“I tried, I tell you,” protested Whiney-voice. “But I was fair betwattled when I spied her sneaking into the stables and saddling her own horse at that time of night. She kept glancing around, nervous-like. It was plain as the nose on your face that she didn’t want anyone to see what she was doing. Never would have thought a respectable lady like Mrs. Greeley would be slipping about like a common bit of muslin. By the time I had me wits gathered and a horse saddled, she’d disappeared.”
“How long was she gone? Or are you going to tell me you went to sleep and don’t know when she returned?”
“No, I didn’t go asleep. I ain’t that much of a fool, despite what you may think!” Whiney said indignantly. “I dunno for sure how long she was gone, not having a timepiece and all, but I expect that it was only an hour or two. Once she came back and put her horse away, I slipped to the front of the barn and watched as she ran to the house. Then I lit out for here.”
There was silence for several minutes. From his position outside the window, Asher guessed that the Ormsby man was considering Whiner’s information.
“You told me to let you know soonest I could if I saw anything strange. Ain’t this the sort of thing you’re after?” asked Whiney after a bit. “It ought to be worth something.”
The Ormsby man muttered something that Asher didn’t catch. He heard the sound of a drawer opening and some coins clinking together. A moment later, Whiney exclaimed, “Bloody hell! That’s all I get for my troubles!”
“For now,” growled the other man. “All you told me was that Mrs. Greeley took a midnight ride. Can’t see that it was worth much.”
The whiner protested, but the Ormsby man waved him away. “I’ve paid you more than that bit of nonsense is worth and if you wasn’t me brother, I wouldn’t give you that much. Now go on back to Kirkwood before you are missed.”
“You always was a stingy fellow,” complained Whiney.
The other man gave a hard laugh. “And you always were a fool! Sometimes I think Ma played Pa false to saddle me with a looby like you.”
“Seeing as how you don’t think much of what I brought you,” Whiney said, “don’t think I’ll be doing you any more favors.”
“I told you: bring me something useful and there’s money in it for you.” He paused and added, “If you’d followed her and knew where she went…now that would have been worth something.”
They spoke for a few minutes more, the Ormsby man gradually coaxing the whiner out of his sullen attitude.
From his position outside the window, wanting to identify the men, especially the one from Kirkwood, Asher considered risking a glance inside the room, but dismissed it. It would be his luck, he thought sourly, that both men would be staring right out the window, straight at him. Consoling himself with the knowledge that the two men were brothers and that finding out which one of the stable boys at Kirkwood had a brother who was the head groom at Ormsby should be simple enough to do.
Business concluded, the two men in the stables parted, the Ormsby man saying, “Now remember, keep your eyes open.”
Muttering, the whiner exited the room and a second later the candle went out. Asher remained where he was and only when he heard the noises that indicated the Ormsby man was most likely settling back into bed, did he move.
Silently he slid along the side of the building toward the front of the stable. Hearing the stable door open and close, he picked up his speed and was at the corner of the building and able to watch the Kirkwood servant ride away into the darkness. When the sound of the horse’s hooves disappeared into the distance, Asher hurried to where he had left his own mount tethered.
Riding back through the quiet night toward Fox Hollow, Asher was thoughtful. Tonight had been…interesting. Under different circumstances, Ormsby’s determination to marry Thalia might have amused him, but the use of her letters to force a marriage between them put the situation in a whole different light. He grinned. He’d have stolen the letters from Ormsby for the sheer delight in doing so, but saving Thalia from Ormsby’s clutches added a touch of nobility to the task. If Juliana was correct, Thalia was in love with Caswell, and what could be nobler than seeing two lovers united?
And then there was Juliana…His loins tightened uncomfortably as the memory of her soft body, the taste of her mouth beneath his, rolled over him. Christ! He had reacted like a green boy with his first woman. He had fallen on her like a ravening wolf on a spring lamb and almost taken her on that battered table in a bloody poacher’s hut. Even now with some distance from the event, his reaction to her appalled him. She was damn near like a sister to him, he thought incredulously, and he had been moments away from mounting her as if she were a trollop in a waterfront tavern.
