Bewitching the Baron (5 page)

The blacksmith’s son Eddie did a final inspection of the clamming shovel Aunt Theresa had brought in last week to be repaired: rust, salt water, and rot had broken the marriage between handle and blade. Valerian watched the play of muscles on Eddie’s arms where they emerged from the rolled sleeves of his shirt, wondering if Gwen had yet found a way to claim them for her own. They truly were magnificent arms, she had to admit, and his chest was equally well-developed. Her eyes ran over his body in a way they never had before, trying to fit what she saw displayed in the scorching smithy to what might lie under the cool silks and brocades of Nathaniel Warrington.

It had been nearly a week since her visit to Raven Hall, and she had not seen the baron again. Their meeting had ended on a most uncordial note when the baron had offered her coinage for her services.

Tight-lipped and deeply affronted, she had refused his offer politely at first, then with growing hostility as he tried to press payment upon her. She had gathered her things and quickly left, her offended pride not allowing her to consider his point of view until she was in sight of home.

Of course he had offered her money. He was used to dealing with doctors in the city, who would be fools if they did not demand payment for their services. He could not have known that he was insulting her. Even such rational thought, however, did not completely erase the humiliation she had felt at being offered the small stack of coins.

“Miss Bright?” Eddie’s troubled voice finally pulled her from her thoughts, and she colored as she looked up at his scarlet face and realized that for some time she had been staring at his crotch.

“Ah . . . Is it is ready then?” she asked, gesturing to the shovel.

“I fixed it myself. Is there anything else you will be needing?”

“No, no, that is all, thank you.” She took the shovel, her hand brushing his accidentally, and she briefly met his startled eyes. She tucked the shovel under her arm and fairly dashed from the smithy, bumping into Gwen a few steps outside the door.

“Miss Bright! Good day to you,” the girl said, surprised. “Would you know if Eddie is inside?”

Valerian glanced back over Gwen’s shoulder, to where Eddie had appeared in the shop’s doorway, watching her with interest. “Turn around, and you will see him yourself,” she answered, and patted the girl’s shoulder before turning and walking as fast as she could from the scene.

What on earth had come over her? For the past week she felt as if her thoughts had not been her own. They had a distressing tendency to wander to the baron—“Nate,” as Mr. Carlyle had called him.

A black fluttering at the corner of her eye warned of Oscar’s approach. He landed with a clench of claws, a heavy and welcome weight on her shoulder.

“Valerian Bright!” came an angry female voice.

Valerian hunched her head down into her shoulders, in a gesture borrowed from Oscar. No, not Charmaine. Not today. And good lord, not with Alice Torrance trailing along behind.

“Do you know what that horrid creature of yours has been doing?”

Valerian turned to face the irate countenance of her cousin. Charmaine was at least ten years older than herself and they had not been kind years. Her face bore the striking structure that marked the females of their line, but a lifetime of dissatisfaction had worn unpleasant grooves into its surface, her lips thin and white in a perpetual expression of discontent.

Charmaine did not like being the daughter of one supposed witch, Theresa, and the cousin to another. She had never wished to pick up the broom of family tradition, so to speak, and whatever unusual qualities she may herself have possessed were deeply buried beneath her quest for normalcy. Her husband was the town cobbler.

“Good day to you, Charmaine, Mrs. Torrance,” Valerian said, acknowledging the innkeeper’s wife. “Has Oscar been causing trouble?”

“And when does he not?” Charmaine asked. “ ‘Tis the second time this week he has pulled my laundry to the ground. If I did not know better, I would think he had been sent on purpose to aggravate me.”

“I am terribly sorry about your laundry,” Valerian apologized, genuinely contrite on behalf of Oscar. She could not wish extra laundry chores on anyone, not even Charmaine. “If I knew how to break him of his bad habits, I would.”

“Someday someone is going to shoot that bird,” Mrs. Torrance put in.

Valerian narrowed her eyes at the woman. “I would be quite upset by that,” she said, her voice filled with unspoken threats. “I do hope no one is so foolish as to try it.”

Mrs. Torrance tucked in her chin, taken aback by the fierce tone. “You ought to keep him away from town, is all,” she temporized.

