Angel of Hawkhaven Page 15

  “Just take me upstairs to bed,” Victoria told the Constable as he carried her into the house.

  “You can go where you wish when you can take yourself there,” he replied, and followed Hawkhaven to the dining hall. “Until then, your days of hiding in your room are finished.”

  I brought up the rear of the tiny procession, and stayed in the dining hall long enough to see Victoria situated and served. Then I headed for the kitchen.

  “Ella,” Hawkhaven called after me. “There’s a place for you here.”

  I didn’t even stop to look back. “I’m sorry, my lord, but that wouldn’t be proper.”

  “My lord?” Hawkhaven echoed in surprise, but I just closed the door behind me and continued on to the kitchen.

  I had to step aside, flattening myself to the wall as a line of servers carried trays of hot soup, meat, cheese, fruit and bread to the dining hall. Hawkhaven nearly knocked the lead man over when he came charging from the room in pursuit of me.

  “Ella.”

  Catching up my too long skirts to keep from tripping on the hem, I hurried to the well-lit kitchen door.

  “Stay where you are!” He caught my arm before I crossed the threshold. “Since when have I ever required that you address me as ‘my lord?’”

  “It’s the proper address for a servant to give the master of the house,” I replied woodenly.

  “Servant?” he echoed. He stared down at me in confusion. “What?”

  His hands on my shoulders felt so good and strong, and I was so miserable. More than anything, I wanted to step into his embrace, lay my head upon his shoulder and just let his arms enfold me. Instead, I made myself stay cool and starkly professional. “Is there something you require that I can bring to you, my lord?”

  Hawkhaven blinked twice, his eyes slowly narrowing, his confusion deepening into irritation. “Yes, you can bring yourself back to the table and eat something.”

  “Begging your pardon, my lord, but that wouldn’t be seemly.” I took myself out of his grasp and continued into the kitchen without a backwards look.

  I knew by watching Bess’s face when Hawkhaven bowed to my stubbornness, and went back to the dining hall. She went from stiff housekeeper to shaking her head at me. “I knew you were trouble the minute I saw you on the doorstep.”

  Fragile and trembling, I sank down into a chair at the servant’s table. “May I have something to eat please?”

  Without a word, Bess ladled a bowl to the brim with steaming, hot soup. She set it down in front of me, along with a chunk of tough bread, before lowering herself into the chair across from me. Hands folded before her, she looked at my bruised jaw and hands and tsked, shaking her head again. “Lord, girl. You are a mess.”

  Stirring my steaming bowl listlessly, my bottom lip wobbled. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t go watering your supper,” she said gruffly. “It’s wet enough, and it won’t solve anything. Plus, the salt will sting the cut on your lip.” Slapping her hands lightly down on the table, she pushed to her feet. “I’ll make you a salve and tonic. Nasty as sin, of course, and the salve will burn like hell-fire, but they’ll fix you right as rain again.”

  The soup was too hot to do more than sip at, but eating kept me busy until she returned with a small pot of salve. She sat down across from me, uncapping the pot and stirred it vigorously with a spoon. “Give me your hands. Amazing, isn’t it?” she said, once I had complied, my battered knuckles turned upwards while she spooned the thick ointment on my cuts.

  “What?” I asked.

  “How some men know just how to hit a girl.”

  “Not all men strike with their fists, Bess, and well you know it.”

  I jumped a little at the sound of Grimsby’s voice; Bess only grunted. In my scarce few weeks here, I had had very little contact with Hawkhaven’s tall, stiff, unapproachable butler. But I knew he was the bane of every mischievous maid’s existence and I’d seen the girls coming from his office last Sunday after supper, rubbing their skirts with their faces flushed red and wincing. I’d kept myself quite clear of him after that.

  “Huh,” Bess snorted, equally unimpressed by his assurances. “The men in this house do!”

  Grimsby gave her a wry look, and then came to sit himself at the table. “Never mind Bess. I dusted her skirts forty-two years ago. Six light pats, and she hasn’t forgiven me yet.”

