Julia London - [Scandalous 02] (10 page)

A
fter what seemed like several hours, but Dougal insisted had only been two, Jack was escorted into the house once more. The day had turned gray, and in the dim light, the telltale signs of the Beal sisters’ financial woes looked even worse. Although the furnishings seemed of the first cut and the place was pristinely clean, candles were scarce and the dimly lit corridors positively gloomy. The wallpaper in the entry was peeling and there was a pot in the corner of the foyer that Jack suspected had been used to catch rainwater, if the stains on the ceiling above were any indication.

He hardly had time to look as he was hauled to the doors of the same drawing room from which he’d been ceremoniously tossed only hours earlier. He was met at the door by two dogs, the smallest of them possessing the fiercest growl and baring his teeth at Jack. The other, a big red hunting dog, was more curious about the scent around Jack than his entry.

The two women were within, but Lizzie had undergone something of a miraculous transformation. She had bathed and changed into a drab gray gown that happened to fit her exceedingly well.
Exceedingly
. He could not help but admire her figure in it. Her dark hair was bound up in the ribbon she seemed to prefer and
she wore a simple strand of pearls that rested against the hollow of throat. When she swallowed, the little strand moved like a tiny river.

Moreover, Lizzie looked considerably calmer and watched him evenly, as if they were engaged in a game of chess and she was awaiting his move.

Her sister, on the other hand, glared daggers at Jack, as if
he
had done something wrong. He supposed she believed he was there to wreak havoc. He couldn’t possibly, even if he were of a mind, for Newton and Dougal remained at his back.

“Good afternoon, milord,” Lizzie said, inclining her head. “Allow me to properly introduce my sister, Miss Charlotte Beal.”

“So formal, Lizzie,” he chided her. “And after all that we’ve endured together.” He turned to her sister. “Miss Beal,” he said, bowing low.

“Milord,” Miss Beal said with a bit of a smirk, “we find ourselves in an unusual predicament.” She primly folded her hands over the lap rug that covered her crippled legs. She looked very regal, Jack thought. Beautiful, regal, and a bit priggish.

“Unfortunately, our uncle’s heinous actions have left us very few options as far as you are concerned. We donna like you to be at Thorntree, but we fear that if we refuse to house you, Uncle Carson may do something more wretched and drastic than he’s already done. So it is with some…reluctance,” she said, looking to Lizzie for agreement as to her word choice, to which Lizzie nodded enthusiastically, “that we will allow you to stay here. We shall make accommodations for you in the nursery.”

Jack snorted.

“It is near the kitchens, where you may take your meals…if you can prepare one.”

Now Jack gaped at her.

Charlotte lifted her hand. “I grant you, it is not an ideal situation, but Mr. Kincade assures me he can make it quite livable—”

“No,” Jack said firmly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“No,”
he said again, folding his arms resolutely across his chest. “No, Miss Beal, I will not be relegated to the nursery. I am an earl, and I, too, have been through an ordeal, to say the least,” he said, thinking of Lizzie. “You are right in that it is no’ an ideal situation, and I assure you, I will take my leave as soon as it is possible for me to do so, but I will sleep in a bed and bathe in a hip bath and eat proper food prepared by a cook. I will no’ sleep in a
nursery.”

“I told you so,” Lizzie muttered in a low aside to her sister.

“How dare you!” Miss Beal demanded of Jack. “You can no’ sweep into our home and demand to be treated as a welcome guest!”

Her raised voice startled the little mutt of a dog, and he growled at Jack again, pouncing on his boot. “That is your first misconception, Miss Beal,” Jack said as he shook the dog off his foot. “I did no’
sweep
into your home and demand anything. I have been threatened within an inch of my life.” The dog pounced again. “If I defy your uncle today, it would seem there are some men about who would collect a very hefty bounty for my head. I donna intend to stay here a moment longer than I must, but until I can figure out, how, exactly, I might take my leave, I will no’ be treated as some mangy cur!” he exclaimed, and shook the dog from his foot again.

“I
told
you,” Lizzie muttered again with a sidelong look for her sister. “He’s very obstinate.”

“Miss Charlotte,” Newton said evenly as Dougal tried to get the dog away from Jack’s boot, “the laird was quite clear his lordship is to remain at Thorntree; and if he does no’, the laird will begin a manhunt. In that event, I’m to bring Miss Lizzie to him.”

