I Thee Wed (10 page)

Judith kneeled before the cold hearth and began to carefully retrieve Orion's notes. She stacked them neatly, even reordering them. For the first time, she moved quickly, glancing over her shoulder occasionally. Attie knew that feeling well—it was the sensation one had when one was doing something one wasn't supposed to be doing. Attie found it hard to go through an entire day without feeling just that way at least
twice.

So . . . burning Orion's notes did not make Judith feel apprehensive, but salvaging them did? Who was it that the girl thought might come through her study door?

Since Attie generally approved of sneaking about, she remained where she was while Judith cast a worried glance about the room.
Looking for a hiding place, are you?

For a moment, Attie wondered if she was going to need to climb down another tree to escape, but Judith turned away from the window, and, after taking something from a desk drawer, she made for the upholstered chair by the fireplace. The girl sank to her knees and did something behind the chair. There was a ripping sound and a rustle of paper. Then Judith rose to her feet and serenely brushed out her skirts before floating from the room on silent, slipper-clad feet.

It was mere seconds before Attie was down on her knees behind the chair.
Ah
. Attie grimaced in reluctant approval. Not a bad hiding place for a beginner!

The sheaf of notes had been tucked under the chair, then slipped through a slit in the heavy canvas that covered the woven leather strapping that held up the seat cushion. The hole was small and neat. Judith must have taken her quill knife to it.

Leave the notes there, or take them away for safekeeping?

Attie decided that far from being an enemy, Judith was actually someone who wished to preserve Orion's work. Attie itched to understand. When Other People did odd things, she liked to know
why
.

After all, she thought as she swung out onto the tree limb outside the study window, she was supposed to be the only one who did odd things!

O
RION stood at his marble table in the laboratory while Francesca sat on a stool at her workbench, a small brown rabbit in her lap. She was ostensibly measuring the length of its velvety ears. However, just like him, she seemed distracted.

The late-afternoon light slanted in through the high windows, glinting from lazily floating dust motes. Its summery warmth seemed to calm them both momentarily from their constant squabbling.

However, Orion could not help glancing over at Francesca's hands as they rubbed and soothed the downy little creature, who seemed, to Orion, to be gazing smugly back at him as if to say, “You wish it were you!”

After a brief spurt of concentration that enabled him to eliminate two entire solvents from the process, Orion glanced back.

Now the rabbit seemed to be looking at the doorway.

Orion followed its glassy dark gaze to see his sister Attie standing quietly there. With a start, he realized that she'd made her way through the entire Blayne household
undetected. He shot a wary look at Francesca, wondering what she thought about such an untoward intruder, but she only lifted her attention for a moment to smile a welcome to Attie.

His posture eased. They had already met, it seemed. Trust Francesca to keep that fact to herself. At least she seemed to like Attie. Few people understood his brilliant little sister. If anyone could, it would be Francesca!

Then his gaze narrowed on Attie. Something was odd. Her lanky form leaned ever so casually against the door frame, as if she'd merely decided to stop by to quietly check on their progress.

Attie didn't do anything quietly—ever!—unless she was in full covert mode.

Like all the Worthington clan, Orion knew perfectly well that prolonged silence—or worse, astonishingly good behavior!—from Attie was a danger signal of the highest order.
Blast it
. He'd been too long in the peaceful confines of Blayne House. His instincts had deteriorated from his former state of high alert.

He put down his beaker. “Attie? What have you done?”

She lifted her chin. “It wasn't my fault.”

He gazed at her evenly. “Attie.”

Heat flushed her freckled cheeks. “I didn't mean to!”

Guilt? From Attie?
Oh hell
. He kept his gaze cool. “And?”

Her green gaze slid from his in shame. “I just wanted to give the rabbits a little time in the grass. It's such a nice sunny day—”

Francesca looked up. “Rabbits?” She stood and shifted her current subject from her lap into the lidded basket she used to convey them.

Attie glanced down to where her bony fingers laced together before her. “It isn't as though they can leave the grounds, not with that wall all around.”

“Oh my heavens!” Francesca hurried to the door. “You didn't mix the genders, did you?”

Attie scowled. “Of course not!”

Orion stepped forward, but Francesca waved a hand as she dashed from the lab. “No, don't let us interrupt you! We can handle this, can't we, Attie?”

