Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 03] (33 page)

Deciding to live to fight another day, Wolfe bent to set his pistol on the floor. The rifle remained aimed at him for several long moments.

“What is the meaning of this outrage?”

Outrage
. Wolfe’s nerves twitched. The prissy little sod’s very language grated on Wolfe’s ear like the sound of a saw.

“I’m sorry, Stick, old man.” Apologize. Lap it up.
Convince the smarmy little bastard to let his guard down. Then kill him and break into the safe.

It was a hell of a plan.

Not as good as the one that didn’t include Stickley armed and ready for him, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” he pleaded.
Oh, how I want to hurt you
. He opened his hands wide to demonstrate his helplessness and took a step forward. He had the reach on Stick. He could probably rip that rifle out of the smaller man’s hands if he chose to.

Then he would pound the little bastard’s face to mush. When the body was found, he’d be sure to cry all the way to the Bank of London.

Stickley seemed to be buying it. He lowered the rifle slightly. “You said you weren’t going to harm Miss Blake or the duke.”

Wolfe shrugged. “Are they harmed? I came out of the matter with a bloody nose, I’ll remind you! And that duke won the day in the alley as well. Kidnapping Brookhaven came to naught and I never personally laid a finger on Lady Brookhaven. I simply encouraged Baskin’s infatuation.” While he spoke, he eased forward a fraction of an inch for every word. Then he lunged for the rifle.

There
.

With a mighty wrench, he pulled the gun out of Stickley’s grip, then quickly switched it to aim at him. “Ha! You’re dead now, you little sod!”

Lamplight flared in the darkened room. “No, he isn’t,” a voice said pleasantly.

Wolfe turned to see a full audience of—blast it!—witnesses. Standing in the room were the Duke of Edencourt, the Marquis of Brookhaven and that literal bastard, Lord Raphael Marbrook.

“How thoughtful of you to recount your sins to us, Mr. Wolfe.” The marquis’s tone was dry. “There were some there I hadn’t even known of.”

Witnesses or not, Wolfe was the only one who was armed. He pointed the rifle at the gentlemen before him. “My lords, Your Grace, I’m sorry to inform you that you’ve all just purchased tickets on the ‘Make My Wife a Widow’ ship—” He smiled nastily. “Which sails immediately.”

Stickley was shaking his head. “I always thought you were simply drunk most of the time. I never realized that you were in the process of becoming the stupidest man alive. If I knew you were coming with enough certainty to assemble this esteemed panel of witnesses, don’t you think I would have used similar forethought to remove the bullets from my rifle?”

The three gentlemen opposite him pulled rifles of their own from behind their backs. “These, however, are quite loaded. Aren’t they, Mr. Stickley?”

Wolfe turned on his partner in fury. “You’re just as guilty of all that as I am, Stick. If I hang, you hang with me!”

He turned back to Brookhaven. “Do you want to know who attacked your fiancée and kidnapped your brother just before your wedding?” He raised one finger to point at Stickley. “This man right here was by my side all through that adventure.”

Brookhaven narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying that Stickley was there, helping you stage a highway robbery on my carriage?” He moved nearer. “Are you saying that he held a gun on my brother’s wife, my fiancée, and that he locked him in a rotten basement for days without food or water?”

Wolfe nodded vengefully. “He did!”

Stickley shook his head wearily. “So much whiskey, Wolfe. I knew it was only a matter of time until you lost your mind.”

“What?” Wolfe looked from one man to the next but saw not an iota of suspicion about to fall on Stickley. He waved the rifle in frustration. “Ask your wife, Marbrook! She was there!”

“Oh, my, yes,” Stickley nodded and made for the door to the kitchen. “My lady, if you please?”

When Lady Marbrook came out, Wolfe gaped. Then he smiled at her, his last hope. She drew back, her brows rising in alarm.

“Rafe, make him stop.”

Lord Marbrook put an arm about her. “It’s all right, darling. Mr. Wolfe seems to have experienced some confusion about the night before I was kidnapped. He’d like you to clear something up for us all.”

Wolfe raised his hand to point at Stickley. “There were two of us that night, weren’t there?”

Lady Marbrook blinked at him. “Two? Are you sure?”

Wolfe’s jaw dropped. “You saw us both!”

