Yankee Earl (29 page)

      
Ah, yes, in bed they would do quite well together. Of that he was certain. For all her protests, Rachel Fairchild was a passionate woman who might know the mechanics of animal reproduction, but had only the slightest inkling of the pleasure a man and woman could give each other. Without undue vanity, he knew he could initiate her successfully. That would take care of the nights. But what about the days?

      
And what about the scheming old marquess who cared only that the Beaumont name and Cargrave titles were carried on? No, he would not fall into that trap, no matter how beauteous an enticement she presented. Why the deuce had she written that note asking him to meet her this way? Since his arrival at the Dalberts', they had taunted and sniped at each other until his nerves were raw.

      
Their plans for the escape were finalized. What more was left? A moonlight tryst. Keeping his hands off of her had become increasingly difficult with every meeting. If he weakened and seduced her, all would be lost. Did he have the willpower to resist her?

      
“Only one way to find out,” he muttered grimly and stalked across the terrace to the rose garden.

* * * *

      
Harry sighed, wringing her hands. She had been unable to sleep, eager to learn what had transpired in the garden between Rachel and the earl. Would they have succumbed to passion right out in broad moonlight? On a bed of roses? She was not certain if her English sensibilities found that romantic or merely very uncomfortable. It would certainly be imprudent, but then at least they would realize that they were meant for each other. Far past time for that to be settled. She simply had to find out what delicious results her machinations had wrought.

      
Opening the door to her room, she peeked up and down the long hallway. As usual, there were no servants about. Sir Roger and his lady were decidedly niggardly in hiring staff, she sniffed. The light was dim but sufficient to allow her to make her way to Rachel's room. Turning the lock, she slipped inside and closed the door, calling out softly, “Rachel, dear, 'tis Harry. Are you asleep?”

      
No answer. Harry moved cautiously toward the bed. At times her sister could sleep like the dead after spending hours riding around Harleigh and mucking about with the tenants. Harry pulled back the heavy satin bed hangings and squinted in the faint moonlight. Empty.

      
“Well, I shall just have to wait.” She stepped on the footstool and climbed onto the bed, letting her feet swing over the edge of the mattress. It would be far more comfortable to lie back on the pillows than to sit in that uncomfortable chair by the window.

      
Before long she dozed.

      
Moments later the door opened and two figures slipped inside, closing it behind them. The taller carried a heavy woolen blanket. His slighter companion held a small truncheon in his hand. “Yer wants me to cosh 'er first?” he whispered to his accomplice.

      
“Let me throw this over 'er, then see,” the big fellow replied as he stepped deftly to the bed. Shoving the curtains aside, he looked down at the sleeping woman. Learning which room belonged to Rachel Fairchild from the drunken footman had been as simple as taking a coin from a street urchin. Now all they had to do was deliver her, relatively unharmed, to the toff waiting at the edge of the woods.

      
With a practiced hand, he threw the heavy, vile-smelling blanket over the sleeping woman and rolled her inside it before she awakened enough to make one small, muffled cry. She wriggled and coughed, but he held her easily, then tossed her over his shoulder. Turning to the fellow with the truncheon, he said, “Now give 'er a tap, light ‘un, careful not to damage the goods.”

      
Chuckling, the smaller man did as he was bade and Harry's struggling ceased.

      
Fox stood at the end of the hallway, looking from Jason's room, which was mysteriously empty, toward the room into which two ill-dressed and hard-looking strangers had just slipped. They did not seem to belong here. Certainly they were not guests, and he was almost positive they were not servants, either. At best they might be stablemen, but what would stablemen be doing in the house in the middle of the night?

      
They looked more like the sort of toughs he'd seen from carriage windows as he and Grandfather rode through the streets of London. Instinctively, Fox did not like them. He darted back into Jace's room and looked about for the carved pecan case in which his hero always carried his pistols. Seizing one, primed and ready, for Jace never allowed them to be any other way, he slipped out the door and crouched behind a pier table in the hallway.

      
Within a moment the men reemerged from the room. The taller one was carrying what looked like a rolled-up carpet over one shoulder. Cracksmen stealing rugs from the guest rooms? Puzzled, Fox began to follow as they made their way stealthily down the servants' stairs.

      
They moved through the kitchens, where the cook fires were banked and deserted, and made their way out a doorway as if they had been given an architectural drawing of the old manor house. The two thieves walked down a gravel path leading to a ramshackle dairy barn. Bypassing that, they headed toward the woods, where another man emerged from the shadows.

      
This one was even taller than the man carrying the rug and he was dressed like a toff. Just then the rug began to move, wriggling like a centipede on a stick. Fox's eyes grew huge as he watched the man toss his burden on the thick, dew-wet grass and yank it up, unrolling the figure of a woman, who cried out. The baroness, Miss Fairchild's sister! The boy would have recognized her pale golden hair and high, sweet voice anywhere. The blackguards had kidnapped her, and now the smaller one reached down and struck her before she could cry out again.

      
Fox dashed closer, using the overgrown brush and weeds for cover as his Shawnee uncles had taught him. Now he was ever so glad he'd brought Jace's pistol. There would be no time to summon help. He would have to rescue her all by himself. Fox could overhear the angry exchange between the gentleman and the cracksmen now.

      
“You utter idiots! This is not Rachel Fairchild but her sister.”

      
“She were in the Fairchild woman's room, asleep in 'er bed,” the tall man protested.

      
“And were no one else in the room neither,” the one who'd struck her averred.

