The Lady Mercy Danforthe Flirts With Scandal (25 page)

“Oh, but Rafe is always very busy,” Mercy exclaimed, her tone weary, lips pouting. “He must work for a living, unlike some of us. We cannot ask him to take time away just for our
trivial
nonsense
. To be sure, we can find other men willing and able. He need not put himself out for us.”

He ignored her and directed a reply to his stepmother. “I’ll do what I can to help.”

Mercy turned away to discuss her purchases with the shopkeeper’s wife, and he stared at the back of her bonnet. He thought about ripping it off her head, turning her around. Making her kiss him.

“Rafe, do help me with these packages.”

He tore his gaze away from Mercy’s bonnet, took some of the heavier parcels from his stepmother’s arms, and followed her outside. The curricle was soon so loaded down with presents that there was barely room for a driver, let alone a passenger too. “Oh dear,” his stepmother remarked, finger to her lips, “I hope we haven’t overdone it. Sophie will be most annoyed.” She swung around as Mercy came out of the shop behind them. “Lady Mercy, I fear there is no room for you in the curricle. Dear Rafe must bring you in his cart.”

In the next breath, his stepmother was in her seat, gathering the reins and smiling down at them.

“I’ll see you there. Make haste.” And she was gone.

***

Mercy looked over her shoulder. She hoped stupidly for some other form of transport to make itself suddenly available. But there was only Rafe’s cart and horses.

“You’ll have to make do with me, Dainty Breeches,” he muttered. “Despite my lack of sartorial elegance.”

“So it appears, you big brute.”

As the last word left her lips, he raised his hand to her face. Not knowing what he meant to do, she went very still. Her pulse raced like a rabbit from a hound. He stroked one large finger along her cheek and moved a curl of her hair.

“What is it?” she exclaimed, fraught.

“You had a hair out of place. Can’t have that, can we?”

“For pity’s sake, let’s get this over with.”

He offered his other hand to help her up into the cart. It was a large hand. Everything about him was too large. Her own hand looked like a child’s doll in comparison.

Just as she raised her foot to the step, Mercy realized they were being watched from across the lane. Mrs. Flick had caught them in the rays of her prim, bespectacled glare as she exited the cobbler’s. She quickened her hobbling pace across the village common, chased by a flock of swans that had wandered up out of the nearby lake.

“Lady Mercy Danforthe! You remain
still
in the neighborhood? I thought you had returned to London. Something most pressing must have kept you here.”

Mercy slid her fingers from Rafe’s enormous fist and prepared her most nonchalant face to greet the old gossip. “I decided to stay a while longer, Mrs. Flick. I trust you are well.” Certainly the ancient crone—usually reliant on a walking stick—managed to move with surprising alacrity on her own two feet when she was afraid of missing an ounce of good scandal.

“And you, Hartley. No word from Moll Robbins, eh? I thought you would have gone after the girl, but now I hear you have other company at the Red Lion to occupy your time.”

Mercy looked at him, wondering what the Red Lion had to do with anything.

“Molly Robbins does not want me to chase after her,” he said.

The old woman leered at Rafe. “’Tis just as well. Young men today. Not to be trusted.” Her small, mean eyes grew bored with him and now inspected Mercy’s appearance. “Tom Ridge tells me
you
enjoyed yourself at Merryweather’s Tavern not so many nights ago. Indulging in the demon drink. With young Hartley here at your side.”

She felt her heart drop. Most folk in that village treated Mercy with respect, as befitted her status, but old Mrs. Flick considered herself above paying deference to anyone. At her age, she clearly saw no reason to hide her venomous fangs. Sinking them into surprised quarry was probably her one remaining pleasure in life.

“You and your fine scarlet frock,” she added with a sneer.

Mercy drew a quick breath. “The color is ‘Mystery of the Orient,’ Mrs. Flick.”

“Is that what they call it these days in London? A popular color for sin, I’m sure. You were always a wicked child with too much to say for yourself. The rod was spared with you too oft, that much is plain.”

Rafe seized Mercy’s hand again, and she feared he meant to crush her bones. “Let’s make haste. They expect you at my uncle’s house, Lady Mercy.”

“With no parents to guide you,” Mrs. Flick continued, “I suppose you’ve been left to make your own mistakes. I hear your brother is scandalously ill behaved. The filthy rich, of course, do not care how they sin. But all that coin will not pay your way into heaven, young lady.”

