Betina Krahn (13 page)

Conjuring in his mind a few choice words with which to confront Antonia at dinner, he yanked open the alley door and stepped outside. The reek of fermenting food scraps identified the barrel, just outside the door. He took a deep breath, grimaced as he lifted the lid, and began to pour. Turning his face away from the rising aroma, he stopped stock-still.

Standing not ten feet away, leaning against the brick wall across the alley and watching him with unholy glee, was none other than Rupert Fitch, scribbler for one of Fleet Street’s most despicable—and successful—scandal sheets. Of late he had appeared with appalling frequency wherever
Remington went, but until now Remington hadn’t given it more than the cursory notice such an annoyance deserved.

He felt muscles contracting all over his body as he watched the news writer’s ferretlike eyes flit over him, first to the slops he was pouring, then to his rolled shirtsleeves and floury black vest, then down to his grease-smudged trousers and dusty shoes. Fitch’s eyes suddenly rebounded to Remington’s middle and widened with malicious delight. Remington looked down and felt his face catch fire.

The damned corset!
Dirty and bedraggled though it was, there was no mistaking it for anything other than a woman’s figure improver—molded bosom holders, pink ribbon rosettes, and all.

He was standing in an alley in a woman’s undergarment, awash in slops and looking ashambles, clearly caught in something he’d rather no one would ever know. The gleam in Fitch’s eye as he tucked his writing pad into his pocket caused Remington’s stomach to sink to somewhere in the vicinity of his knees.

“Fine day, yer lordship.” Fitch tugged at the brim of his bowler and strolled off down the alley, whistling.

Remington ducked back inside the kitchen and slammed the door so hard that the frame rattled for seconds afterward. And as he stood there, his fists clenched around the pail handle and his face aflame with humiliation, Antonia swept into the kitchen looking cool and prim and utterly in control.

“How is his lordship doing, Gertrude?” she asked, letting her eyes drift down his rumpled form. He could tell by the tightening of her lips that she was suppressing a smile, and it was all he could do to keep from laying hands on her there and then.

“Well enough,” the cook replied. “As long as we got plenty of potatoes.”

Antonia laughed softly, seeming to know exactly what Gertrude meant. “Having difficulty with a thin skin, your lordship?” Her eyes twinkled as she leaned across the worktable to pick up a surplus potato and the paring knife he had used. She made quick work of peeling half the potato, then held it up for him to see. “The secret is keeping your thumb at the edge of the blade.” She demonstrated despite the fact that he wasn’t near enough to see. “Close enough to guide things along and keep the peel thin, but far enough away to keep from getting cut.”

Her smile, as she emptied her hands and wiped them on a cloth, said she knew she was doing an excellent job at
keeping her thumb on the edge—with both the potato knife and him. He stood mute, not trusting himself to speak. If she were to learn of Fitch’s presence in the alley, it would only warm the cockles of her icy little heart.

She went to a set of pegs on the wall by the servants’-hall doors and began to unbutton her jacket. When she looked up and caught him glaring at her, she smiled and addressed the cook again.

“Gertrude, perhaps you should make meringues for supper this evening. That way you could give his lordship some eggs to beat.”

Gertrude laughed and shook her head, turning back to the meat pies she was taking from the oven. Antonia continued unfastening her buttons with that annoying little smile on her face, and he began to feel as if time had slowed. She was taking forever to unfasten her jacket. Those seductive hand motions and that broadening expanse of white beneath her opening jacket generated an inexplicable tension in him.

His eyes fixed irritably on the lacy front of her blouse, then her undulating hands and those parting edges of gray. There were at least two dozen small buttons down the front of her jacket, he realized. Then at last she was sliding it from her shoulders and reaching for a long, full-skirted apron to replace it. He watched her slip the ruffled bib over her shoulders and reach behind her to tie it. For one brief moment the silhouette she presented him was a perfect hourglass … curves, ripe and womanly … small waist … shoulders and breasts thrust forward. Heat surged up out of his loins, taking him by surprise and leaving him chagrined.

She said something to the cook, and Gertrude pointed to something. He turned his head and saw that it was the huge bowl of select scraps and fish parts that had accumulated while they worked.

“Time to feed the babies,” she said, gesturing to the bowl. “Perhaps you would like to come see them, your lordship.”

“Babies? A houseful of old widows … and
babies
?” he declared with horror.

“Not
human
babies,” she said, watching his reaction with a puzzled smile.

“
Inhuman
babies, then. I see.” He dropped the pail he was holding onto the tile floor with a clang. “Charming, I’m sure, but I’ll give them a pass. Mrs. Dolly here probably has something urgent for me to do … butchering something single-handed, perhaps … threshing a bit of grain … stomping grapes to make wine for supper …”

“Oh, I think Gertrude can do without you for a few minutes before dinner.” She was at the doors of the servants’ hall when she glanced back over her shoulder and told him: “You can bring the bowl.”

He was about to say something satisfyingly profane, when he realized that cooperating might provide an opportunity to further his plan. Brushing the flour from his clothes as best he could, he picked up the scraps bowl and followed her through the swinging doors.

