The Wild One (9 page)

His pillow, his room, his bed.

And he had probably been the last one to
sleep in it.

She pulled the other pillow close and curled
her body around it, hugging it and staring at the shadows
flickering against the far wall. Then she closed her eyes ... and
dreamed of Charles.

She saw him again, the fine British officer
on his mighty charger, surveying his troops with a coolly assessing
eye as they filed smartly past. She lived again that moment when
he'd first caught her watching from the window and had touched his
cocked hat in acknowledgement. And she was there once more, on that
day he'd finally stridden into the shop ... spoken to her ... met
her behind the woodshed two weeks later, where they'd shared that
first magical kiss, and she had found herself enfolded within the
hard circle of his arms.
Oh, Charles.
She sighed softly and
turned over, sinking back down into the depths of sleep.

The dream faded out.

Charles?

Oh, my dearest love, come back!

But Charles was no longer there. Someone
else was coming toward her now ... someone riding out of a rainy
English night, lifting a pistol, tumbling through fierce, stinging
nettles to shield the child in his arms even as the ball tore into
his side.

She ran to him, and when she lifted his head
from the nettles, the sleepy, down-tilted eyes that gazed up at her
were not Charles's, but Lord Gareth's.

Chapter 7

Gareth awoke, briefly, sometime just before
dawn. Faint light was just starting to creep through the parted
drapes, and from somewhere outside the first blackbird was calling.
He shivered, pulling the covers up over his shoulders. The room was
cold and empty, the hearth a pile of dead ashes, his friends long
gone. Lucien must have kicked them out sometime during the night,
he thought, not sure whether to be grateful or annoyed. As he lay
there wondering if it was worth moving to retrieve and use the
chamber pot, the words of the doctor played through his head like a
litany.

You were lucky, damned lucky, my lord ...
another half-inch and you would've lost your rib; a little more
than that your lung, and very likely your life.

It was a sobering thought.

They'd told him the ball had peeled a strip
of flesh off a lower rib, plowing a furrow in the bone and leaving
a loose flap of skin that had bled profusely. As wounds went, it
was far less serious than it had initially looked. But plague take
his rib, Gareth had thought then — and thought now as he groaned
and finally reached for the chamber pot, it was his head — the
entire left side of his face — that was killing him.

He'd do well to stay out of the nettles in
the future.

And, he allowed ruefully, Irish whiskey.

Still, he knew that if he had the chance to
live the robbery all over again, he wouldn't do a thing
differently. Despite his hangover, his raw cheek, and the throbbing
of his nicked rib, he felt quite good about himself just now. Quite
good, indeed. He slid back beneath the covers, smiling like a fool.
It was rather nice, being the hero of the hour ... and there were
no words to describe how he'd felt when Miss Juliet Paige had come
in to say good night to him and bent down to touch her cool, sweet
lips to his brow. He sighed and lay back in bed with a happy grin.
Such attentions made him feel quite special, indeed. And,
appreciated.

He wasn't used to anyone appreciating
him.

He closed his eyes. The blackbird was still
singing, and as he began to drift away, he allowed himself to
imagine that Juliet Paige was gazing reverently down at him,
standing watch over him as though he were some mighty fallen
warrior-hero and she, heaven's dearest angel.

