he cursed his luck. It was lowering enough to accept that he had failed to find the man as he had promised. To now know that the man had somehow managed to get past him and start back toward the city was somewhat humiliating.
Despite his personal embarrassment, he was also pleased by the news that Morris might be headed back to London. There were a lot of people there he could call upon to give him some help. Not everyone could be hampered by whatever shielded Morris from his and Catryn’s gifts. He had a few true trackers in his family who might be able to help. He also knew every place where a man like Morris could hide if he did not foolishly return to his own town house. And if the man was as superstitious as Catryn believed him to be, Orion knew a few of his kin who could scare the man so badly he would never get within miles of Catryn and Alwyn again.
It was going to be difficult to tell Catryn, however. She was as tired of this hunt as he was, and he knew she had been hoping the confrontation with Morris, one that was long overdue, would soon be behind her. Orion could only hope that she saw that there were advantages to Morris returning to the city as clearly as he did.
Patting the horse on the neck, he decided he did not need to race back to the inn and kept the horse at an easy pace. He had a lot to think about and he did not get much of that done when he was around Catryn. Even when he retired for the night, his thoughts rarely stayed fixed on the problem of Morris. He wanted Catryn, more than he had ever wanted another woman in his life. Orion was not sure what to make of that.
Lust was an old companion to him, arriving right along with the hair on his body. Restraint was something he had taught himself, however, as his father had had none and his mother had had too much. In the end, his mother had deserted him just as too many parents in the Wherlocke clan did their own children; those parents who came from outside the clan, anyway. The ones who came from within the Wherlocke and Vaughn clans were better at seeing to their children’s needs, but were not necessarily the best of parents. Some because their gifts consumed them, and some because they themselves had had such miserable childhoods they were trapped into repeating it with their own children. It was one reason so many of his family avoided marriage, or tried to.
Lady Catryn Gryffin de Warrenne was a woman a man married. Orion knew that, yet it was not enough to cool his desire for her. Before he gave in to that need, which he suspected he would if she gave him even the smallest sign of welcome, he should decide if he was ready to toss aside his plan to remain unwed for his whole life. The odd thing was, that no longer looked like such a good plan.
“I believe I have been infected with Morris’s confusion of the mind,” he muttered and almost smiled when the horse tossed its head and snorted.
He took a few minutes to consider the recent marriages amongst his clan. Penelope was a good choice to study, for she had a gift too many were terrified by. Yet he had absolutely no doubt in his mind that Ashton adored her, and could not see any chance that the man would ever hurt her or the children they were so busily breeding. The man had taken in all the children who had lived with Penelope, and their gifts were wide-ranging. Even his powerful, arrogant cousin Argus, a frightening man even to his own family, had found a wife who accepted him as he was, and all of his family. It was enough to raise the hopes of many of the clan who had survived the miserable unions of their own parents.
Catryn was one of them, distant though the connection was. She had a child who spoke to spirits, his current ghostly companion a rogue of a Vaughn, so she understood them in a way few others outside of the family did. Nor had she turned cold and judgmental when she discovered he had three sons. She had been utterly appalled that the children’s own mothers had deserted them. There was, he realized, a lot to appreciate about Catryn aside from the passion that flared between them. It could be that he should not be quite as concerned over a possible future with her as he was. The thought of it did not inspire any urge to run for the hills.
Every instinct he had told him that if he crawled into Catryn’s bed, and she warmed it as he thought she would, it would be the end of his carefree bachelor days. He wanted to say that would be because he loved her, but he had little understanding of that emotion. He liked her, enjoyed her company, appreciated the way she accepted who he was and those gifts that cursed everyone in his family in one way or another, and he lusted after her. Even more important, he realized that he trusted her, completely, and he trusted few outside of his own family. Being as inexperienced as he knew she was, there was a good chance his need to hide his back from sight would not rouse her curiosity. He could even see her accepting his scars. Yet, there lingered the faintest touch of that unwillingness to give up his freedom.
“Perhaps,” he mused aloud, “it is time I grew up.”
Chapter Twelve
A sharp rap at the bedchamber door yanked Catryn from her thoughts. She was just reaching for her pistol when Orion announced himself. Catryn grabbed up her robe, hesitated, and then tossed it on the end of the bed. Wrapping herself up in a heavy woolen robe would not help her succeed in the seduction she planned, she decided, and hurried to open the door.
He barely gave her a glance before going to stand in front of the fire, and that stung. Either the man was far too accustomed to seeing women in a state of undress or she simply did not warrant a second look. Trying not to take that to heart, she shut and latched the door before walking over and standing right in front of him.
A touch of damp on his hair told her that he had paused to wash up. It hung past his broad shoulders in thick waves that she ached to run her fingers through. Catryn was both intrigued and a little frightened by how just standing near him could make her desperate to put her hands on him. The indication that, despite the heated embraces they had shared, he did not suffer from the same need, hurt more than she cared to think about.
“Did you discover anything new?” she asked, becoming unsettled by the silence between them.
“Merely confirmed my original supposition,” he replied. “I have difficulty grasping what his plans are and he has been seen in this area. It appears he may be headed back to London. That was the direction the stableboy said the carriage turned in.”
She could hear the deep frustration in his voice. For a man with Orion’s skills, ones he was rightfully arrogant about, it had to be galling to be thwarted by someone as foolish as Morris. Catryn patted him on the arm and was startled when he suddenly covered hers with his own, holding it in place.
“We did not pass him on th
e road,” she said.
“No, and that puzzles me, but I am no longer surprised. It may be a good thing, however.”
“How so?”
“Not only do I have a vast amount of family in the city but we can trap him within, find him more easily for he is a man who would never dirty himself even if he is trying to hide. Hiding successfully requires getting a little dirty and accepting a lack of comforts. The man must realize that you have allies now and he no longer has Alwyn as a bargaining chip to save himself from prosecution. So we can watch the docks, for it is possible he may be thinking of fleeing the country. I will have a lot of help in doing those things, too.”
She thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “Then that is our new plan.”
“You need to put your robe on,” he said.
The words were so unexpected that it took Catryn a full minute to understand what he had just said, for it had nothing to do with what they had just been talking about. Then, despite the blush she could feel stinging her cheeks, she began to get annoyed. It was scandalous to stand dressed in only her linen nightdress before a man who was not her husband, but he was the one who had come to her bedchamber. It was also an extremely modest night shift. Her own maid had called it the spinster aunt night shift.
“I beg your pardon, but I believe you are the one who came to my bedchamber,” she snapped. “This is the customary attire for a woman in her bedchamber so late at night. I also suspect it is far more modest than any you have become accustomed to seeing.” Just thinking of all he had seen and how many bedchambers he might have seen it in irritated her.
“True, it is very modest.” He reached out and took a thick lock of her hair in his hand. “Until you add the allure of this hair. And the fact that I can see how your nipples have hardened and it tempts me, very strongly, to lick them.”
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