Rafe had moved around, his other hand placed lightly on her waist, his tall frame sheltering her from the old gossip.

“I saw you leaving this young man’s farmhouse in the small hours. Illness, indeed. There was nothing amiss with you that morning. I saw with my own two eyes, you in that same scarlet hussy frock.”

Guided by his hand on her waist, guarded by his comforting body heat, Mercy stepped up to the seat in front of his cart. “Once again, Mrs. Flick, the color is ‘Mystery of the Orient.’”

The old woman grumbled under her breath. Her wrinkled face crumpled even further with disappointment now that they were leaving before she could conclude her lecture with more tales of damnation.

Rafe leapt up beside Mercy, and the cart wheels bounced into action, carrying them away down the lane. Another unfortunate item for gossip, of course. She should not be riding unchaperoned with a man.

For a few moments, they said nothing. Eventually the lane turned, and the horses slowed as they started uphill. Catching her breath, Mercy looked at Rafe. “I’m afraid there will be a scandal.” Since several days had passed with no one making mention of her dawn exit from Rafe’s farmhouse, she’d happily and somewhat foolishly concluded it was forgotten. Or else people believed the story of her falling ill.

He shrugged easily, expression unchanged, eyes on the road ahead.

“Do you not care?” she demanded as she wondered if the fool even heard what she said.

“What worries you most? That she’ll spread the story of you spending the night with me, or that she’ll get the color of your dress wrong?”

“I did not
spend
the
night
with you. Kindly refrain from describing the incident as such.”

“Yes, you did,” he replied smoothly. “You were in my house, weren’t you? With me? All night. Don’t expect me to lie for you. That would be perjury, and I’m an honest soul.”

She gripped the edge of her seat as the lane evened out again and Rafe’s horses picked up speed. The verges whipped by, and her head began to spin.

“Worst comes to the worst,” he shouted above the clip of hooves and rumble of wheels, “you’ll just have to marry me, won’t you? Again.”

This was impossible, she thought irritably. Typical Rafe. Thank goodness for men like Viscount Grey. She knew where she was with him. There were no surprises, no puzzles. Life with him would be smooth, predictable, neat, and tidy.

They bumped over a hard rut, and Mercy almost slid out of her seat. His cart was far less comfortable and safe than any vehicle she’d ever ridden in before. “Slow down, knave!”

He slowed the horses to a walk, much to her relief and a measure of surprise. She stared at the passing verges and plowed fields beyond them, finding comfort in the neat lines of rolled earth and the trimmed hedges separating fields in a quilt-like pattern. “What did she mean about the Red Lion and company there to occupy your time?”

“Who knows?” He snorted. “The old hag is half-senile.”

Just then an open barouche appeared around a bend in the lane, heading toward them. Rafe pulled his cart aside to let it pass and tipped his hat when they saw it was Mrs. Kenton, her sister, and Sir William.

“Good day to you!” Mrs. Kenton called out as they trotted by. It looked as if she appealed to her brother to stop the carriage, but he was lost in his daydreams, and in the next instant they were gone. It had been just enough time for Mercy to see the large peacock-feather muff in Mrs. Kenton’s lap. The gall of that woman!

How could Rafe say she was just like her? It was an outrageous insult. She swiveled on the little wooden seat to stare straight ahead, teeth grinding.

“Miss Milford looked very pretty today,” he observed.

“Miss Milford looks pretty every day. The very moment she awakes, I’m certain, her face could launch a thousand ships.”

A rumble of laughter shook the wooden seat on which they both sat. “Envious, my lady Bossy-Drawers?”

“Not at all. I like her.” In truth, she wished she did not like Isabella Milford. It would have been far easier and much less confusing to dislike her, since Rafe was so enamored.

But then he said, “Do you not think there is something about her…almost an air of grief. Her heart has been abused, I think.”

Mercy was pleasantly surprised to find him that perceptive. It never occurred to her that he would take time to look beyond Isabella’s pretty surface. “I thought so too.”

“Sakes, we agree on something for once.” Then he sighed and hunched his great shoulders. “Obviously, I can detect the fellow sufferer of a broken heart.”

