The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (52 page)

Kevin's outburst immediately gave Gilly the impression that his precious Amanda was an overbearing, dominating female and she became, if it were possible, even less enchanted with the idea of having the woman at The Hall.

But when Kevin spoke again, Amanda Delaney was forgotten as Gilly's anger and resentment both mushroomed a hundredfold.

"Thank the gods Rice and your dresser will be arriving soon, and that your new gowns should be here at about the same time. That will mean three problems solved. Now listen, infant," he instructed severely, "and I want no arguments from you on the subject. I will expect you to conduct yourself with propriety while my friends are in residence. Let your dresser guide you. Remember, you are mistress here now. I'll brook no sweeping of grates, slopping of hogs, or—most definitely—consorting with free-traders. You are the Countess of Lockport now, and my wife. You will behave accordingly."

Gilly sprang from her chair in a flaming fury. "The devil take your bladder, Kevin Rawlings. Who are you to dictate to me? A vain, penniless, money–mad, clock–selling, bastard–marrying, liberty–taking fortune hunter—that's what you are! And you still dress as if you expect His Majesty to show up on our doorstep every afternoon for tea, parading around here like some vacant headed popinjay when even a fool would know good honest work and satins have absolutely
nothing
in common with each other."

She strode across the expanse of carpet, her too-short muslin skirts kicking about her ankles, and stopped just inches from colliding with his chest—the chest she began poking with her finger to accent her next words. "I'm not ashamed of The Hall, and I'm not ashamed of honest work. Mayhap if you spent less time preening yourself and more time with a broomstick than a hairbrush, The Hall wouldn't look so shabby."

Kevin grabbed her poking finger and shot back at her, "And mayhap if I had a magic wand I could turn dust into gold! And another thing, wife," he added as Olive Zook, armed with several dust rags, wandered into the room, stopped, shook her head, then quickly backed out again, "Although I understand outbursts like the devil take your bladder to be innocent parrotings of a child overexposed to such cant, my friends may not be so broadminded. Especially Anne, Bo's wife, and a very sheltered creature. Learn to guard your tongue or I'll be forced to take steps to...to...damn it, woman! Don't make me say things I don't want to say!"

"Oh, go ahead, Kevin. Say them. Don't make you what? Lock me in my rooms until they're gone? Hit me?
Divorce
me? Please, good sir, don't tease me with that most wonderful gift!"

Kevin shook his head, sighing. "I'm sorry, Gilly. I lost my head there for a moment. Please, let's start over, shall we?"

She looked toward the windows, blinking against the sunshine that now shone brightly through the newly washed panes. The brightness stung at her eyes, making it necessary to blink back sudden tears. "All right," she agreed quietly. "Let's begin again."

"Thank you, Gilly," he said, lifting her hands to his lips one after the other, then taking a deep, steadying breath. "The sad condition of this pile of stones to one side, we've got a bigger problem, thanks to my own stupidity. I know this is a lot to ask, pet," he said somewhat nervously, "but my foolish pride won't be denied. Vain popinjay that I am, I would wish, although I've already written Jared about the reasons for our precipitate marriage, to convey the image that ours is a happy union—as I also so foolishly told him. In other words, while my friends are here, I would like us to exhibit some signs of affection between us while in their presence. Is that too much to ask?"

Gilly's heart took up a painful throbbing in her breast as she took in Kevin's earnest expression. Surely she'd been right. Kevin was in love with this Amanda person. What other reason could there be for him to be so concerned over putting a bright face on their marriage?

Nodding her head in assent to his request, her former anger now forgotten in the face of her newer, more painful reaction to the realization Kevin's heart belonged to another, Gilly slipped from the room, her husband's gaze following her woebegone figure in puzzlement.

That night, when he entered their private apartments, Gilly was nowhere to be found. There was a storm brewing outside, so he knew no smugglers were out, but he was at a loss to locate her.

When she appeared at breakfast the next morning, her eyes suspiciously red-rimmed, he asked her where she had slept, and had his nose bitten off for his efforts.