Attie nodded in sharp agreement and ran out after Francesca, looking like a skinny puppet on badly tied strings compared to Francesca with her light, dancing grace. However, the young girl was fast.

Orion kept working but also kept one eye on the window, just in case he was needed. Not that he would be. Chasing rabbits was clearly a pastime meant for people somewhat lower to the ground than he was!

Francesca, of course, found the entire matter hilarious. Orion could hear her bubbling giggle—a constant disturbance—through the window, although he noticed that laughter did not slow her down, nor deter her from serious rabbit-gathering technique.

Francesca's hair fell down at once, of course, and thereafter followed her like a sable flag. Her cheeks became pink, her dark eyes sparkled, and her even white teeth flashed in the afternoon light as she urged Attie onward. Orion found himself riveted by the charming amount of jiggle produced by rabbit chasing. She looked so alive. So vibrant. So alluring.

So damned frustrating!

He wanted her so badly that he could barely breathe when the lust struck him like a white-hot spike through his gut. Yet she was aggravating, and contentious, and never, ever simply agreed with him, or had any faith that he knew what he was doing, like most people did, and worst of all, she was so damned
open
! She employed no reserve, no boundary, no dam to the brook of her soul. Every emotion she felt appeared on her lovely face with foolhardy clarity, forcing him to listen, to look, to pay attention—to care.

She was everything he never wanted—but he could not stop thinking about her in his bed, over him, under him, wrapped hot and wet around him.

Or far, far worse—holding him, listening to him, laughing
at him . . .

A strange smell caught at his attention. He looked down to see that his solvent had boiled over and was running off the tabletop to drip steaming onto his boots. The blacking had already begun to leach from the leather!

Bloody hell!

With superhuman effort, Orion managed to bring his simmering obsession under control enough to concentrate. Time began to alter in the manner of deep focus, as if his mind were ticking to a different clock than the rest of the world. What seemed like only minutes later, Orion looked out the window to see a disheveled and weary Francesca walking back from the rear of the grounds. Francesca said something to the lagging Attie over her shoulder.

Attie threw back her head—

And laughed out loud.

Orion caught his breath. He had seen angry Attie, vengeful Attie, even cold, logical Attie. Had he ever seen happy Attie?

He loved his little sister and understood her very well. Yet in all her thirteen years, no matter how he might have wished to, he'd never been able to bring that sort of innocent joy to her pointed little face.

Within days, Francesca had.

With absent care, Orion stopped to remove his solvent from the burner stand. Then he opened the door to the laboratory and walked out into the beautiful day to meet happy Attie and miraculous Francesca in the garden.

“Of course, they are all named for poets,” Francesca was saying to Attie as Orion approached them. “My father dearly loved rhyme. And he was fond of rabbits as well.”

Another precious clue to the mystery of Francesca, dropped easily to Attie but not to him. “So,” he said, thinking over his classics, “Herbert is named after George Herbert?”

Both girls turned to him with surprised expressions. Attie
rolled her eyes. “Of course not!”

Francesca's smile danced. “Herbert is named after Mary Herbert, of course.”

Orion blinked. “Herbert is female?”

Attie gave him her standard “Could you be any more obtuse?” look, but the laughter still lingered at the corners of her mouth. It warmed him to see her usual bleakness eased.

Orion smiled indulgently. “So
Miss
Herbert is safely back home with the others, then?”

Attie looked at Francesca, as if expecting her to answer. Francesca looked at Attie in the same way. Attie frowned.

“I thought you had Herbert in the lab.”

Francesca shook her head. “No, I was measuring Dante. I thought I saw you catching Herbert in the hedgerow.”

Attie's eyes grew wide. “No, that was Voltaire.”

It seemed the rabbit hunt was not over yet. Orion thought he might rather enjoy joining in on a leisurely tramp through the garden in search of the elusive Herbert.

A deep roar of rage sounded from another part of the grounds. “Bloody little
thief
!”

Attie blinked. “Is that the giant?”

Francesca paled. “The cook's garden, Attie!”

Orion could see that Attie hadn't thought of that. In a whirl of faded skirts and lanky ankles, she was gone, running for the kitchen garden. It was mere seconds before they followed Attie, but she far outpaced them both.

