A Dangerous Courtship (14 page)

A frown knit the young man's brow. "So you're going, too?"

"Aye. I'm going."

"And won't be returning here any time soon." It was a statement, not a question—and an accusatory one at that.

"I'll be back when I'm back," Garn said. "You're not to be leaving here and running away to London, as you did last August, you hear?"

"I didn't run away," Wil shot back. "I went there to see the father who has no time for me."

"The open road is no place for a boy alone, and you could have been killed in that explosion."

"But I wasn't," Wil snapped. "And if not for me, you'd have never found your way to his lordship in time to carry him out of that burning house. Because of me, he was saved from the flames."

Garn studied the young man. "Is there anything else you might have saved from those flames, boy?" he asked quietly.

Wil's green eyes narrowed. "You calling me a thief?"

"I'm asking you a question."

"If you had ever bothered to spend time with me, you wouldn't have to ask me anything. You'd know everything there was to know," he said and the animosity in his tone was unmistakable.

"Go on to bed, Wil. Think long and hard about whether there is something you wish to tell me," he said.

Garn leaned down to blow out the candle stub atop the table. Suddenly, the room was swallowed in darkness.

"Lately I've done nothing but think," said Wil, who turned back into his room and closed the door behind him.

Garn stood in the dark stillness, listening to the sounds of Annie's son moving away from him.

Chapter 9

Veronica paced the confines of her rented chamber, her strides taking on a decidedly agitated tempo as she thought again of what Julian had proposed—no,
ordered
—her to do: accept him as her personal guard, inform her coachman he'd be returning to London with them,
and
leave a lamp lit for him.

Listening with irritation to the sounds of her abigail asleep and snoring softly in the connecting room, Veronica began to grow truly furious. Her personal guard indeed! Gad, that's exactly what she
did not
need. She had enough bother with the many watchdogs her father had overseeing her.

More to the point, however, was the fact that Julian's mere presence threw Veronica's emotions into a whirlwind. She had always kept her emotions tightly reined and her deepest feelings hidden, but this evening had proved to be the most emotionally charged one of her life—and all because of Julian. It was altogether too amazing to believe they'd actually met only a mere few hours ago. If this was what he could stir to life in her in such a short span of time, she could only imagine the outcome of having him near her day in and day out. The long journey back to London alone would doubtless find her a mass of quivering nerve ends, Veronica suspected.

For the life of her she could not puzzle out why Julian had so quickly jumped into her troubles concerning the packet. Certainly he'd met with some foul miscreants over the thing and been beaten soundly—but should not
that
have been incentive enough for him to want nothing further to do with her or the package? Why choose to get more deeply involved when he could simply not bother at all? And why, of all things, take the packet with him when it had been because of the blasted thing that he'd nearly been beaten to death? None of this made sense to Veronica.

As the minutes dragged past she became more and more agitated until, at last, there came a loud knock on the door.

Veronica whipped her attention to it like lead shooting from a gun barrel.

"Yes?" she called, thinking it was Julian, hoping it was Julian, then hoping it
wasn't
Julian, and all the while wondering whether or not she would open the door.

"I've made one last check on the cattle, m'lady. All is in ready to leave at dawn."

Shelton. Not Julian.
For some absurd reason Veronica felt her heart sink a bit. Earlier, her coachman had dogged her way up the steps to her rented chambers, ascertaining for himself that she would indeed go straight to her rooms. Veronica had to admit she was glad, at once, for Shelton's shadow, for at that particular hour with all the revelers in the inn, and after having viewed Julian's beaten face, she'd been afraid to head up the stairs without company.

Thinking of all that, she replied, "Thank you, Shelton."

"Are settled for the night, m'lady?"

Veronica knew what her coachman was really inquiring was whether or not he could trust her to stay in her rooms and not go gadding off about the countryside.

"I am," she called back, wondering if the man would take it into his head to play sentinel at her door the whole night through.

She hoped not. If he did, he'd doubtless be rubbing elbows with Julian. The thought unsettled her further.

"Very well, m'lady. I'll be turning in for the night myself then."

He did not bid her a good night, nor she him. She heard the sounds of his heavy footfalls heading away; then she could hear nothing but the merriment from the lane outside and the taproom below.

And her maid's snores, of course. How the girl could so easily fall asleep, quick as a wink, was beyond Veronica.

When she'd informed Nettie they'd be leaving for London at dawn, the girl had immediately thrown herself into a frenzy of packing and preparing for the journey. Then she'd laid out her lady's traveling garments, plus night clothes and a light dressing gown. That done, she'd inquired, almost too eagerly, whether or not Veronica would be retiring any time soon.

"No," Veronica had said, adding that she could see to her own self this night. Then she'd hurried Nettie off to bed in the adjoining chamber, where the maid had promptly fallen asleep the moment her brown-haired head pressed down atop the pillow.

Veronica had since decided only the truly innocent could sleep so soundly. She, herself, felt as though she were waiting to be taken to the guillotine.

And by none other than the dangerous stranger she'd unearthed from Fountains.

