The Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order (12 page)

Ainsworth wished he’d taken more brandy. Or a truncheon to the head.

“That will do,” she finally said to Murphy. Ainsworth let his tense, sweaty body settle. She swabbed his shoulder with brandy. He flinched at the sharp stings. As she mixed a poultice into paste, its pungent smell roused him from his sweaty daze. She applied it, wrapped it up in linen bandages and covered his shoulder with hot towels. Her hands lingered to comfort him as they had That Night. She placed a chamois over everything to retain the heat and moisture. Last, she draped a dense, soft wool blanket over his bare upper body. Without a word, she turned and strode from the room.

Watching her leave, Ainsworth knew something had gone seriously wrong with his plans.

B
last the chit!
Since her torturous treatment the previous week, Ainsworth’s shoulder improved significantly, which he hated to admit. His arm swung more naturally, almost comfortably, with each step. For the first time since Waterloo, he was a man restored to vigor, which irked him mightily, for he owed it to his tormentor-in-chief. Nevertheless, he remained adamant about avenging himself on the competent little apothecary. To this end, he decided to confront her that very night and return to Town on the morrow.

Almost midnight, under a full moon, the duke stalked down Broad Street to cross Pulteney Bridge. He made his way to Henrietta Street. He relished the idea of making Miss Haversham squirm as he revealed her punishment for the crime of indelible mockery. He was a cad to corner her in her own bedroom and rip up at her till her ears bled. But at least it was a private venue. However furious he was, he was gentleman enough not to give Miss H. the cut direct in public or abuse her in front of her patients.

Through the silvered night, he strode down the street past countless, tall, attached cream stone townhouses toward his objective. He met no one along the way. Unlike London, Bath Society tended to end evenings before midnight. Just as well, because he wore old, worn buckskin breeches, his favorite pair of ‘mucking’ boots also too worn to be seen in and a barely serviceable, loose dark wool coat over nothing but a linen shirt.

By the time Ainsworth reached the cottage, his mind was calm, his thoughts clear.

Miss Haversham’s window was dark.

He slipped quietly to a side entry to try the knob. Locked. He stepped back to look again. Ivy climbed the entire wall, surrounded her window and continued well above. He struggled through the rose bushes that grew in irritating profusion on that side of the cottage. The roses’ thorny branches picked and nagged at his clothes as if beseeching him to reconsider. He pushed through. He tested the old vine with a boot. It held firm under his weight. He grasped another vine overhead and tested his left shoulder, sore but tolerable. He lifted himself up with his legs and steadied himself with his left hand. He sought the next handhold overhead with his stronger right hand and carefully pulled himself higher.

Her window was open a crack allowing Ainsworth to slide his fingers under the sash and lift it. He swung a leg over the sill and sat for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark room before stealing inside.

In the moonlight he saw Miss Haversham lying in a large bed, linens frothed around her, a long, thick braid of brown hair draped over a pillow. The rush of cool night air tickled her. She awoke with a start.

“Who are you!” She gasped, wide-eyed as an owl.

“Ainsworth.”

“Why are you here?” Came her whisper.

“You know why I’m here,” he growled then clarified, “you perpetrated a vile assault upon my person.”

“Oh,” she said.

“You had your fun, Miss Haversham. Time to pay the piper.” Ainsworth prowled toward her bed as she huddled beneath the covers, peeking out at him.

“Please forgive me, Your Grace.”

“I’ll forgive you when your bloody tattoo disappears,” he scoffed.

“Oh,” she said.

“How did I earn your enmity, Miss Haversham?”

“You didn’t. I made a mistake. A terrible mistake.”

“A mistake?” He spit out, incredulous.

“Obviously. I intended to tattoo the previous Duke of Ainsworth but I didn’t know he had passed away — my condolences, by the way – and then there you were. It was too late.”

He gawped at her before gathering his wits enough to ask, “Why did Phillip deserve such infamous mistreatment?”

“He disgraced me.”

Her accusation stopped Ainsworth dead in his tracks. His brother? Impossible. Duty, honor and propriety guided Phillip’s every action in life. His brother had been a prig but a most excellent man. Of that, he was certain.

“Impossible,” the duke stated flatly.

“I live as I do because of it.”

