Tempted (11 page)

Chapter Ten

“I don’t bloody believe this.” Alex paced from one end of the small room they were being held in, to the other. “It is beyond belief. Ridiculous. Absurd.”

Mary Callahan silently moved her mouth along with his, which incensed Alex all the more, even as he felt a pang of guilt as he watched her cradle her foot in her lap. Someone had given her a tattered brown cloak, not out of kindness, but to shield her indecency. Her legs peeked out from that cloak, the edge of her nightclothes creeping up. She glanced up, her long red hair catching the early afternoon light even though the room they were in had one small window set high in the wall.

Alex looked away, feeling utterly embarrassed and, yes, ashamed.
He
was the reason they were in such a muddle. He was the reason why Gabby and his father would go a full day without knowing where they were. He and only he.

“I am the Marquis of Warrick,” he said. “One would think my breeding and lineage would show upon my face.”

“You forget who your ancestors are.”

He looked at her, about to give her a serious set-down for slandering his lineage so, until he thought about it for a moment. His mouth closed.

The room they were in was actually an antechamber of a rectory, the church, they’d been told, doubling as a court when the occasion warranted it. As such their window was made of stained glass, the image of two white doves in a field of blue filtered by sunlight. It turned the wood floor topaz.

“What you need to do is concentrate on how to get us out of this ramshackle cell,” she said, gingerly trying to clean out her wounds, “instead of dwelling on no one believing who you are.”

“There is no way out,” he said. “It would appear as if we’ve been tried and convicted simply because we happened to be passing through a town that had had the sad misfortune of just being robbed.”

“Welcome to the world of the poor, m’lord. Sometimes all you have to do is simply exist to be punished.”

He didn’t want to admit it, but he thought she might have a point.

But what had Alex feeling even more buggered, what made him wish for the thousandth time that he’d never knocked on that damn squire’s door, was not the fact that his daughter and father would be worried about them. No, what worried him was that he’d have to spend the night in a room. A tiny room. Small. Really, really, minuscule.

His heart began to beat in his chest like he was a man with a string wrapped around his tooth, and a horse on the other end. His hands began to shake. And—devil take it—his skin began to itch like a nest of ants had crawled on it.

Bloody hell.

He tried to distract himself by concentrating on Mary, and for a moment it worked. She looked better than she had earlier, he noted. At least he had that to be grateful for. The squire’s cook had given them some stew, Mary having all but devoured it in a gulp. So had he. And though it seemed an inconsequential matter, he suddenly realized she had the prettiest of noses. Small and tipped at the edge.

And then his gaze caught on the door, and all thoughts of Mary fled.

He itched the skin at his neckline. It was exactly five paces from one end of the room to the other; he should know. He’d counted. Numerous times. But it did no good to keep on the move, for his heart only seemed to beat faster, his gaze fixing on that damnable locked door. Locked. Locked. Locked.

“You got fleas, m’lord? Never seen a man itch as much as you.”

He had no idea he’d stopped before that door, that he stared at it, breathing hard, hands clenching and unclenching in between itches. He turned to her, her feet apparently forgotten as she stared up at him.

“Here now,” she said, “don’t tell me you’ve taken on a chill?”

He opened his mouth, about to tell her that was, indeed, the problem, but he couldn’t do it. And so he said, “I’m afraid I’m a bit claustrophobic.”

“Claustorfic?”

“Claustro
phobic
,” he repeated. “Afraid of small, enclosed places.”

She blinked, her brows lifting. “Well now, waking up to find yourself in a coffin must’a been a wee bit hard on you then.”

She almost startled a laugh out of him. Almost. “Indeed.”

Her brows lowered, eyes following the motion of his hands as he itched again.

“And I get hives when I’m nervous.”

“But there’s nothing to be nervous about. We’re safe as jewels in a box in here.”

Box
was not the correct word to say. Not now. Not ever.

He felt his breath hitch, felt his heart rate ramp up. Felt new hives break out on his legs.

“M’lord?”

He didn’t answer, just bent down and scratched his legs. Why should he say something when there was nothing to say? He was a coward. A lily-livered, itching coward when it came to confinement. He could admit that. To himself.

“Here now. Don’t go all blubber-kneed on me now. You’re a man. You’re supposed to have a stiff upper lip.”

He nodded, scratching at his arm.

“Careful. You might give yourself welts if you keep goin’ on like that.”

And she actually looked amused.
Amused.

“Come, m’lord. Sit down beside me.”

“No.”