The servants’ hall was a long, oak-paneled room furnished with a tressel table and numerous, comfortable old chairs. Antonia was on the other end of the room opening a door that presumably led to some other part of the house. In bounded a small horde of cats: neat little calicos, solid-colored specimens in a variety of shapes and sizes, longhaired aristocrats with their tails up, and big, bruising tabbies pushing their way to the front of the food line.

They sniffed and frisked around Antonia’s feet while she talked to them in honeyed tones, asking them if they were hungry. When they caught the scent of the bowl Remington was holding at arm’s length, they quickly abandoned her for him. Before he could move, they were upon
him, meowing, rubbing against him, climbing onto his shoes, and digging claws into his trouser legs.

“Cats,” he said irritably, trying to shoo them away with his feet. “I might have known you’d take in cats as well as old maids.”

“Widows,” Antonia corrected, watching his nostrils flare and his body tense.

“Where’s the difference?” he said, shaking one leg to free it of a set of claws. “Go away—scram!”

“Oh, there’s a great deal of difference between a maiden lady and a widow.” She watched his predicament with vengeful pleasure. “Widows have experience in the world, while maiden ladies generally do not.”

“Experience
with men
,” he supplied archly, watching her reaction. There was a hint of heightened color in her cheeks. And for the first time he found himself wondering about
her
experience with men. Sir Geoffrey Paxton. After meeting her the other evening, he had learned that she had been married to a man who by all accounts was old enough to be her grandfather. She didn’t seem to think much of men in general, and it gave him cause to wonder what old Geoffrey had done to his young bride to make her dislike men so.

She carried several battered bowls from the stairwell outside the door to the table. “You may do the honors.”

He stood for a moment resisting, then decided to save confrontation for another time and portioned out the scraps using the spoon Gertrude had slipped into the bowl. As he lowered the dishes, the cats rushed to eat, and he barely got his hands out in time. Stepping high in order to avoid the creatures, he found one of his feet unusually heavy. When he was safely out of their way, he peered at the back of his leg and found a very young kitten hanging on to his trouser leg for dear life.

“Ye gods—I’m being climbed,” he said through a clenched jaw.

When he looked up, Antonia was staring at him.

Her eyes drifted over the layer of flour, the grease spots, and the grimace of disgust he wore. His hair was hanging over his forehead, there was a streak of dirt across one of his cheeks, and his starched collar and silk cravat both were beginning to wilt. The same could not be said, however, of his shoulders. If anything, they seemed to be broader and more powerful than ever—the result, she realized, of wearing a waist cincher that emphasized the contrast between his oversize shoulders and his much smaller waist. The corset might not have been such a brilliant idea after all.

“That’s one of the babies. Here—” She detached the kitten from his leg, then stepped back, assessing his snarly mood through the filter of her lashes. “It was born just a month ago.” The little beast was all fur and eyes and ears as she lifted it for him to see. “Isn’t it adorable?”

“The only thing I detest more than babies is cats.” He gave the mewing kitten a wince of disgust. “That means cat babies rank at the very bottom of my list.”

“Now, that does surprise me, your lordship,” she said, cradling it against her and giving its ears an affectionate scratching. She looked up without raising her head. “I thought
women
occupied that unenviable spot in your esteem.”

“Then perhaps you should have read the articles I have written with a less jaundiced eye,” he said testily. “I have stated succinctly in each of them that I do not loathe or despise women. I only hate the things women do to men.”

“The things women do to men?” she said, feeling a flutter of disquiet in her stomach at the way his eyes intensified and darkened. “And just what do we do to men that you find so objectionable?”

“You lure and beguile and entrap us … with our own weaknesses.” He set the bowl on the table and brushed his hands together to clear them of debris. Then he took a step closer to her, and she took a step back.

“You trap us into marriages in which we become little more than indentured servants to your unquenchable desires for things and status. You spend our money, our time, and our energy as if all three were limitless.” With each complaint his voice lowered a notch, becoming a deep, powerful vibration as he moved still closer. “And you never let us hear the end of it if we try to spend any of the three for ourselves.”

She could feel the heat of him reaching for her in some real but intangible way, and stepped backward again, into the edge of a chair.

“You weigh us down with your delicacy, your helplessness, and your coquettish dependency. And you wear us down with your vapors, your silences, and your tears.” He loomed over her, leaving her no easy avenue of escape. She was forced to stand her ground and look up into his penetrating eyes.

“You play on our sympathies, our passions, and our sense of decency.” Those liquid eyes began an unhurried inventory of her at alarmingly close range. She could scarcely breathe. “In short—you wrap us around your little fingers.”

His gaze settled on her lips, and under his scrutiny they became dry and embarrassingly sensitive. She swallowed hard and suppressed the urge to wet them.

“Not all women behave so,” she protested, in a voice that had dried to a whisper. “I have never wrapped a man around my little finger.”

“Oh? You think not?” He leaned slightly into her, his fascinating mouth curling in a smile that made her knees go weak. “And what about the rest of you?” he said quietly.
“Have you ever wrapped a man around the rest of you, Antonia Paxton?”

She gasped softly, knowing she should push him away and put him in his place. But her outrage was somehow muffled by his nearness; she couldn’t summon an ounce of proper indignation. He was so close … his mouth so full, so exquisitely mobile. Would his lips feel soft or hard? Cool like his logic or hot like the rest of him?