The Devilish Montague (6 page)

After rummaging through the luggage, Lady Bell returned with a clean white cloth and a brandy flask. She held them out for someone else to bring to him, not deigning to enter a stable containing a man with a naked foot. “I cannot conceive of any rational reason for this incident, Jocelyn,” the dowager said. “You have blood on your skirt.”

“And straw,” his mother added absently, kneeling on the floor at an excellent advantage for observing Miss Carrington’s attire. “I do hope she accepted your proposal if the two of you were out here all night.”

Damnation!
His mother was a woman dedicated to seeing him wedded. She would stick tighter than a leech if he did not divert her.

“We were not out here all night.” Blake gritted his teeth and whisked the cloth and flask out of Miss Carrington’s fingers so she might flee—which, of course, she didn’t do. He took a healthy swallow of the brandy before dumping the contents over his wound, then whipped the linen around his toe to hide it. “Our soaked conditions should be proof enough of that,” he added. “And Frances was with me until just a few hours ago.” Five or six, to be exact. Small matter.

Miss Carrington stooped down again, this time to offer aid in helping him up. Her damp attire revealed far more of her curves than he had any right to notice, and his blood thrummed in inappropriate reaction.

He blamed his response on the blond strand that had once been a ringlet dangling damply beside her ear. When he brushed aside her interfering aid, she nibbled a delectably pink bottom lip and cast him a look that he preferred not to interpret. The woman would no doubt blow off another toe if he allowed her closer.

“I was merely checking on my horse, and Miss Carrington was helping a mother cat.” Wobbling, Blake pushed off the floor without anyone’s assistance, hoping to escape this ambush of delicate femininity until he recovered from his light-headedness, which had probably been brought on by loss of blood. Certainly not from Miss Carrington’s presence.

He’d shot his good foot, leaving him to hobble unsteadily with one boot on and one boot off. It would be simpler to volunteer for the army again rather than suffer another house party like this one.

The least he could do was collect the reward for his troubles. He’d heard the filthy-mouthed bird in the cart as the hordes descended, but it was impossible to listen for it while his mother, Frances, Lady Belden, and Miss Carrington chattered all at once.

“That’s sweet of you to protect her reputation after she saved you from a duel,” his mother simpered, following close and prepared to catch him should he topple, although he towered a foot taller, several stone heavier, and would likely flatten her. “She’s a darling girl, and we thoroughly approve.”

“I am not protecting anyone, and I was not aware that I needed your approval, Mother,” he replied stiffly. Saved him from a duel! As if he needed saving. Ogilvie was such a bad shot, he could only have hoped to hit Blake by accident.

Any attempt at argument with his parents felt as if he’d been reduced to a snot-nosed boy in short breeches, but he couldn’t let his mother entertain ridiculous hopes about an addlepate who would no doubt get him killed. “Miss Carrington was not with me, as Ogilvie and Atherton can attest.”

Not that Ogilvie would be inclined to help him or that anyone would believe a rake like Nick. Blake ignored the imagined noose tightening around his neck and limped toward the wagon, eyeing the stacks of trunks, satchels, and other assorted luggage piled high. They were less than a day’s journey from London, but it looked as if Miss Carrington and Lady Belden had packed enough for a year on the Continent.

Miss Carrington hastened to come between him and her boxes.

Rather than suffer the continued humiliation of being dithered over, Blake risked her tempting perfume to lean over and whisper in the bird lady’s ear, “If you will not tell me where you have hidden Ogilvie’s fowl, I have nothing further to say in your defense, Miss Carrington. Your reputation may go hang.”

“Oh, I believe you are wrong there.” She caught his arm and steered him toward the house, away from the cart, steadying his limping stride while pretending he supported her. “But men are often so caught up in seeing the world at large that they fail to comprehend the social niceties. That’s where women are eminently useful, is that not right, Lady Montague?”

Blake politely refrained from rolling his eyes at her apparent reference to the straw on her skirt and the noose dropping over his head. Instinct warned that she had turned the table and was holding the situation over
his
head as a threat. He had the urge to fling off her hand and stalk into the house, except with a bad knee and an injured toe, he feared he’d fall flat on his face.

