Chapter 10
Anthony slammed the door to the carriage. Rachel had taken their argument seriously and he had to do everything himself. At this speed, he wouldn’t make a single discovery until the next millennium.
Fiery acid boiled through his gut. Was she off meeting more potential husbands, buffoons like Pembroke and Alford? What had made him interrupt her visit with those two barnacles? Why did he care who she entertained and why did he possess the juvenile urge to reveal her staunch patriotism? Jealousy? Never.
He raked his fingers through his hair, seeking and explanation for his behavior. Because the ramifications of the argument that divided them now threatened to unravel everything he had built. A second later, he realized that was it. The argument.
Not only had his temper brought the miscalculations, but also a tempest of unforeseen challenges forcing him to start over. He had made the mistake of letting his frustration get the best of him and that mistake had dire consequences. To keep his listing ship from capsizing, he would seek her out and apologize. Yes, he would express regret.
He strode past several shops in the village to Harold the Blacksmith’s shop. A horse dunked its head into a trough to draw water. He recognized the mare from his father’s stables. When the head groom had informed him Rachel had ridden to town on an errand, refusing escort, his blood boiled.
“I’ve come to pick up my order.” He looked around for the infuriating woman. Running a shipyard. Clearly, she had enjoyed too much freedom for too long.
Harold lifted his hammer and banged several times on red-hot metal. “It ain’t done.”
“I need it now.” Anthony’s stomach muscles hardened, the toothless blacksmith must have taken leave of his senses. To not have finished his order on time?
Harold shoved the flattened metal into a bucket of water. Steam whooshed upward, clouding his blackened face. “Everything is on hold. Have to polish off an order for that Colonial lady.”
Colonial lady? Rachel? What was she up to? “Cancel it.”
“I can’t. I couldn’t disappoint her.”
So now she had charmed the blacksmith. Miss Thorne possessed the aptitude to manipulate fools to genius. “I order you to cancel it.”
“She wouldn’t like it.”
“The devil she will.” Anthony was in the mood to take on the blacksmith, had licked him before, but with a hammer the size of Thor’s, and biceps the size of trussed full grown turkeys straining his shirtsleeves, he thought better of it. To continue a conversation with Harold was an exercise in idiocy, the blacksmith’s mental gears turned only so far.
Anthony stalked off, his heels digging half-moon furrows in the mud. His quarry rested on a porch step, wreathed in a crown of sunlight, sucking on a candy cane and surrounded by several of the village children, also sucking candy canes. Leaning against her was a filthy mutt, dining on fresh meat while she regaled her young audience with stories about Indians in the Colonies. For dramatic effect, she pulled the string of an imaginary bow and sighted down her prey. Pling. He could almost hear the whistle of the arrow.
His shadow covered her. Horror written on their faces, the children inched away. Good. The mutt barked and the hair on its back ruffled up. She pulled the candy cane out of her mouth and pointed it at him. “Why do you have to be so forbidding?”
“This is my normal face.”
“That is your formidable face and would scare the hair off a wooly mammoth.” She rummaged through a brown bag and produced six candy canes. “Horehound, peppermint, licorice, lemon…would you like one?”
He bared his teeth. “No. And would you mind telling me what you have the blacksmith engaged in so that he cannot fill my order.”
She shrugged a dainty shoulder, daring to dismiss him. “A secret. I gave him my design and told him he had to have it completed immediately. He can shape the copper curvatures that I need.”
Damn her conniving heart. He stared her down. “Cancel it.”
She scratched the mutt behind the ears and it howled in pleasure. “I like this dog. The blacksmith says he’s a stray. Starved you know.” She smoothed open the brown paper package so the dog could lick the remnants of his meal.
Anthony grimaced at the two pounds of meat the canine consumed. Not hungry now. “We have to talk.”
She pasted on the most angelic expression Anthony had ever seen. “About what? She’s a very nice companion. The blacksmith said I could have the dog. It’s beginning to rain and my horse is in the stables.”
“I know—unescorted.” He ground out his words. The dog stopped eating and whined.
“Most American women go out unescorted.”
“We are not longhouses and savages in England.”
“You are behaving like a savage, Lord Anthony. And where is your guard?”
