The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (45 page)

Gilly, who had been silent so far, could stand no more. "Keep your bloody tongue off my ancestors, Mutter-gutter, or else I'll be forced to poke you one in the chops," she warned the lawyer before turning on her groom. "And you, you popinjay, how dare you cast stones at my name? If you were shocked when the minister rattled off that string of names I'm cursed with, it was no less of a blow to me when he addressed you as Kevin
Sylvester
Rawlings!"

Kevin winced. "Please, wife, I wish that to remain our little secret. I will refrain from further comment on your names if you will afford me the same courtesy."

"Yes, well," Mutter ventured hopefully, "the hour grows late, your lordship, my lady. If I may suggest we, er, well, that we just get on with it?"

The three settled themselves into well-separated chairs, and Mutter shuffled through some papers, at last pulling out one official-looking sheet of parchment written on in fine, spidery copperplate.

"Here, then, is the puzzle your great-uncle has set for you, my lord," he said, passing the parchment to Kevin, who scanned it quickly, then read the thing aloud:

"For now, on humble pie you dine.
I give you, girl, an anodyne.
Your Fortune waits with endless time,
Two clues; your name and this wry rhyme."

Partway through, Gilly made a sound, one much closer to a snort than a sniff, but everyone ignored her.

"Well," Kevin commented when he was through, "Will Shakespeare has nothing to fear. The world was done a great service when m'uncle chose not to become a poet, wouldn't you say? But what does it all mean—as I trust there is some cryptic message hidden in this scribbling."

Gilly rose from her seat, nearly tripping over her hem as she snatched the parchment from Kevin's unresisting fingers. She yanked up her skirts and paced the room while reading and rereading the puzzle, then stopped and addressed the two men. "The girl in the puzzle is me, don't you think? Other than that, the whole thing seems to be totally senseless. Just another example of the workings of a sick, rotted, and twisted mind."

Kevin's left eyebrow rose fractionally. "I know the man treated you shabbily, Gilly, but remember, he was your sire."

"So?" Gilly countered, hands on hips. "What do you wish from me? Tears? Gushings of gratitude that he at last deigned to recognize me? And how does he do it, eh? I'll tell you how. By forcing me into a sham marriage and then dangling some puzzle in front of me like a carrot before a donkey." She tossed back her fiery head and laughed. "And they call
me
a bastard?"

"Now, now, child," Kevin commiserated as Mutter tried to make himself invisible in his chair. "We must endeavor not to allow circumstances to overwhelm us. Give me the puzzle."

She handed over the parchment as if she were happy to be shed of it and stomped off to plunk herself inelegantly into a nearby chair.

Taking time to sip from his brandy glass before he spoke, Kevin read the puzzle once more, then told Mutter he too believed the rhyme was meant for Gilly. "You'll notice the word fortune is capitalized—as if it were the surname he'd invented for his daughter rather than calling her by her mother's maiden name."

"It was a full year before her birth was registered at all, as the Earl forbade anyone from entering The Hall, even the local clergy, and when at last he could be made to have the birth entered, Fortune was the only surname he would allow." Mutter shook his head sadly. "It seems, my lord, that he must have had this plan for her future—for her future and for yours—even then. How else can anyone explain his Will?"

"How else can we explain it, Mutter, indeed. Explain that, or his dislike—hatred, actually—for me, a mere distant cousin, destined to inherit what should rightfully have been his son's."

"Which son?" Gilly snorted. "Do you mean the drunken fop who was skewered by a cuckolded husband? Or do you refer to my brother, who never took breath? Sylvester had no great love for either, you know. He just wanted a direct blood heir. If I had been born a boy, Kevin my man, or my mother had been able to bear more children, you'd still be hiding from your creditors and dodging bailiffs wherever you went."

Gilly was right, and Kevin knew it. But knowing they were all victims of circumstance and Dame Luck did nothing to solve the puzzle. All it did was remind Gilly of her grievances and himself of his obligations. Addressing the room at large he ventured, "Could he have trusted his sister with the solution, do you think?"

