Maddening Minx Read online

  It seemed he had. The only warning she had was the slightest of grunts and then a warm body covered hers, a large foot pushing between her precariously balanced toes, and a hot hand sizzling against hers on the leather loop. With impossibly lithe movements for the normally unbending, stiff accountant, Edward swung his body into the wind streaming against Celine’s face, and then there was calm.

  Celine lifted her head up. His face looked down into hers, intent, hard, close. The wind lifted his hair slightly and his mouth twisted in a wry smile. She stared as he brought his face closer, before tipping back her head, her mouth parting involuntarily, her eyes closing of their own accord.

  His warm breath whispered against her cheeks, and then it was gone. Celine opened her eyes that she hadn’t realized she had closed. Edward stared back at her, his mouth open, his cheeks slacker somehow. And his eyes seemed to tot up her worth. She worked her mouth as his Adam’s apple moved.

  “Edward?”

  He shook his head with controlled movements. Freeing his hand briefly from the carriage, he tucked her head awkwardly into his shoulder and turned his face away from hers.

  She barely felt the hard jolts of the carriage as her face pressed into the distinctly male smelling warm scratchy material of Edward’s jacket. Oh god, the comfort it brought, the feeling of safety and of predictability. Celine gasped and hung onto the leather strap as her foot slipped on the rail. Predictability? She brought her toe back onto the rail. Her balance felt off kilter somehow, as if at any second she would slide off the coach, if Edward’s body wasn’t in the way.

  The horses galloped for four miles, first left on a road, then right on a track until Celine had completely lost all sense of direction. At last the carriage stopped, just as Celine began to lose the sensation in her fingers from hanging on to the tight leather loop. She shrank in on herself as the warm body that had pressed against hers drew itself away suddenly, and sunlight flooded her closed eyelids.

  Slowly she opened her eyes, the biting cold hitting her face hard once more. Swallowing, she pulled one hand out of the loops she had clung to, and hung for an instant, before her newly released hand began to burn. With a moan she flinched, her trapped hand freeing quickly from the other loop. And then she fell.

  She tried to roll into a ball, push her feet to the floor, anything to prevent the hard landing on the roadside. Instinctively she closed her eyes again, bringing her hands up to her face. But strong hands caught her as she rushed through the air.

  “Bloody hell, Celine. We are definitely not doing that again.”

  Celine gave a sigh of relief. “Edward?” She opened her eyes and met the piercing blue eyes of Gunvald. Oh. No.

  Gunvald raised an eyebrow. “Edward? You mean that so-called accountant that we just rescued?”

  “He is an accountant.” He’d spent more time with his ledgers during their…relationship than he had with her.

  Gunvald stared at her strangely for an instant and then dropped her feet none too gently to the ground. He steadied her shoulders as she stood shakily, and peered into her face again. Wordlessly he fished around in the pocket of his coat and pulled out a handkerchief. She took it gently with a finger and thumb and frowned.

  Gunvald shook his head. “It’s just a handkerchief, Celine. It doesn’t do anything else. Roland hasn’t been anywhere near it.”

  “I know.” She gave a shaky embarrassed laugh. “I was just wondering why you were giving it to me.”

  “Because you’ve got water on your face.” Silver’s deadpan tones echoed behind them. “Your accountant has rushed off into the cottage here. It seems that he found the journey a little bone shaking.”

  “Oh!” Celine pushed the handkerchief to her cheeks and pulled it across the bridge of her nose. It was no ordinary water. It was tears. “It must have been the wind that made my eyes water.” She blinked at the small white-washed cottage that fronted straight onto the road.

  Gunvald made a hmph sound under his breath and swung away, picking up Big Bess from the floor, and a small knapsack. With quick strides he disappeared round the side of the cottage.

  “I’ve brought your things.” Silver held out the leather bag that Celine took with her everywhere. Celine nodded and bent over to push the handkerchief into her bag. As she leaned forward, Silent Sally slid out of her bodice and fell to the ground with a dull thud, the flintlock still cocked, the powder sliding in the pan. She gasped and stared at the small deadly gun. For goodness’ sake she could have killed Edward and herself both as they jolted on the carriage.

