3. Chapter 3
Zander Worthington, bless him, didn’t even blink. He simply turned and left the room. Elektra knew that her brother would have his horse ready in moments. She dashed toward her own room to don something a bit more appropriate for her half-formed plan. Then, on impulse, she diverted to Zander’s quarters instead.
She threw on a pair of Zander’s trousers and cinched them tight. He was still so thin that they almost fit anyway, despite his height. She added one of his shirts, left untucked to hide the revealed curves of her hips and bottom. Her bosom she concealed with one of her brother’s weskits, buttoned up and tightened snugly in the back. Her own sturdy traveling boots with her own stockings would have to do.
Done! Having taken a bare seven minutes to dress herself — possibly a lifetime record — Elektra opened Zander’s door and flung herself into a run before she’d even fully entered the hallway.
And ran directly into one of the maids walking down the hall with a covered tray.
Elektra bounced back into the wall. The smaller girl was flung right off her feet. Her salver tumbled through the air, scattering its contents over both of them.
Elektra was at the girl’s side before she’d managed to right herself. “Let’s see there.” She ran a quick sisterly inspection, just as she would for Attie after a tumble. No cuts, no head wound, stand her up, brush her off. “Now, see? Right as rain.”
When she looked into the girl’s face, she realized that the petite, dark-haired maid who stared back at her was at least her own age. Elektra dropped her hands. “So sorry. That was pure habit. I have this younger sister who is always falling out of trees and such.”
Thinking about time and escaping almost-earls and Zander waiting downstairs, Elektra dropped to her knees to quickly gather the fallen items back onto the tray.
“Oh, no, miss! You mustn’t!”
Elektra snorted. “Well, I knocked it down, didn’t I?” It was all quickly sorted. The clunky pottery water jug had a new chip or two, but the lidded pot of something smelly remained solid and the clean rags were soon folded and placed neatly next to jug and pot. Elektra stood and handed the tray back to the maid. “Good enough?”
The girl gave an astonished gasp. “Good enough? Miss, most ladies would slap me for spotting their … er … gown.”
Her gaze passed over Elektra’s ensemble. “But if I may be so bold … you don’t look very much like a boy. If you wish to pass inspection, you might want to…” The girl mimed putting up her hair. “I’ll be right back, miss!”
Elektra opened her mouth to object, but the dark, elfin girl was gone in a flash. She was right about the hair, however. With a twist and a quick repinning, Elektra had her softly waved chignon pulled into a tight, sleek bun.
Then, just as Elektra was beginning to fidget in earnest, the little maid was back, breathlessly waving a brown woolen cap in triumph.
“The boys in this valley wouldn’t step out the door wi’out one of these on their heads.”
“It’s perfect!” Elektra snatched it and plunked it over her hair. The cap said, Pay no mind to me, I’m just a poor common lad. Elektra smiled, her real smile. “Thank you!”
The girl blinked. “‘Tis nothing, miss. I’d best be on my way now.”
Elektra looked at her closely. “Aren’t you curious why I’m trying to pass as a boy?”
The girl blinked again. “No, miss. It’s a better life, bein’ a boy, isn’t it? Safer’n all?”
Elektra sobered slightly. Here she was, a protected woman, surrounded by men like her father and her brothers, who would die to save her. What must life be like for this defenseless little creature? She wasn’t big enough to fight off a hedgehog, much less a man with evil on his mind.
On impulse, Elektra dug into Zander’s weskit pocket and pressed her last coins into the girl’s palm.
“Oh, no, miss! I can’t take all this!”
“All this”would buy Elektra no more than a few ribbons and a tin of sweets for Attie. “Take it,” she urged the girl. “What is your name?”
“I be Edith, miss.”
“Edith, take this. Just save it for … for Someday.” Elektra didn’t know a woman in the world who didn’t dream about Someday.
Edith looked down at the coins in her palm. “Aye,” she said slowly. “For Someday.”
“Now I truly must be on my way. Farewell, Edith!”
Elektra took off down the hall at a full run, for the future of her family was fast getting away!
Edith watched the strange beauty depart until the woman was nothing but an echo of booted feet on the stairs.
To think, a lady like that, getting on her knees to clean up a tray!
Edith had waited on many a toff at the Green Donkey, for it was the only reputable inn on this long stretch of road. Never in her years of service had a lady spoken to her in any fashion other than to command.
And then there was his lordship …
Lord Aaron Arbogast was a handsome fellow, sure enough. A big strapping, dark-haired man with the bright blue eyes of a chancer.
That was what Edith’s mum called a man like that one. A chancer was a fellow who gambled as easily as he breathed. He gambled with his money, he gambled with his woman, he gambled with his life.
Edith had never met one of the nobility before this week. She wondered if all lords were chancers. Perhaps they were, for they had little to lose by it.
That had nothing to do with her. Edith had always imagined herself taking up with some stolid farm boy, with whom she might have some farm boy sons, and perhaps a clever daughter to pass on the Knowledge. Unfortunately, she had never encountered that farm boy — at least, she had never encountered one she thought she might like to keep.
