Nervously, Tyrus demanded, “If you still want ’er dead, I’ll be doing it, and you’ll be paying me twice wot you promised before, ’alf now and ’alf when I tell you where the body is. I ain’t taking no chances wi’ you this time, m’lord.”
The man laughed. “Not a penny without results. You’ve already proved how incompetent you are, Mr. Dyer. You’ll have your payment, but only if you succeed this time.”
Tyrus was happy to settle for that. Aye, his luck was definitely improving.
Chapter 21
MRS. APPLETON WAS SO HAPPY that her first dinner party was such a success that she poured herself a glass of wine to celebrate— and poured one for Danny and Claire, too. Claire declined. She was still washing dishes. But Danny only had to check the dining room and parlor once more, to make sure they were back to looking orderly before she retired, so she chugged down her glass.
The cook shook her head at Danny in disgust. “Now that was purely a waste I hope to never see again. That used to drinking, are you? Or do you just not know that good wine should be savored?”
Danny didn’t blush—well, not much. But she did regret having drunk the wine that quickly, tasting it after the fact, as it were. She was used to cheap wine, not this fine stuff with such a heady flavor.
“Can I ’ave another taste then? Missed it the first go-round, I did.”
Mrs. Appleton laughed. “Yes, I suppose you’ve earned it. You did good tonight, lass, very good indeed. Didn’t spill or drop anything. The mark of a good maid is, she’s never noticed. Of course, you’ll never aspire to that with the way you look, but you can still manage to be the best maid on the block if you work at it.”
“And wot’s wrong with the way I look? Mrs. Robertson picked out these togs, ye know.”
“Bless you, child, you must know how pretty you are. That face of yours will always draw attention to you. There’s simply no help for that. But as long as you do your job well, you can overcome that flaw. Now run along. You’ve earned some rest and morning will come around quick enough.”
Danny left the kitchen with a grin on her face. Who but a domestic would consider a pretty face to be a flaw?
The last guest had departed the house quite a while ago, so Danny had been able to collect all the dishes from the dining room in peace. She didn’t expect to find anyone there when she passed through it to give it one last quick inspection, but there was Jeremy back at the table, a decanter of wine in front of him and a half-empty glass in his hand. He didn’t look happy. He looked quite miserable and didn’t even notice that she’d entered the room.
Danny was torn between wanting to ask him what was wrong and wanting to slip back out of the room before he noticed her. She chose the smarter option and turned to leave.
“Don’t want to join me?”
“No.”
“Too blunt,” he tsk-tsked. “Shouldn’t be blunt with a man in the doldrums, you know. Any excuse, even a lame one, would have sufficed.”
Danny tried to concentrate so she’d be able to answer him properly, but the wine she’d drunk herself made it too difficult. “Ye want to be lied to then?”
He thought about that for a moment, then said, “Well, no, ’spose not. But excuses aren’t considered lies, they are considered polite whoppers.”
“Are ye foxed, Malory?”
He blinked at her, then staggered to his feet to pose in an offended manner. “Course not. Never been foxed a day in m’life.”
Danny snorted. “That’s wot they all say. So wot excuse d’ye ’ave, eh? Yer party was a success. Ye should be pleased, not drowning in yer cups.”
“Would be pleased if I didn’t know that at least three members of m’family, possibly four, and I know exactly which ones, are going to go straight to m’father and chew his ear off that I’m failing miserably at my first foray into property ownership.”
“Ye ’ave a smashing party and think yer failing? Aye, yer foxed to the gills.”
Jeremy finished off his wine, set the glass down hard on the table, and admitted, “Isn’t about the party, dear girl. It’s Percy and his bloody big mouth. And if you knew m’father, you wouldn’t want him annoyed with you.”
“Ye ’ave a nice family. Even I could see that. Yer father can’t be worse than the rest o’ them.”
He laughed. She waited, but that was apparently his answer.
She shook her head at him. “Go to bed and sleep it off, mate.”