Gilly slapped her knee in amusement. "And what if he did, you goosecap? Over a hundred clocks in this place and I'd not trust that dotty creature to tell me the time. Lord love a duck," she continued, lapsing into servant slang as she always seemed to do when under stress, "I'd more hope of an answer from Elsie than that old looby."

Kevin laughed in genuine amusement. "You're right of course, infant. I must have let the strain of the past days overwhelm my judgment. That and being cooped up in this cursed pile," he finished, casting his eyes around the dismal room.

"You do look out of place," Gilly concurred wryly. "A fashionable London fribble at The Hall seems about as logical a placement as lace curtains in the stable."

As the newly married couple exchanged heated glances—Kevin angered more than he cared to admit by Gilly's continual baiting of him, and she disturbed by the reminder that this man now standing before her in all his splendor was not only her unwanted husband but a permanent fixture for as long as it took to solve Sylvester's inane puzzle—Mutter mumbled something about the lateness of the hour and slunk away as unobtrusively as he could.

The silence in the room grew uncomfortably long and Kevin at last broke it by suggesting that his wife could better occupy her time by readying herself for bed. "I'll be on pins and needles wondering if your night attire rivals your choice in wedding gowns in flamboyance. My heavens," he teased, "the visions that spring to mind bid fair to unman me. Make haste, my bride. I shall join you shortly."

It had maddened Gilly that her satin gown had failed to discommode Kevin and, even worse, that her planned triumphant march down the aisle had been turned into a farce by Aunt Sylvia. And now, just as if he hadn't been planning it all along, he had finally brought up the subject just to make her appear a complete fool. Again.

She stomped past him without a word and slammed out of the saloon, the double doors shutting behind her with enough force to set the chandelier above his head to dancing, bringing down a shower of dust upon his head and shoulders.

"Little tiger cat." He smiled, brushing at the mantle of dust on his coat. "I'll need to take care not to tame her too quickly. Her temper is her only redeeming feature." He downed the last of his brandy and scooped up the half-full decanter to take to his rooms, where Willstone was waiting, he was sure, with a hot tub.

This was his wedding night, he told himself as he eyed the decanter, deciding whether or not the contents were sufficient to his needs.
After all
, he told himself,
you're going to need all the courage you can drink.

#

Kevin spent a good hour in the capable hands of Willstone, who interlaced his respectful "If m'lord will raise his foot so I might relieve him of his boots?" with bits of gossip gleaned belowstairs. "Olive Zook swears she's carried a score or more buckets of hot water to the Countess in the master chamber," he informed the earl, then added one or two more personal comments meant to let his lordship know the valet was cognizant of the great sacrifice shortly to be made by his employer in the interests of ensuring the Rawlings name for posterity.

"You know, Willstone, my friend," Kevin mused, "I begin to understand the great pressure Prinney labored under when first presented with Her Royal Highness, Princess Caroline. No wonder the man developed such a fondness for cherry brandy—among other diversions."

At last, unable to dawdle any longer, Kevin squared his shoulders and inspected his reflection in the clouded mirror. His eyes told him he at least looked the part of a bridegroom, dressed as he was in a midnight-blue velvet dressing gown worn over his otherwise naked body. As he stood before the mirror, Willstone arranged a white silk scarf at the neckline of the dressing gown, and brushed at some nonexistent lint on the Earl's sleeve.

"All right and tight you are, sir," Willstone assured him, and Kevin exited the room for the long march down the hall to what was, for his sins, to be his new sleeping quarters, the master bedchamber.

#

The master bedchamber was, as was all The Hall, built along generous lines. Contained behind the massive double doors were an anteroom, a large sitting room, two bedrooms with adjoining dressing rooms and servants' bedrooms, a powder closet converted into a water closet, and, outside the sitting room, a wide balcony overlooking the West Park.

Locating one slim red-haired girl within this sprawling apartment was no easy matter, but at last Kevin found her in one of the servants' bedrooms, sitting cross-legged on the narrow cot, a rag-tag cotton nightgown covering her person and a mulish expression on her face.

