Judith Ivory (15 page)

Nor did she trust the man standing before her. Stuart watched her, waiting, loaded down with a satchel, papers, his fine coat, her own raggedy one, his hat, gloves: the man from the bank. “Shall we?” asked her most recent lover.

“Certainly,” she said, lifting her big, baggy skirt as if it were one of the ball gowns she’d once worn, while inwardly shaking her head. She’d mated with him. Like a ewe in estrus. She still couldn’t grasp it. Why? How?

Then worse: As he reached for the doorknob with the arm loaded down with his satchel, he winced, then gripped his shoulder, pushing his thumb into the muscle, massaging. He stood a moment, then actually set the satchel down.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, when she should have remained quiet.

“My shoulder,” he said. “I think you really did bite it.”

“Oh, I did not! You have the gout.”

“All right. Wait.” He let go of their coats as well and began yanking at his coat.

“Stop,” she cautioned. “I don’t want to see your chest.”

“My shoulder.
I
want to see what you did.”

He shrugged partway out of his coat to undo again the top of his shirt and cravat.

Emma looked away.

Out the side of her eye, though, she saw he’d pulled his shirt open nonetheless. She caught a glimpse of his neck and upper chest—a remarkably muscular chest with a hint of fine black hair down the center—then he shrugged a thick, sculptured shoulder forward, and Emma found herself staring: at faint teeth marks sunk into the top round head of muscle, deep indentations even if they didn’t break the skin.

“Look at that!” he said, laughing.

Emma bit the edge of her lip. “It’s not from something else?” A tattoo, for instance, to make women feel bad.

“No.”

“Um. My, ah”—she tried to piece it together, now that she saw the reality—“my, ah, hands weren’t free—” Yes, that part was right. “And I, um—wanted to feel your, ah—” She kept staring at the marks she’d left, asking herself how they could have gotten there. “Well, your shoulder—Because. Um. It seemed to be very hand”—she couldn’t admit the whole word at once—“some. So I wanted to. Feel. It.”

“Why, thank you.”

She looked to his face.

He was smiling as he straightened his shirt, buttoning, self-satisfied. “To tell you the truth, I barely noticed at the time. I was”—he laughed—“preoccupied elsewhere. It’s all right. I can take it. You don’t bite hard, though to tell you the truth I’d rather you didn’t do it.”

“I’m sorry.” She’d be more careful. Or, no, there wouldn’t be opportunity to be more careful. But, still, one shouldn’t hurt people unnecessarily.

He said to her bowed head, “I’m not. No regrets or apologies here. It was damned exciting. You have a little vicious streak. A little one, not a bad one; it’s delightful.”

“Oh, I don’t. I’m a nice woman.”

He was smiling, his dark eyes dancing, riveted to her. “Who bites.” He laughed, then repeated, “A dark, nasty world, Emma. Welcome to the human race.”

She allowed herself a sheepish, befuddled smile. There was something funny here, if embarrassing. If he was laughing over it, teasing her with it, then how bad could it be that she had—

Dear goodness, that she had bit the man? A little. Lightly. On the shoulder.

She’d bit him. And licked his thumb. Not since she was seventeen had she thought
this
dangerous thought: Men were delicious. Or the right one could be.

Tightening his cravat back in place again, he asked once more, “Shall we?”

She nodded, a little subdued, though she’d regained a measure of her poise by the time he held the door wide. “Yes,” she said, “we shall,” and wheeled around two handfuls of frumpy skirt, as regal as a queen. She knew the walk, the talk, how to handle herself. She remembered. It was with mixed pleasure, though, that she waltzed past Mount Villiars through the doorway.

Yorkshire Pudding

E
MMA
and Stuart waited less than a minute on the hotel steps before his black-lacquered coach and eight rolled around the corner. The temperature was falling. The wind was icy as it cut through her coat. As the vehicle pulled to a halt, it seemed so much larger than she remembered—or perhaps simply more huge as one proceeded toward it. Walking out to the big, black thing made her heart thud.

