The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (59 page)

"Ghost walked again last night, Jared. Hear it?"

"Hmm?" Lord Storm replied to Bo's query absently, his mind still on other matters.

"Noises," Bo went on, heedless of his friend's introspective mood. "Heard 'em. Anne heard 'em. Anybody could. Going deaf, Jared?" Just then their host tardily (as usual) entered the library looking resplendent in his evening finery (again, as usual), and Bo asked without preamble, "You hear it, Kevin? Screeched to wake the dead. Banshee, you think?"

Lord Lockport was not blessed with the ability to read minds, but it took no great insight on his part to decipher Bo's code-like speech. "Not banshees, friend. Hinges, more like," he told Bo cryptically as he poured himself a glass of burgundy.

That statement demanded an explanation, one Kevin rendered happily enough—only leaving out the ignominious ending to the adventure.

Jared pondered the tale for a moment and then asked the question that had risen in his mind. "Why drag your wife along on such a potentially dangerous mission?" As Kevin opened his mouth to protest, Jared held out his hands and went on, "No, no. You don't have to answer. I understand why you went to her chamber. You wanted to assure yourself that she wasn't the intruder. In your boots, I would have done the same myself. But, after easing your mind on that head, why wake the girl? If you felt the need for companionship, wouldn't Bo or I have been a better choice?"

"Peacocking," Bo muttered, his nose stuck in his glass.

"What?" Jared asked, turning to look at his friend. "Oh—
peacocking.
Of course, Bo. How dense of me not to have thought of it myself. Our Kevin meant to show off in front of the lady. Still a bit of the schoolboy left in you, eh, Kevin?"

Kevin strove to ignore these barbs, having no great desire to be made the butt of any more jokes. Perhaps if he had succeeded in getting back in his wife's good graces—not to mention back in her bed—he could have found it easier to take their friendly ribbing. But he hadn't, and he needed no reminders of that sad fact.

"I discovered something last night, gentlemen," he announced, knowing what he had to say would divert attention from his less than successful evening. "Aside from the passageway Gilly pointed out to me, there are any number of other secret panels, stairways, and passages in The Hall."

"Priest's hole?"

"Yes, Bo, I'm sure there's one of those as well," Kevin assured the interested man. "But it's the underground passages
outside
, on the estate, that really bother me—tunnels large enough to drive a curricle through, Gilly told me. Worse, the vastness of the network is unknown. If any of the tunnels open into The Hall, and if our intruder has knowledge of them? Well, I don't imagine I have to spell it out for you."

"Indeed not," Jared agreed, his brow wrinkled in concern.

"Adjourn to the cellars? Tap on the walls?" Bo suggested amicably. "Hold the candles. Bring the bottle. What, ho? Shall we?"

The eager redhead was half out of his seat before Kevin's barked "Sit down you idiot!" causing him to fall back into the chair with a disappointed sigh. Clearly, if there was any adventure to be had concerning the tunnels, it was not to begin that evening.

Just then the dinner gong sounded and the men went off to join the ladies and their guests for the evening, Rory and Glynis O'Keefe. Ever since Lord and Lady Storm had separately gifted the Lockports with much the same advice, the O'Keefe's had been invited to The Hall with, if Bo Chevington's opinion had been asked for, nauseating frequency.

After an interminable meal, during which Rory made cow eyes at Gilly and Kevin outdid himself in his attentions to the openly preening Miss O'Keefe, the ladies adjourned to the recently refurbished music room while the men remained behind to relax over their port and cigars.

"How charming you look in that gown, Gilly dear," Glynis simpered sweetly once they were settled in the room. "You will wear a prodigious amount of green, won't you? La, never mind. After all, what other choice do you really have with that hair?"

"Oh, I don't know, Glynis dear," Gilly returned, wide-eyed. "I know Kevin also likes me in black, although he protests that I'm much too young to wear such a matronly, funereal shade."

As Glynis almost invariably wore stylish black (as she was doing at this moment), Amanda and Anne were hard put to cast their eyes elsewhere lest they look at each other and burst into giggles.