"That's none of your concern, my lord," she told him coldly. "I'll be your lapdog all the day long once your friends arrive. It's the least I can do to help a man so fraught with insecurity as yourself. But I'm telling you here and now, sir. Don't expect me to be your pillow at night. Not any more! I've no time to spare for mewling babes, and less desire to share a bed with a man so embarrassed by his wife's conduct he only seems able to approach her in the dark."

Kevin sat back in his chair when she was done, softly applauded her performance. "That was quite a speech, wife, and undoubtedly a well-prepared one. But as Shakespeare said, 'Since maids, in modesty, say "No" to that which they would have the profferer to construe "Aye,"' I do believe you protest too much."

"Oh, is that so? And I, Kevin Rawlings, believe that you are a low-down, filthy—"

"Ah, ah!" Kevin broke in hastily, and Gilly, her face white with fury, rose and stomped from the room.

Kevin's laughter followed after her, but there was little humor in his face as he spent that night, too, very much alone in his huge bed.

Amanda Delaney was a beautiful woman. From her coal black hair, to eyes the color of old gold coins, down to the tips of her dainty feet (not too great a distance as, although softly rounded, Lady Storm was just a little dab of a woman), she fairly oozed charm and femininity from every pore.

Lady Storm, by her mere physical appearance, made Gilly (even clad as she was in one of her new gowns the recently arrived Miss Roseberry had coaxed her into wearing) feel flashy, cheap, clumsy, plain, and jealous. Jealous of the other woman's beauty? Her charm? Her bearing? Definitely. She was jealous of all those things, Gilly admitted to herself. But mostly—painful as it was to acknowledge—she was jealous of Kevin's obvious affection for the woman.

From the first moments of introduction and exchanged greetings, Gilly had felt out of her element in the midst of these four (five, counting Rawlings), and could only long for the anonymity of the servant's hall. These people inhabited a world she had only dreamed of, a world she had only wished for in her wildest fantasies. She didn't belong here. She never had. She never would.

Now, as they all sat in the newly cleaned but still shabby large drawing room sipping Mrs. Whitebread's special herb tea and munching Hattie Kemp's honey topped scones, Gilly sat back and let the babble of conversation flow over her head as she observed Kevin's friends. The most she could hope for, as long as Kevin demanded her presence, was that they'd all forget she was in the room.

Jared Delaney, she had seen at once, was obviously a personage of some consequence. Not that he was straight-backed or toplofty in any way. But there was an air of confidence about the man, an aura of quiet authority as it were, that clung to his figure like a velvet cloak. He was also, thought Gilly, as handsome as a Greek god to boot, what with his great height, jet black hair, and startlingly vivid blue eyes.

Together, Lord Storm and his wife made a devastatingly handsome couple, and they were also, Gilly concluded after only a few minutes spent observing them, a couple very much in love with each other. Whether it was the way Amanda laid her hand on his arm when she spoke or the frequency with which his eyes sought her out, Gilly's general impression was that, if her idea about Kevin's affections were true, her poor husband was whistling at the moon.

Somewhat relaxed by this knowledge, Gilly examined Bo and Anne Chevington, a pair very dissimilar physically from Lord and Lady Storm. Where Amanda was beautiful, Anne was pretty; pale, blonde, and unassuming. Bo, unlike the physically impressive Jared, was short, a bit round, and the recipient of hair even more carroty than Gilly's. He seemed shy, and spoke in tight clipped sentences, almost as if he was in a rush to become silent once more.

Gilly decided she might just like the two couples well enough—heaven knew they were a far cry from the posturing, preening O'Keefe's. But, as she had told herself depressingly, that didn't mean they would like her in return. After all, she wasn't one of them. She felt sure all of them—and most positively Amanda—held definite thoughts on the sort of woman Kevin should marry. That her candidates for Kevin's bride could not possibly have included an unmannered bastard kitchen wench took no great burst of insight on Gilly's part.

Gilly mentally shrugged away Amanda Delaney's wants. Because that was all just too bad wasn't it for, like it or not, they were all stuck with her! So thinking, Gilly made an effort to listen to the conversation that had so far focused on the poor state of the King's highways and the advisability, to quote somebody's Aunt Agatha, of taking along one's own sheets when forced to make use of wayside inns.

"How is dear old Aggie?" Kevin broke in with an exaggerated grimace. "Still frog-marching everyone about like some line officer intent on keeping us all in order?"