Impressive
wasn’t quite the word for the carriage anymore.
Daunting
seemed more appropriate. The coach to Hell. Its interior seemed larger than the back room of her house. It took more horses to pull it than she and her neighbors owned in total. The shiny, black carriage gleamed against the white winter afternoon, by contrast fit for the devil himself, the devil’s own footman awaiting her, his hand on a filagree brass door handle. The clean lines stood out vividly. And the windows. She had never noticed how many windows it had—perhaps because over each dangled the gold tassel and fringe of a window shade, her guess being that most of the time these shades were down, obliterating the windows.

Presently though, the windows were wide, high, and un-shaded, their clean glass reflecting a picture-perfect elonga
tion of the yellow stone hotel with its black door and blue awning, then herself, bareheaded, coming down the walk with a dark, neatly dressed gentleman at her elbow. Stuart looked every inch the viscount coming toward his carriage: a tall man in a long greatcoat and high top hat, his clothes making him seem taller still. He towered over her and his footman.

The vehicle’s door latch
clicked,
then swung open, the gold fringe of its window’s privacy shade shimmying in a little dance of heavy, twisted silk. Inside the lining of the door matched the carriage seats: dark red, button-tufted leather. The servant bent to set the step, then offered his hand. Emma was about to ascend into a cavernous interior of dark leather, polished wood, brass, crystal, velvet…so much luxury, it was hard to take it all in. Then a horse whinnied, several stomped, adjusting, and the carriage shifted an inch—and the two footmen, the driver, and the viscount himself all responded by turning their attention sharply toward the team of eight in front.

“Are they giving you trouble today?” the viscount called up to his driver.

“No more than usual, sir.”

Stuart veered, turning away from the carriage entrance to walk down his line of skittish horses.

The closest lead animal snorted again, yanking its head up.

“Easy,” Stuart murmured, though he approached the horse cautiously. It stomped and gave a kick, sharp enough that the animal behind it grew worried. The whole team was unstable for a moment. Stuart grabbed the tack of the near lead and pulled the animal’s head down by the bit. “Easy,” he said again, then stroked him as he slowly eased up. “Easy.”

He let go. The animal seemed better, calmer. It knew him. Stuart stayed there a moment, then backed up, speaking to the driver overhead in a conversation she couldn’t quite hear. The viscount nodded, then looked at the horses again as he folded his arms over his chest.

Emma waited, thinking any moment he would return,
they would get going. But he seemed inclined to pose there by his horses—alas, as fine a sight as they in his slightly foreign-looking clothes: black top hat, black gloves, his long, fur-lapeled greatcoat. His coat blew, unbuttoned, in the wind, showing its rich inside by furls and billows. Likewise, about his shoulders, his gray scarf fluttered loose, animated by the wind—floating up one moment on a ghostly breeze, then darting the next on a wintry blast.

The second footman, having finished putting their things in the boot, approached the driver and viscount, offering something more, presumably to do with the horses. Stuart listened, questioned him. The driver called down further comments from his overhead box. The three of them, driver, footman, and employer spoke together, with Stuart erect, direct, all business. She was reminded of the man from the bank again, the man who did not smile easily. Hardly at all, in fact.

The man with the ironic humor and dark smiles seemed to have been left upstairs. It was as if, when his servants lined up behind him, when he put on his hat and frock coat, his scarf and gloves—the regalia of a viscount—they weighed him down.

He should get away, take all these clothes off more often, she thought.

Oh, dear. Her eyes widened as she abruptly looked down at her own feet. No, no, perhaps not, she thought. Best he keep all his clothes on, come to think of it, the more the better as a matter of fact.

Damned, rich, snotty, handsome…. She glanced up to where he stood, so straight and tall, dallying over his fancy horses. She called suddenly to him, “If everything is all right, can we go? I don’t have the leisure you do.”

He stopped in midsentence and turned toward her. They all did: staring at the woman in the tattered coat who would interrupt a viscount in the business of his favorite horses.

“Can we go?” she asked no less emphatically. She was purely peeved to have so little control over her own life.

He lifted his chin. She could see beneath the brim of his hat for a moment—he had that one eyebrow cocked at her.

