by Rebecca King
“I can try to find out who owns the house from some of the locals at the tavern,” Joe suggested. “Meantime, I will keep watch here and follow whoever leaves first.”
“Have you had any sleep yet?” Marcus asked. He wondered if his friend was as exhausted as he was.
Joe shook his head. “I am going to have to stop soon. Preferably before I fall asleep standing up. Unfortunately, things are on the move right now. It is imperative that we don’t lose the goods, Marcus. We are onto something here.”
Marcus knew he was right. Not least because when Joe got one of his ‘feelings’ he was apt to be right.
“Eleven tonight. You know where I am if you need me.”
“Send for Barnaby,” Joe ordered. “We need men to take over so we can rest.”
Marcus nodded and melted into the bushes so he could make his way to his new lodging house undetected.
The large house would have once been quite grand if it hadn’t fallen into a ramshackle state of disrepair. Marcus wondered if it was safe to enter. It looked as though a good gust of wind would blow it down in a heartbeat. Still, he needed to get inside. If only to search Ben’s room and try to find the stolen items he suspected were now stashed inside.
He pushed the squeaky gate open and winced as its loud protest shattered the silence. Several blackbirds cawed as they left the leafy protection of the tree-tops. Marcus watched them fly off with a shudder. It was as though they were a forewarning of what was to come.
As he walked up the path to the front door, he eyed the freshly swept cobbles and the windows that sparkled. Whoever owned the place tried to look after it. It just wasn’t enough to stop the decades of decay from making a mark upon the place.
“It’s got to be warm and dry at least,” Marcus murmured as he came to a stop in front of the door.
He eyed the sagging roof doubtfully. “Well, warm, at least.”
Then he turned his gaze to the chimney pots. In spite of the chill in the air, there was no sign of any smoke coming from the chimney. He suspected that the fires were unlit. As if to encourage the direction of his thoughts, a cool breeze swept over his already chilled flesh.
“Well, I might survive until morning,” he muttered.
He knocked on the door and stood back to wait.
“I am not going,” Jess declared as she watched Ben close the back door and remove his jacket. “They came to see you the last time they called. You answer it.”
She slapped the bread onto the table and glared at him, then pointedly turned her back. She sensed Ben’s hesitation but, when he tried to cajole her into going, she merely glared at him and turned back to stirring the pot of soup.
When the knocking sounded again, Ben eventually had to concede defeat and went to answer it himself.
The low rumble of voices made Jess curious. It wasn’t Lloyd back for another visit after all. Curious, she moved closer to the door so she could listen to what they were saying only to jump back in alarm when Ben pushed it open.
“The gentleman here wants to know if we have room for him,” Ben reported cautiously.
Jessica glanced at her brother, but it was a brief flicker of acknowledgement at best. The full focus of her attention remained on the stranger standing just a few feet behind him.
Her ability to think while pinned beneath those wonderful dark eyes vanished completely. The kitchen they were standing in; indeed the entire world around them; faded into insignificance. She fell into the depths of the most incredible brown eyes she had ever seen. Several shades darker than honey, they reminded her of whisky. The deep hues of gold and brown mesmerised her to the point that she felt drawn in by them. She couldn’t move. Even breathing was difficult.
“Jess?”
She jumped at the sound of her name and frowned at Ben. It took her a moment to recall what he had just said.
“Erm. I don’t think so,” she replied hesitantly. She desperately tried to ignore the small, inner voice screaming; ‘yes, yes, yes, take me, take anything.’
“We have one room,” Ben reminded her pointedly.
“That’s not ready yet.”
“I don’t mind, so long as the roof doesn’t leak,” Marcus drawled only half-joking.
He was so tired that he didn’t care if it did leak. As long as he didn’t have to sleep with a bucket on his chest, he could cope. Now that he had seen the delightful landlady, he suspected he would do whatever she asked of him.
She is stunning he mused as he studied her from the top of her head to the tip of her dainty feet.
Jess felt that slow purusal like a brand. In contrast to the magistrate’s lechery, this stranger’s apparent interest was enticing. She had never felt anything like this before. The slow sweep of his gaze as it slid over her elicited a shudder that seemed to originate from her very soul. It left a blazing trail of desire behind that demanded nothing less than complete and total satisfaction.
“Well, I am not sure. The room isn’t ready, you see?” Jessica said doubtfully, unsure if it was wise to let this man into the house.
In a few short moments, he had stolen her senses.
What would he be capable of if he stayed for a week? What else would he help himself to if he became a resident? Jess closed that thought out.
“I don’t mind waiting until the room is ready,” Marcus assured her.
“I am sure the tavern in the village would be able to provide you with accommodation for a few days,” Jessica announced helpfully.
Inwardly, she was relieved that he wasn’t going to be stopping under her roof after all. It was so very difficult to think while he was around she wasn’t sure she could stand it.
“They are already full,” Marcus countered, trying hard not to smile.
Unless he was mistaken, she was trying to get rid of him. He held out a hand.
“Marcus Cauldwell.” His eyes almost dared her to try to avoid having to touch him.
