The Pretenders (17 page)

Having settled my mother’s future to my own satisfaction, I leaned back in the curricle, looked at the scenery and idly wondered what Reeve would think when he saw me in my wedding dress.

We arrived home to find Reeve and Robert going at each other with their fists in the stable yard. They were surrounded by a circle of grooms, who looked to be urging them on with disgusting enthusiasm.

“Oh my God,” Lord Bradford groaned, and he jumped down from the curricle, leaving Mama and me to alight by ourselves.

“Stay away, Papa,” Robert snarled at his father, as Lord Bradford barked an order for the grooms to disperse. “It’s a fair fight. There’s no reason for you to get involved.”

This was said as the two men circled around each other, bare fists raised, each one hungrily looking for an opening to attack the other. They had to have been at this for a while. Reeve’s lip was bleeding copiously, and Robert’s eye was beginning to swell. They had taken off both their coats and their shirts, and their bare upper bodies were shining with sweat.

Mama and I came up to stand beside Lord Bradford, and he said to us in his most authoritative tone, “Go back to the house. This is no place for ladies.”

I had no intention of budging an inch, and so I told him.

“Miss Woodly,” he said through his teeth. ”
Ladies
do not watch boxing matches.”

“That is my future husband out there with blood pouring down his chin,” I snapped, “and I intend to stay right here and make sure that nothing terrible happens to him.”

“I will monitor this fight,” Lord Bradford said. ”There is no reason for you to be here.”

Mama said in a frightened voice, “Why don’t you just stop it, Bernard?”

Bernard?

I turned to stare at my mother, whose beautiful blue eyes were fixed upon Lord Bradford.

Once more he put his arm around her shoulders and turned her toward the house. “Sometimes it is better to let boys get their frustrations out with their fists, Elizabeth. It releases tension and everyone is better off.”

Elizabeth?

What the hell is going on between my mother and Lord Bradford?

I crossed my arms, and said grimly, “Neither Reeve nor Robert are boys any longer, Lord Bradford.”

He ignored me and gave my mother a gentle push. “Go along now. You will be upset if you remain here to watch this.”

Mama went.

I stayed.

The sound of a hard thump brought my attention back to the violence that was occurring in broad daylight in the middle of the Wakefield stable yard.

Obeying the orders of Lord Bradford, all of the grooms had disappeared. Now it was just Reeve and Robert pummeling each other under the hot summer sun.

Robert was shorter than Reeve, but he was built like a bull and was clearly relying on the sheer power of his punches to take Reeve down. As I watched, he landed one on Reeve’s brow bone that sent Reeve staggering back. Reeve’s eyebrow began to bleed copiously.

My nails dug into my palms. I felt sick to my stomach.

Reeve grinned!

“Good one, Robert,” he said as he held up his fists and came in for more.

The two men circled each other again, then Reeve ducked under Robert’s guard with a quick uppercut that caught Robert on his unprotected chin. Robert quickly backed away, shaking his head as if to clear his brain. His chin began to bleed.

I was beginning to think that Lord Bradford was right and this was in fact no spectacle for a lady. I wanted to scream at them to stop.

Instead I stood in silence and watched the long smooth muscles sliding under Reeve’s glistening bare skin as he danced gracefully around Robert If Robert looked like a bull, I thought, Reeve looked like a thoroughbred.

The first thing any self-respecting thoroughbred would do if he was confronted by an angry bull would be to run. I thought furiously that Reeve didn’t even have the sense of a horse.

At this point the match erupted into a storm of ferocious blows. Robert had evidently determined to end things quickly, and he swung his powerful arms with deadly intent, aiming for Reeve’s stomach and his face.

But if Robert was more powerful, Reeve was faster. He jerked his head aside to avoid Robert’s fist and, weaving back and forth, he came in with his own punch, connecting solidly with the point of Robert’s already-bleeding jaw.

Robert went down heavily.

Reeve stood over him, hands on hips, while Robert tried slowly to pull himself to his knees.

Lord Bradford walked forward. “That’s it, boys,” he said. “The fight is now officially over.”

Robert, who had made it to his hands and knees, panted, “No, it’s not.”

“You’ve been beaten, Robert,” his father said. ”Acknowledge it like a man.”

Robert looked up at his father. “You always take his part.” His slightly unfocused eyes moved slowly to Reeve. A look of sheer rage contorted his face. “I hate you,” he said. And collapsed in the dirt of the stable yard.

I took Reeve back to the house with me so that I could attend to his cuts and bruises. I made him sit on the terrace while I went for water and salve. I didn’t see any point in getting blood on the rugs or the furniture just because he was stupid enough to get into a fight.

His lip was bleeding, his eyebrow was bleeding, and his knuckles were skinned and bloody as well.