She wasn’t sure if his look was some sort of command or prompt, but she decided it did no harm to say, if a little sarcastically, “Please?” Then decided to add, “Sir?” then more elaborately, “Your lordship?”

He let out a kind of gasp of humor, surprise. “Gadzooks,” he pronounced, an old-fashioned expression, which he perhaps knew was such; said to amuse. Still, it made him sound out of touch with what she knew of the clubs and smoking rooms of London, when he added a word he seemed to know better, one of those foreign mouthfuls that wanted to be ten syllables that his tongue compressed into three. It began with
nyaow
, like the yowl of a cat, and ended in
chnyee
. Russian, she judged. It didn’t matter; she liked the sound of his speech. She could listen to it appreciatively, even when it meant nothing at all to her.

Then he said in English, “Yes. We can go. How lovely that you can be so respectful. It’s a nice step, Emma.” He pivoted. “Let’s.” He began to walk toward her. Halfway there, he called to her, “When?” He seemed to realize the question wasn’t enough and clarified, “When was your lamb hit?”

“Um—” She had to think a moment. “Um, August.”

“I took the coach in August. When in August?”

He hadn’t had the coach the whole month? Emma frowned, mentally sliding around on the implications of his question. “You’re saying your uncle may have killed my lamb?”

He came up to her, lifting his head slightly to make eye contact. In the shadow of his hat brim his eyes frowned, then he shook his head and let out a large sigh as he dropped his hands into the pockets of his coat. “It doesn’t matter.” He let out a little snort of self-rebuke, letting his inquiry go. “You had me right the first time. I am capable of having killed your
lamb, then given you a hard time about it.” He looked down at the snow, then squinted up again to ask her, “Though is that so terrible?”

The look on his face seemed to be asking no less than if he were a terrible person.

“It was fairly terrible for the lamb.”

“The horses,” he jerked his head toward them. “They’re fast. I’ve grown fond of them.” He pulled a face. “They are also the most crazed animals I have ever tried to manage. I keep attempting to soothe them. My father”—he raised that sarcastic eyebrow—“what a surprise: He beat them, denied them food—” He broke off in revulsion for a moment, couldn’t speak, then met her eyes again. “In any event, I keep thinking gentleness will bring them back to some semblance of normalcy. Do you think that’s possible?”

She felt less qualified than most to answer, but she offered, “For some it is; for some it isn’t.” She didn’t know horses, but that’s how it was with people.

“They are gorgeous, don’t you think?” He turned to enjoy again the view of them with her. “And even more remarkable for being so well matched.”

“Yes.”

“And their speed and heart—” He broke off.

She waited.

“Two or three of them,” he continued, “are coming around, I’m quite sure. The lead on the left, though—” The left lead was bobbing his head, impatient. Stuart, in profile, shook his head. “But even the one who bites and kicks, even he gallops with the team. That’s a good sign, isn’t it? They, all eight, put their souls into hauling the coach as if their lives depended on getting to the next place as quickly as the road can take them. My driver says they drive him, that that is the only way to manage them: a loose rein.”

He loved his horses. His bad horses. He was trying to save them. Along with seventy-seven servants. What was going
on here? She frowned up at him, feeling the cold on her face as she tried to comprehend this man and why he would speak so earnestly to her, of all people, about his concerns.

She asked, “It’s dangerous, isn’t it? I mean to you, not just to lambs.”

He looked directly at her. “It doesn’t feel unduly dangerous. They stay to the road.” He shrugged and looked down. Then admitted, “I can’t tell. Normally, they gallop around things. I think the road must have been bent, too little space to shift, once they saw your lamb.”

“They shouldn’t have been going that fast.”

He disliked this unpleasant, unwanted answer. With a quick frown, he said, “They are the only living connection to my father who doesn’t take advantage of me, who bears me no ill will.” He sighed. “And now you’re saying they aren’t innocent either.”

“They’re animals. All animals are innocent.”

He looked at her. “We’re animals.”

“Other than man. Horses, dogs, cats, they are guilty of nothing. They are just following their nature.”

He contemplated her narrowly a moment. “Perhaps that’s all we do, too.”

