Rrreowww.
The unearthly yowl yanked Pierson awake.
Rrreowww.
The second one had him sitting up and opening his eyes, only to be greeted by a wretched bit of sunshine flitting through a slight opening in the curtains. The shaft of light cut across the room like a spear to his temple, daring him to just try and ignore the brilliance the day offered.
Rrreowww.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered as he got up. He wasn’t too sure what the order of the day was going to be, but for now he had a rather sketchy list of immediate concerns.
Close those damned wall hangings.
Drown that cat.
Go back to bed.
But once his feet hit the cold floor and he stumbled his way across the room, he knew there was no returning to the void of dreams.
So there he stood, naked and cold and hungry. And just a bit hungover.
Well, a lot hungover.
Rrreowww.
He blanched as the noise cut through his skull. “Drown the cat” rose rather quickly to the top of his list, and he caught up his wrapper as he went.
All things considered, where Hannibal went, Miss Tempest most likely wasn’t far behind.
At least he bloody well hoped so. He had a few choice words for the miss. About her cat. Or rather, former cat.
“Good God!” he exclaimed as he pulled open the door and immediately took two steps back.
Hannibal himself was always a bit of a shock, but there he sat on his haunches, battered ears twitching and his one eye looking up with pride. The demmed feline had brought a grand offering with him. A rather large rat. Rrreowww, the cat repeated, and if Pierson wasn’t mistaken, with all the puffery of one of His Majesty’s naval officers.
Then the cat came strolling forward, rubbing against the viscount’s legs, before making a beeline for the now-emptied bed. He hopped up and came to a stop right where Pierson had been sleeping moments before. Turning a few circles, he finally seemed satisfied with his choice and plopped down to begin cleaning himself.
“Now see here!” Pierson protested, not that Hannibal even deigned to notice.
“Yes, well,” he managed, taking another glance at the rat to assure himself it was good and dead. Turning back to the bed and the interloper, he said, “Don’t get too comfortable,” as he tugged on his breeches and a shirt.
If he had to get up, he might as well get some breakfast. But what that might be, he couldn’t imagine. Tiploft had managed, with the help of the nearby inn, to pull together a manageable supper, but it wasn’t the same as having one’s dinner hot from the kitchen.
Not that his former cook had been anything to brag about, but the meals had always been hot.
More often than not burnt, but heated nonetheless.
Catching up Hannibal and sidestepping the rat, he stalked down the hall, his stomach growling.
Rrreowww, the cat complained. What the devil is the matter with you? I brought a rat.
“I think I’d prefer roasted cat,” Pierson threatened. But it was obvious this sort of prospect hardly dinted Hannibal’s nerves. Most likely he’d heard it before.
Probably daily.
Cat in one hand, cane in the other, he managed the stairs slowly, and considered what might be had this morning. Some toast and butter, perhaps?
Though some ham and eggs wouldn’t be all that bad either.
But no jam. None of that, he thought with a shiver.
For while he’d made a great show of storming off the previous day, he was rather sheepish to admit—after she’d left—well, fled, actually—he’d returned like a beggar to the table and eaten every morsel. Including the jam, until he’d realized the flavor was something akin to summer and bright promises—rather like the chit herself.
The viscount shook his head like a dog, tossing any image of the pretty minx out of his thoughts. No, that decided the matter—he needed to find a cook immediately.
Perhaps he could enlist his man of business—but after a moment of consideration, Pierson discarded that notion. The overly cautious fellow would want to make a careful search, if only to assure that the viscount got a proper replacement.
Again, time was not in his favor. Or rather his stomach’s.
And while Pierson knew the matter could be quickly expedited with a note to his mother or his sister Margaret, that was the last thing he wanted to do.
It would be akin to running up a white flag, giving his female relations all the evidence they needed to prove his life wasn’t as perfectly ordered as he declared it to be.
Mother, Margaret, and most likely, even Roselie—for she never liked to be left out of her share—would descend upon the house and start putting things in order, and then after that, they’d insist on doing the same to him: meddling and “setting him to rights,” as Margaret often said.
