An Untitled Lady (26 page)

“Which is why the true ladies don’t drink it. Kitty is all you need say.” She finished the pint in smaller sips as they left the line at the sideboards and headed for the trees.

Nash wondered how many times Maddie had stopped herself from pleasure in the same way. He’d seen her hesitate, during a savory course at table, and once during the harpist’s performance at Heywood’s. She certainly held herself back in bed.

“Kitty, you’re a woman.”

“What of it?” She flicked a speck of foam off the top of her lip. If Maddie had done that, he would have bedded her right there, damn the sun and the crowd. Kitty might look the same, except for those blue eyes, of course, but she did not move him at all.

Could he make Maddie happy? How did he make her love him, the way he had started to love her? “How do I persuade Maddie that she might show pleasure?”

“She sure don’t laugh enough now. I thought that’s how ladies was.”

“That’s how they are trained up to be, but I don’t believe she is like that at all. I see hints, suggestions, that she is enjoying herself, but only a small smile, or a light laugh.”

“You want her to guffaw.”

“Actually, I want her to scream.”

Kitty coughed, covering a laugh and nearly spilling her half-empty pint. “Might be your method has something wanting about it.”

The hairs on the back of Nash’s neck rose. “My technique is fine.”

“Judge by the results, my lord.”

“Nash is enough.”

“Does she trust you, now? Did she tell you she how she wanted to meet her Da?”

“I told her no.”

“Judgment falls. What will she take from that?”

“That I care about her and don’t wish her hurt.”

“Could be, or could be that she’d better darn sure do as you say or you’ll toss her out.”

“My love is not contingent.”

“You sound so sure. What if she really did disobey you?”

“I don’t force her to obey,” Nash sputtered. He hadn’t considered it, and now that he did, he was not sure what he would do.

“You look to me like a fair-weather friend, Master Nash. I might not put my trust in you, neither. Hiding her away in a cottage when all the others like her sit high on the hill.”

“She thinks I’m unreliable?” Nash’s shoulder blades stiffened. She shouldn’t be judging him that way. He never would judge her. Wait, wasn’t he doing just that here and now? Demanding that she expose her feelings to him, as well as her body? Who was he to demand anything?

Her husband. Nash disliked the philosophy that woman was owned by man, be he father, brother, or husband, but apparently he still subscribed to it. It was bred into his bones, but wasn’t it bred into hers, as well? They might fight their training, and succeed, but first they had to realize that it was training, and not nature.

“You look as if you have an itch, and you need our girl Maddie to scratch it. Where is that one?”

“Let’s go find her.”

“Nay, I’m after another pint. Or the sack races down the hill. Looks to be some fine man-flesh on display.”

Nash nodded. He did need to see Maddie. Could she truly think of him as Kitty told it? He had to change her mind, and now.

He watched her saunter back to the line for ale. There were plenty of other village women around for comfort—and to keep their men safe.

He headed back to the house. He had philosophies to expound. And Maddie had better listen.

{ 28 }

Maddie saw Nash coming toward the kitchens and hurried out to meet him. There was a grim set to his mouth that hadn’t been there before. Had something happened?

“Maddie, I need to talk to you.”

“Where’s Kitty?” The rivulet of worry in her voice seemed to stop him. He frowned, and then turned to look back down the hill, holding up his hand to block the sun from his eyes.

“She said she was going to watch the races. This way.” He dropped his sun-kissed hand and held it out to her. She took it, warm and welcome and a treasure, indeed. When she had first met him, she’d never have dreamed he would be so affectionate, and in public. They started tracing a leisurely path down the grass toward the crowd framing the contestants.

“Listen, Maddie. Do you think I’m unreliable?”

Where had that come from? Maddie stopped, but the pull on her hand was steady and she came to herself enough to keep moving. “I think you are very reliable.”

“Not like that.” He swung his free hand wide. “I mean, do you think our marriage is a trial? No, that’s not what I mean, either.”

She tried to guess what he wanted to hear. “You’re a good man, Nash Quinn, and I do my best to live up to your expectations,” she said.

“That’s what I mean,” he said, stopping a ways away from the crowd. Nearly everyone was watching or running in the races. Contestants for the three-legged race were lining up: She thought she saw a pair of young lovers, another team of siblings, the sister nearly half again as tall as her little brother, and some strong-looking farm hands. “My expectations. What about your expectations?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Which are we, Maddie,” he said, looking at the racers. “An evenly matched team or an ungainly one?”

“The lovers, there, by your brother.”

She waved toward the far end. Shaftsbury himself was officiating; nearest him were the young couple, the woman laughing so hard her partner had to hold her up. Shaftsbury raised his arm to
set
and dropped it for
go
. The lovers were the first to stumble, the farm hands the first to fight. The ungainly siblings loped in for the win.

“Or perhaps not,” Maddie amended.