She considered his words, then modified her own thinking. “Responsible then. We aren’t guilty, just responsible in a way that they aren’t.”

He nodded, took one gloved hand from his coat, offering his hand. She took it and quickly stepped herself up into the coach. She settled herself into a well-padded seat of leather so dark a red it was almost black. The appointments of the interior were gleaming—polished wood that showed the grain, side lamps of cut crystal, brass fittings and handles, velvet-rope hand straps. The highlight, though, was indeed the windows with their shades up. They offered a panorama to the passengers, a view in almost all directions.

And the smell—settling back into Stuart’s coach was like sitting into a rich little corner of Marrakesh. As if someone
had rubbed the leather and wood with sandalwood, bay, and clove…or, no. These were smells she knew. Lotus? What did lotus smell like? Frankincense? She knew no name for the smell that permeated the interior, only the sweetness of it. And the recognition of it: It was the odor that faintly lingered on his clothes, in the fur of his coat.

Indeed, the smell had a name: Stuart Winston Aysgarth, the Viscount Mount Villiars.

From her seat, she watched him climb in after her. In one movement—a smooth lift, bow, and pivot—he slid into the seat facing her, his footman shutting the door. Stuart
was
what Zach could only imitate: part of the worldly, creamy upper class.

“Have you eaten lately?” he asked as he settled himself into the seat.

She startled. “This morning.”

He furrowed his brow, then leaned to put his arm out the window. He made a motion with his gloved fingers.

A moment later, his footman appeared again just outside at the window. “Yes, sir?”

“Is there anything special you want?” he asked her. “I don’t remember much of Yorkshire cuisine.”

She was hungry. She’d eat anything. “Not lamb,” she couldn’t resist saying, however. “I’ve had my fill of that lately.”

“Be specific. I don’t know what to ask for at the shops here.”

She named some favorites. “Yorkshire pudding, pork pie, and mushy peas.”

To his man, he said, “Ask the concierge where to find Yorkshire pudding, pork pie, and”—he glanced at her askance—“mushy peas. We’re going to the Stunnel Farm. Have Freeman meet us there with these delicacies. Meanwhile, you go to the livery stable and pick up a mule left by Emma Hotchkiss. Sign my name for it.” To Emma again, he asked, “John Tucker’s, correct?”

She had to think a moment, not quite able to keep up with him. “Um, yes.”

“Can you give easy directions to his farm?”

“Across the meadow and road from my house.”

“Which is where?”

“Down the hill about eleven miles from yours.”

He frowned, then turned to the footman. “Find John Tucker’s farm. Do you have the rest?”

“The rest?” The fellow looked worried.

“The food, the livery.”

Concern crossed the footman’s face. “Ah—Not precisely perhaps.”

With a kind of humorless patience and the specificity of someone used to giving orders to those who could misunderstand, Stuart said, “Have Freeman bring Yorkshire pudding, pork pies, and mushy peas to the Stunnel Farm. You are to pick up Mrs. Hotchkiss’s mule at the only livery in town and take it to Malzeard-Near-Prunty-Bridge. Ask around for someone named John Tucker. Take the mule to him. Then get yourself home.”

The man nodded this time, said, “Right-e-o,” and disappeared.

“There you go,” Stuart told her.

Emma twisted her mouth. “Well. Snap your fingers, and someone fixes everything. That must be nice.” Her words came out with a little more hostility than she’d meant to allow.

He faced her, the brim of his silk top hat lifting till he was looking at her squarely, then he said absolutely straight-faced, “Actually, it’s not. I find it rather an onerous responsibility. It would be easier to do many things myself.” He shrugged, as if none of it could be helped, tilted his head, his face dropping back into shadow, and grew silent.

Then more unexpected still: Instead of signaling to go, he added, “You can keep the fifty-odd pounds. And when we’re finished, provided you deal straight with me, I’ll explain
the whole situation, tell the bank, the authorities that I want you to have the money. I’ll explain my part in it. It’s my own account. I shouldn’t get into too much trouble for taking money from myself, even though it violates some court orders. I’ll get a slap on the hand.” He shrugged. “Whatever I get, I’ll face it. The fact that I come forward will help.”