He shuddered and decided a few cold plates of greasy meat from the public house could be borne if it kept the females in his life at bay.
And Miss Tempest as well. She was rather like that annoying ray of sunshine that had divided his room—reminding him of all that was bright and beautiful, everything that the world had once offered him.
Well, it was his world no longer. And all he needed was someone who could manage to put a good char on a beefsteak, cook a rasher of crisp bacon, and perhaps send along a pot of tea that wasn’t cold.
How hard could it be to find someone capable of a few decent dishes?
He hauled Hannibal through a dark and cold dining room and continued down the back stairs to the kitchen, where a puzzled-looking Tiploft was surveying the stove.
Which was also cold.
This did not bode well for the prompt arrival of his breakfast.
Pierson sighed. “What is it, Tiploft?”
“My lord!” The butler looked up, plainly surprised to see him up and about so early in the morning. “I can’t seem to get the stove lit this morning. Confounded new contraption. Your sister insisted—”
“Say no more.” Pierson sighed, leaning against the doorjamb. When he’d come back from Spain, his mother and Margaret had taken advantage of his convalescence and “modernized” as much of the house as they could before he’d regained his ability to walk and discovered what mischief they’d been about.
The fancy stove, which was the devil itself to light, was just one such example of their meddling.
“I do hate to add to your woes, Tiploft, but Miss Tempest’s cat has returned and left a rather large rat in the hallway.”
Tiploft sighed. “I shall see to it, my lord.”
“How did he get in?” Pierson asked as he made his way toward the back door.
“He bolted in when I opened the door earlier. I didn’t realize he’d brought something with him.”
“For future reference, my good man, this foul beast always brings an entire host of disasters with him—undistinguishable piles, dead vermin, Miss Tempest—”
Even as he invoked her name, there was a sharp, determined rap of someone demanding entrance at the kitchen door.
Knock. Knock. KNOCK.
Apparently a rather brave soul with a limited amount of patience, who was, given the viscount’s mood, about to meet his demise. He dropped Hannibal to the ground and yanked the door open.
Before he could utter a word, a substantial woman came bustling in. “About time,” she blustered as she barreled in, nearly toppling Pierson in the process. The woman was not so much large of girth but tall and strongly built. And certainly not the sort of woman a man naysayed easily.
She stopped in the middle of the kitchen, her mouth falling open at the state of affairs around her.
Pierson had to admit, the place was a shambles. Dishes and pots stacked up in the sink; Tiploft sporting a face smudged with ash; and him, the master of the house, in nothing more than his breeches and a loose shirt.
And given that he hadn’t put on any shoes, he could also assure her the floor needed a good scrubbing.
But he doubted this woman needed to be told that.
She spun around and glared at him. “Who are you gaping at? Never seen a woman before?”
“I . . . uh . . . uh,” Pierson stammered, for he’d never been berated so—especially not in his own house.
Save by his sisters.
“Harrumph,” the woman replied to his stammering and turned to Tiploft, dismissing him just as quickly. “A useless, shiftless lot if ever I saw one. Now it appears I’ve come just in time, but mind you—”
Pierson hadn’t served under Wellington not to know when to pluck up his courage and stand his ground. “Madame, who the devil are you?”
The woman turned slowly around, eyes narrowed. “Cheeky fellow aren’t you? I’m the new cook, if you must know. And don’t be calling me ‘madame,’ I’m Mrs. Petchell to you. No talking fancy, or flirting, or trying to charm me is going to get you out of your responsibilities around here. Nor is being lame. This is my kitchen and I am in charge and you’ll work like everyone else, cripple or not.”
What had she just said? Flirting with her? Pierson didn’t know whether to laugh or run. She was at least twenty years his senior.
But the woman wasn’t done with her extraordinary pronouncements. “Well, now, what a mess. That miss wasn’t wrong about that. And here I thought she might not know the difference between a pot and kettle like most of these fancy ladies—” Her steely gaze swept over the room once again, “ ’Pon my husband’s grave, I owe that gel an apology.”
