Jo Goodman (10 page)

Her hands were shaking now as was her voice. "Because it's the truth!"

Colin cut through her camisole.

Mercedes cried out when the camisole hung in shreds. She tried to hold the thin material together to preserve her modesty. Her mouth was dry, making it impossible to swallow or speak. She simply stared at him.

"I think you made it all the way back to Weybourne Park," he said. "There was a tear in the skirt of your gown but not anywhere in your cape. That suggests you weren't wearing the cloak. In fact much of the damage to your gown appears to have happened when you were out of the cape."

"You cut the fastener, remember?" she said. "The first time I came here." Her throat ached. Her voice didn't sound as if it belonged to her. "He had no difficulty getting it off me."

"I don't think so. You told me you fled and hid. I don't think you would have gone back for your cloak. Your attacker might have been waiting for you."

Mercedes was silent.

"The smudges on your neck would lead one to believe your attacker's hands were dirty, yet where the material of your gown was split there was no sign of dirt. That neat tear on the skirt of your gown wasn't made by running into a branch." He paused a beat. "Talk to me, Mercedes."

She found she couldn't. His hand was on her shoulder, plucking at the strap of her camisole. The point of the dagger was under her chin.

"Is your uncle involved in this?" Colin asked. Her stricken look was answer enough. "Did he ask you to come here this evening?"

Her voice was only a pathetic whisper. "Please," she said. "Let me go."

"Did he force you?"

"No!" There were some truths that could not be told.

Colin's eyes narrowed darkly. "You said before that there would be consequences if the earl died... something about someone coming after you."

Mercedes felt the last vestiges of color drain from her face. She didn't want to think about it. Beneath her chin was the cool length of Colin's blade and she concentrated on that. Her clenched hands ached and her knuckles were white from holding the edges of her camisole together. It was suddenly borne home to her that his interest had never really been personal; everything he did was to bring her to heel.

"Tell me what you meant by that," he said.

Mercedes finally understood that she didn't have to tell him anything. It didn't matter if he saw her naked because his own arousal wasn't his purpose. Taking away her garments one ribbon at a time was only a tactic to keep her off balance. He couldn't shame her if she wasn't ashamed.

It occurred to her that her hands weren't tied or even restrained. He had accomplished the same outcome by keeping them busy. In order to use them she had only to give up her modesty. Staring down the length of Colin's dagger, it was an easy choice.

Mercedes let go of her camisole and slapped at Colin's wrist. The blade missed nicking her throat by a fraction of an inch but she was successful in pushing it sideways. She ducked and kicked out swiftly, shoving him away. He lost his balance on the edge of the bed and before he could recover, Mercedes scrambled to the opposite side.

Colin straightened. "So what are you going to do now?"

The bed was certainly between them but she was on the wrong side to reach the door. Her brow furrowed as she considered her predicament.

"Or hadn't you thought that far?" Colin deliberately allowed his eyes to wander to the level of her gaping camisole. "Take your time."

Mercedes fought the urge to close the material. She had better uses for her hands than to protect her modesty. Keeping her eyes on Colin and the dagger resting lightly in his palm, Mercedes sidled carefully toward the dresser.

"Don't pick up that knife," he warned her.

"I'm getting my stockings." Her tone made it seem a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Colin couldn't fathom her intention. "Are you going to flail me with them?"

"No," she said sweetly, reaching the dresser. "I'm going to tie you up with them."

He didn't think that was possible. That's why he was still looking at her breasts when she flung the drawer at his head. One corner caught his temple and Colin Thorne went down as if he'd been felled. He was groaning, trying to raise his head and clear his vision, when Mercedes clobbered him with the whisky bottle.

His last thought was that since she had promised to tie him up, she probably wasn't going to kill him.

Chapter 3

Mercedes let herself in the tradesman's entrance at the rear of the manor. She was relieved to be able to do so. She had no wish to face her uncle immediately upon her arrival. Using the back stairs, Mercedes reached her room in the north wing without being accosted.

A great cheval glass with an elaborately scrolled walnut frame was one of the few amenities left in her room. Mercedes did not pause in front of it or even glance in its direction. She had no wish to see the wretched mess she had become. Standing in the middle of the threadbare rug, she stripped out of her clothes and tossed them in a corner. She could not afford to be so careless with her belongings, but the need to feel clean, the need to have this evening behind her, hammered at her practical nature until she surrendered, at least conditionally. There was still a small voice telling her to get rid of the clothes entirely, but Mercedes rebelled against that kind of wastefulness.

It wasn't as if she had his blood on them, she thought. Only she knew what she had done.

Mercedes pressed the heels of her hands against her temples and closed her eyes tightly. She didn't want to think about it anymore. She
wouldn't
think about it anymore. The dull, pounding ache in her head was relentless, and like the steady beat of kettle drums, would not be silenced. She swayed a little on her feet, moaning once, softly, with pain.

Mercedes let her arms drop mechanically to her sides and opened her eyes. It was the sheer force of her will that propelled her to the armoire in the adjoining dressing room. She removed her nightgown and slipped it over her head. Like a cloud descending, the voluminous cotton shift swallowed her whole. Mercedes fastened the satin ribbon at her throat and adjusted the sleeves at her wrists. The hem brushed her ankles as she reached for her robe. As secure as a babe in swaddling clothes, Mercedes derived a measure of comfort from putting on her dressing gown and tightening the sash about her waist.