  Uncharacteristically Silver bent and gingerly reset the small pistol, before pushing it into Celine’s leather bag. Sniffing, she picked up her own bag and handed Celine the leather one. “That was quite a leap onto the coach that you did. I’ve not seen you do that to a moving carriage before.”

  Celine sighed inwardly with relief as she followed the short dependable figure of Silver round the side of the cottage. “I know,” she said brightly. “I think I did it once…probably around that time when that dolt Charles Fashington was chasing after Agatha Beauregard during the Lady Guthrie affair. Of course then it was a bit of fun…”

  “That was when you were with Lord Anglethorpe wasn’t it?” Silver said without turning.

  “Yes I believe it was but…” Her steps slowed as she rounded the side of the cottage. The front door was open, and Edward’s serious face shone lightly in the gloomy interior. “Oh no.”

  Silver continued in a normal voice. “Pity you didn’t get to marry him. That would have been a very comfortable life indeed. Of course you would have had to have given all of this up.” Silver turned and swept her arms to the coach, noticing Celine’s face for the first time. She stopped. “Oh dear. I’ve said the wrong thing again, haven’t I?”

  “Perhaps a little,” Celine squeaked. She never squeaked.

  “Ah, amore,” Silver sang under her breath.

  “Silver!”

  Silver sighed audibly and sobered. She stopped and put a hand on Celine’s arm. “Celine, wait.”

  Celine looked into Silver’s plain face. The eyes that had given Silver her name held no mirth.

  “My father came to me two weeks ago.” Silver’s eyes flickered. “You remember I had told you he hadn’t enough money to pay for coal?”

  Celine nodded. “I remember.”

  “He said that someone brought a sack of coal and left it in his rooms. Enough to last for several months. An anonymous someone.”

  “How wonderful!” Celine pushed her face into a delighted smile.

  Silver shook her head in frustration. “You were the only person I told, you know my relationship with my father.”

  Celine lifted her chin. “Do I look like I am strong enough to lift a sack of coal into a person’s room?”

  Silver shook her head. “Well no, but still—”

  Celine licked her lips and started off for the cottage without letting Silver finish her words. She ducked as she passed underneath the low lintel of the front door. Her eyesight dimmed as her vision grew used to the gloom of the front room. A large burly man sat opposite Edward, a beard of enormous proportions falling to his protruding belly. Behind him hung rabbits, and birds of every forest hue. His slightly sunken eyes took in Silver’s pantaloons and Celine’s revealing dress with one flicker of an eyelid.

  “I don’t often get visitors,” he said in a gruff voice. He turned his gaze to Edward who smiled weakly back. “Especially ones as throws up as soon as they enter my cottage.”

  Celine narrowed her eyes as Edward nodded woodenly and the large man sat further back on his chair.

  “I had to sponge him down with a large cloth when he was finished. By the way, you can call me Robert.” Robert nodded slowly, his beard brushing his chest, and looked at Edward. “I work for his lordship.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Edward shook his head imperceptibly at Robert, but the rotund giant refused to look him dead
in the face again. Yes, they had cooked up the fib that Edward had been sick in order to cover the reason why he had shot into the cottage so quickly, and why they had locked themselves in the back room until the blond handsome giant that Celine was obviously connected to, had hammered on the door and demanded to know what they were doing.

  But they didn’t all need to know the finer details of Edward’s stomach contents and certainly not about Robert’s job.

  Robert looked around and obviously noted the confusion. “Yon man over here has told us you are in need of a bit of shelter. I’m Lord Rochester’s gamekeeper,” Robert clarified. He sat back and folded his arms.

  “Really?” Gunvald said sarcastically, poking at one of the rabbits strung by its back legs. “I would have taken you for a poacher myself.”