  Bess’s grip on my sore hand tightened enough to have me wincing as she slapped another spoonful of salve on my knuckles. “Light pats, my fat toe! I had bruises for weeks!”

  Now it was Grimsby’s turn to snort. He took the spoon and my hand from Bess before she, in her temper, could hurt me more than I already was. With a soft touch, he took over the art of spreading the medicine upon me. “Six,” he assured me, “very light pats.”

  “Bruises!” Bess snapped, her eyes flashing defiantly. Feathers thoroughly ruffled, she jumped up from the table and shook her finger under his nose. “I distinctly saw your thumbprints on my bottom the morning after, and I could still see it there two weeks later! Forgive? Ha!” She drew herself stiffly upward. “I’d sooner send you packing to the devil! Go ahead, you give me that glowering look all you want. I am not twenty any more, Mr. Grimsby. I’d just like to see you try and spank me now!”

  Chin mutinously set, she snatched the keys off his belt and stalked back to the pantry to fetch me a healing tonic.

  His hands pausing over mine, Grimsby’s eyes drifted down the back of her and ever so briefly a smile softened his grim features. I knew that look. Heaven knows, I’d seen it on Hawkhaven’s face often enough. Usually it was right before he upended me across his lap.

  I covered my mouth with my free hand to keep from saying anything to Bess. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to warn her. But this was the first time she’d ever done something truly kind for me, and I didn’t want to ruin it. Grimsby was perfectly capable of dispatching his own warnings anyway.

  When Bess returned from the pantry, she thunked the small vial onto the table by my supper and thrust the keys back at the butler. “This is women’s business,” she snapped, snatching my hands out of his and reasserting herself as my nurse. Sitting, she put her back to him in the most audacious snub I’d yet seen anyone dare give a man in such a position of authority as Grimsby’s.

  That too, the elderly butler took in stride with little more than another of his slight smiles. “Miss Rayette?”

  “Sir?”

  “Do you know when a woman grows too big for spanking?”

  Bess’s fingers stilled over mine. I don’t think either of us breathed. “No, sir.”

  “Neither do I.” Standing up, he lay his hand on Bess’s shoulder as he stepped around the back of her chair. Almost as an afterthought, he bent down to her ear. His soft-spoken words, I’m certain, were meant for her alone, but in the quiet of the kitchen I heard them with crystal clarity. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

  His fingers squeezed her shoulder, and the oddest wide-eyed look came over Bess. Then he patted her arm and left the kitchen. It was a long, full minute before Bess could make herself move. My hands forgotten, she wilted in her chair, folding her arms on the tabletop and dropping her head wearily onto the cushion of them.

  “Oooh!” she groaned, helplessly. “That man has spanked half the girls who work here—and believe you me, I know for a fact he enjoys it! And yet he walks into the room and positively makes me melt. Something dreadful must be wrong with me!”

  Lord, but I knew exactly how she felt.

  I lingered in the kitchen with Bess until one of the servers brought back news that the Constable was taking Victoria up to bed. I hurried down the second hall to the main foyer in time to see Victoria being carried upstairs in her new husband’s arms. She had her head on his shoulders and looked for all the world to be asleep already.

  “Ella,” Hawkhaven called out, stopping me at the bottom of the stairs. “Come into my study. We need to talk.”

  I gathered my skirts a
nd started up the stairs anyway. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but I’ll be needed to help—”

  His booming voice stopped me before I’d climbed even three steps. “If you’re going to insist on playing Servant and Master, then you’d best play by the rules or suffer the consequences.” Softening his tone, he added, “They can manage one night just fine without you. Come on.”

  My shoulders sagged. I knew eventually I would have to battle out this conversation with him, but not tonight. I just couldn’t. “I’m tired,” I said simply. “I want to go to bed.”

  Braced for an explosion of temper behind me, I nevertheless gathered my skirts and started upstairs again.

  Hawkhaven muffled a curse, and though I refused to look back, initially I thought I heard him head for his study. But then he cursed again, this time making no effort whatsoever to stifle himself. With an abrupt about face, he marched after me. “Ella, stop where you are!”