He scowled for a moment. “I would, except I can’t seem to find my bed.”
“Eh?”
“I tried, really I did. But I kept finding beds that weren’t mine. I’d recognize m’own bed, you know. So there was nothing for it but to come back here and find a chair instead.”
Danny rolled her eyes, marched over to him, grabbed his arm, and pulled him out of the room and toward the stairs. He got harder to pull though when she started up them. She glanced back to see him frowning.
“Don’t think I can manage those again,” he confided. “Not without help.”
“And wot d’ye think I’m doing, eh?”
“But if you should let go for some reason, I could lose m’balance. Course, a broken neck would probably make m’father go easy on me.”
Danny was starting to get amused. When Jeremy Malory was drunk, he was pretty funny. And harmless. The sensual glances that always undid her were missing. The nervousness she always felt when she was around him went away completely. She didn’t even mind touching him at the moment.
“You want to sleep on the couch then?”
“When I’ve a perfectly good bed upstairs?” he said indignantly.
“No, perhaps if you let me hold on to you, that would work?”
Her violet eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Hold on to what?”
“Your shoulder, of course. What the deuce did you think I meant?”
She blushed slightly, grabbed his waist, and pulled his arm over her shoulder. “This better?”
“Much.”
They made it up the stairs with no mishaps. He was leaning on her a bit hard, but despite her narrow frame, she was strong and could support him well. He didn’t let go of her when they reached the upstairs hall, though, even seemed to be leading her down it. She decided it would be quicker to get him to his room if she said nothing and just got him there. But he still didn’t let go of her at his room and apparently wanted assistance right to his bed.
Danny’s suspicions returned, particularly when he got clumsy right next to his bed and fell onto it, dragging her down with him. That she ended up beneath him didn’t help her to extricate herself quickly. Jeremy at a dead weight was quite heavy. She still shoved and bucked to push him off her, but it was wasted effort.
“You better not have fallen asleep, mate,” she growled. “Let me up now or—”
“Be still,” he admonished with a groan. “I think I’m going to puke.”
Danny went very still. She’d forgotten for a moment that he was drunk. She felt bad now, for her suspicions—for all of five seconds. He’d turned his head toward her when he’d spoken, lifted it slightly now, and put his lips right on top of hers.
Danny turned her head aside. She was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he hadn’t meant to do that. But his lips grazed her neck now, sending shivers up her spine, and she heard, “You must know that I want you. I’ve made no pretense about it. There is such pleasure awaiting us, luv. Don’t fight it anymore.”
Before she succumbed to it—desperately now, because his words had such a weakening effect on her—she turned her head back to tell him what he could do with his offered pleasure and got trapped again. She tried to resist, she really did, but all she could do was forget every single reason why she shouldn’t be kissing him. She’d always wondered what it would be like. Lucy had told her about sloppy kisses, wet ones, drunk ones, and the right ones, those rare instances when a kiss could stimulate her sexual urges.
Danny knew well the latter was happening
to her. She even knew why. This was Malory, after all, and she was already attracted to him more than she’d ever been to any man before. And he might be drunk, but his kiss didn’t reflect that at all, far from it. In fact, she wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this first kiss of hers was the most fantastic kiss she’d ever get, that she’d never find another one as powerful or sensual again.
She should have ended what he was doing instantly, before she got a good taste of him. It was going to spoil her for all time, she was sure, because how could any man compete with the best, and she was being shown the best. But ending it was the last thing she wanted to do at the moment. She just couldn’t muster the willpower to do so, when her every sense was being manipulated so expertly, when all she wanted to do was wrap her arms around him and never let go.
And she had the odd thought that if this was how he kissed when he was drunk, heaven help her when he wasn’t.
“God, you taste good!”
She’d been thinking the same thing. His lips were so velvety soft. Or maybe it was because hers were soft and the combination of the two meeting made for a perfect meld. His breath wasn’t fumed with alcohol at all, was rather heady in scent. His taste was exotic, beyond her capability to describe. And she was feeling things other than the kiss, delightful sensations, all new to her, all highly pleasant.
