Chapter Ten
Graham ducked behind the tree and clutched at his wounded shoulder. He was only a short distance from Castle Black, but it was telling that the first danger he’d encountered was so near. The shot had rung out in the darkness. He’d felt the heat of it as it passed him. A second one had followed, grazing his shoulder and taking a good bit of hide in the process. The horse had reared then, tossing him to the mud and bolting for home.
Rather than risk taking the road and being out in the open, Graham stuck to the trees. Darting from shadow to shadow, he made his way toward the dark and looming silhouette of the castle in the distance.
He’d made very little progress when he heard the sounds of shouting. There were lanterns emerging over the rise, people searching for him from Castle Black no doubt. Blessing the worthless nag he’d been riding for returning to its familiar stables, he began making his way toward the search party.
He encountered a terrified looking footman in a clearing no more than a hundred yards away. The boy was white as a sheet and clearly terrified.
“What the devil has you shaking in your boots?” he asked.
“These woods are no place for a man to be in the dark, my lord,” the boy confessed. “Full of beasties and banshees they are.”
“The only thing these woods are full of is poachers… one shot me and I was thrown from my horse.” Graham didn’t believe for a single moment that it was a poacher and that he had not been shot intentionally. But there was little point in giving away his suspicions until he had more irrefutable proof. “Lead the way back… Jones, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my lord. Jones,” the boy said. “This way, my lord.”
Graham followed the boy toward the others as he called out that the search was done. It was only moments later, tucked in the back of a cart, rolling over the muddy ground, that he was nearing the large and imposing entrance of the castle.
The butler opened the door and Graham hopped down from the cart and climbed the steps. “Thank you for sending out the lads to fetch me, Hammond,” Graham offered.
“Do not thank me, my lord. It was Miss Beatrice who issued the instruction.”
“And did you ask her to?”
Hammond shook his head. “No, my lord. I merely informed her that your mount had returned sans rider and she took the initiative.”
Graham nodded sagely. “I understand that you did not seek out Lady Agatha, given her fragile health. But why did you not ask Edmund for his input?”
“He is not here, my lord. He was gone after dinner and we have not been able to find him as was the case with Mrs. Blakemore,” the butler admitted.
It wasn’t proof, but it certainly solidified his suspicions. “I was struck by a stray ball… poachers, no doubt.”
The butler frowned at that. “We’ve never had a problem with poachers here, my lord. But if you say it was poachers, certainly it must have been.”
“Dr. Warner will be here tomorrow. I’ll have him tend the wound more fully then, but I’ll need someone to help me dress it tonight, if you please.”
“If my lord had a valet—” the butler began.
“If I had a valet, he’d take one look at my rough clothing and rougher ways and run for the hills. No valet, Hammond. No valet. Send me the housekeeper or someone else who will not faint at the sight of blood.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Graham took the stairs two at a time and headed for his room. Where was Edmund? What the hell was he up to?
Once in his room, Graham had managed to shrug out of his jacket, but removing his shirt was pointless. It’d need to be cut off him as he couldn’t lift his arms over his head. Taking a seat near the fireplace, he poured himself a snifter of brandy from a bottle he’d liberated earlier. He’d need it for what was to come.
A knock at the door had him pausing with the glass halfway to his lips. “Come in,” he barked.
The door opened slowly as he downed a healthy swallow of the fiery liquid. It wasn’t the housekeeper as he’d expected but Beatrice. Her maid was with her, bearing a tray of supplies. She arched her eyebrow at him, clearly unimpressed with his churlish tone.
“If that is how you intend to speak to the servants, I imagine we will have to get used to an endless stream of new staff in and out of the castle,” she chided.
“Are you here to patch me up or take me to task?” The question lacked heat, but held a fair amount of sarcasm.
“Both appear to be required in equal measure,” she answered with just as much sarcasm and an imperiously arched brow.