“There’s a child?”

“No! My reputation suffered harm, nothing else. But a virtuous reputation means everything to a young lady, doesn’t it?” She sat up in bed and watched him.

“You wanted to tattoo my brother for nearly but not actually debauching you, Miss Haversham?”

“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm, Your Grace.”

“And I don’t appreciate your tattoo, Miss Haversham,” he spit back.

Head bowed, she worried the linen sheet in her hands, twisting and smoothing it, “Such an awful blunder. I’m usually far more deliberate. Careful. I regret what I’ve done. I am truly, dreadfully sorry, you must know I am.”

“I know nothing of the sort but you will be sorry,” he growled and leaned closer to her. “Come to think of it, I might as well commit the debauchery for which I’ve already been punished. That should begin to balance the scales.”

Her head shot up. The silence between them lengthened as they glared at each other from a few feet away.

Finally she threw up her hands and sighed, “Well, if you must.”

The Duke of Ainsworth found himself well and truly gob smacked. He shot straight upright and withdrew to glare at her from a safer distance. His threats were not having the desired effect.

“You have no objection to my ravishing you?”

“Of course I do! Of all the bacon-brained questions,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I think it’s childish to insist on tit for tat. I’m trying to apologize to you! I do feel the full horror of the wrong I’ve done you.” Here, her voice took on a patronizing tone, “But if debauching me will balance accounts and send you back to London, then do your worst and be done with it.”

“My
worst!
” he choked and then recollected himself. “You couldn’t possibly know what you’ve done to me. You’ve ruined one of life’s greatest satisfactions, Miss Haversham, that of seeing a woman on the verge of…” He interrupted himself.
Blast and damnation!
Her wide-eyed curiosity stopped a scandalous retort on the tip of his tongue. More disturbing, staring at him were the eyes he imagined whenever he found release for nearly a twelve month. He took a calming breath before speaking, “Suffice it to say, I’ve been denied a great deal of pleasure because of your witless prank.”

“From what I’ve read, you’re not denied any pleasures,” she said. “Indeed, you’re notoriously well supplied.”

“That’s nothing but gossip! In truth, I won’t expose myself to ridicule so I live like a bloody monk, Miss Haversham. I cannot be with a woman without fear of… That is to say, uh, when I try to find amusement, there’s your bloody tattoo and then you, you,” he bit back the rest. No point revealing he had carnal knowledge of her apparition. It’d only muddy the waters. Instead he growled, “You’re a bloody menace!”

He was far too furious to regret his liberal use of profanity with her. Besides, he was guilty of more serious improprieties, standing bold brass in her bedchamber threatening her with rape being chief among them.

“I acknowledge that I assaulted you in an unforgivable manner,” Miss Haversham whispered. “And I’ve undertaken your rehabilitation with the sincere desire to make amends.”

“You think a jar of goo,” he sputtered at her, beyond irate, “and stabbing me repeatedly with that infernal sucking thing…”

“Fine,” she interrupted. “If you insist on your revenge, you shall have it. Just stop bellowing at me!” She lay back in bed with arms at her side, stiff as a corpse.

He stood staring at her, mouth agape. He snapped it shut and fumed on the verge of bellowing some more. He had no intention of carrying out his threat. Still, he was a large, intimidating man. She was a slip of a woman. How could it be that he was the one knocked askew?

He tried another tack. “Assaulting a peer of the realm is a serious offense, Miss Haversham.”

“If you intend to press charges, you should know I alone am responsible,” she addressed the ceiling with dignity. “My staff participated unwillingly, under threat of dismissal. So I alone must answer for it.”

“How noble of you,” he mocked. She wanted to shield her co-conspirators. It irked him, this nobility of hers. He also realized with disgust, he approved. He’d do the same. “Blast!” He hissed.

“Pardon?” She peeked over at him briefly then resumed her rigid, prone position.

“Never mind,” Ainsworth barked.

“I’m not being noble, it’s the truth and I would swear to it,” she replied. “Don’t forget, Your Grace, I believe it’s my right to have the evidence of my crime presented in court. Imagine how interested the press will be.”

“What the devil! Is this some of your sincere regret? Threatening me with further humiliation?”

She turned her head toward him and said, “In all fairness, you threatened me first.”