One of his legs had slipped between hers. The pressure there was exquisite because he wasn’t keeping his leg still; he was moving it against her loins in the most erotic way. And he’d gathered her so close, holding her to him as if he weren’t already pressed fully to her, one hand behind her back, the other cupping her bottom, actually pressing her even harder against his thigh. Heat was swirling madly there, about to explode…
“Hell and tarnation, Jeremy,” Drew complained out in the hall, his tone as disgruntled as his words. “You could at least close the blasted door.”
Drew’s door was then slammed shut. And Danny had no trouble getting off the bed now. She didn’t just shove this time, she balled her fingers into a fist and knocked it hard against Jeremy’s ear. He howled and moved off her right quickly.
She shot off the bed and didn’t bother to look back, just hissed on her way out the door, “Ye’ll be getting no ’elp from me the next time yer foxed, mate. Ye can bleedin’ well sleep on the floor.”
Chapter 22
THE NEXT MORNING, as Danny was on her way downstairs to clean the lower rooms because nothing was left to clean upstairs until the two slugabeds rose for the day, a knock came at the front door. Carlton wasn’t around to answer it. She knew that he’d left the house with Mrs. Robertson earlier to help her with a few errands, and it didn’t look as if they’d returned yet. She still didn’t approach the door immediately. In her current mood, she wouldn’t make a courteous butler.
She wasn’t angry at Jeremy over what had happened last night. Drunks were drunks, after all, and did stupid things while they were at it. But she was angry at herself. She had no excuse for what she had let happen. She could think of any number of ways she could have extricated herself immediately from that kiss last night, but she hadn’t used them simply because she didn’t really want to. And that’s what infuriated her. Knowing better hadn’t counted. Knowing what that kiss would have led to hadn’t counted. Nothing had counted but the pleasure Jeremy Malory was capable of handing out.
Claire wasn’t showing up to answer the front door. And the pounding got a lot louder, indicating the impatience of the caller.
With an annoyed sigh, Danny finally yanked it open and snapped, “They’re all sleeping, come back later.”
“I beg your pardon?” the man said in a sardonic tone that implied he wasn’t doing any such thing.
Danny’s palms began to sweat. The large fellow standing there on the doorstep was quite likely the most intimidating man she’d ever seen.
He was big, solid big, with hefty arms and an extremely wide chest of hard muscle, but he wasn’t much taller than she was, probably just short of six feet. Somewhere in his midforties she would guess. And it was impossible to tell if he was an aristocrat or not. His bone structure indicated he was, but he was dressed too casually: no cravat, a white lawn shirt opened at the neck, a black coat, buff trousers, and black riding boots. His blond hair was much too long, though, for him to be a member of the ton, who prided themselves on being fashionable. It was so long it rested on his shoulders in thick waves, giving him the air of a pirate. His expression, though, said clearly this was not a man to cross. He fairly reeked of danger, which was probably why she was suddenly so nervous. She’d never encountered anyone who exuded such an aura, didn’t doubt for a moment that he could be utterly ruthless if provoked—and deadly.
She was tempted to close the door on him and lock it. She might have, too, if he hadn’t brushed past her into the entryway, where he now stood with his arms crossed.
She cringed since she was forced to put him off. “They really are still sleeping. Which one o’ them did ye want to see?”
“Jeremy.”
“It’s doubtful that one will be up anytime soon. ’E got foxed to the gills last night and is sleeping it off.”
A golden brow rose quite high. “What utter rubbish. Jeremy foxed? That’s an impossibility. He was weaned on strong spirits. The youngun is quite incapable of overimbibing, I do assure you. So go wake him and tell him to get his arse down here.”
