Suzanne Robinson (28 page)

“It’s a talent I learned from having the keeping of dozens of regimental officers whose sole object in life is to play havoc with the Queen’s peace.”

Balling her hands into fists, Kate summoned up her courage and plunged ahead. “So you’ve put everyone’s house in order. How considerate. The only problem I see is that you don’t give me the same courtesy.”

“You aren’t making sense.”

“You’re a little dollop of butter, my lord, and you spread yourself over too many pieces of toast.”

“Your metaphor is giving me nausea.”

“I’m trying to explain something to you, de Granville. And I’m trying to be ladylike about it.” She poked her finger in his chest. “When I was walking hundreds of miles across the American continent behind starving oxen and growing up in houses with canvas walls, I learned one important thing—if you don’t demand respect, you’re not going to get it. And by God, sir, you’ll respect me, or I’ll string you up by your generous endowments.”

Alexis gaped at her, then blinked rapidly. “You’re mad.”

“If you mean that I’m angry, you have grasped my point. I’m through with our engagement. You can go back to the lady with the hot-air balloons on her chest.”

Kate turned on her heel to leave, but Alexis grabbed her arm and swung her around. If she hadn’t been so angry, she would have been frightened at the rage in his
eyes. He pushed her against the merlon and placed his arms on either side of her to block her escape.

“I will decide when to end our betrothal, you presumptuous little witch. And I’m not ready for that yet.”

Scowling up into glass-hard eyes, Kate said, “I’m not a convenience like indoor running water. You may run Val’s life, and most everyone else’s, but you don’t run mine. It’s a wonder to me that you belly up at your mother’s feet like you do. But then I forgot. She has even less respect for you than I.”

He grabbed her shoulders and lifted her off her feet, then just as suddenly, he dropped her. Kate’s ankle gave way, and she stumbled. Alexis caught her around the waist and held her steady.

“She told you,” he said. His hands dropped away from her.

“Told me what?”

“About my murders.”

Kate furrowed her brow. His anger was gone. No, it had changed somehow. Alexis stood over her with one arm resting on the top of the merlon. Beneath the sleeves of his jacket she could see the bunching of his muscles. When he spoke his voice was no longer raised. It was quiet but resonant with suppressed emotion.

“Aren’t you afraid to be alone with me now that you know?”

“Did you kill your father and sister?”

He closed his eyes and whispered, “I must have.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“I remember them dying.”

“Don’t you remember setting the trap?”

He shook his head.

Kate slipped away a few paces, then turned to face him, her hands on her hips. “I didn’t believe your mother when she told me. After we announced our engagement
she told me you’d murdered them and every mistress you ever had.”

“What?”

Kate nodded.

“But only one is dead besides Ophelia,” he said, “and she was killed in a carriage accident when I was with my regiment two years ago.”

“Then why does your mother tell these stories? To behonest, Alexis, I don’t think she’s, well, healthy in her mind.”

He laughed. “It’s not that. She hates me for killing Father and Thalia.”

“Stop that. You aren’t capable of such evil.”

“You don’t know that. Like Macbeth, ‘I am in blood stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ ” He turned away from Kate and looked out at the clouds on the horizon. They glowed with volcanic intensity as the sun set. “But regardless of my sins, we will continue as we are until after Hannah is buried and things have settled down. We should be rid of each other in a few weeks.”

“Oh no.”

“And then I’ll find some perfect Lady whose head is stuffed with goose down, marry her, and get an heir. A Lady who won’t ask questions to which she doesn’t want the answer.”

The morning after Kate confronted him with his supposed infidelities, Alexis sat in the small dining room, a plate loaded with eggs and ham in front of him. He contemplated the blobs of white sprinkled with pepper while he thought of Hannah and Cardigan, and Val. Worry over his friend, sadness for Hannah, and bewilderment about Kate caused his stomach to do one of Iago’s somersaults. He shoved the plate away and tried to force tea down his
throat. He was unsuccessful, because at that moment his mother came in on Fulke’s arm.

Placing the cup back in its saucer with great care, Alexis nodded to Juliana. He expected no greeting from her and got none. Fulke murmured something to him.

“How are you?” Alexis asked.