"Blondes usually look extremely well in black, I've always thought," Anne felt bound to put in politely, favoring Glynis with an admiring smile and effectively diverting the woman away from delivering a second sugarcoated insult (that would no doubt be taken up again by Gilly, with who knew what dire results).

Long minutes passed in painfully correct civility and the tension in the room rose accordingly. Before armed hostilities could break out, the gentlemen came in, Rory still busily trying to reiterate his agreement with anything his companions had talked about over their drinks.

Gilly could not help but compare the differences between Rory and her husband as they strode into the room side by side. Kevin's Brummell-like attire won hands down in any comparison with O'Keefe's neat but tired jacket and darned waistcoat.

The bodies beneath their clothing were both well formed, but there was something subtle about Kevin, some natural grace of movement that gave hint to a lean but powerful physique, and that made the other man look soft and weak.

Kevin was intelligent, Gilly thought, while Rory was decidedly a man who should devote more time to listening rather than opening his mouth when he had so little to say. Kevin was polite; Rory was fawning. Kevin had a sense of humor; Rory had no sense at all. Kevin was real; Rory was artificial. Kevin was—
oh
, Gilly sighed quietly,
Kevin was everything she could wish for. Kind, thoughtful, gentle, considerate ...

Gilly shook her head at her own folly. She knew what Kevin was. He was a two-faced, debt-ridden, fortune-hunting, pleasure-mad opportunist. He'd married her saying he wanted to save the estate, knowing full well it was only a means to secure the old Earl's fortune in a year's time. Not content with that, he was now seeking more gain from the jewels Mutter suggested might make up the hidden fortune. He even seemed eager to learn about the smuggling, most probably because he saw a way to make some money from that as well. But how? By joining Harry and the rest of the men, or by turning them over to the revenue officers in hopes of some reward?

As further proof of his selfish interests, Gilly told herself doggedly, he demands his marital rights until he can get back to his paramours in the city, at which time he'll conveniently forget his countrified bastard wife.

How much Gilly loved Kevin. How little she trusted him.
Ah, but I've been lucky
, she thought, sipping heavily at her wine.
If he hadn't shown himself to be an utter glutton by chasing after Glynis O'Keefe, I might have allowed myself to be fooled and come completely under his spell.

With all of these thoughts and conclusions coloring her judgment, any flirting Gilly may have done with O'Keefe up until the moment he joined her on the sofa was to pass as nothing, as she began to fairly drool over the man, so marked were her attentions.

Asking if anyone wanted to hear a song, she directed O'Keefe to bring her the aged lute that stood in a glass case in the corner.

"Oh, no," Glynis cried, "not those ancient songs again! What a shame your pianoforte is so out of tune, or I could play and sing for you, Kevin, rather than for you to endure Gilly's sad repertoire."

"I like her songs," Kevin shot back defensively, forgetting his role of flirting male for a second, thus causing Glynis to scowl fiercely before quickly recovering herself and succeeding in looking crestfallen, repentant, and lovely at one and the same time.

"I like them too," piped up Rory (who swore he liked everything) as he bowed over Gilly and presented her with the instrument.

Kevin pretended to gag, but everyone ignored him.

The lute was difficult to keep in tune, and Gilly worked for several minutes until she seemed satisfied. Then she began playing random snatches from a merry tune written by Henry VIII as Bo, who lost all his inhibitions at such times, ably sang the words telling of the Monarch's lust for the good life.

Kevin had heard Gilly play before and was, as usual, proud of the way she performed the old songs and airs. Hattie Kemp had informed him that Gilly's mother had taught her to play the lute using song books they found at The Hall, such as Thomas Campion's
Third Book of Airs.
It may have first been published in 1617, but it was the most recent material available, as the late Earl's tastes hadn't expanded to include music, or else at least three rooms in The Hall would be piled to the rafters with songbooks.

With Gilly's talent for the lute, Kevin mused, it was a pity the harp and the other instruments were so sadly in need of repair. As soon as there were any funds to spare, he resolved, the harp must be mended. He, who had made her a lifelong prisoner of The Hall, owed it to Gilly to at least provide her with some forms of amusement.

