Jo Beverly (6 page)

Miss Smith shot him a look that clearly said that they already had one. Him.

Outrage turned instantly to amusement and arousal. Devil take it, but she was an exciting woman. Whatever the truth of her situation here, she clearly was no angel. She was too ripe, too bold, too responsive to a kiss. Sparks flew from her, igniting fires in him, and she knew it.

What a pity he couldn’t stay at Rothgar Abbey to investigate Miss Smith at leisure, not to mention witness his haughty cousin’s handling of the return of his pawn and his reception of nursery treats. It would also make it easier to assess exactly how to use his weapon.

It wouldn’t do, though. It would look as if he was accepting the invitation, as if he was ready to sue for peace. He probably shouldn’t return the pawn, either. Devil alone knew what Rothgar would do with it next. Cheynings would be a better option, but Thalia would be hard to convince.

Snares and entanglements. He raised his glass and wryly toasted the three ladies. “To Christmas, and all merriment of the season.”

G
 enova returned the toast, but she recognized malicious enjoyment behind it. She should be wary, if not afraid, yet something was firing her blood as it had not been in an age.

Not something. Someone. The Marquess of Ashart. In the year since her father’s retirement, she’d learned that she missed action and adventure. Now she was engaged in a duel with a formidable opponent, and the zest of it sparkled in her blood.

She was determined that he support his child, and he was determined to resist. It would be a glorious battle.

Thalia broke the moment. “Good, that’s settled! Now we can have a nice game of whist. Genova, dear, ring for the servants to clear the table.”

Genova did so. This hardly seemed the moment for a game, but Thalia adored whist and went after what she adored with the purpose of a willful child.

As they waited for the servants, Genova tried again to pin down practical details. “How are we to transport the baby and his maid? We can’t fit five adults in the main coach, and the secondary ones are packed.”

“Five?” asked Thalia, already with her cards in hand. “Oh, Ashart will ride. Won’t you, dear?”

“Always,” said the marquess.

Genova remembered his arrival in that ominous cloak. The outriders had ridden all day for two days, but that a marquess should choose to do so in such bitter weather seemed…unnatural.

The essential problem in the Trayce family was a
woman who’d murdered her baby. Did insanity, or at least instability, run in the blood? Thalia, dear though she was, was dotty.

Now that Genova thought of it, wasn’t the madwoman’s son, Lord Rothgar, sometimes called the Dark Marquess? She seemed to remember reading of a duel not long ago in which he’d killed his opponent. The Portsmouth paper had regarded it as scandalous, and hinted that only royal favor had saved the marquess from dire consequences.

Caution chilled excitement. What was she blindly sailing into? What was she blindly carrying two innocents into? As the servants arrived and set to work, she said, “Perhaps we should think of some other plan—”

“Stop fussing, Genova,” Lady Calliope growled. “We have space in the coach, and you’ve arranged for a bed.”

“Which I haven’t.” Ashart caught the attention of one of the servants. “Tell the innkeeper I wish to see him.”

The man bowed and left.

As soon as the table was clear, Thalia sat and dealt the cards. They had finished the first hand when the innkeeper arrived, looking distressed.

“Milord, milord, I spoke the truth. This close to Christmas, many are on the roads, and with the weather so bad many stopped early. The arrival of such a large party as this…”

“So? Do you expect me to turn holy and sleep in the stables?”

Lynchbold winced at the tone. “No, no, milord! If you would be so gracious, there is a mattress already set up in the lady’s parlor upstairs. I gather it was for a maid, but it’s a good thick mattress, milord, and a maid can sleep in the kitchens.”

Genova braced herself for a tantrum, but the marquess sighed. “It will have to do.”

The innkeeper left, almost quaking with relief. Genova was weary of battle but had to make one more
foray. “Would it be possible for Sheena to sleep with us, Thalia? With her speaking no English, it would be frightening for her to be put among strangers.”

“She’s already among strangers,” Lady Calliope snapped. “Stop pampering her. She probably sleeps in an earth-floor hovel in Ireland.”

Lord Ashart looked wry. “You truly do think I should sleep in the stables, don’t you, Miss Smith?”