“Do it.”

And like a five-year-old child, he did as ordered. Scratching the whole way. He sat down beside her, though his knees shook and his breath jigged like a spirited horse.

“There now. That’s better. Now, tell me what it’s like to be a great lord.”

Her words almost didn’t penetrate the pressure that had begun to build in his brain. Indeed, to make it impossible to think. But he forced himself to listen.

“Did you have your own pony as a child?”

Pony? Who cared about a pony? He almost snapped the words at her, but of course, he knew ’twas only his anxiety that made him on edge.

So he said, “Of course,” hearing himself as if from a great distance.

“And did you order that pony about like you order everyone else about now?”

Bloody hell. He needed air. He needed freedom. He needed to get up again, if only so he could itch his back.

She stopped him with a hand, quickly, reaching out as if they were the best of friends, her smile oddly endearing as she said, “Did you act like bloody Wellington? Bring me my pony,” she imitated a male voice. “Now, now, what, what.”

The words sounded farther away. He had trouble focusing, had trouble breathing. He clutched at her hand.

“Alex,” she said sternly. “Look at me.”

He didn’t, tried, instead, to calm himself, to tell himself that what he felt was simply a reaction to being enclosed in a room. He would be all right. He had no choice. He
had
to be all right. For Gabby’s sake.

“Alex,” she ordered.

And then he felt warm hands on either side of his face, was startled into gazing into her concerned green eyes. “I’m here, Alex. You’re not alone. I’m here with you.” She patted his cheek.

He looked at her, and god help him, he almost didn’t recognize her. But then she put her nose right up next to his, the tip of it touching his own. He caught the scent of her, a smell that was earthy and warm and that made him close his eyes and simply breathe. A calm began to settle over him again, the itching faded a bit. He closed his eyes, inhaled even more deeply. Lovely, she smelled lovely.

“Don’t think you’re going to work that energy o’ yours off, m’lord, for I tell you here and now, there’ll be no lechery in this room to pass the time.”

His eyes sprang open.

She smiled.

He could only stare, looking from one eye to the other as he waited, waited for…something.

Her smile slowly faded. Time seemed to freeze for the both of them. Alex leaned toward her.

And then she released him, faced forward, messing with her cloak as she said, “Now, go on. Tell me about your childhood.” But in her gaze, right before she’d turned away, he’d seen something in her eyes. Something rich and warm and remarkably like longing.

And god help him, he’d felt the same thing.

But he was not his father. He would never take advantage of her. Not now. Not ever.

“It was,” he forced a breath in, “a childhood like any other young lord’s.”

“Well, then, I suppose you can stop right there for I’ve heard it all before, me knowing so many lords and all.”

It took him a moment to realize she was being sarcastic.

“What do you want to know?”

She was staring straight ahead still, her eyes having gone unfocused. “What was it like?” she asked again. “What did it feel like to have a roof over your head always? To know that you had a place in this world. To know that you are and always will be Alexander Drummond, Marquis of Warrick, heir to a dukedom?”

He found himself staring at her. Found himself suddenly swallowing. “It felt like nothing for it simply
was.
”

Her profile in the waning light looked strikingly pretty, and wonderfully perfect. Alex suddenly found himself forgetting about his anxiety, though he scratched at a lingering itch on his neck.

“Aye,” she said. “I suppose that’s true. You were born to greatness while I,” he watched her swallow, look down for a moment, “I grew up wanting greatness.”

“You did?”

She nodded, her eyes once again growing distant as she tipped her head up and back, her voice low as she said, “Sometimes I would face the stars—just gaze into the heavens and know that someday I would be
someone
.”

He hardly dared move, feeling almost afraid to breathe, for fear she’d remember his presence.

“Some days, it was all I could do to hang on to the dream. My mother died when I was five. Then it was up to me to raise me brothers, and raise them I did, and I took care of me father, too.” She swallowed. He could see the way her throat worked as she did so. “It wasn’t easy feeding six mouths. Sometimes it was all I could do to make the food stretch a week, only to realize too late that I should have figured for a week more. Da was never happy when that happened.” She shivered as if the memory chilled her, and he had a feeling it did. “But somehow I lived through it, all the while vowing that one day I’d leave, make my way to London where I could be a
somebody
.”

“And did you?”

She started at his words, and he knew then that he’d been right. She’d forgotten his presence. “I went to London, all right. I learned the hard way that it’s a man’s world out there, and that a young, naïve female has no business trying to work in it.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

Sixteen? He’d been at Oxford at that age. Still learning Latin and Greek. Still trying to understand the world and his position in it, while she…she’d been out living it.