“Precisely, Miss Carrington,” his mother happily replied. “Blake is a brilliant visionary who could lead men out of darkness if he applied his talent appropriately, but he cannot see the food beneath his nose sometimes.”

“Perhaps it has not been the proper food,” Ladybyrd suggested, patting Blake’s coat sleeve and offering him a dimpled smile as he limped up the stairs to the portico.

As if she understood he’d like nothing better than to heave her down the stairs they’d just ascended, Miss Carrington slipped blithely into the house after Lady Belden, who had her pert nose so out of joint that it was a wonder it didn’t brush the door lintel as she passed under it. Women! He’d never understand them. Nor did he want to.

“I forgot to leave instructions with the stable lad about my horse,” Blake said abruptly. “I shall see you at breakfast.”

“Your foot!” his mother protested as he hobbled away. “It will become infected!”

His head was likely to become infected if he lingered longer among musical voices and feminine scents while any chance of claiming Ogilvie’s—or a duke’s—reward rolled away with the luggage wagon. Why on earth would a duke want an obscene parrot?

Leaving the ladies to dither inside, he reversed course and limped back to the stable.

Having discarded her damp cloak and bonnet, but still wearing her wilted evening gown, Jocelyn kept an eye on the stable yard out the window while Lady Belden paced up and down the parlor. The lady harangued the fates that had put Jocelyn and Blake Montague in the same location at the unfortunate hour of dawn, with more than one witness. She ended up bewailing the need to return Jocelyn to her family.

“You must marry! I cannot let you return to Norfolk in the state I found you in,” the lady finally cried. “Your half sister behaved appallingly!”

With a weary grimace, Jocelyn recalled the day Lady Bell had arrived, a particularly disastrous occasion if she did say so herself. One of Richard’s ducks had nested on her brother-in-law Charles’s head the previous night. Her half sister Elizabeth had rolled into an egg the duck had laid on her pillow. And when Charles had wrung the duck’s neck and roared down the stairs to swat at Richard with the carcass, Jocelyn’s kitten had crossed his path, tripping him until he’d fallen face-first into the maid’s slop bucket. She could almost smile at the memory now.

She hadn’t been smiling when Charles had gone after the kitten with an ax and sworn that Richard would be sent to Bedlam and the rest of the damned family could go with him. She’d heard that threat from her other relations over the years. It inevitably meant more upheaval, and at the time, she had run out of options. Lady Bell had saved her.

“Baron Montague has said he will provide his Chelsea home as a settlement on his son if Blake marries a wife of whom he approves,” Lady Belden was saying, disrupting Jocelyn’s reverie. “But I fear Blake Montague is a confirmed bachelor with violent tendencies and little income of his own who will not appreciate your social skills.”

To be perfectly honest, after being relegated to rural desolation for so many years, Jocelyn had been having such a good time whirling about society these past months that she truly hadn’t given much thought to what kind of husband might suit her. She’d given a great deal of thought to ones who would
not
suit her, however.

If it weren’t for her little brother and the desperate need to find a stable home for him, she would not worry about marrying at all. But she feared Lady Bell was making it clear that her own home wouldn’t be indefinitely available, and even with the caretaker Jocelyn had hired to keep Richard out of trouble, the time had come to make a decision. She truly didn’t want to be thrown out of still another home.

“I can see that you might not be happy living in the country, although you could certainly afford to hire a companion and do so,” Lady Belden continued, her voice softening as it usually did once she vented her anger or dismay. Slender and elegant, she looked like a disapproving angel. “But if you wish to live in town and go about in society, you must marry. Blake Montague may be a decent man, but he does not meet your requirements by any means.”

Standing in the bay window, Jocelyn watched the wretched man in question. He was systematically dismantling the baggage wagon’s load under the bemused gaze of the driver.