What gel? he was about to ask, only to find the lady continuing her speech. Or rather, tirade.
Having finished her quick inspection of her surroundings, Mrs. Petchell heaved a large sigh. “I can see rightly that I am needed here. Yes, indeed, this kitchen needs Matilda Petchell’s touch, it does.” She shrugged off her cloak and shoved it at Pierson. “Now I hear from the miss that the master’s a regular devil of a brute, but I don’t blame him. Not in the least. I’d be in a perpetual pet if my meals were coming out of this ruin.” She continued into the kitchen and then stopped, and looked over her shoulder at the still-open door. “Well good thing I gots my Bits and Bobs with me,” she declared, jerking her head in a nod, that brought with it more arrivals.
A pair to be exact. Yet they came no farther than the door. Two wide-eyed mites viewed the kitchen like one might a cell at the Tower. The scrawny little girl, with her bright red hair tied in pigtails, bit her lip and looked ready to bolt, while the other one, a boy with a smile that showed a few missing teeth, and an equally red mane, winked at Pierson, trying to look older than his narrow frame implied.
Mrs. Petchell tapped her foot with a staccato beat. In fact, everything about the woman was impatient. She seemed to quiver with nervous energy.
And it came spilling out each time she spoke. “Bitty, you get those dishes sorted out. Bob, you see to that stove.” Then she caught up the coal scuttle and shoved it at Pierson. “Well, what are you waiting for, Hopping Giles?”
Tiploft gasped at the woman’s use of the vulgar slur.
She shot a glance at the butler. “Oh, aye, I’m not one to mince words. And aye, he’s lame, but I don’t mind it a bit if he works for his keep. I don’t cozen anyone laying about and expecting to be fed, nor will I hold my tongue for anyone who don’t know their place.” Nodding as if that was the end of the discussion, she prodded Pierson again with the coal scuttle. “Be useful, you shiftless vagrant. Go fetch some coal and a bit of kindling from out back so Bob can get that stove going—something you might have thought of doing afore I arrived.”
She poked him once again with the bucket until he truly had no choice but to take it. For one wild, fleeting moment, he thought she meant to clout him with it if she had to “ask” one more time.
“Don’t gape at me like a mackerel, get moving,” she told him as she shooed him out the door. “I’ve got His Lordship’s breakfast to make and not much to do it with from the looks of things.”
As the woman continued to order her troops about, Pierson Stratton, the fifth Viscount Wakefield, backed down the steps and found himself in his own garden, having been routed from his house.
More to his shame, he’d raised barely a defense. Flanked and defeated before he could fire off a shot.
Suddenly, it occurred to him that he was exactly as she’d claimed, nothing more than a shiftless vagrant, for he hadn’t any notion of how to reclaim his own castle.
Taking a wary glance back inside the kitchen, he spied Mrs. Petchell interrogating Tiploft like his very position was at stake—enough so to give Pierson pause.
Certainly she couldn’t recall his letters patent, but he wouldn’t put it past this overbearing Amazon not to try.
Yes, perhaps fetching the coal was the better part of valor. For quite honestly, he was a bit wary of returning without it.
Even if he was lord and master of the house.
I am the lord and master, he reminded himself as he glanced around and tried to discover where the coal was kept, or even a scrap that might serve as kindling.
From behind him, the garden gate groaned as if it hadn’t moved in years, and it was followed by an added complaint.
“Oh, bother these hinges.”
Pierson cringed. For it wasn’t the censure of his broken garden door that had him balking, but the voice.
He glanced first toward the kitchen and then back at the still-shuddering garden gate. Now it all made sense.
Mrs. Petchell’s “gel.”
And the newfound bane of his existence.
As he turned around, he discovered Miss Tempest, her back to him, caught in a tangle of rose canes.
A rose trapped by thorns.
If the front of Miss Tempest was enticing, her backside was even more so. It showed a decidedly feminine figure, with curves and soft angles that could tease a man into believing the lady was just as pliable.
And any man who thought that, Pierson reminded himself, would be a fool.
If only to prove matters, she continued her complaints.
