The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (62 page)

More evidence was found along the pathway leading to the left rear entrance of the maze, showing that this was the exit the men had used, but there the trail ended.

Bo was all for sending for the constable, until Amanda reminded him of that man's recently demonstrated remarkable lack of intelligence.

Willie was summoned to The Hall and told to question all the outside servants (meaning Lyle and Fitch, who he later found sleeping under a bench in the Conservatory), while Rice grilled the household servants to find out what they knew.

The two men had just reported back to those gathered in the main saloon, ashamed to admit that their exhaustive questioning had produced nary a single clue, when there was a sound on the flagstones outside, and Gilly burst into the room through the French doors.

"Heyday! It's Gilly!" Bo exclaimed unnecessarily. Brushing down one dusty sleeve before wiping her grimy hand across her forehead (adding one more slash of dirt to an already woefully begrimed face), Gilly retorted acidly, "Of course it is. Who else were you expecting?"

Kevin dashed his wine glass to the floor and raced across the room to take his wife by the shoulders and examine her critically, rather, Gilly thought resentfully, as if she were a mare he might be considering purchasing. Then, suddenly, she was tight in his arms, and shocked into returning his embrace as he whispered hoarsely, "Ah, Gilly. My brave, headstrong little Gillyflower, you're home. I thought I'd lost you!"

"Don-Don't be silly," she found herself soothing him. "You'll not be rid of me that easily." If this was a show put on to convince his friends of his devotion, Kevin certainly was a consummate actor, for even Gilly half-believed he was truly shaken by her disappearance.

By this time everyone was crowding around them, and Gilly hastily disengaged herself only to be embraced again, this time by a visibly worried Amanda Delaney. "Oh, my dear, I cannot tell you what a pucker we were all in, wondering what on earth could have happened to you."

"Indeed," Jared added, "and Kevin here was not the least of our worries either. Why, he's been twitting about here these last seemingly interminable hours like an ancient cockerel who has lost his only pullet." Hard on Jared's heels Bo entered the conversation, pumping her hand up and down between his two beefy fists, thanking her for sacrificing herself to save his beloved Anne, as Anne stood apologizing for turning coward and agreeing to leave Gilly there alone.

All this commotion was fast setting up a fierce pounding in Gilly's temples, as it was well past three and she hadn't eaten since breakfast. Her struggle with the smugglers, combined with the disquieting news they had imparted to her, had taken a large toll on her reserves of strength. As she smiled and made meaningless sounds of agreement with anything that was being said, the last of her stamina deserted her and she was hard-put not to succumb to the yearning to relax against the arm Kevin had kept draped protectively about her waist.

Just when she thought she would sink to the floor in a swoon, something she had only once before in her life done, but was convinced she was about to experience for the second time, Miss Roseberry, not one to stand on ceremony at the best of times, bustled purposefully into the room in her rusty black gown and took command of the proceedings.

Within moments, Gilly was extracted from the company, who had begun to ask pointed questions as to where she had been, and was being whisked upstairs to a hot tub.

"Sal-volatile, that's the ticket," Miss Roseberry declared bracingly as she propelled Gilly along in front of her.

"Actually, dearest Bunny, I'd rather a brandy," Gilly coaxed in return, earning herself a haughty sniff before her dresser-cum-nursemaid told her, in a voice that brooked no arguments, that Gilly was to have a leisurely bath, a soothing draught made from Miss Roseberry's special recipe, and, lastly, an early night.

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Gilly had been submerged almost to her neck in the steaming bath long enough to have been washed and her hair shampooed. She was just preparing to rise when the door to her chamber opened and her husband barged in unannounced (as well as uninvited and unwanted), sending Gilly back down into the bubbles in her search for cover.

Kevin suppressed a grin as Gilly clutched her large bath sponge to her breasts, and only allowed himself to raise one speaking eyebrow in her direction before advancing on Miss Roseberry, who was hovering beside the tub, warmed towels at the ready.

"You may go," he told the balefully glaring woman.

"You
may go," Gilly shot over her shoulder at her husband.

Miss Roseberry, naturally, stood her ground. She would

defend her charge to the death—and the belligerent set of her shoulders stated that fact most eloquently.

