Gentlemen Prefer Mischief (4 page)

“It’s the
country
,” she said. “There’s no one here but cows. It’s not London—there are no footpads with whom to engage in fisticuffs, no fashionable shops. Though I suppose if you were to ride about drunk on horseback, you wouldn’t be the only one.”

“Heard about that, did you?”

“It was in the newspaper.”

“Keeping track of me? I’m charmed.”

“It’s impossible not to hear tell of your doings since my sister reads all the London news and Lord Perfect is a frequent topic. Anyway, being put in jail for serenading your commanding officer isn’t something to be proud of.”

“I beg to differ; I was extremely foxed at the time. It’s a wonder I was able to keep my seat, never mind performing a serenade.”

His outrageous words made her lips start to curl, but she pressed them together and whispered
Old
Duffer
to herself.

“I suppose life in the army was just another game to you.”

“Perhaps it was,” he said after a moment. “In any case, you ought to be careful—only consider what happened to my great-uncle and the young lady he was trying to rescue: the Woods Fiend did them in. And here he is, abroad again.”

“Of course he isn’t—that was fifty years ago. He’d be at least seventy.”

He chuckled. “Very well, I grant you our current Fiend may not be on the same order as the original. But danger aside, only think about your reputation if word got out that you were here tonight with me and Ivorwood.”

“But word won’t get out, will it? Only you and the earl saw me. Unless I can’t trust you to keep a secret?” She realized that, as much as she knew him to be shallow and an accomplished tease, she didn’t believe he was so lacking in integrity that he’d expose her harmless part in the evening. Well, mostly harmless. She found herself not wanting to admit that he might have a virtue or two.

“You can trust us to keep your secret,” he said tightly. “But you’re forgetting about the Fiend.
He
might gossip about your presence tonight.”

He was being coy. He’d already guessed that she’d recognized the trespasser and that that was what had made her knock him over. Well, he could guess all he wanted—she’d never admit it.

“I don’t suppose I have to worry about him outing me,” she said, “as he would then be outing himself. Whoever he is.”

“Yes,” Hal said. “Whoever is he?”

She made no reply.

“Oh,” he said, “this may interest you. I managed to find your journal. I’d forgotten about it being in code, which was why I must have put it down to begin with. But now that I’ve found it again, I have a new patience for code-cracking.”

Her stomach took a deep dip at these words. “I can’t believe you’re thinking of not returning it to me. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”

“Ah, but a gentleman might not return it if he felt it belonged to an adversary. If he felt it might be needed for a little friendly persuasion. My new hunter is riding on this wager. You tell me what you know about the Woods Fiend, I’ll return the journal.”

She pressed her lips together unhappily, grateful for the darkness that kept him from seeing how bothered she was that he had her book. He’d been so very good at mischief when they were children, swapping out adults’ medicines for Dr. Pitt’s loosening drops, putting toads in people’s wardrobes. He was doubtless enjoying teasing her now, but the idea that he would read about her youthful passion for him—good God. To get it back, though, she’d have to betray Nate.

“I have nothing to tell you about the Woods Fiend.”

But she had to get that journal back as soon as possible, no matter what.

“Nothing you
want
to tell me, evidently.”

Thistlethwaite Manor was a dark bulk ahead of them—it must have been well after one. She stopped by the rosebushes that flanked the walkway to the manor.

Roxham sighed. “Can you really get in without waking anyone?”

“Yes,” she whispered back. “Now go away.”

***

Hal walked into his bedchamber and tugged off his cravat. He was glad the ladies hadn’t waited up for him and Colin, as they—or rather Hyacinth—had threatened to do. It wasn’t so long ago that he’d found Hyacinth’s empty-headed chatter and deep fascination for all things fashionable diverting, but he didn’t want it tonight. For once, he wanted no one’s company but his own.

He went over to the small desk on which sat a brandy decanter and poured himself a generous measure. Lily’s journal was lying there, where he’d left it earlier.

It was her private book. He really should not read it. Everard certainly would never have done so, but then, he would never have taken it to begin with or done most of the other things Hal had done.

He wasn’t his brother. He took another sip of brandy and opened the book.

The first few pages were a nonsensical text of coded words. And then, a few pages in, was an illustration of a cravat tied around a neck. It could have been his, or someone else’s.

He turned over another page of text to find a sketch of a man’s hand resting on his knee. Hardly a sensual picture, and yet he felt something from the attention to detail in the hand and leg. He was tempted to think that it was
his
hand and
his
knee. Unless this journal were a collection of various gentlemen’s parts, a thought that drew a dark chuckle from him.

He used to go to cozy old Thistlethwaite for tea often, finding it a break from the grander, more formal world of Mayfield. She might have been sitting across the room, ostensibly writing letters while in fact sketching him. It was not as if he hadn’t known back then that she’d had a secret affection for him—he’d felt her eyes on him many times. But the odd, pale, thin Lily Teagarden had merely registered as another in the always flowing stream of young ladies who’d admired him.