“Oh, bother,” she sputtered as she tried to extract herself, but only managed to catch not only her hair, but her gown. “Why doesn’t that man hire a gardener for this tangle?”
“Have you considered that perhaps he prefers a tangle, if only to keep busybody misses on the other side of the wall?”
She stilled. There was a moment that Pierson felt the unlikely desire to laugh, but when she turned her head toward him, he thought better of it. “Well, why are you just standing there? Do something!”
His first thought was a rather uncharitable one—having to do with pushing her into the roses and leaving her there, but one look at those lips, pursed together and so in need of . . . Well, he didn’t want to consider what this lady needed, though a thorough kissing did come to mind . . . and, despite his misgivings, he found himself moving forward to help her.
As he drew closer, towering over her, she leaped a little, as if in panic, and managed to get herself further imbedded.
“Oh, dear,” she gasped, swiping at the unruly canes and getting her sleeve caught in the process.
“Hold still,” he ordered, and to his amazement, she did. “However do you manage to find trouble so quickly, Miss Tempest?” he asked as he leaned closer and very carefully plucked the first branch from her hair.
She glanced quickly at him, her eyes wary. “I’m hardly in trouble,” she replied. “Just caught.”
Caught. He wanted to laugh, but as he freed her from yet another cane, the thorns pulled a strand of her mahogany hair from its tight, perfectly wound chignon, and the silky tress fell into a rebellious wave alongside the curve of her chin.
And there it was. The moment that changed everything.
For suddenly it was Pierson who was caught—with an aching desire to reach out and set the damage to rights, to brush the errant strand away and in the process, graze his knuckles against the silken temptation of her fair skin.
He swallowed and tried to look away, but there they were, her lips, that tempting pair of ruby jewels, parted just so, and begging a man to come explore.
His gaze fled upward, where he found her staring at him, a starry light to her eyes. It seemed that, along with his own good sense, that practical, tart-tongued chit he’d just met was gone, and in her place stood a lady whose wiles and passion had found a way past his defenses.
You’ve been alone too long, my good man, he told himself as he tried to wrench his gaze away from that dangerous light, away from the wayward strand of hair that had ignited this blazing spark inside him.
All these years—first in Spain and then home—spent alone came haunting forward. How could he have forgotten how something so purely female could lead a man to forget the very simple fact he was a gentleman?
Well, supposed to be, he mused as he leaned closer, his senses filling with the unmistakable air of roses and Miss Tempest. His eyes closed as he heard her soft intake of breath, and he let his fingers tease that curl back over her ear. He didn’t need to see what he was doing, for he could feel her trembling beneath his touch, so he knew he had the right of it.
The rake he’d once been would then have followed with his lips, letting them explore the very same path. Then, inch by inch, he’d free her from her thorny prison and take her captive in his arms.
That is, until he opened his eyes and all his fantasies took flight, for the lady was gaping at him as if he’d suddenly gone mad—or worse, she knew exactly what he was thinking . . .
They stared at each other, both suddenly wary. So very lost in that fragile, dangerous moment.
Not that he had any idea what to say—for he didn’t quite understand what had happened.
Not that Miss Tempest seemed to be at a loss for words—though they came out in a whispered, halting jumble.
“I—I—I . . . that is, I think . . . I’m undone,” she told him, glancing away as she tugged the last cane off her sleeve and slipped past him.
Right about then, her devil of a cat came bolting out of the house. After a hasty flight down the steps, he came to stop beside Pierson, settling down on his haunches with an air of feline disdain.
Hannibal, meet Mrs. Petchell.
Apparently the cat got along with the cook as well as he did with everyone else.
“Oh, Hannibal, what have you done now?” Miss Tempest exclaimed.
“He brought me a peace offering,” Pierson explained, looking down at the one-eyed tom.
“He did?” she asked with a wary note.
Obviously she knew her pet very well.
“A rather large rat,” he told her.
Miss Tempest cringed a bit before she asked, “Was it—”
“Dead? Yes, rather,” he replied, and then for the life of him, he didn’t know why, but he added teasingly, “You might want to inform that beast of yours I prefer strawberry jam.”