It was hard not to smile when he resorted to fishing for pity, but she managed nonetheless. “Perhaps you can suffer together then. You have a bond already. You can share your tales of lovelorn woe.” She didn’t believe his heart was in the slightest way injured, although his pride must be a different story. “Miss Milford is a very good sort of girl, and she likes you.”

“And you are a very wicked sort of girl who despises me.” Quickly abandoning the dour, sad expression, his lips lifted in a crooked grin. “I must be a glutton for punishment. Surely you understand, your ladyship. To me, you are that peacock-feather muff.”

Reminded of that item in Mrs. Kenton’s possession, Mercy seethed inwardly and glowered at the horizon.

“What did I say now?”

Ha! As if he didn’t know exactly how to get under her skin.

“Can’t you even smile at me today, Bossy-Drawers?” he asked silkily. “Show me your dimples.”

“No.”

“Would cost you too much, I suppose, to bestow any kindness on a lowly peasant like me.”

“Precisely. Since you know that to be the case, I wonder why you ask. And you are not lowly.” She thought of the night at Hartley House when he breached her bedchamber and threatened to stay if she did not meet his demands. “You are dreadfully forward, impertinent, and presumptuous.”

“And your coldhearted, haughty manner makes you the most irritating creature I ever beheld, but I have difficulty keeping my hands off you nonetheless.”

She reflected a moment on his peculiar talent for surprising her. Insults would tumble freely from his mouth and then turn, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, into a form of reluctant flattery. It meant that she never knew which part of his statement to correct first. “I’m sure ’tis a fascination that will pass.”

“Why? Because you say it must? I know you like everything in its proper place, all tidy and under your command. If only I obeyed your orders, but I make things untidy for you.”

“When things—and people—are in their proper places, life is predictable and calm.”

Rafe drew the cart to a halt. “Predictable and calm? Is that all you want out of your marriage? Out of life?”

He said that as if there was something wrong with an orderly world. Perhaps because he’d never known one.

Too many things had occurred in Mercy’s own young life to knock her tidy world askew, forcing her to scramble and restore order. She still recalled the gentle crackle of coals in the hearth, the methodical tick of the mantel clock on the night her mama died. Her nanny, old Mrs. Potts, sat nearby, sobbing quietly into her handkerchief, and no one spoke to Mercy of what happened at the hunt, but she overheard plenty and was aware of everything changing around her.

Her father’s voice rang throughout the house, cursing wildly. “Why did she take that hedge instead of going by the gate like everyone else? Why did she not heed my warning and take the safer route? Foolhardy! Reckless, headstrong woman!”

In all the chaos, Mercy was exiled to the nursery with Potts, instructed to fill the afternoon and then the evening cleaning out the shelves in her nursery and refolding her clothes, deciding which might be given away to charity. Once that was done, she’d sat by the fire to play with her dolls while the gentle and steady sound of the mantel clock kept rhythm and order among the madness.

Five years later, when her father died of a fever and—so she romantically liked to think—a broken heart, Mercy took her comfort again from that nursery mantel clock. After her brother came to relate the bad news, she ran not into the waiting arms of her governess, but to the fireplace, where she stared at the clock and watched the smiling moon face above the number twelve. Then she changed into the heavy black-crepe mourning clothes and set about tidying her shelves and cupboards, arranging her shoes and boots in a straight line.

Order must always be kept.

“Well?” Rafe Hartley demanded impatiently, eyes narrowed as he stared at her, elbows on his knees, reins slack between his fingers. “We both know what we want. We knew it when we were on my bed together and you put your ladylike hands on my—”

“Never mention that lapse again. Yes, I do know what I want, and it is not you. I will take the gate, not risk my life over a hedge when I can’t see what’s on the other side.”

He blinked at her in a confused manner.

“Never mind,” she exclaimed. “Now please drive on.”

He dropped the reins, shifted closer on the wooden seat, and clasped her face between his large, warm palms. “First, I’ll take my fee for giving you a ride.”

Mercy grabbed his thick wrists and tried to pull his hands away, but he was too strong and determined. His lips found hers, forced them apart. She weakened. It horrified her to find this softened center beneath her cultivated barriers, but there it was. He knew it was there and teased it out of her, remorseless, ruthless. His tongue swept hers, curled around it, drank her startled moan. Thank God no one was in the lane at that moment, she thought. It might not matter to him if she was painted a scarlet hussy, but it did to her. As soon as his lips set hers free, she demanded that he remove his hands from her person.