Suzanne Robinson (14 page)

Crunch crunch tap.

The marquess lifted his head. Kate rested her forehead on his chest and groaned. In mid groan he pulled her chin up and covered her mouth once again. Then he set her away from him and swiftly brushed curls away from
her face. He pulled the ends of her jacket together and arranged his own. Taking her arm, he ushered her back onto the path and started walking.

His calm, the way he reacted to the approach of a witness, brought common sense lumbering back into Kate’s head. She had no idea why this man wanted to kiss her. That is, she knew why men wanted to kiss, but she didn’t know why this particular man wanted to kiss this particular woman.

As they approached Valentine Beaufort, she began to fidget mentally. The marquess must think she was pretty, or he wouldn’t want to kiss her. But it hadn’t been that long ago that he hadn’t wanted to dance with her. He thought she was entertaining, but he disapproved of her behavior. He liked her, but he didn’t like her. He insulted, then he kissed.

“Miss Grey,” he said softly, “my worried friend is coming. Before we reach him, I’d like to ask that you call me by my given name and beg the same favor of you.”

“Very well, Lord Alexis.”

“No. Alexis, plain Alexis.”

Kate smiled at Val, who was almost within hearing distance, and he smiled back.

“Careful,” she said. “ ‘And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility.’ ”

She heard a sharp intake of breath followed by a wondering laugh. “You little beast.”

She pulled ahead of the marquess and looked back over her shoulder. Disheveled sensuality caught her off guard. He was bathed in it; he emitted it in heat waves that rolled over her. And he wasn’t doing it on purpose. That was evident by the way he smiled at her like a saint and expected her to join him in laughing at himself.

Turning to face Val again, Kate hurried away from Alexis de Granville to the safety of his friend’s company.

• • •

He’d never had a young lady insult him with poetry. Alexis stopped walking to enjoy the view of Kate Grey from the rear. A bluestocking with hair that burned with a sunset glow. Such a gift for verbal jousting must mean she’d had plenty of men tilting their lances at her. She had reached Val and the two were talking. Kate flicked her boot with her riding crop. The black stock swept up in an arc and cut the air.

The simple motion was all it took to bring the memory roiling back into his mind. Alexis tensed, but it was too late. In an eye blink he was twelve, alone and furious. He sat on his horse watching his father and his sister gallop toward him. Jealousy expanded in his heart. He was puffing from the exertion of beating them to this point on the race path, and rankling, snarling offense churned inside him. Father was holding his mount in check so Thalia would win the race. Pampered, lovely Thalia came hurtling toward him. He could see the veil on her hat flapping madly.

Alexis gripped his own reins with sweaty hands. As he sat there nursing his rage, Thalia plunged between the two giant oak trees that marked the finish line. To Alexis it looked as if she jumped off her horse on purpose. Her hands flew out, and her body jerked backward. Red water appeared out of nowhere, and somehow, Thalia came apart. Her head went toppling away from her body. Alexis froze in his saddle. His eyes took in what his mind could not.

A high screech and the hollow thud of hooves followed. Alexis screamed along with his father’s horse. The hunter stumbled over Thalia’s body. Its great forelegs buckled, and horse and rider tumbled over each other. Alexis kicked his own horse, but the animal wouldn’t run.
He shouted to his father. He dug his spurs into his mount, but the horse ignored him and walked. He couldn’t get off and run himself. He could only sit and watch his father’s horse roll and thrash, crushing his father beneath hundreds of pounds of flesh.

A giggle made the blood and the bodies disappear. Alexis shook his head. He couldn’t have been standing in the middle of the path as stiff as a Maypole for long, or Val and Kate would have noticed. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to hide their shaking.

He’d dreamed about Father and Thalia again last night. If Val hadn’t shaken him awake, the nightmare would have continued on through the shock of death, his own hysteria, the numbness and loss of the threads of memory, until it ended with him kneeling in the chapel asking God if it had really been he who tied the fishing line between the oaks so that it would behead his sister and cause his father’s death. Val had interrupted the horror, but the desperation and need for escape remained. There was only one method of exorcism. He’d used it immediately, only to have a redheaded elf pop into his path and shout “Morning” at him.

Alexis smiled. Then he stopped smiling because he was surprised he could smile. He waited. There it was again. He was smiling. Where was the oppression that engulfed him after a death ride?