“Then I shall have to tolerate them both I suppose,” he snapped and refilled his glass generously. He was needling her on purpose, trying to get under her skin. It was perverse and contrary, but as she’d tormented him for the most of the day with her unrelenting presence in his mind, he felt compelled to seek his petty revenge.
“You might want to save some of that for the wound,” she snapped. “Numbed certainly, I understand, but completely foxed is unnecessary.”
Graham considered tossing back another swallow, but then realized he was cutting his own nose off to spite his face. Being intentionally provocative to someone who was caring for a wound that could easily become putrid was stupid on his part. Reluctantly, he put the glass down. “You can leave. Your maid can assist me.”
The maid’s eyes widened in sheer terror at the suggestion. Beatrice shook her head. “Betsy does not like the sight of blood. I’m afraid you will have to content yourself with my less than tender ministrations.”
“Give me your scissors,” he said. “I’ll have to cut the shirt away.”
“I’ll do it,” she insisted and lifted the shears from the tray.
Arguing was fruitless. He was learning that Beatrice would do precisely what she pleased regardless of any protest he made to the contrary. She was the most bullheaded woman he’d ever encountered. He could only be thankful, he supposed, that she’d heeded common sense and remained safely tucked behind the walls of Castle Black for the day rather than providing an easy target for would-be attackers.
The blades of the scissors were cold against his skin as she carefully cut away the shirt, snipping the pieces near the wound first. He tensed in anticipation of her response. Would she be repulsed? Would the layers of scars on his back send her running from the room? She would not be the first woman repulsed at the sight, but it was the first time a woman’s revulsion would wound more than his pride.
She didn’t gasp. In fact, no sound escaped her at all. He felt her tense, felt every muscle in her body stiffen next to him. Not even a breath escaped her. For what seemed an eternity, she simply stood there. Finally, after that long and interminable moment, she exhaled.
“There’s no saving this shirt,” she muttered. “The pistol ball, if that’s what it was and not a musket, tore quite a bit of the fabric away. Between the blood and the damage I’ve done with my shears, it’ll be good for nothing but the rag bin.”
He didn’t sigh with relief, but it was there, a current running between them beneath the mundane words they uttered. “It was good for little better than that to start with. I hardly expected it to be salvaged.”
“There are some things in the attic that belonged to Lord Nicholas… you and he are of similar size. I’ll have them brought down,” she muttered as she pressed a cool, damp cloth to the wound.
He hissed out a sharp breath. “What the devil is that?”
“Just water with herbs to prevent the wound from becoming fevered. It will help the blood to clot and slow the bleeding, as well.”
“Well it burns like fire,” he protested.
*
Beatrice clenched her hands into fists to keep them from shaking. She’d been told, of course, that his back was scarred from flogging. She’d even had some inkling in her mind’s eye of what that might look like. The reality of it was far different and infinitely more brutal.
While she had not seen all of it, the skin bared by the cut away cloth of his shirt revealed thick ridges of scar tissue where his flesh had literally been scourged nearly to the bone. The agony of it must have been excruciating and it was clear that it was a punishment he’d endured more than once.
“Then perhaps you should have another brandy,” she suggested mildly. It was nearly impossible to speak normally when she wanted to do nothing more than touch his battered flesh and weep for what he’d had to suffer. “Betsy, bring the tray here and you may go. It’s going to require stitching and heaven knows I can’t have you in a swoon.”
The maid did as she’d been bid, departing quickly and without a backward glance. When the door closed behind her, Graham spoke first.
“You can stop pretending that it isn’t shocking or even something worse,” he said softly. “I know what it looks like. I’ve lived with it for long enough.”
“It looks like cruelty and brutality. Nothing more,” she replied. “Those are things that I have been blissfully spared in my existence here. I am sorry that you were not.”
“I earned every mark… don’t think for a moment I didn’t. The captain took legitimate work when he could get it and less legitimate when it wasn’t. I was a crewman on little better than a pirate ship. We robbed and pillaged every ship coming into Freeport that we could catch.”