“But enough about me, m’lord. Tell me about your fairy-tale childhood. Tell me about your pony.” She rested her cheek against the wall, and Alex almost thought he saw a tear track on her cheek. But, no. He must be imagining it. Mrs. Mary Callahan didn’t cry.

So he told her about his pony, Rosie, and the time he’d fallen off the little horse and broken his leg. And the talking helped, for it kept his anxiety at bay, his hives fading away.

Time passed. Eventually she leaned into him, though he doubted she even realized what she did. And still he talked. And then the weight of her body made him realize that she might have fallen asleep. He shifted and looked down at her, and she had, indeed, drifted off. Her lids closed against her cheeks, the thick lashes a smudge of shadow. And as he stared at that face, he wondered how she’d survived it all. How she’d kept her wits, and her sense of humor, and her undeniable charm. But what struck him most about her was what she didn’t say, what she didn’t complain about. He had a feeling it might have been a lot, that her childhood had been one notch above miserable.

How long he stared at her, he had no idea, but from nowhere came the urge to touch her. He had cause, then, to be grateful that she slept, for she remained blissfully unaware of his reaction to her. Unaware that he stroked the side of her cheek softly, her only response to his touch a small moue of irritation, almost as if she thought a fly crawled upon her skin. That almost made him smile. And then, because he couldn’t seem to help himself, he lowered his head, a craving he knew he should never allow prompting him to taste the forbidden. One kiss. Just one.

He pressed his lips against her own, his heart beating as it had earlier—hard, frantic pumps—only for an entirely different reason.

She stirred as he kept his lips against her own. And there was a part of him that wished she would open her eyes. That she would meet his gaze, and that in that gaze he would see the desire he himself felt.

Alas, all she did was turn her head into the crook of his arm, sigh, then nestle closer to him; Alex inhaled deeply.

Lord help him, he wanted her. Badly.

Chapter Eleven

“Alex Drummond, you’re being charged with theft and fraud.”

It was the next morning after what had been a very,
very
long night. Alex stood in the center of a small room, a rail behind him separating him from the masses of people who’d shown up at the small church/court.

“Fraud?” he said. “Are you mad? What the blazes for?”

“Impersonating a lord.”

“I am not impersonating one, you oaf. I
am
one, which you would know if you were near my own shire.”

Very well, it had been a child-like slur, but it was the best he could come up with given his lack of sleep and his general state of anxiety.

The magistrate didn’t seem to notice. He sat behind the pulpit, the squire apparently wearing many hats in this part of the country, or wigs as the case may be. Landowner, vicar and Justice of the Peace. He had assumed absolute power in the region, much to Alex’s dismay. Spectators filled the oak pews behind him, Alex standing at the foot of the pulpit. No one recognized him, but of course they wouldn’t for they were far from Alex’s lands. A big hulking farm hand with shoulders as wide as a draft horse’s stood behind him. Alex had a feeling that if he made a break for it, he wouldn’t be chased; the giant would simply stamp on him.

“How do you plead?”

“Why, not guilty, of course.”

The magistrate looked pained. “Very well, what is your defense?”

“I demand an attorney.”

“This is not London, sir. We have no fancy attorneys to defend you. Beside, have you the coin to pay for one?”

He bit back an oath of frustration.

“I will grant you, sir, that you do a remarkable impression of your betters. Most play actors do. However, the fact remains that we have had a series of thefts in the area, thefts that coincide with your arrival. As such, I am quite convinced of your guilt.”

“But that’s ridiculous—”

“Silence.” The man banged his fist. “Alexander Drummond, if that is indeed your real name, you are hereby convicted of theft and fraud, sentenced to be taken away from my shire and sent to London where you will be remaindered to one of the hulks.”

“A hulk? Are you mad?”

“Take him away.”

This couldn’t be happening, Alex thought. It just couldn’t. He was a revenue commander. An officer of the Crown.
He
was the one that did the arresting. Not the other way around.

“Come with me, sir,” the giant said.

But, alas, it was all too real, Alex wondering for a brief, panic-stricken moment if he’d ever see Gabriella again.

They led him outside, the sun hidden behind clouds that were firmly clasped closed, yet the gray light felt bright enough to make his eyes ache and his lids lower. It was an old Tudor town with narrow streets and M-shaped buildings, dark wood beams intersecting their white fronts. A few people milled about, but most, he decided, were inside the church with the tall, white spire.

