Kasey Michaels - [Redgraves 02] (11 page)

Simon would never admit it, but he couldn’t recall ever being so happy to see anyone in his life.

“They’re getting more men, more shovels,” she told him as she unceremoniously pulled the jacket from behind his head and tucked it in around his neck and shoulders. “There, that should help for a while.” Then she dragged herself through the muck, wresting his head forward before letting it drop onto her thigh as she sat beside him. “We have to keep your head above the mud until we can dig the rest of you out. Honestly, Simon, how did you manage anything so stupid?”

“Practice,” he muttered, relieved she hadn’t broken his neck. Who knew she was so strong? Or was that just bloody determination? “It takes practice. I think the mud has slid as far as it’s going to slide.”

“You’re an expert on sliding mud?” she asked him, pushing his sodden hair away from his face. “Isn’t that fortunate. I know it eases my mind mightily, although it certainly doesn’t explain how I could leave you safely standing up there and now you’re down here.”

He looked up at her, into her clearly worried eyes. “So you’re an advocate of kicking at a man when he’s down, are you? Good to know.”

“And you joke when things are at their worst. Also good to know.” She then yanked the jacket away again, wadded it up and stuck it behind his head as she withdrew her supporting thigh. “I can’t do anything with your head on my leg, and I want to try to dig some of you out of the muck while we wait.”

“Isn’t that strange. I could imagine any number of things I could do with my head on your thigh, but this is probably neither the time or place to enumerate on them.”

“I’m not certain what that means, Simon, but for a man who may have only a few precious breaths left to him, you might want to consider uttering something more profound.”

“Marry me,” he said instantly, wondering where the words had come from. He must have suffered a glancing blow from one of the rocks during the collapse. God, he barely knew her.

She was already digging with her hands, attempting to reach his left arm and then, apparently, wrench it out of its socket. “First I’d have to kiss you, and that would mean missing your performance from the church steeple. I’d never do that. Especially since I’m already thinking of something Valentine calls
side bets,
and winning a purse of gold coins.”

Simon would have been hurt by this remark, but he was much too interested in the way her chemise gaped open as she continued her industrious two-handed dig. Strange. It would appear even males on the verge of swallowing a fatal dose of mud could still be diverted by glimpses of the soft, deliciously bouncy curves of the fairer sex.

“Now pull, Simon—
pull.
There! Now both your arms are out. I don’t think we’ll need risk more people down here, or shovels. We can just secure the rope beneath your arms and pull you out. Brilliant, yes?”

“Astonishingly so. But now I can manage putting the rope around myself, so they’ll first pull you out.”

“Don’t be asinine. What if I’m on my way up and more mud comes down?”

“What if
I’m
on my way up and more mud comes down?” he countered.

“You’re in no position to argue, you know. Besides, I can stand up and hold on to this rope if that happens. You’re still half-submerged, like a pig in a sty. Ah, and they’re back.” She raised her head as another rope was lowered beside the first. “Pull it up again, Liam, and make one of those sliding knots in the end. You know...like a noose?”

“Only if you plan to fasten it around his neck.” Valentine’s head and shoulders appeared in the light from the lantern. “This is how you take care of my sister, Ravenbill?”

Kate shot Simon a quick, questioning look. “What is he talking about?”

An outright lie seemed to be the safest way to go at the moment, Simon realized. “I haven’t the faintest idea. Oh, look, here comes the noose. I don’t want to rush you, Lady Katherine, but we might want to make haste about leaving this charming place. There’s far too many people standing about up there, close to the rim, to make me comfortable.”

“I’ll have an answer from you, once we’re out of here.” Kate somehow managed, with Simon’s limited assistance, to secure the crudely constructed “noose” under his arms. She looked up toward the rim of the pit. “Pull!”

The rope went taut and Simon waved a silent goodbye to his new Hessians as he was slowly, and definitely not painlessly, unearthed, the mix of mud and water making a sickening sucking sound, as if reluctant to let him go. He believed he could now identify greatly with any poor soul who had been stretched on the rack.

At the same time, Kate struggled to her feet, her riding skirt sodden with mud and the rest of her streaked here and there with it, making her still the most beautiful woman in the world. Especially since her smile bordered on the triumphant.

Simon let go of the rope and grabbed her hard against him, his arms like steel bands around her waist. “Arms and legs wrapped around me, Kate. Now! And then hold on.”