The teasing words came out before he could stop himself, and she appeared as surprised as he was.
Strawberry jam, indeed! What had gotten into him?
Miss Tempest, that was it.
This chit was going to be his death. Or rather his undoing. Still, his fingers wound tightly around the handle of his cane and he took a step back, tamping down the unfathomable rush of desire that had flooded his limbs.
All of them.
With that thought came a shiver of recognition, and if he were a suspicious sort he would have called it what it most likely was: a portent, a warning.
If there was ever a lady who could find the odd crack in the curtains of his life, throw back the hangings, and allow the sun to flood into his world once again, it was this one.
Miss Tempest would dare where no one else would tread. He could see it in her eyes, in the set of her chin.
In her choice of cats and cooks.
And that very notion frightened him more than Mrs. Petchell in the kitchen with a coal scuttle.
“Yes, well,” Miss Tempest stammered a bit. “I saw Mrs. Petchell coming up the mews and thought I would come over and see that she was properly settled,” she said as she brushed her hands over her skirt. “That, and Hannibal was missing.”
That answered his previous question. Not that Pierson had really had any doubts as to who the “gel” was who had thrust Mrs. Petchell into his kitchen.
“My lord?” she prompted, this time wading further into his garden, seemingly unafraid that she faced—oh, what had Mrs. Petchell said?—oh, yes, “a devil of a brute.”
That she thought him a brute bothered him more than he cared to consider.
Perhaps he had been a bit churlish before, but demmit, it was his house and his life in which she was so blithely interfering.
He’d had everything perfectly ordered before she’d tumbled—quite literally—through his front door.
Well, mostly.
And now . . . and now . . . well, she had him considering reckless, foolish notions like kissing her—and if there was anything that would upset his precarious and precious routine, he had to believe kissing Miss Tempest would be disastrous to his closely kept sanctuary.
Yet as churlish and brutish as he’d been, here she was, daring to venture into his garden, nay, his life, yet again. “Miss Tempest, have you nothing better to do than interfere in my life?”
Much to his chagrin, she didn’t take it as an insult, not in the least. She blinked once or twice and then managed a sturdy, determined smile. Oh, the determined part was the most vexing. “No, not at the present,” she told him. “Luckily for you.”
Luckily for him?
He was about to give her an entire litany of all the ways he was anything but lucky, but she had already sidestepped him and was snatching up the abandoned coal scuttle.
“Oh, dear, let me do this,” she said, making her way to the coal shed. “How kind of you to help Mrs. Petchell as she gets everything in order.” She deftly filled it and then handed it to him. “I do hope everything is to her liking.” Then she leaned in close, close enough that Pierson could detect those spicy hints of, what else, roses once again. “I must warn you, Mrs. Petchell is rather particular about her kitchens, but she comes highly recommended by Lady Aveley.”
Had the chit bothered to ask him if any of this was to his liking? Or by his leave? Rather, she was worried about Mrs. Petchell’s sensibilities?
And when he looked up again, he found that she’d started toward the kitchen and was glancing back at him, as if surprised he wasn’t following in her sunny wake. “How do you like her?”
“Not. At. All.”
That put a decided crimp in her smile.
And while that, he thought, should be a victory for his camp, it brought none of the familiar glow that came from routing an enemy. So he sallied forth, lobbing yet another shot to send her packing. “Whatever possessed you, Miss Tempest, to hire a cook for me?”
Her hands fisted all too quickly to her hips at his challenge. “Because you needed one.”
Well, she had him there. But there was a better point to be made. “And why did I need one, dare I ask?”
She blushed at this, though only slightly, a hint of dusky pink rising on her fair cheeks. “That hardly matters,” she told him. “Besides, Mrs. Petchell comes highly recommended.”
“So you’ve already said.”
Her lips pressed together.
If only they weren’t the color of strawberry preserves. Sweet. Delectable. Tempting.
His better judgment clamored for a hasty retreat. Yet with his enemy in his sights, he stalked forward. Boldly.
Not because those delectable lips of hers tempted him, but because he had her cornered.
