Chapter Ten #2
An attack had not been in the plans for the day, yet here Caroline was.
Derailed once more. At least this detour had a purpose.
Protection. When she’d discovered Mrs. Smith had left for the village to retrieve some personal belongings while her husband worked, an insistent worry had compelled Caroline to follow.
She’d abandoned the Ackerman’s Repository she’d been perusing for furniture and set off to ensure the safety of Hawthorne’s newest maid.
Truly, though Mrs. Smith didn’t realize it, Hawthorne’s first guest .
A woman in need of protection, a safe home.
“Release me,” Caroline demanded, “or I will call for the constable.” She would call for the constable anyway, not that Mr. Smith needed to know that.
“I don’t let women interfere in my business.”
“I do not let men hit women.” She made herself as large as possible, the better to protect the delicate Mrs. Smith behind her. Thank God the brute had not hit her. He’d been about to, though.
Mr. Smith’s hold on Caroline’s wrist tightened. He squeezed so hard she could not keep the pain from her face, the yelp from her tongue.
She heard the footsteps before she saw who they belonged to. Heard, too, the slice of metal against metal and the whoosh of steel through the air.
“Unhand my wife or I’ll run this sword through your gullet.”
Felix! He stood behind Mr. Smith, a sword purloined from the front window of the forge held expertly in one hand, its tip digging into Mr. Smith’s back.
Caroline’s heart accelerated, joy banishing fear until she could no longer feel the pain in her wrist. Or she simply could no longer feel her wrist.
Hopefully not that.
Behind her, Mrs. Smith quivered. “Listen to him, John.”
“The woman is wise,” Felix ground out, twisting the sword. Caroline had never seen him so fierce, blue eyes glittering yet cool, muscles bunched and dangerous. “Release. My. Wife.”
One moment Caroline was standing, admiring Felix, a surge of victory bursting in her chest, the next she was on the ground, her body thudding against the wall, her skirts, soaked and muddy.
She cried out and lifted her head quickly enough to see Felix spin Mr. Smith around and throw a punch so hard the other man’s head shot back with his guttural curse.
The sword tip hit Mr. Smith’s gut, and Felix walked him backward as Mrs. Smith helped Caroline to her feet.
“Now, Mr. Smith.” Felix’s voice calm and cold. “You will apologize to my wife.”
The other man snarled.
Felix pressed the sword tip into his belly until Mr. Smith yelped.
“Please don’t,” his wife cried. “Please just leave him alone.”
Caroline wrapped her arm around Mrs. Smith’s shoulders. “Will you come back with me?”
Mrs. Smith nodded.
“You”—Felix drew the sword up Mr. Smith’s torso until it rested just below his chin—“are coming with me.”
“I’m not.”
“Unless you’d prefer your insides to become better acquainted with this blade, you are .
Now.” Felix relaxed his arm somewhat and ticked the sword point toward the end of the alley.
“Walk.” As he nudged the man at sword point toward the busy street beyond the alley, he said, “Caro, Troy is across the street. Meet me there with Mrs. Smith. I’m taking this bit of refuse to the constable. ”
Mr. Smith growled, earning the prick of steel just below his ear. He yelped and picked up his pace until both men disappeared around the corner.
“Do you have your belongings yet?” Caroline asked Mrs. Smith.
“The constable won’t care about my…husband. He can… can do to me what he pleases.”
Caroline wrapped at arm around the other woman’s shoulders. “Not any longer.”
The woman hesitated but then nodded and looked toward the end of the alley. A bag sat there in the dim light, fat and squat and threadbare.
“Yours?” Caroline asked.
“Yes.” But she hesitated to go to it, seemed only to take comfort in Caroline’s presence.
“We shall gather it together.” Keeping her arm around the other woman, Caroline guided them into the sun. She grabbed up the bag and found Troy across the street. They didn’t have to wait long to spy Felix striding toward them.
“Well?” Caroline asked.
He only offered a grim smile, a forced smile.
“Come along, ladies. Back to Hawthorne.” He sounded carefree, jovial.
He even grinned, a soft thing just for Mrs. Smith.
But something in the sword-straight line of his spine, in the bone-white of his knuckles spoke of tension. Of simmering emotion. Rage.
Caroline had spent the last two days avoiding her husband and pondering the answer to a single question: What would he do if he knew how she planned to use his house?