He was as happy as a clam.

“I’ve never been sure if I could take Robert in a fistfight,” he confided in me as I picked up a cloth, dipped it in water, and began to clean the blood from his knuckles.

“These are disgusting,” I said.

He winced. “Do you have to be quite so thorough?”

“Yes,” I said. ”Did you have to fight with Robert? You heard him. He hates you badly enough already. Was it necessary to exacerbate it?”

“Nothing I can do will ever make Robert cease to hate me,” Reeve said. ”And besides, it was he who forced the fight on me.”

“You could have walked away from it,” I said. I scrubbed even harder. ”It takes two to make a fight.”

“He called me a name,” Reeve said.

I rolled my eyes. “Lord Bradford was right. You may have the bodies of men, but in some ways you are still little boys.”

“Oh stop sounding like a grandmother, Deb,” he said impatiently. ”Why do you think half of the men in London frequent Gentleman Jackson’s boxing saloon?”

“I have no idea,” I returned austerely.

“We like to hit each other,” he said.

I rolled my eyes again.

I had finished washing his knuckles, and now I spread salve on the open scrapes and wound a bandage around them.

“Now let me see your lip,” I said.

He held his face up to me. The lip had stopped bleeding, and I gently sponged the blood off his chin. His lip was split open but there was nothing I could do about that and so I left it alone. Then I looked at his eyebrow.

I frowned. “This is deep. I wonder if it needs to be sewn.”

The cut eyebrow was on his right side, and I was standing on his left, tilting his face toward me. Now he rested the full weight of his head against my breast, closed his eyes, and said, “I’m sure it doesn’t need stitches, Deb. Just clean it out and put some salve on it.”

I hoped very much that he could not hear how my heart had accelerated under his cheek. I frowned down at the dark head that was resting so confidingly against me. “I think perhaps I should try to find Harry,” I said.

Very slightly he shook his head. His eyes remained closed, his long lashes spread upon his hard, masculine cheekbones. “You take care of me,” he said.

I looked at the cut that was just above his eyebrow. “It might scar.”

“I don’t care.”

I gave in. “Well, we’ll leave it for now. I’ll clean it out good and put salve on it. Harry can look at it later.”

“Mmm,” he said. He made no attempt to lift his head.

“Are you feeling faint?” I asked sarcastically. ”Perhaps I ought to send for Dr. Calder?”

He turned his head and buried his face in the hollow between my breasts.

I jumped. “Reeve! Someone may come along!”

He kissed me. “We’ll tell them that I felt faint.” His voice was muffled by my breasts.

My heart was hammering. I could feel the fire of his kiss right through my dress. I put my hands on his head and plucked him away from me.

“Behave yourself,” I said severely.

His dark eyes glittered up at me. “You’re no fun, Deb,” he complained.

“And
you
have no sense of propriety.”

He smiled at me, mischief as well as desire sparkling in his eyes. “Neither do you,” he said. “That’s why we get along so well.”

We stared into each other’s eyes.

A voice came from the door of the terrace. “Oh here you are, Reeve. Are you all right? I hear you got into a fight with Robert.”

It was Harry.

Reeve and I straightened away from each other.

“Yes, it’s true,” I said, ”and I wish you would have a look at this cut on Reeve’s eyebrow, Harry. I think it may need to be sewn.”

Harry looked pleased. “Well, I’m not a doctor yet, but I’ll be happy to look at it.”

Reeve said stubbornly, “You are not sticking a needle in me, Harry.”

“Stop being such a baby and let Harry look at you,” I said.

Reeve scowled, but he let his cousin look at his wound. Fortunately Harry gave his opinion that the eyebrow did not need to be sewn, and, after I had attended to the cut, the three of us returned to the house to get ready for dinner.

TO MY GREAT RELIEF, ROBERT DID NOT
APPEAR
AT
dinner. When Lord Bradford inquired as to his whereabouts, Harry said that he had told his valet that he was going into Fair Haven for the evening.

Lord Bradford frowned when he heard this.

Lady Sophia said with satisfaction, “He’s probably going to that dreadful Golden Lion to drink himself into a stupor.”

Lord Bradford’s frown deepened. “I don’t think that’s a fair statement just because Robert has chosen to go into town.”

“There’s no other reason for him to go into that wretched little seaport, and you know it, Bernard,” Lady Sophia said. She turned to Reeve, who was sitting next to her. Silence fell as she surveyed his beat-up face. One of his eyes was beginning to blacken nicely. ”Got the better of him, eh Reeve?” she cackled.

Reeve winced as the hot oyster soup touched his cut lip. He put down his spoon and turned to his aunt. “Now what makes you think that I was the winner?”