“Simon, no! You can’t hold me. The rope could snap. Let me go!”

But Valentine was calmly issuing orders above them as he now held the lantern over the edge. “Hand over hand, men. On my command. Pull— Stop. Pull— Stop. Again. Pull— Hold up, they’re spinning like tops down there.” He reached for the rope and somehow held it steady. “All right, we begin again. Pull— Stop. Once more and we’ll have it, boys. Pull— Stop!”

Kate was snatched from Simon’s grasp just as their heads appeared above the rim, leaving him to dangle and swing like a watch on a chain. But that was all right, because Kate was safe.

The next thing he knew, Valentine himself had grabbed hold of his buckskins at the center of his waist. In one quick, wrenching upward jerk on the cloth that could have rendered Simon’s manhood a deathblow, Valentine one-handedly lifted him up and over the rim as the men pulled one more time, not stopping until Simon was a muddy lump lying facedown a full ten feet away from his possible burial spot, wondering if outright whimpering would be allowed.

“What in bloody blue blazes were you doing down there?” Valentine shouted, clearly still overcome with fear for his sister, or possibly anger. Probably a mix of both. Although he, like Kate, had been markedly coolheaded while affecting the rescue.

“The side of the hole caved in when Simon was standing there, keeping an eye on Adam until I could bring help,” Kate explained as she sat on the ground, her knees raised, her arms balanced on her knees. It would seem the strength she had employed while in the pit had deserted her. Simon understood that feeling, as well. He felt weak as a kitten, probably thanks to the weight of all that mud on his legs and chest.

“Adam? What does he have to do with anything?”

“Perhaps if you ceased your shouting, we could tell you,” his sister pointed out in some belligerence. Simon sighed, and attempted to rise. Pluck to the backbone, that was his Kate. Even when she should keep her mouth shut.

“Look, Val,” Simon said, but then quickly put out a hand to steady himself against a support beam. Prudently, he held on as he gingerly lowered himself to a sitting position in the dirt. “Adam fell in, I slid in after him when the ground I was standing on caved in, and now we’re out.”

“All right,” Valentine said, running a hand through his hair. “You’re out. You don’t have to tell me why Kate was down there. It’s just like her to want to play the heroine. But where’s Adam? My God, are you saying—?”

“Your pardon, sir,” Liam broke in, “but it’s after a bath the boy is, or so he told me when he was tiptoeing past as I was bringing more rope to haul up his lordship. I’m to dig out those queer red shoes he wears, he told me, and then I can have them mayhap I wants them. Now what, beg pardon, sir, does that queerboots think I’m to do with the likes of any such things? Sir.”

“Off to take a bath while I’m half drowning in mud,” Simon said, shaking his head. “Now there’s a sailor I’d not want standing at my back in battle. I’d be taking a cutlass in the gullet while that blockhead was employing his knife to pare his nails.”

And then the strangest thing happened. The sound began as a sort of weak chuckle, but within moments became real laughter—complete with a few unladylike snorts. Kate was laughing. She was laughing so hard, she had to lean her back against the leg of a nearby worktable.

“Katie? Katie-girl?” Valentine asked, kneeling in front of her. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

“I—I’m fine. Really. It’s all over now,” she said, and then burst into tears.

Her brother scooped her up into his arms, and she buried her head against his shoulder, her muddy arms clinging tight around his neck. He turned to glare at Simon. “You and I will speak later.”

As all the servants save Liam put their heads down and shuffled off, clearly embarrassed to be where they were, Simon pulled a clump of mud from his tangled hair and threw it in the direction of the pit. “Yes. I’ll just wager we will.”

Liam chuckled, clearly delighted.

“Go away, boy. I’ll be fine on my own.”

“But, m’lord, you’re a sorry mess, sir. And you have no boots. Begging your pardon.”

“No begging necessary. Wait. Is there a pump nearby?”

“No, my lord. But the stream is out there just a-ways. And trees lined up all along it, if I take your meaning.”

“You do. Send my man, won’t you, telling him to bring soap and enough clothes to dress me from the skin out.”

“Mrs. Justis will like that, my lord. Mr. Adam and her ladyship are dragging enough mud home with them to put her into a rare taking.”