She… wanted to tell him. The words seemed always on the tip of her tongue.
But she held back. No one but her sister had ever been privy to her plans. And Garrett. Chloe’s husband.
What if Caroline’s husband knew as well?
Felix placed Mrs. Smith on Troy, and they walked back to the house in silence.
At the stables, Mrs. Smith said, “I cannot thank you enough.”
Felix bowed, keeping his distance, likely guessing she would not want a man so very close to her so soon. “Your husband will not—”
“He is not my husband,” the girl spat. “I am Ruth Farmer.” Ferocity turned the young woman into a Furie, shoulders shoved back as if she might battle an entire army on her own. “ Miss Ruth Farmer.”
The girl had told Caroline her story the day she’d arrived teary-eyed at Hawthorne. She’d never expected her to feel comfortable enough with Felix to reveal the truth. Caroline held her breath, waiting for his reaction.
“Ah.” Felix bowed. “I stand corrected, Miss Farmer.” There went that soft grin again, and Caroline’s heart thumped like mad. Her fingers twitched to trace it, to kiss it. He was so kind and gentle, but a hard, battling knight—with an actual sword!—when necessary.
Now, he treated the fallen girl with the same respect he might show a queen.
Perhaps… Caroline could answer her question now.
With a grateful smile for Felix, she looped her arm through Ruth’s and led her back to the house and to the bed chamber she’d been sharing with Polly.
Polly was lying on her bed, swishing her feet, and reading a horrid novel. “I see yer back safe!” She tossed the book aside.
“Almost not,” Caroline said. “We met Mr. Smith.”
Ruth flinched. “Lady Foxton is terribly brave.”
“Ain’t she just.” Polly flopped onto her belly and propped her chin up with both fists.
“Have you met the new footmen? Much bigger than your Mister Smith. And there’s two of ’em.
When the viscount left for the village, they started looking about the house, making plans for locks and such.
It’s about to be safe as a bit of lettuce in a fox den around here. ”
Ruth relaxed, and Caroline slipped downstairs.
She found Felix in the parlor with the new footmen.
Or foot giants . They were huge, even bigger than Smith.
They could have stepped right out of a fairy tale, and they were reporting to Felix, very businesslike.
Fairy tale giants, apparently, had excellent manners and a keen eye for detail.
She waited in the doorway until they’d left, and then she approached her husband. He looked out the window, hands clasped behind his back. Very capable hands, strong yet gentle.
She picked one up as she joined him, drew it around to his side and her front, and blew on his slightly raw knuckles. “You, Viscount Foxton, are impressive.”
He snorted and shook off her hold. Her hand felt empty. “I’m lucky I did not kill him.”
She raised a brow. “He’s lucky, you mean.”
“Not at all. It would be an honor for him to die by my fists. I, however, do not wish to gain the reputation of an executioner.”
If she was stubborn, he was… marvelously cocky.
“Ruth is not lying. She is not married to the man.” The young girl had spilled the whole sad story the day she’d first arrived at Hawthorne alone, with tears in her eyes.
“She came to Dorking from London with a lord who promised to marry her. When he left her here unwed, she fell into the arms of Mr. Smith. He’d been a comfort at the time, promising to marry her.
” The same old lie. The same damnable consequences.
“But then she began to earn money with small jobs around town, and he began to… take her money. And then when she began to hide it away. For escape. He found out. Was not happy. That’s why she arrived here crying the other day.
Had heard we were looking for servants and hoped we might provide more funds than she had earned heretofore.
I promised to help her.” She straightened her shoulders. “And I will.”
“Of course you will. Caro—”
“You’ll be leaving now?” She tried not to sound small, disappointed, but the quiet of sorrow snuck in around the syllables. “Now that the footmen have arrived?”
He bit off a curse. “No, in fact, I will not. Won’t you reconsider? Come with me to—”
“Do not ask it.”
“Join me in London.” Not a question. A command.
Polly entered, bringing a noon repast, then leaving again.
Caroline poured them tea before answering. Calm. Unflinching. Resolute. “No, I will not. I am safe here, Felix. Particularly with the footmen you’ve hired.”
“They will not stay,” he ground out. “The Black Widow is paying them to remain only as long as I do.” He picked up his cup.
“Why would she do that?”
“Can anyone plumb the depths of that woman’s mind or understand her machinations?”
