“Come here,” Barnabas told her, waving her over. She got up and walked over with no hesitation. He was a little surprised at her willingness. “Turn around.” She gave her back to him, but looked over her shoulder, her trepidation written on her face.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “We are simply going to show you how it is done. Now I’m going to wrap my arms around you lightly, like this.” He did it and felt her tense up like a poker, but she didn’t pull away. “If you go slack very suddenly, particularly in the middle of a struggle, then you will pull your attacker down and forward. Try it.”
She bent her knees slightly.
“No, that’s not enough. It has to be sudden and more pronounced. Try again.” She bent her knees deeper. “No. It requires that you almost collapse. Hastings, stand in front of her and show her.”
Hastings moved in front of her. “Here, watch. Stand as you are, very stiffly, when they first grab you. Struggle a bit. Yes, like that.” She squirmed in Barnabas’s arms and he set his feet firmly. “Then, all of sudden like, just collapse, like jelly.” Hastings showed her. “Let everything go loose, your arms, your torso. But keep ahold of his arms about you.” He moved her hands on Barnabas’s arm, so she was holding it. Her fingers gripped him tightly, and Barnabas could tell the effort it took for her not to panic. “Now collapse. The point is that right now, simply by standing stiffly and struggling, your holding him up. When you relax and collapse, he loses his support and he’ll fall forward.”
“But won’t he just fall on top of me?” she asked, her voice strained.
“No, not if you do it right,” Hastings said impatiently. “That’s the whole point of this lesson.”
Barnabas let Hastings take over the lesson. He was overwhelmed by the way she felt in his arms. She was so delicate and yet so fierce and determined. He could smell the very slight lavender water she’d used on her linen, but no perfume, just the smell of warm skin and freshly washed hair. He liked how she smelled, without artifice or enhancement. He liked it too much. Shock over his physical reaction to her had disconcerted him so much that he didn’t dare try to offer instruction for a moment.
“Like this?” Melinda asked, and Barnabas was completely taken by surprise when she did indeed collapse like jelly in his arms. He started to fall forward and then she sprang up clumsily, the back of her head hitting his cheekbone instead of his nose. He felt like a fool at his failure to dodge the hit.
“Oh dear!” she exclaimed at his grunt of discomfort. She let go of his arm and spun around. “Sir Barnabas! Are you all right?” She cupped his cheek and turned his head to look at the damage.
Hastings moved in behind her, peering over her shoulder. “Doesn’t look too bad,” he said, laughter in his voice. “I suppose, sir, that we can mark that move as learned?”
Chapter 8
“What is the meaning of this?” a man demanded angrily from the doorway.
Mrs. Jones gave a squeak and tried to jerk away and face the unexpected visitor in the doorway. Squeezed in between Barnabas and Hastings as she was she stumbled, stepped on Barnabas’s foot, and when Hastings reached for her she slammed back into Barnabas again, hitting him on the nose with the top of her head.
“Bloody hell,” he barked, grabbing his nose. He took a hold of her arm and moved her off to the side. “Make your presence known in a less startling way next time, Wetherald,” he snapped, his voice muffled.
Hastings was laughing. “Definitely an apt pupil,” he said in between chuckles.
“Be careful you’re not demoted to stable duty,” Barnabas told him through clenched teeth.
“What is going on?” Wetherald asked, his voice calmer but still concerned. He stood in the doorway, dressed in his usual somber black, his white cravat startlingly bright in the midst of it. He did know how to make an entrance. Barnabas always felt underdressed in his presence. Today he felt almost slovenly standing there without a jacket. He was glad he’d left his waistcoat on.
“My lord,” Mrs. Jones said with a small curtsey. Barnabas frowned at the obsequious gesture, not caring for it at all. Wetherald was frowning as well.
“I have told you before, Mrs. Jones,” he said, stumbling over the name. “There is no need to show deference to me when we are not in public. So none of that. And you must call me Wetherald.”
“Yes, my lord,” she replied, clearly flustered. She spun around to Barnabas. “May I be excused, sir?” she asked hopefully.
