And gasped.
11
It wasn’t Dougald’s black presence that accounted for the silence, but his appearance. One eye was purple and swollen shut, his lip was split and puffed up, he had a bruise on his cheek and a goose egg on his forehead.
Before anyone could remark, he said, “I fell off my horse.”
A lie. Hannah had seen him look something like this before after a bout of fisticuffs that involved Midsummer’s Night, too much ale and some old cronies from his days on the streets.
“Come here, young man,” Miss Minnie directed in her severest tone.
He limped toward her, wincing with each step.
Hannah tore her appalled gaze from his face. She could do nothing for him. It wasn’t her place. Glancing around, she saw the aunts shaking their heads in unison. Mrs. Trenchard stood wringing her hands. From the doorway, Charles glared at her as if his master’s condition was her fault, and she understood now why he had sought her out. Perhaps he thought Dougald would listen to her and allow his wounds to be tended.
Dougald had never listened to her. Charles knew that.
Dougald didn’t deserve all this sympathy. The stupid man had been fighting! She wanted to go up and shake her finger in his face and scold him, slap a bandage on his eye and tell him how his behavior was childish and ill-advised.
And why was Sir Onslow leaning against the sideboard and grinning like a buffoon at Dougald’s limping figure? She didn’t like that baron. She didn’t know why she ever thought him amusing.
Taking his hands, Miss Minnie looked them over. “When you fell from your horse, Dougald, you seem to have landed on your knuckles.”
Sir Onslow chortled.
Miss Minnie whipped her head toward him. “What are you laughing about, young man?”
Under the influence of her righteous indignation, he quickly sobered. “Nothing, ma’am.”
“I thought not.” Miss Minnie transferred her gaze to Mrs. Trenchard. “We need ointment and bandages from your medicine closet.”
Mrs. Trenchard sorted through the keys on her belt. When she had found the right one, she curtsied, and said, “I’ll get them at once, ma’am.”
She scurried out, leaving a silence Aunt Spring rushed to fill. “How did dear Dougald scrape his knuckles falling off his horse?”
“He’s been fighting, Spring, dear.” Aunt Ethel shook her head, and her white curls bobbed. “I had thought the dear boy would be better with his fists.”
Hannah straightened. Dougald was good with his fists. He’d told her so, and she’d seen him swaggering and proud after that brawl. So how had he managed to get himself so battered?
She looked at him with a little less heat and a little more thoughtfulness.
But he resolutely ignored her. Limping to the high, carved, armed chair at the head of the table, he seated himself with excruciating caution. “I couldn’t be better.” With his gaze, he challenged anyone to refute him.
Aunt Spring didn’t notice. “Why were you fighting, Dougald? You’ve never fought before.”
Dougald shook out his napkin and repeated, “I fell from my horse.”
“You were fighting with your horse?” Aunt Isabel teased him.
He didn’t return her smile. He probably couldn’t. Not with that split lip. Hannah placed another crumpet on her plate—how had she thought to eat so much?—and started for her seat, when Mrs. Trenchard returned, hands full, almost at a run.
Charles started forward, but Miss Minnie boomed, “Give the bandages to Miss Setterington. We’ll see whether she knows enough about nursing to care for dear Aunt Spring.”
“I don’t indulge in fisticuffs,” Aunt Spring objected.
Charles began, “Mademoiselle Minnie, I already offered to tend the master’s wounds, and he refused most vociferously. So if he—”
Hannah didn’t wait to hear how that squabble would fall out, but strode toward Dougald armed with hard-won confidence—and a plate of food. She was a competent nurse, and her fingers itched to fix Dougald—in more ways than one. She gripped her fingers around his arm. “Let’s go into the little dining room.”
He looked down at her hand. “Miss Setterington, you are presumptuous.”
She released her grip. “Very well.” She turned her back and folded her arms, knowing very well what was to come.
“Dougald, dear, you look barbarous.” Aunt Spring sounded distressed.
“Not delightful at all at the breakfast table,” Aunt Isabel said reproachfully.
