Barbara Metzger Read online

  It was all that widow’s fault that he’d been fired, that he had no room, no board, that he had to chew on the side of his mouth. To be honest—if one such as Fred could be honest, even with himself—it was Rockford’s fault, but he needed the rest of his teeth. Never for a moment did he blame himself, except for not taking Arkenstall’s path with whatever the bailiff had left to steal.

  He decided to pay a call on the widow—and on the pouch of money he had seen Rockford hand her.

  “I want my share,” he said with a slur through his missing teeth.

  “Your…share?”

  Alissa stood, but she did not put down the trowel she was holding. She was alone, tending the garden at the side of the cottage. The boys were at lessons in the village, and Aminta had gone with them, to see if the lending library had the latest La Belle Assemble or Ackerman’s Repository, so she might study the fashion plates before deciding on a style for her new gown.

  The pistol was inside, and the surly groom from Rock Hill was outside, looking more like a ruffian than ever. Alissa had wondered why they kept the oafish man on after Arkenstall left, and wondered more now that the earl was in residence. At least that mystery was solved when he said, “That’s right. I lost my post on account of you, and now I want what’s due me.”

  “But I did not have anything to do with your being dismissed.”

  “Oh, no? You turned the earl against me, you did, hoping to keep all the booty for yourself.”

  “Booty? You are mistaken, Fred, if not foxed. I kept his boy, that’s all. I think you had better leave now.”

  “Not without what I come for. I brung the pigeon for you to pluck, aye, and I fetched and carried for the brat too, taking orders from that old relic Jake, when Arkenstall promised I’d be stable master. Now I am out on my ear and you are sitting in clover.”

  No, those were the last of her cabbages. “I am sorry, but I cannot help you. I don’t have the resources to hire a…a handyman.” Not that she would consider Fred for the post of privy digger.

  “No, but you do have that purse what his highness gave you. I saw him hand it over, I did. Now I want it.”

  The money for Billy’s clothes? “I spent it.”

  “What, all of it?” he shouted, taking a threatening step closer to her, trampling a cabbage.

  Alissa took a step back, closer to the house. She was not going to give this maggot a farthing of Rockford’s money. “I had bills. I paid them, and my rent. There is nothing left but a few pence,” she lied, “so you are wasting your time.”

  “A waste of time, is it? Then I might as well have my pleasure, iffen I can’t have my money.”

  She understood his toothless leer all too well. “I would die sooner.”

  “What, too good for the likes of me? Well, you ain’t good enough for his lordship, if that’s what you’re saving your favors for. His women are all soft, like silk, not dried up widows. They say he’ll marry some foreign princess, even.” He reached a filthy hand toward her shoulder.

  Alissa struck at his hand with the trowel. “Get off my property this instant, Fred. You are trespassing and I will not stand for it!”

  He wrenched the trowel out of her hand and made a grab for her arm. “I don’t intend you to be standing, I don’t.”

  Alissa doubted she could get past him to the house and the pistol. She could scream, but who could hear? Panic rising in her throat, she pushed his hand away. “Don’t do this, Fred. You will hang for sure.”

  “Only if they catch me. I’ll be gone long before that.”

  Alissa turned to run, but he grasped a handful of her skirt. She kicked out with her wooden-soled shoe.

  “Bitch!” he shouted, letting go of the fabric to rub his shinbone, but not stopping his pursuit.

  Alissa picked up the trowel and threw it at his head; then she started throwing the cabbages she’d collected. Panting, heart racing, she knew she could not hold him off for long. Then she heard hoofbeats.

  Oh, Lord, she prayed, don’t let it be the boys. Don’t let this madman hurt the boys. Or Aminta. Heavens, the man must never catch sight of her little sister. She hoped it was Sir George, her dreadful landlord. He was mean and a miser, but he was acting as magistrate. “Help!” she screamed for all she was worth.

  Fred had not heard the rider. He wiped dirt and cabbage leaves out of his eyes and kept coming—until he noticed that the widow was not fleeing. She was not screaming anymore either.