Nash smiled despite himself as the crowd roared its approval. “You mean the world to me,” he said. Taking her hand again, he swung their arms a little as they joined the crowd.

Shaftsbury soon spotted them and sauntered over. “A good contest, that one. Next up is sack-racing. May everyone retain their teeth.” He smiled at them, and then looked down at their hands, entwined. He looked up at Maddie and grinned. She couldn’t help matching his smile.

A cloud passed over his countenance. “Word of warning. Wetherby’s here.”

A chill started at the base of Maddie’s spine and sped toward her neck. Nash squeezed her hand, and the cold seemed to recede.

“My god, man.” Nash’s voice was rough. “You invited him?”

“Had to, didn’t I? Couldn’t very well invite the men and not their master.” Shaftsbury shrugged apologetically. “At least I didn’t have to invite the army.”

“What army?”

“He’s bunking a regiment, or some such, on his lands. Better him than me. Worse than rats in the kitchen, the army. They just sit and eat.”

“They shoot, too,” Nash said. “Those must be the men Malbanks was on about. So close to town?”

“They’re not at Shaftsbury. I told Wetherby to give you wide berth, too. He’s easily enough avoided. The only one here in bloody orange. More princely than Prinny.”

Maddie stood on tip-toes, scanning the crowd. Nothing orange. Still, her heart would not calm. “Seen Kitty?”

Nash understood immediately. “He’d have to be a blockhead to go after her.”

There she was, at the race’s finish line, a parade ground’s distance. The blue of her dress, Maddie’s dress, nicely set her off against the stand of trees behind her. It was so strange to look at her, like looking at a moving mirror. Maddie loved Kitty’s smile. She hoped hers was as fine. Then she saw who her sister was smiling at.

Maddie’s shout came out a strangled sob, but Nash heard it. He pulled her closer, bumping shoulders as he reached around her waist. “What is it? Take a breath, Maddie.”

Wetherby was offering Kitty a mug of ale, holding it out and then lifting it up, out of her reach, and taking a step back, making her follow. Maddie had played that game with him, too. It never ended well.

Did Kitty not see that he was driving her into the woods? Away from the people? Maddie stumbled out of Nash’s arms and ran a little up the hill. Kitty might see her better that way.

She did, thank the Lord. Nash joined Maddie on the hill. “By the trees.” She could barely get the words out, her throat was so clenched. “Wave to Kitty to come over here.”

He followed her gaze and stiffened. He shouted and waved, Maddie waved, come here, come here. Kitty lifted her hand in greeting, looked at that man, and then back to Maddie.

Kitty grinned, and turned back to the man.

She wasn’t coming. She was following the man in orange into the woods.

Maddie started to run. They couldn’t be alone. She had to stop him. It was wrong. It would not be well.

Nash didn’t catch up to her until they were nearing the edge of the woods. Together they crashed through the underbrush but didn’t see anyone at first. She knew the man usually took his victims deep.

She heard a dull thud, there, over to her right. Kitty, hair wet, dropping to her knees, a whoosh like clothes falling from a hamper. He had hit her with the tankard.

Closing in, they could hear his voice. “Back where you belong, little mouse.” One of his hands held Kitty by the back of her neck, the other was undoing the front of his trousers.

Maddie felt Nash’s hand pull her back, behind him, as they reached the couple. She tripped, and hit the ground hard on hands and knees. The tankard lay on its side in front of her.

Nash grabbed Wetherby by the collar and yanked him back, away from Kitty. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t knock your teeth out here and now.”

Kitty lifted her hand to the side of her head. Her gaze was off, but she wasn’t bleeding. Maddie picked up the tankard.

Maddie’s lungs were bursting as she pushed herself to get up even as her fears fought to slow her down. The bright dots in her vision flashed into a tapestry of memories.

His hands on her skin, on her belly. Inside her. His face, too close. His slicing sneer. “Good girls don’t cry.”

Good girls don’t lick their uncle’s cocks, either.

Maddie blinked hard, trying to come back from the shadows of her mind. She saw him true now, a stoop-shouldered, balding viper.

Against Nash’s pull, Uncle raised his hands in surrender. “I’m a peer, I’d remind you. And besides, didn’t I train her up well for you?”

He should not have smirked.

Maddie swung the tankard up as she rose to her feet. It connected hard with Uncle’s cheek, knocking him out of Nash’s grasp and back onto the dirt. She sank onto her knees in front of him, just as he always liked. Hands fisted one inside the other, she lifted her arms and slammed them down on his pretty face. And his shoulder, and his leg, and back to his face.

She had been a good girl, all along. It was Wetherby who had been bad.
Very bad. Not again. Never again. Never, never, never, never.

“Maddie?” Nash knelt on the other side of the body, which had stopped groaning.

“I won’t be his whore anymore.” Her tears softened his face, but not the shock upon it. She had shocked him. She had shamed him.