Kevin saw this and changed his tactics. Shrugging as if to say it mattered little what the woman did, he turned to the bath, and while Gilly stared at him like a cornered hare might eye a hungry fox, he plucked the sponge from her nerveless fingers and drawled, "It is so depressing, is it not? The human body is a true miracle of engineering, yet, for all our dexterity and built-in mobility, it remains impossible for any of us to comfortably wash our own backs."

Even as he spoke he was dipping the sponge into the sea of bubbles and dribbling streams of warm water down Gilly's exposed spine. Miss Roseberry's discomfort grew by leaps and bounds as the Earl's application of the sponge became more and more personal in nature. Gilly, caught between enduring this torture and rising from the tub to stand before him clad only in a layer of very revealing bubbles, was for the moment incapable of deciding which was the worse humiliation.

When the naughty sponge found its way up and over the creamy rise of Gilly's left shoulder and began its descent down the other side, Miss Roseberry could stand it no longer. She deserted her mistress without a backward glance, completely dismayed by her unspinsterly reaction upon viewing such a scene.

The sponge was now being drawn in lazy circles over Gilly's upper chest, circles that seemed to dip lower and lower with every passing second.

"You have no right," she choked out at last.

"I have every right," came the amused reply.

The sponge continued its travels, dipping into the warm water before surfacing to run over Gilly's wet skin, now grazing the upper curve of her breasts, now sliding into the slight cleft to massage, to stroke, to linger.

"I wish to get out now. The water's cold."

"Ah, but are you sure you're thoroughly clean? I believe I may have missed a place or two." Using the sponge to demonstrate, Kevin went on, his voice now a husky murmur as he guided the sponge lower, "Such as here ... and here ... and—"

Gilly fairly jumped to her feet, the water in the tub splashing all over her tormentor and anything else within three feet of her, and in a few quick moments she was standing on the carpet, a large towel clumsily wrapped about herself.

"The game's over you big bully, so why don't you go away now and leave me in peace," she declared, her breathing rapid and shallow.

But instead of leaving, the gentlemanly thing to do, he mused ruefully, Kevin picked up another towel, wiped himself dry, then steered Gilly onto the bench in front of the dressing table and used the towel to briskly rub at her wet hair.

When he was done, the feat accomplished with Gilly all the while glaring at him in the mirror, he threw down the towel, took up a comb, and began to arrange Gilly's short mop of fiery hair into a smooth cap that, he thought privately, made her look like a wood nymph, or perhaps a particularly fetching pixie.

What a singularly vast storehouse of willpower I must possess
, he mused,
not to throw her on the bed this instant and kiss those pouting red lips until she's senseless.

Flicking the last locks into place, he at last broached the questions that had been burning inside him ever since the abduction.

"Do you remember me speaking of Harry?" she replied for openers, deciding to go about telling her story in her own way.

"Your smuggling friend?" he returned, eying her reflection in the mirror.
"He
kidnapped you? What did you do, imp, take a keg for yourself from the last run? Was this the matter of life and death he mentioned in the note? By the by, tell Harry shrubbery has two B's—and no I's at all."

"Will you be serious, please, if it doesn't overtax your mind?" Gilly scolded wearily before telling him pointedly that she had only been Harry's second choice, that it was Kevin they had originally come to see.

"Yes, I know. I was late, wasn't I? It's one of my many failings, although not my worst. But why me? I have nothing to do with smuggling. Surely if they wanted to sell me some brandy or some other contraband, there were easier ways of going about the business. Was such high drama really necessary?"

Gilly took a deep breath and stood up, turning to face her husband. "Two of Harry's last three hauls have been stolen. He wanted to find out if you'd taken them."

Kevin had been racking his brains to come up with a reason for anyone in the district to wish him ill, but his ideas hadn't even come close to this. "Good God, woman, what would I want with the bloody stuff?" he demanded angrily.

"Harry heard you needed money. When you sold the clocks and used the funds to start fixing up the estate, Harry thought you'd stolen and sold his goods," she informed him reluctantly.

She watched Kevin as he began to pace the room, his right fist slamming into his left hand. "You corrected him, I trust?"