“Is Howard well?” Valerian asked Charmaine, seeking to change the subject. Mrs. Torrance loved to stir up trouble, and she was best ignored.

“Yes, fine. Gone to Yarborough for supplies for the shop,” Charmaine said absently of her husband, and then she lowered her tone, her eyes turning bright and hungry. “You have met the baron, I hear.”

“Baron Ravenall!” Oscar squawked joyfully, then buried his head in Valerian’s hair.

“Yes, we met.” Charmaine and Mrs. Torrance were the last people with whom she wished to discuss the man.

“I saw him from a distance. He is young. Good-looking.” Charmaine eyed her cousin’s body in a manner that made Valerian acutely aware of her own breasts and belly. “I also hear he invited you to the hall, and you went. Alone.”

“To tend Mr. Carlyle’s injury, yes.”

“And?”

“There is not much to say. I did my job, and I left.”

Charmaine stared at her for a long moment. “He has been asking about you, you know.”

A flush crept up Valerian’s cheeks, her cool composure suddenly in danger. “What? Who has?” She was aware of Mrs. Torrance listening closely, a smug smile on her lips.

“The baron, silly girl. Or so I hear. He even asked Alice about you, at the inn.” Charmaine nodded towards Mrs. Torrance.

The temptation to ask for details was nearly overwhelming, but that Valerian would not do, not with this pair. “Well, I hope he heard nothing ill.”

“Pity he did not come to me. But perhaps he does not know that you and I are family.”

“I cannot imagine the genealogies of the townsfolk are of any interest to him.”

“It would be better for him if he knew we were not all witless farmers. It might save him making mistakes in his treatment of us.”

Valerian did not want to think about what Charmaine was implying, or what scandalous scenarios she may have been speculating upon with Mrs. Torrance. “I must be going. I apologize again about the laundry, Charmaine. Good day.”

Charmaine nodded, wishing her good day in return, but Valerian felt both women’s eyes on her, following her down the street. She wondered if others were watching her, too. Did the whole town think she had thrown herself at the baron, simply because she had gone to the hall alone?

She heaved a sigh. Her reputation was bad enough, without having harlotry added to the list of her sins.

She hefted the clamming shovel up onto her left shoulder, Oscar bobbing happily on her right as she walked down the street, her mind chewing over why the baron might be asking about her.

She hardly noticed when Oscar left her shoulder, and her feet had already taken her halfway home and up the path to the Giving Stone before a sense of something wrong pulled her from her reverie. She was in the midst of an imaginary conversation with the baron, explaining to him why she had no interest in furthering their acquaintance, when Oscar’s squawks of “Eee-diot! Eee-diot!” finally caught her attention.

Heart beating wildly, she quickened her pace. She came around the last hillock and saw him, sitting with arrogant languor upon the Giving Stone, legs stretched out and crossed before him. His horse cropped at grass just outside the stone circle. She stopped where she was, observing him as he frowned up at Oscar, now perched atop one of the few remaining upright stones. As if sensing her presence, or perhaps assuming that Oscar’s arrival heralded her own, he turned and saw her.

The frown smoothed out and he smiled, then stood and gestured negligently towards Oscar, who was now pacing the top of a stone slab like a soldier on watch. “I begin to wonder if that bird does not bear me a certain amount of ill will. Or perhaps he warns me to beware my own foolish impulses.”

“What are you doing here?” It came out harsher than she had intended, her breast a welter of conflicting emotions: eagerness, embarrassment, distrust.

His smile, suspiciously smooth to begin with, only deepened. “Why, to see you, of course.” Valerian stared at him, not sure how to react to this peculiar statement. “And to apologize,” he continued. “I had not realized I would be offending you by offering coinage for your services. I assure you, I was quite unaware of this custom of leaving gifts, else I never would have tried to pay you.”

“Apparently whoever you asked neglected to tell you that it is to be left anonymously.”

“Is that so?” He sounded entirely unconcerned. “I shall keep that in mind for the future.”

Propping the shovel against the rock, Valerian came forward to see what, if anything, was on the stone.

“It is not much of a way to make a living,” the baron said, “if today’s income is any measure.”

