by Darcie Wilde
“What did you say?” Harry inquired.
Mr. Dickenson set his glass down on the bar. He straightened, but not steadily. “I said, Mrs. Wakefield’s got no business being picky about who comes courting her sister. She’s lucky to get any offer at all, after the way she’s carried on.”
He’s drunk. Don’t do it, Harry told himself. Let it go. But he wasn’t listening to himself. He got to his feet. He walked over to the bar. That unholy eagerness was back and it had brought his frustrated lust as reinforcement. “You will be cautious, and polite, about how you refer to Mrs. Wakefield.”
“Ohhh-ho!” Dickenson’s eyebrows shot up. “The boy thinks he’s got teeth.”
Harry realized his hand had already curled into a fist. It’s the brandy. It’s the brandy. Let him babble. It doesn’t mean anything. But all he could see was Dickenson’s smug face. That sight got down deep in him and it was foul and filthy, and goaded him hard. The man thought birth and family made him, thought he could tread across other lives with contempt and disregard because they didn’t measure up.
“Now, then, sir, there’s no call for anything unpleasant,” said Mr. Jessop. “Is the brandy not to your taste? I’ve another bottle, very fine . . .”
But Dickenson wasn’t going to be distracted. “Or maybe you just haven’t heard about the methods the good widow used to get her fingers into that property she’s holding on to so tightly. Maybe I should enlighten you as to your lady’s morals.” He fondled his quizzing glass. “But being in trade yourself, maybe you don’t object to a woman with such capital business sense that she’s ready to sell herself and her sister off to the highest bidder . . .”
Probably Dickenson was an habitué of Gentleman Jim’s, or some other fine establishment where they taught boxing as a science. Harry had learned to brawl on the docks around his father’s warehouse among the men and boys for whom fighting was a way to stay alive. His first punch went straight to Dickenson’s guts, and when the man doubled over, the second blow landed right on the back of his head, dropping him like a sack of bricks. But it wasn’t enough to appease the vicious anger roaring in Harry’s veins. He had to teach the man a proper lesson. He drew his foot back, ready to plant a kick in the bastard’s ribs. Roll him over with that, get the next one in his back.
“Harry!”
Mrs. Wakefield’s shout cut through the vicious determination of his thoughts and Harry’s head jerked up. She stood in the doorway, her face shocked and pale as she stared at him.
“I’m sorry,” said Harry to her. “I’m sorry.”
But it was Mr. Jessop who answered. “No need to apologize, sir.” He stumped out from behind the bar. “Very neat job you made of it, if I may say. Martin! Come help me get this mess off the floor!”
As Martin slouched out of the kitchen to help his master carry the unconscious Mr. Dickenson to the bench by the door, footsteps thundered on the stairs. A moment later, Miss Morehouse pushed out of the parlor past her sister.
“What on earth!” Miss Morehouse cried, and then she saw exactly what on earth. “Anthony!”
Harry didn’t move an inch as Miss Morehouse raced past him and dropped to her knees beside the bench, and Dickenson’s prostrate form. Harry’s gaze did not waver from Mrs. Wakefield’s. His hand hurt and his blood burned. The terrible, heady desire for violence boiled through him, and she’d seen it. She saw him ready to beat the living hell out of a drunken man who was already down.
“You brute!” Miss Morehouse shouted up at him as she jumped to her feet. Genevieve Morehouse was nowhere near as tall as her sister, and her hair was many shades darker, but they shared the same green-gold eyes, the same regal bearing, and, clearly, the same nerve.
“Leave him be, Genevieve,” Mrs. Wakefield spoke softly, but the command still rang through the room. Even her sister, it seemed, could not find it in her to disobey. Miss Morehouse huffed, but retreated to sit on a stool and very ostentatiously take up the unconscious Mr. Dickenson’s hand.
Harry noted all this distantly. All that was real was the shock on Mrs. Wakefield’s face and the pallor in her cheeks. The violence that anger and insult had summoned was draining away and shame crawled into all the places it left open. He couldn’t face Mrs. Wakefield anymore. He couldn’t face anybody.