She shrugged. “I can’t really recall. I was so terrified, you see—a helpless lady alone on a dark road
with a highwayman . . .” She shook her head regretfully. “I’m not sure what I saw.”

Wolfe saw it all now. Stickley had made a bargain with them. His capture in exchange for sheltering beneath their protection and probably a bit of something on the side.

Then the watch piled into the room, rough men swearing and shoving him, all eager to claim the bounty for his crime.

As Wolfe was taken away he could only glare hotly at Stickley through the barred window of the wagon like a caged animal.

MRS. O
’
MALLEY WAS
a woman of great wisdom and tolerance. She knew that if her eldest daughter, Patricia, claimed to have returned from England because she’d been fired from her job for slacking work, then the real reason was best left unspoken for the moment. As if one of her children had ever slacked a day in their lives!

It was a man, of course.

Mrs. O’Malley had five sisters and three daughters. She could tell the difference between the strained pallor of heartbreak and the despair of failure.

Even the boys, bless them, knew that someone had broken their beloved sister’s heart. They cast worried glances and muttered dark words about the “damned English”—but not in Patricia’s hearing, for it only made her paler yet.

Mrs. O’Malley dried her hands of dishwater and
moved to where Patricia sat peeling potatoes for the noon meal. A family of seven hard workers could eat a fair pile of potatoes, but Patricia had peeled enough for an army.

Inhaling, Mrs. O’Malley cast her eyes to the heavens, hoping for aid. She was going to have to open a deep wound, but if she didn’t cauterize it quickly with some common sense and practicality, they were all going to drown in tearstained peels.

Then movement caught her eye through the small front window. Someone was coming down the cliff road, walking with the loose, easy movements of one who’d been walking for a long while. A man, in sturdy homespun wool and linen—a tall, good-looking fellow with his cap tipped back to better enjoy the rare day.

“Who is that, d’ye think?”

Her daughter joined her at the window, gazing dutifully out at the world she’d retreated from. Then Mrs. O’Malley heard a gasp like that of a woman struck to the heart. She turned her head sharply to see that her fine Patty, always one of the prettiest girls in County Clare, had never looked so beautiful.

Mrs. O’Malley turned her gaze back to the man on the road. “That’s never the Englishman!”

Patricia laughed, a trill of pure joy. “Don’t be silly, mum. That’s my Irish Johnny, come home at last.”

Mrs. O’Malley watched as her eldest daughter ran lightly down the road to meet her man, the white wool ends of her shawl flying out behind her like the wings of a seabird soaring in to solid land at last.

Graham walked through the front door of Edencourt without having to touch the latch with his own lordly hand. Of course, that was because the doors had been removed and taken by the carpenter for some much needed repair. They ought to be back in a day or so. When more workers arrived, the progress on the house would go faster.

Graham hoped so. He’d promised Sadie the doors would be back on before the first snowfall.

“Windows!” She’d wielded her scrub brush at him. “Don’t forget to hire a glazier! We have too many broken windows!”

It had been Sadie’s idea to hire Mr. Stickley for the general organization and repair of the main house, and the fellow had turned his zealous efforts to spending the Pickering fortune nearly as fast as he’d grown it.

“I’ve secured the principle,” he’d reassured Graham. There had been some other words in there, like “amortization” and “percentages” so when Graham’s eyes had glazed over he’d waved the man onward in his efforts.

“Good show, old son.”

Stickley had beamed. “This is highly rewarding, Your Grace. I hope I’m to be a guest here someday.”

Graham had gaped at him. “As if we’d ever let you leave!”

The little fellow had become positively misty-eyed. Graham for one couldn’t wait to turn him loose on the rest of the estate!

Still, at the moment, the estate looked worse than before. What had been sagging had been torn down. What had been broken was boarded up. What was repairable had been removed, leaving great gaping holes and rubble everywhere.

They were on their own with the whole mess. He’d cordially invited both Brookhaven and Marbrook to help. They’d regretfully declined. Since then, the old Duke of Brookmoor had died and Calder and Deirdre had taken Meggie and her kitten, Fortescue Minor, and journeyed to take up residence at Brookmoor. Rafe and Phoebe had immediately taken off for Brookhaven, panting to make it their own in custody for the first male son to be born to Calder and Deirdre.