Danny ran up the stairs, forgot to hike her skirt and tripped a bit, hiked her skirt high, and finished running till she was out of sight. She wasn’t running to get to Jeremy, just to get away from that fellow. But upstairs in the hall, after a long sigh of relief, it sank in what the man had said.
Malory was incapable of getting drunk? So all that nonsense last night had just been a ruse to get her upstairs and into his bed? That bleeding bastard! How dare he trick her like that?
She didn’t knock on his door, she was too angry for that. She marched in and found him on the bed, wide-awake, just lying there looking smug and self-satisfied. He was surprised by her unannounced entrance, though, and sat up. His expression even turned wary when he noted hers.
She stopped in front of him, her hands on her hips, and shouted, “Ye son of a bitch! Ye ever try tricks again to get under me skirt and I’ll gullet ye. And I don’t care if I get fired for it!”
“What tricks?”
“Being foxed. Ye weren’t drunk last night. Yer incapable o’ being drunk!”
He actually grinned. “I did mention that, didn’t I? Definitely recall doing so.”
“And that ye couldn’t find yer bleedin’ bed on yer own? D’ye recall mentioning that, too!”
He chuckled. “Danny, luv, you leave a man few choices. So I was getting desperate enough to take advantage of the conclusion you drew. A few minor fibs, but it was well worth it to finally taste you.”
“Was it?” she snarled just before her fist cracked against his cheek.
She’d expected him to move out of the way. He’d done that easily enough before. She didn’t expect to have her knuckles throbbing now. But it was very satisfying that they were.
“D’ye still think so?” she asked him smugly. “And that’s letting ye off lightly, mate. Keep yer kisses to yerself from now on!”
She marched back out of the room and ran straight into a brick wall. Well, that’s what it felt like. The intimidating chap she’d left in the entry hall had come upstairs, his patience gone, apparently.
“Run along, wench,” he told her. “I’ll be taking over where you left off, you may depend upon it.”
That sounded too ominous by half. Malory was about to get more than a black eye, she’d wager. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving scoundrel.
Chapter 23
JEREMY DROPPED BACK on his bed with a groan, recognizing that voice outside his room. He’d thought he would have another day or two before his father returned to town. But George had no doubt dragged him back as soon as she’d gotten word that her brother’s ship w
as in. And to go by what James had just said, Jeremy had been right last night in thinking his wonderful relatives were too concerned about his behavior to keep it to themselves. Either Percy’s remark had been relayed to James, or he’d been told that Jeremy was bedding his upstairs maid. Probably both. Though how the deuce they’d gotten to James this quickly boggled him.
“Hiding behind a black eye, puppy?”
Jeremy sat up and pointed to his upper cheek. “Take a look. Her fist landed here, but my eye does smart a little. Think it will turn black?”
“What I think,” his father said, “is you’ve bloody well lost your mind, tangling with a wench who throws punches instead of slaps.”
Jeremy grinned. “You don’t think any such thing. You saw her. You know exactly why I’d want to tangle with her, no matter what she throws.”
“Beside the point,” James said, but he still came over to the bed, took hold of Jeremy’s chin to tilt his head at a different angle, and examined the rapidly bruising area on his upper cheek.
“Won’t be a full shiner, but you might have enough bruise there to put off Albert Bascomb’s girl, so she’ll tilt her cap elsewhere.”
Jeremy flinched and exclaimed, “Hell’s bells, you even heard about her?”
James moved his large frame over to one of the two stuffed chairs in the room and got comfortable. “Let me tell you about my morning, dear boy. I manage to get to the family home by mid-morning, much to George’s delight, only to find Eddy boy burning a hole in the carpet of my study with his impatience to see me. Thirty minutes later the elder marches off, unsatisfied with my replies, of course.”
“Naturally,” Jeremy grinned.
His father was unique to the Malory clan, always had been, going his own way and breaking convention as he pleased, the black sheep of the family, as it were. He’d been disowned by his brothers for over ten years when he took to pirating on the high seas. He was back in the fold now, but he still bucked convention.
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