Or so he thought. Foolishly.
Towering over her yet again, he fired his best sally. “And who recommends that harridan you’ve foisted upon me? Newgate?”
To his chagrin, she laughed. “A harridan? You’re being quite the grumbletonian today.” She paused and then added, “Even for you.”
What did she mean by that? Even for you? Rather than give it much thought, he continued on. “Your cook thinks I’m a footman. Called me a ‘Hopping Giles,’ and sent me to fetch coal.”
Miss Tempest, rather than being shocked at such a state of affairs, shook off his complaints and replied, “You must have mistaken her.”
He held up the coal scuttle.
Unwilling to raise a white flag, as any honorable combatant would when defeated, she continued forward into the fray. “Plainly, you were improperly introduced.”
“Improperly introduced?” he nearly exploded. “The woman was set on me.”
Miss Tempest pulled her skirt back and swished past him, heading toward the kitchen. “Set on you! I never! Lord Wakefield, considering all I’ve heard of you, it seems you are also afflicted with a terrible flair for the dramatic. Set upon you, indeed. She was nothing of the sort.”
And if Pierson thought that was the end of the matter, he was sadly mistaken.
The chit whirled around and came stomping back to face him, thorns at the ready. “And why wouldn’t she mistake you for some layabout when that is exactly how you appear this morning?” She waved her hands at his hastily donned ensemble.
Well, it wasn’t like he was expecting callers.
He never had callers.
Until now, apparently.
“If you are determined to live your life looking like a common ruffian, then you had best be comfortable being addressed as one.” She walked around him and sniffed. “No wonder poor Mrs. Petchell confused the matter.” Then she was off toward the kitchen again. “Well, come along, let’s set this to rights.”
“There is nothing to set to rights,” he told her, holding his ground. “You can take her back where she came from. Her and those imps she brought with her.”
Again, that incredulous expression that spoke volumes. “You don’t mean to keep her?”
“No, I do not. Not unless she knows how to roast a cat.”
Back she came down the steps yet again, and he regretted his words immediately, for she brought with her that air of roses. Sharp and determined to overshadow anything else—including his better judgment. “I’d wager your monsieur was adept at that recipe.”
Most likely he was. There had been more than one dish that Pierson hadn’t dared ask what it was. Better to think it chicken and leave it at that.
Nor was Miss Tempest done roasting him. “You cannot let Mrs. Petchell go. She’s a widow with no other means.”
Pierson wondered if the woman’s marital state was because the former Mr. Petchell expired out of self-defense.
He thought he might have to follow suit, since Miss Tempest hadn’t finished ringing a peal over his head. “ . . . and furthermore, those children are orphans. Her sister’s children. The dear lady has taken them in.”
“I am not running a charity, Miss Tempest.”
“Those children have no one else but their aunt.”
He set his shoulders. “And how is that my problem?”
For a time, and before he’d inherited, he’d fancied the law and had even studied it for a bit. After all these years, there had been one sound piece of common sense that he’d never forgotten.
Never ask a question to which you don’t want to know the answer.
And now he’d gone and strayed from that very sound advice.
Miss Tempest leaned in close and lowered her voice. “Their father perished in the flight from Corunna. I would think that you, of all people—”
Corunna . . . Pierson heard nothing more.
That one word was enough to stop the air in his chest, bringing with it a slate of horrible, bloody images.
His garden disappeared and he saw nothing but the road, awash in blood and mangled bodies, men writhing in the throes of death. And the horrible, helpless feeling that there was nothing to do but keep marching. Running.
Now here were more casualties from that mayhem being laid at his doorstep.
“Not again!” he said, stabbing his cane into the ground and leaning heavily against it as he tried to breathe.
Whatever she’d been saying, her words came to a quick halt, giving him time to stalk past her, ignoring the sharp pain that such a quick movement sent through his leg.
“Not another word,” he growled in warning when she went to open her mouth.
Like a brute might. But at this point he didn’t care. He wasn’t about to wade into another bloody ditch. Not ever again.
And then he got inside the kitchen.
