Black Sheep Read online

  Still standing in front of it, she turned when he banged the door wide open. Throwing her hands up to pat the air between them as if that might help to calm him, she hastily said, “I realize my actions were rash, but please, let me explain. Sit down, Mr. Strathsford.”

  He was going to sit down, all right. Staggering towards the same chair he’d occupied the night before—back before she’d passed him that tampered-with drink—also brought him to within an easy arm’s reach of her. She realized her mistake only after he tugged that chair around to face her, swiveling it so all he had to do was grab her by the arm and then collapse backwards into it.

  “Mr. Strathsford, please!” she cried as he hauled her, kicking and flailing, right down across his lap. His head was still swimming a little and it was a sloppy hauling attempt. It took two more tries before he got her just right. “Wait! You—Wait, please! You—you swore you weren’t predisposed to walloping!”

  “Must be an effect of the drug.” He braced one arm across the small of her back, pressing her firmly into place no matter how she struggled to right herself.

  And she did struggle. Her feet scrambled to find firm footing on the carpeted floor, and her hands flailed wildly behind her as she tried to pry her way out of his unyielding grasp. She also shrieked, a shrill yelp of sound that burst from her mouth the instant his broad hand came cracking down across the seat of her skirts. Her feet kicked all the way up, baring her shins and folding her dress up over her thighs as she fought to cover her bottom with her shoes.

  Grabbing her hips, he yanked her all the way over one thigh and they both nearly went over nose-first onto the floor before he caught his balance. The room spun dizzily for half a second before his vision cleared. Growling even louder than before, he finished scissoring her legs tightly between his own and then he let her have it.

  “Don’t! You! Ever! Drug! Me! Again!” he told her, punctuating each word with the hardest spank he knew how to give. Then, dumping her onto the floor in a tangled heap of black skirts and scrambling legs, he leapt to his feet. “I shouldn’t even have to say that!”

  Elspeth struggled quickly to her feet, her eyes seething as she grabbed her bottom with both hands. “How dare you!”

  “How dare I?” he echoed incredulously. “I’ll show you exactly how I dare!” He grabbed her shoulders and down he went again, collapsing back into that chair and pulling her, already shrieking and fighting to get away, face-down across his lap. Again she kicked her feet up to cover her bottom, and this time he took advantage of her partially hiked skirt. Grabbing a fistful of fabric, he threw the whole mess up and over her head, muffling her outrage instantly and revealing the white of those thin, knee-length knickers all over again. “I dare Just! Like! This!”

  He attacked the full and round swells of her buttocks, filling the room with the sound of crisp and meaty smacks and Elspeth’s tea-kettle yelps and shrieks of very real distress.

  “Stop!” she wailed. “You can’t!”

  He could and he did, paddling a whole new reality into her backside until he could feel the heated effects of this outburst sizzling just beneath the thin cloth of her underwear. His palm was throbbing every bit as much as his knees and his head before he was done, and he was still mad. Mad enough to give serious consideration to simply paddling her from dawn until dusk, but somewhere beyond the peripheral of all that anger, he dimly heard a break in her constant wails. A heart-felt, hiccupy sob of a break that signaled the end of those pleading shrieks and the beginning of real tears.

  Leverton made himself stop. He forced his arm to stay, his open hand wavering for a few seconds above her cringing, bucking hips, before once again he dumped her off his lap. He not only stood up, but this time, he put a good ten feet of distance between them.

  “You weren’t supposed to be disposed to violence!” she wailed. She picked herself up off the floor slowly, alternating between holding and rubbing her bottom. If it ached anywhere near as intensely as his palm, then he’d be thoroughly satisfied with the job he’d just done.

  And speaking of jobs...

  “I quit,” he said. Turning on his heel, he stalked from the den, growing more steady on his feet with every step.

  The elderly couple were still standing at the base of the stairs when he strode across the hall to collect his bags.