The stone was devoid of offerings, which was no great surprise. There was only so much illness to be tended, so many requests for water-divining in the countryside. “Aunt Theresa and I take care of ourselves quite well, thank you.”

He moved closer to her. “So I hear, although it does sound like a lonely sort of life. Does not a young woman like yourself dream of pretty things? Fancy dresses, parties, baubles for your ears and throat? Of the city, and perhaps a young man to escort you from ball to ball, and to lead you out onto the dance floor?”

She looked up at him, into his hazel eyes. He was focused entirely upon her, and a blush heated her cheeks under his scrutiny. She looked away. “I have plenty to keep me occupied. I have no need of such frivolities. What good would jewels and silks do me in Greyfriars, but earn the envy and hatred of others?”

He did not answer her, and the silence vibrated between them, growing in heat and intensity. She saw him lift his hand, and could not move as he reached toward her and lightly ran the back of one finger down her cheek.

No man had ever touched her like that, and the shock of it rooted her in place. She knew she should move away, but she stood motionless instead, caught in the surprise of the sensation. Her lips parted as he moved his hand to the back of her neck and delved his fingers into the hair at her nape, gently massaging.

The fine hairs on her skin rose as he bent his head down beside hers. She felt his warm breath on her ear, then the moist heat of his lips as he kissed her lobe, then took it into his mouth. Quicksilver ran through her nerves, her muscles contracting in pleasure. The intensity of it startled her back to herself, and she jerked away from him, her hand going up to cover her ear.

“Stop that!” she cried.

“Are you certain you want me to?” He sounded disappointed.

“I am not accustomed to being accosted by men,” she said, her eyes wide in fright at the newness of it. Indeed, she could hardly believe he had even wanted to accost her.

“I do not suppose you are. You have them all too cowed to attempt it, with that ferocious smile of yours. I do believe it is their loss.”

“It is certainly not going to be your gain,” she snapped, backing away.

The deviltry in his eyes slowly disappeared, retreating behind an apparent indifference. “You had me so distracted, I almost forgot,” he said. For all the emotion he now showed, they could have been discussing the weather all along. This whole encounter was leaving her feeling distinctly out of her depth.

She watched warily as he withdrew a delicate silver bracelet from a vest pocket. He held one end between his fingers, letting the filigreed chain dangle, the links catching and reflecting the clouded sunlight. “I thought it would suit you.”

Despite herself Valerian reached out and touched the bracelet, letting it lie across her fingers. The workmanship was exquisite, the silver shaped into interlocking ovals with flowers in their centers. It was a well-chosen piece for an herbalist, but there was no way on earth either pride or propriety would allow her to accept it.

She withdrew her hand and looked up at the baron, a slight tightening around her eyes and mouth the only hint of the emotions that roiled within her. “Is this what you believe to be fair trade for ten minutes plucking stitches out of a man’s arse?”

“There was also the slight injury to my hand, and the soothing of Paul’s nerves.”

“It is too much, and you either are ignorant of that fact, and can be forgiven, or you know it and cannot. Jewelry is a gift a man gives to his lover. What would they say in town if I wore it? And what makes you think I would be the type of woman who would accept such an extravagant gift?”

“It is hardly extravagant. I will not be reduced to eating cabbages for a month for having given it to you. Do not wear it in town if the thought distresses you. Keep it for your own pleasure.”

“You, sir, lack the understanding of a sheep, and I want nothing more to do with you.” She picked up her shovel and marched back down the path, inarticulate with offended pride.

If he did not understand, how could she explain to him? If he overpaid her for her services, then he was paying her either out of charity or ulterior, dishonorable motives. Either way, it discounted the work she did as not worth a fair trade. The people of Greyfriars, who worked hard for what they had, understood that as a matter of course. It was a timely reminder that this London aristocrat came from a different world, and she would be wise to avoid him.

And besides, what did he think he could buy with that trinket, pretty though it was? This must be a game he played with her, for his own amusement. There were no London ladies here to pursue, so he must think she would do until more attractive prey came along. She recalled his mouth on her ear, and blushed in shame at how still she had stood for him, enjoying it.