  Robert rose from his chair and squared up to Gunvald. They were about the same height. “I am his gamekeeper,” Robert growled in drawn out tones. His gaze flickered to Edward’s. “And whilst his lordship is away, I keep an eye on his grounds. See?”

  Edward buried his head in his hands. In his eyes Robert had always been a big, burly giant. Right from when Edward was small and would play in this very cottage. Robert had been the man to teach Edward how to shoot, tramping through the grounds of the Rochester estate for hours, for days even, until he would arrive back at Rochester Castle, wishing, hoping, that he would find his mother in a serene state, and his father…his father lucid.

  But although Robert was a large burly man, he was a man of the forest. Not a man of words. And he had a pride to him.

  “Whilst Lord Rochester is away?” Gunvald said slowly, looking into Robert’s face. “I thought Lord Rochester was famously lost.”

  Edward schooled his face into his most wooden and boring expression. Ah, how easy that was. “I think you will find that the parlance of ‘Lord Rochester being away’ is what the local folk around here term his lordship’s absence from the estate. Ahem.”

  Gunvald turned a suspicious gaze towards him. Edward carefully kept his face still, and clicked his feet together precisely under the table, but he almost fell apart as he caught Celine’s beautiful features out of the corner of his eyes. He had to keep it together.

  “I would of course know,” he said in a voice of one pitch, “because I am his lordship’s accountant and I meet the family once a year to go through their accounts.”

  “So that was what you were doing on Lord Rochester’s drive?” Gunvald sniffed. “We came all the way up north for a bloody businessman, Celine?”

  Robert stiffened, his hands rising from his side. “You don’t speak about—”

  “Robert,” Edward barked. Gunvald turned his piercing gaze on him. I don’t know who you are, the gaze said, but I don’t believe a word of what is being said around here. “Robert,” Edward smiled weakly and strove to regain the boring voice he had perfected earlier, “would you be so kind to provide us with some food as I believe we might be continuing our journey very soon?”

  “We should stay the night here,” Celine said quietly behind him. Edward blinked. Her voice, it was even more sultry than he remembered. And her lips were sweeter than honey. He pushed the thought away and locked it behind the wall in his mind.

  “That is if Robert would be so kind as to provide us with a room.” Celine’s voice contained a gentle hint of enquiry.

  Robert nodded. “Of course. It’s not often that I get company.”

  Edward glanced at Gunvald, waiting for him to protest. But it seemed he was not the one in charge.

  Gunvald nodded, and waited.

  Celine stepped forward into the darkness of the room. “Gunvald, you and Silver sleep in the coach and alternate guard duty. I will stay in the cottage with Mr. Fiske.”

  Mr. Fiske? Since when had she stopped calling him Edward?

  Probably since the moment six months before when he had given her her congé. For god’s sake he had caught her kissing another man in Regent’s Park no less. Kissing another man. The pain that stabbed him in the heart now was twenty times greater than that he had experienced at the time. What else had she expected me to do? He turned his head to look at Celine for the first time, but she wouldn’t look at him, her long black hair swinging to cover her face, falling across the swell of her bodice where the creamy skin rose from her—

  Edward groaned. He couldn’t help it.

  “Everything alright, Mr. Fiske?”

  Edward nodded at the peculiar female that stood at Celine’s side, her baggy breeches tied with rope at the waist around a billowing shirt. No, everything was most certainly not alright. He thought he’d managed to remove Celine from his life, for her own protection. And yet—

  “I don’t believe you have met Silver yet,” Celine said drily.

  “Please to meet you, sir.” Silver stepped forward and bowed.

  “Pleased to meet you too, miss…er,” Edward fumbled for the words.

  “Just Silver will do.” The puzzling female glanced away at Celine.

  “Thank you, Silver.” Celine smiled and turned her attention to Robert who had stopped staring at Gunvald. A slow blush crossed his bearded face.

  Edward’s fists curled as Celine lowered her eyelids. “Robert, we are so grateful to you for looking after Mr. Fiske. Might we ask one more favor?”