His lordship, on the other hand, was in sore need of a firm feminine hand.
If all ladies were like the one who’d just run off, vibrant and indomitable, Edith could just about imagine a lady of that sort taking his lordship in hand.
On the other hand, if ladies were like the ones in stories, all fainting pale in peril, why, his lordship didn’t stand a chance of reforming his gambling nature! That would be a pity. Edith saw glimmers of a fine man beneath the gambler. A man, perhaps, who sought the warmth of home fires and the welcoming bed of a wife.
It could be that a chancer was just a man who hadn’t found his home yet.
The other maids at the inn had swarmed the man, hoping for his notice, to what end Edith couldn’t imagine. A man like that could only want one thing from a common serving girl. She knew that one or two of the other girls didn’t mind tumbling the occasional guest and receiving a trinket for their troubles, but Edith couldn’t bear the thought.
She might be only a chambermaid, but she had her pride. Indeed, she had little else! But she was hardworking, she could read and write a bit, and she had her mother’s wise-woman skills. Born into a long line of the Knowledge, her mother had been respected in their village. People had come knocking, begging her healer’s skills, offering money or their last pullet. Her mother would take a coin to pay the butcher, then hand back the rest. Healing was her calling, a sacred ability, and not to be sold at high price to the desperate.
But when her mother had passed, lost to a wasting disease that had been far beyond Edith’s skills, she couldn’t bear to stay in that village. Impulsively, she’d set out to journey to London, where she had a cousin or three, according to family tales.
Unfortunately, there hadn’t been much coin left to travel on and Edith’s adventure had come to a halt at the Green Donkey, where she might be able to put away enough to finish her journey.
So, she cleaned up after the guests and kept her head high, for she was an honest and virtuous girl. She didn’t advertise her healing skills, for this was a superstitious region, the sort her mother had warned her about. “Them that don’t understand our ways like to blame us when crops fail and livestock dies. Be careful. Stay small and quiet, keep the Knowledge to yourself until you’re sure it’s needed.” Edith kept to herself because she’d prefer not to be hunted for a witch next time there was a grain blight, thank you very much.
However, now, here at the Green Donkey, his lordship needed her. The rest of them thought he would soon recover from his chill but Edith knew the signs. She could hear the faint, bubbling whistle in his lungs, see the fever in his eyes, the tremble in his hands. Pneumonia awaited his lordship, ready to enfold him like a deadly lover.
Edith meant to prevent this. She leveled her tray on one palm and straightened the small pot of her special unguent. Then she took a deep breath and tapped on the door of his lordship’s chamber.
Lord Aaron Arbogast had seen a bad morning after or two in his wayward youth. A decade of scrupulously clean living had not dimmed the memory of a dry mouth, a pounding head, and eyelids of sand. He held very still and waited for the swirling nausea that was surely on the heels of such a hangover. He had drunk —
Nothing. Not a damned thing. Not a drop of brandy, not a whiff of whiskey.
Furthermore, he was not in a bed, nor even in the hayloft of the inn. No, he was sitting in a chair, entirely unable to move. Without opening his eyes or making a sound, he carefully flexed the muscles in his arms and legs against his prison. Ropes?
Keeping his breathing calm even in his alarm, he inhaled slowly, trying to sift clues from the scents about him. Wood smoke, not coal. Candle wax. A draft crossed his face — no, it smelled of fresh, damp nature. A breeze? He didn’t have the sense that he was out of doors. He smelled moldy furniture … and damp plaster … and jasmine.
Jasmine? No, that wasn’t possible. He was no longer on the plantation on the isle of Andros. He was in England, damp, fusty, smoky England. He was home.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, open your eyes!”
The terse, yet melodious feminine tone startled him into doing just that. A single flame seared his vision. He blinked away the blur and focused on the dim form several feet in front of him.
A vision. A creature of shimmering perfection. A golden, nubile beauty.
A goddess.
He blinked. A goddess holding a pistol. Correction, pointing a pistol. At him.
Did goddesses carry pistols?
The heavenly — er, heavily armed female perched daintily on a crate across from him. She rolled her eyes. “Finally. Really, watching you sitting there sniffing like a hound was fair to bringing on a sneeze.” She raised her brows. “So, how close was your guess?”
Aaron reluctantly tore his gaze away from her perfect face — a genuine stunner! — and cast his glance around his surroundings.
Bloody hell!Only years of practice in keeping his impulses in check kept him from exclaiming out loud.
He sat in the middle of a ruin. Toppling walls, leaning doorways, and all. Beneath his feet he could see the muddy, moss-tainted remnant of a colorfully patterned carpet. To his right stood a fine marble fireplace, holding a crackling fire — and a garland of ivy, except that the garland was growing up and across the mantel!
More ivy crept in through the open window — no, not open. Starkly empty of glass or shutters, it was the hole through which he’d felt the night breeze. And there was something wrong with the sound of the crackling fire — the noise faded away instead of resounding through the room.
