How To School Your Scoundrel (7 page)

Quincy broke free and jumped off the bed. His claws scrabbled on the wooden floorboards and came to a stop in front of the connecting door, where a thin line of yellow light rimmed the bottom. Quincy strained forward and let out a tiny whine.

“Shh! Come back!”

Another whine.

Luisa jumped out of bed, a task made far more straightforward by her masculine blue-striped pajamas: the one item of clothing she genuinely preferred to her old feminine wardrobe. Quincy reached out a paw and scratched furiously at the crack of light.

“Stop that!” Luisa whispered. “You’ll have us both thrown out!” She bent over and scooped up the dog.

Quincy let out a furious series of barks.

“Quiet, Quincy!” She tried to cover his mouth with her hand, but he tossed his head and squirmed his lithe body in her grasp. His short legs wriggled furiously, as if he were swimming in a race, and his little heartbeat rattled against her hand.

From the other side of the door came the sound of determined footsteps.

Quincy yipped twice and leaped from her arms, just as the connecting door wrenched open and the Earl of Somerton, wearing only a pair of crimson drawstring pajama trousers and a thunderous expression, planted his feet on the floor before her.

W
hat the devil . . .” began Somerton.

Quincy darted between his legs and scampered through the door.

“Quincy!” Luisa dodged past the earl’s thick shoulders and into his bedchamber. She took two running steps and staggered to a halt.

The room might have been a monk’s cell. There was no plush Oriental rug, no profusion of dark wood furniture, no wealthy display of handsome gilt-edged paintings on the white plaster walls. The fireplace was surrounded by ornate carved marble, but the mantel held only a square brass clock of the sort used by military officers on campaign, ticking away with loud and ruthless precision. A bookshelf along one wall contained an immense number of close-packed books, each spine turned outward and arranged in exact vertical order. There were two wooden chairs, a washstand, a wardrobe, entirely without decoration of any kind.

And a bed, of course. Straight, narrow, dressed in crisp white linen, and home at the moment to a fluffy golden corgi wearing an expression of immense self-satisfaction.

“Quincy!” Luisa swallowed her astonishment and rushed across the room to snatch the dog from the center of the Earl of Somerton’s Spartan bed. He let out a yip of disappointment and wriggled his body, attempting escape, but this time Luisa held firm. “Naughty dog. Very naughty dog,” she said in his ear, which he swiveled dismissively away.

Slowly Luisa rotated back around to meet the full force of Somerton’s rage. As crimson, no doubt, as his silken pajamas.

He stood silently, with one hand gripping the other arm, and his formerly immaculate black hair dipping into his forehead. She tried not to look at his chest, which bore—she couldn’t help noticing, in the lower periphery of her vision—not an ounce of unnecessary padding. It just went on and on, acres of olive skin covering endless peaks and valleys, a vast topography of male muscularity. Utterly impregnable.

“This is a trifle awkward,” she said, into the silence.

“It is, I believe, the most extraordinary first day’s employment in the history of personal secretaries,” Somerton drawled.

“I apologize for Quincy. He heard a noise and became alarmed . . .”

“And he makes that sort of racket whenever he’s alarmed?”

“I was on the point of silencing him when you opened the door,” she said. “You only set him off again by venturing in to cast down your thunderbolts of justice.”

He frowned. “Thunderbolts of justice?”

“Yes. If you hadn’t taken it into your head to interfere . . .”

The frown smoothed away into the hard angles of his face. He let out a sigh and turned to walk across the room to the door on the opposite wall. “You misapprehend, Mr. Markham. That wasn’t the reason I opened the door.”

Luisa swallowed again. His back was nearly as impressive as his front, thick and powerful, held in place by shoulder blades the size of dinner plates. She refused to look any lower. It simply wasn’t seemly to . . . another man when . . . Peter lay . . . dear Lord. Taut, round buttocks, covered in crimson silk.

She closed her eyes. “It wasn’t?”

“I regret to say that I have met with a small accident, and require your assistance.”

“An accident?” She opened her eyes again. He was walking toward her, holding a white cloth in his right hand, which was firmly attached to his left forearm. “Good heavens! What happened?”

“I was pouring a drink. The glass slipped. If you would be so good as to hold the dressing in place, while I wrap the bandage around it.” It was not a request.