  “I’m done,” he told them needlessly. He didn’t even care at this point if the local authorities were called on him. He’d been here less than twenty-four hours and already he was positive that jail could only be an improvement over a life of waking up drugged on the floor. Shouldering his sack, he marched himself out the front door. He even slammed it behind him. It was the first time in all his life that he’d ever slammed a door.

  Then he stood there, on the top porch step, basking in the full sun of the morning and wondering where in the world he was supposed to go now. He had no money. He had no home. His mother was too afraid of poverty and his sisters too desperate to find security by gaining husbands to dare risk angering Uncle Albert. He had given his word that he would find a job. That he would prove he was not as reckless, as irresponsible, as single-mindedly selfish as his father had been. And yet, the only thought that kept spinning through his mind over and over again was how this never should have happened to him. He was never supposed to be destitute. He was supposed to dance in ball rooms, and flirt with beautiful women, and play the horses, and bed beautiful women, and attend the theater until three in the morning, and have rollicking bouts of lovemaking in his private box the instant the lights went out. The notion that he might have to spend his life pinching pennies had simply never, ever occurred to him. He was a Strathsford, for crying out loud. How could he be expected to work for a living?

  He frowned down the road, stiffening until his back was broomstick straight and he couldn’t possibly have stood any higher without straining something. He was a Strathsford, all right. A Strathsford without any money, without any home, without any friends brave enough to bear the scorn of the Ton by taking him in, and without any way to get back to London that didn’t first involve walking the soles clean off his boots. Whether it was supposed to happen or not, he was a Strathsford with a job. He was the estate manager for a lunatic Wainwright who spent her nights as a bush, chasing invisible sheep exchangers, and he didn’t have any conceivable choice but to just get used to it.

  The lingering effects of the drug had mostly fled his system by the time Leverton got a grip on himself. He turned around and reluctantly went back into the house. The elderly couple were still hovering in the den’s doorway, wringing their hands as they peeked in at Elspeth, who was now standing at her desk and sniffling, her hands braced to either side of the felt green mat she stared at while she thought.

  “You,” Leverton addressed the old man. “Who are you and what do you do?”

  “Edward Brody, sir,” the old man said. Shuffling his feet, he stood a little straighter himself, brushing once at his worn but clean clothing before adding, “I take care of the house.”

  “And you, mother?”

  Though he’d gentled his tone, the old woman tucked herself a little behind her husband, catching the back of his jacket in both hands as she said, “Annie Brody, sir. I take care of the kitchen and feed the livestock.”

  “Best get on with it, then.” Leverton insinuated himself in the doorway, blocking Elspeth from their sight. “How many servants are there?”

  The Brodys exchanged quick looks, before Edward answered, “Just us, sir. Twice a week, two girls from the village come up to help with the laundering and the floors, and Jack Holcomb comes every other morning, bringing peat for the fires and mending the fences and sheep’s cotes.”

  “Fine.” Leverton made a concentrated effort to squeeze himself into a servile role. “Your mistress has been out all night and would no doubt appreciate a hearty breakfast before bed.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Elspeth argued from her desk. She barely looked up at him as she sniffled, sou
nding somewhat petulant as she added, “And I fell asleep under a bush around two, so I’m not tired, either.”

  “Fell asleep under—” Leverton stopped himself before he lost his temper and started scolding her all over again, this time right in front of the servants. Of which he was now one, he reminded himself, whether he felt that way or not.

  “Didn’t you quit?” Elspeth said testily as she wiped her eyes and her nose on her handkerchief, baring pale patches of skin amidst the darker shoe polish still masking her face.

  Stepping into the room, Leverton caught hold of the door and brought it mostly closed. He was not going to strangle that woman, he told himself firmly. He might shake her until her eyeteeth rattled, but he was not going to strangle her. “A light breakfast, then,” he told Mrs. Brody.

  “Make his portable,” Elspeth grumbled and sniffled again. She stubbornly avoided looking at him even when he shut the door, sealing them into the den alone together. Whether she wanted to look at him or not, he knew she was very well aware that he was still in the room with her because he could see her brow furrowing. She looked very cross, and so it was nothing short of surprising when she began the conversation by saying, “This is my fault entirely.”

