Gallant Waif (21 page)

He glared at her for a moment, examining her face for any sign of mischief. She looked back, troubled grey-green eyes innocently meeting his gaze. She really had no idea what her touch was doing to him.

“Dammit! No!” Jack growled crossly. “You’re not hurting me at all. Just get it over with as quickly as possible!” His eyes darted past her, over her shoulder, to where Carlos was standing; Kate felt a spurt of surprise at the withering look Carlos received.

Kate bit her lip. Of course she was hurting him, or why was he moaning? Men were so stubborn at times. She didn’t mind if he cursed or groaned, but she did need to know if the treatment was hurting or not and where. She continued in silence. He was getting tenser and tenser under her hands. It was puzzling. He should be relaxing. She redoubled her efforts, rubbing in the warm, aromatic oils with firm, rhythmical strokes along the length of his leg. Suddenly he groaned again and with a surge of sheets he turned over on to his stomach, sending Kate sprawling on the bed.

She sat up, flustered and astonished. “What on earth do you think you are doing?” she demanded crossly. “Turn over, please; I haven’t finished there yet.”

“Oh, yes, you have, Miss Farleigh,”
came
the uncompromising reply, slightly muffled by the pillow. “That’s quite enough from you.”

Kate shrugged. “Oh, well, I suppose I can work on the back of the leg as well as the front.” She reached out and began to rub it again.

“Damn and blast it, woman!” The words exploded from the pillow. He jerked his leg away from her and tried to thrust it back under the sheet.
“Out, Miss Farleigh, now!”

“But—” Kate began.

“Carlos!”

Kate felt Carlos’s hand on her shoulder. “Please, Senorita Kate,” the man said. “You must go now.”

“But I have not finished showing you everything.”

Carlos grinned. “Oh,
senorita,
you have shown me plenty, I think.”

“Carlos!” the deep angry voice from the pillow growled warningly.

“At once, Major Jack!”
Carlos said hurriedly. His eyes glinting with private amusement, he turned back to Kate again. “It is certain that Major Jack can bear no more of your treatment today. Perhaps another time in the future…”

“Carlos!” There was no mistaking that tone.

“Si, si,
Major Jack.
Now,
senorita, por favor.”
He ushered Kate rapidly out of the room and shut the door behind them.

Kate stopped on the landing. “I don’t understand it at all,” she said worriedly. “What I was doing should not have hurt him so much. He’s not the sort of man who would complain of a little pain. His leg must be worse than I thought.”

Carlos grinned down at her wickedly. “It was not his leg which was troubling him,
senorita”
he said meaningfully.

“What do you mean?”

Carlos shrugged. The English were so prudish about things such as this. She had brazenly entered Major Jack’s bedroom and bared his leg without so much as a blush, so she was no innocent.

“Senorita Kate, it is a long time since the Major has been with a woman, and when you touched him…” He shrugged. “Well, he is a man, after all…”

Kate stared at him a moment, assimilating what he was telling her. Then a fiery blush surged up over her face and she was flooded with embarrassment. “Oh,” she gasped, and fled.

Chapter Nine

For perhaps the twentieth time that evening Carlos glanced towards Kate with foreboding. The little mouse was behaving more like a cat tonight, pacing back and forth, clearly disturbed about something, and from the looks that she was casting towards the ceiling it concerned Major Jack.

Naturally.
Carlos sighed gently. If she was touchy and moody, it was nothing to what his master had been. Ever since Major Jack had been unable to disguise his body’s response to her.

Carlos shook his head. It was the simplest matter in the world. These English made such a fuss over things. So the Major was attracted to the little mouse. It would be something to be concerned about if he was not, in Carlos’s opinion, for she had blossomed lately and was looking very pretty. But instead the Major must go to all lengths to avoid her, even having Carlos sneak around heating oils in secret, in case she found out he was continuing the massage treatment without her.
Such foolishness.

Kate kicked one of the logs in the fire angrily, releasing a shower of sparks up into the chimney. How could he give up after only one attempt?
she
asked herself for the hundredth time. She was utterly convinced that massage would improve his leg, possibly even enable him to ride again.

Obviously he didn’t have her faith. But to try it only once and then give up!
Merely because he was affected by lust.

That was what was so upsetting. It was partly her fault— men were unable to control their baser natures, she’d been told. They took their lead from women, she’d been told. And she’d behaved so indelicately.

Assuring him she was not embarrassed to see his leg! Telling him she was no innocent! That she was well acquainted with the male form! No wonder he’d reacted as he had.

It was clearly eating away at him, for every evening since he had retired to the upstairs parlour and commenced to drink himself into oblivion. He even seemed to have given up on his morning attempts to ride.

Well, she would not stand for it any longer. There were two faces to guilt, she knew—it could fester inside a person, or it could be got rid of, by turning it outward, by turning it to anger. And a healthy dose of anger, Kate decided, was exactly what Mr Jack Carstairs was going to receive.

Carlos eyed the slender, pacing figure with misgiving. If she had a tail she would be lashing it. A wise man would hide
himself
discreetly away until the fireworks were over. Stealthily he rose. His movement caught Kate’s eye. She stopped and turned towards him, decision and resolution in every inch of her. Carlos’s heart sank. Too late, he thought mournfully.