The last sketch was the one of him on the terrace at Mayfield. She’d obviously been in the process of filling in the details when he’d discovered her.

A woman might well have felt violated to find a man hiding in the bushes, sketching her. He hadn’t felt violated then, nor did he now. The drawing had been made out of adoration, and how could he mock that? He’d never felt something so pure as what had made her create the journal, and he marveled at this sign that such innocence existed.

It took half an hour, but he finally saw the pattern in her code, and he had to admire the discipline that had gone into using it. The first paragraph was not at all what he would have expected.

I am going to write here about Hal, with whom I think I should like to lie. No, that is not true, and I will only tell the truth here. I do want to lie with him. He fascinates me, and I want more than anything to touch him. And to have him want to touch me.

Well. Well, well. He sat back in his chair, a little breathless at the bold and intimate words.

He slung back the rest of his brandy. These words had been written by a younger version of the woman who had, not a few hours past, been lying across him. By Lily, the tart and smart neighbor of his youth, who had turned, like a caterpillar emerging from a cocoon of years, into a beautiful woman.

She intrigued him, though she was not his type of woman. He could only imagine what she’d say if she knew about all the drinking and carousing he’d engaged in over the last few years, though perhaps she’d approve of the killing, being that it had been in the just cause of dispatching Napoleon’s troops.

It was late, and he sat there, staring over a guttering candle, and considered that this journal that promised to recount young Lily’s sensual journey would be very good leverage in finding out what she knew about the Woods Fiend, and what she was up to. Not that he truly intended to show it to anyone. There was some force in it: innocence, the pure passion of youth. Qualities that, had he ever had any claim to them, had long been washed away.

He wanted to decode the rest of the book, but first he would rest a moment. He crossed his arms over the closed book and rested his head on it—this made him smile, to think how excited the sixteen-year-old Lily would have been to know his cheek was on her book—and that was how he awoke the next morning.

Buck was sniffing her ear.

Lily dropped a hand drowsily onto his furry head and murmured at him with her eyes still closed. Visions of last night presented themselves—the glow of a lantern and men and darkness. She shifted, and a note of Roxham’s fabulous, expensive-smelling scent came to her, apparently having been imprinted on the skin of her neck.

Doubtless that was why she’d dreamed of him.

She pushed thoughts of him away and focused on what was important: what had Nate been doing in the viscount’s woods?

She opened one eye to find her dog gazing eagerly at her, waiting for her to get up. Her bedroom door was ajar, and the modest, tidy room, with its unadorned white walls and plain wooden furniture, was suffused with a late morning brightness that felt like an accusation. Normally by this time of the day she’d already be at work on yarn dyes, or knitting a shawl in her room, but that was hardly necessary at the moment. However, now that she knew the Woods Fiend was Nate, it was possible the problem might be solved this very day, as she intended to speak to him and convince him to stop whatever he was doing in the woods.

Buck gave a discreet yip, mindful of the need to not make a nuisance of himself in the house.

“I suppose you and Malcolm have already seen the sheep into the pasture,” she said. Buck nudged her hand with his soft snout, and she sat up and petted him a little before gently shooing him out.

Some minutes later, dressed in a simple, butter-colored gown, she was stepping into the hallway.

“There you are, Lil,” Delia said, poking her head out of her own chamber. Her nose wrinkled as she took in Lily’s attire. “Such a plain gown. Can’t you at least put on a necklace?”

“Perhaps later,” Lily said.

“Which means never.” Delia was ever-aggrieved at her sister’s lack of interest in adornment. “Listen,” she said in a serious tone at odds with the merry look of the pink bow tied in her lemony hair, “Roxham’s ball is only a few days away, and I can’t think what either of us is going to wear. All those fashionable people will be there, and we’ll look like bumpkins.”

“No we won’t,” Lily said. “We can find something among the gowns from my Season.”

“Oh! I’d forgotten about your Town clothes. You never wear them.”

True. She’d put those clothes away years ago, wanting to put away any reminder of that time. Father had died soon after their return from London, and it had then come to light that the estate was straining under debt—a debt to which her Season had only added.

“The gowns are in a wardrobe in the guest room. Choose one, and I’ll help you make alterations.”

“Oh,” Delia said excitedly, “this is going to be such a treat! And you’ll pick one out, too.”

“Mmm,” Lily said vaguely.

“Lily, how
can
you possibly be so unexcited about the most thrilling thing to happen to us in ages?”

Delia’s despairing tone made Lily smile as she walked down the stairs.

Breakfast had already been cleared away, and she passed through the kitchen and took a roll on her way outside. She and Buck stopped briefly by the high pasture, where the sheep were contentedly grazing, then set off on the path to the Becketts’ farm.