Amanda laughed, as again her hand went out to her husband, who quickly took it and lifted her fingers to his lips. "Thanks to my sweet wife's forethought in producing twins, both Aunt Agatha and Nanny—you remember her, Kevin; that fire-breathing creature with the heart of a lion—are so endlessly occupied that we sometimes go entire days between, er, domestic crises."

"Remember, dearest, what happened when little Beau cut his first tooth?" his wife interjected. Amanda then turned to speak directly to Kevin and Gilly, who sat at either end of a small sofa. "Nanny, you see, wished to put powdered cloves against poor Beau's gums. But Aunt Agatha, in her turn, insisted a few drops of brandy would be more the ticket. In the end," Amanda had to pause to giggle, "they decided to try the remedies out on themselves first—with the results that Nanny's tongue was so numb she couldn't speak, and Aunt Agatha imbibed so much brandy she fell asleep at table and snored all through Sunday dinner."

"The vicar was visiting," Jared added, a chuckle escaping his own lips. "He was quite nonplused."

Now Gilly relaxed in spite of herself as they all enjoyed the joke, and when Kevin sat down close beside her after replacing his teacup on the tray, she did not shrink away from him.

"So, Bo," Kevin addressed the chubby redhead, "what have you been up to since your marriage? You've been quiet since your arrival, even for you."

It was Jared who answered. "Ah, Kevin, do you remember the saying, something about the deepest rivers flowing with the least sound' And our Bo certainly is a deep one. Why, they've not been married but three months, and already Anne is with child."

As Bo and Anne both turned a deep red, Amanda poked her husband in the ribs, admonishing him for upsetting Anne.

"What?
More
babies?" Kevin cried out in mock incredulity. "Is the whole of England then out to reproduce itself? Keep this sort of thing up, gentlemen," he admonished his two friends, "and soon there will be no room left at all, and we'll all topple into the sea."

At this, Amanda spoke up. "Kevin Rawlings, you haven't changed a whit since the day I met you. First you complain that your friends have deserted you by marrying, and now you accuse us of trying to usurp your land with our offspring. Yet after bemoaning our actions you have, at least in part, emulated them. Already you're married—and sooner or later you too will be a parent, as it most naturally follows, you know. Now, what do you say to that?"

Anne blushed at such frank speech and only whispered, "I don't know what Kevin might say, but I say
Amen.
"

"Quite jolly right," Bo added, patting his wife's hand.

"Trumped your ace," Jared pointed out, lifting his teacup in a toast to his wife.

Topping it all off, Amanda then remarked, "And it will probably be the making of him, you know, although Aunt Agatha has said innumerable times that our Kevin is beyond salvation. A sad fribble, I think she called him last we spoke."

Gilly was incredulous a moment, listening to this good-natured attack, but then joined in the laughter at her husband's expense.

Kevin looked about the room as if crushed by this assault from his bosom chums. "The treachery of one's friends is depressing to say the least, but that my bride chooses to side with my attackers fair bids to unman me. Wife," he said turning to face Gilly, who was suddenly quite sober, "I pray, I beg you, that you are not already planning to gift me with a miniature replica of myself."

"No, my lord," she replied softly, "I am not."

"Thank the gods!" her husband responded, raising her hands, and pressing kisses on both palms. "I want you entirely to myself for some time to come, dearest. You're too precious to me to begin to think of sharing you with another."

Gilly colored hotly at this speech, knowing Kevin's friends, who could not see the laughter in his eyes, were likely to take the impression that she and Kevin were deeply in love. They could not know how tightly he held her hands, so that she could not pull them away and slap that inane, teasing look off his handsome face. She knew he wanted her to voice an answer of some sort that would support his impression of a loving couple, lost to the people just now avidly watching this touching scene.

"And you know, dearest, of the depth of my affection for you," she at last replied, satisfying their audience and at the same time succeeding in wiping Kevin's expression clear of any traces of good humor.

A rapport of sorts had been established in the group by the time the small party broke up in order to dress for dinner. Indeed, Gilly was beginning to look forward to the chance of getting to know Kevin's friends better, and they, in turn, seemed to like her well enough. But she still, as she had done this last fortnight, held her husband at arm's length.