They glared at one another and the tense silence lengthened. Finally, the duke scrubbed a hand over his eyes and said, “So I did. Well, what am I to do with you now?”

She looked as if she’d eaten a lemon, peel and all. In the next instant, her eyes snapped open wide and she sat up. “How did you get into my room? I lock the doors downstairs.”

“Climbed the ivy.” The duke gestured toward the open window.

“Did you!” Her soon-to-be-martyred-to-a-satyr expression vanished and her lips curved into a ravishing smile, “You climbed the ivy, Your Grace?”

“What of it?” He prowled restlessly around the dark room.

“Why that’s marvelous! I’m astonished! Any sharp pain? Soreness?”

Ainsworth stopped in his tracks, rolled and flexed his shoulder. “Some tenderness, why do you ask?”

“Don’t you see? You used both arms!” She clapped her hands with delight, “Oh well done you, well done!”

He stopped to consider this. Absent-mindedly, he ran a hand through his tousled hair. Ivy leaves fell like confetti as if to celebrate his accomplishment.

She gave Ainsworth another heart stopping, moonlit smile and gushed, “Your progress is so gratifying. It’s simply spectacular!”

As are you, little nymph.

He prowled the room, suddenly restless for an entirely different reason. He didn’t know what to do about this enchanting sprite or how to forestall his ever more obvious physical reaction to her. This conversation, this encounter from start to finish, left the duke at sixes and sevens.

There’d been no quaking or quailing, no begging for mercy, no hysterics, and no moment for his magnanimity after a great deal of her tearful groveling. This was what he had rehearsed in his mind: Intimidation, then thunderous accusation, followed by devastating rebuke, manly tolerance of her emotional collapse and, he now allowed, perhaps grudging forgiveness.

How in blazes had forgiveness slipped into his thoughts? He glanced at her and found she still smiled at him. Granted, her enthusiasm was endearing. Her face glowed beatifically. She was nothing short of breathtaking, blast her.

In an instant, his intentions underwent such material alteration that turning her out of home and business seemed…well, draconian. Perhaps, he would let her stay on, lease the properties back from him on easy terms, that sort of thing. Sterling would know how to manage it.

“Your Grace?” She looked at him quizzically, her head tilted to one side. A smile lingered on her plush lips while she examined him closely. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I am. Don’t be impertinent,” he snapped, ending his reverie to reassert himself. In two steps, he reached her bedside to tower over her.

“Your Grace!” She cried and ducked under the covers.

Better.

He hovered there, staring down at her, smelling her sleep-warmed, rose-infused skin, uncertain what to do with her.

“I’m going to have to tuck you in,” he said gruffly and began shoving the counterpane, the thin blanket and the linen sheet well under her slim hips and legs.

“You’re mummifying me.”

“Yes.” He moved up to tuck in her arms and shoulders.

“I cannot move my limbs!” She complained.

“Mmm.” He worked quickly on her other side before he could think the better of it.

“But why?”

“For safety’s sake,” he explained. That was the God’s honest truth. He still couldn’t decide whether to strangle her or to gather her into his arms and kiss her senseless. Best he swaddled her until his emotions settled.

“I promise not to lay a finger on you,” was her tart rejoinder to all his tucking and humming.

He sat on the edge of the bed to yank off his boots. “Not my safety, nymph. Yours.” He gave the covers under her one last poke, “There.”

This was definitely not the plan.

He lay down on top of the counterpane that she lay beneath and turned to face her. The mattress sagged under his weight and she rolled toward him helplessly till her muffled body bumped against his chest, her face within inches of his.

“Oof!”

He chuckled.

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “You’re not going to ravish me, are you.”

“The mood has passed,” he grumbled.

“I’m glad.” She wriggled away from him to lie face up.

“By Jove, you unman a fellow, Miss Haversham!” She turned her head and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps,” he mumbled, “I deserve it for making idle threats.”

His lips were inches away from the graceful curve of her neck and a delectable hollow he noticed just below her ear. Sorely tempted, he breathed deep to calm himself and inhaled the natural sweetness of her clean skin and her scent. It was not just the soft, teasing whisper of flowers; it had a pleasing tart tang of something else. Delicious, he groaned.