Their place was about half a mile away, just off a path used by the local farmers. George Beckett had died several years before, leaving the farm to Nate, his oldest, who was in his late twenties. He lived there with his mother and three much younger siblings.

It had been a long time since she’d talked with any of the Becketts. She felt a bit bad about that, considering all the cheering cups of tea she’d consumed with Mrs. Beckett when she was younger. But Lily hadn’t had much time for visiting with anyone in recent years.

She wanted to speak to Nate alone, and she found him at the edge of the property, fixing a fence. He was hammering a crossbar to a post, and he stopped when he saw her and greeted her.

At a little distance behind him, the familiar farmhouse looked oddly forlorn. A downspout pitched forward off the front of the house, and the white paint that had once freshened the door and window frames was little but streaks on weathered wood. At the side of the house, little Liza—shoeless—trailed after a thin-looking cow.

Concern pricked her. Why did things look so shabby?

“Well, Lily,” he said in that perpetually gruff voice of his, “what brings you here?” He held the hammer loosely in his deeply tanned hand.

She pulled her attention away from the farmhouse. “I’ve come to talk to you about the Woods Fiend. I know it’s you.”

He cocked his head as if her words could only be silly, but wariness had crept into his brown eyes. He was a sturdy man, and handsome, with brown hair and a strong jaw. Even when he was younger he’d never been much for conversation, and seeing him now, toughened from seasons working the fields, she wondered if he ever stopped to laugh.

“Come now,” he said, picking at a splinter on the hammer’s handle and not meeting her eyes. “I’m far too young to have done anything to the ill-fated sweethearts.”

She didn’t comment on the word “sweethearts,” though the reason those two people had been in the Mayfield woods years ago had always been a matter of dispute. Nate’s family had more reason than most to give a romantic slant to what had happened on that night fifty years before, because the young woman had been his great-aunt, Anne Beckett. And the gentleman found with her had been Hal’s great-uncle. But to polite society the only reason Edmund Waverly had been there was to rescue a woman who was being attacked. Since the Woods Fiend had never been discovered, no one could say for certain why the two had been found together, cruelly slain.

Nate was stalling for time, she guessed, not certain he could trust her. After all, she’d all but neglected his family in recent years. “Nate, I was in the woods last night. I saw you, and I knocked Roxham down the hill so he wouldn’t catch you.”

His eyes were definitely wary now. “You? In the woods at night? Why?”

She explained about the supposedly possessed sheep.

“Your… sheep?” he said with raised eyebrows.

“Yes—their yarn is now believed to bring bad luck. Nate, you know you can trust me. I’m not going to reveal it’s you.”

He crossed his arms and leaned back against the fence with a frown. “Very well, it was me.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“
And
what are you doing in there?”

He frowned. “I didn’t know about the trouble this has caused for Thistlethwaite, and I’m sorry. But what I’m doing is secret.”

“I can keep a secret. Come, we are old friends. And I’ve already confessed to being in the woods at night myself. Besides”—she fixed him with a piercing eye—“remember that I never revealed who it was that broke your mother’s favorite vase.”

A rueful smile briefly teased the edges of his stern mouth. “Very well. I’ve been digging. There’s something of value buried there that belongs to my family. If this thing could bring a significant sum of money, we need it now to pay some debts.”

She felt a pang that they’d apparently been struggling and had received no help from the Teagardens. But he was too proud to want her compassion, and he didn’t linger on that part of his story.

“It was just happenstance,” he went on, “that someone saw my light and started the rumor that the Woods Fiend was back, but it’s worked to my advantage, since no one’s wanted to see what I was doing there. Until now.”

She blinked. “A buried treasure?” How fascinating, like a pirate story. Except there was nothing amusing about his family’s evident need for money.

“Of some sort. We found a letter last year in the attic, written to my great-aunt fifty years ago. It was signed by Edmund Waverly.”

Lily sucked in a breath. “So maybe they were sweethearts!”

“Of course they were sweethearts.”

“What did the note say?”

“That he’d hidden something valuable for her under their favorite birch tree—some pledge of his love. And how he would soon come to her.”

“Perhaps they were to be married.”

“So it would seem. But I didn’t dare look for this valuable thing because of it being in the viscount’s woods. Now we don’t have a choice.”

Well. This changed things considerably. While she needed the Woods Fiend to go away, Nate badly needed to find this treasure. How could she stand in his way when his need was so urgent?

There ought to be a way to work this situation to benefit both of them. After all, if she helped him, the Woods Fiend would go away. And she would be thwarting the Old Duffer’s efforts to win his bet. Next to restoring the shawl business—well, was it so bad that she wanted to pay the OD out for taking her book four years ago and refusing to return it now?