  I hurried faster up the stairs. By the time I reached the top, I was running and he was closing ground fast behind me. I barely reached my room ahead of him, but I just could not move quickly enough to get the door shut before he caught it.

  “I am not leaving here until we talk,” he said.

  “There’s nothing left to say!”

  “There is everything left to say, starting with what the hell is wrong with you?”

  Temper knew no boundaries of exhaustion. “You know what’s wrong!” I accused. Someone had already unpacked the carriage and bought my carpetbag up to the room. I nearly tripped over it when he forced his way inside. “Please leave, my lord! If you’re caught in here, there’ll be no end to the talk!”

  He stared at me, as if I’d suddenly started shouting in Japanese. “What?”

  “And dear God, whatever you do, don’t let anyone know you actually touched me!”

  “Stop it!” he said harshly. “You are as much a lady as my mother ever was!”

  “The men in your family must have a fondness for marrying tavern wenches!” I snapped back bitterly. Those words were regretted the instant they had passed my lip. I regretted them even more when that familiar grim darkness crossed Hawkhaven’s face.

  “I don’t know what started this,” he warned stiffly. “But if you ever, ever say anything like that again, about yourself or any other woman in my family, I will not only scrub your mouth with soap, but I will lay so many multi-colored stripes across your backside that you will mistake it for a tartan.”

  I was so angry; my bottom lip began to shake. “Why not? It’s the truth.”

  He raised a cautioning finger. “I swear to you, Ella, one more word like that and I WILL go for the cane!”

  “You said so yourself!” I shouted.

  “When did I ever say—”

  I threw his words from the church back at him. “‘Things have changed now between us. I am tempted to make an honest woman of you right here and now. If it weren’t for the scandal I would.’ You said that yourself. The scandal! That’s how you think of me, don’t deny it! You said it so yourself!”

  His anger vanished behind a mask of confusion, and then he straightened with understanding. Two steps closed the distance between us. Catching my shoulders, he shook me gently. Much more gently than I expected a man of passion should want to when the woman he professed to love was shouting and near hysterics. Much more gently, I think, than I wanted him to.

  “Ella, when I spoke of scandal, I meant the banns! If Victoria and John have a child within the year, everyone will count the months because they went across the border and married in a hurry. If we had married today, they’d have done the same to us.” He shook me again as he said, “I don’t want that for you. I want the banns to be read, I want you to have a beautiful dress, the perfect ceremony, everything blushing brides ache for on their wedding day. And afterwards, I intend to keep you so active in my bed that a child will be inevitable. If we are so blessed, I want no one counting the days.”

  I could barely bring myself to look at him. “The scandal of not posting the banns will be dwarfed by the scandal of marrying your servant.”

  Sighing, he cupped my face, sternly forcing my gaze up to his. “I know who your father was, Ella. You are no more a servant than I am, and you need to stop blaming yourself for his failures.”

  I drew back, blinking. Shaking my head, I stammered, “You can’t know…”

  “Both my father and John’s invested in Rayette’s shipyard. Half the Ton invested in that doomed venture. John’s family lost everything when it failed. Thank God, my father never believed in putting all of his money in any single place or we might have suffered worse than we did. But I do remember the half a dozen trips I made to the shipyard, and Ella, you are the spitting image of your sire. When I first laid eyes on you at the Dog and Duck, you looked so familiar to me. But I confess, I didn’t make the family connection until the day you showed up at my door and Bess announced your name.”

  “You—you know?”

  “And I don’t care.” Hawkhaven took my face in his hands. “I never cared. Do you think I was lying when I said I loved you? True, I was holding a beautiful, naked woman on my lap at the time, and she was writhing about deliciously, saying all sorts of bawdy things.”

  I flushed red all the way to the roots of my hair.

  “But I meant what I said. I still do.”