She stared at the white dressing on his wrist. A few specks of red had already soaked through the cloth.

“Sir!”

“You may set down the dog, for now.”

Luisa loosened her arms, and Quincy leapt to the floor. He rushed straight to Somerton’s bare feet and set down his hindquarters on the polished wooden floor, staring up the sweeping length of bone, muscle, and crimson pajama with anxious eyes.

“What the devil is he doing?” asked Somerton.

“Possibly he likes you.” Luisa placed her fingers on the edges of the dressing and smothered a smile. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Impudent beast.”

Luisa wasn’t sure whether he meant her or Quincy, and she hardly dared ask. She stared instead at the red-speckled dressing and the muscled forearm beneath, while Somerton’s large hand whipped the gauze expertly around in overlapping strips. His breath reeked of whiskey. For some reason, the scent was not unpleasant.

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” she said.

“I have lived forty years upon this earth, Mr. Markham, and have incurred the odd scratch from time to time. If you will move your right forefinger out of the way.”

“How did the glass slip?”

“An accident.”

“An odd sort of accident, to create such a wound.”

“There we are. May I ask you to knot the ends, Mr. Markham?”

“Of course.” Luisa took the ends of the gauze and tied them securely together. “I performed the same service for myself, only a few hours ago.”

“I recall I had asked the housekeeper to tend you.”

“In the end, Lady Somerton came to my aid.”

The whiskey breath stopped. “Did she?”

“Yes. She was very kind.”

Somerton pulled away and walked briskly to the tray of drinks. A pile of shards glittered on the floor next to the wall, ten feet away, as if someone had thrown a glass against it. “She can be very kind, to those she likes.”

Quincy rose to his feet, and Luisa leaned down to pick him back up. “Stay here, love. You’ll splinter your paws.”

“Did she bandage your wound for you?”

“No, I did it myself. I dislike fuss.”

“Good man. Drink?”

“No, thank you.” Luisa shifted her weight. As she watched, Somerton poured a generous glass and lifted it to his lips. “I should be getting back to bed.”

“What’s this?” Somerton turned and leaned against the table, drink in hand, facing her. “You have no questions? Why, for example, does my dear wife sleep upstairs in the nursery, instead of in the room you yourself inhabit? Why do I not keep such a tempting creature busy in my own bed at every opportunity? You cannot deny, Mr. Markham, that my wife is an astonishingly beautiful woman.”

The blood climbed in Luisa’s cheeks. “She is lovely, of course. But that is your own affair.”

“Affair. Yes.” Somerton laughed and finished off the glass. “An excellent choice of words, though in fact the affair is not, strictly speaking, mine. But go to bed, go to bed.” He waved the empty glass at the connecting door. “Take your upright self back to your room and into innocent slumber, my dear Mr. Markham. The deep sleep of an untroubled conscience. Enjoy it while you can.”

Something about his words, about the dangerous edge of his voice, the cold recklessness of his expression, made Luisa turn instead to the bed and place Quincy back on the pristine white linen. She walked by Somerton’s laconic figure without a glance and bent to pick up the shards from the floor by the wall.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“You’ll cut yourself. Again.” She placed each one, piece by piece, on her open palm, and when she had found all the large ones, she dropped them into the washbasin, for lack of a nearby dustbin.

“Unnecessary. My valet will see to it in the morning.”

He was quite drunk. She could hear it now, the determined precision of his words, the negligent spilling of personal details. The hint of self-defense.

She picked up the washcloth and returned to the floor, where she began to wipe up as many of the tiny slivers as she could find.

A hand appeared on her wrist. “Stop that,” he growled. “You are not paid to perform menial labor.”

“Better this than be forced to stitch up your foot in the middle of the night.”

“I can stitch it up myself.”

His shoulder pressed against hers, his warm breath suffused the air between them. He was so hot and large, so electric with unpredictable power. Luisa was afraid he could hear the thumping beat of her quickened heart, could feel the thrust of her pulse beneath her skin.

She tried to think of Peter, to raise his poor image in her head. She was a widow; she had lost her husband not two months ago. And now here she was, standing next to a half-naked married man while her heart pounded beneath the bands of linen that flattened her bosom, while her skin tingled and her thoughts blurred.