"I did."

The pacing went on uninterrupted. "Who told the estimable Harry I was in need of funds?"

"It was gossip overheard in the village; he refused to say who. It's really not important, Kevin, or I would have pushed him on it. I think most everyone can simply look at The Hall and know you're in need of money." Taking a deep breath, she went on fatalistically, "Harry's been carrying a Frenchman on his tubs occasionally. I just found out about it today."

The pacing abruptly stopped and Kevin whirled to stare closely at his wife. "Well, you certainly took your own precious time about telling me, didn't you? I want the rest of it, Gilly—the whole of it. And right now, if you please."

While Kevin had been intent on his assault on the threadbare carpet, Gilly had seen her chance to covertly slip on her dressing gown. Now, feeling not quite so vulnerable as before, she too began to pace; slowly, hesitantly giving Kevin the information he wanted.

There was a long silence in the room when she had finished, broken only by the ticking of the mantel clock. Just when Gilly thought her taut nerves would surely snap from the tension of waiting and watching as conflicting emotions came and went in her husband's expressive eyes, he spoke again.

"This Frenchman. He's a spy of course," he stated flatly. Gilly nodded her agreement. She then told him that Harry had been unaware he was carrying a spy in his tubs until she pointed it out to him, and she knew that Kevin believed her. She had no desire to see her friends hanging on some gibbet as traitors to the Crown.

"And this mysterious gentleman? Harry's benefactor, the man who introduced him to the seagoing Frenchman? Who do you suppose he is?"

Gilly colored hotly and looked down at her bare toes.

"My God! Me? They thought it was me? Not only a thief, but a traitor as well. What a cad I must be—to steal from my fellow thieves while betraying the country I fought and damn near died for just a few years back." Kevin's voice shook with righteous anger. "How dare they? And you as well. How
dare
you judge me like the Lord on Doomsday—you and your rag-tag pack of bumbling smugglers? That's above everything wonderful, isn't it, considering it comes from idiots too thick to figure out you've been escorting a spy back and forth across the water. Spy and thief, spy or thief — but either way, guilty in your eyes, correct? If you weren't a woman I'd call you out for that, I swear it."

Gilly's head came up and she stammered, "I-I really couldn't blame you if you did d-do it, what with you being so pressed for-for funds. Maybe-maybe you saw it as your only way out." Her voice gaining strength, she looked him in the eye and promised, "I wouldn't cry rope on you, Kevin, really I wouldn't. You can tell me."

All Kevin could do was shake his head sadly. "Your loyalty overwhelms me, wife. You'd betray friends and country for a man you have claimed time and again to despise. All that loyalty," he went on, "but not a single drop of trust "

"Then you're innocent?" Gilly piped up in a hopeful voice.

"Ah, she rallies," Kevin drawled to the room at large. "Yes, you female Doubting Thomas, I'm innocent. I only asked you about the smugglers to gain information about the spy the Admiralty thinks to be operating in this area. I'm under secret orders to ferret him out, if you must know."

All traces of remorse vanished from Gilly's eyes in an instant. "You mean to stand there and tell me you've been on the hunt for a spy among Harry and his men and never told me? You
used
me, Kevin. Talk about a scarcity of trust. Where is your trust of me!"

Miss Roseberry, thinking she had been banished quite long enough, chose that moment to march back into the room. the loud voices she had been hearing, even through the heavy door, had convinced her she wouldn't be thus subjecting herself to any further embarrassingly private goings-on. She clapped her hands to gain the angry pair's attention.

"It is time and more my lady had a lie-down on her bed, my lord.
Alone
, my lord," she added with great determination.

"Yes. Yes it is. It's indeed more than time" Gilly concurred, still glaring daggers at her husband with eyes that told him he was lucky she hadn't yet skewered him with her letter opener.

Moving over to stand inside the protection of Miss Roseberry's stiff embrace, she said, "One more thing, 0 Trusting One. I've promised Harry you'd meet him at nine tonight behind the stables, for a talk. My fears that you were guilty were easily come by, but I refused to really believe deep down in my heart that you could be a party to such two-faced treachery."