  She was too busy watching the devil himself dismount.

  Chapter Seven

  This was not Amy’s knight on a white charger, no fairy-tale Lancelot come to save the damsel in distress. This was elemental power, like a sudden dark squall descending from clear blue skies to destroy everything in its path. Vengeance on an ebony horse, he was, with a caped charcoal cloak billowing behind him. His black hair was windblown, his hat long gone, and he wore the darkest expression Alissa had ever seen on a man. He leaped from the back of his still-galloping mount straight onto Fred, knocking the former groom to the ground before Fred could finish “Bloody he—”

  Hell. That was what it appeared to Alissa, watching her rescuer pound Fred’s skull into the earth of her garden.

  The ground was soft, though, and Fred’s head was hard. Besides, he knew he was fighting for his life, so he struck out. His fist connected with the earl’s eye. While Rockford blinked, Fred managed to roll on top of the slightly lighter man. He raised his muscular, laborer’s arm high for a knockout blow.

  Alissa snatched up the trowel and slashed at his fist before he could lower it. Fred yowled, but by then he was on the bottom again, and Rockford, no longer considering the ground as a weapon, used his well-trained right.

  He kept pounding at the man even after Fred stopped resisting, using his right fist, then his left, for balance. Alissa feared he would kill the man. Not that Fred Nivens would be any great loss, but this would be murder, not justice.

  “My lord, stop. He is unconscious.”

  Battle rage still coursing through him, the red haze of fury blinding him to the sight of blood, Rockford did not cease. So Alissa did what she usually did when the boys were playing too rough: she threw something at them. In this instance she had no towel or bucket of water, and the trowel could do more harm than good, so she threw a cabbage.

  “What the…?”

  “He is unconscious,” she repeated, once she had the earl’s attention.

  He stood up and wiped his hands on his coat. “And you are unharmed?”

  “Yes.” Alissa feared that, if she answered anything else, saying she was frightened out of her wits, or that she would have nightmares for the rest of her life, he would resume pummeling the former servant.

  He took a step closer to her, mere inches away, in fact, and started swearing. Alissa could not translate most of the words, thank goodness, but she did understand that the earl had transferred his rage from Fred to herself.

  “Then you are the stupidest, most idiotic female I have ever known,” he shouted when he ran out of French, Italian, and German blasphemies and one particularly colorful Russian phrase about a bear and a Cossack and a bottle of vodka. “And I have known some truly featherheaded females. Hell, I was married to two of them. But you. You have to be the most jingle-brained of them all! Thinking you could defend yourself with a garden tool! What the deuce were you thinking, if you were thinking at all? Where was your damn pistol? Or do you only carry it when earls are expected?”

  The pistol was inside, of course, but he did not give her an opportunity to answer that she was about to offer Fred money after all, admitting she had lied, in order to lure him into the parlor. She could not have run, but she might have had a chance with the weapon. She barely got her mouth open to speak before Rockford raged on.

  “Where is your sister? Not that she could be much help, but how could you be out here by yourself when there are dastards like this on the loose? What if I had not decided to ride by on my way out of town? There a
re returning soldiers, dash it, out-of-work farmers, and who knows how many mangy curs roaming the woods looking for just such vulnerable widows. What possessed you to think you could live out here in near wilderness isolation by yourself?”

  Alissa did not know where to start. How dared he shout at her when she was the one who had been attacked? Why, one might think it was her fault, that she had invited this muckworm lying among her earthworms out for tea! One might also recall that the out-of-work servant was his former employee, not hers. If he had not employed such baseborn scum, if he had made certain the man left the vicinity…

  As for living alone with the boys, did the nodcock think she had a choice? Her husband was dead. So was the rest of her family, except for Aminta. Whom else was she supposed to live with? The ducal Henning relatives who did not acknowledge her existence, or her sons’? She’d found the least expensive rent where the boys could play, because that was all she could afford, by heaven. And it had been a thoroughly peaceful neighborhood, with little crime beyond the occasional drunken brawl or adolescent mischief—until he, the great Earl of Rockford, had arrived. She did not say any of it to the now silent, glaring lord, who was having a hard time keeping his aristocratic eyebrow raised when his eye was swelling shut beneath it. In fact, he did not look haughty at all. Angry, yes, and battered, but not half as arrogant as usual as he waited for her to wither in the face of his blistering accusations.