Lady Sophia gave a very unladylike snort. “You’re here at the dinner table and Robert’s getting drunk in Fair Haven,” she pronounced.

Reeve started to grin, and then winced again as his cracked lip stretched.

Lady Sophia smirked, shook her head and looked at me. “Looks as if you won’t be getting kisses for a while from this lad, Missy,” she said with a wicked grin.

Across the table from me I could see how Mama’s cheeks flushed pink with embarrassment.

I said calmly, “It doesn’t look like it, does it, Lady Sophia?”

Lord Bradford said, “That is quite enough, Sophia. This is a very improper subject for the dinner table, as well you know.”

“Oh pooh,” the old lady said. ”You’re as starched up as the rest of your generation, Bernard. We weren’t so mealy-mouthed when I was young.”

“Things were different a thousand years ago, Aunt Sophia,” Reeve said. He raised his eyebrows at her in mock horror. ”And I, for one, would like to know how
you
know about the Golden Lion.”

“Reeve,” Lord Bradford said ominously.

But Lady Sophia was waving her arthritic, claw-like hand. “Leave the boy alone, Bernard. He’s the only one left in the family with any spirit.”

Clearly Lord Bradford did not agree, but just as clearly he did not wish to prolong this discussion. Instead he turned to Mr. Norton, who was seated on the far side of Mama, and asked him a question about his afternoon’s shooting. Shortly conversation at the table became general, except for Lady Sophia, who kept Reeve’s attention centered on herself.

After dinner was over, and the men had returned to the drawing room after having their port, Reeve asked me to go for a walk with him in the garden.

Lady Sophia banged the floor with her cane as we went out, and shouted after us, “Remember his lip, Missy. No kissing.”

“That woman is a menace,” I muttered to Reeve, as we stepped off the patio stones and began to stroll along the walk that would take us to the fountain.

He chuckled. “She says what she thinks. You’re two of a kind, Deb.”

I stopped short. “Don’t you dare compare me to that horrid old woman,” I said hotly.

“Well, perhaps she is a trifle rude,” he admitted.

“You don’t mind her because she dotes on you,” I said. “It’s a very different thing with the rest of us.”

“How did your shopping in Brighton go?” Reeve asked, prudently changing the subject. ”Did you get your dress?”

“Yes, but after we finished shopping, the oddest thing happened.” We had reached the garden benches that stood at the entrance to the wood, and Reeve took my arm and drew me to the seat beside him. The daylight had faded while the men had been drinking their port, and the three-quarter moon was very blight in the night sky. Reeve’s hair looked as black as his evening coat in the white moonlight.

I said, “We ran into Richard, Charlotte, and John Woodly when we were walking along the Marine Parade,” and I proceeded to tell him all about that strange meeting.

When I had finished, he said with a mixture of incredulity and anger, “Do you mean to tell me that that infamous Woodly has been embezzling your mother’s money for all these years?”

“According to Charlotte, that is precisely what he has been doing,” I replied.

“That bastard,” Reeve said bitterly. ”How can a man like that look at himself in the mirror in the morning?”

I looked up at the moon, as if I could find the answer there. “I don’t know,” I said.

Reeve squinted a little with his bruised eye, as if it were hurting him. “What is your brother going to do now that he knows the truth?” he asked.

I folded my hands in my blue-silk lap. “I don’t know,” I said again. “It was Charlotte I was speaking to, not Richard. But she said that Richard has hired a new steward to go over all of the account books to see if dear Uncle John was taking money out of the estate elsewhere as well.”

“I’ll lay you a monkey that he was,” Reeve said instantly.

“I never bet against sure things,” I returned.

Reeve laid one of his damaged hands briefly over mine, then withdrew it. “I’ll make it my business to speak to Richard myself about this matter, Deb,” he said. “Once I come into my money, you know that your mother will never want for anything, but, dammit, as your father’s widow, she deserves the money that Richard thought his father’s estate was paying to her for all these years.”

I stared down at my hands, which looked forlorn now that they were no longer covered by his. “I agree with you, Reeve. I know you will always take care of.

Mama, but I think she deserves some money from my father’s estate as well.”

He shifted his weight on the bench, moving his shoulder as if it ached. He really had absorbed some hard punches from Robert that afternoon.

Served him right, I thought stubbornly. He shouldn’t have been fighting in the first place.

He said, “Your mother actually fainted when she saw John Woodly?”

I nodded somberly. “There is something between those two, Reeve. I can feel it. She turned as white as snow as soon as she saw him, and he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.”

Reeve shifted again. “Perhaps he was feeling guilty. After all, this was the woman he has been robbing for eighteen years.”