Hardheaded, determined, with a strong streak of cynicism and snobbery, Blake Montague would not be easily manipulated. His clever wits would spin circles around her. But she had tricks he’d not encountered, ones developed out of necessity and over the course of many escapades while dodging Harold and her half sisters, who disliked bird poop in their soup. Getting caught in a stable was just one in a long string of misfortunes that would have flattened her by now if she wasn’t resourceful.

Besides, Blake Montague apparently had something she might use—a house in Chelsea. She and Richard had grown up on their father’s estate in Chelsea, and her younger brother would be ecstatic to be back by the river again. The village was less than an hour’s ride from London, so it wasn’t entirely rural oblivion. Lady Bell was correct, though. Blake Montague did not suit her in any way—except that he wished to go off to war. A house in exchange for his colors. That was something to consider.

There were any number of reasons why the incredible notion forming in her addled brain was probably terribly, horribly wrong—starting with the fact that she just might need to kill the man if he didn’t leave her brother’s parrot alone.

She preferred confronting problems to dithering over them. Now that she’d found Percy, the bird would require Richard’s care. Richard needed a home with an aviary. She could afford no suitable house in London.

Her brother-in-law would not tolerate Richard’s childishly inappropriate tantrums and her mother’s disconnection with reality for very much longer. Charles would insist that Richard be institutionalized. Or worse yet, that he be returned to his proper guardian, Harold. Richard had no defense against Harold’s rages. That would be an abomination. Mama was not quite so intrusive and might escape his fury, but Lady Carrington deserved a home of her own, too.

Jocelyn needed a husband so she could have a home. Blake Montague needed a wealthy wife so he could go to war. He’d recklessly stained her reputation. The conclusion seemed obvious.

Montague might conclude otherwise, but she wasn’t above a little blackmail. He was a gentleman, after all. His reputation had as much to suffer as hers.

If she hadn’t killed Harold in all these years, then she should be able to hum along just fine with an overeducated snob who would spend the better part of a year a thousand miles away.

Jocelyn swung about, dropped an elegant curtsy, and hurried across the parlor, forcing Lady Belden to halt in midsentence. “Perhaps Blake Montague belongs on a battlefield,” Jocelyn acknowledged. “But he does not belong in my baggage. If you will excuse me, my lady—”

She left without waiting for permission. She knew better. She was extremely well versed in etiquette. She could converse eloquently with a queen or a housekeeper. She might be as simpleminded as others called her, but she had learned all the rules so she knew how best to work around them.

She also knew how to play the rules to get what she wanted, and right now, despite all her misgivings, she had Blake Montague in her crosshairs.

She took the side steps to the cobblestone stable yard and hastened across, wishing she had a riding crop. “Stop that this instant!” she shouted in a most unladylike fashion.

Not that a mere shout would stop a tenacious rogue like Montague. The man could scarcely walk! Yet he was unloading her baggage while hobbling about on a bloody bandage and a gimpy leg. Even so, without a pistol of her own, she couldn’t physically force him to cease his depredations. He was far larger than she. With his short-waisted coat unbuttoned, his neckcloth unfastened, and the damp linen plastered to his formidable chest, he revealed far more of his muscular physique than she wished to encounter.

Fortunately, physical strength failed before her arsenal of weapons.

“If you do not stop that this instant, I shall tell your mama that you lied and that we spent the night together in the stable!” she called.

The annoying man narrowed his eyes and immediately removed his hands from the crate next to the bird box. She could hear Percy stirring. In another moment, the poor creature would be screaming for his breakfast, in words that would make a seaman blush.

Ignoring Mr. Montague’s escalating temper—as indicated by his ominous silence—Jocelyn stalked toward the side of the stable where Lady Belden couldn’t see them from the parlor window. And where the miserable rogue couldn’t disturb Richard’s parrot.

She tried not to glance down at his bandaged toes. She hated that she’d shot him, but she couldn’t stifle her curiosity. She’d never seen a man’s bare foot. His was arched high, with long, elegant—manly—toes.

“That is the stupidest threat I’ve ever heard,” he finally said, limping along beside her. With his overlong hair coming loose from its unfashionable queue, he looked more disreputable than ever.