This tingle of blood under her skin: arousal, or shame?

How could she tell? She’d never felt this way before. Peter, sweet Peter, had been her friend, a mere dear acquaintance, cheerful and distracted. Of his dutifully intimate fumblings under the covers at night, she remembered little. In the morning, the two of them had always pretended those necessary intimacies did not exist. It was all too embarrassing otherwise.

But still. She owed something to his memory, didn’t she? She owed him at least the respect due to a deceased husband, that she would not fall prey to base sexual attraction within weeks of his death.

Luisa jerked her arm away and stood. “Very well, then,” she said, handing him the cloth. “Clean it up yourself. It’s your mess, after . . .”

She stopped in mid-sentence, for she had just spotted an object on the rim of the washstand. A small, round, glittering object.

The state ring of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof.

“After . . . ?”

She shifted her gaze back to the earl. “All. After all. It’s your own mess, after all.” A novel sentiment, coming from her. Until that fateful October day, she had relied on servants to wipe clean every spill and stain in her life.

“You shame me.”

Luisa edged closer to the washstand. “I doubt anyone has the capacity to shame you, Lord Somerton. Least of all me.”

“You’re mistaken. I find I value your good opinion, for some unknown reason.”

“Likely the effect of the whiskey you’ve been drinking.” She nodded at the tray.

To her disappointment, he didn’t follow her glance. “Perhaps. But there’s something about you, Markham. I ought to have sacked you a dozen times already, and I haven’t. In fact, the offenses for which I ought to have sacked you, I find myself admiring instead.”

Keep him talking.

“Offenses? How have I offended you?” She stole another step.

Somerton lifted his hand and counted on his fingers. “Your insolence, your signal lack of respect, your disobedience of my direct orders . . .”

“I am not insolent.”

“Your dog.”

Quincy lifted his head at the word
dog.

“My dog offends you?”

She caught sight of the ring again, from the corner of her eye, alluring as a magnetic center. How could he fail to wonder at it? Tomorrow morning, when he was sober, and the sunlight streamed through the window and banished this strange melancholy of his, he would pick up that ring and his eyes would narrow. He would turn it about in his fingers. He would see the inscription and read it. His sharp mind would link the pieces of the puzzle.

Luisa angled her foot idly. Two more steps, perhaps three.

Somerton twisted the glass in his palm. “He does. He reminds me of you, utterly lacking in respect for his betters.”

“That’s because he has no betters. He is a dog of impeccable moral standards.”

“And that, you see . . .” Somerton wavered, making another gesture with his empty glass. Luisa took another step, and another, as his gaze left her and traveled around the room.

“And that?” she pressed.

“And that is why I forgive you, I suppose,” he said quietly. “Because an honest, straightforward, loyal chap is the very devil to find in this world. A . . . a needle . . .”

She had reached the washstand. She placed her hands casually on the edge. The ring lay so close, eighteen inches at most. So easy to slip into her pocket. Just a little movement of her hand, when his face turned away . . .

“What are you doing?”

Luisa jumped. Somerton’s gaze had refocused on her, keen and black once more.

“Nothing. Merely waiting for you to continue. You’re vastly entertaining when drunk.”

His eyebrows came down in two forbidding lines. “Whelp. Off you go, then.”

“No, no. Pray go on.” She clutched at the edge of the washstand. Her fingers yearned around the bowl. She could almost picture them curling around the hard gold band, the bumps and ridges of the familiar gemstones . . .

Somerton stepped away from the table. His face was old and hard, all broad planes and unforgiving angles. “I said
go
, Markham,” he barked.

She held up her hands. “Very well. I . . .”

Without warning, Quincy leapt down from the bed and trotted to Somerton’s feet.

Somerton looked down. “What the devil are you doing, you half-witted mongrel?”

Quincy’s tongue lolled happily from his mouth, as if Somerton had just pledged his undying loyalty. He struck out one paw and stroked the earl’s bare left foot.

Like a seasoned thief, Luisa snaked her hand along the washstand and swept the ring away, into her pocket.

She could have sworn that Quincy winked.

“I’ll be off, then,” she said cheerfully. “Good night, pleasant dreams and all that. Come along, Quincy.”