Without a word, Harry turned and bolted out the door.
Nine
Leannah watched Mr. Rayburn’s abrupt departure, momentarily dazed. Then, fully aware that Genevieve had begun talking again, she ran out into the darkness behind him.
The rain had cleared and the moon was out. Harry stood alone in the middle of the cobbled yard. She could see his shoulders shuddering as he drew in one gasping breath after another, struggling for control.
Confusion filled her. Clearly Mr. Rayburn was in the grip of powerful emotion, but she could not see any trace of its origins. He had knocked a man down. She might not be an habitué of public houses but she knew that fights happened with great regularity, and were even regarded as something of a rite of passage, if not actual friendship in the rarified realms of male behavior.
And yet, there had been that moment when she’d first opened the door to see Mr. Dickenson fallen to the floor. Harry drew his boot back to deliver a savage kick. His good-humored face was twisted into such a mask of fury Leannah could not help crying out to him, because something was wrong. This good man should not look so violent and yet so gleeful.
Leannah took a tentative step forward, uncertain as to what she meant to do or say. Harry must have heard because he turned his face toward her. All the commonplaces and light quips that might have occurred to Leannah scattered like dry leaves before the shame on Harry Rayburn’s face.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
He made no answer, just flexed his right hand experimentally and nodded. Impatience overtook her and Leannah strode to his side. Ignoring her cuts and her bandages, she grasped the sides of his face, exactly as she had done a hundred times to her brother, Jeremy. She tilted him firmly toward what little light escaped from the inn’s shuttered windows so she could look for bruises, scrapes, or blood.
There was not a single mark, and Leannah’s reflexive maternal instincts bled away, replaced by the awareness that this was not Jeremy whose face she held. This was the man she’d been fantasizing about. She had settled her palms right over his whiskers and she could feel them, crisp and curling and yet oddly soft. At least, she could feel them where she wasn’t bandaged. Warmth and tension coiled low in her belly as Harry gazed at her. A smile formed on his expressive mouth that was both rueful and sweet. She stared at his smile. She could lean forward and kiss him, here and now. She wanted to kiss him. But as they stood like this, far too close for anyone’s comfort, she did not see the sort of desire she’d glimpsed in him before. Now there was shame and sadness. His hand trembled as he raised it to pull her away from him.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s the matter? Please tell me.”
“I can’t,” he whispered. He didn’t meet her gaze. He looked down at their hands, held together. “I’m sorry . . . I just can’t.”
Bashfulness and confusion overtook Leannah as Mr. Rayburn drew away from her. She clearly had intruded on some secret, and she was torn between the desire to extricate herself from the situation, and the desire to know more.
We’re still strangers, she reminded herself. I have no right to press for a confidence. I mustn’t forget that.
“He’d had too much brandy,” Mr. Rayburn said to the darkness and the empty yard. “I should have just let it go.”
“I’m sure he gave you no choice.”
“There’s always a choice. Sometimes it’s not a good one, but it’s always there.”
He let his head fall back and gazed up at the sky, looking for what, Leannah could not tell. I wish I could go to him. I wish I could hold him, and tell him . . . something, anything.
But she couldn’t. She had transgressed enough boundaries. She shouldn’t eve
n still be standing here. Her place was inside with Genny, not out here with this man, who was obviously unhurt.
He drew a shaky breath. “I’m afraid I’ve made a rather poor impression on your sister.”
“I think, when she has time to reflect on it, we’ll find Mr. Dickenson has made a worse one.”
“I suppose it is hard to play the dashing hero when one is unconscious on the floor.”
Leannah gave one bitter laugh. “I only wish Genevieve really was pining to be swept away by some dashing hero. Then it would be easier to deflect her attention.”
His brows drew together. “So, she actually does love that smug . . .” he stopped. “Dickenson,” he amended.
“The situation is complicated, and not in any of the more usual ways.” She couldn’t stand to have this man thinking Genevieve loose in her morals. Whether it made sense or not, she cared about Mr. Rayburn’s opinion, just as she cared whether or not he’d been hurt, and wondered what made him seem so sad and ashamed just now.