      
“You had the wrong room, you incompetent louts. The gel recognized me. Someone may have heard her cry. Get rid of her quickly,” he said.

      
“We don't do nothin' 'less we gets paid, gov,” the little man said nastily.

      
With a snarled oath, the nobleman tossed the pouch of coins he had at his waist to the taller of the pair. “Kill her and throw her body in the woods.”

      
With that icy command, he turned on his heel and stalked toward the big, blaze-faced chestnut grazing unconcernedly a few yards away. Jumping on its back, he vanished into the darkness, leaving the two thugs with their prey.

      
Fox swallowed hard for courage and moved in closer, clutching the pistol in one small, sweaty hand.

* * * *

      
Rachel heard the soft echo of footfalls and turned with a stifled gasp as Jason loomed behind her. “Must you always make it a habit to sneak up on people?” His hair was rumpled and glowed blue-black in the moonlight, framing that harshly beautiful face, now made even more menacing in the shadows. He had shed his formal dinner clothes and wore a soft shirt, open at the throat as was his wont. Her eyes skimmed over the hard planes of his hair-sprinkled chest as was her wont.

      
“You were expecting me. My arrival should scarce be a surprise.” He could smell the faint essence of her perfume blended with her unique female scent, a fragrance more enticing than all the roses in England. His hands ached to touch her, and he found himself stepping dangerously close. Her breasts were barely an inch from his chest. If either of them took a deep breath…

      
Rachel tore her eyes away from that muscular chest and stepped back before she did something utterly stupid. Her heart hammered and the blood all seemed to rush from her head, leaving it swimming, fuzzy and confused. Every instinct in her body cried out that she fall into his arms and let him kiss her, for that was certainly what it seemed he wished to do. She swayed ever so faintly toward him without realizing it.

      
That was all the encouragement Jason needed. One hand reached up, taking a fistful of the shiny dark hair cascading down her back, pulling her against his chest. “I'm glad you did not plait it,” he murmured as he tilted her head backward and lowered his mouth to hers for a kiss. She tasted sweet and tart all at once—a fitting match to her personality, he thought ruefully. Then her lips parted with a soft moan and he could not think at all.

      
His tongue was fierce, commanding and hungry, just as his eyes had been when he had taken her aside in the foyer before dinner. This was madness, but such sweet madness that she could never deny him. A dim part of her brain was telling her that this was the perfect solution to her fears about seducing him on their wedding night. But what if he took her now?

      
That sudden thought snaked its way past the excitement as he rained kisses across her eyelids, cheeks and throat, then once more centered on her mouth. Rachel struggled to make her body obey the commands her mind was frantically sending.
Do not let him have you here! It must be on your wedding night. The servants must see your virgin blood on the sheets so that they swear it is a true marriage that cannot be annulled.
But a deeply buried fear lay like ice in her heart. What if in refusing him now, she so infuriated him as to kill his desire for her? How could she deny herself the intense pleasure of his caresses? What if this were her only chance to have him?

      
Her jumbled thoughts finally crystallized when his hands once again cupped her breasts, just as he had that night in his bed…before he lost consciousness. She had been grateful he did not appear to remember it, but humiliated by her own disappointment when he was unable to go further. Letting him come near her before the wedding was insanity. She had to get away. Biting back a cry of anguish, she turned her head and twisted from his embrace.

      
They were both breathless, dazed as they stood looking at one another. His hands fisted at his sides, and the tendons in his jaw twisted when he gritted his teeth in frustration. Rachel dared not lower her eyes, for she knew what would be revealed by his tight-fitting britches. Her first impulse was to turn and run away; but she had never been a coward and her nature was too set to change now, even for the likes of this Yankee earl.

* * * *

      
Fox watched the two men as they considered how to carry out the ghastly assignment they had been given. He could hear the shorter one saying, “I say we ‘as a bit o' sport w' 'er afore we kills 'er.”

      
“No. Remember wot ‘is lordship said. She may ‘ave raised the alarm. We got no time,” his tall companion replied, reaching inside his raggedy jacket and producing an evil-looking knife.

      
Fox saw the gleam of the blade as the killer knelt over the unconscious form of the baroness. Stepping out from behind the shrubs where he had been hiding, he aimed Jace's pistol and said in the steadiest voice he could muster, “Drop the knife and step away from the lady.”

      
“Whot 'ave we ‘ere, eh?” the short fellow said, moving menacingly toward Fox.

      
“No bigger 'n a minute, is 'e?” the tall one said, releasing the baroness. “You better go back ta yer stables whilst ye can still walk away.”

      
“You are the ones who will leave—without harming the lady.”

      
“Now, lad, there be brave 'n' there be foolish,” the knife-wielder said, signaling his companion to outflank Fox.

      
Knowing he had but one shot, the boy decided the knife was the most immediate danger. Just as he prepared to fire, the baroness began to stir, giving out a moan that caused all three to glance down at her as she struggled onto all fours.

* * * *

      
Rachel inhaled to calm her pounding heart, trying desperately to think of something to say to Jason. “This is an ill way to apologize for your churlish behavior at dinner. I believed you'd written that note for a better purpose than seduction,” she finally managed.

      
“I'd written a note?” he echoed incredulously. “You were the one summoning me, Countess.”

      
“I—” Suddenly realization dawned. “You received a note, too?”

      
“From you. I recognized your handwriting.” He looked at her with narrowed eyes. What game was she playing?