Though there were five years between them, from the time he was around eleven years old and his stepfather had lost a leg in some nameless battle and returned to Apple Hill, they’d grown up together. He shook his head remembering those carefree childhood days. The times she had tattled on him and his brothers and he’d seethed to box her ears! He’d viewed her in those early years as one of the most irritating members of the female species that it had ever been his misfortune to know. But he’d had affection for her, too, and when he thought of her at all, it had been with the same fondness he bestowed upon his younger sisters. Yet that had changed in an instant tonight and he doubted he’d ever be able to go back to thinking of her with anything that remotely resembled brotherly affection.
The stark fact was that he had wanted her in the most basic way a man could want a woman. And he had wanted her, he reminded himself uneasily, more than he could remember wanting any woman.
Even after Fox Hollow came into view and he dismounted and took care of his horse, his thoughts were on Juliana and the passionate interlude in the poacher’s hut. His own reaction, he half understood—he was male and it had been several months since he’d had a woman. As he entered the house and walked upstairs to his rooms on the second floor, it was Juliana’s reaction to his blunt advances that preoccupied him. So why hadn’t she boxed his ears and rung a peal over him? The Juliana he had known certainly would have. He grinned. With relish—and then lectured him on the impropriety of his actions.
Not bothering to light a candle, Asher stripped off his clothes and slid into bed. Settling beneath the sheets and light coverlet, his hands behind his head, he stared into the darkness, still reviewing those combustible moments in the poacher’s hut. It gratified him that Juliana had not repulsed him, but he wondered why she had not. Did her response bespeak a woman who was willing game for any man…or had her sweet generosity been for him alone? He rather liked the idea that her reaction might have been simply because he was the man kissing her.
Thinking of those heated kisses, he was fascinated that his often vexing childhood companion had revealed, if only for those moments, a distinctly amorous proclivity. Who would have ever suspected, he wondered, that underneath those damned muslin skirts and hiding behind that prim and proper exterior existed such a passionate creature? More importantly, could he coax that decidedly sensual being out of hiding again? His grin widened. Oh, yes, he rather thought he could.
It would have been pleasant to drift to sleep thinking of Juliana, but knowing he could put it off no longer, he shoved the enticing paradox of the eminently respectable Mrs. Greeley aside and concentrated on the rest of the night’s events.
One thing was obvious: Ormsby had a spy at Kirkwood. But why? Ormsby held the upper hand: he had the letters. Did he fear that despite the threat of scandal Thalia would throw caution to the winds and try to run away with Caswell anyway? Asher frowned and briefly considered the possibility that the head groom’s meeting tonight with his brother had nothing to do with Ormsby or Thalia, but he dismissed it. What would be the purpose? No. Ormsby had to be behind it. And going on that assumption, from what he’d overheard tonight, it would appear that Ormsby had enlisted the help of his head groom, but hadn’t been very specific about what sort of informatio
n he wanted from the Kirkwood stable boy.
Asher didn’t doubt that the head groom would report Juliana’s midnight ride to the marquis, but beyond, perhaps, arousing Ormsby’s curiosity, Asher didn’t see that it would do any harm. He would warn Juliana, though, of the spy in her stables.
As for the spy in the Kirkwood stables, Asher concluded that identifying him would be enough for now. No use alerting Ormsby that his agent had been unmasked and give him an opportunity to plant another one somewhere else on the estate. Once the stable boy was identified, they’d be able to circumvent his learning anything useful. An unpleasant smile curved Asher’s lips. And, if necessary, allow them to feed Ormsby whatever half lies they wanted.
The stealing of the letters held the least interest for Asher. He’d taken on harder jobs than this before and been paid damned well for it, too, he admitted. For a moment the rein on his thoughts sprang free and he lost himself thinking of ways to extract a suitable and oh so satisfying price from Juliana for his efforts on her behalf. Money was not involved.
