Seducing the Beast (30 page)

Her father warned her loudly not to tell so many fibs. “I know this lad. He’s Griff, the earl’s man.”

Meanwhile, Griff looked from one to the other, taking ill-concealed umbrage at the sight of an arm other than his own around her waist. She decided not to offer any explanation. Let him stew in his own juices.

“I prefer to travel incognito, captain,” he managed, the words choking out in one breath.

“Ah.” Her father faltered, immediately on his guard. “I see. I wish I’d known, my lord.”

Belatedly remembering his manners, the earl extended a hand, the one not holding the riding crop. “Welcome to Starling’s Roost, captain. Call me Griff. I don’t stand on ceremony here.”

She expelled a scornful chuckle, but when both men looked at her, she studied the gravel path.

Her father recovered easily. Never one to let life’s many ups and downs knock him off kilter, he kept a mostly placid disposition, traveling along with a steady, plodding amble. The discovery that his friend with whom he’d shared several ales and confidences was in actual fact the Earl of Swafford caused only a small ripple soon smoothed over with good humor. “I’ll have this little menace out of your hair now. We can go back to what we were, eh?”

“What we were?” Griff murmured. “And what
were
we, exactly?”

Reaching over to tweak her nose, her father laughed. “Like a bad penny, I always knew she’d turn up again. Never have daughters, Griff. They’re ten times worse than sons.”

The riding crop almost slipped out of his hands, and much to her wry amusement, his knees bent slightly, before they remembered how much weight they had to carry. “Daughter?” His voice cracked on the word.

Madolyn, meanwhile, caught her father suddenly assessing her flimsy apparel. His brows ruffled quizzically.

“Papa,” she cried rather louder than necessary, “can we leave at once? I’m anxious to get home.”

“Of course,” he muttered, still considering her bare feet. “You’ve troubled this kind fellow long enough.” Then he turned to Griff. “I daresay she drove you mad these last few weeks.”

“Yesss. It has been….most interesting.”

“My feet hurt and I’m cold,” she interrupted, scowling hard at him. “I’ll go and get dressed.”

“What are you doing outdoors barefoot, in your night things?” her father asked.

“Taking the air of course,” she replied, as if it was quite natural.

Griff’s eyes sought hers and she saw the hot gleam of gold, tossed like a challenge to bounce at her feet.

“Aren’t you going out for a ride, your lordship?” she demanded scathingly. “Don’t let us keep you.”

“Aye,” her father agreed. “We’ll not detain you. I’ll get my daughter’s things and we’ll be on our way.”

But Griff raised his hand again, this time in a halting gesture. His overheated gaze swung to her father. “There’s no haste, captain. Surely you’ll stay for the day and dine with me this evening? I insist, captain. Please.”

He smiled broadly.

Devastatingly.

She’d never heard him say “please” before and she’d certainly never seen him smile like that.

“Will you join me for a ride over the estate, captain? I won’t ask your daughter to come. There’s nothing more I can show her apparently. She’s not easily impressed.” When she threw him a warning frown, he responded with another of those rare smiles. “No entertainments I sought to provide have been enough to satisfy.”

“I hope you’ve not been rude to his lordship,” her father muttered, eyeing her skeptically. “After he put a roof over your head these past weeks.”

“And fed her appetites,” Griff added slyly.

“Aye, and fed you too. I know the amount of food you can put away.”

“I’ve been the epitome of restraint, Father.” She glanced sharply at Griff. “Despite severe trial to my patience.”

One eyebrow lifted, and his lips twitched. And Maddie knew whatever story she told her father, Griff would have a better one. They both knew which would be believed.

How odd the two men liked one another. Her father never cared for noblemen. In fact he often mocked and ridiculed those men who thought themselves superior just because of an accident of birth, and she would have imagined her father’s manners far too casual and easy for the earl’s approval. Yet, apparently they were friends.

They returned several hours later, laughing and easy, the earl playing the part of a benevolent host--to spite her, of course. He lent her father the use of his library to write to her mother and tell her she was found safe, then he suggested Gregory prepare a chamber in the west tower.

“You must stay the night, captain, after your long journey. Please.”