Veronica remembered again Julian's order for her to leave a lamp lit for him.

In a fit of rebelliousness, Veronica doused the lamps of the chamber, casting herself into complete darkness. It appeared that the drapes covering the windows of the chamber were as thick as any tapestry that must have once adorned the inside walls of Fountains.

There,
she thought
,
that ought to serve him. He won't know which chamber is mine. He will bang about all the night, and with any luck I won't have to see him until morning.

Feeling somewhat better, though not much, Veronica sat down on the huge bed, telling herself she would go to sleep and simply forget about the man she'd met at the abbey... forget about his kisses, his touch, and—

"Drat and blast," she said aloud into the thick darkness. Who was she trying to fool?

The mere memory of Julian's touches, the feel of his mouth on hers, was so firmly etched into her brain that she'd not be forgetting him at all.

There came a single sharp rap on the heavy oak door, the sound jerking Veronica from her thoughts.

"'Tis me. Open the door."

Veronica did not need to be told the identity of the person now standing on the other side of the portal and rudely demanding entry.

She held perfectly still, hoping Julian would think she was asleep or that he'd chosen the wrong room.

"I know you're not sleeping, Veronica. Now open this door. Unless, of course, you want me to take it from its hinges."

Veronica's eyes widened. He wouldn't... would he? But she knew the answer.

"Devil take him," she muttered to herself hastening to unlock the door before he thundered it apart, splinter by splinter.

He'd best have that dratted bundle with him, she thought because
that was the
only
reason she was opening this door. And when he stepped inside the room—if she was fast enough and wily enough—she would take the thing from his hands! And then... well... then she would simply scream for help.

It was a hopeless plan, Veronica knew, for what would she do when help
did
come running, only to find Lord Wrothram's youngest daughter alone in her rented rooms with a nefarious stranger?

All of these thoughts went winging through her mind as Veronica worked to get the door unlatched.

She'd no sooner pushed the bolt back than Julian pressed into the room, a spill of light from the hallway behind him throwing his entire body into one large, menacing shadow.

"I thought I asked that you leave a lamp lit," he groused.

Veronica could only gape at that black shadow that was his face.

"You didn't
ask
anything, sir," she reminded him. "You simply
ordered."

The difference seemed lost on him. "So why isn't one lit?" he demanded, stepping inside the chamber and swinging the door shut.

A huge darkness swallowed them, far deeper it seemed than the one Veronica had just sat amidst alone. What was she doing, allowing this man into her rented bedchamber? She hadn't even spied the bundle in his hands. Maybe it was tucked in some pocket of his... maybe...

Veronica heard the too-final clack of Julian throwing the bolt securely back into place. It sounded like a death knell. Notably,
hers.

There came the briefest stirring of air against her. Veronica heard a soft muffle as his booted heel turned atop the wooden floor, accompanied by the whisper of his pant legs brushing together. He was turning to face her—a simple act, most assuredly, yet every movement of it seemed to be happening in slow, maddening motion, and all the while she wondered his intent—and even more so, she wondered what her reaction would be.

Would he touch her again, as he had at the abbey? Would he draw her close once more, so close that she'd be able to feel the deep, steady thud of his heart?
Did she want him to do so?

"I-I'll light that lamp now," Veronica said, tamping down hard on her wanton thoughts.

"Don't bother. I'd wanted to see the light from the street only. Wanted to see what kind of a view anyone watching you would have. I'd intended to douse the thing the minute I got inside."

With that, he moved past her, only his shirtsleeve brushing lightly—and by sheer accident, it seemed—against her. He navigated his way to the curtained window, parting the heavy drape at one side with his forefinger and peering down at the busy street below. The light of the bonfires played fitfully over one half of his stony features, while the other half of his face remained claimed by the darkness of the room.

"Any visitors while I was gone?" he asked, not looking at her.

"Inside my bedchamber? Hardly," Veronica replied. "It seems there is only one brazen man about this night—you."

He ignored the rub. "Did you talk with anyone?" he demanded, his gaze continuing to search the sea of faces below.

How very rude of him to barge his way in here, bombard her with questions, and not even have the courtesy to look at her when speaking. "But of course I did," she snapped, her tone sounding childish even to her own ears. "All the king's horses and all the king's men. Not to mention—"

"Just answer the question," he cut in. "Did you
talk
to anyone, Veronica? Anyone at all?"

"No," she blasted, "no one other than my servants, not that it's any of
your
bloody business."

He finally looked at her, arching one brow at her churlish outburst. "If you don't quiet down, my lady, you'll wake that snoring maid of yours."

Veronica lifted her chin, defiant. Veronica knew that an uprising throughout the countryside wouldn't wake Nettie now that the girl had a full belly and a soft bed beneath her.

Veronica also knew she would not back down from this—this ruffian, and she would
not,
she told herself sternly, be aghast at her own uncivilized choice of words with him.

"Pray tell, just who do you think would be standing outside peering up at my window?" she demanded. "Other than the likes of you, that is."

"The likes of me? There you go again, Veronica, lumping me with every foul fiend who has ever walked this earth."