A Week to Be Wicked (11 page)

“I always sleep atop the bedclothes,” he said, sitting down on the mattress edge. “So as long as you stay under them . . .”

“There’ll be something between us.”

Something.
Yes. Something with the thickness of a birch leaf.

As he stared up at the ceiling, the memory of her breasts seemed to hang up there in the dark. Like two round, peachy moons mounted from the rafters, tempting him to touch. To taste. Colin knew better than to stretch a hand toward the mirage, but his gullible cock strained and arced, ever hopeful.

He shut his eyes and tried to turn his mind to the least arousing things possible. Spiders with hairy legs. Those bumpy, long-necked gourds that made him think of poxy genitalia. Mashed peas. The dust-and-beeswax smell of impossibly old people.

Then an entirely different image bloomed in his mind. One that made him laugh out loud.

“What’s the matter?” She sounded sleepy. He envied her that.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just picturing your mother’s reaction right now.”

Chapter Eight

“W
here
is
that Minerva?” Laying aside her deck of cards, Mrs. Highwood snapped her fingers at one of the Bull and Blossom’s serving girls. “You, there. What is your name again?”

“I’m Pauline, ma’am.”

“Pauline, then. Do dash over to the rooming house and tell my wayward daughter I wish her to join us here at once. At once! Tell her to put aside that scribbling. She’s already missed tea,
and
dinner. She will take her lesson with Miss Taylor, and then she will serve as our fourth at whist. She will be an obedient daughter, or I will no longer claim her. I will wash my hands of her entirely.”

With a curtsy, Pauline turned to do as she was bid.

Seated beside Charlotte at the pianoforte, Kate Taylor smiled to herself. Of all the hollow threats. She doubted Minerva would feel a single snowflake’s chill of sorrow, should Mrs. Highwood resign her relentless campaign of feminine improvements and give her middle daughter up entirely.

Kate felt a great deal of sympathy for the harangued Misses Highwood—at times, more sympathy than envy, which was saying something. Kate had no family at all, save the circle of female friendship here in Spindle Cove. No home, save for the Queen’s Ruby. She was an orphan, raised on the kindness of anonymous benefactors and educated at Margate School for Girls.

For all the nights she’d spent weeping into her pillow in that drafty, austere attic dormitory, pleading and bargaining with God for a mother of her own . . . Occasionally, Mrs. Highwood’s behavior made Kate thankful for unanswered prayers. Not all mothers were blessings, apparently.

“Begin again at the coda, Charlotte,” Kate told her young pupil. “Mind the rhythm here.” She tapped the sheet music with a slender pointer. “Your fingering’s all wrong when you hit that run of sixteenths, and it’s slowing you down.”

Reaching over Charlotte’s wrist to demonstrate, she said, “Begin with your index finger, see? And then cross under with your thumb.”

“Like this?” Charlotte imitated the technique.

“Yes. Two times slowly, for practice. Then try it up to speed.”

As Charlotte repeated the passage, Kate heard a series of subtle cracks from the direction of the bar.

They came from Corporal Thorne. He sat with his rugged profile to them, his only companion a pint of ale on the bar. Whether the repetitive scales, the shuffling of cards, or Mrs. Highwood’s shrill pronouncements were to blame, Thorne was clearly unhappy to be sharing the establishment with anyone.

As Charlotte started on her second repetition of the same passage, Kate watched the grim, enormous boulder of a man grimace at his ale. Then he brought his hands together on the counter and began to crack the knuckles of his left hand. One by one. Deliberately. In an ominous, vaguely threatening manner that suggested he might crack something—or someone—if the plodding musical exercise continued.

“Make that
three
times, Charlotte,” Kate said, straightening her spine.

Thorne was an intimidating presence, to be sure—but he would not put an early end to their lesson. Repetition was essential to music practice, and the ladies had every right to be here in the Bull and Blossom. It was both their tea shop and the gentlemen’s tavern.

Just as Charlotte hit her stride with the coda, playing fluently at tempo, the doorbell jangled and Pauline returned from her errand.

“Well, girl?” Mrs. Highwood asked. “Where is she?”

“Miss Minerva wasn’t there, Mrs. Highwood.”

“What? Not there? Of course she’s there. Where else would she be?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, ma’am. When I told Miss Diana you were looking for her, she—”

At that moment, Diana burst through the door.