Aaron looked up into a black night sky. The room had no roof at all, but for a few burned rafters over the farthest corner.
“This was the solar, I think,” the girl said in wistful tones. “I have heard it was quite nice once.” She leaned her head back to gaze upward. “My brother Poll calls it ‘the lunar’ now. It is quite magical when the moon shines full into it. Like something from a dream.”
Aaron began to struggle then. He wanted out. Out of his bonds, out of this creepy hellish ruin, out of the same county as the mad female before him!
Elektra gazed at her captive for a long moment. She wasn’t entirely mad, after all. She knew that if she made the next move to capture the king, she was taking an irretrievable step.
This was not hesitation. Not in the slightest. When she thought of her family, she felt not the tiniest waver in her conviction that she would do whatever must be done to save them from themselves.
It was only the method that seemed, well, tawdry. He was a stranger.
Then again, perhaps it was better this way.
He was a very handsome fellow. His hair was darker than hers, more of a light brown than her own blond. His eyes in the candlelight kept switching from blue to gray. He had a square jaw and quite a lovely set of shoulders, if she was impressed with that sort of thing. She didn’t think she’d mind despoiling herself all that much with a man like him. The books her mother had given her — the ones that other girls never even knew existed! — had hinted at the possible joys of the flesh that came from coupling with an appealing man.
Other than that, there was no point to knowing him better. It didn’t really matter much if she liked him in the end. Love was for people who could afford the luxury.
That little voice inside her that she was wrong, wrong, wrong — well, that little voice could take a flying leap from the ruined roof of Worthington Manor! She knew what she was doing. She always knew what she was doing.
Declining to waste one more moment on dithering, Elektra rose to her feet and brushed out her skirt — er, oops, her trousers. Bother. She ought to have changed into something a bit more entrancing. Then again, she still had all the required equipment to seduce a man. She’d been born with it.
One deep breath. Then she crossed to where the bound man in the chair still gazed at her in horror. She smiled brightly, to ease his anxiety. Oddly, her dazzling smile didn’t seem to relax him at all.
“My lord, I have decided that your search has come to an end.”
He drew back. His struggles increased, until the heavy chair creaked against the pull of his muscles. Elektra gazed at him perplexed. What had she said?
Come to an end.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Where had she drawn that silly line from, the dialogue of the villain in some seedy novel? She clasped her hands before her and waited for his alarm to die down a bit. When he again lifted his gaze to hers, she nodded encouragingly, widening her eyes and smiling at him.
“What I meant to say is that you have found me at last.”
Now he gazed at her as if she were drooling and listing slightly to port. Seriously, the fellow was just a bit thick, wasn’t he?
Elektra worked her neck slightly to ease her own tension, then showed more teeth. It might be best to speak slowly. Sometimes the upper classes could be a bit inbred. “I — am — your — countess,” she enunciated carefully.
He paled, the dusky tan of his skin fading right before her eyes. Really, there was no call for him to take it so hard.
Dreaming of making a brilliant match and kidnapping a man might not seem like one and the same, but Elektra refused to listen to the voice of reason, even when it was emanating from her own mind.
Lord Aaron Arbogast was The One. All the factors matched up. Rich, titled, young, and not from near about. He was looking for a countess. She was looking for an earl.
All she would need was a private moment with the man in order to make him see her point, she was sure.
Around her stood Worthington Manor, what remained of it after all these years. The broken walls supported her like the loving, if somewhat irregular, arms of her family.
This house was the perfect place to have her little tête-à-tête with his lordship. It was isolated enough that no one would hear him calling for help, er, no one would overhear their private conversation.
This is mad.
Yes, but what else was she to do? How else to bring a man — the right man! — to heel?
You’ve been dealing with your brothers too long.
Elektra suspected that the voice of reason was quite right about that. Unfortunately, it was a laggard voice, kept too silent for too long. Now she stood in the very place she meant to save, with her bound, titled victim — er, future husband — in her grasp.
Her nerve began to fail. She ought to turn about now. Or better yet, leave him here, safe in his carriage on the roadside, none the wiser to the identity of his assailants!
Then the clouds passed on for a moment, and the moonlit lines of Worthington House came into view. Graced by a silvery glow, it almost looked as it once had — the lovely, graceful seat of the Worthington family history and stature.
I want to come home. I want us all to be able to come home again.
And I will do whatever it takes to make that happen.
She straightened at that thought. Ah, there it was, flooding back through her veins, no longer faltering in the late hours of the night. Her purpose. The goal that had her riding out behind her brother’s saddle, chasing down a carriage in the night, stealing a man from the side of the road like pilfering a pumpkin from a field! Everything she did, everything she would ever do, had only one aim.
The Worthingtons would be restored.
She had the means. His lordship sat before her. If he didn’t wish to listen to reason, she would simply have to take matters into her own hands. Again.
Elektra took two steps and straddled his lap, settling herself gingerly onto his hard thighs. The trousers were coming in handy once more. She placed her hands on each side of his beard-scratchy jaw and closed her eyes against his appalled gaze.
And kissed him.