Part 7 (1/2)
Because he'd never felt more free, even with the full might of England out to find him, jail him, execute him.
He was tired, filthy dirty thanks to the road dust, and more than slightly damp due to the early-afternoon rain, when he slid off his horse in the stable yard of his good friend Rafe Daughtry. Too dirty to present himself at the front door of Ashurst Hall, he'd planned to enter through the kitchens and sneak up to his a.s.signed room, where Wigglesworth could render one of his miracles and make him human again.
But that was before he'd heard the giggles.
Alina. The woman he'd thought of night and day since the moment he'd first seen her on the docks in Portsmouth. The woman he'd dreamed of last night as he slept beneath the hedgerows. The woman who could never really be his.
d.a.m.n. He'd never before recognized this streak of melodrama he seemed to possess. He'd have to stop thinking like some lovesick swain and remember who he was. And the danger that followed him.
One of Justin's own outriders had been lounging on a bale of hay, using a single stick of that hay to pick at his teeth. He didn't bother to rise until he belatedly realized that the ragtag rider was his always immaculately groomed employer. He hastened to a.s.sist him with his mount, noticing that Justin's gaze was on the open door to the stables.
”Lady Alina, my lord,” he offered without being asked. ”Sounds like music, don't it? But I'm keepin' one eye on her, yes, I am. We all are, my lord. She just don't like stickin' in one place too long, she says.”
”And what is she doing?”
”Don't know, my lord. I was told to watch, not to look.”
”Very good. I'll see for myself.”
Brus.h.i.+ng at the front of his jacket with his gloved hands, Justin left the suns.h.i.+ne of the stable yard for the cool stable, pausing just inside it until his eyes became accustomed to the darker interior. Rafe kept a fine stable, stalls lining it in both directions, the whole of it built into the side of a hill, so that hay and other supplies could be moved by cart, directly into the upper floor of the vast structure.
As Justin stood there, a few bits of hay came drifting down from the wooden plank ceiling above him.
And he heard another giggle.
A man could get very disturbing ideas, hearing a woman's giggle coming from a hayloft.
He turned to the man, who was kicking at the dirt just outside the doorway, as if there was some invisible line he dared not cross. ”She's alone?”
”Oh, yes, my lord. Came back from her ride and went on in there, and didn't come back out.”
”Thank you. What's your name?”
”Willis, sir. Did I do somethin' wrong?”
”No, Willis, you did not. Protecting the Lady Alina is paramount, but I will take it from here now. You may return to your post.”
Justin headed for the ladder that wasn't much more than a series of foot-wide slats hammered onto one of the beams, marveling that a woman in a riding skirt would attempt let alone manage the vertical climb. Lady Alina, it would appear, was a young woman who went where she wished to go, when she wished to go there, no matter the difficulty.
He supposed, if he thought about it, he could come to at least two other conclusions. The young woman in question was fairly fearless. And the young woman was probably more than slightly reckless. A prudent man would store all three conclusions away for future reference.
He removed his hat and flung it on the hard-packed dirt floor, as nothing much could be done to the hat than hadn't already been accomplished by the rain and the fact that he'd used it for a pillow as he slept beneath the hedgerows last night, before pulling himself up to the floor of the loft.
Following the giggles, he soon located Lady Alina in a small walled-off area of the large loft. She was lying on her back in the soft, fragrant straw.
And she was covered in kittens.
At the moment, she was holding up one of the furry black-and-white b.a.l.l.s of fur and then bringing it down to her face, nuzzling the lucky thing nose to nose, as its littermates-Justin counted at least six of them-variously snuggled against her side or climbing over her as if she were some mighty Gulliver and they were the inquisitive Lilliputians.
The mother cat, that had obviously accepted the intruder, wasn't quite as certain of Justin's appearance, and strutted over to him, her tail high, her back slightly arched. ”Put a scratch in these boots, Mother, and there will be no saving you from Wigglesworth's wrath,” he warned, and Lady Alina immediately sat up, looking at him with those wide, golden eyes.
He'd surprised her, surely. But she didn't look shocked. On the contrary, she appeared to be pleased.
Or he was weary enough to allow wishful thinking to cloud his heretofore clear judgment.
Her pins had fallen out of her hair. Ebony curls tumbled all around her head and shoulders. Sunlight streaming in through a barred window shone on her emerald-green riding habit and touched on her slightly reddened cheeks as she quickly put down the kitten and began b.u.t.toning up her jacket, for several of the b.u.t.tons had slipped their moorings as she played with the frisky litter.