The ladder-back chair beside her bed held a washbasin and pitcher and a few toiletry items on its seat. At one time the bedroom had been appointed with a dresser, two bedside tables, a vanity and padded stool, and a writing desk. Two cream brocade wing chairs used to be arranged in a conversational setting near the fireplace. The dressing room had held a daybed and a commode in addition to the armoire. The missing, exquisitely crafted pieces by Chippendale and Windsor now filled an unoccupied room in the south wing for the earl's occasional guests.

Mercedes had become accustomed to the arrangement. She no longer missed what wasn't there.

At the basin Mercedes scrubbed her face hard, as though she could erase the bruise along her jaw. The ache that developed there was a diversion from the pounding in her head so she counted her effort as some kind of success. Sitting on the edge of the four-poster, Mercedes unwound her thick plait of hair and began to brush it out. She was careful to give it long, gentle strokes, starting at the ends and working her way up to her scalp. The braid had rippled her hair and when she was done it framed her face and shoulders in waves of dark chocolate.

From under her pillow Mercedes pulled out a small brown bottle of laudanum and measured out a spoonful. The bottle was her secret, her protection against pain inflicted on those occasions when the earl was in his foulest moods. She rarely had cause to use it, not because she was seldom the target of her uncle's aggressions, but because of her well-developed tolerance for pain.

Even as she swallowed the opiate, Mercedes acknowledged that it was not merely physical pain that made her seek out the medicine's dubious comforts. She could have endured that. What she required was relief from her deepening sense of shame.

It was an effort for Mercedes to leave her bed. It beckoned her to stretch out beneath the covers and welcome drugged sleep. No one who knew her would have been surprised that other responsibilities weighed too heavily. Instead of lying down, Mercedes went to check on her young cousins.

"I told you she'd come," Britton said as soon as Mercedes let herself into his room. "Didn't I say it?" He was sitting up in bed, a pillow plumped behind his back and surrounded by a mound of blankets. He wasn't talking to his twin. That worthy fellow was sleeping soundly at the foot of the bed like an old guard dog. His gleeful whisper was directed at Martha Hennepin, who, along with her husband, had served at Weybourne Park in one capacity or another for the past forty years. Every so often Lord Leyden would take it in his head to get rid of one or both of them, but they had been blithely ignoring those directives for as long as the earl had been issuing them.

"You did indeed, Master Britton," Mrs. Hennepin said. She clapped her hands together lightly, just once, to applaud his observation and to punctuate her own relief. Getting to her feet, she smoothed the wrinkled folds of her apron where she had been twisting the material between her gnarled fingers. "And I was thinking the same, the truth be told." She waved one hand in a beckoning gesture, urging Mercedes to come in the room and shut the door. "Best to be quiet, dear. His lordship is sleeping in his own room, but no one can ever say for how long or what incidental sound might wake him."

Mercedes nodded. She closed the door quietly. "Did you hear the commotion from your rooms or did Brendan get you after I left?"

"It was Sylvia who came for me as soon as you and the earl were gone downstairs. She was beside herself, poor girl. Didn't know half of what she was saying." Mrs. Hennepin crossed her arms in front of her, supporting her shelf-like bosom. "Mister wanted to come with me, of course, but I told him I would do better managing on my own." Her frown became even more substantial. "He worries so about the boys."

Britton piped in with more than a bit of bravado. "He needn't fret about me. I did fine. Sylvia loses her head about the least little thing."

Mercedes found it in herself to smile faintly. "I'd like it better if you'd let me look for myself," she said. She watched Britton wrestle with her request. He didn't like to be coddled, not in these circumstances anyway. It hurt her heart to look at him, with his wide blue eyes and brave face. Britton's sandy hair was tousled and a cowlick made several strands stand at attention. She fought an urge to sweep her hand over his head and smooth the wayward curls. He was only eight years old. He deserved to be fussed over for something besides being able to take a beating on the chin. "Well?" she asked, sitting beside him on the bed. "May I?"

"Oh, very well," he said with a long-suffering air. Pulling up his nightshirt, he missed the half-amused, half-heartbroken glances that Mercedes and the housekeeper exchanged. "See? Not even a cracked rib this time."

Mercedes placed the flat of her hand along Britton's small ribcage and pressed lightly in a number of places. He winced a little when her fingers touched the edges of a bruise but she noticed he wasn't experiencing any painful breaths.

"He only caught me in the gut," Britton said, his voice muffled under his nightshirt. "You saw how I curled in a ball. Just the way you taught me, Mercedes. You can see how well it worked."

She could see. There was no substantial damage this time. Mercedes wondered what other governesses taught their charges. It didn't seem likely that measures for self-defense were part of the standard curriculum for the schoolroom. She helped him lower his nightshirt and before he could duck away, she leaned forward and kissed him on the brow. "You were very quick this evening."

It was just as well that in a few more months Britton and Brendan would be going away to boarding school. Mercedes made certain there was money for that. The boys could hardly be expected to take their place in society without a proper education. It was low on the list of the earl's priorities so Mercedes put it at the top of her own.

Mrs. Hennepin moved closer to the bed. Her rounded figure blocked light from the bedside lamp and cast a shadow across the quilts and comforter. "He wouldn't let me wrap his ribs. Just to be safe, I told him, but he wouldn't have any part of it."