Jess’ cheeks turned pink, but she took his hand. “Jessica Parkinson. This man here is my brother, Ben.”
“Miss Parkinson. Ben,” Marcus murmured.
To think that someone as beautiful as her would risk a future behind bars made him want to take her by the shoulders and shake some common sense into her. Still, if they were thieves he couldn’t allow his personal interest to get in the way.
“I have nowhere else to stay,” he announced persuasively.
When Jess still didn’t relent, he adopted his most hang-dog expression. Still, neither of them offered him the room but continued to trade cautious looks. Marcus knew it was time to fight dirty. Digging around in his pocket, he drew out a note temptingly and held it out. It was far more than he wanted to pay for any accommodation and considerably more than any room in this house was worth. But he held it out because he rather suspected that funds were short in this house.
“I will only need the room for a short while, I am afraid, but I can pay well while I am here,” he urged when he still didn’t get the agreement he wanted.
“If you don’t mind waiting while we prepare the room then you are welcome,” Ben began, ignoring Jess’ drawn breath. “We provide breakfast and an evening meal. However, you do need to tell us in the morning if you intend to dine here in the evening.”
Before Marcus could reply, Ben snatched the money out of his hand. Marcus blinked at the speed with which the lad moved, but didn’t mention it. He had gotten what he wanted.
Marcus held his hand out and shook the man’s hand while surreptitiously studying the pocket of his jacket. The package was still there and, although it looked the same size as the box that had contained the Squire’s jewels, he needed to take a closer look to be definite. There were certainly enough telling looks passing between Ben and his sister to warn him that they had secrets. He just needed to get to the bottom of what those were before he made a decision whether he could take someone like Jessica to the magistrate.
Jess sighed in dismay, but couldn’t come up with any reasonable
objection to accommodating the man. As a result, she now had to move her belongings out of her room and move into the worst bedchamber in the house.
It galled her to admit it, but they were in desperate need of all the money they could get their hands on at the moment. It would be foolish to turn down any opportunity to earn a bit extra. Besides, now that Ben had taken the note from the man, they had no choice but to provide Mr Cauldwell with what he had purchased.
“If you would like have dinner tonight, it will be ready soon. The lodgers usually dine in the dining room at the front of the house. Your room should be ready for you by the time you have eaten,” Jess murmured.
She was a little annoyed at Ben for having taken the situation out of her hands, but wouldn’t take him to task for it in front of the new lodger.
Marcus nodded his thanks and struggled to contain the shiver that swept through him as he listened to the slightly husky tones of her voice. It was nothing short of a siren’s call of seduction that most women could only hope to possess. He suspected that she wasn’t even aware of the flurry of awareness that brought his exhausted body to arousal, and was thankful he still had his cloak on to hide the obvious evidence of his attraction to her.
Shaking his head in disbelief, he followed Ben into the front room that had been set aside for the lodgers.
“Who else do you have here?” he asked as he studied the empty room.
It contained nothing more than a large, well used dining table, a huge dresser covered with plates and cutlery, a retiring screen, and nothing else. The curtains and the cushions on the window seat were threadbare, and although everywhere was clean, there was a tired feel to the place that warned him it had long since seen better days.
“You will meet all of the lodgers in a while. I will introduce them all then,” Ben replied as he studied the room.
There was something in that searching look that warned Marcus that the lad had an ulterior motive for forcing his sister to accommodate him. However, what that was would have to be discovered in its own good time. At the moment, he wondered what the reaction would be if he asked to take a bath. If they possessed a tin bath, he suspected that the stunning woman in the kitchen would begin the relentless march through the house laden with buckets of steaming water. He just couldn’t bring himself to do that to her.
Quickly turning his thoughts away from being able to sink up to his neck in hot, steaming water, Marcus nodded his thanks. With nothing else to do, he took a seat beside the fire while Ben went to help his sister with the dinner.
“Why did you do that?” Jessica whispered as soon as Ben reappeared in the kitchen. “Now I have to move all of my things out of my bedroom and sleep in that horrid back room. He can’t stay in there; I will have to.”
Ben snorted unsympathetically. “Well, I have to sleep in the scullery with the dead birds.”
“You haven’t gotten rid of them yet?” Jess was horrified.
“I will move them on,” Ben promised with a nod toward the window. “I can’t risk going out there with them. Lloyd or Carruthers might be sniffing around. For now, the game has to stay in here.”
“Well, I can’t serve them. If the magistrate asks any of the lodgers what they had for dinner and they tell him they had pheasant, you may as well take yourself to jail because that is where you will be going.”
Ben sighed and sensed there was another lecture coming.
“You had better start to move your things,” he suggested in the hopes of preventing it. “I will keep an eye on dinner. Hurry up. We don’t have long. That man will want his room once he has eaten, and I don’t think he will want to sleep amongst your smalls.”
Jess growled as she stormed out of the kitchen. She was so furious that she didn’t notice someone standing on the opposite side of the door until she ran smack into a solid wall of unrelenting masculinity. She hadn’t realised just how tall the new guest was until she was close to him, and had to tip her head right back to be able to look up at his face.