Justin caught a glimpse of snow-white skin and the soft curve of a breast above a silk chemise.
He swallowed like a schoolboy.
”You're here,” she said unnecessarily as she began pulling bits of hay from her curls.
”Your powers of observation are astounding, Alina, if a trifle belated. Still, I couldn't be more delighted with my welcome,” he told her, striving to get himself back under control, appear nonchalant while all he wished to do was take her in his arms and hold on tight to the best thing to have happened to him. Instead, he bent to pick up the kitten Alina had been playing with and brought it to his face. ”Lucky little man, aren't you?” he said before carefully putting it back down in front of its worried mother.
”Do you always sneak up on people unannounced?” Alina asked as he held out a hand to a.s.sist her. She ignored it, and got to her feet unaided. She began working at her hair, tugging loose more bits of hay.
”Your pardon, I'm sure. Clearly I should have had Willis announce me. He could beat on a drum, or perhaps crash some cymbals? Here, don't do that, you're only making more tangles. Let me play at lady's maid.”
She looked at him for a long moment, and then lowered her arms and nodded. ”At least you look worse than I do,” she said as if that made everything all right. ”Wigglesworth told me you are always impeccable. Clearly I should not believe all that Wigglesworth tells me.”
”I wouldn't believe the half of it,” Justin told her as he fought the impulse to thread his fingers through her hair. Her soft, silky, wonderfully warm hair. ”I vastly overpay the fellow.”
If he just slipped his hands into the soft curls at either side of that sweet little face, and then gently drew her toward him, then he might kiss that full pink mouth, taste her sweetness once more, lose his wickedness in her innocence...
”What are you looking at? Do I have dirt on my nose?”
Justin pulled his mind from foolish fantasies and stepped away from her. ”No,” he said shortly. ”Are you ready to return to the house? I've a great need for a bath and a change of clothes before I find our hosts and thank them for their kindness in taking care of you while I was gone.”
She gave a rather imperious toss of her head, marred only by the sort of snorting hrummph that accompanied the gesture. ”You make it sound as if I'm some infant and need taking care of. Which I don't, thank you. I'm quite out of charity with you at the moment. And if Brutus hadn't gotten in the way, I would have shot that man.”
As she attempted to rush past him, Justin grabbed at her elbow and spun her around to face him. ”Would you mind repeating that last little bit, kitten?”
Alina pulled her arm free of his grasp. ”Don't call me that, even though I'm certain you think it's charming. You think you're charming. Wigglesworth insists that you're charming. Is it charming, my lord, to go riding off, leaving me in a strange land, surrounded by strangers, and having Luka shot into the bargain?”
Justin's blood froze in his veins. ”Luka has been shot?”
”Yes, and my best traveling ensemble has been destroyed. Not that anything so trivial is so important as Luka being shot. But if you'd not had us riding all over this silly island while you did some flit as if you couldn't stand being with me-with us all a moment longer, instead of taking us to London, as you were supposed to do, then we wouldn't have been accosted by highwaymen intent on stealing my cloak. I shouldn't have flaunted it on the dock, granted, because that was horribly stupid of me now that I've had time to reflect on the thing. But still, it's mostly all your fault.”
Justin's head was spinning, a circ.u.mstance that he felt no need to apologize for, as the woman could have been speaking a language he didn't understand for all the sense he could make of her words. He decided the cloak and the silly island could be disregarded as superfluous to the point for the moment, and instead concentrated on the words Luka shot and highwaymen.
”You were accosted by highwaymen on the way here, and Luka was shot?”
She looked at him in wide-eyed exasperation. ”Didn't I already say that? Yes, we were accosted by highwaymen, and Luka was shot. And then I ended up in the mud and Brutus scooped me up and all but threw me back into the coach. For a man who doesn't speak, he can certainly make his point extremely clear.”
Justin relaxed, but only slightly. She was clearly safe, and the major's wound couldn't have proved fatal, or else she wouldn't have been out here, giggling with kittens. ”I find myself powerless to resist asking, kitten. How did you end up in the mud?”
”That isn't important to the point,” she told him, s.h.i.+fting her gaze away from him. ”Luka wants to see you as soon as you've returned. He is very put out with you.”
”It would appear he's not the only one. Alina, I had to leave. But I could only leave if I believed that you would be safe until my return, which you most obviously were. But you think I was running away from you and our...arrangement. Don't you?”