  I blinked rapidly to clear my eyes, unsure whether or not I could believe him. Even if he did know me as a gentlewoman from birth, our peers might not make the same distinction. It still made more sense to believe I was the scandal he feared, not the consequences of a quick and hasty wedding.

  “Perhaps,” he finally said, seeing my reluctance, “we are going about this the wrong way. Perhaps what I should ask is, do you love me?”

  Pulling out of his hands, I looked away, my hands clasped over my stomach, pressing down as if to keep the sudden fury of butterflies from beating their way out of me.

  “Do you?” he asked again.

  When he reached for me again, I backed away again, stumbling up against the side of my narrow bed. I sat down, rather than fall. My hands pressed against my stomach even harder. My breaths came in sharp, quick gasps, but I still felt as if I couldn’t breathe.

  Lowering himself to sit next to me, Hawkhaven caught my chin between two fingers and gently turned my reluctant eyes back to his. He smiled, infinitely patient and tender. “I need an answer, even if it’s no.”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. How did anyone know if they loved another person? Mostly whenever I was with him, all I felt was hot, flustered, and, when it came to going over his knee, sick to my stomach. I’d heard love spoken of now and then in my life. My mother sometimes said the word when she talked of my father, the other women I once worked with back in the Hells had said it upon occasion as well—not a one of them ever described love quite like this.

  “At least you didn’t say no.” He kept his smile, though it did dim just a little. “That gives me some room to work, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m very tired,” I said again, my voice breaking. At that moment, all I wanted was for him to go away so I could cry myself to sleep.

  “Give me one chance, and then I’ll go for the night.” His hands drifted from my chin to my shoulders, pulling me closer. “Tell me if this helps you make up your mind.”

  He kissed me tenderly, softly coaxing my lips apart, and all those butterflies in my belly exploded into warmth, heating me from the inside out. Kisses like these could turn a girl’s legs to jelly. Thankfully I was sitting, so instead of falling, my legs shook, bouncing rapidly up and down. I pressed my hands on my knees to make it stop.

  As he brought that gentle kiss to its bittersweet end, husky and low, he asked, “How do you feel now?”

  Like crying, I thought, all those butterflies of uncertainty filling me up inside all over again. I licked my lips and pressed harder on my shaky legs. “I-I’m t-tired.”

  This time, Hawkhaven didn’t push. />
  “We can talk more tomorrow, then,” was all he said. “Try and get some sleep.”

  As he got up to go, my eyes fell on my carpetbag and I suddenly remembered. “Wait, your watch.”

  I reached for it, but he stopped me. “Give it to our son the day he marries the love of his life. Or give it to me when we’re old and gray, celebrating our fiftieth year together. Or if you find after searching your heart and your mind that you don’t love me, put it back in my hand and find the courage to tell me so. I won’t accept anything else, do you understand?”

  Bowing my head, I nodded.

  “Ella.” He waited until I made myself look at him. “If I wake tomorrow and find the watch on my desk with your room empty, I will come after you. I will track you down no matter where you go. I will bring you back here, and then you likely won’t sit for a week. Tell me no, if you must. But have the grace to tell me to my face.”

  I clasped my hands so tightly that my fingers hurt and sat for a long time after he left, staring out my bedroom window.

  Then I stood up.

  Leaving everything behind me—my carpetbag and clothes, the watch, everything—I went to it. My reflection in the poured glass looked back at me as I stood, captivated by the night-blackened panes. The hinges were unaccustomed to use and I had to push hard to get the window open. Reaching beneath the sill, I plucked a leaf of ivy, twirling it between my fingers and thumb before gently letting it go. It floated away on the evening breeze, disappearing into the dark.

  After a moment, I reached down under the window, my hand delving between the thick vines until I closed my fist around the rung of the sturdy wooden trellis. Withdrawing back through the window, my hands clasping over my stomach again, I listened to the soft rustling of the leaves. I still did not like heights. I didn’t want to leave, either. But more, I didn’t want to stay if staying meant living here for a lifetime of shame and servitude. Victoria might take me with her to the Constable’s home. I was pretty sure I didn’t want that fate, either.