“Yes,” he told her. “Gladly. My face can’t take any more abuse this morning.” At that she relaxed, a small, triumphant smile not quite concealed.
“I am sorry, Sir Barnabas,” she said insincerely. “But the lessons were your idea.”
“Tomorrow I shall have to teach him how to defend himself against you,” Hastings said, laughter still in his voice. “Good morning, ma’am. Sir,” he said, bowing to Mrs. Jones and Barnabas. “My lord,” he said to Wetherald with a slight inclination of his head.
“Be back here at one o’clock,” Barnabas told his retreating back. “I have reports for you.” Hastings stopped and stood still for moment. Then, without turning around, he nodded and left.
“Will you be dining soon, sir?” Mrs. Jones asked from the doorway. “Cook would like you to eat at a prescribed time each day. Your erratic schedule is very difficult for her.”
Wetherald looked surprised at her question. Barnabas knew that in his world the servants managed around their master’s whims, and he was sure that it had been like that in her world, too. Now she was on the other side of the coin, but she still had her previous mindset and expected everyone to adjust their schedules to her satisfaction.
“Inform Cook that she should make a cold breakfast on days when I am not prompt and simply leave it on the sideboard for me.” The cook had been with the household for years and had never complained before. Barnabas touched his nose tenderly.
“It’s not bleeding,” she said helpfully, fighting another smile.
“Yes, thank you,” he snapped. “That will be all.”
“Of course, sir,” she said, turning away.
“Wait, Mrs. Jones,” Wetherald called, and she turned back, a question on her face. “I came by to see how you are getting on,” he asked lamely.
“Fine, my lord,” she said. “Thank you for asking. Good morning.” She turned, and with a flick of her skirts, she was gone.
“Satisfied?” Barnabas grumbled. Damn if his cheek wasn’t throbbing. He had to meet with the prime minister this afternoon and he’d probably be sporting a bruise. Well, at least he’d look the part of the lower-class ruffian most politicians already thought him to be.
“What were you doing?” Wetherald sounded merely curious now. “She was touching you.”
“Noticed that, did you?” Barnabas said smugly. “I guess she trusts me.”
“I’ve been trying to gain her trust for months to no avail,” Wetherald said with a frown. “She still won’t even shake my hand. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Barnabas said. “I simply gave her control over our interactions. As you said, she touched me.” He shrugged. “I was teaching her how to defend herself and she proved a rather exemplary pupil.”
Wetherald surprised Barnabas by grabbing his chin and jerking his head to the side. “Let me see it,” he said. “It’s bruising.” He rubbed it with his thumb. “Perhaps a beefsteak?”
“She hit me in the nose, too,” Barnabas complained. He found that he liked the attention he was getting this morning. The fact that he liked it from Wetherald surprised him almost as much as his physical reaction to Mrs. Jones’s touch. Clearly it had been too long since he’d had a good fuck.
Wetherald snorted and let go of his chin. “I’m sure you deserved it,” he said, snapping Barnabas out of the moment.
“I need you to vote in favor of the appropriations bill,” Barnabas said, moving off to the side to grab a rag and stick it in the basin of cold water beside it. “The vote comes up next Tuesd
ay.”
“What?” Wetherald asked sharply.
“Lord Winston’s bill,” Barnabas clarified. “On the surface it’s innocuous enough, but I’ve attached a rather large sum I need for an operation on the coast.”
“I’ve read the bill,” Wetherald said. “And it has so many such attachments as to make it completely untenable and ill-advised. None of the programs funded by the bill are necessary at this time and there are bills being presented that are far more urgent matters for the treasury.”
Barnabas held the cold cloth to his cheek and turned to face Wetherald, leaning negligently against the table as he did so. “You misunderstand me, Wetherald,” he said slowly. “I am not asking you. I am telling you. You owe me two favors. This is number one.”
Wetherald looked as if he’d been slapped. “There was nothing in our agreement that included my complete abandonment of self-respect and the principles I live by,” he snapped. “In your immortal words, I don’t give a damn what you want.”