He wasn’t foolish enough to go looking for it. Val called to him, and he joined his friend and Kate Grey.

“A guest has arrived,” Val said. “Fulke sent me to find you.”

“Lord help me,” Alexis said. “I hope it isn’t Sir Eustace. He wants the living of Heppleton for his son, and his son is a boring dispenser of cant. Though, come to think on it, such qualities make him the perfect churchman.”

Alexis took his place on the other side of Kate and offered his arm. She took it, and the three of them walked
toward the house. He was proud of himself for going the whole way without sparring with her. They stopped just inside the great hall. Through an open set of nearby double doors they all could see a man talking to Fulke.

“Bloody hell.” Val took a jerky step forward.

There was no time to make a polite excuse and turn around. Alexis shoved Kate aside and leaped for his friend. “Bloody hell” expressed his own feelings accurately. He’d forgotten Cardigan. There he was, curling hair, elegant mustache and all, unaware of the danger. Alexis grabbed Val’s arms. Val jerked free and kept heading for the earl. Alexis swooped after him and snatched the cane from his friend. Val tottered, and Alexis hauled him close by the neck of his jacket agilely, dodging a fist.

Hands full, Alexis tossed the cane to Kate. The girl caught it as he’d expected and kept out of his way, as he’d also expected. He wrapped his arms around Val from behind. Ignoring the barracks curses hurled at him, he lifted the lighter man off his feet and half carried, half dragged him toward a side door.

“Well done, Miss Grey—Kate. Val is overexcited and needs to lie down. Uh!” Alexis squeezed harder on Val’s arms and lifted him higher. For a sick man, Val’s blows were powerful. Alexis shook his head as Kate hissed questions at him. “Please, distract those two until I can come back. Please?”

“I’m staying in a castle full of demented squirrels,” she said. “Oh, all right. I’m going.”

Alexis shoved Val back out of the great hall and slammed the door shut. Val caught hold of a chest sitting against a wall and propped himself against it.

“You’re too weak to fight me,” Alexis said.

“I’m going to kill him. I’ll tear out his heart with my hands.”

“You can hardly walk. Look at you. You’re trembling like a newborn calf. There are blue smudges under your
eyes, and your skin feels as cold as pond ice. The doctors have told you and told you that you won’t get well if your mind doesn’t give your body peace.”

Val lunged for the door. Alexis caught him as he fell. A heavy weight jammed into his shoulder. It was Val’s head. Dragging his friend’s arm across his shoulders, Alexis bent and lifted Val.

“Put me down, you bastard.”

“You’ve had a busy time, haven’t you? Prowling the castle all night. Routing me out of bed. Hunting down Miss Grey and launching her at me. Attempted murder. I think I’ll lock you in your room. Quit fighting me or I may drop you down the stairs.”

A few minutes later Alexis joined Fulke, Kate, and the Earl of Cardigan in the drawing room. He hadn’t taken the time to change, but Cardigan was a fanatic horseman and wouldn’t balk at Alexis’s riding clothes. Not that he cared. He was too busy lecturing himself not to call the man out. It would annoy the Queen.

He needn’t have given his apparel a thought, for Cardigan didn’t seem to care where his host was. His whole attention was on Kate Grey. As Kate poured him a cup of coffee, Alexis listened to Cardigan, and he tried not to hate.

“Would have faced the cowards myself,” the earl was saying. “No way to find them out, you see. They send anonymous threats full of abuse and accusations. Her Majesty asked me to come down here while the authorities investigate.”

Alexis nodded without speaking. Fulke plunged into the hole in the conversation.

“What do the notes say, James?”

Cardigan flushed and twirled his mustache. Alexis was hurled back six months to a day of blood. Cardigan had sat on his horse at the head of the Light Brigade and twirled his mustache while he argued with the Earl of Lucan. If
the two hadn’t been locked in a prima donna battle for command, both would have asked for clarification of the order that sent hundreds of men to slaughter.

“And they accuse me of lying,” he heard Cardigan say. “Lying! They claim I never asked Lucan to question the order.”

Kate set her cup down and eyed the furious man. “Why didn’t you refuse to do it, my lord?”

Alexis nearly choked on his coffee, but the earl turned sky-blue eyes on the girl and went from a boil to a simmer.