“Why?” demanded Charlotte.

Newton’s face darkened. “He will hold her responsible and punish her accordingly.”

“Punish?”
cried Charlotte. The sisters gasped with indignation and exchanged a look. But Charlotte was every bit as stubborn as her sister, obviously, for she shook her head and pressed her lips together, and Jack thought that it was remarkable that she could look so very handsome even when pouting.

The dog pounced again.

“That is unacceptable,” Charlotte continued crisply, as if her miserable little mutt of a dog was not attempting to chew Jack’s boot off his foot. “If he remains among us, free to come and go out of our company at will, it will compromise our reputations, and my uncle knows that very well! No, we donna want him here.”

“Diah,”
Jack groaned.

“’Tis a fact that there are times we all must do what we donna want to do,” Newton said.

“No,”
Charlotte said adamantly.

In a moment of frustration, Jack bent down and scooped up the snarling little dog, holding him tightly beneath his arm. “I share your distaste for this charade, madam, but unfortunately, I am here, and I will take a proper guest room. Now, where shall I find it?”

“You are awfully bold, sir!” Charlotte exclaimed.

“I
told
you,” Lizzie said in a very soft, singsong voice.

“He’s to stay, lass,” Newton said gruffly before Charlotte could object, and abruptly took the dog from Jack,
stroking him behind his ears as he moved to put the wee monster on Charlotte’s lap. “He will remain at Thorntree, and no’ in the nursery.” He walked back to where Jack stood. “Ye’ll come with me now,” he said, and put his hand on Jack’s arm.

“Please remove your hand from me, sir,” Jack said hotly, jerking his body clear of Newton’s paw. “Have you no’ a patch of land or a family that needs looking after more than me?”

“Very well, take him to the shed,” Charlotte said.

Newton did not respond, for he had clamped his hand on Jack’s arm, and this time held it painfully tight. “Ye will come with me, milord,” he said, and forced Jack around. When Jack resisted, Dougal caught his other arm.

“Newton!” Lizzie cried. “There is no need to harm him!”

Jack would have said that he was beyond harming, but the two men had already dragged him out of the room.

They continued to drag him down the corridor with a red dog and two old sheepdogs who’d appeared from nowhere at their heels, strolling along behind as if they thought there might be a bone for them at the end of this walk. Much to Jack’s surprise, they did not take him out of doors and to that wretched shed but up a flight of stairs and down a corridor that was bitterly cold. Apparently they kept only those rooms that they frequented heated. When they reached a pale green door, Newton flung it open and half tossed Jack across the threshold.

Jack caught himself before he tumbled to the ground and took a moment to look around.

He was in a bedroom. It was a wee bit dated in the décor but comfortable nonetheless. There was a four-
poster bed, a pair of upholstered chairs near the hearth, and a writing table at the window. “This will do,” Jack said, surprised by his luck. “There, Newton, do you see? I never asked but to be treated fairly, aye?”

Newton walked across the room and opened another door. Through it, Jack could see what looked like a small sitting room that had been turned into storage. There were bolts of cloth stacked in a corner, a table with a basin, and an old, cracked saddle, merely tossed onto the floor. There were crates, too, and a shelf that held children’s boots.

Jack looked at Newton.

“This room,” he said, gesturing to the bedroom, “belongs to Miss Lizzie. Ye’ll reside with her as ye ought, being handfasted as ye are.”

“That news likely will be met with shouts of joy,” Jack drawled.

“It is Miss Lizzie’s room, then, and she’ll decide precisely where ye are to reside.” He looked over his shoulder at the room behind him. “Given the lass’s apparent feelings for ye, I reckon it might be here.”

Jack looked at the room. “In
storage
? That’s absurd.”

“Mrs. Kincade will give ye a hand tidying up. And she’ll bring what ye need to make a pallet for sleeping,” he added rather nonchalantly.

“Pardon?” Jack exclaimed, gesturing toward the smaller room. “I’m to reside in there, in a closet, like some waif?”

Newton shrugged indifferently. “It’s for Miss Lizzie to decide, then.” He walked toward the door, but paused. “Oh, and by the bye, milord, Dougal will be right outside this door at all times. He’ll persuade ye differently if ye decide to sleep elsewhere.”