“Yes, I am a considerate sort. Oh, and have my man bring me a bottle. Uncorked. I’ve no need of a glass. Make that two bottles.”

“Yes, sir, your lordship!”

Once the servant was gone, Simon managed to push himself to his hands and knees, figuring his next move would be to use the post to get all the way to his feet.

That’s when he saw it.

When they’d pulled him free of the pit, it would appear as if something in the mud clinging to him had been dragged along with him, and was now half-buried again in the dirt.

“It can’t be,” he told himself as he crawled toward what he was already certain was a not yet completely decomposed human hand.

CHAPTER EIGHT

O
NLY
AFTER
HER
second bath did Kate finally feel both clean and warm again as she curled up beneath the covers in her chemise, Consuela having ordered her to nap. Who would have thought mud could be so cold? Or perhaps the cold had grown inside her and had to work itself out.

When she’d peered over the edge of the collapse, to see Simon three-quarters buried in mud, the world began to spin and she thought she might faint. She’d read and heard about tunnel collapses, and how men had been swallowed up by the shifting earth and left there, as it would have been too dangerous to attempt to dig them out again for a proper burial.

She hoped Simon hadn’t known that, but she was nearly positive he did. How brave of him, to attempt to divert her, worry for her—even peek down her bodice when he believed she wasn’t looking—when he was only a few watery inches from a horrible death.

It had taken everything inside Kate to maintain her facade of calm and keep thinking, keep doing, keep scrabbling in the mud to keep it away from his face.

She may have made it a point to learn everything she could about caves and tunnels in the past weeks, to aid her in her search for the journals, but nothing she might have imagined could have adequately prepared her for the sight of layer after layer of nearly solid slabs of mud breaking away and splashing down on top of Simon Ravenbill.

For she already knew an extensive network of manmade tunnels from the coastline to nearly five miles inland, used as hidey-holes for contraband and ponies in order to evade the king’s revenue men, was more fiction than fact. Not in this area of England. Much of the ground was unstable for tunnels; even caves near the shoreline often filled with water at high tide. Digging around rocks prone to shift, or burrowing beneath the water table, had the unhappy result of more cave-ins than engineering victories.

There were precious few long-term successes in the way of man-made tunnels or hand-dug caves. Unless one had firsthand knowledge of their location, or a map, the entrances to those successes were all cleverly disguised and nearly impossible to discover. Although a few years ago, one had been found beneath the altar of a village church.

Gideon had explained all of that to her when the ground first opened up inside the succession house. When he’d redirected the stream, the water must have found a way around and over unstable underground rock until it found a place to gather, weakening an area of the tunnel until one storm or another provided enough water for a section of the thing to collapse. Work had begun on returning the stream to the route nature had intended for it, but clearly water was still finding its way beneath the greenhouse.

Valentine, once he’d variously assured himself she was all right, and had harangued at her for being so stupidly brave, had already ordered—and the devil with Gideon’s hopes and plans—the pit be filled with rock and gravel beginning tomorrow morning, or he’d know the reason why. Valentine was such a dear when he was being protective. No wonder everyone begged his assistance....

There was a light tap on the door and Consuela bustled into the bedchamber, having already discarded her maid’s apron for an entire rusty-black, widely skirted rigout that included a heavy black lace mantilla perched atop a curious high comb, and lace-edged black gloves. Mantilla flying out behind her, she approached the bed looking very much like a prodigiously large raven fruitlessly attempting flight.

Kate attempted to hide her smile. If the sight of Consuela wasn’t enough to frighten Simon into fleeing back to London, perhaps she should begin to think his flirting held more weight than simple nonsense meant to provoke her.

“We will rise now and go downstairs,” the one-time nurse, now senior upstairs maid and temporary duenna declared even as she rather ruthlessly pulled the covers to the bottom of the bed. “We are to bear witness as Mr. Valentine murders the marquis.”

Consuela had come to England over thirty years previously, as one of the young maids meant to serve the then-new bride, Maribel. She had been left behind to care for Maribel’s abandoned children, the infant Lady Katherine in particular. Consuela was not a woman to take her responsibilities lightly, and in many ways had come to be as English as her beloved charges.