The warmth of his breath fanned across her cheeks, but that didn’t bring the flush to her cheeks. He did. His very presence sent a shiver of awareness swept down her spine that made her toes curl. She tried to take a step back, but her feet wouldn’t work properly. Neither would her mind because words failed her completely.
“I am sorry, I didn’t realise you were there,” she murmured awkwardly when her ability to formulate words returned.
“It’s alright,” Marcus soothed. “No harm was done. I was just wondering if I could have a drink?”
“Of course,” Jess replied quickly and sidestepped around him. “There is a jug of ale kept on the dresser in the front room. Just help yourself.”
“Thank you.” He offered her a gentle smile in an attempt to ease her wariness and watched to see what she would do.
Was her nervousness down to a dislike of having strange men around? If so, why did she run a lodging house full of men?
Was she worried because her, and that brother of hers, had something to hide? He didn’t know yet, but he was damned well going to find out before he left.
Just the thought of uncovering all of Jessica’s secrets made his body start to twitch. He shut those particular thoughts out before he embarrassed himself, and went in search of a drink.
“I will go and help myself then,” he said gently but felt strangely reluctant to leave her.
There was something indefinable in the air. A crackling tension, bristling with desire. Expectancy, maybe? Anticipation? For the first time in a long time, he wanted to take the time to get to know a woman, and it had nothing to do with the investigation.
How does she do it? You have been in the house all of five minutes, and am already distracted by her; he mused as he left for the safer confines of the sitting room.
Jess watched him go with a mixture of relief and consternation. Wariness warred with disbelief that anybody could make her forget her mind so quickly. This powerful response to anybody had certainly never happened before. But then, none of the other guests were as handsome as this one.
“I had better be careful around you, I think,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” Ben called.
She threw a dark glare over her shoulder at him, silently warning him that their conversation was far from over, then hurried upstairs to remove her belongings from her bedroom.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dinner was a very odd affair. Marcus had never seen such an eclectic group of people gathered in one place in all of his life before. He was used to his colleagues from the Star Elite. They were who he dined with if he wasn’t alone. They were rambunctious, lively, always teasing and jocular, and always talking.
The group of men seated at the dining table tonight was nothing short of peculiar. Not least because they clearly didn’t want to be there and hardly talked about, well, anything.
To his left was Mr. Gillespie, a rather aged man who appeared to be as blind as a bat. How on earth he could bird watch during the day as he claimed to do was anyone’s guess because he could barely see the plate Ben set before him. Whatever the man did, Marcus doubted it was ornithology. Although his hair was white, his face was relatively unlined; youthful even. At first appearance, his age was around sixty. However, the more Marcus studied him, the more he suspected the man was more likely in his early forties.
Bemused, Marcus moved on to the next man, Mr Brammall.
He was nothing short of effeminate. Even down to the pink cravat he wore, and the rather vacant look on his face. He fluffed his hair every two or three minutes and tended to ramble on in a way that most ladies would have associated with should there have been any. He didn’t work, but couldn’t explain what he did with his day.
Overall, Mr. Brammall appeared to be a seemingly helpless individual who posed little threat to anyone.
The quiet, studious man beside him, Mr. Ball, had yet to take his eyes off his food. He ate with a careful precision that defied belief. The small neat square
s dotted at equal lengths on his plate were placed that way by a man who had a little too much time to think as far as Marcus was concerned. He watched the man cut each piece of his food to precisely the same shape and size as the others. He then lined up the pieces on his plate and then proceeded to eat from the top left corner down to the right bottom as one would read a book.
Seated directly opposite Marcus was Mr. Abernathy, a banker’s son who had just returned from a day’s work as a clerk in Retterton, apparently. As if to prove this, his fingers were liberally stained with ink. Marcus had tried several times to find out where the man worked but received nothing more than vague answers. Mr Abernathy appeared to be in his forties but at times seemed considerably older. His shoulders had become stooped from long hours bent over a desk, and there was an abstract vagueness about him that was intriguing. It was clear from the bespectacled way he peered at everyone that he was struggling with his eyesight. How he managed to work with books and paperwork was anyone’s guess.
With eyesight as bad as his, there is no possibility he would be able to pick his way through an uneven forest floor in the dead of night; Marcus mused as he watched the man peer at his food.
What he had observed throughout the evening, and what bothered him the most, were the rather cautious looks everyone threw at each other whenever they thought nobody was looking. The furtive flicker of eyelids didn’t leave Marcus, himself a man who was always watchful, with any ability to sit back and simply enjoy the meal.
Thankfully, the delicious repast was well cooked, and Marcus ate his share. His only criticism was that the amount they had was hardly plentiful. Just enough had been served to feed each man what they could eat, but very little had been to the kitchen.
In spite of this, he was now warm and fed, and eager to get some sleep.
Making his excuses to the table at large, he pocketed an apple and a pear from the fruit bowl beside the door and went in search of the landlady. He found her scrubbing down the empty kitchen table.