The waxed playing cards slithered to the table as Mrs. Highwood looked up mid-shuffle. “Take care, dear. You’ll give yourself an attack.”

“She’s gone,” Diana said, swallowing hard and drawing a slow, deep breath. She held up a piece of paper. “Minerva’s gone.”

Charlotte stopped playing. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

“She left a note. It must have fallen off the desk. I didn’t find it until just now.” Diana smoothed the paper and held it out, preparing to read.

As if they were in church rather than the tea shop, the ladies rose from their chairs in unison, preparing to hear the reading. At the bar, even Corporal Thorne perked subtly.

“ ‘Dear Diana,’ ” the flaxen-haired beauty read from the note, “ ‘I am sorry this will come as such a surprise. You, Charlotte, and Mama are not to worry in the least. I am safe, traveling north with Lord Payne. We have eloped to Scotland to be married. We are . . .’ ” Diana lowered the paper and looked to her mother. “ ‘We are desperately in love.’ ”

The silence was profound.

Charlotte was first to break it. “No. No. There must be some mistake. Minerva and Lord Payne, eloped? In
love
? It’s not possible.”

“How can they have been gone since morning?” Kate asked. “Did no one notice?”

Diana shrugged. “Minerva’s always out exploring the cove and cliffs. It’s not unusual for her to disappear before breakfast, only to appear again just as dark’s settling in.”

Kate gathered her courage and addressed the elephant in the room. “Corporal Thorne?”

He looked up.

“When was the last time you saw Lord Payne?”

The big man frowned at the bar and swore. “Yesternight.”

“Then it must be true,” Diana said. “They’ve eloped.”

A new concern pinched at Kate’s heart. She crossed to Diana and touched her arm. “Are you terribly disappointed?”

Diana looked puzzled. “In what way?”

Kate tilted her head toward the still-stunned Mrs. Highwood. “I know your mother had such hopes for
you
and Lord Payne.”

“Yes, but I never shared them,” she whispered. “He’s charming and handsome enough, but my feelings for him never went beyond friendship. I often thought it would come as a relief, actually, if he were to marry another. But I never dreamed that Minerva . . .”

“Minerva detests the man,” interjected Charlotte. “She’s told me so, many a time.” She snatched the letter from Diana’s hand. “I cannot believe she’d elope with him. I would easier believe she’d been kidnapped by pirates.”

Kate lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Sometimes apparent dislike can mask an underlying attraction.”

“But for months now, they’ve done nothing but bicker,” said Charlotte. “And half the time, Lord Payne can’t even recall her name.”

“He did ask her to dance the other night,” Diana pointed out.

“That’s true, they did dance,” Kate said. “But rather disastrously. Still, who could have guessed this?”

“No one. Because it’s not right.”

Corporal Thorne shoved back from the bar and rose to his feet, nearly bashing his head on the exposed, black-painted rafters. In heavy strides, he crossed to join their group. “Payne’s up to something, I warrant. I’ll go after them. If I ride out now, I can reach London by morning.” He looked to Diana. “If they’re anywhere on the Great North Road, Lord Rycliff and I will find them and bring your sister home.”

“No!”

Everyone swiveled to face the source of this objection: Mrs. Highwood. The woman remained frozen in place, palms pressed flat to the table, staring straight ahead. Kate wasn’t sure the matron had blinked once since Diana read the letter.

“No one is going after them,” the older woman said. “I’ve known from the first, Lord Payne would be my son-in-law. My friends always tell me, my intuition is unparalleled.” She pressed a hand to her bosom. “Of course, I thought it would be Diana who’d catch his eye, lovely as she is. But it seems I discounted Minerva’s cleverness.” Blue eyes gleamed. “I can’t imagine what the cunning girl did to snare him.”

“Surely Minerva’s the one who’s been snared,” Charlotte argued. “I tell you, she never would have run off with Lord Payne. She might have been kidnapped!”

“I doubt she’s been kidnapped, Charlotte,” Diana said. “But Mama, you must admit that this turn of events is highly unexpected.”

“Unbelievable, more like.” Thorne crossed his arms. “He’s up to no good.”

“Perhaps he’s in love,” Kate argued. “Like the letter says.”

Thorne shook his head. “Impossible.”