She spoke the language quite well, with her only noticeable lapse a continuing problem with pronouns (or else she was employing the kingly “we,” which was an amusing thought). She wore English clothes—today being a remarkable exception—excelled at training the younger maids as she patiently waited for one of the Redgraves to fill the nursery for her again, and she clearly greatly enjoyed English cooking. And Leonard, the head groom, although she steadfastly refused to marry him.

But when it came to protecting Maribel’s children, even now they all were years beyond the nursery, the blood of a smattering of Moorish warrior ancestors ran hot in her veins.

Kate slid her legs over the edge of the bed. “Val’s not going to murder Simon, Consuela. He might want to put a few dents in Mr. Adam, but the marquis wasn’t at fault for what happened. You look very...nice in that gown. Um...queenly.”

Consuela attempted to lift all three of her chins. “We do, yes. The trappings of a duenna. It was left behind by Doña Fermina in the rush to escape, and now it is ours. Here, put on this wrapper. We cannot waste time. We were given five minutes to arrive in the study.”

“This?” Kate grimaced at the worn, deep green velvet banyan that once belonged to her father or grandfather; she’d used it earlier, after her baths, and now it lay at the bottom of the bed. She’d unearthed the robe years ago on a rainy-day search in the attics, pretending she was after buried treasure. Kate had found it wonderfully comforting after her bath on cold winter evenings, as it had a high quilted plaid shawl collar, the sleeves fell below her fingertips to end in quilted plaid cuffs, and the hem reached all the way to her toes. But, goodness, even she knew enough not to wear it outside her chambers. “Are you certain there are no shrouds about, Consuela? Where’s Sally?”

Then she remembered. Her personal maid had gone off to hang Kate’s riding habit near the kitchen fire until it was dry enough to, hopefully, brush the clinging mud from it. “And then most apt burn the thing, more’s the pity, for it won’t work, m’lady, much as you love it and hard as I’ll try.”

Consuela remained adamant. “Five minutes. There is time for nothing else. We remember Mr. Valentine in the nursery. Such tantrums! We will not risk them. Not today.”

Kate smiled as she dove into the banyan before tying the sash tightly around her waist. She lifted her long, still faintly damp tresses out from beneath the collar and allowed her hair to hang freely, and somewhat wildly, below her shoulders. In her agitation, Consuela seemed to have forgotten the necessity for slippers, and since her feet were covered by the banyan, anyway, Kate decided it would be delicious to present herself to her brother barefooted. That would teach him to measure his words when summoning her...and perhaps take his mind off any lecture he’d prepared for her.

Five minutes, indeed! “If he throws his toy soldiers, I’ll be certain to disappear behind one of the couches.” Then she shrugged. If Valentine wished to play the master of the house,
ordering
her about, then let him explain to his lordship why his sister had appeared in the study most resembling a rag-and-bone lady, while bringing her very own black crow with her.

Before she had time to reconsider, Consuela sounded the small wooden castanets tied to her thumb and middle finger. Kate had believed them long banished to the nursery, although she could still recall her dread at hearing their sharp
click-click, click-click.
Somebody was in trouble when the castanets were heard, usually Valentine or herself. At the absurdly young age of ten, Gideon was already allowed downstairs with Trixie, and Max was too smart to ever be caught out doing any of the many things he shouldn’t have been doing.

But Val and Kate? They neither one of them seemed to survive breaking the rules of the nursery unscathed, and being called to attention by the castanets probably hastened the development of what the siblings preferred to think of as their “independent thinking.” Or, as Valentine once said, “The fine art of getting away with things.”

“You aren’t really going to use those while acting my duenna, are you?” she asked the maid, who simply held up her fingers and
click-clicked
again. “Oh, you are, aren’t you?”

“Four minutes,” Consuela pointed out, brushing past Kate on her way to the door, leaving a nearly chewable scent of camphor in the air. Her eyes stung and nearly began to water. Poor moths. No wonder the black gown had survived so long. A pity, really.

Her slim shoulders drooping only a little bit, Kate resigned herself to trailing along behind Consuela to the main staircase, following her down so that the maid wouldn’t see her bare feet.

It was strange, though. She was being Kate, being herself, and the devil take the hindmost. But suddenly it wasn’t so enjoyable to play the hoyden. Either she was, as her family would have said, “at last” growing up, or this strange feeling was Simon’s fault. Probably the latter. It was always easiest to blame Simon...except she knew where the true blame belonged.