“I’m fine,” Fulke said. “It’s hard to believe she’s gone.”

Fulke sat down beside Alexis and toyed with his napkin. Alexis studied his cousin’s face. Since Hannah’s death he’d been withdrawn, but calm.

“I’ll find out what happened,” Alexis said.

“I know what happened. Like all women, she succumbed to her evil nature at last. She went out to fornicate with her lover and in her crazed lust, she lost her footing and plunged to her death.”

Alexis clenched his hands into fists and looked away from Fulke’s righteous expression.

“Oh, Fulke, no,” Juliana said.

“Please,” Fulke said. “Do me the favor of avoiding the whole subject. It is painful to me.”

Alexis tried to lift his teacup again while Juliana and Fulke talked about the weather. He managed a nod to several questions directed to him by Fulke.

“By the way,” Fulke said. “It seems your repairs to the keep weren’t extensive enough. Part of the upper wall is falling down.”

“But it was fine,” Alexis said.

“Not this morning. I was walking on the lawn and noticed several stones and some mortar at the foot of the keep.”

“I’ll look into it after I finish my meal.”

“Your food is cold,” Fulke said.

Before Alexis could protest, Fulke ordered hot food for him. Under his cousin’s badgering, he managed to eat, but only after Juliana excused herself. At last he escaped
Fulke’s brooding presence under the pretense of his concern for the damage to the keep.

Once out in the courtyard, he wandered along the perimeter of the lawn until he came to the old tower. At its base lay several broken stones. Crumbling mortar spattered the grass, and one of the stones had torn a deep gouge in the turf. Alexis kicked a rock, then bent back and looked up at the top of the wall, shielding his eyes with one hand. As Fulke had said, part of it was collapsing. He could see two stones, one beneath the other and each the size of his chest, that had collapsed on each other so that they rested at a tilt. Perhaps the mortar between them had given way with age.

Alexis looked at the stones on the ground again. One had fresh chip marks in it, probably from being struck by another rock. He bent, grasping it in both hands. As he did so, he heard Iago bark. Dropping to one knee, Alexis looked up and saw the dog bound across the court after Val. His friend waved, and Iago raced in circles around the limping man. Alexis scowled at Val. He was still angry at the fool for scoffing at the superintendent. Alexis turned back to lift the rock.

“Alexis, move!”

The words themselves wouldn’t have produced his instant reaction. What caused Alexis to dive headlong away from the keep was Val’s tone. It was the one he’d used in battle, the one that commanded his men to charge, to wheel, to retreat, an officer’s shouted order. As Alexis hit the ground he felt a heavy weight glance off his shoe. There was a thud and then the sound of pebbles and sand falling. He landed on his stomach. Iago romped over to him, barked, and stuck his muzzle in Alexis’s neck. Alexis cursed and shoved the dog away.

“Good boy, Iago. Not now.”

Val hurried up to him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, just covered in dust and feeling stupid.” Alexis brushed mortar from his hair.

Craning his neck backward, Val examined the crumbling wall. “What possessed you to stand beneath those stones when they were obviously about to tumble down?”

“You’re standing under them.”

Val stepped away from the keep. “It would be ironic to survive the Crimea and get smashed by your own house.”

“I’ll have someone build a barricade and get my foreman to look at the damage.”

“Mmmm. I want to talk to you.”

“That’s a change. It wasn’t long ago that you had nothing to say to me.”

“Not about Hannah and Cardigan,” Val said. “About Kate.”

“What about Kate?”

“What have you done to her? She’s moping around like a puppy who’s lost its mother.”

“Stay out of it,” Alexis said.

“I like her. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you and that Beechwith woman. Don’t hurt Kate, Alexis. She’s a sweet little thing underneath all that determination.”

Alexis looked up from brushing dirt off his coat sleeve. Val was so angry, the gold in his hair seemed to catch fire. Alexis slowly straightened to his full height, his gaze fixed on Val’s.

“Don’t try shriveling me with that lord-of-the-castle stare,” Val said irritably.

“Then don’t presume to interfere.”

Val stabbed his cane into the grass. “Someone has to stop you from tossing your own future into the latrine. When are you going to forget the past?”