  Damn straight it was. Folding his arms across his chest, Leverton braced himself to hear her apology and then, perhaps, to render one of his own. He needed the job too much to be stubborn.

  Straightening slowly, Elspeth finally looked at him. Her mouth was frowning, and her blue eyes—not black as he’d mistaken them to be the night before—were flashing. “I did hire you to manage both the house and the estate. Perhaps I should have been more specific. Heaven knows what was expected of you in your last position, but in this one, spanking is not part of your job description. I feel it highly necessary to inform you of that so we can avoid any further... uncomfortable misunderstandings.”

  Abandoning the door, Leverton stalked her slowly, stopping only when he reached his side of her desk. Unfolding his arms, he braced them upon the edge, leaning slightly towards her as he said, “And I feel it highly necessary to inform you that if you ever drug me—or anyone else, for that matter—not only will spanking again be part and parcel of my job description, but I will bare your bottom completely and you will not sit for a year.”

  Her jaw dropped and her fists thumped into her hips. “I am your employer! If anyone’s going to do any—any—”

  “Walloping?” he supplied.

  “Yes, exactly, thank you—walloping, then that ‘anyone’ should be me! I pay the salaries!”

  “Too bad,” he said. Her jaw dropped in shock, but Leverton wasn’t done turning her world upside down. “And that’s not all, either. This sleuthing nonsense of yours is finished.”

  “Oh, no, it’s not! You—”

  “You fell asleep under a bush?” Leverton asked, his voice rising to drown out her objection. “You are, by your own admission, trying to catch thieves in the act of stealing your livestock, an offense for which they will, if caught, be hanged, and you fell asleep under a bush?”

  “I was in disguise,” she protested, although she at least had the good sense to look abashed about it. “They could have walked on me and never noticed I was anything but a shrubbery.” As if to press her point, she added, “You didn’t see me until I jumped on you!”

  “What would you have done had I been the thief you’re lying in wait for, eh? What then? What grand scheme did you have in mind to keep me from cutting your throat?”

  “I am not an idiot, Mr. Strathsford. I had thought of that and, it just so happens, I had a knife in my boot.”

  He folded his arms across his chest, not in the slightest impressed. “Why didn’t you pull it?”

  She scowled. “If I could have reached it, I would have, but you had me pinned too tightly. That’s why I moved the knife to my waist band, right above my stomach.”

  She patted the spot, drawing his eyes to her trim waist. He was still unimpressed. “Why didn’t you draw it when I spanked you just now?”

  Her cheeks flushed, and she lifted her chin before admitting, “It was pinned between your thigh and my stomach. I couldn’t reach it.” She held up a finger, stopping him. “Which is why I moved it here. See?”

  She opened her left sleeve, pulling out the smallest, cutest, most feminine-looking knife he’d yet seen in his life. It had a two-inch blade. He hadn’t thought he could be any less impressed, but she had just shown him how wrong he could be. “I could do a more serious injury with a piece of paper than you could do with that knife.”

  She opened her mouth, paused, and then closed it again without a word. She frowned, slipping the knife back into her sleeve, but at least she seemed to be considering his point.

  “No more sleuthing,” he said firmly.

  “I admit it does seem rather foolish to attempt to solve this maddening mystery on my own.” Her chin lifted, but she capitulated. “Fine. On this one particular point, I’ll give in and agree to abide by your wishes, but only because I want to be able to sit upon occasion: No more sleuthing unless you’re with me.”

  Thrown off balance, Leverton straightened in surprise. “Excuse me, what?”

  A knock at the door signaled the arrival of breakfast, and Elspeth hailed Mrs. Brody to enter.

  “Having a big, strong, walloping-style man around might help me progress in my inquiries, anyway,” she mused. Her arms folded across her chest and back her thumb went to her mouth. If his mind weren’t already occupied with more immediate concerns, he might have marveled that she had any nail there left to bite. “You can talk to those people where I, as a woman, am brushed off with little more than a pat upon the brain-pan and a fond fare-thee-well.”