“When did I say that?” Barnabas asked, not put off in the slightest by Wetherald’s refusal. He’d expected him to make some sort of token resistance.
“Nearly every time we meet,” Wetherald told him. “Surely you didn’t think you could bully me into voting your way?”
“I know you pride yourself on being a gentleman,” Barnabas told him, tossing the cloth aside. “A gentleman keeps his word. In return for my assistance rescuing Mrs. Jones you said you would do anything to repay the favor. I’m calling in your marker.”
“No, I said I would help you in any way I could,” Wetherald replied, looking behind him at the bench against the wall. He dusted it off with his handkerchief before sitting down, his hands resting atop his walking stick between his legs. Barnabas didn’t care for his victorious smirk. “They are not the same thing.”
Barnabas gritted his teeth, aware that Wetherald had bested him in this. It was a matter of semantics, but his argument was valid. “You could vote in favor of the bill,” he tried. “There is nothing stopping you.”
“On the contrary,” Wetherald said. “My conscience is stopping me, not to mention my fiduciary responsibility and common sense.”
“None of which constitute a physical impediment to your voting in favor,” he commented, adopting a lazy tone. He wouldn’t let Wetherald know he was unhappy with the course of this conversation. To do so showed weakness, and that was fatal to any negotiation.
“Physical impediment is not necessary to meet the requirement of things I cannot do,” Wetherald said.
“It is implied.”
“Implications are not facts or requirements,” Wetherald shot back.
“I could make you do it,” Barnabas said softly.
“No, you cannot,” Wetherald said just as softly.
Barnabas could see he meant it. Short of holding a gun to Wetherald’s mother’s head, there was nothing Barnabas could do to force him, and he wasn’t willing to do that. He hadn’t fallen that low in peacetime yet. During the war, that had been different. But he’d reined in his more militant tendencies when it came to domestic issues.
“Fine,” Barnabas said with a cold smile, conceding defeat even as fury heated his blood. “Then how are you going to repay those favors?”
“Surely there is something I can do for you of a personal nature,” Wetherald said, frowning. “Introductions, invitations, that sort of thing.”
Barnabas stared at him, wide-eyed. “Do you think I need those things? I know everyone worth knowing who is of any use to me. I turn down more invitations than one man could accept in a lifetime. I have only to snap my fingers to get the attention of men of far greater consequence than you, Wetherald.”
Wetherald was scowling. Truly, the man had no negotiating skills whatsoever. Every emotion was transmitted on his face before he even spoke. “You can’t be unaware of your reputation,” he said, “or the things that are said about you behind your back.”
“I am not unaware,” Barnabas said. “I simply don’t care.”
“Really?” Wetherald challenged him. “You don’t care that just yesterday someone referred to you as a gypsy bastard who’d gotten above his station?”
“I cannot deny my gypsy heritage, but I am not a bastard,” he replied calmly. “My father dutifully married my mother before promptly abandoning her. And then he had the poor taste to die penniless in India, where he had gone to seek his fortune. I have the misfortune to be the legitimate heir of Maxwell Chandler Hyatt James.”
Wetherald gawked. “The late younger son of the Earl Chambers?”
“Indeed,” Barnabas drawled.
“But how?” Wetherald exclaimed. “I have never heard anything about it.”
“Because I do not acknowledge the connection and neither do they,” Barnabas told him. “They saw me fed, clothed and educated after my father’s death, as befitted someone in line to inherit the title. Other than that, there is no familial connection at all.”
“But…it could help you,” Wetherald said, clearly confused. “A connection like that could open doors for you politically.”
“I didn’t need anyone to open doors for me,” Barnabas told him flatly. “I amassed enough power and knowledge to force them open myself. Now I guard those doors.”
“Extraordinary,” Wetherald said. “You do not use your courtesy title at all?”
“I do not.” Barnabas continued to lean against the table, a position that placed him higher than Wetherald and by its very casualness indicated both his mastery over the situation and how immaterial he found the conversation. “So,” he mused out loud. “What am I to do with you?”
