Seducing the Beast (2 page)

The younger of the two was absorbed in deep, dismal thoughts. He felt his companion waiting patiently, poised to give comfort and advice whenever needed, but Griff, as he called himself today, couldn’t find the words to share this problem, even with his friend. It was customary to swallow his troubles and deal with them alone; a hard habit to break.

Captain Carver, a sun-browned fellow with whitened hair and a few weathered scars, peered at him with piercing blue eyes above a second mug of ale. “Bad tidings?” He nodded at the folded missive on the table between them. Its contents, once read at speed, had been angrily set aside, the parchment reduced to lowly service under the younger man’s mug of ale. “Anything I can do to help, Griff?”

He managed a slight grimace. “’Tis my duty, Captain. I’m never done with it.”

“I hear your master the Earl of Swafford is a notoriously ill-tempered fellow, a hard man to please. What’s his latest trouble?”

Griff hesitated. He slowly rubbed the bristles of his chin with one hand, his focus trained on the streaks of amber firelight gilding his pewter tankard. “The earl’s brother is embroiled in an affair with yet another unsuitable wench.”

“Ah. The earl does not approve?”

Nodding curtly, Griff held his lips taut. Like a heavy threat of thunder in the air, his formidable size and aura of barely-stifled discontent filled that small tavern. Overt physical strength, conspicuous with every gesture, was so potent and volatile that the sudden, innocent motion of reaching for his ale pricked several men nearby into a twitch. “Gabriel Mallory falls in love and out again, four times annually,” he growled. “Consequently, with each change of season he rediscovers the pain of a broken heart. The earl tries to save him from it. Sometimes I wonder if ’tis worth the trouble.”

“Perhaps young Mallory doesn’t want to be saved.”

“Or else he deliberately causes his brother anguish,” Griff snapped. “He certainly chose a woman of scarlet hue this time.” Aware of the captain’s cool gaze searching his face, he struggled to smooth the frown he knew lurked there, but it was too deeply ingrained. Anxious to escape his companion’s steady, keen perusal, he raised his tankard, closed his eyes and drank. Cheap ale tasted remarkably good, he mused, when one was thirsty and in a foul temper. “I leave for London at once,” he said, the idea bringing him as much joy as a wasp down his breeches.

“’Tis a pity. If you might delay another day or two, until I conclude my business here, we could travel together. I’m to collect my daughters there and bring them home to Norfolk.”

Staring gloomily into the distance, he barely heard the captain. Whenever his friend talked proudly of those little girls, Griff adopted the least surly expression he could muster, while his mind slipped sideways to ponder more important matters. His only interest in women of any shape, size, or age, was to know where they skulked in wait, so they might be avoided.

“I bring gifts for them both, but my youngest daughter, Madolyn, is a difficult wench,” the captain rambled on. “Never know what she might like. Now, Grace, the eldest--she’s a good girl--easily content with a bolt of fine cloth or a pretty bauble. Not Maddie though. She asked me to bring her a Spanish rose, but ’tis not the sort of thing I can bring her over the sea is it? I try to explain to her--they’d be dead before I got home.” He stopped, looking at Griff, realizing the young man’s mind floated elsewhere. “A penny for your thoughts, lad.”

“I muse, captain, on how otherwise sane men let their codpiece rule their head.” He gestured with a nod toward the stained letter on the table between them. “I’d rather keep a mangy hound dog than a wench for company.”

The captain laughed. Reaching over, he laid a hand on his shoulder. “Many years ago, I might have said the same. Then I met my wife and she put paid to that.”

Glancing down again at the stained parchment, Griff’s eyelids flickered wearily, for the great, lumbering weight of those burdens pressing on his shoulders felt far heavier than the comforting reassurance of the captain’s work-scored hand. “I’ll never let any woman get the better of me.”

“One day, some mischievous wench will come alongside in a sinking vessel, adrift in her own jiggery pokery, and you’ll feel obliged to save her, as I once did.”

“I think not.”

“And when the day comes, we’ll share another ale together.”

Adamant he was above the folly of chasing females, Griff stated firmly, “Women are like pomegranates--too many pips and not nearly enough sweetness to recompense. If ever I’m tempted by such troublesome fruit, I’ll gladly lay down coin for all the ale you can drink, captain.”