“No, my lord, but…”

“But the girl can share the trundle bed with Regeanne,” said Thalia with a careless flutter of her hand. “Enough interruptions. Back to the game!”

The trundle bed was almost as big as the one it fit under, but Regeanne would not like it. It was the better option, however, so Genova dealt the next hand.

Ashart, however, rose. “Your indulgence, my dears, but I must check tomorrow’s arrangements. I’ll be back shortly.”

Thalia didn’t pout. Instead she beamed after him. “Isn’t he the dearest boy?”

Genova couldn’t stop herself. “He’s a rake, and he’s Charlie’s father, and he plans to abandon him like a worn-out shoe!”

Thalia looked at her, eyes wide and serious. “Oh, no, dear. A Trayce would never abandon his responsibilities.”

“And you said yourself that the supposed Mrs. Dash was not a reliable woman,” Lady Calliope pointed out. “Why believe her?”

“A point,” Genova conceded, frowning, “but what mother would abandon her child to strangers in this way?”

“It’s exactly what she has done, though, isn’t it? Whatever the truth behind this story, Lady Booth Carew is not here.”

Genova couldn’t argue with that.

Thalia gathered in the cards and laid out a game of patience, though her manner could not be called patient. She twitched for whist like a whippet eager for
a walk. Genova felt more like a ship caught in a maelstrom, spinning out of control.

They would arrive at Rothgar Abbey, home of the possibly deranged and murderous Dark Marquess, with a mysterious, misbegotten baby in the party. And, she now realized, with Lord Rothgar’s cousin Ashart, who was apparently his mortal enemy!

She looked at the two old ladies, wishing she could see their unconcern as reassuring. Instead, it seemed like further evidence of family insanity.

Ashart returned and the game resumed. Seeing no alternative, Genova focused her mind on the cards. The one thing guaranteed to irritate was careless play. After a while, Ashart ordered rum punch. It was delicious but Genova only sipped at it. She had no intention of growing tipsy in this company.

Both old ladies drank deeply, but it had no noticeable effect until Lady Calliope slipped into sleep between one trick and the next. Genova sent for her menservants to carry her chair into her bedroom, relieved that the evening was finally over.

But then she recalled that Ashart would be coming upstairs with her and Thalia. Could he not sleep in this parlor? A question revealed that Lady Calliope’s two menservants slept here in order to be to hand.

That left no choice. A nobleman would not deign to sleep with lowly servants. While Ashart helped tipsy Thalia up the stairs, Genova followed with assorted items.

They entered the parlor, which was now a bedroom. A plain mattress was made up with sheets and blankets. A punch bowl and glasses sat on the hearth. Lynchbold was doing his best to make up for the inadequate room, but Genova didn’t think anyone needed more spirits.

The table had been turned into a washstand, with bowl, mirror, and towels. Leather saddlebags lay nearby, and the great cloak was spread over a chair, damp fur giving a predatory presence.

Thalia wove toward the table. “Three-handed whist?”

Oh, no. Genova dumped the things in her hands in order to steer Thalia into the bedchamber. When she finally shut the door, she sagged against it in relief.

Ridiculous to think she was in danger. Be he wicked as Lucifer, the marquess would not try to rape her in his great-aunt’s bed. But that wasn’t the peril, and she knew it. The danger came from the sizzle in her blood, from the way she responded to even a look, from the way she lusted for another fight.

Regeanne came over to help Thalia to bed and, thank heavens, didn’t look too put out over the baby. When the Frenchwoman whispered to be quiet, so as not to disturb the
petit ange
, Genova decided there might be hope of peace there, at least.

Sheena O’Leary and Charlie Carew were already fast asleep on the trundle, looking like innocent angels. But, Genova realized, a wet nurse could hardly be innocent. Sheena must have borne a child—and that baby had almost certainly died.

Some wet nurses fed two. Some gave their child to another mother’s care in order to earn the higher wages given to a nurse who devoted herself to her employer’s baby. Neither seemed likely here, and Genova’s heart clenched with pity.

It seemed unlikely that Sheena was married, so the poor girl must have suffered the shame of carrying an illegitimate baby, then the grief of losing it.