Wetherald cocked his head to the side as he stared back at Barnabas. “I don’t know,” he said. “What are you going to do with me?”
Something about the way he was sitting there, looking so prim and smug and heroic, rankled Barnabas. Mainly because he found it attractive. His sensual barometer was clearly off this morning. First Mrs. Jones and now Wetherald, both of whom were far different than the usual type he found interesting enough to bed. He tended to limit his carnal interactions to individuals who knew what he offered and knew not to expect more. Neither Mrs. Jones nor Wetherald were capable of handling or holding his interest. And yet here he was, unexpectedly aroused by them both. Wetherald was certainly the most surprising of the two in that regard.
Perhaps he’d been using the wrong means to try to control Wetherald. It wasn’t an iron fist that would bend him to Barnabas’s will. He was compassionate, heroic, sympathetic—in other words, emotional. He needed a more personal touch.
“I think, Wetherald, that your debt can be repaid in a very personal way,” he suggested smoothly.
“Now that is what I meant,” Wetherald said with relief. “Rescuing Mrs. de Vere—”
“Mrs. Jones,” Barnabas corrected without thinking.
“Mrs. Jones,” Wetherald agreed, “was a personal favor to me. Naturally I wish to repay the favor in kind.”
“Well, I am not in need of rescue,” Barnabas said with a genuinely amused smile, “but I am need of something.”
“What?” Wetherald asked, leaning forward and watching Barnabas with an expression that reminded him of an overeager puppy.
“A companion,” Barnabas said softly. He observed Wetherald’s reaction with hooded eyes. At first there was confusion, but as Barnabas watched the confusion was replaced with astonishment and then with embarrassment, and finally anger.
“I think you’ve made your point,” Wetherald said, standing up and stiffly confronting him.
“My point?” Barnabas asked, letting amusement color his voice.
“If you wished to make a fool of me, consider it done.” Wetherald inclined his head and turned toward the door.
“You wish me to rescue Mrs. Jones,” Barnabas said. Wetherald froze in place.
“You already have,” he said, turning slowly back around to face Barnabas.
“I have barely begun,” Barnabas told
him, straightening from the table. Now was the time in this negotiation to stand firm. “De Vere knows she is the key to destroying all he has built. He will stop at nothing to have her. I—and my considerable resources—are all that stand between them. If I withdraw my protection, she will not last a day in London.”
“I will protect her.” Wetherald’s face reflected his outrage.
“You don’t know the first thing about protecting someone from a devil like de Vere,” Barnabas told him, not unkindly. “You have the power and knowledge to save thousands with a stroke of the pen, but saving one woman from an unspeakable evil that will stalk her until she is dead is beyond your skills. You know this is true.”
“I will hire someone,” Wetherald said.
“For the rest of her life?” Barnabas asked, tilting his head just as Wetherald had done earlier.
“Until you…” He paused. “Until you take care of him,” he finished softly, understanding entering his eyes.
“Now you see my point,” Barnabas said. “In exchange for protection, her self-defense lessons, and her position in this household—which has done miraculous things for her self-esteem and recovery in just a few days—you, Wetherald, will become my lover for as long as I desire it.” Barnabas kept his face impassive as he made the offer, giving nothing away. The truth of the matter was he’d never kick her out of his house or withdraw his protection until he’d killed de Vere and she wished to go. But he was counting on years of adversity between them to make Wetherald think that he would.
“You are an unconscionable bastard,” Wetherald said in a low, harsh voice.
“Not a bastard,” Barnabas said. “I thought we’d already established that.”
“I won’t do it,” Wetherald said.
“Then Mrs. Jones will be on the street by the end of the day,” Barnabas told him. He knew he held the upper hand. Wetherald couldn’t knowingly put an innocent in that much danger again.
“I will not be your lover in truth,” Wetherald said, pale and radiating fury. “But I will allow others to think I am.”
For Love and Country (Brothers in Arms Book 13) Page 6
