“She will not harm you,” the man said, reading her thoughts or perhaps the stiffness of her body. “She looks upon every stranger as a potential new friend.”
Abigail switched her attention from the dog to the man without moving her head. He had straightened and turned to face her, revealing himself as tall and powerfully built, the muscles of his chest and abdomen, which she could see almost to his navel, well defined. His eyes were as dark as his hair, one lock of which hung over his forehead. His features were angular and harsh, his expression forbidding. Both his face and his body were badly scarred. Indeed, a scar slashed across one cheek, down over his chin, and along part of his neck before proceeding across the whole width of his shoulder. He bore himself in a very upright manner. His large hands were clasped about the handle of the axe, which he held at an angle across his body. He was glistening with sweat.
He looked like a fearfully dangerous man. Primitive. Magnificent. He was all raw masculinity. Abigail felt herself shudder inwardly.
He looked boldly back at her, his eyes moving over her quite frankly, as she supposed hers had moved over him. And terror gave place to embarrassment—had she really wailed or whimpered and thrown up her arms to protect her face? And had he noticed? But how could he not have? Washe laughing inwardly at her? Or worse, feeling a sneering contempt at her terror of an apparently friendly dog? Embarrassment turned to indignation—at his near nakedness and at his boldness.
“Were you given permission to remove your coat and shirt?” she asked him. Too late she heard the primness in her voice.
He cocked one eyebrow.
“You are in full view of anyone who walks even a few steps from the house,” she said. “It is quite unseemly. Perhaps you have not been informed that Major Westcott has visitors and is expecting more. Including ladies. I shall report you to him and see to it that he has a word with your supervisor.”
Belatedly it occurred to her that she ought to have had that word with Harry without actually scolding the man himself. She did not usually take it upon herself to berate servants. But she was feeling ruffled and hot cheeked, and he was still standing there looking steadily at her.
“Beauty,” he said, “heel.”
The dog, without having moved from the spot where it had sat when commanded to do so, had nevertheless begun trying, without success, to stretch its neck far enough to lick her hand. It rose immediately, loped with ungainly gait toward the man, its tail wagging, its ears flopping, and stood close beside him, rubbing itself against the side of his leg. He removed one hand from the axe handle in order to fondle its head and scratch it behind one ear while the dog gazed up at him with a silly look of worshipful bliss on its face. All the while the man did not remove his eyes from Abigail.
Insolent man, she thought, and just stopped herself from saying so aloud. He must be a new addition to the staff. Hehad not been employed there when she left with her mother. Perhaps he was a soldier discharged from his duties after the wars came to an end two years ago. His scars would certainly bear out that theory. And he looked savage. She could almost imagine him hacking and carving his way through enemy lines with that axe, the bloodlust high in him. It was a thought she did not wish to pursue.
“Beauty?” she said, looking down at the dog.
“Irony,” the man said.
She was surprised he even knew the meaning of the word.But an uglier, less suitably named dog she had never beheld.
She turned without another word and made her way back to the house. At least the incident had taken her mind off the shock she had felt at first seeing Harry. For a brief moment in the carriage she had wondered who that frail old man at the top of the steps was.
From the direction of the stables the sound of the axe being wielded resumed.
•••
Gil had always found chopping wood to be an enjoyable form of exercise. He had never considered it a chore. It was also a productive way to work off frustrations and irritations and downright anger. The stack of chopped wood and the pile of kindling grew in direct proportion to the shrinking of the pile of logs. The axe felt nicely balanced in his hands, and it had a good, fine edge on it—one he had put there himself earlier over the horrified protests of Harry’s head groom. The man had been even more flustered when he had realized that Lieutenant Colonel Bennington intended to chop the wood piled at one side of the stable block.
So, Harry’s prediction that his family would descend upon him here had proved to be accurate. Gil had both heard and seen the elegant traveling carriage that had arrived ten minutes or so ago. He assumed that woman was a family member. He also assumed she had not come alone. And she had said that more relatives were on the way. It was not a comfortable prospect. It had been bad enough to discover yesterday that Hinsford Manor was a grander place than he had expected. It had been worse to realize this morning that Netherby and Riverdale were in no hurry to rush back to their own families in London. But now this.
That woman.
She was all delicate feminine beauty and vaporish terror before an ungainly softie of a dog like Beauty. No creature of the canine world had ever been further from ferocity than the one now stretched out beside him a safe distance from the flashing blade, napping because for the moment there was no play afoot and no chance of a good fur ruffling or ear scratching.
She—the woman, that was—had been terror personified for a few moments, cringing and whining and begging for mercy. And then she had looked at him as though she had never seen a half-naked man before—as perhaps she had not—and had become all stiff, aristocratic hauteur. She had mistaken him for a servant. She had asked if he had been given permission to remove his shirt and had warned him that she would report him to Harry. But if she had thought he was a servant, what the devil had she been doing giving him a good looking over before informing him that it was unseemly for him to appear thus before her?
She would probably have fainted dead away if he had taken so much as one step toward her.
Which member of Harry’s family was she? He did notknow much about them, except that Harry had briefly been the Earl of Riverdale, head of the Westcott family, and that they had all stuck by him and his mother and sisters after the discovery was made that the old earl’s marriage to the mother was bigamous. The story had made Gil quite happy that he had never had any family at all.
Was the haughty, wilting beauty one of the sisters? Gil felt nothing but irritation and contempt for her, whoever she was. Though he was perhaps being a bit unfair. Actually, there was noperhapsabout it. She had had no way of knowing what a softie Beauty was, after all, and the dog’s size could be intimidating to strangers. And perhaps she really had not seen a man without his shirt before. Many ladies, as he knew from experience, were brought up in near seclusion, with very little exposure to the realities of the world. He could not for the life of him understand the reasoning behind it, but there it was.
He should perhaps have disabused the woman of her assumption that he was a servant. At the very least he ought to have laid down the axe and pulled on his shirt and made himself look marginally decent. Was it sheer perversity that he had done neither?
He did not like women.
The fact did not excuse him from boorishness.
It also made him seem peevish.
What he would like to do right now, Gil thought, lowering the axe and leaning on the handle, was borrow one of the horses from the stables and ride off somewhere, never to return. But he could not do that, could he? Where would he go? Anyway, he had just sent a letter to his lawyer to inform him where he could be found for the next while. Besides, Harry needed him here. His family presumably would not stay long, and he had been quite firm in hisresolve not to go to his mother in London, where he would soon find himself smothered by love—Harry’s own words— and in the care of yet more physicians.