She looked up at him as he entered the dim room, her newly washed hair framed softly around her face and tumbling down over her shoulders to her waist like a colorful shawl. She was quite obviously unaware of the innocently appealing picture she made as she pushed out her bottom lip and shot at her husband, "So you ran me to earth, did you? Well, here I am then. Your Countess."

Rawlings's eyes narrowed and he asked, "And what, pray, am I to deduce from your presence in this—this
cell?
"

Gilly's chin lifted a fraction. "I didn't think a bastard, even a bastard Countess, belonged in either of those huge beds in the other chambers. It might give me airs above my station."

Kevin had been through a lot that day, and he had, he knew, a lot more to face in the days, weeks, and months to come. The last thing he needed was more complications. So thinking, and with a muttered curse, he swooped down, yanked Gilly from the cot, and hoisted her up and over his left shoulder.

Marching toward the bedchamber he had already decided to use, he informed her tersely, "I've taken more than I care to take from you, brat. So you're a bastard. So what? You're my wife now, like it or not, and from this moment on you'll please me by thinking of yourself as such."

From her head-down position over his shoulder, half-smothered by her own hair, Gilly shrieked, "I am
not
your wife. It's all a sham—a fraud."

Kevin had reached the wide bed by now and deposited Gilly onto it none too gently before joining her, positioning his legs across her lower body to hold her down while his hands grasped her wrists and held them above her head.

"I don't want to hear that again, do you understand? The marriage is no sham. Don't you know your own minister?"

Gilly tried to pull her wrists free of his grip, without success. "I don't mean it isn't legal. I mean it's just a means to an end, an —oh, let me go you pig! You know what I mean!"

Kevin hadn't planned it this way. In truth, he hadn't planned much of anything at all. But, much to his shock and surprise, Gilly's frantic movements beneath him were beginning to stir him. Arouse him. His earlier observations had proved true: hers was a slight but well-proportioned body. As her head thrashed back and forth against the mound of pillows, the scent of her newly washed hair drifted to his nostrils, and her wide blue eyes, huge in combined anger and fright, looked like twin pools that threatened to drown him in their depths.

Kevin could have been knocked down by a feather. Brought to his knees by the slightest puff of air. He was that nonplused by his reaction.

And that pleased.

Slowly he lowered his head until he was just scant inches from her face. "I told you ours was to be a real marriage, child," he crooned gently, "and it is. I'm pleasantly surprised to realize at this late date that Sylvester may have erred just a bit in his bid for revenge, as this side of my supposed punishment has suddenly begun to appeal." His voice deepened and he coaxed, "Come now, infant, cease your struggles. I mean to have you, and have you tonight. It will be more enjoyable if you don't fight me. As they say, pet, it's best to get over rough ground as lightly as possible."

So saying, he touched his lips to hers and let go her hands. Almost before he could register more than the surprisingly sweet softness of her mouth against his, he found himself alone on his back and Gilly standing on the side of the bed, her slight chest heaving in her distress.

"There's another saying, sir—begin as you plan to go on!" she taunted, and then she took to her heels through the doorway and out into the hall.

There were over one hundred chambers in The Hall, and twenty staircases. By the time Kevin had collected himself, pulled on his breeches, secured a candle and gone in pursuit, the hallway was empty. He turned left and set off, then took the first hallway branching off it, which, he discovered some ten minutes later, had been a mistake. He had forgotten what a rabbit warren of a place The Hall was; the corridor he had chosen wove on seemingly for miles, winding and twisting while rising periodically a step at a time, until at last he had climbed a full floor and found himself in a gallery at the very top of the great, high chamber hall.

Halfway back down the corridor, the candle stub sputtered out and he was forced to travel the rest of the way in the dark, stumbling and cursing as he went.

When at long last he found his way back to the master bedchamber, he was resigned to spending his wedding night alone. He had, in fact, had time to rethink his initial attraction to his wife, and decide that he'd simply drunk too much brandy. Surely he couldn't
really
want to bed the annoying creature?

Discarding his dressing gown, Kevin crawled in between the covers and tried to find a comfortable spot on the rock hard mattress even as the smell of damp bedding assaulted his senses. He knew that it was rumored Richard III had slept in this same great bed, but he had once blithely supposed the sheets had since been changed.