Aunt Ethel used one hand to shield her eyes. “The sight of blood makes me queasy.”
Hannah heard Dougald’s heavy breathing, and smiled. How she loved to see Dougald defeated by four frail old ladies.
“Damnation,” Dougald muttered as he stood. “It was just a little fracas.”
When Hannah looked back, Aunt Ethel winked at her.
Dougald began to limp out, but something caught his eye. Stopping, he stared at his heir. In a disgruntled tone, he said, “I’ve got a diamond collar pin just like that.”
Seaton touched it with his finger. “Then I must compliment your good taste.”
Dougald shook his head and moved on, and Hannah heard him mutter, “Gooseberry.”
Mrs. Trenchard followed Hannah and Dougald. A footman hurried to pull out a chair at the small round table.
With ill grace Dougald seated himself. “I will remember this,” he said to Hannah.
Mrs. Trenchard set the bandages and ointment beside him and a steaming cup close to Hannah. “Your hot chocolate, Miss Setterington.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Trenchard. Lord Raeburn, you remember everything.” Hannah placed her plate close to his right hand—she had learned a few things in her years of caring for the ill, and one was that they had to be on their deathbeds before they turned up their noses at food. “As do I.”
They were at a standoff, at least with a footman at the door and Mrs. Trenchard hovering behind Hannah, ready to render assistance.
Dougald showed his teeth in an angry snarl. “You should eat. You’re already too skinny.”
“Thank you, my lord, for that fawning assessment. Your countenance could use improvement, also.”
He gave a bark of laugh, then stopped as it pulled his lip. “Vixen,” he said in appreciation.
“Eat. It’ll keep your mouth busy.” She smoothed his hair back.
He jerked back as if the touch of her burned him. “When did you learn anything about nursing?”
“I learned much when I tended Lady Temperly, and even more while directing the Distinguished Academy of Governesses.” Moving slowly, she touched his chin. When he let her, she lifted it and looked him over. “Eighteen-year-old girls have a way of getting into mischief, and when the mischief is done, someone must bandage their wounds.”
“You must have loved running your academy. All those girls doing what you told them. You could imagine they were your children.” He paused. “That must have been almost as good as having your own family.”
She wanted to slap him, but his face was worse than she’d first thought. When she slid her hands along his scalp, she found two more swellings the size of a hen’s egg. He’d been soundly drubbed.
Right now, she was glad. “You really are a swine,” she said conversationally.
Mrs. Trenchard said, “Miss Setterington!”
Hannah ignored her. Mrs. Trenchard had no part in this war between Dougald and Hannah. “My lord, do you suffer a headache?” Hannah asked.
“Of course,” he snapped.
“Can you see clearly out of the good eye?”
He leered at her chest. “And a lovely view it is, too.”
Mrs. Trenchard gasped. Apparently she wasn’t used to hearing her master compliment women on their breasts.
Hannah took what comfort she could from that.
“He needs cold rags wrapped around his head and a cold slab of beef on this eye,” she told the housekeeper.
Mrs. Trenchard gave
instructions to the footman.
“How is he, Miss Setterington?” Aunt Ethel peered from the doorway at the stricken Dougald.
He reared back. “I’m fine, Aunt Ethel. Why is everyone talking about me like I can’t hear? And why is everyone making such a fuss over a few cuts? I’m fine!”
“I suppose you are. Anytime a man is that cross, he’s going to live.” Aunt Ethel retreated, but Hannah heard her mutter, “More’s the shame.”
Charles appeared at Dougald’s left shoulder and lifted his superior French nose toward her in challenge.
She didn’t care, as long as he didn’t interfere here. After all, he had helped Dougald get dressed. He’d had his chance to reassure himself of Dougald’s health. She said, “I’ll do his scrapes first.”
Mrs. Trenchard twisted the top off a clay pot and extended it toward Hannah. “Comfrey mixed with lard,” she said.
Hannah dabbed ointment on his lip and found the words bubbling from her unrestrained by propriety or eavesdroppers. In a furious undertone, she demanded, “What have you been doing, Dougald? Trying to get yourself killed? Never before were you so foolish as to take on a fight you couldn’t win.”