“I want to help you find what you’re digging for. If I help you—say, if I let you know the viscount’s plans regarding the Fiend—then you can find the gift faster, and the Fiend can go away sooner.”

He considered her plan. “But how will people ever believe he’s gone?”

“We’ll plant some evidence that he’s been scared off or something, so it can all be laughed off.”

“That could work,” he said slowly. “But there’s not much time—the debts must be paid in two weeks.”

“Then here’s our plan: you must stay away tonight, because I know he plans to watch again. And perhaps your absence will lull him into thinking he’s scared you off. And then, since he expects you near midnight, if the next night you came at a much different time—”

“Right. I’ll come at half-past four. His lordship won’t want to stand around that long waiting.”

It took some doing to get Nate to agree that she should come to the woods and stand sentry, but in the end he saw how desperate things would be for his family if he were discovered. Their signal would be the hoot of an owl repeated three times.

Walking back to Thistlethwaite with Buck at her heels, Lily felt satisfied with the plan. She also admitted that, however idiotic it was, she would enjoy her secret battle against Roxham.

But. She could feel herself wanting to daydream about him just as she had years ago, as if that part of her were a muscle that had gone too long unused. She wanted to remember how it had felt to have his muscular body underneath hers on the forest floor, and how his breathing had changed as they lay there.

No. No! She knew him, could
see
him, now that she was older, for the wealthy, careless rogue he was. She was too wise now to be seduced by his handsome exterior and his limitless charm. She was going to get the best of him this time, and then she’d be able to forget him for good.

***

That afternoon Lily was in the little stone house behind Thistlethwaite, which the Teagardens called the yarn house, when Delia rushed through the open door.

“Make haste, Lily! They are here!”

“Who is here?”

“Oh, step away from that pot and take off your apron. Roxham and Eloise are here. They’ve come for a visit—and they want to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, any moment—and they are coming out
here
. Lord, what is that vile smell?”

“It’s only some moss boiling.” Lily stood up and brushed powdered green and brown bits from her apron and sleeves. “No one will think it amiss that I occasionally experiment with the dyes.”

Delia’s only response was a long-suffering casting upward of her eyes over such an unconventional sister. Behind her, voices signaled the approach of their visitors.

“Ah, Lily Teagarden,” the viscount said, ducking his head as he entered the small house.

The sight of him—tall and golden, his chocolate coat hinting at his beautiful proportions—made her cringe as she thought about him reading her journal. Had he deciphered the code yet? She couldn’t think about it or she’d be a wreck.

“My lord.” She inclined her head. “And Miss Waverly.”

Eloise Waverly came forward with an open, friendly expression. She looked fresh and lovely in a cream-and-gold-striped gown, her glossy brown hair curled prettily to frame her face.

“Oh, but we are Eloise and Lily, are we not? Can we not be familiar as we used to be? Oh, do say it’s all right.”

Lily smiled. “Of course it is.”

“Yes,” Roxham said, “let us not stand on ceremony, Lily.” As he was nearer to her than any of the others, she was the only one who saw his mouth creep back in a one-sided smirk that brought out the fascinating slash of a dimple in the plane of his cheek. It played up the dark light of mischief in his eyes that said he knew better than anyone how
familiar
she’d been.

He sniffed the air. “Making potions?”

“It’s a yarn dye.”

He moved to the table and picked up a dish of dandelion flowers she’d gathered and peered at it speculatively. “You look so scientific here, Lily, with all these little cups and spoons and liquids. I hope we’re not interrupting anything.”

“Not at all,” she said. “I merely like to dabble with the colors used in the Thistlethwaite shawls.”

“How creative,” Eloise said.

“And this is where the shawl work would be done, if people weren’t afraid of your horrifying sheep and their evil yarn?”

Delia giggled. Lily gave him a dry look. “Yes.”

“A pity.”

“It really is such a pity,” Delia said, “since Lily knits—I mean since the knitting is so different and pretty.”

Delia shot Lily a horrified look, but their visitors seemed not to have noticed what she’d started to say.

“We’ve come to tell you,” Eloise said excitedly, “that Hal and Ivorwood nearly caught the Woods Fiend last night!”

Lily relaxed at the change in topic. The last thing she needed was for Roxham to know she was engaged in trade, for how might someone who so loved to tease use such damaging information?

“Did they?” she said. A twinge of conscience prodded her for pretending that she hadn’t been in the woods the night before, but she was Nate’s ally now, and what else could she do?

“Yes!” Eloise enthused. “Hal and Ivorwood went out together and watched and waited for hours by the wood.”

“Oh,” said Delia with shining eyes. “How persevering and brave of them.”

The viscount was looking ever so nonchalant while his praises were being sung.
Old
Duffer, Old Duffer
, Lily chanted to herself as she took in the interestingly boxy way his brown coat sat on his lean, broad shoulders.