Jack laughed. “Do you think I will no’ step over Dou
gal when he’s snoring soundly in the middle of the night if I choose?”

“Ye might,” Newton said, nodding. “But perhaps ye’ll think what the laird might do to the lass should ye turn up missing.”

Jack scowled at the giant of a man. “If you ever have occasion to call at Lambourne Castle, Mr. Newton, I should very much like to entertain you on
my
terms.”

“That’s no’ likely to happen, then, is it?” Newton asked lightly. He looked at Dougal. “Keep him here, lad,” he said, and, whistling for the dogs, walked out of the room, leaving Jack and Dougal.

Dougal looked curiously at Jack. “Dougal, lad, we’re friends,” Jack tried, but Dougal was already backing out of the room, closing the door behind him. He did not, Jack noticed,
lock
the door. After the events of the last few days, he considered that something of a personal victory.

Lizzie, like Charlotte, assumed Jack had been dragged off to the shed. She didn’t like that at all, for it seemed like something Carson would do. Why could they not have put him in one of the servants’ rooms?
Diah,
it wasn’t as if they had any servants to fill those rooms any longer.

Lizzie made her way to her room after she and Charlotte talked and was surprised to see Dougal sitting in a chair outside her door. “Sir?” she said, pausing to look at him curiously. “What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Newton said to keep an eye on things,” Dougal said.

“A guard? You are
guarding
me?” she asked incredulously.

“I suppose ye might call it that,” Dougal said.

“Ha,” Lizzie said pertly. “We shall see about that, sir!” And with that, she walked into her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She stood a moment with her back to the door, thinking of Jack in that shed. They’d put a cot in it years ago for Mr. Kincade’s brother. He’d come round every now and again to pay a call but would fall so far into his cups on the strength of Mr. Kincade’s whisky that they’d have to put him in the shed to sleep it off. The second Mr. Kincade had not been round in years, nor had Lizzie looked inside the shed in years.

She hoped it wasn’t too terribly uncomfortable.

She pushed away from the door and moved to the center of her room, rubbing the nape of her neck. But as she stood there, she felt something odd…as if someone were watching her. Lizzie slowly lowered her hand and turned around—and cried out as she spotted Jack sitting in the shadows at her writing desk.

“
Diah,
what are you doing here?” she cried, her hand on her heart. “This is my room!”

“Aye, I am keenly aware of it,” he said, and rose to his feet, moving languidly into the light.

“Get out,” she said, pointing to the door.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes narrowing on her. “We are handfasted,
leannan,
or have you forgotten it? No one else in this bloody provincial glen has.”

“I want you to go straightaway!” she insisted, marching to the door.

“I can no’ go—the large man with the larger knife has spoken. We are handfasted.”

“
No,
” Lizzie said, shaking her head. “You will no’ stay here in this room!”

“I
shall,
” he said, his eyes turning dark. As if to prove it, he fell into a chair and propped his boots on the table.

“No,” Lizzie said. “No, no,
no
! Where is he, where is Newton, then? I shall put this all to rights!”

“I wish you luck,” Jack said with a flick of his wrist. “I’d join you, but I have a keeper with strict instructions to leave me put.”

Lizzie ignored him and stormed out of the room, almost tripping over Dougal in her haste.

She found Newton in the foyer. “He can no’ reside in my room,” she said, dispensing with any greeting.

“He must,” Newton said impassively. “Ye have pledged yer troth to him, and now ye must abide by that troth.”

“You know it was no’ of my free will!” Lizzie cried.

“Aye,” Newton said. “But ye agreed nonetheless. The laird would have the appearance of a handfasting at the very least.”

Fury filled Lizzie. She was so angry she could scarcely speak. “So you will aid in the ruination of me, is that it?” she asked, her voice shaking.

“He will reside in yer rooms, lass. But
where
in yer suite of rooms is yer choice. No’ mine. Mrs. Kincade is to put a pallet in the adjoining room.”

“In the sitting room? Is that the best you can do, then?” Lizzie cried. “The entire glen will talk of this!”

He looked at her; Lizzie realized that was precisely what Carson wanted. “I’ve me orders, lass,” he said, and walked on, effectively ending the discussion.