“I am telling you, sir, you are making a mistake,” he said to his guard, but the farmhand ignored him, leading him toward what looked to be an ice cart converted into a makeshift prison transport. It was completely enclosed, with not even a window cut into the side.

Alex felt his mouth go dry.

“Here you go,” the man said, opening a door. For a brief moment Alex thought about struggling, but what was the point? Thus, when the man opened the narrow door at the back of the transport vehicle, Alex climbed inside. But by the time he took his seat upon the flat wooden floor, he’d begun to feel a deep-seated rage. Less than five minutes later Mary joined him.

“Well, now, this is much better than roaming the countryside. Thank the good lord above you thought to knock on that squire’s door. I fancy the hulks will be much warmer than your home in London.”

“Sod off, Mary.”

She jerked as if he’d hit her, blinked a few times, clucked her tongue.

“And why the blazes do you always sound like a chicken when you’re irritated?”

“Habit,” she said simply.

“Well, I’m in no mood for your smart mouth
or
your clucking.”

She stared a bit longer, her expression lightening as she said, “Very good, m’lord. I see you’re growing a spine.”

He didn’t answer.

It was, Alex realized, the lowest point of his life.

And far away, at an estate called Wainridge, Gabriella felt low, too.

Her father still hadn’t returned. Worse, she’d woken up this morning convinced he’d run off with that horrible nurse.

She stared outside through a pane of glass dotted with rain, hardly noticing the cold that seeped through the small crack where the wooden frame met the casing. The window seat had a comfy blue and white down blanket covering it, but Gabby ignored that, too, as she recalled the way her father had looked at the nurse … and what the nurse had said in the carriage when they’d thought her asleep.

You want to kiss me.

Had he? Had he truly? How could he want to kiss a woman with such horrible red hair? And who talked so much?

Gabby felt another tear teeter down her cheek, zigging and zagging so that she had to wipe at half her face to catch it. And if he did want to kiss her, did that mean he’d run off with her? One of the downstairs servants seemed to think so. She’d overheard her say exactly that. Her father had run off. He’d become a Wicked Wainridge, though she didn’t know what the last part meant.

And as she sat there, the fear within her grew and grew and grew.

And then something jumped in her lap.

Gabby shrieked. Which made the creature screech. Which made Gabby shove the thing off her. Which made the creature leap down…

It was a monkey.

Her shriek died mid-scream.

A monkey.

She sat up, hearing footsteps outside her door. The monkey must have, too, for it turned and darted under her frilly bed.

“Miss Gabriella,” a housemaid cried as she burst into the room, her white mob cap knocked askew, the black dress she wore a stark contrast against her white face. “What ’appened?”

“I saw a spider,” Gabby said, with a look at her bed. “Lord above. Gave me a fright you did. What with the Runners off searching for your father, and you screamin’ like you did. I thought you was being taken—” The maid stopped abruptly, seeming to realize that she shouldn’t mention a possible kidnapping. “Well, glad it is you’re well,” she said, stepping back, curtsying and then closing the door.

Gabby waited a breathless ten seconds before slowly leaving the window seat and approaching the bed, her cold feet appreciating the warmth of the plush ivory rug.

“Here, monkey, monkey.” Silence. “Come here. I won’t hurt you.”

It was as if the little thing understood her, for she saw it lift the edge of her coverlet as if they were engaged in a game of hide and seek. A white face peered up at her, pink skin around his nose and mouth and eyes looking almost human-like. And then the creature smiled.

Gabby couldn’t help but smile, too.

“Come here,” she said.

The monkey listened, leaping into her arms and snuggling under her chin like they were the best of friends.

And as the two lonely creatures comforted each other, a friendship was forged, one that would last a lifetime.

Alex felt like yelling. The driver of the cart they rode in took pernicious delight at finding every rut and hole and bottomless pit he could find on a road that, by all accounts, should be impassable. Alex’s cranium smacked the roof every time. Worse, he could barely see his hand in front of his face, the only light that which shone in through the paper-thin cracks between the boards. He couldn’t breathe, though he told himself that was likely a good thing given the poor quality of the air. Mold filled the interior of the vehicle with a sour smell, not even a small breeze brushing it away.

“Devil take it,” he said after one particularly hard knock. “Can he not endeavor to go around?”