A yawn took him. He could solve nothing tonight and dawn was only hours away. He yawned again. First thing in the morning, he had to ride over to his grandmother’s and warn her that she was going to go visit poor little Thalia Kirkwood this afternoon. His pulse gave a jump. And he would see the delightfully proper Mrs. Greeley. A smile on his lips, he slept.
Juliana did not sleep so well. For the first time since she had temporarily moved back into her father’s home to help with Thalia’s debut, she resented being here. She had her own charming house not too many miles down the road and tonight she missed its familiarity and comforts terribly. Not that Kirkwood wasn’t a pleasant house; it just wasn’t her house.
After the meeting with Asher tonight, her nerves were jangled and she desperately wanted the comfort of her own things around her, needed to walk through the cozy rooms she had created and find her equilibrium. From the instant Ormsby had called upon her father and the existence of Thalia’s indiscreet, foolish letters had been revealed, life had seemed to spin out of control. And Juliana needed control.
For so much of her life, most things had been beyond her control. She had been a dutiful daughter, submitting gracefully to her father’s kindly rule, never once struggling against the edicts of society that gave him complete sway over her future. When it came to marriage, it had never occurred to her not to marry a man her father and the polite world thought suitable. It hadn’t, she thought, half hysterically, even occurred to her not to marry. Marriage was what was expected of a young lady of her class and the alternatives, governess, spinster aunt or household drudge, did not appeal. And so just shy of her twenty-first birthday she had married. A very nice, respectable man with a modest fortune.
Wandering around her former rooms at Kirkwood, she wondered, not for the first time, if she had ever loved William Greeley. She hadn’t disliked him and he had been a pleasant enough man, but…No, she hadn’t loved him. She’d been genuinely fond of him, enjoyed his company and had been content to be his wife. She had exchanged her father’s rule for her husband’s and without complaint had adapted to her new circumstances. Marriage gave her a trifle more freedom—a wife wasn’t as constrained as a single woman—but it would never have occurred to her to thwart society and kick over the traces. Settled into her husband’s home on his father’s estate in Hampshire, she’d hoped for children, they both had, and in time that might have happened if he hadn’t died of consumption barely a month prior to their third anniversary.
Finding herself widowed at twenty-four had been a shock and her world had turned upside down. For the first time in her life there was no male figure to be deferred to, no one to exert the gentle despotism under which she had lived, and for a few months she drifted aimlessly, much like a ship without a rudder. Of course, her father and her father-in-law gave her sage advice on what she should do and where she should live and she listened to them politely, but a part of her was even then vaguely aware that they could not compel her to follow their advice.
Her in-laws had wanted her to continue to live in the pleasant house she had shared with their youngest son, but after only a few months, Juliana found herself longing more and more for the familiar lands of her birth. Lonely, missing her husband, she yearned to be near her sister: she wanted, she realized, to return to Kent. The marriage settlements she received from her husband had been generous and she woke up one morning with the invigorating knowledge that she could do precisely as she pleased with no one to gainsay her. If she wanted to move nearer her sister she could, and with only a little pang she had kissed her in-laws good-bye and moved back to Kirkwood.
Her father, assuming she had come home to stay, had been astonished when a few weeks later, she mentioned that she wanted to buy a charming little estate hardly more than five miles away from Kirkwood. He counseled against it, happy to have his eldest daughter once again seeing to Thalia and taking the burdens of running the household off his shoulders, allowing him to lose himself in his books. Surprising herself as much as him, she demurred and promptly purchased Rosevale—a half-timbered, two-story house, and the three hundred rich, fertile acres that went with it.