“And is that why you were flogged? As punishment for piracy?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I was flogged because I was the least necessary member of the crew at the time and could be spared.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he answered softly. “It feels like it was a hundred years ago anyway. At this point, I can only be thankful that I wasn’t hanged instead. Mercy they called it.”
“And what did you call it?”
He laughed but it was a sound that lacked any humor. “Nothing. I lost consciousness after the second lash. Fainted like a fine lady, the captain said. When it was done, they collected my bloody body, carried me back to the ship and tossed me into a small bunk to recover or die.”
Beatrice didn’t ask further questions as she applied a compress to the wound, a mixture of herbs that the housekeeper kept on hand for just such instances. She pressed it gently to his skin and then placed a linen pad over it to hold it in place. It would help to numb him and ease the pain before she closed the wound. “While I am glad you were not hanged and that you survived your ordeal, I would hardly call such treatment merciful.”
“I am not a saint… not simply some poor victimized child who was placed on the path to a life of crime, Beatrice. I committed crimes a plenty, even if they weren’t the ones I was flogged for.” The words were uttered as a warning. “Perhaps I lack the same cruelty you saw in me as a boy, but I am not a good man. I have not been.”
“You have been good to me,” she said. “You have saved me twice from terrible fates. Why are you so determined to turn me against you?” Beatrice continued as she carefully threaded her needle. She grasped the brandy and soaked a clean bit of cloth in it before using it to clean the needle which she then held over the fire. Those were techniques that their old housekeeper had taught her. She had no notion of their importance or why they must be adhered to. Still, she completed the ritual as she had been taught.
“We are none of us good or bad, Graham. We are simply fallible people capable of extremes… whether it be kindness and compassion or cruelty and brutality. The seeds for all exist within us. Whatever you may have done in your life, it is not the definition of who you are.”
He sighed heavily. “You do not know what you speak of. Not truly. And I would not wish for you to. You have been sheltered from much of the ugliness in this world, though not nearly enough of it for my liking.”
“Hold still,” she commanded. “I have to stitch the wound now.”
She pierced his flesh with the needle, struggling at times to guide it through the thickest of the scars. “I’m not a child, Graham. I’m well aware that there is ugliness in this world, just as I am well aware that I have been blissfully spared much of it. Do not insult my intelligence or my sense of gratitude by implying I am too stupid to realize just how blessed I have been!”
“It is a foolish man who insults a woman that holds his life in her hands,” he conceded, turning his head slightly to look at her. “And I do not think you are stupid. Far from it.”
Beatrice placed her hand in his hair, turned his head forward again and said, “Hold still. I cannot make my stitches even with you moving about so… and I’ll not have this wound become putrid simply because you could not heed a simple directive!”
She felt his smile but did not see it. Dutifully, he kept his head turned forward and allowed her to work. It was a far different thing to sew a man’s flesh than it was to embroider linens. By the time she had finished, her hands were shaking and her stomach was churning furiously.
Wearily, she sank onto one of the other small chairs that flanked the fireplace and willed the nausea to pass. It was done. The wound, all together, had been relatively minor, but that did not mean he was safe. He would have to be monitored closely to prevent fever.
He did look at her then. “This was too much for you,” he said. “This kind of thing should not have fallen to your shoulders.”
“I am not so fragile,” she protested. “It had to be done and there was no one else to see to it.”
“In a house full of servants, there was no one else?”
“Would you have preferred one of them? Truly?” she asked. “There was already talk—gossip about your scars. Would you have preferred that I send the housekeeper up and let her carry tales back to everyone below stairs?”
“What do I care what they say?” he challenged. “Better for them to gossip than for you to cast up your accounts! You take too much upon yourself, Beatrice.”
“And you were not shot by a poacher,” she fired back. “Also, I have come upon some information that may be useful.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “How did you stumble upon information when you were not to leave this house?”