When Lucien came quietly in to check on him
an hour later, Gareth was fast asleep ... and still smiling.

~~~~

The mighty hero slept straight through
breakfast. By then, the flowers, tributes, notes and poems of
praise had already begun to arrive as news of the robbery, and
Gareth's part in thwarting it, spread through Ravenscombe and into
the surrounding countryside.

The Wild One had always been popular with
the ladies, but never so much as he was this fine, late-April
morning. His actions of the previous night — and the fact that he'd
suffered a "grievous, life-threatening wound" — seemed to have
driven every female in Berkshire into a frenzy. A group of
blushing, giggling maids from the village brought him a bouquet of
bright purple lilacs. A half-dozen red roses arrived from Lady
Jayne Snow, only to be outdone by a full dozen from her sister Lady
Anne. A box of sweet, juicy oranges were sent by Miss Amy Woodside,
letters and notes poured in by the dozens, and a poem of ardent
admiration came from the gushing pen of Miss Sally Chilcot, who was
as brainless and silly as her fool of a brother, Neil.

Or so proclaimed an increasingly annoyed
Lucien, as a footman entered the dining hall where they were all
having breakfast, with the missive on a silver platter.

"For
heaven's
sake," he muttered,
plucking the perfumed vellum and slamming it down into the growing
pile before Gareth's empty chair.

He picked up his coffee and went back to
reading
The Gentleman's Magazine
.

"Oh, do open it, Luce," drawled Andrew,
buttering a piece of bread and craning his neck to read the flowery
writing that covered the folded vellum. "Let's see ... Ah!
A
Poem: To the Brave and Dashing Lord Gareth de Montforte
." He
made a noise of amused contempt. "Whatever she wrote ought to be
priceless as far as breakfast time amusement goes."

"Whatever she wrote is for Gareth's eyes
only," snapped Nerissa, who was bouncing Charlotte on her lap.
"You're just miffed that Gareth is getting so much attention, and
you're not."

"On the contrary, my dear sister. I have
better things to do than fend off the attentions of pestilent
females."

"Perhaps that's because there
are
no
pestilent females giving you attention to fend off," Nerissa shot
back.

"
Children
," murmured the duke,
without looking up from his paper.

Feeling uncomfortable and more than a little
out of place, Juliet silently stirred sugar into her tea. She was
still smarting over the way the duke had treated her during the
previous night's interview, and even now she didn't know whether he
intended to take her in and make Charlotte his ward — or not. He
hadn't said a word about the subject, and until Nerissa had brought
her down here to breakfast, Juliet had not seen him so that she
could ask. She wanted to speak to him alone. Here at the table,
with two bickering siblings listening in, did not seem the
appropriate time or place in which to do so.

Perhaps she could request a moment of his
time after breakfast....

"Don't look so troubled, Miss Paige," Andrew
said amiably, mistaking the reason for Juliet's preoccupied frown.
"My sister and I fight like cats and dogs. 'Tis quite normal in
this household, I'm afraid. In time you'll get used to us."

Juliet glanced at the duke, wondering
whether or not he intended to give her that time, but he made no
comment, only continued reading.

"And Andrew
would
have pestilent
females chasing after him if only he'd get his nose out of those
science books and venture out into the real world once in a while,"
his sister added. "Tell her about the invention you're working on,
Andrew."

"It's nothing."

Juliet noted the sudden tinge of color along
Andrew's cheekbones. "Invention?"

He shrugged and bent his head, making a big
project out of buttering another piece of bread. "I'm trying to
build a flying machine."

"A flying machine!" Juliet nearly dropped
the cup of tea she was just bringing to her lips.

"Yes." He didn't look up, but kept smearing
butter on his bread, the color spreading out along his cheekbones.
"I know it sounds daft, but if birds can fly, and kites, and even
leaves on the wind, I don't see any reason why it can't be
done."

"Impossible," the duke muttered, still
reading.

"I don't think so," said Andrew.

The duke turned a page. "If God wanted us to
fly, He would've given us wings."

"Yes, and if He'd wanted us to ply the seas,
He would've given us fins," countered Nerissa, as Andrew,
red-faced, set down his knife. "But He didn't, so we had to invent
ships. Why should flying be any different? I think Andrew's idea is
worthy and fine."

"And I think it's damned ridiculous," the
duke snapped, not bothering to look up. "Of all the men who've gone
through Oxford in the last twenty years, Andrew was probably one of
only a handful who didn't waste his time drinking, whoring, and
carousing, but actually got down to the business of serious study.
And for what? A flying machine. What a waste of a fine education.
What a waste of a damned fine
brain
."

Andrew flushed hotly, his eyes sparking with
sudden anger.

"Lucien, that was cruel and unfair!" cried
Nerissa.

"It is the truth."

"If people like Andrew didn't invent things
that others thought impossible, nothing new would ever be
made!"

"Flying machines
are
impossible.
He'll never do it."

Andrew slammed his chair back and stormed
from the room, nearly knocking over a footman who was just
entering. The servant never batted an eye as Nerissa also jumped up
and went hurrying past him after her angry brother. The duke,
meanwhile, calmly went on reading his paper as though the exchange
had never happened. He didn't even acknowledge the footman —
bearing yet another note on the silver plate he held in one gloved
hand — when the servant lowered it before his face.

"For Lord Gareth, Your Grace."

Wordlessly, the duke took the note and
tossed it into the growing pile as the footman glided soundlessly
from the room.

Then he looked up and saw Juliet still
sitting there, her face tight with disapproval. "Ah —" he gave a
rueful, bland little smile — "I see that you, too, think I'm cruel
and heartless. But Andrew cannot focus his mind, and attentions, on
a single project. He has an annoying and unproductive habit of
hitting upon an idea, then failing to follow it through." He took a
sip of his coffee and smiled benignly at Juliet. "If I do not mock
and challenge him, he will never design his flying machine."

"You're a very manipulative man, Your Grace.
Do you always employ such methods to get others to behave as you
would wish?"

Again, that derisive little smile. "Only
when it is necessary, Miss Paige. Now, be a good girl and take
those letters up to Gareth, would you? I find that the scent of
them is giving me a headache."