“Impossible?” Kate was highly annoyed on Minerva’s behalf. “Why is it impossible that a man should fall in love with an unlikely girl? Perhaps Minerva’s not the prettiest girl in the room. But maybe Lord Payne saw something of beauty in her curious mind, or her independent spirit. Is it truly so unfathomable, that an imperfect girl might be perfectly loved?”

The Highwoods looked away in awkward silence, and Kate knew she’d said too much. This was about Minerva, not her. Their situations weren’t the same. Minerva might not be the prettiest girl in the room, but she was still a gentlewoman of good family and modest fortune.

Kate was alone and poor, atop being cursed with physical imperfection. No dashing lords had proposed to elope with her, nor even asked her to dance. But foolish as it might be, she held fast to the hope of love. She’d been holding on to that hope all her life, after all. She could scarcely uncurl her grip now.

“Minerva is my friend,” she said simply. “And I’m thrilled for her.”

“If she’s your friend, you should be concerned.” Thorne’s glare was intense. “She needs rescuing.”

Kate hiked her chin and gave him her profile. Her imperfect, port-wine-stained profile. “Shouldn’t that be her mother’s decision?”

Mrs. Highwood grabbed her elbow. “Yes, Miss Taylor has the right of it! We should be celebrating. Imagine—my awkward, prickly Minerva, eloped with a viscount. Some might call it unexpected, unbelievable. But unless someone convinces me otherwise . . .” A smile spread across the woman’s face, making her look ten years younger. “I call it a
miracle
.”

Chapter Nine

M
inerva woke in the night.

Tangled
with him.

She knew a moment of pure, paralyzing terror, until she recalled exactly where and when she was . . . and with whom. Once she’d remembered that she was in a London coaching inn, and the heavy leg so casually thrown over both of hers belonged to none other than Lord Payne . . .

Then the true fear set in.

He sighed in his sleep, nestling closer. His arm cinched tight about her waist.

Oh, God. His arm was about her
waist
.

And that wasn’t the worst of it. He was all over her, and she was all . . .
under
him. His scent and warmth covered her like a blanket. His chin rested heavy on her shoulder, and his nose jutted against the soft place beneath her ear. Yes, the embroidered sheet still formed a soft, pliant barrier between their bodies. But aside from that, they were so closely intertwined, they might have been one creature.

She stared up at the ceiling. Her pulse pounded in her throat. The desire to move was unbearable, and yet she didn’t dare stir.

For untold minutes, she lay still. Just breathing. Staring into the darkness. Listening to the frantic beat of her heart and feeling the soft heat of his breath against her neck.

And then, suddenly, his whole body turned to stone. His grip around her waist tightened to a painful degree, making it difficult to breathe. The leg thrown over hers went rigid as iron. His warm breath ceased washing against her neck.

He began to tremble. So violently, he shook them both.

Minerva’s heart rate doubled in both speed and intensity.

What should she do? Wake him? Speak to him? Remain still and simply hope this . . . episode . . . passed?

This dreadful sense of helplessness wasn’t new. She felt the same whenever Diana was stricken with an asthma attack. Minerva could never do much to ease her sister’s suffering during a breathing crisis, except to stay at her side and keep her calm. To let her know she wasn’t alone.

Perhaps that would help him. To know he wasn’t alone.

“Colin?”

He drew a harsh, rattling breath. His muscles were coiled as tightly as springs.

One of her arms lay trapped at her side, pinned by the weight of his body. But she had the use of her other hand. She raised trembling fingers and laid a cautious touch to his forearm. With the fire banked, the room had long gone cold. But his skin was damp with sweat.

“Colin.” She traced her fingers up and down his forearm in long, calming strokes. She wished she could caress other parts of him—his scalp, his back, his face. But unless he loosened his tight hold on her body, this was as much of him as she could reach.

Her attentions didn’t seem to be helping. He shook violently now, and his breathing was erratic. His heartbeat hammered against her shoulder.

This was so much worse than in the cave. There, he’d been mildly agitated. Now he seemed to be struggling for his very life.

A sound rasped from his throat. A raw, anguished, almost inhuman moan.

“No,” he muttered. Then more forcefully, “
No.
Won’t let you. Get back. Get back, you bloody bitch.”

She winced. She’d never heard him speak in such a savage tone.