There it was again.
Please
. She trusted it as much as she trusted that stupid grin on his face. How adept he was at playing the part of a civil gentleman when she knew he was a savage, lusty brute, with no feelings and no heart.

“Papa,” she whined, “you said we might leave now--”

“I insist you stay tonight, captain,” the earl repeated, a slight inflexion of noble prerogative noticed by her, if not by her father, who eagerly agreed he was weary after his journey and would be considerably refreshed after a good night’s sleep.

Griff shook his finger in her face, his eyes agleam with superior amusement. “Tsk, tsk! Captain Carver’s daughter. My good friend’s little daughter. And I might never have known.”

It took every ounce of prim restraint not to bite that finger clean off. As her father handed his letter to Gregory, giving instructions for the delivery, she took the opportunity to whisper, “I find myself increasingly astonished, your lordship, that you’ve never been slapped before--as you claim.”

He merely laughed as if she told some jest of great hilarity. And then he pushed his luck further still, by ruffling her hair in the indulgent manner of a fond uncle.

* * * *

“When I heard her cousin was married to your brother, I knew Maddie must have come here too. I would’ve fetched her before now, but had to see her sister safely home to Norfolk first.”

Across the table his wayward mermaid picked at her supper, improbably quiet, and Griff was equally sparing with his words, weighing each one carefully, having no plans to rouse the captain’s suspicions. It seemed her father assumed she was there with her cousin the entire time, not realizing she’d been in Dorset alone for several weeks, unchaperoned, unguarded.

Mostly undressed.

She cast him a quick, luminous blue glance above her wine. Apparently she thought she could get away with this. Was her father intentionally blind to her antics? Did she pull the fleece over the eyes of any man with the misfortune to cross her path?

It was a balmy evening and they dined on the terrace under a full moon, surrounded by rush torches. He wanted to show off his property again, to impress the captain and that surly-faced madam who quietly complained at the number of insects feasting upon her. She scratched and itched, muttering furiously about these and many other discomforts she could not name.

The captain, unlike his daughter, was completely at ease, enjoying the relaxing effects of Gregory’s special brew, chattering away to Griff more openly than ever before.

“Living a life of leisure here in this fine house, taking advantage of your good food and hospitality, it’s no wonder Maddie didn’t want to be sent home again. She gets blinkers on, like a plow horse.”

“Your daughter
is
remarkably stubborn, captain. I’ve not been able to make her comply with a single command.”

“She’s always had a mulish spirit.”

“But tell me, captain, how do you discipline such a naughty child? Is there anything that might be done to curb her defiance?” He shot her an arch grin. It was brief, quickly vanishing into his mug of ale.

Captain Carver admitted he had yet to find a reliable method, although the threat of a firm slap across the buttocks was enough to silence her cursing mouth on occasion. At this, Griff laughed again, letting his humor out for a longer gallop.

“Perhaps it is you who needs the discipline, my lord,” she observed primly.

He tried to halt his laughter, clasping a kerchief to his lips.

“Don’t talk to your host like that,” the captain exclaimed, “or you’ll feel the sting of my belt on your saucy behind.”

“Father, I’m not a child,” she cried. “I wish you wouldn’t treat me as such.” Griff found her eyes directly trained on his face. “I’m a woman now and should be treated thus.”

He coughed hard at the reminder.

“Now you mention it, girl,” her father mused, “you do look different. The air of Dorset must agree with you, eh? There’s quite a bloom in your cheeks.”

Griff studied his knuckles, the heat rising under his collar, where it suddenly rubbed uncomfortably.

The captain demanded, “Is that a new frock?” The silence that followed was broken only by the sputtering of the torches and the nervous clatter of Griff’s knife against his plate. Sitting forward, her father observed her face in the flickering torchlight. “What have you been up to? What happened to you in London, under your cousin’s roof, eh?”

“Naught, Papa!”

“More ale, captain?” Griff speedily gestured for Gregory to refill her father’s tankard.

“Someone bought you a new frock did they?” the captain persisted.

No answer.

“I don’t like it.” He fell back in his chair and turned to Griff. “She’s been up to no good. I know my daughter.”