His kitchen, he reminded himself.
It was all still a chaotic mess—which only served to rattle his shaken nerves all that much more. Yet as he drew another deep breath, he could see that the girl had organized the dishes in the sink, while the boy—by some miracle of happenstance—had gotten the stove lit and now a kettle was atop it and starting to steam.
Across the room, Mrs. Petchell and Tiploft were nose to nose having quite a row of their own.
Mrs. Petchell whirled around at his arrival. “So this one,” she began, jerking her thumb at Tiploft, “says you’re the master.”
“I am,” Pierson said, rising up, and for the first time in ages, wishing he looked more like one. But there was more to being noble than a well-cut coat and polished boots. He tucked his chin up and glared at her.
But if he was expecting a bit of remorse or even a demmed apology for her high-handed ways, he wasn’t about to get anything like that.
Not even close.
“Harrumph!” she managed, and shook out her apron. “We’ll see about that.” Then she pointed at the door that led up to the main floor. “If you’re the master, what the devil are you doing in my kitchen? Get out with you.”
From behind him, he heard a choking little cough from Miss Tempest. Whether it was dismay or laughter, he couldn’t tell.
Not that it mattered.
Nor was Mrs. Petchell done. “Oh, but first, the Bits and Bobs have something to say.” She shot the children a pair of pinning glances. “Don’t you now?”
“Aye,” the little boy began.
“Yes, milord,” the girl said, her lower lip trembling. She turned to Pierson but didn’t look up at him. “Thank you, sir,” she mumbled, more to the floor than to him.
“We’ll earn our keep, milord,” the boy added, to which his sister nodded emphatically.
“Oh, aye, they will. I’ll see to it,” their aunt declared with a no nonsense huff.
And in that moment, Pierson felt that crack, that bit of warmth from earlier slice across his heart, opening it a bit more.
No. No. No. He didn’t want any of this. Especially responsibility for the welfare of two scrawny orphans.
War orphans, Miss Tempest would add.
He didn’t bother counting Mrs. Petchell. Pierson suspected she could do for herself in the furthest reaches of Russia with nothing more than a penknife and an apple core.
But when he glanced up, firm in his resolve to cast the entire lot of them out, he spied Miss Tempest standing in the doorway, sunlight now flooding in around her, illuminating her, and her gaze shining with a misty veil.
One that defied him to be anything but the brute she thought him to be.
Even Hannibal, now perched in his mistress’s arms, cocked his head to let his one eye give him a good look at the viscount. I didn’t waste a perfectly good rat on you, did I?
“Yes, well,” he muttered. “See that you do.” Then he nodded to Bob and said, “There’s a dead rat in the hallway upstairs courtesy of Miss Tempest’s cat. Please fetch it for her, with my compliments.”
Then he fled upstairs, each step echoing one determined thought.
I am the master of this house.
I am.
But he suspected he was the master of little else.
After Lord Wakefield fled to his domain above stairs, Mrs. Petchell turned her sharp gaze on Louisa.
She had to suppose there wasn’t much that escaped the irascible cook’s notice—and right now she felt exposed and bare—as if the cook could see inside the dangerous tangle of desire still roiling inside her.
“Harrumph!” Mrs. Petchell snorted, as if she knew the answer, but wasn’t about to share her opinions.
Thankfully.
“Off with you, miss,” the cook said, shooing Louisa down the kitchen steps and out into the garden. “I’ve got work to do.” And with that, she slammed the kitchen door shut.
Louisa paused in the overgrown garden, just stood there like a statue—save for the uneven rhythm of her heart—and wondered at what had just transpired.
It had seemed a simple task: having spied Mrs. Petchell coming up the mews, Louisa had hurried over to ensure the lady got a proper introduction.
Then she’d come through the garden gate . . . she’d come through and . . . and then . . . well, everything had turned upside down.
She glanced down at Hannibal. “I got caught,” she whispered to him. By the rose canes and by . . . him.
Cornered by that beast of a man. When he’d come storming across the yard, she had thought at first he meant to toss her back over the garden wall, but then he’d stopped before her and . . .