Oh God. Oh, Colin. What are you facing in there?

Desperate to do something—anything—to pull him out of that dark, terror-stricken place, she resorted to a trick he’d taught her on the dance floor. She slid her fingers to the vulnerable underside of his arm and pinched him, hard.

He jerked and startled, sucking in a deep, gasping breath. Like a drowning man who’d just surfaced.

“Colin, it’s me. It’s Minerva. I’m here.” She twisted in his slackened embrace and rolled to face him. She stroked calming touches over his brow. “You’re not alone. It’s all right. Just take deep breaths. I’m here.”

He didn’t open his eyes, but the tension in his body ebbed. His breathing slowed to a normal rate. Her overtaxed pulse gratefully took the excuse to slow, too.

“I’m here,” she repeated. “You’re not alone.”

“Min.” His voice was like a rasp rolled in cotton-wool. Rough and soft all at once. His fingers caught a lock of her hair, and he twisted it between his fingertips. “Did I frighten you?’

“A little.”

He muttered a curse and rolled her close to his chest. “Sorry, pet. All’s well now.” His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “All’s well.”

Remarkable. After that episode he’d just experienced, he was the one soothing
her
. And doing a very good job of it, too. His fingers grazed her temple in deft, calming strokes. The relief of knowing the crisis had passed . . . it left her sapped and boneless. Weak.

“Do you need anything?” she mumbled, pressing her brow to his chest. “Brandy, tea? Would it . . . would it help to talk?”

He didn’t answer, and she worried she’d offended his pride.

He pressed a kiss to her crown. “Just sleep.”

So she did as he told her. She curled into his strength and let his slow, steady heartbeat lull her back to sleep.

W
hen Minerva woke next, it was daylight.

And she was alone.

She sat bolt upright in bed. Weak sunlight filtered in through the room’s single, grimy window. In the daylight, the room looked even shabbier than it had the night before.

After donning her spectacles, Minerva looked around. All of her things were still there. But she saw no sign of Colin. Not his boots, not his coat, not his gloves, not his cravat hanging over the chair back.

Her stomach lurched.

He couldn’t have
gone
.

She scampered from bed and began searching the table, the chest of drawers. Surely, he would have left a note, at least. When she found none, she hurried to wash and dress as quickly as possible. Rationally, she knew he was probably just downstairs, but she’d feel much better when she laid eyes on the man himself.

Fortunately, the moment Minerva descended to the breakfast room, Colin rose from his chair to welcome her. “Ah. There you are.”

He’d bathed and shaved. She could see that his hair was still damp behind the ears. The worst of yesterday’s travel dust had been brushed from his coat, and it made a respectable dark-blue contrast with the snowy white of his fresh shirt and cravat. Someone had blacked and polished his boots to a healthy shine.

He looked well. Truly
well
. Not just handsome, but vigorous and strong. After feeling him groan and tremble beside her last night, this came as profound relief. She’d been so worried for him.

“Colin, I . . .” Strangely overwhelmed, she put a hand to his lapel.

“I do hope you slept well. We’ve been waiting on you.”

Her head jerked in surprise. “We?”

“Yes, dear sister,” he said loudly, taking her hand in his. “Allow me to introduce the Fontleys.”

Dear
sister
? She gawped at him.

“This is Mr. Fontley and Mrs. Fontley.”

He turned her, with all the finesse of a clockwork gear turning a porcelain dancer in a music box. Minerva found herself curtseying to a kindly-looking couple. Silver frosted the gentleman’s thinning hair, and his wife smiled from beneath a tidy lace cap.

“The Fontleys have offered you space in their carriage. They’re traveling north as well.”

“Oh. I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance,” Minerva said, with genuine feeling.

With a hand placed to the small of her back, Colin swiveled her to face the other side of the breakfast table. “And here are their children. Mr. Gilbert Fontley and Miss Leticia.”

“How do you do?” Gilbert, a young man just on the cusp of adulthood, rose from his seat and made a gallant bow.

“Please call me Lettie,” the bright-eyed girl said, offering Minerva her hand. “Everyone does.”

Lettie possessed the same sandy hair and flushed complexion as the rest of her family. She looked just a few years younger than Charlotte. Twelve, perhaps thirteen.

Gilbert brought a chair for her, and Minerva sat.