  Drawing himself up stiffly, Leverton put his foot down. “Apparently, I value my neck a great deal more than you do. I have absolutely no plans, whatsoever, to go gallivanting around the countryside in the middle of the night.”

  Elspeth blinked at him twice. Taking her thumb from her mouth, she put her foot down, too. “Yes, you do.”

  Bracing his hands upon her desk again, he loomed his most threatening loom. “I beg to differ.”

  She mimicked his stance, leaning in just a hair closer to him as she said, quite succinctly, “Beg all you like, Mr. Strathsford, but the end result will be the same. I am the boss, you see. You will do as I tell you, or you may find yourself another estate to manage.”

  ‘The end result’ was perilously close to being her, bare bottomed across his knee, flailing while he thrashed, but Leverton kept his itching palm pressed flat upon her desk. He needed this job, he told himself. And although he’d never paid much attention to the lives of estate managers before now, he was pretty sure he’d never heard of spanking managers receiving sterling recommendations.

  And so he caved, but only slightly. “If we do this, we do it my way. No more dressing up like bushes, and you can resign yourself right now to following my commands to the letter from now onward!”

  “Agreed!” Elspeth grinned, flashing white teeth amid that sea of shoe polish. Clapping her hands once in victory, she pushed back off her desk so Mrs. Brody could lay the breakfast tray between them. “Splendid! Where shall our partnership begin, eh?” Grabbing her chair, she hauled it into place and started to sit. The instant her bottom touched the seat, however, her face twisted through a myriad of shocked and pained expressions, and she promptly stood back up again. “Oh,” she said softly, rubbing ruefully with both hands before resolutely pushing the chair away.

  Annoyed, Leverton pretended not to notice. He also made a great production out of his own ability to sit. Mrs. Brody had brought two empty plates and enough breakfast for two and so, having not eaten anything other than that ill-fated glass of wine since noon yesterday, he claimed one of them, which he filled. Eggs, buttered biscuits, sausages and thick slices of mutton chops, lightly spiced and smothered in thick brown gravy. His mouth was already watering, and when he splashed a dollop of gravy upon his thumb, he h
ad no qualms whatsoever in becoming the first Strathsford in history uncouth enough to lick it off.

  “We’ll start at the beginning,” he decided, snapping a napkin out across his lap. “And you,” he stabbed his fork at her before stabbing it into a piece of sausage, “if you want to go sleuthing anywhere today, you’ll do so freshly washed. Filth has a place, and it’s not on your face.” The words were out before he could stop himself, and then Leverton sat there, frozen mid-chew, while he considered how much like his own mother he’d just sounded.

  Elspeth didn’t notice. Grinning broadly, she simply grabbed two biscuits and hurriedly limped off into compliance.

  Shaking his head, Leverton speared another link of sausage and bit the end off it. He chewed, stubbornly determined not to allow another of those motherisms to fall so easily from his mouth again. He was an estate manager, after all, and estate managers were not mothers. Nor were they detectives, his conscience argued, imbued with powers of great deduction, and yet here he was. About to embark on what the detective writers of the age would no doubt luridly entitle: The Mystery of the Switched Sheep.

  “Please be careful,” Mrs. Brody told him, already wringing her hands with worry. “This is how we lost our last estate manager.”

  “Never fear, Mrs. Brody,” he replied. “I am nothing if not imbued to the gills with common sense. I also intend to be extremely careful.”

  In fact, he had no intention of ever coming face-to-face with a real cutthroat sheep-switcher. However, should the unlikely occur, he fully intended to break off running straight away. No doubt with Elspeth thrown over one shoulder, shaking her fist and hurling ‘How Dare You’ at every step.

  Sitting up straight in his chair, chewing on bits of sausage, Leverton watched through the window as the morning sun rose above the distant treetops and wondered exactly what he had just gotten himself into.