“I left without one in a hurry to find you.”
“Here take a candy cane.”
“I don’t want one,” he shouted. The dog lifted its head, looked at Anthony and ran.
“Now look what you’ve done. You’ve scared off my dog.”
“Good…why have you ordered the blacksmith to−”
“I didn’t.”
“He said you did.”
“The Duke ordered it.”
“My father?”
“He’s the Duke, isn’t he?”
He’d bite off his tongue before he’d admit to her deliberate attempt to run circles around him. “Get in my carriage before you get wet.” He handed her up, followed, and then, clapped the door shut.
“Who is the driver? He looks kind of rough,” said Rachel.
Anthony pounded a fist on the carriage to signal the driver. The sooner he got this dispute over with and Rachel back in his lab the better. “The devil I know. Thompson must be out sick. He’s the replacement. Quit changing the subject. I have to get my project done and that stubborn blacksmith won’t do mine until yours is done.”
“There was a strange man in the village. He had that coal dust in the lung kind of cough, the same kind we heard before the flower pot fell on us. He asked questions about your family. Are you sure you don’t want a candy cane?”
She wasn’t paying attention to one word he said, her head out the window, the mangy dog racing alongside, snapping at the wheels. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t want a candy cane. I want−”
“Stop the carriage,” she hailed the driver.
“You’re not bringing that filthy mutt in the carriage.”
With a mutinous glare, she popped open the door and the dog hopped in, yapping, tail-up and nose-dived straight into her lap.
Anthony’s nostrils flared. Lavender and Lemon balm mixed with London sewer. “I can’t believe it. You allowed that mutt in here against my orders. Out with him.”
“Never.” She clutched the mud-packed, black beast to her chest mindless of soiling her gown.
He jabbed a finger midair, pointing at her. “My father will not allow him in the house. And I don’t want to see the mongrel anywhere near my lab.”
“He’s hungry and I’m going to care for him.”
“You’ll have to house him in the stables. I’m allergic to dogs.”
She smirked with that sure you are look.
Anthony twisted his mouth with derision. She had promised all of England he’d produce something brilliant. “You are wasting my time. Worthless, useless creature.” The dog licked her beautiful hand.
“He’s very nice. Once he has a bath—”
The horses picked up speed as they left the cobbled road of the village and galloped through the rutted, rain-soaked road. Anthony seized the strap for balance. To think she had gone into town unescorted. Didn’t she have any regard for her safety? Disasters gripped his mind. She could have been attacked by highwaymen and been ravaged. Her body left for wild animals. “About the blacksmith…”
“What about him?”
“Stop it. I need him to make copper discs and strands.” She could have broken her neck. He wouldn’t have been there to save her.
The crack of the driver’s whip snapped. The horses whickered. The harnesses clanged. The countryside blurred. What was happening to him?
“I don’t like your tone and there’s nothing to do about it.”
Something shattered inside him, driving him beyond rational thought. “You are as useless as that dog. No one would want you.”
Her head jerked up. The color drained from her face. “I would not want them anyway.”
You fool, he told himself savagely, but the past that tracked him like an ugly shadow came roaring down. He grabbed the sides of his head. No.
“An accident,” the gamekeeper said quietly. “Unseated. When Celeste fell…broke−”
“Get a doctor,” Anthony said gruffly.
“Anthony, it’s no use,” his father said.
“Damn you, get a doctor or I’ll−”
“Her neck was broken by the fall.”
“No−”
“Anthony, she’s dead…”
Rachel burst out crying. The dog howled in chorus and she buried her beautiful face in her hands. “Everyone talks behind my back. Do you know how that feels?” Despair leapt from her so profound…she sobbed, her diatribe never ending, but becoming high-pitched, hysterical sputtering of all the wrongs incurred on her and none of which made any sense to Anthony.
His mind clawed for logic. To escape the lunacy that controlled him. He took deep breaths. The fog cleared.
What a brute he’d been. More than a brute. He’d been cruel.
Rachel needed him. Now.
With certainty, self-pity was an impulse, Rachel seldom tolerated, her New England upbringing forbidding it. Whatever her history was, it had a profound effect on her.
Loud, soulful, hiccupping anguish. “I-I was nearly defiled.”