Damn, but it wasn't fair! Kevin seethed when he thought of how his contemporaries in London would cut Gilly dead if they knew she was a bastard—which it wouldn't take them long to discover. Even his own consequence and popularity wouldn't be enough to spare her such humiliation by a condemning Society, which had destroyed so many people before her.

Only royal by-blows and legalized bastards like the Harleian Miscellany, who might all bear the same surname but who could none of them be sure were sired by the same father, were accepted in Society. Maybe, he thought, when she was older, less startlingly beautiful (oh, how Kevin's original opinion of his wife's looks had altered!), the
ton
could be made to tolerate her. But until that day, there was nothing for it but to keep her here, at The Hall, where she had friends and loyal servants to protect her.

She could have gone anywhere she liked, done anything she wanted, if only she could have half Sylvester's fortune (the least she deserved) and the freedom to leave The Hall and her past behind her. With enough money she could have set herself up in Ireland or somewhere and lived in luxury, married a man she loved, and raised a half-dozen red-haired little babies.

But no, Gilly couldn't do that; she wasn't free to do that. She was married—chained to a man she would only give herself to in the dark, never in the sunlight. A man she tolerated but did not love. Damn his uncle! Damn the Will. Damn The Hall. Damn everything. Kevin damned them all, because they had damned his love for Gilly to live and die unrequited.

For a while, he had believed Gilly might actually have begun to care for him, but too many things kept interfering, pushing them apart. The spy, the smugglers, their house guests, the fortune and their midnight visitor—not to mention the O'Keefe's. Kevin's thoughts rudely brought him back to the heart of his current unhappiness—Rory O'Keefe. He'd noticed Gilly's flirtation with the man before this. He would have had to be blind and deaf not to. But never before tonight had her encouraging behavior been so pronounced, so blatant

The harder Gilly flirted with Rory (by means of small girlish smiles, giggles, and shameless eyelash batting), the more Kevin retaliated by flirting with Glynis (by means of artful compliments, meaningful glances, and one or two playful winks).

Like watching a shuttlecock flying back and forth across the net, the other four people in the room looked from one couple to the other, as enthralled as an audience watching an exceptional performance at Covent Garden.

Once Bo tried to intervene, easing the charged atmosphere a bit when he begged Gilly to play the lively tune
Now Is The Month Of Maying
and, while everyone sang the choruses, Bo backed them up with a hearty
fa-la-la-la-la.

As a diversion it was a laudable try, but when Amanda begged for another tune, "something soft and possibly sad, please," Bo wished he'd suggested a few hands of cards instead, for Gilly began to play one of Campion's more plaintive airs:

Shall I come sweet love to thee
When the evening beams are set?
Shall I not excluded be
Will you find no feigned let?
Let me not for pity more,
Tell the long hours at your door.

As she sang, her eyes never left Rory's face, so near to her on the sofa. Then she turned slowly towards Kevin and sang the second verse directly to him:

But to let such dangers pass
Which a lover's thoughts disdain,
'Tis enough in such a place
To attend Love's joys in vain.
Do not mock me in thy bed
While these cold nights freeze me dead.
While these cold nights freeze me dead.

While the first verse had been sung in a seductively pleading voice, the second, a quite suggestive bit of poetry actually, was sung in a voice somehow suddenly gone hard, as if she was conveying a between-the-lines message to Kevin.

He received the message with a look of fury darkening his face. Gilly was letting him know she felt their lovemaking to be a mockery, and that she—and he—would freeze dead before they'd share the same bed again.

Well, enough was enough, and too much was just too much. Or so thought Kevin Rawlings. His usual cool urbanity for once completely gone, he determined to get up from his seat, go over and grab Gilly by the scruff of her neck, and march her up to their chambers where he would either strangle her or bed her.

He actually had risen to his feet, as had Jared, who was reluctantly about to restrain his friend, by force if necessary, when the glass doors opened with a force that set them crashing back against the inner walls.

A man stumbled into the room.

"M'lord. I-I've been ... sh-shot!" Kevin's estate manager, Walter Grey, gasped between ragged breaths before sliding gracefully to the floor.

Kevin and Gilly were the first to reach him, Kevin turning the man onto his back while Gilly's hands went straight to Grey's shoulder, that was dark and sticky with blood.