Dougald tried to jerk his head out of her grasp. “That stuff stinks.”
“A penance for your sins.” She spoke loudly enough for Mrs. Trenchard to hear, directed a quick smile her way, then smoothed the ointment across the scrapes on his chin and over the inflammation on his ear, and murmured, “Where did you go last night? To the pub with Alfred?”
“You’re nagging,” he said.
“Someone needs to.” Her voice rose. “You came close to getting yourself killed.”
Mrs. Trenchard flinched.
Both Dougald and Hannah looked at her.
In a choked voice, she said, “Just like the other lords.”
Dougald snorted. “Yes, Mrs. Trenchard, but you’ve heard the rumors. I killed my wife, and I killed the other lords so I could have the title. I’m not going to kill myself.”
“Yes, my lord.” The jar Mrs. Trenchard held trembled. “I had forgotten that, my lord.”
Hannah lifted his left hand. “Why were you limping?”
“Stepped in a hole. Twisted my ankle.” His free fingers crept toward her plate and plucked up the crumpet.
He’d always liked crumpets.
She slathered his knuckles with ointment. “Sir Onslow says you’re now a romantic figure in all of England.”
“Sir Onslow.” Dougald fixed his brooding gaze—or rather, half his brooding gaze—on her face. “You’ve been flirting with him.”
She stopped smiling. “I don’t flirt.” Taking the strips of bandage, she wrapped each finger.
“You’ve been talking to him.”
A footman arrived with towels floating in a basin of water. Another brought a cold piece of beef on a plate.
Hannah lifted a towel from the basin and wrung out the cold water. “I do talk.”
“I don’t want you talking to him.”
Their voices were rising, but Hannah couldn’t contain herself. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He’s dangerous.”
She slapped the towel on his head. “If I listened to rumors—so are you.”
He caught her wrist.
She looked down at him.
Beneath the bruises and the scrapes, he was wearing his cold, angry face again, and his scowl very effectively conveyed a warning. “Don’t listen to rumors. Believe it. I am dangerous.”
He was threatening her again, in the broad light of day and after she’d been kind enough to bind his wounds. If he weren’t already hurt, she would pummel him. Jerking herself free, she glanced at the servants. Mrs. Trenchard’s stiff face proved she had heard at least part of their quarrel. The servingmen appeared to be straining to hear.
It didn’t matter, though, did it? This whole situation was untenable, and Miss Hannah Setterington was not about to allow any man to intimidate her. Certainly not her own husband. “Piffle! I don’t have to put up with such nonsense.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
Lifting the beef, she placed it carefully over his bad eye and stepped back to survey the results. “You look incredibly silly.” Stepping toward him, she leaned over, picked up her mug of now-tepid chocolate, and said softly and fiercely, “I’m catching the first train back to London.”
As she turned to leave, he grabbed her skirt. “Mrs. Trenchard, ask Aunt Spring if she will attend me here.”
Mrs. Trenchard curtsied and hurried into the breakfast room.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Hannah asked. “You can’t keep me here by force.”
“Force?” He removed the meat, revealing his battered face. “No. I don’t need force.”
Observing the intensity of his one-eyed gaze, she thought that he was going to fling himself at her. She placed her cup on the table so she could defend herself.
Defend herself, or welcome him…what a conundrum!
She no longer knew which action she most wished to take. All the years she’d spent by herself had been chaste ones, and she’d been proud of her constraint. She had looked on men, handsome men, men who wooed her, men who attempted seduction with the sweetest phrases and the most forceful embraces, and she had disdained them. With her wit and the occasional sharp box to the ears, she had cut them down, reduced them to their true form—sulking boys or needy beasts. She had imagined herself as a buttress of righteousness, a fortress so strong mere charm and dapper virility could not assault it.
Now she realized that she had not been strong—merely she had not been challenged. Those men had not been Dougald. Nothing of their bodies or their souls had called to her passion or her loneliness, for none of those men had been the mate for whom Nature intended her.