No wonder she’d seized the chance to escape and earn her keep this way. Poor, poor Sheena, especially as she seemed to have transferred all her mother love to little Charlie.

That left Genova no choice. She vowed that Lord Ashart’s innocent son and Sheena would be safe and together, even if she had to use her pistol.

T
 he baby’s catlike warble woke Genova for the second time. She was hard to disturb from sleep, but something about the cry of a baby could do it. A soft Gaelic murmur beyond the closed bed-curtains would be accompanied by the presentation of a milk-filled breast. Peace returned.

Genova settled back, but this time sleep eluded her. She shifted, trying to find a comfortable position on the pillow. She needed sleep if she was to have her wits tomorrow, and she would need all her wits to deal with Lord Ashart.

A distant clock struck three—the goblin hour, when dark monsters invade even the most tranquil mind, and her mind was not tranquil. Her fretting bounced from journey to baby to marquess, then with a leaden thud to her deeper problem, her life now her father had remarried.

She tried to smother it, but goblins have no mercy.

If only her mother had lived.

Mary Smith had been carried from health to death in a day by a sudden internal bleeding. It had happened in the middle of the Atlantic and she’d been buried at sea, which had been a particularly painful blow. Genova was practical by nature, but even so, pain burst in her every time she remembered her mother’s bundled body hitting the water with a splash.

Thrown away. Like bad food and waste.

She’d give anything to have a grave that she could tend. She’d been waiting for the right moment to suggest
a headstone for her mother in Tunbridge Wells, or a memorial plaque in the parish church. It seemed simple enough, but she’d sensed it would be awkward, though how her stepmother could object she couldn’t imagine.

Her stepmother. Hester Poole as was, Hester Smith now.

If Genova could dislike Hester it might be easier, but she recognized a kind and gracious woman. Captain Smith would choose no less. Hester and Genova were simply different.

It was a puzzle why her father had chosen a woman so unlike his free-spirited, lively Mary, but perhaps that was the point. A complete break, just as he’d broken from the past by first retiring, then moving to Hester’s house in Tunbridge Wells, far from the sea.

Genova hadn’t thought the move would be so very difficult, but after three months she was ready to gnaw through walls to escape. Hester’s house was a very conventional house; her family and friends a very conventional circle. If not for the Trayce ladies, Genova felt she might already be stark, staring mad.

It had all come to a head on December 13 over a superficially simple matter—the
presepe.

The Italian Nativity scene was a family tradition. All Genova’s life it had been set up on December 13 to wait for the Christ child on Christmas Eve. Perhaps it was particularly important to Genova because Christmas Eve was her birthday. She’d not realized how important, however, until Hester had gently refused to have the
presepe
on display in her drawing room.

“Forgive me, Genova dear, but it is a little
popish
, don’t you think? And a little
shabby?
Some of the finest people in the Wells pass through my house at Christmas.”

Shabby?
Genova could still feel the sting of that, especially as she’d seen it was true. The
presepe
was gilded for her by a lifetime’s memories, but the paint on the wooden figures had faded, and the gold was
flaking in places. The embroidered white linen it sat on, which her mother had called the flowers-in-the-snow, had yellowed with age, and even become spotted with mildew. Some of the embroidery had frayed into tufts.

She’d touched up the paint and was making a new cloth, but Hester’s words still hurt.

She’d bundled it away, fighting tears, but the deepest hurt had been because her father had made no protest at all. He’d helped her, and even apologized after a fashion, but she’d known then that the
presepe
was something else he’d like to leave behind. And that the same thing might apply to her. He still loved her—she didn’t doubt that—but she was a cuckoo in his new nest….

Genova jerked out of a restless sleep and sat up.

The flowers-in-the-snow! The new one. She’d left it in the parlor.

Before turning Thalia toward the bedroom, she’d dropped everything in her hands on the table, close by the washing bowl. What if it was already stained? She couldn’t lie here and wonder. She had to go and retrieve it. It was still dark, still the middle of the night.

When she slipped out through the bed-curtains, however, she found that the fire had been started. It was only just beginning to catch the logs, so someone had crept in to light it not long ago. Perhaps that had woken her.