Jaw tight, Griff looked everywhere but at his guests.

“If I find out there’s been mischief of that kind,” her father continued slowly, “I’ll hunt the fellow down, slice off his tackle with my blunt knife and use it for fish bait. Or throw it to my dog. He likes a good bit of flesh for his Sunday dinner.”

“Papa,” she protested, “How could you talk of such things and at the supper table?”

“Who was he, girl? Best save me more trouble and tell me before I beat it out of you!” When she resolutely refused to entertain his suspicions, he said to Griff, “I daresay some scoundrel bought her gifts and she’s empty-headed enough to accept them without knowing what he wanted in return. My daughter is an innocent, and I fear she’s been misused.”

“Innocent?” Griff mumbled. “Yes, I’m sure that must be the case.”

She stood swiftly. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

“I’ll get to the root of this, girl. Don’t think you can avoid the matter by skipping off to bed,” the captain warned. “No man buys my unwed daughter gifts of fine clothes. What will folk think?”

“In my experience, Papa, folk will think what they wish to think, right or wrong.” She aimed a meaningful look in Griff’s direction, and before leaving the terrace, added, “Don’t forget we leave tomorrow on a long journey, Papa, and you need a clear head.”“Just like your mother,” he muttered.

They watched her walk into the house, the torchlight licking her shape, momentarily sweeping her with gold dust. Griff realized, with a fierce, shameful pang, he didn’t even have a miniature portrait of her to keep. Once she was gone, he might never lay eyes on her again.

As she disappeared inside, the Captain apologized for his daughter’s behavior. “Alas, she is her mother’s daughter.”

Griff ran a finger around the rim of his tankard. “The women in your family are troublesome, captain?”

“All but my daughter Grace. A good girl she is. Too good-hearted and gentle, in fact.” He proceeded to tell of her misfortune in London, when she was led along by a gentleman called Jessop, who turned out to have a wife already. “Poor Grace was brokenhearted. She blamed her sister for sending the fellow off with a flea in his ear, but later discovered the truth, that Maddie had only acted for her good.”

Griff remembered the night he’d seen Jessop confront her under the arches. Now he understood.

He knew how she liked to meddle, but it was out of kindness, it seemed, not mischief. Well, she was done meddling in his life. Tomorrow she would go home and his life could go back to what it was before, his world in tidy order. Other men who kept mistresses ended the arrangement easily and often enough. Why should he not be capable of the same?

Candle stump in hand, she went to his door.

“With your father here in the house?” he exclaimed. Suddenly he was righteous and proper. “Have you lost your mind?” Looking nervously over her shoulder, he grabbed her sleeve and pulled her into his room, closing the door quickly behind her. “If he should see you coming here--”

“Still fretting over that disemboweling cutlass?”

He winced. “More than ever.”

“I never thought the wicked Earl of Swafford would let a little thing like that worry him.”

“The wicked Earl of Swafford wants to keep his parts where they are--all his parts attached exactly.”

She chuckled. “Shall Gregory measure it with his notched stick to be sure it stays the same?”

He grabbed her candle, muttering she would probably drop it and set his house ablaze. “Your father might beat the truth out of you, like he said.”

“He would never raise his hand to me.”

“That’s where he went wrong then.”

He was angry with her, it seemed. His eyes wouldn’t meet hers tonight and looked at her shoulder, her hand, her candle, anything but her face. Moonlight and shadow fought over the stern lines of his expression. He put distance now between them and perhaps, she thought sadly, it was for the best.

Madolyn struggled to say her goodbyes, but they died mid-way up her throat. Before she’d tapped on his door, she’d had it planned: how calm and sensible she would be, how she would thank him for their time together and wish him happiness for the future. She’d even thought she might shake his hand. Now that she stood before him, polite gestures seemed impossible. “Tomorrow I’ll be gone,” she blurted. “I suppose you’ll miss me.”

His answer was unduly terse. “I doubt it.”

“We’ll never meet again.”

“Good thing for my sanity and my household.”

Fighting tears, she tried to remember what she’d come there to say. “Take care, my lord, in your dealings with Wickes.”

“This again?” he scoffed.