“That’s the trouble,” Alexis said. “I’ve forgotten my past too much lately.”

Val made an impatient and rude sound. Turning from Alexis, he called to Iago and stalked away. Alexis watched
the two leave before returning to his examination of the keep. There was a hole at the top of the tower now, where the fallen stones had been. He would need to see his foreman immediately. After he’d done that, perhaps he would visit Carolina. He should, if only to prove that he could do as he wished, prove it to himself and to a presumptuous snippet named Katie Ann Grey.

Several days of misery passed for Kate. She spent much of her time sitting in her room crying, or simply befogged by melancholy. She had lost. It was her own fault for being so jealous that she had berated a proud man as though he were a dog. All it had gotten her was an Alexis who avoided her, a cold, princely man who treated her with impersonal respect and insulting politeness. He didn’t even protest when she stopped wearing a crinoline.

She was sure he was seeing Carolina Beechwith. Val said he wasn’t, but Kate was sure those long rides of Alexis’s ended in that woman’s bed. Val said she was wrong. He seemed sure his friend wasn’t bedding Carolina.

“It’s what he wants you to think,” Val had said. “He’s trying awfully hard to make you hate him. Don’t let him, Kate. He needs you.”

She was in the kitchen garden early one morning thinking about what Val had said when Alexis appeared. She hadn’t talked to him in days. The first sign she had of his presence was hearing his riding boots crunch on the gravel outside the kitchen door. He stopped when she looked up from the hole she was digging. Dressed in riding clothes tailored to enhance the near perfection of his body, tapping his crop against his thigh, he looked too much the sophisticated aristocrat. He frowned at her in silence.

She stabbed the dirt with her spade. “I hear your castle is falling down on top of you.”

“It was nothing serious.”

“Not unless you consider how many accidents have happened in this neighborhood in the past few weeks.”

He walked over to her, stopping so close that his polished boot knocked dirt back into the hole she was digging.

“My house is centuries old,” he said. “Parts of it are always falling down.”

She sat back on her heels and glanced up at him. “That may be, but when was the last time some of it decided to fall on you?”

She was startled when Alexis dropped to his haunches beside her. His gaze traveled over her face, and he cast aside his riding crop. Pulling off one of his gloves, he touched a finger to her chin.

“You’ve been working hard,” he said. “You’re all tousled, and those tiny wisps of hair on your forehead are curling again.”

“You’re not listening. I think you ought to be worried.”

He was staring at her neck. Kate remembered that, along with rolling up her sleeves, she’d undone the top buttons of her gown when she started to dig. She refused to clutch at the open bodice like a guilty serving maid.

“Alexis, you’re not listening.”

Her irritation rose when he failed to answer a second time. He was beginning to make her nervous. She could smell the soap he used—its aroma was like wood and clean air—and feel his body heat. Even when he was kneeling his height and the bulk of his shoulders made her feel like an ant.

It wasn’t easy to move away from him while she was sitting on her skirt. Kate managed to put a few inches between them, but the effort was wasted because Alexis moved closer. She put out a hand to stop him, and he
caught it. His thumb stroked the back of her hand, and her agitation increased. He wasn’t going to answer her at all. The snake was content to let her babble while he examined her as if she were a jewel he was considering purchasing. She tried to pull her hand free, but he wouldn’t release it. He turned it over and opened the curled fingers.

“A grubby little paw.” He pulled at her hand until she was resting against his chest. “You’re all hot and sweaty, Katie Ann. I like you hot and sweaty.”

“Let go.”

He grasped her wrists and held them down at her sides, then he kissed her ear. His breath tickled her neck, and she shivered as his teeth raked gently down her throat. Her whole body vibrated. Her nipples and the ends of her fingers and toes began to tingle. Her concern about the accidents faded when Alexis released her wrists and fastened his hands on her buttocks. He brought her up against his body and began to flex his hips. The steady thrust of those talented hips warned her. If she didn’t say something now, he wouldn’t stop. Already his eyes were burning with sexual tension. Once he’d made up his mind, he wouldn’t give quarter.

She pressed her hands against his chest. “No.”

“Yes.”

“I said no.”

“And I said yes.” He leaned over her.