Mary Callahan reclined against the very back of the box, her eyes closed as she wound one strand of her hair around and around her index finger so that the thing looked like a Christmas ribbon when she was done. “The roads are rough, m’lord, or have you forgotten we were stranded at your father’s place prior to your kidnapping?”

Since the moment she’d entered the cart, she’d been quiet playing with that strand. She hadn’t even spared him a glance. Not this morning when she’d woken. Not before they’d been taken away for their trial—if one wanted to call it that. Not even when he’d been served a deplorable breakfast of some kind of lumpy floury thing that might have been gruel.

Alex could stand it no longer. “Do you not care that we are on our way to the hulks?”

She shrugged, her red hair shifting over one shoulder. In the dim light he could see that she’d pulled her cloak around her dressing gown. Why no one had offered to supply her with a dress, Alex couldn’t fathom. He was certain it wouldn’t have been hard for the local magistrate to arrange such a thing.

“Ain’t no sense in worrying over that. Isn’t a bleedin’ bloody thing we can do about it.”

“Mrs. Callahan, your sublime unconcern over our fate worries me ill.”

Finally, her eyes snapped open. She flicked the ribbon of red hair over her shoulder. “At least I haven’t turned cross.”

“Cross? I am not cross.”

But he knew he was. More than that, he knew the reason why, and it had nothing to do with the farce of a trial he’d been forced to endure and everything to do with the way his skin began to itch.

“You’ve got the hives again,” she said.

He did, damn it. Worse, his pulse raced. Could hear the blood buzz in his ears, signaling the onset of yet another one of his blasted attacks, as if his itching skin wasn’t warning enough.

“Lord love you,” he thought he heard her murmur. “Shall I try and turn your mind with a tale?”

And though he hated to admit weakness, though he reminded himself that he was the Crown’s best revenue commander and as such, above such a silly thing as a fear of confined spaces and—of all things—hives, his voice was barely audible as he said, “Yes, please.”

“Very well. What?”

“What what?”

“What would you like me to talk about?”

It was a challenge to concentrate, to force the words into his brain and then assimilate them.

“Tell me about your childhood,” he finally said. “Isn’t much to tell and what little there is, I told you last night.”

Sadness poked through his fear for half a heartbeat, but it quickly retreated as he itched his belly. “Very well. Then tell me …” He had to all but mush his mind into working. “Tell me your happiest memory.”

If Alex could have seen Mary’s face when he asked the question, he might have changed his mind. But he was too busy trying not to let his panic get the best of him again, and so he didn’t notice the way Mary grew as still as a startled bird, the way her hands clenched in her lap. Then again, chances were he wouldn’t have been able to see her anyway in the stuffy darkness and gloom.

“I’d rather you tell me more about your own childhood.”

He shook his head. “Already done that. Need you to distract me.” And it was a testament to his state of mind that he didn’t even care that the words made him sound weak. He closed his eyes, trying to regulate his breathing as he’d done last night, trying not to scratch at the bloody, silly welts.

When she didn’t immediately answer, Alex opened his eyes, trying to find her in the darkness.

“I was ten years old,” she said at last.

He almost released a sigh. Her face was in profile, a knothole allowing a thin beam of light to shine upon the floor. That light illuminated her toes, reminding him that she didn’t have any shoes.

His fault. They might have been home by now. He might have been reunited with Gabby. Instead they rolled toward an uncertain destiny.

“What happened?” he said over a lump of guilt.

“I found a horse.”

It wasn’t the answer he expected, though he’d be hard pressed to say what, exactly, he’d expected.

“He just appeared one day.” And the smile he saw was one he’d never seen cavort playfully across her face. Beautiful. Unexpected. Like a gift from the heavens.

“There he was grazing on the side of the road, free as a bird, and the ugliest beast you’ve ever seen. Skin and bones, he was. A big bay with feet the size of dinner plates and huge ears to match.” She laughed softly. “Looking back on it, I think the reason why his owners turned him loose was because he was too ugly to sell and too skinny to use for meat. Poor thing.”

The smile dimmed a moment, but then returned full bore. “So I kept him. Oh, I asked if anyone knew who he belonged to, but no one ’fessed up. Truth be told, he looked so rackety he might have traveled a long way before coming to stop by that roadside. I didn’t care. He was a horse. I claimed him as mine.”

Her eyes found his in the darkness. “Have you ever wanted anything so bad that you’d have done anything to get it, and then once you had it, to keep it?”

Had he? He honestly couldn’t recall. But then again, their worlds were so far apart as to be the sun and the moon, he admitted as he absently scratched his thigh.