Caroline raised her brows in concession. He was agitated, prowling back and forth across the room like a caged lion.
“You’re restless,” she said.
“I am used to more… compelling activity.”
“Holding a man at sword point and punching him is not compelling?” It had been to her.
He fell into a chair, the tea sloshing over the side of his cup. He cursed and patted at the droplets on his thigh.
She missed how that thigh felt, tight between her legs.
“It was”—the corner of his mouth twitched up—“invigorating.” His gaze flew to her—hot and heavy and… demanding . “I can think of more invigorating activities to do. Why do you run from me? We are husband and wife, and whatever we do is sanctioned by God and the king, I assure you.”
She floundered for words, settled on. “I do not wish to have children.”
“Ah. I thought that might be the problem.” He patted his thigh, the unsullied one. “Sit, wife.” He growled the last word as if it gave him great pleasure.
She should absolutely not sit in his lap.
She sat in his lap. And he gathered her up with a great inhale that seemed to settle him, soothe him. His muscles relaxed all around her.
“I understand,” he said, taking her cup and reaching for the tea service on the nearby table. He refilled her cup and blew on it. “Not too hot, not too cold. You like it perfectly between belly-warming and scald-your-tongue hot. Yes?”
She nodded, taking the cup, sipping. “Perfect.”
“I know you well, Caro, but what I do not know is why you do not want children.”
“You do not want them either.”
He shrugged.
“Why?”
Another shrug. “You would be an excellent mother.”
An evasion. “Everyone says that, don’t they? A wheedling way to convince women to become mothers.”
“Fine then. You’d be a horrible mother.”
She laughed. “I actually… I would rather like to have children.” She’d never told anyone that before.
Not even Chloe. But it… felt right to tell Felix.
Easy. “But it does not feel the responsible thing to do. I wouldn’t be able to give all of myself to them.
I enjoyed my childhood, learned much from it, but…
my father was not often my own. I should have liked to have more of his attention at times. ”
“And you could not give children your attention in this big house all alone?” He squeezed her tightly, encouraged her head toward his chest, not satisfied until her palm and cheek rested there.
She should tell him.
He kissed the top of her head. “There are other things we can do in bed. Things that do not produce children. Were you aware?”
He wasn’t arguing, wasn’t trying to convince her out of her decision. How… refreshing . How… wonderful. “Yes, in fact, I am.”
“I have your father’s idea of an education to thank for it, I presume.”
“More my stepmother.”
“I shall thank her next time I see her.”
Caroline laughed, pinched his chest. “Do not do that! She’d be mortified.”
“Ow.” He rubbed his chest, held her hand. To keep her from further attacks upon his person, most likely. “Be gentle with me, Caro-mine.” Voice low and rumbly.
And oh, it seemed to turn her inside out, to put her heart into her palms so she could see just who it thumped for.
She melted against his chest and listened to his heart, strong and steady just like him.
She wanted to give him the same steadiness he gave her, the same protection.
“Have you been suffering nightmares still?”
“Do not worry about them.”
He had been, then. “What are you going to do about the footmen?”
“Find my own.” He sighed. “I trust the widow’s references implicitly. I hate to lose these fellows so quickly.”
“So, you will be leaving?”
“I… Caro… I do not see another way. As soon as I replace them, I’ll leave.”
“Why?”
“Are you willing to stay in my bed every hour of the day?” he asked. “Are you willing to make a home with me in the folly? Because that’s what it would take, I fear. There are too many bloody ghosts here for me to live in peace.”
He’d not answered her question. Not really.
Ghosts. Nightmares. Could she do what he asked to keep him?
She had, at some point, begun to want that.
Wanted to keep the way he held her, wanted him to hold her longer, hold her forever.
No other man could do this to her, wrap her in the safety of his friendship and strike her through with a bolt of lust and longing. A heady combination.
A fatal one. Nonetheless…
She stood, placing her teacup down—wrong temperature now—and folded her hands behind her back. She stepped away from him to more easily breathe. “If I come to you, Felix, will you stay?”
His eyes flashed, and a wicked grin slanted across his face. “If you come to me, wife, I’ll do whatever the hell you want me to.”
She nodded and left him. Much to plan. Much to ponder. For instance, why she’d made such a bargain, when he’d be staying anyway.
The widow’s arrangement with the footmen had assured it. For a time.