Maddie shrunk back from the body, from Nash’s outstretched hand. She was unclean. She would be forever unclean.

She had to get away, run away, hide. He sometimes got tired of looking for her when she hid.
Down the path, strange to be outside. There was a pond here somewhere.
She needed to wash, too, and find a place to hide.

He was calling her name, angry. She must get away. She was still sore from the last time. She needed to rest.

Her breaths pounded in her head. The pictures wouldn’t stop. Now she could sense the smells, too. And the sounds.

“
You are nothing, you hear me? This is all you are good for. And you’re not even good at this. I should keep you in the sty with the pigs, you’re so useless.”

“Give me that bread. You know to take crusts only. And stay upstairs, out of sight. Don’t let the clean people see you.”

“Swallow, bitch.”

Maddie pounded at her head, but nothing blocked the river of memories. Her eyes were cloudy, and the path she ran was narrow. A wild-pig path? Exactly where she deserved to be.

She heard his voice calling, too close, and ducked under two crossed trees lying on the ground.

He’d never find her here.

* * * *

Nash couldn’t hold her. Maddie had pulled away from his outstretched hand as if it were on fire. By the time he was on his feet again, she was at full run, deeper into the wood.

Bloody hell
.

But before he could go after her, he heard Deacon stumbling into the chaos.

“Bloody hell, Nash. Not again.” He knelt beside Wetherby. “The coat is ruined. What have you done?”

“Maddie did that, and from what I heard he deserves a damn sight more. He…he…my god, Deacon. He was having his way with her, and her but a child.” His mind skittered away from the picture, it so disgusted him, but his heart wouldn’t hear of shrinking back. “No wonder Father sent her away. His goddaughter.” Nash looked at the prone form on the ground. He should be under the ground. “Bastard.”

“Nash! Step back from him. And the sister?” He looked at Kitty sitting still against a tree.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Bit of a cracked head.”

Nash would not be distracted. “Wetherby attacked her. He was forcing himself on her.”

“And your bruiser? Where is she?”

“She ran.” He had to find her, now. His red-hot gaze pleaded with the cool of his brother’s.

“Leave it. Go.”

Nash ran, glad to put space between himself and the man he longed to slaughter. The bastard betrayed a little girl. He probably broke her little body.

His Maddie.

Wetherby deserved to be shot, or castrated, or both. But as a peer, he was nearly untouchable, unless he attacked another peer.

He hadn’t, had he? He’d attacked a defenseless girl, an orphan, looking to him for solace and safety.
Fucking bastard
. No—it was precisely because he was not a bastard but a titled heir that he could get away with this.

Nash ran past the broken branches he could see she’d crashed through and up the trail, but Maddie had simply vanished. He retraced his steps.
Gone
.

He pounded down on a young ash in frustration. Its snap back nearly beheaded him. How could he have been so blind? She could barely speak to the man back at Deacon’s birthday supper, and they’d all thought her shy, overcome by the long-awaited reunion. Overcome, true, but by loathing and disgust.

And that scene in the barnyard. Hadn’t Wetherby actually touched her? Lucky she merely fainted, or whatever she did. Run away. Well, he knew all about that move, too.

And Heywood’s face at that first supper. He must have known something of it, as well. His friend had kept it damned close to his vest, if he did. Small wonder Heywood offered her work rather than return to Wetherby.

With clues so obvious, the Quinns were but three blind mice, and him the blindest. Lord, she flinched at his touch. The barest stroke brought her to tears. The miracle was that she did join with him, forcing herself to submit for the sake of—what?—propriety? Wetherby had trained her to submit, but he couldn’t train her to like it.

Nash tripped over a root, sprawling into the grass along the path. He lay, dazed, unsure where exactly he was in his family’s own damned play forest. Maddie must be completely lost. The trees canopied, spilling fresh green light through the air. He sat up, head reeling, hands gripping the cool sod as if to pull up the earth itself and look under it for her.

He knew Maddie had a history, a sad story indeed. But it was easier to blame himself, for lacking some critical skill to please gentle ladies, than to consider that something that had happened so long ago could leave a trace in the adult mind.

It had; he couldn’t deny it now. Just as, if he would but admit it, his own childhood terrors and longings diverted the currents of his thoughts.

The look on her face, green flecks giant in her rounded eyes. Her mouth, drawn down at an impossible, a painful, angle. The arch of her back as she raised her fists, rounding as she brought them down, her body a guillotine.

She would turn that force on herself. She mustn’t be alone. The very moment she needed a loving hand, she stole herself away. Didn’t that sound familiar, too. Just what one would do, if one believed love brought only pain.

He had to find her. He pushed up to standing. He was just south of the castle. Where was she? She wouldn’t leave the safety of the woods, surely. Only an acre. He’d already crossed and re-crossed it twice.