“Carlos, come with me if you please. And bring that large bucket from the scullery.” Dolefully he did so and followed her out of the room. She marched upstairs to Jack’s private parlour. Carlos felt his hands growing damp. Surely she would know better than to disturb Major Jack at this time of night, when he would be in his blackest, bitterest mood—he would have consumed two bottles, maybe, by now.
Ay de mi!
It was madness.

*
   
*
   
*

Jack lay sprawled in a chair before the fire, a glass of brandy dangling perilously from his long, strong fingers. He gazed into the dancing flames, his eyes half-closed. Damn her. Damn her. Damn her! It had been so much easier before she had come into his life. So much
easier.
. .and so much duller. He should have forced her to go off with his grandmother.

She wouldn’t have been here long enough to plague him, to provoke him, to insinuate herself into
his.
. .life.

She had no business being here, scrubbing his floors, cooking his meals, with no one to talk to in the evenings but a foolish old woman, a rascally Spanish groom, two illiterate farm girls and a crippled wreck. She should be in a ballroom, dressed in silk and satin, swirling round the floor as light as thistledown, engaging in light social
badinage
with a score of men hanging on her every word.

Six months! How would he ever stand it? It was hard enough to keep his hands off her as it was. She was like no woman he’d ever met. She’d been through so much. And yet, to look at her, see that fresh, sweet face, no one could believe she had spent three years at war, seen death, destruction, men at their worst, while in the process losing her entire family.

Curse her father! What the devil did he think he was about, taking a young girl into that hell-hole? Getting
himself
killed so that she had nobody to look after her, nobody to call her own. Jack lit a cheroot and puffed sullenly, brooding on the iniquities of the Reverend Mr Farleigh. His grandmother had said the damned fool had even refused to let Kate’s grandparents settle money on Kate’s mother.
Stiff-necked bloody idiot.
Pride was one thing—but to leave his daughter in such straits! Good thing he was dead, Jack thought, or he’d probably have throttled the man…

Dammit, his grandmother had no business leaving her here. She should be in London, finding herself a rich husband, some titled fellow who would pamper her and protect her for the rest of her life, who could give her all the fine things she had been denied. Any man should be grateful to win her… His mouth twisted at the unpalatable thought.

She was so damn naive. She had no idea what her touch had done to him that time when she was massaging him. She was so full of unconscious sensuality and unawakened passion. Would probably fall for the first handsome face she saw. The
ton
was infested with damned blackguards. He would have to speak to his grandmother about it. Make certain she protected her from the wrong type, make sure she chose well for little Kate.

He drained the glass,
then
carelessly refilled it, slopping brandy on to the fine polish of the table at his elbow. Whatever he did, he was going to have to get her out of his house and up to London soon, for, the Lord knew, he was having the devil’s own job keeping away from her. And that simply would not do. She was too fine a person to get herself chained to a poverty-stricken, embittered cripple. Scrubbing his floors the rest of her life. He thought of those small, work-roughened hands. No. If it killed him, he would get her out of here and into a fine London drawing-room.

He drank deeply again, and his mood darkened, recalling each and every time he had touched her. His body responded even at the memory and his mouth curled cynically. He had to stop this, had to get her out of his mind and out of his fife. He was finished with women, finished with ladies anyway—even floor-scrubbing ladies with tender, beguiling eyes who smelt so sweet and fresh. They were a trap. Women thought differently from men.

Even the best of them wanted a man for what they could get.

He thought of Julia and the heavy bitterness rose inside him again. Was Kate any different? What would a penniless, homeless orphan want with him—a crippled wreck—an ugly, crippled
wreck.
. .?
A home, perhaps?
Even a run-down one like this might look good to a homeless waif. And, while he might consider himself poor, his sort of poverty was relative; he would never be in danger of starvation—she had already experienced that, several times. No, he would never be in danger of having nowhere to go, no one to turn to.

He had a home, a family and he was his grandmother’s heir. It didn’t take a genius to realise that all of that would look good to a girl with nothing. And if the price
was having
to live with a broken-down ruin of a man, well, Kate was a girl full to overflowing with good Christian virtues—charity, selflessness, pity… Yes, it wasn’t hard to see what Kate might see in him. A girl could put up with a lot for the sake of a home, security and family…

“Senorita,”
Carlos whispered tentatively. “I do not think this is a good idea.”

Kate glanced at him scornfully. “No, naturally you would not,” she snapped. “You are the one who purchases those bottles of poison he pours down his throat every night.”

Carlos shrugged. “He is my master, after all.”

“Well, if you had any concern for your master, you would refuse to do his bidding in this.
Can you not see, he is destroying himself?”
She stamped her foot. “Well, I won’t have it! I am employed by his grandmother to see to his welfare and I will put a stop to this right now.” She stepped towards the door.

“Senorita,
I beg you, it is not a good time.” Carlos grabbed her sleeve in desperation. “Please, wait until morning.”

“By morning, he will have consumed a great deal more of that filthy stuff,” she responded briskly. “Now, let go of me, Carlos.” She flung open the door.

“Senorita,
it is too dangerous to cross him when he is like this,” Carlos hissed urgently.