“I thought for a moment he meant to—” she confessed to her perfect confidant. Say what you might about her less-than-amiable pet, he was a good listener. “I thought he might . . .” She began to tell him, but stopped. She couldn’t confess that, not even to Hannibal.
Wasn’t it every girl’s dream to be kissed?
Picking her way through the tangle of rose canes, she slipped through the opening in the wall. Faced with the thought of seeing Lavinia, she stopped yet again.
Her sister would see through any dissembling on Louisa’s part, so she settled down on a bench, setting Hannibal free to roam about Lord Charleton’s perfectly ordered garden, while she collected her composure.
For all she’d called the viscount a ruffian, she found herself entranced by him. He was a puzzle of contradictions.
And if there was one thing that could needle at Louisa, it was a tangle that needed unraveling.
Yet here she was, still firm in her conviction not to marry, yet she couldn’t stop herself from thinking of him, of his chin—dark with stubble—and how, heaven help her, she’d wanted to run her fingers down the strong line of his jaw.
She’d longed to untie the hasty queue of his hair and run her fingers through it until he resembled a pirate in all his untidy, most ruffian ways.
So when his hand had reached toward her, when he’d pushed that wayward strand of hair off her cheek . . . she’d wished, she’d wanted, so much more.
She’d wanted him to cradle her chin in one of his great, large hands and turn her face up so he could steal a kiss.
As she’d tried to breathe, tried to stop thinking about him carrying her off in some rakish manner, she’d looked up and into his eyes and seen something there that had left her utterly unsettled.
A need so deep, she’d been afraid of falling into it. Afraid it reflected the turmoil raging inside her—the one that had nearly prodded her into rising up on her toes, catching hold of him and bringing his mouth to hers.
The toe of her boot gouged into the gravel path, sending the rocks scattering.
“Oh, bother,” she muttered as she dropped down and went to work gathering them back into place, setting it all to rights.
If only the stark, ragged desire inside her could be dealt with so easily.
“I wanted him to kiss me, Hannibal,” she told her friend when he came to inspect her work. “He must think me quite the country goose.”
For worse yet, in that naked moment of awakening, what foolish thing had she’d said?
Oh, yes, she remembered. Blushed at the very memory.
I think I am undone.
She’d all but told him that she was willing—how utterly mortifying was that?—and yet had he taken advantage of her?
No. He’d let her slip away. Let the moment pass without comment.
The heat in her cheeks blossomed and left her chest tight and aching. She’d come ever so close to making a complete cake of herself.
“It won’t happen again,” she told Hannibal. “I vow it won’t.”
Hannibal made a bit of a shrug and walked away, tail flitting back and forth.
“He isn’t the proper sort, not in the least,” she added.
Hannibal had no comment. For they both knew that wasn’t true.
For even when she had been utterly convinced that the viscount was a complete beast, he’d gone and surprised her. She’d have wagered every bit of her pin money that he’d intended to march inside his kitchen and send Mrs. Petchell packing.
But he hadn’t. He’d looked down at the Bits and Bobs, a pair of orphans as lost in the world as he, and given them a place in his home.
Oh, bother the man, she thought, sitting back on the grass. It was impossible to detest him now. He was rather like that lion in the children’s story. The one with a thorn in his paw.
That was Lord Wakefield to a tittle. A dark-maned lion with a thorn in his paw.
Whatever would he be like if it was plucked free?
Taking one last glance over her shoulder at the beast’s lair, with its garden lost in time and the windows covered with curtains that told the world quite clearly he wanted nothing to do with anyone, she wondered who Lord Wakefield truly was, and why a man who could be so kind should want to hide away from the world.
And live in such a shambles.
Hannibal returned, and she reached out to scratch his one good ear. If this were Kempton, with the society behind her, she’d shoo away all the cobwebs and dusty corners of his world so he might be tempted to come out.
“But this isn’t Kempton, Hannibal.”
And if she was to discover who the man behind the wounded veneer might be, she would have to do it all on her own.
Louisa shivered again.
That is, if she dared.