  Alissa would not shrink away. She raised her own chin, looked him in the eyes—one eye, that is—and said, “Thank you.”

  The earl took a deep breath and started to brush leaves and dirt off his coat. His neckcloth was untied and hanging down, so he pulled it loose and wrapped it around his cut knuckles. The action gave him time to regain his wind, and his composure. Lud, he could not remember the last time he had been so angry, the last time he actually wanted to kill a man. He might wish the occasional cow-handed driver to Hades, or the long-winded puff-guts at Parliament to perdition, and Arkenstall definitely ought to hang, but not at his own hands, by Harry. He had never even harbored such malice toward the man who had run off with his first wife, killing her in his carriage. Of course, the man had died too, but Rockford had not been half this angry.

  What kind of diplomat showed such emotion? A poor one, who was quickly replaced by a cooler head. Rockford prided himself on his control, his aplomb, his dignity. There was not much dignity in rolling about among the cabbages, and he had shown no control whatsoever. And did not regret it in the least. What if he had not been coming to make his farewells? The thought of what might have happened made him shudder.

  Alissa was thinking it too, now that the fighting and the shouting appeared over. She shuddered too.

  He saw and held out his arms. That was all, no words, no superior, sardonic look. Alissa stepped into his embrace, just for the comfort, she told herself, because she had been so frightened. He held her with one hand and awkwardly stroked her hair, fallen out of its braids, with his wrapped hand while she cried.

  “Hush. It is all right. He will never threaten you again. No one will. I will send someone over to keep watch. He can sleep in your stable, with the horses.”

  “No, I cannot afford—”

  “You cannot afford not to. And I am not asking you to pay.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. My son’s safety is involved too, you know, so stop being so deuced stubborn. That is, so independent.” He handed her a lawn handkerchief that was embroidered with his crest.

  Alissa wiped her eyes, then dabbed at the trickle of blood above Rockford’s nearly closed eye.

  And then the earl did a remarkably foolish thing for a man of his experience and prowess, an act so spontaneous as to be totally out of character. He kissed Mrs. Henning. Right there in the trampled garden.

  Right after she had been pawed at by a disgruntled drunk.

  Right after he’d shown the violent side to his nature.

  Right after Fred had reminded her that she was not good enough for the Earl of Rockford.

  Right. She slapped him. Hard. Then she said, “Thank you,” again, for it was a good kiss—she could feel it to her toes—and a good lesson. This man would steal more than her money, and be just as heartless as the fallen groom, with less thought. After all, Fred had planned on robbing her. The earl was just passing by. “I will accept the watchman you mentioned, my lord. And I will keep the pistol more handy. I see now that no man is to be trusted, especially where supposedly vulnerable widows are involved. Good day.”

  That was it? He’d saved her virtue and perhaps her life, and she was dismissing him, the Earl of Rockford, as if he were a flunky? Granted, he ought not have stolen that kiss, but she had not kept her lips locked together, either. At his haughtiest, despite smelling like a cabbage and not seeing out of one eye, and his knuckles stinging like the devil, he drawled sarcasm: “I see your gratitude is boundless, madam.” He bowed. “I shall not bother you again. Good day.” He walked toward his well trained horse, who had wandered off, but not far.

  “Wait.”

  Ah, he thought. The widow was not as outraged as she pretended. He would have raised his eyebrow, if he could. “Yes?”

  “What about him?” She pointed toward the flattened greens.

  Rockford looked at Fred, who had not stirred. “I doubt he will cause any further trouble.”

  “But you cannot leave him here, in the garden.”

  “You wished him brought into the house, perhaps?”

  “Of course not!” Alissa wished she had slapped him harder; he was being so insufferable, simply because she had rebuffed his unwelcome—well, his unworthy—advances. “I wish him out of my sight!”