I shook my head. “A man like that doesn’t feel guilty. Nor does it explain Mama’s reaction. She didn’t know what John had done.”

He didn’t reply.

I turned around on the bench to face him fully. His face was pale, his features very clear cut in the moonlight. “I’ve observed before that Mama reacts violently to the mere mention of John Woodly’s name.”

“He was the one who condemned her to that tiny cottage in the first place, Deb,” Reeve pointed out. ”I don’t think it’s odd that she should react negatively to the mention of his name.”

“I suppose that’s true.” I searched his moonlit face. ”Did you mean it when you said
that
you would talk to Richard about securing Mama a pension?”

“Of course I meant it.”

I smiled up at him. “I would talk to him myself, but I think you will do it better.”

“Thank you,” Reeve said, much moved.

I laughed at him. “You’re welcome.”

He watched me for a long moment, his eyes hooded, so that I could not read them. Finally he said, “Do you know what I have been thinking?”

I gave him a mystified look. “What have you been thinking, Reeve?”

“I was thinking that when necessity dictates, one must improvise, and that perhaps I could use my tongue instead of my lips.”

“What?”

“Licking is good,” he explained, ”and I have noticed on other occasions that you taste delicious.”

At this point he had moved his hands to my shoulders. I tried to pull away from him and get to my feet. “You are disgraceful, Reeve. And disgusting as well. There will be absolutely no licking. Do you hear me?”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.

I folded my lips tightly to keep him away, thinking I was being very clever, but those resourceful hands of his moved like lightning. Before I realized what he was about he had pushed down the front of my low-cut blue-silk evening dress, thus exposing my breasts.

“
Reeve
!” I squeaked in horrified protest.

“Mmm?” His tongue was already on one exposed nipple.

He was right about the licking. The feeling it caused was sensational.

“Don’t do that,” I heard my voice say. But my body was saying otherwise. My back arched, and my hands came up to bury themselves in his hair, holding his head to me.

He moved his tongue to my other breast.

I said in a ragged voice, “This has got to be a sin. We aren’t married yet”

“Nine more days,” he said. ”Jesus, Deb, I don’t know if I can wait that long.”

“You have to,” I said. ”And don’t…“

“I know, I know, I know…“ He drew a deep unsteady breath and raised his head as if he were straining against an invisible force that was holding him to me. ”And don’t blaspheme.”

I pulled my dress up to cover my aroused nipples and moved away from him as far as I could get on the bench. I said with as much dignity as I could manage under the circumstances, “You are making this whole waiting business much worse by this kind of behavior, Reeve. If you conduct yourself in a gentleman-like way for the next nine days, we shall both be better off.”

He reached over and pulled a ringlet that was dangling on the nape of my neck.

I said, “And if you
don’t
behave, I’ll punch you in the mouth. That will make you sorry.”

He heaved an ostentatious sigh. “All right, all right, all right. I hear you, Deb.”

I stared at him for a minute in the moonlight. He was looking very gloomy.

I said, “Cheer up. At least Harry didn’t insist on shaving your eyebrow to sew up that cut.”

“Hah. I have news for you, Deb. Harry is going to have to graduate from physician’s school before I let him anywhere near me with a needle and thread,” Reeve said. ”You would probably do a better job than he would at present.”

I thought of the pathetic unevenness of my mending and shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

He unfolded himself from the bench and got to his feet. “All right. I think I can go back to the drawing room now without mortifying myself.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He said in a mystifying tone, “I’ll show you in nine days’ time.”

The tea tray came in at ten-thirty, and after we had finished, the ladies and Lord Bradford and Mr. Norton retired to bed while Reeve and Harry and Edmund Norton went along to the billiard room for a game.

I was deeply asleep when some movement in the room must have alerted me enough to drag me up to consciousness. I opened my eyes and saw a shadow pass in front of the partially opened window, where a ray of moonlight spilled into the room.

I said sternly, “If that’s you, Reeve, you can just remove yourself from this room immediately.”

But I knew, even before the answer came, that it wasn’t Reeve. I opened my mouth to scream, and a hand came down over my mouth.

“It’s not Reeve, Deborah.” Even thick and blurred with drink, I recognized Robert’s voice. ”I’ve come to pay you a visit in his place.”

The moonlight from the window allowed me to see the wide bulk of Robert standing over my bed. His big hand was half-covering my nose as well as my mouth, suffocating me, and I reached my hands up to rip it away. He grabbed my wrists and pinned them both over my head with his free hand. I strained to release myself, but he held me seemingly without effort.

Then he laughed.

Fear struck me like a blow as I realized what it was that Robert had come to do. My legs were trapped under the covers so that I couldn’t kick him, but I tried to roll away from him, desperately trying to free my mouth so I could scream.