Mrs. Fontley smiled. “We’re so pleased to have you joining us, Miss Sand. It’s our honor to escort you to your relations in York.”

Miss Sand? Relations in York?
She shot Colin a look full of questions.

The teasing rogue didn’t answer.

Mrs. Fontley stirred her tea. “I think it’s so beneficial for Gilbert and Lettie to make the acquaintance of young people like yourselves. Doing such good in the world. Gilbert has his eye on the Church, you see. He’ll be at Cambridge this autumn.”

Gilbert spoke up. “Miss Sand, your brother has been telling us about your missionary efforts in Ceylon.”

“Oh, has he?” With an air of utter incredulity, Minerva looked to the “brother” in question. “Pray tell. What tales of our good deeds have you been relating,
Colin
?”

She laid heavy emphasis on his name. His real Christian name. After all, if he were truly her brother, she ought to call him by it.

Now, let’s see if he could remember hers. And use it, consistently.

She propped her chin on her hand and stared at him, smiling.

He smiled back. “I’ve just been telling all about our time in Ceylon, dear . . . M.”

M.
So this was how intended to solve his memory problem. Not by actually remembering her name, but by reducing her to an initial. Magnificent.

“Miss Sand, he’s been telling us all about your years of missionary work, ministering to the poor and unfortunate. Feeding the hungry, teaching little children to read and write.”

Lettie’s eyes went wide. “Did you really spend your schoolgirl years curing lepers?”

Minerva set her teeth. She couldn’t believe this. Of all the false identities to assume. Missionaries curing lepers in Ceylon? “Not actually, no.”

“What my dear sister means”—Colin slid his arm around the back of Minerva’s chair—”is that it wasn’t all hard work, all the time. We were children, after all. Our dear parents, may God rest their souls, permitted us ample time to explore.”

“Explore?” Gilbert perked.

“Oh, yes. Ceylon’s a beautiful place. All those lush jungles and mountains. We’d leave our family hut early in the morning, me and M, with just a bit of bread in our pockets. Then we’d spend our whole day out adventuring. Swinging from vines. Devouring mangoes straight from the trees. Riding elephants.”

Minerva looked around at the Fontley family. She couldn’t believe that anyone would believe this ridiculous story. Elephants and mangoes? But they all stared rapt at Colin, a mix of wonder and worship in their matching blue eyes.

Well, at least this was some balm to the sting she’d incurred that night in the turret. She wasn’t his only dupe. Clearly, he employed this talent for willful, wild exaggeration regularly. And with consistent success.

“You’d wander the jungle all day long?” Lettie asked. “Weren’t you afraid of being eaten by tigers? Or getting lost?”

“Oh, never. I might have worried, if I were alone. But there were always the two of us, you see. And we had a little system. A game we played whenever we went out adventuring. If we lost sight of each other in the dense jungle undergrowth, I’d just call out, ‘Tallyho!’ and M would call back . . .”

Colin turned to her, eyebrows raised, as though waiting for her to put the final link on this epic chain of balderdash.

“You’re cracked,” she said.

He slapped the table. “Exactly! I’d call out, ‘Tallyho!’, and she’d call back, ‘You’re cracked!,’ blithe as anything. And that’s how we’d keep from being separated.”

Each and every member of the Fontley family laughed.

“What a clever game,” the beaming patriarch said.

“Nothing will ever separate us, will it, M?” Colin reached for her hand and squeezed it, gazing fondly into her eyes. “I think I’ll never feel such kinship with another soul as I do with my dear sister.”

Across the table, Mrs. Fontley sighed. “Such good young people.”

A
s the footmen secured her trunks atop the Fontley carriage some time later, Minerva took the first possible opportunity to draw Colin aside.

“What are you doing?” she hissed in his ear.

“I’m making them feel comfortable,” he murmured in reply. “They’d never allow you to travel with them if we told the truth.”

“Perhaps. But must you make the stories so absurdly exaggerated? Curing lepers and riding elephants in Ceylon? How do you even come up with such things?”

He shrugged. “It’s called improvisation.”

“These are decent people. It’s wicked to tell them such horrid lies.”

“We’re traveling under false pretenses. On the premise of a false engagement. Using false names. And this was all your idea. This is hardly the time for moral scruples, pet.”