Unfortunately, five seconds was more than enough time for Atalanta Worthington to get herself and others into dire straits.

Orion's legs were longer, but Francesca was perhaps slightly more motivated, since it was her rabbit, after all. She whisked by him, her skirts held shamelessly high and her body bent in the pose of a serious runner. She was fast—and Orion was not immune to the bolt of sudden lust inspired by her golden, rounded thighs and the flash of underthings. The
startling power of it snagged his attention so thoroughly that his pace almost slowed in sheer surprise.

So he was a few seconds behind both females. A Worthington man ought to know better than to allow any Worthington female—or one similar to a Worthington female!—to outrun him into trouble!

When Orion finished his mad dash for the kitchen garden perimeter, he could see nothing past the flourishing height of the plants within—but he could hear someone yelling in anger. The cook? He was angry about the rabbit invasion, no doubt. Orion wasn't much good at placation, since he rarely cared what anyone else cared about, but he knew that Francesca could not be in the same vicinity as the coarse fellow without a great display of Italian cursing and a high probability of flying food. He hurried.

The deep voice changed from anger to a hoarse yelp of alarm.
Oh damn
. Only Attie on a rampage could bring out that sort of fear in a grown man.

When he rounded the asparagus bed and took a sharp left past the carrot patch, he found Francesca dancing between the two opponents, obviously trying to negotiate some sort of peace. Which should inform one as to the degree of animosity present, if temperamental Francesca was playing peacekeeper.

Then Orion realized that the cook was holding a rabbit up by the scruff of its neck. Orion could see the black-and-white patchwork coat clearly.
Damn. Herbert
.

Then he realized that Attie was waving something as well. As he neared the fray, he saw his baby sister was attempting to wreak permanent damage to Blayne House's head cook with one of the man's own meat cleavers.

Blast it!
Attie with no more resources than her own imagination was bad enough. Armed, she was prone to outrageous acts of reprisal, although Orion had to admit that using a cleaver was new. Usually she resorted to firearms, or sometimes poison. She was also fond of blackmail, although Iris
claimed that it had only been a prepubescent phase.

“Get her off me!” the cook cried, his voice becoming rather shrill for a man of his weight class. “She's a maniac, that one!”

The maniac was undeterred by their arrival. “Put Herbert down, you murdering blackguard! I'll carve
you
up, you brute, and see how you like it!” Attie whirled the cleaver by the handle in an intricate and alarmingly assassin-like maneuver. Orion blinked at her skill with the blade. Obviously they had not been imaginative enough when clearing all weapons from Worthington House. It was clear that Attie had been practicing on the sly.

A note to himself: Strip the kitchen down to the spoons. He hated to think what his little sister could do with a spatula!

However, she was not the only one with fighting skills. Orion stepped forward, ducked, grabbed—and snatched the blade from his baby sister's hand in midtwirl. She turned on him, eyes narrowed. Although she scarcely came up to his breastbone, Orion fought the urge to step back out of range of her burning green gaze.

“He”—Attie pointed an indignant finger of accusation at the cook like the pocket version of Lady Justice declaring her verdict—“wants to feed you Herbert for dinner!” She turned to blast her mighty ginger rage at the cowering man. “Cannibal!”

Orion put the butcher knife behind his back. “Attie, you have eaten rabbit many times yourself.”

“Oh!” Attie stamped her foot. This ought to have made her seem more like a little girl, and perhaps it would have if one hadn't half expected the earth to shake fearfully in response. “You are becoming one of
them
, Orion Worthington!”

Attie didn't rage. She certainly didn't cry. Attie, on the whole, simply walked away in the moment, seemingly sanguine about her defeat—and then took long-lasting, delayed revenge at some other time—usually the worst possible time, to tell the truth.

Orion had never seen the tears that flowed freely down
Attie's freckled cheeks. It surprised him so that his hands dropped to his sides and the butcher knife came back into his little sister's range. She took a step toward him, her arms held out as if for a consoling hug. This was so unexpected that Orion nearly stepped back in suspicion. For a fraction of a second, he hesitated, concerned what the watching Francesca would think of him if he did.

Which was how Attie got her hands on the knife again.