Turning a deaf ear to those who suggested that she was far too young and pretty to live on her own, she set about turning Rosevale into her home. She conceded to convention on one point though, installing her dear old nursemaid, Mrs. Rivers, in the house to still any wagging tongues. It was sufficient to satisfy her father and since Mrs. Rivers was a cheerful and sensible lady who was far too grateful to live in ease and comfort beyond her means to ever raise any objections to anything Juliana suggested, the two women were very pleased with the arrangement. Her small staff, cook, housekeeper, maid, gardener and stable man, insured that everything ran smoothly and she had settled down happily to live a tranquil life in the country. She wanted for nothing. Her father and sister were nearby. She had her own home, her own fortune, and could and did arrange her life as she chose. It had proven to be exhilarating.
When she offered to help her father with Thalia’s London debut, Juliana thought of it as a pleasant, enjoyable diversion. Originally, she would be gone from Rosevale for a few months while the family was in London, and once they came back to Kent, she would return to her own snug little home, except for times such as the house party, when her presence would be needed at Kirkwood.
Her lips drooped. It seemed so simple, she thought unhappily, before Ormsby had destroyed everyone’s plans and set her feet on the perilous path she now trod. For someone as respectable and conventional as Juliana, the notion that she would creep into Ormsby’s London study with theft on her mind had been inconceivable. But that was before, she reminded herself, Ormsby had threatened to destroy Thalia’s chance for happiness.
From the moment she had opened the door to Ormsby’s study and slid into that dark room, she’d known that she was on shifting, dangerous ground, every step she took fraught with disaster. And nothing had changed since then. If anything, she may have made things worse, enlisting someone else, allowing someone else to know how foolish her sister had been….
The memory of lying on that horrible old table, her skirts up around her waist, her body hot and yearning, eager for Asher’s possession, burned across her mind and she flushed. Good God! She, not Thalia, had been seconds away from being thoroughly compromised and ruined!
She buried her face in her hands, humiliated and ashamed. Her sister’s very future was at stake and she had acted like a common trollop. What had she been thinking? Certainly not of Thalia, she admitted wretchedly, and Thalia had to be her first and only priority.
Juliana took a deep, calming breath. What happened tonight had been an aberration, a moment out of time, a moment not to be repeated. She couldn’t explain it, she wasn’t even certain how it had happened—she only knew that once Asher had touched her and taken her into his arms, the world had simply vanished and there was only Asher kissing her, touching her, arousing her beyond anythi
ng she had ever imagined. In those wild, frantic seconds, she forgot everything except how wonderful his mouth felt on hers, how hungry, how demanding her body had been for his possession. Nothing had mattered then. Not Thalia, not respectability, not even danger. Just thinking of those never-to-be-sufficiently-regretted moments, desire, uncontrollable and urgent, flooded through her and to her horror her nipples peaked and an aching heat flared between her thighs. Her fists clenched at her sides and she willed the feelings away. What was wrong with her? Even with her husband she’d never experienced such powerful sensations, yet Asher…She swallowed painfully. With Asher she had forgotten every scruple, every precept she had ever known. And it must not happen again. It must not, she reminded herself desperately, because only folly…and heartache awaited her down that path.
Chapter 6
Asher’s first chore the next morning had been to write his grandmother a note, telling her of Thalia’s measles and with the warning that he would be driving over this afternoon to take her to call upon the Kirkwood household to offer assistance. Once the note was on its way to Burnham, he enjoyed a breakfast of tender scones just from the oven, coddled eggs and rare sirloin, washing down the whole with a tankard of ale.
Retiring to his office, he looked over some papers his farm manager had left earlier on his desk for his perusal, but his mind had been on last night’s events and his thoughts drifted.
He had no doubts that he could find and recover Thalia’s letters in the time frame that Juliana had given him. Finding the letters would be the trickiest part, but in the course of his less-than-respectable career, he had discovered that most people were predictable, even more so when it came to concealing items of importance. He’d known a few individuals who did not follow the normal pattern of behavior and had caused him some unpleasant surprises, but those people were the exception, not the rule.
Passion Becomes Her Page 8