“Val can wait. I’m going back upstairs to get properly dressed,” she told Consuela just as they reached the second landing, only to turn about to face Simon descending toward her. He looked wonderful, unruffled, none the worse for wear, making her feel stupid, frumpy and horribly gauche.

“Interesting plaid,” Simon said as he came toward her. “It looks fairly ancient. Where did you get it?”

“That’s it? That’s all you can say?”

“For the moment, yes,” he answered, fingering the shawl collar. “Although I do intend contemplating what lies beneath.”

The sound came snapping up to them from the foyer.
Click-click, click-click!

“What was that?”

“Not what, whom. Consuela. My duenna. Apparently she disapproves of you pawing me.”

“Pawing—I’m bloody well not pawing—”

Click-click, click-click.

“Now you’re yelling at me. And swearing. Consuela apparently disapproves of those, as well. Plus, you haven’t let go yet.”

Simon raised both hands and glared past Kate to the maid. “All right, all right, I get the point,
senora.
”

“
Senorita.
Now you’re in her black books for certain.”

Simon made an elegant bow, which was quite a feat when performed on the stairs.
“Mil perdones, pierda. Estoy asombrado de que tal belleza ha no todavía se quebró por algún hombre con suerte.”
Then he turned back to Kate to whisper, “Your brother has sicced a dragon on me. Wonderful.”

“I was beginning to see the beauty in it, yes,” Kate groused. “But now you’ve flattered her all hollow, telling her how amazed you are such beauty as hers has not been snapped up by some lucky man. And in Spanish, no less. A show-off. It may be your biggest fault, you know, among a plethora of annoying shortcomings. Now please let me pass.”

“I don’t think so, no. May I assume you’ve been likewise summoned to the study? If so, I’d like your brother to see this banyan. Or has he already seen it?”

Kate frowned in confusion. “No, I don’t think so. I only wear it after my bath, in the wintertime. Today I was cold enough to use it. Consuela decided it was modest enough to cover me today because of Val’s demand I be downstairs in five minutes— And why am I telling you all of this? Oh, I remember. She worries Val may otherwise throw one of his toy soldiers or the equivalent.”

Simon rubbed at his forehead. “I’m going to ignore as much of that as I can. Come on, take my arm, and damn well smile so I don’t get clicked at again.”

Kate did as he said. “You swore again. I didn’t drop you into the pit, you know. You should be growling at Adam, although you’ll have to wait him out, as he’s taken to his bed with what his valet assures Mrs. Justis is a fatal chill.”

“We’re not that lucky. The idiot
climbed
over me. I swear he even stepped on my head,” Simon said, and this time in a definite grumble. “Listen, Kate, we’re going to have to take our medicine on this one, I’m afraid. Val has every right to be angry with both of us. Accident or not, your life was in danger while you were in that pit with me.”

“But not my virtue, which seems to be in danger any other time we’re together.”

“You believe so?”

Kate could see the humor in his eyes, and belatedly realized what she’d said, what she’d given away to the man. “Never mind. I was aiming for amusing, but clearly missed the target.”

“I don’t know. I would rather hope you’d hit the mark quite nicely. Your nose is shiny, by the way. I like it. And your hair smells like jasmine. I could become quite comfortable with your unconventional ways, if not to mention your myriad other attributes. God knows you never bore me.”

“You don’t ever stop, do you?” Kate halted just outside the study doors. “I really should go back upstairs to change. Val will tear a strip off my hide if I walk in there with you, dressed this way.”

“You couldn’t be more modestly covered in a shroud.”

She looked up at him in shock. “That’s what I thought— Oh, drat. Hello there, Val. I was just about to—”

Valentine pushed back the double doors, quickly recovering after goggling at his sister’s outfit—or simply resigned to her sartorial mischief. “Kate. Simon. I thought I heard you two out here, indulging in your favorite sport—provoking each other. Come in, if you please, and even if you don’t. Consuela, you look marvelously regal.
¿juntos nos mantendrá en jaque, sí?
But for now, our charges will be safe with me, you may retire.”

“Simon speaks fluent Spanish, Val,” Kate pointed out, trying not to laugh. “You and Consuela will keep us in check, will you? Surely we’re not
that
bad.”

“I’m still considering which of you is the worst, actually, although I think you just got a leg up with that monstrosity you’re wearing,” Valentine said, ushering them inside the study.