Nature cared only that two bodies came together in passion to reproduce. Nature didn’t comprehend that a woman might need to be more than a female propagating to increase the tribe.
Now as Hannah faced her mate, heard his threats, knew that he wished for…nay, had plotted her capture as if she were a pet who had run away, she still experienced the brief, sharp pain as her nipples pinched, and the warm, sluggish wanting settled in her belly.
She had to stop this. If he knew—and Dougald had always been acute where animal passions had been concerned—he would act in the way most likely to make her miserable and please himself. She had no doubt what that action might be, and it involved her long-buried emotions and two nude bodies.
She pulled away from that thought with the maidenly dismay never experienced by the younger Hannah. She had to bring this scene to an end. Somehow, she had to get out of this room before he tried to impose himself on her, or she too frankly told him what she thought of his younger self and his current despicable and much-stained soul.
Folding her arms over her chest, she glared down at Dougald. “I am Miss Hannah Setterington of the Distinguished Academy of Governesses. I do not tolerate threats.”
In a tone as cold and firm as her own, Dougald answered, “I don’t make threats.”
They stared at each other, locked in a battle of wills, neither willing to turn away.
Aunt Spring appeared in the doorway. “I fear I’m not very good at bandaging wounds, dear boy. You’re better off with Miss Setterington.”
Hannah and Dougald broke eye contact.
“That’s not why I begged that you attend me, Aunt Spring,” Dougald said.
She hurried toward him. “Then what can I do for you?”
In a voice as fulsome as a traveling actor’s, he asked, “Didn’t you tell me you knew the Burroughs family?”
The name meant nothing to Hannah. She tried to yank her skirt free of his grasp.
Aunt Spring blinked at their tug-of-war. “Why, yes, dear. What’s left of them. Only the old couple, and that’s a shame.” She turned to Miss Minnie, Aunt Isabel and Aunt Ethel who, led by curiosity, had followed her. “Dougald is asking about the Burroughs
es.”
“We know them,” Aunt Isabel boomed. “A pleasant couple, but rather stiff.”
“Stiff?” Miss Minnie sniffed. “They are quite full of themselves.”
Never one to allow the conversation to elude him, Sir Onslow appeared behind them. “Yes, ma’am, but the family has been in the district since before the Tudors. Some would say they have the right to be full of themselves.”
“Well, they will die out now,” Aunt Isabel stated. “They haven’t anyone at all.”
Dougald twisted Hannah’s skirt in his bandaged fist. “You said they had lost their son in his youth, not long after they’d refused him permission to marry a certain Miss Carola Thomlinson?”
Hannah stopped tugging so suddenly she fell back toward Dougald. She caught herself just before she would have tumbled into his lap. She whirled to face him.
He sat enthroned in his chair, bleak and hard, the man who knew her secrets. The man who knew how to pull her strings. The man who knew her mother’s name—and who knew how desperately Hannah wished to discover what family she had left. He had known she would come to Lancashire and stay, regardless of what he did or said, for a chance to meet her grandparents. Probably he was the one who had subtly directed her inquiries to the correct place.
No wonder he was so confident.
“Burroughs.” She tested out the name. “Burroughs.” Her father’s surname. She’d never known. Her mother had never told her. She had tried to ask, but her inquiries gave her mother such pain she had waited and waited—until it was too late, and her mother could no longer tell her.
Now Dougald knew the name of her grandparents. Her father’s parents. She turned to Aunt Spring, unable to repress the kind of eager desperation only an orphan could understand. “Can you…will you tell me where they live?”
Aunt Spring smiled at her. “Do you know them, dear?”
“No. No, but I…”
“Family friends, no doubt,” Aunt Ethel said.
“Yes.” Hannah looked around to find herself the focus of every gaze. She hadn’t thought of this. That she would have to explain herself to anyone. Why should she? She had imagined she could make discreet inquiries over an extended period of time. She hadn’t thought that Dougald would be at Raeburn Castle, making it impossible for her to stay. Making it impossible for her to go. “I suppose you could say that, although it has been years…they probably don’t know me.”
Rules of Attraction Page 11