Deirdre had confessed that she was expecting already. Phoebe had demonstrated a previously unnoticed competitive streak by immediately getting into that state herself.

Sadie had smiled happily for them both, then dragged Graham home to get a bit of practice in. Graham dutifully gave it his all. And then some.

Now, standing in the entrance hall, Graham coughed on a cloud of plaster dust. Moira’s husband, John, was
gleefully shaking out a tarpaulin from the upstairs balcony. “Sorry, Your Grace!”

Ah, the joys of homecoming. Graham made his way up the stair, avoiding the pitfalls where the crumbling marble steps had been ripped out and were awaiting the new order, which was very late.

Sadie hadn’t been in the kitchens or in the gardens or even in the stables. He snickered at that. Sadie had declared that there was no need for her to learn to ride, for she was never getting on another horse again for the rest of her life. Yet she was always in the stables, sneaking sugar to the sturdy ponies that did the majority of the hauling at the moment.

At the top of the stairs Graham gazed down at his domain. It was astonishing how little memory of his old life here remained. With the ritual bonfire cleansing of every musty, desiccated hunting trophy, less and less of the old duke’s brutality seemed to linger in these gracious halls.

Instead, Graham felt his mother’s presence like a benediction. Was she here? He didn’t really believe that. Perhaps it was only that he sensed the presence of a woman’s touch. Every project Sadie turned her attention to achieved exceptional results, as if the house and the estate longed to be cared for, to be nurtured, to be loved—

Don’t we all?

Finally, frustrated, Graham tossed his head back and roared her name over the din of hammering, sawing and general mayhem.
“Sadie!”

“I’m in here, Gray!”

He followed the sound of her lusty shout into the old duke’s bedchamber. She was kneeling in the hearth, cleaning years of ashes from the grate. She looked overworked, exhausted, grubby and grimy and utterly, entirely blissful.

“Sadie, you shouldn’t be doing that yourself! You’re getting filthy!”

She turned to look over her shoulder, then laughed at him. “Look at you!”

He looked down, plucking at his workman’s clothing covered in pitch. “I’ve been directing the roofers at the north cottages,” he explained. “I
had
to get dirty.”

She sat back on her heels. “Hmm. You loved it. Like a boy in the mud.”

“That’s me, I’m a dirty boy!” He leered at her.

She leered right back. “Want to watch me take a bath later, dirty boy?”

He swallowed. Hard.
“Irk.”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, please.” Then he remembered why he’d come upstairs.

“Time for your riding lesson.”

She rolled her eyes. “Horses are very useful. They can pull carriages and everything. I hear some people even eat them. I don’t think it’s necessary to burden them with riding as well.”

He knelt before her. “They are very enjoyable to ride, I promise. You needn’t be afraid.”

She snorted, sounding very much like a horse, actually. “I’m not afraid. How could I be afraid of something that is thrice my size and has giant teeth and hooves of iron—”

“Yes, I’ll admit, it’s a fearsome sight when they attack those defenseless flowers and I shudder to think of what the bale of hay goes through—”

The filthy coal-brush struck him in the chest, but she was laughing. “Oh, all right! I’ll come for my riding lesson as soon as I’ve finished here.”

He looked around him dismissively. “What’s so important about my father’s room?”

She tilted her head. “This isn’t your father’s room, you idiot. This is
your
room.”

He made a long arm and dragged her across his lap. “Our room,” he growled into her ear. “If you spend every single night with me for the rest of our lives, I’ll sleep wherever you like.”

She laughed when his unshaven cheek tickled hers, but sobered as she gazed up at him. “I love you, Gray. I loved you before you were duke.”

He smiled down at her and rubbed at a smudge on her cheek with one finger. It only moved the soot around. “I love you, Sadie, my lady. I loved you before you were one of the richest women in England. I also loved you before you were the most beautiful woman in England. I’m fairly sure I loved you before you were the maddest woman in England, but that’s a close call.”

She smiled then, bestowing her now famous brilliance on only him. That was just the way he liked it. He kissed her, dirty as they both were, using his lips and hands to drive her to gasping.

They made love in the cinders, a duke and a duchess in a happily ever after of their very own making.

Don’t miss the first two novels in the beloved Heiress
Brides series from
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