“My dear Miss Grey,” he said. “Of course a lady does not understand a soldier’s duty. A soldier obeys his commander.”

“You said this commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan, was a desk general. The last battle he fought was against Napoleon at Waterloo. Nobody would have blamed you for refusing to kill yourself and a whole brigade, would they?”

“Yes, Miss Grey, they would.”

“Well, it seems to me that a man who can’t supply his own men, who lets them starve and suffer from wounds without medical treatment—”

“Miss Grey,” Alexis said.

He couldn’t help the strain in his voice, or the whip-crack way he lashed out at her. She exposed unhealed wounds. Cardigan had that distant, haunted look he’d seen on Val’s face too many times. He only hoped his own countenance wasn’t so ravaged.

Bless Fulke for smoothing things over.

“May I show you to your rooms, James? Juliana put you in the state chambers. You’ll be honored to know you’re sleeping where Henry VIII did, although considering his bloodthirsty reputation, you might not rest easily.”

Alexis got up with the others, but didn’t follow the earl and Fulke. That was why he noticed the exchange of glances between Cardigan and Kate. The earl looked over Fulke’s shoulder and scrutinized her body with the thoroughness
he used in a full-dress inspection of Prince Albert’s Own Hussars.

Kate did what no other young lady of Alexis’s acquaintance ever did. She stared back with open interest, appraisal, and appreciation. Damn her. The door shut, cutting off contact between the two.

Alexis jerked the silver pot off its tray and poured more coffee into his cup. “Miss Grey.” He was too angry to call her Kate. “I must insist that you observe a semblance of decorum with my guests. Perhaps in a backward country like the United States young ladies are allowed to conduct themselves with the boldness of a waterfront doxy, but in my house I expect a superficial adherence to the rules of polite society.”

She got up. His anger was fed by the sight of her split skirt, the open neck of her blouse, the curls that rioted about her face.

“What was that word you used?” she asked calmly.

The urge to send her fleeing from him in embarrassment was too great. “Doxy.”

“Are you calling me a whore?”

As had happened too often with Katherine Ann Grey, he found himself gaping at her.

“I said, are you calling me a whore?”

He shook his head in denial.

“That’s good, because now I won’t have to call you a gutter-minded, tight-assed fool.”

She stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

Alexis picked up a spoon and stirred his coffee without looking at it.

“Tight assed?”

He squirmed uncomfortably on the aforementioned body part.

“We’ll see whose ass is tight after I’m through with you, Kate Grey.”

Kate tramped down the hall muttering to herself.

“I can’t believe I said that. I called a nobleman tight assed. Mama will vapor to death if she finds out, but I don’t care. He is tight assed.”

A door to her left opened. A golden marmoset scooted out from behind a fan of black satin skirts. Kate stopped, distracted by the tiny creature.

“Miss Grey.” Lady Juliana beckoned to her from the doorway of yet another drawing room. “Kate.”

The marmoset climbed up Kate’s skirt. Kate snatched the monkey from her waist and carried it into the room with her. Lady Juliana was smiling at her. Juliana seldom smiled, and Kate had never seen her laugh.

Juliana took the marmoset from her. “My dear, I heard that unfortunate exchange with my son.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Don’t be.” Juliana stroked the long fur of her monkey. On a sofa behind her slept three Persian cats. “I’ve been watching you, and my son deserves your contempt. He is the opposite of his father, who was perfection among men. You see, Miss Grey, Alexis preys upon women the way a tiger hunts antelope. You are the first girl I ever saw get the best of him and the only one who ever judged him as he should be judged.”

Kate experienced the sensation she would get when she first tried to read a foreign language. “I don’t understand, ma’am. Your son and I don’t get on well, it’s true.”

“Ah! But you don’t realize that Alexis always gets on. He gets on well with any woman at whom he takes the trouble to snap his fingers.” Juliana put the marmoset down and laid her hand on Kate’s arm. “I admire you. Thirty years ago girls had your kind of wits and courage. Today they act as though it’s a crime to have either.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“I shall take you up.”

Kate furrowed her brow. “Take me up?”

“Introduce you to Society.” Juliana picked up a fat, cream-colored cat and began stroking it. “Frankly, Kate, I can’t abide your mother. She has no backbone, and she simpers. I hate simpering.”