“I did not leave the house… I accessed the tower through the passageways that the servants use. Betsy helped me,” she said. It was a difficult thing to blurt out, to speak of such intimate things to him while they were alone in his room, regardless of the circumstances. “Eloise is—she has been having an affair with Christopher. And there’s more! There are documents spread out upon the desk where someone has been researching the means necessary to have you declared legally dead and the title passed on to Christopher.”
“Of course they want that!”
“Edmund has been insistent, yes! But I cannot fathom why Eloise and Christopher would be focused on such a task together! I fear that the plots and machinations occurring under this roof go far deeper than either of us realized, Graham! And I cannot help but feel this nonexistent poacher who put a pistol ball in your shoulder is part of it!”
When he spoke, his voice was deadly quiet. “Do not put yourself at risk again… not for any reason!”
“We needed to know what was going on in that tower!” she protested, frustrated and furious with him for ignoring what she felt was vital information.
“I needed to know,” he corrected. “You needed to remain safe!”
“You’re being ridiculous! There was very little risk.”
She had no time to respond as he grasped her by her arms and hauled her up, pulling her to him as he loomed over her. There were scant inches separating them and she could smell the brandy on his breath.
“There is nothing in this house, not the wealth or the title, not even the whole bloody estate is worth the risk to you… none of it!”
There was no time to ask what he meant. Despite his injured state and the not so small amount of brandy he had consumed, he moved quickly, pressing his lips to hers in a kiss that seared her to her soul. Everywhere he touched, she burned. It left her shaken and breathless, clinging to him with a desperation she did not understand. Every time he touched her, it stoked the tension that had been building inside her since his arrival, heightening it, ratcheting it to a greater intensity until it felt as if she would simply shatter from it.
His lips moved over hers ravenously, but they did not stop there. They moved along her jaw, down the column of her neck, and when they pressed against the pulse beating there just beside the hollow of her throat, she felt her knees weaken. Had he not been holding her so tightly, she would have collapsed at his feet.
It wasn’t the soft or romantic feelings she had anticipated. This was not the gentle love or desire that poets wrote of. It was darker, more consuming, more primal than all of that. The more he gave, the more she craved.
Of their own volition, her hands migrated beneath the tattered remnants of his shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin, the dusting of hair that covered firm flesh so different from her own. He was more dangerous to her than anyone or anything else could be. He made her reckless, gave volume and force to that little voice whispering inside her mind to simply give in to temptation. And she was tempted—terribly so.
He pressed closer to her, holding her even tighter. Somehow, he had maneuvered them toward the wall without her knowledge and she could feel the firmness of the stone at her back. As her knees had gone weak, the added support was welcome.
Beatrice couldn’t think. In truth, she could barely breathe. Her heart pounded wildly and the blood rushed through her veins until she was dizzy from it—or perhaps it was simply the heat. Her body burned, heat pooling low in her belly and spreading outward until her limbs became languid with it.
He pulled back from her, drawing in a deep, gulping breath. “We cannot continue this.”
“Did I do something wrong?” She didn’t want it to end. She wanted him to continue kissing her until they were both breathless and weak from it again.
He pressed his forehead to hers, a slight smile playing about his lips, perfectly framed by the shadowy darkness of the day’s beard. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Beatrice. Far from it. When I kiss you I lose all sense of reason… I want more and more from you but I do not think you are prepared for what that means.”
She was not entirely ignorant of what he meant. Having grown up in the country, the basics of carnal knowledge were at least familiar to her, and the giggle-infused whispers of parlor maids had filled in a few blanks. But it wasn’t the physical act that left her hesitating.
They could not ever have anything lasting between them. His station and the precarious nature of the estate’s finances would not permit it. And as painful as it was to imagine letting him go, the idea of doing so after sharing such intimacy left her shaken and afraid. She did not relish the notion of having her heart broken. Yet, she was fully aware that he already had the power to do so.
“I should go,” she whispered, lowering her gaze. “No doubt, Betsy will be looking for me.”