The two men shook upon it.

He entertained no fear of losing his wager. He was, after all, Lord Griffyn Mallory, Earl of Swafford, The Beast. Always right, and accustomed to getting his own way.

“Move your rancid, worm-holed head out of my view, you pustulous, stinking wretch!”

In the ruckus no one heard her. The fellow to whom she addressed this tirade kept his back turned, refusing to apologize for having trampled her like muck under his feet. Now, shoving her ruthlessly aside, he won a coveted spot at the very front of the throng and, smug in this victory, stoically ignored her pokes.

Despite all attempts to remember ladylike manners, Maddie lost her temper so far she wouldn’t recognize it again if it ran up to bite her. Time was of the essence and she was in a desperate mood. Temporarily under the lax guardianship of her widowed cousin Eustacia, and with her father away at sea, she made the most of her unusual freedom and these last days in London. Their father could arrive any day and hurry his daughters home to Norfolk, in which case, this would be her last chance to see the Earl.

Very soon Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers would pass en route to Whitehall, and all these humble folk lining the street, crammed in around leaning houses and shop fronts, hoped to win a glimpse of her, perhaps even catch her eye in return. It was every man and woman for themselves. As the writhing mass of sweating humanity seethed and swelled, Madolyn covered her nose with the letter of petition in her hands, momentarily overcome by the stench. Jostled from side to side like the runt of the litter, almost knocked off her feet, she cursed again at the man blocking her view, before resuming her assault against the glowing red flaps on either side of his head.

A guard at the edge of the crowd looked over his shoulder and studied her for a moment. Dismissive, he turned away again.

* * * *

The Earl of Swafford ploughed swiftly through the scrum with excessive use of elbow. Having no patience for the obsequious fawning of courtiers, rather than join the noble procession, he chose this anonymous route among the rough and rowdy, sparing no one more than the briefest of glances. Until he heard her.

“Odious, maggoty villain! Look what you did to my gown with your jiggery pokery. This is very costly, branched damask, you rotten, poxy cur!”

Astonished, Griff watched the short, dark haired creature, as she leapt up to slap her victim’s ear between each curse. No one seemed in control of her and he had no tolerance for unguarded wenches. They were, in his opinion, a danger to themselves and everyone around them.

Caught up in their own business, the crowd paid her no more heed than they would a minor irritant in the corner of their eye, but for some inconvenient and inexplicable reason, he found his own gaze rooted upon that small, noisy, bouncing disturbance. The long black curls, uncovered and left loose, suggested she was a young, unwed maid. The gaudy scarlet gown and brazen attitude suggested otherwise. Whatever she was, she displayed a surplus of dangerous energy, not to mention a reckless disregard for her own safety.

While he weighed the option of not getting involved, the crowd surged to one side; the woman lost her footing and, with another ribald curse, disappeared from view. A creature that size could be trampled by the mob, and even the Earl of Swafford was occasionally obliged to be gallant--though he’d never admit it to a living soul. Thrusting his way forward, he came to where she knelt in her crumpled, foot-printed skirt and offered one hand, fluttering his fingers in an impatient gesture, showing how he put himself out for her.

She looked up, surly, frustrated, not in the least thankful. Her eyes were hot and blue as an unspoiled August sky, her lips still complaining. The gown about which she’d expressed such pride, stretched beyond capacity by a bountiful bosom, expanded further with each indignant breath.

Incredibly, it seemed she would refuse the assistance he deigned to offer, so before she crawled away, he leaned down, swept his hands under her arms and scooped her upright in one swift motion. No one interfered as he apprehended her, no one claimed ownership of the mouthy, voluptuous wench. A lofty, cumbersome fellow with shoulders that did credit to any Tudor doorframe worth its wood grain, his sheer size warned off potential rivals.

“God’s Teeth! Who gave you the right to manhandle me? Poxy, presumptuous…” She shot him full of arrows in the form of fulsome oaths one might expect from the mouth of a drunken sailor.

Impervious to insult--accustomed to it--he held her a good distance off the ground, wanting a closer look at this anomaly, wondering at her untended state. Why did no man step forward to keep her in order?