~~~~

Juliet managed to find her way through the
maze of rooms and corridors to the great staircase that led
upstairs. She paused at the summit. Half-way down the hall, the
door to Lord Gareth's room was standing slightly ajar. Her hand
gripped the carved bannister and, with some surprise, she realized
her heart was beating twice as fast as it should be. Now, why on
earth was she nervous about entering that room? There were other
things that deserved her concern far more than a common female
reaction to the uncommonly handsome Lord Gareth de Montforte.

Such as whatever the Duke of Blackheath was
planning.

It bothered her that he'd sent her on this
errand when it would have been more appropriate — not to mention,
proper — to have one of the servants do it. It bothered her because
she suspected he was up to something, and she didn't know what it
could be. She had seen first-hand how Blackheath pulled strings and
people unwittingly danced. She had seen how he'd manipulated Andrew
by purposely mocking and angering him; he had done much the same
with her during last night's interview. In fact, he had even
admitted as much — though what his motives were now, or even then,
Juliet did not know and was not sure she cared to know. After all,
she had nothing that His Grace could possibly be interested in,
nothing he could possibly want of her....

She continued down the corridor, pausing at
Gareth's partly-open door and listening for sounds within. All was
quiet. Slowly, shyly, Juliet pushed the door open, breathing a sigh
of relief when it made no noise on its well-oiled hinges. Oh, she
was nervous, all right; the letters in her hand had absorbed its
dampness, molded themselves to the curve of her palm. Slipping
quietly over the threshold, she paused just inside.

The room was preternaturally still. She took
a deep breath, casting about for a place to leave the letters while
trying not to look at the bed. A pillow was on the floor; yet
another; in fact, a whole jagged trail of them, hurled off the bed
by a sleeper who was either restless or in a considerable amount of
pain. Juliet's gaze followed this trail, across the floor and
straight to the foot of the bed. She saw the tasseled ropes of deep
crimson holding back the curtains of shimmering gold silk that
dressed the bed; she saw the carved headboard framed between them;
and she saw a man's form, partially covered by a loose sheet.
Rising above this form was the bare skin of one handsomely rounded
shoulder and a tousled head of hair upon the pillow.

Juliet's cheeks went feverishly warm. She
jerked her gaze away, feeling she was intruding upon something
personal. Something private. A man's bedroom, for goodness sake!
She would just drop the letters on the highboy between the windows
and beat a hasty exit.

She was partway across the room before she
realized Gareth would have to get out of bed to retrieve the
letters, and injured as he was, he was likely to be very sore.

Oh, she could just strangle the Duke of
Blackheath for putting her in this position!