  “Anything for you, my lady,” Robert murmured.

  Edward took a deep sniff through his nose and coughed. He couldn’t help it. Robert was putty, a sheer mush in Celine’s hands. Don’t believe a word she says, he wanted to shout. She’s not a helpless female. She’s a desirable courtesan that fuddles my brain and spies on me. Bloody hell! She can jump onto moving carriages and shoot casually from the hip. None of her is real. None of her is understandable!

  Gods but he still wanted her. All of his being wanted her.

  “Robert, might we stay the night here in your cottage?” Celine cocked her head and smiled. “We will be on our way again in the morning, all of us. We are trying to avoid some very undesirable people, and your cottage is so well hidden.” She paused. “We will pay you for your trouble.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve been paid already.” Robert smiled, and then swallowed as Celine took a step forward, a frown on her face. “By your presence I mean, my lady,” he stammered.

  Edward let out the breath he didn’t realize he had held.

  “I have but one bedroom, my lady,” Robert swallowed visibly. “It’s up the ladder from the back room.”

  “I will need to guard Mr. Fiske,” Celine said briskly. She cocked her head. “Perhaps we could stay down here if you only have one bedroom, Robert?”

  Robert, Robert, Robert. Her velvet voice caressed the rolling Rs. Edward gritted his teeth.

  “I think Robert would be very happy to give us his bedroom wouldn’t he, Robert.” Edward stood, an unfamiliar anger coursing through his veins.

  Robert threw up his hands. “Of course, my lord.”

  Gunvald unfolded his arms. “He is not a lord, Robert. He is a boring accountant.”

  Robert laughed uneasily. “Silly me, I always forget myself when I have visitors.”

  Edward injected a nasal tone into his voice. “I took it as a compliment, Robert. No harm done.”

  “Aye, I’ll show you to the bedroom then shall I?” Poor Robert pushed past Gunvald and disappeared into the back room.

  “Come, Silver. Let’s go out to the carriage.” Gunvald stared hard at Edward, before pushing Silver out of the front door with a friendly shove of his hands.

  Silver resisted slightly. “But I wanted to see what happened next—”

  Gunvald’s reply to Silver’s complaint was lost as Celine slammed the door closed.

  “Well?” She put her hands on her hips.

  “Well what?” Edward ran a hand through his hair and then pushed his hand into his coat to finger his pocket watch.

  “Aren’t you going to say thank you?”

  “Thank yo
u?” He watched fascinated as with a deep breath Celine nearly spilled out of her dress. She was as ever, magnificent.

  “Yes. Thank you, Celine, for saving my life. I was nearly run through with a sword but you pulled me from danger.”

  He scratched his chin. “You didn’t have to do it.”

  Her finely wrought eyebrows rose. With a flick of her wrist she threw the black locks of hair that tumbled down her chest over her shoulder. “I didn’t have to do it? Edward, he was about to kill you.”

  “No he wasn’t.”

  “He was.”

  “Celine.” Edward took a deep breath as an unfamiliar anger coursed through his veins, faster than a forest fire. “When will you ever get it through your thick skull that it is not all about what you think? Or what you want at that very moment?”

  “What?” Celine’s shout was so loud that the pots above the hearth rattled.

  Robert pushed his head through the door. “Is everything alright, my…friends?”

  “Yes,” Edward said firmly.

  “No,” Celine shouted again.

  The smile that crossed Robert’s face would have lit a candle it was so bright. He rubbed his hands in front of him. “Good,” he said and disappeared again back into the back room.

  “Mr. Khaffar is not a man to be taken lightly,” Celine said in even tones. Her gaze bored in to him.

  “I know.” Edward hesitated and closed his eyes briefly. “Just as you know I chose to become his business man.” He examined Celine’s face carefully, inventorying the two exquisitely made-up eyes, the long straight nose, and the slightly smudged rouge on her cheeks framed by long, curling black locks of hair.

  She stared right back at him. “How do you know I know?”