Suddenly ceasing her complaints, she took advantage of his considerable height, using his frame like a mounting block to press herself higher still, consequently kneeing him in the belly. Struggling to maintain his footing, Griff’s protests met the warm, sweet-scented curves of her plump bosom and were immediately muffled, both in execution and thought. As for the folk around them, they ignored this unseemly behavior. Simply because he now held her in his arms, he supposed they considered her in his charge, therefore his to reprimand. Burdened with the sudden responsibility, Griff wasn’t sure what to do with her; he’d never known anything quite like this, but his mind was open and curious when it came to new discoveries in flora and fauna. At least, this was the excuse he gave for his inertia.

Now with a good view of the approaching procession, the resourceful wench writhed and wriggled, holding on by his ears and alternately, his nose. “I seek the Earl of Swafford. Do you see him?”

Startled out of his drowsy thoughts, he almost dropped her. He felt the excitement trembling through her, could even hear her heartbeat leaping like a spring coney as she draped herself around his shoulders. Aware he should be enraged by her behavior, instead he struggled for several breaths, fighting the rare urge to laugh.

Finally he managed a hoarse, “Yes, there he is--the Earl of Swafford. Did you not see?”

“Where?”

“The ancient fellow with the ear trumpet,” he grunted, shifting his shoulder under her weight. “There--with the hump and the limp. And the magnificent wart. Ah, he dropped his wooden teeth and it seems a dog ran off with them, poor, bent old wretch. You missed him. What a pity.”

With a frustrated gasp, she fought her way back down the length of his body, until he felt considerably molested, slightly breathless, and perversely intrigued. “What business could a little thing like you have with the old Earl of Swafford?”

“Something most important.”

“Hmm?”

Trying to get around him now, his rangy form blocking her view and her progress, she muttered a resentful explanation. “Seduction.”

He must have misheard, surely.

Someone knocked against her and she stumbled again. He granted the clumsy intruder a fierce, contemptuous scowl over her curly head. No need for words, one solitary glare of Swafford wrath was enough to wring a stammered apology from the other man, and then at last a space cleared around them. Not that she thanked him for it. “Unhand me at once, man,” the ungrateful chit commanded breathlessly.

He hadn’t realized he still had her in his arms,precisely where she shouldn’t be.

Tempting, very; trouble, definitely.

“Excuse me, madam,” he grumbled. “I thought you a lady in need of rescue, now I see I was mistaken. You are, in fact, a strumpet in need of a scold’s bridle.”

Her eyes widened, brows arched high. Now he counted three freckles on the bridge of her nose--a rarity, since many women painted their faces with a thick white concoction, often to mask the scars of smallpox. Her complexion was colored only by the air itself, and her emotions. He stared at her lips. They were maidenly pink, full, and now damp as she passed the tip of her tongue over the lower and then the upper in a quick, irritable fashion. A deceptively innocent-looking mouth. He suspected it could also be deadly, especially in proximity to such a pretty bosom. The eyes were stunning. Thickly lashed, wide and an utterly beguiling blue, they drew him in until he thought he might do something scandalous and wicked. And he suspected she would not object. Neither would he regret it.

Despite the inherent danger, he stared into those stormy, sea-blue whorls, determined to issue a warning. She did not blink. There was no retreat.

Slowly relinquishing his grip, he muttered, “
Mais vous etes tres beau et si je n’etais pas un camarade prudent, je vous prendais a la maison avec moi.
” She would be ignorant of what he said, of course, and having got the idea off his chest, he moved away with his customary trampling.

He had never looked twice at any woman. It took every ounce of his willpower not to look again at that one.

* * * *

Good thing he took himself out of her reach before she could kick him in the kneecaps. So he thought her lovely, and if he were not such a prudent fellow, he would take her home with him. Would he indeed? His assumption that she wouldn’t understand French annoyed her more than the suggestive words themselves. Of course, he couldn’t know about their rather unconventional upbringing, how their mother believed in a well-rounded education, providing her daughters with every opportunity to learn--at least, as much as could be afforded. Their last tutor, sadly, fell in love with Grace, obliging Maddie to chase him off with the wood axe because he was too old, had sausage fingers and stank of onions. Thus ended their formal education. After that, she’d taught herself with the books her father and cousin brought home from their travels. None of this could her lonely-eyed stranger be expected to know.