“Does she . . .” he began, but stopped. “No, no, I’m sorry. I’ve made enough of a mess of things tonight. I’m sure you wish I’d just start walking back to town.”
“That is not at all what I wish.”
Those words turned him toward her. The moonlight shone in his deep eyes and Leannah felt the intensity of his gaze prickle across her skin. It seemed as if he looked straight through her and into her confused and unruly heart. She liked that feeling. She wanted to be bared to him, and not just in her thoughts. She wanted to be free to go to him right now, to kiss his shadowed face and moonlit eyes. She wanted to touch him, to press herself against him and know for certain he was hard. She wanted to use her hands, her mouth, her whole body to ease the pain of the secrets Harry Rayburn carried.
“It is not what I wish either,” he breathed. “I . . .” he stopped, and he was smiling, shyly, ruefully. The sight of that moonlit smile robbed Leannah of her breath. “I do wish I knew your Christian name.”
“Leannah,” she told him at once.
“Leannah,” he repeated and it was sweet to hear. “Thank you, Leannah.”
“What have I done?” she asked. “I mean, beyond land you in a world of troubles that aren’t your own?”
“You have showed me yourself,” he answered. “And you have allowed me to share this little time with you, and that . . .” He lifted his fingertips and she felt them graze her hair, just barely touching her, just barely travelling across the bounds of propriety. “That I will cherish.”
She couldn’t speak. Her mouth had gone dry and her heart fluttered at the base of her throat. The ability to move had fled, but at the same time it seemed every inch of her had come utterly alive. She was waiting for Mr. Rayburn’s kiss, longing for it. His kiss would shatter this paralysis, as surely as the prince’s kiss in a fairy tale would wake the sleeping princess. If he kissed her, she would be able to move, to touch him, to return his kiss. She wondered if it would taste of the spices that scented his skin, or of the rain that had so recently drenched him. It should be spices, she decided. There was nothing bland about this man. All was fire, all was heightened, even to the point of delirium. Surely it was delirium that seized hold of her now and kept her rooted to this spot.
“I imagine you wish we’d met properly,” he was saying, trying to make some joke that would break the heated tension of this moment and banish the unspoken need filling in the air between them. “In somebody’s ballroom, over cups of punch.”
She didn’t want this. She couldn’t bear it. This moment was all she’d ever have with Harry Rayburn. She would not let anyone turn it into light satire, not even he himself.
“No,” she said. “I am glad we met this way. In a ballroom, I never would have seen you.”
“Because I’m a merchant’s son?”
“Because you would have been just another beau in a fine coat,” she said. “And I never might have looked beyond that.”
The warmth in Harry’s eyes faded and he stepped away. Cold rushed across Leannah as he turned away.
“You should probably go check on your sister,” he croaked. “You’ve been out here too long.”
I don’t care! she wanted to shout. I want to stay. I will stay!
But he looked over his shoulder at her, and she saw the plea in his eyes. He wanted to be alone. The cold she’d felt before sank under her skin, but she nodded. Then, she turned away and walked back inside the house.
Mr. Dickenson was still sprawled on the bench. Genny was nowhere in evidence. The landlord was running a cloth across the bar, his face studiously neutral. Leannah winced. She had been out there with him far too long. There would be talk, if only between Mr. and Mrs. Jessop.
“Is he all right?” she asked gesturing to Mr. Dickenson.
“Right enough,” answered the landlord. “He’ll have a bit of an aching head and bruised pride, but he’ll be none the worse for that.”
“Good. Thank you. I’m sorry for your trouble, Mr. Jessop. I—”
“Think nothing of it, ma’am.” He cut her off. “There is one thing maybe I should say.” He glanced toward the door. “None o’ my affair a’course, but I thought you ought to know. The other gentleman, Mr. Rayburn, he wouldn’t have laid a finger on this one if he hadn’t taken to insulting yourself and your sister.”
“That is good to know. Thank you, Mr. Jessop.”
“You get along upstairs, ma’am. I’ll keep an eye on things.”
“Oh, but you must be tired.”