  “I should bury him?” He studied his wrapped knuckles. “I think not.”

  “Nonsense. You should take him to Sir George Ganyon.”

  “Your landlord? Why? Does the baronet rent rooms to felons? I knew he was careful with his money, but that seems extreme.”

  Alissa almost stomped her foot. “Sir George is acting as magistrate while the squire travels to Scotland.”

  “In chase of my errant bailiff, I suppose. I’d rather have my Rembrandt returned than Arkenstall.”

  “That is irrelevant. Sir George can see that this scoundrel is locked up.”

  “At his place, Fairmont?”

  She nodded. “Until he can be sent away.”

  Rockford looked to his horse, who seemed to be content cropping the widow’s herbs. She’d likely blame that on him, too.

  “I cannot carry the dastard double, not without laming Mephisto, whom I aim to ride to Sheffield. Nor would the stallion carry Fred across the saddle, if I were inclined to walk alongside leading him.”

  A glance toward his tasseled Hessian boots indicated how disinclined he was.

  “There is the cart,” Alissa suggested. “You could tie your horse to the back.”

  So he drove off, the eminent Earl of Cabbage, behind a donkey, with a bloodied bully unconscious at his feet. Of the three, Lord Rockford wondered, which was the biggest jackass?

  *

  Rockford would have seen the former groom put on a boat, courtesy of His Majesty’s navy, but he really had to catch up to his valet and his carriage. He would have to raise the valet’s salary, of course, when the man saw his current state, but there was no help for it. So he drove into the courtyard of Fairmont, an ugly, squat stone dwelling. Ugly, squat Sir George came out to see for himself his noble neighbor driving a donkey cart.

  Rockford delivered the now-groaning groom, and he delivered a scathing lecture on the rules concerning social responsibility, the care of dependents, and the maintenance of thatched roofs.

  From a man who had not inspected his own estates in two years? Sir George guffawed. “Great joke, Rockford. Never knew you for a wit.”

  He could not start another melee, not in front of the baronet’s gaping servants, so he nodded curtly, smiled slightly, and refused to come inside for a drink. He di
d get Sir George to agree to look after the widow’s welfare, including returning the donkey cart, having his men watch for suspicious strangers, and putting a new roof on the cottage.

  All of which cost money.

  *

  “So you see, ma’am,” the large-nosed, short-legged man told Alissa, “I’ll have to raise the rents, come the new year.”

  She had been forced to invite the baronet in for tea when he drove the cart back, leading his own mount, a brute as ill-natured as its owner. She’d sent the boys to the stable with the donkey, away from the curling lips and darting eyes of both the stallion and Sir George Ganyon. Sir George’s ears were too big and full of hair to flatten back like the horse’s, but they would have, when he noted that the donkey got a warmer welcome than he did.

  Alissa put down her cup untasted. “But we agreed on a two-year lease, which is not up until next summer. I cannot afford any more.”

  “Tut, tut.” He brushed crumbs off his protruding belly and smacked his fleshy lips as he reached for another macaroon. He nodded toward the plate of sandwiches and biscuits, which Alissa had prepared in case the earl returned with the donkey. “You are living well enough off his lordship’s bounty.”

  “But that will end when he makes other arrangements for his sons.”

  Sir George lowered his head, revealing the bald spot in his mouse-brown hair. Sons were another sore spot. He had none, after burying two wives. The widow had two off that weakling Henning who’d died of a chill, the milksop. Rockford had two dead wives, too, but had two sons to show for it. One was supposed to be sickly, but the other seemed healthy enough, if a bit scrawny. Young Rothmore was a regular hellion, he’d heard, but the cub could sit a horse well, the hunt-mad baronet had noted.

  He had no sons. That was simply not fair. He did not particularly like children, but that was not the point. He found the younger Henning boy shy and sissified. The sprig clung to his mother when she brought him by with the rent. The older one was distant and distrustful. Standoffish, just like the widow. He’d teach them all the proper regard, the baronet vowed, someday.