He laughed. “Not the first time I’ve kept watch through the night. Don’t you worry.” He gave her a wink, and Leannah felt a weary smile form. She nodded her acknowledgement and started up the stairs to the room Mrs. Jessop had prepared for them.
There she found Genevieve, stretched out on her bed, fully dressed, with her arms folded tightly over her chest.
“It’s about time,” Genevieve announced as she sat up. “I was beginning to think you were the one who eloped.”
Leannah did not rise to the bait. “You should be in bed.”
“I am in bed.”
“You know what I mean.” She gestured for Genevieve to stand up and then moved behind her to undo the laces and tapes on her dress.
“All right, I do know,” said Genevieve to the fireplace. “But I was worried about you, alone out there with that brute.”
“Mr. Rayburn is not a brute, and you are not to say so again.”
For a wonder, her tone was enough to silence Genevieve for ten full seconds. Leannah swiftly pulled her sister’s dress off over her head and hung it on the peg by the door.
“I could just as well stay dressed,” she grumbled. “It’s nearly dawn.”
“Which would make it all the easier for you to run off with Mr. Dickenson as soon as it’s light enough.” Leannah turned away from her sister and lifted her hair off her back. “Now me.”
Genny obeyed, but Leannah could tell she had not in any way given up. She could plainly feel her sister’s eyes boring into the back of her neck while Genevieve undid her tapes and loosened the laces on the corset underneath.
When they had both stripped down to their shifts and donned the nightdresses their well-prepared hostess had left out for them, Genevieve was still glowering. Leannah sat in the slat-backed chair by the fire and picked up the hairbrush that waited beside the basin of clean water. If nothing else, she could make a start on untangling her hair. Probably she’d need a week to do the job thoroughly.
“There is something going on between you and this Mr. Rayburn,” said Genevieve finally. “I can tell.”
Leannah took up a handful of hair and started brushing, hard. Why on earth hadn’t she had it trimmed like a sensible woman? To let this mess grow so long was sheer vanity, and nothing more.
“There is, isn’t there?”
The brush jerked in her hand as it hit a snarl. Leannah pulled again, harder.
“Leannah, I’m not going to sleep until you answer me. Tell me
I’m not wrong.”
Leannah sighed. “You are not wrong.”
“I knew it!” cried Genevieve. “Are you in love? Where did you meet him? Have you known him long? What sort of man is he?”
Leannah eyed her sister through the screen of her tangled hair. “I thought you’d decided he was a brute.”
“First impressions should not be taken too seriously. Tell me!”
“Genevieve, I’m exhausted. Please. Just, go to sleep.” To emphasize her point, Leannah reached across to the lamp and turned the wick down. The light sputtered and died, leaving only the low fire to illuminate the room.
She heard more than saw Genevieve flop down onto the pillows. “You’ll tell me sooner or later,” she prophesized. “You know you will.”
No, I don’t. But this time, Leannah had the sense to keep the comment to herself. She just picked the brush back up and set to work on her hair again. She listened to the sounds of wind around the eaves, and the sound of Genevieve’s breathing, waiting for it to slow and deepen into a sound sleep.
But her last question would not leave Leannah’s mind. What sort of man is he?
I don’t know what sort of man he is, but I wish I did, because then I’d know what sort of man it is I want so badly.
Almost against her will, Leannah imagined Harry lying in the room on the other side of the wall. Was he naked? He might be. The night wasn’t all that cold, and his clothes were damp. She remembered how confidently he’d moved about the parlor downstairs in his shirtsleeves. She hadn’t been able to stop noticing how well his buckskin breeches fit his strong legs and taut buttocks. He’d be magnificent naked. She wondered about his chest. It was broad, and it would surely be a match for his strong arms. His hands and face were bronzed. Was his chest pale, or did it carry the warm coloring of a man who sometimes stripped to the waist when he worked? Did he have much hair on his body? He was quite fair, so probably not. There would be just enough to be enticing as her palms slid across his skin, up around his shoulders to his throat, his face. She knew just what his face felt like under her palms. She could feel it now, and she could clearly picture the intensity his gaze would hold as she pulled him to her so she could kiss him.
