Page 6 of Win Me, My Lord (All’s Fair in Love and Racing #5)

CHAPTER THREE

CH?TEAU BOTTOM’S ROOST, NEXT EVENING, MIDNIGHT

A rtemis’s boots crunched loud against gravel as she dashed across the Roost’s wide forecourt on swift feet.

She was late.

Midnight supper parties were the stuff of London—not the Yorkshire countryside.

She’d even taken a leaf from Mother’s book and sneaked a nap after tea this evening.

Yet, strangely, her footsteps were the only kinetic sound in the still night air.

How was that possible? Shouldn’t she have been stepping out of the way of late-arriving carriages? Shouldn’t muted drifts of conversation and laughter be floating out from windows open to cooling night air?

But as she approached, she detected no evidence of a supper party in progress.

A feeling niggled.

What was Sir Abstrupus about?

The fact was she shouldn’t have accepted the invitation that had arrived with her morning tea. Sir Abstrupus ever had secret motives and games at play. It was how he kept himself occupied.

Still, that wasn’t the reason she shouldn’t have come.

She shouldn’t have come because of Lord Branwell Mallory.

Yesterday morning, she’d received solid proof that she was, indeed, sharing the same Yorkshire air as him.

And all he’d left her with was a shadow and a pair of words to parse.

Lady Artemis.

Not much to parse there, really.

But the voice that had spoken those words, velvet and resonant, was the same as she remembered, perhaps deeper.

Nay, not precisely deeper.

Growlier.

Yet that voice held enough familiarity to light a sense memory through her. Her ears and her brain remembered that voice.

Other parts of her body did, too.

The instant they’d issued from his mouth— Lady Artemis —those words had produced a spray of goose bumps across her skin, as if she’d just seen a ghost.

Well, she had, hadn’t she?

Who said all ghosts had already departed this world for the next?

At any rate, they had no business materializing whenever and wherever they so liked.

Lady Artemis.

Such a measured two words. They’d abruptly cooled the hot blast of anger she’d flung at him. And thank the heavens for small blessings, for who knew what words would have tumbled from her mouth next.

Certainly not she.

So, she’d fled, but in addition to the kittens, she’d been left holding a question.

Why?

Why was Lord Branwell a guest at Chateau Bottom’s Roost? Why had Sir Abstrupus invited him?

A whole host of why s.

With one answer certain— mischief .

But what sort of mischief?

She needed to know.

Sir Abstrupus would tell her. He never could resist riling her. It was giving him purpose and enlivening his winter years.

She took the front steps with slower care than she was inclined toward, and gave her bodice a subtle adjustment beneath the studiedly neutral eye of the footman standing beneath the wide, columned portico and holding a torch.

A torch.

Sir Abstrupus and his dramatics.

“Come on, girl,” she spoke to Bathsheba as they entered the open front door. Sir Abstrupus was entitled to his eccentricities and she to hers. Bathsheba accompanied her everywhere, as the sheepdog suffered from a nervous disposition that was surely the result of her injuries and possible abuses.

Inside the foyer, with its two-story-high frescoed ceiling of frolicking baby angels, a different footman took her indigo woolen cape.

A touch of self-consciousness suddenly overcame her.

She had decidedly not worn her best or even second- or third-best dress to this midnight supper.

The problem was that this fourth-best dress hadn’t been worn in years and was so snugly fitted that her breasts might have formed the impression they were at liberty to pop out of her bodice at a moment’s notice.

She offered up a silent prayer that they would behave.

A third footman nodded and led her across the expansive black-and-white checkered marble floor. Though French baby angels soared above her head, the house below was English by way of the unapologetically eccentric. If a house could take on the character of its owner, the Roost had.

As she traversed one dark, winding corridor after another—the Roost held not a single straight line that she had ever observed—it was the collection of Venetian Carnevale masks that caught the eye with their exuberant, sometimes grotesque beauty.

Then it was down another dimly lit corridor lined with masks that had come from the continent of Africa.

These were less colorful, but no less imaginative.

Another corridor was filled with Noh masks from Japan with their exquisite, lifelike renderings meant for the stage.

While Sir Abstrupus had a penchant for the unusual and far-flung, this was more than a collection of the exotic.

It was driven by curiosity, she’d decided.

A curiosity to view the world beyond England’s shores and understand how everyone was connected.

The footman stopped at the door of the study, and her earlier suspicion grew roots. The house was quiet—too quiet.

Her doubts were confirmed when the footman opened the door.

Across the white-oak parquet floor littered with Aubusson rugs and settees and ottomans and tables, which were themselves littered with vases and figurines and general bibelot from every corner of the planet, she observed two men seated in leather armchairs beside the hearth.

One sat with a plaid blanket across his lap, a glass of one tonic or another lifted to his mouth; the other slouched, his legs sprawled before him, his gaze averted toward the fire, presenting her with no greeting but rather the strong line of his profile—the straight nose; the ridge of cheekbone; the firm press of lips; the angled line of jaw and chin.

A profile Artemis didn’t need to see to know, for it was etched into memory.

The full force of her situation crashed through her.

Only she, Sir Abstrupus, and Lord Branwell Mallory would be attending this supper party.

“You’re late.”

Only as Artemis’s gaze startled toward Sir Abstrupus did she realize she’d been staring at Lord Branwell.

Well, what little he offered of himself.

She met her host’s sharp blue eyes directly—it didn’t do to be indirect with Sir Abstrupus—and cleared her throat. “I wasn’t aware of the intimacy of the gathering.”

“Meaning?” Questions were ever subtle demands when issued from Sir Abstrupus’s mouth.

Her sense of equilibrium returned. Verbal sparring was familiar footing, at least. “Meaning, I wasn’t aware my lateness would have been of note or particular interest.”

From the edge of her eye, she saw Lord Branwell hadn’t looked away from the fire roaring in the hearth.

Sir Abstrupus kept the fires of the Roost blazing year-round.

Artemis couldn’t begrudge him that. She supposed if she made it to ninety years and counting, she would have fires roaring in every hearth, too.

Even in August.

Another observation came from the edge of her eye. Lord Branwell’s posture … It was surly .

Here was a man who fit the growly Lady Artemis she’d received in the woods.

Sir Abstrupus lifted an inquisitive eyebrow. “Have you no greeting for our guest, Lord Branwell?”

Anticipation flittered through Artemis, had her heart flipping over, and her stomach tumbling. Bathsheba gave a small whine, ever sensitive to her mistress’s moods.

One slow beat of time loped past—then another.

Artemis waited, her hands curled at her sides.

Though Lord Branwell sat in this room, he didn’t seem to be here at all. Rather, he appeared to be in a world of his own—one he didn’t wish to share.

Sir Abstrupus gave a pointed clearing of his throat.

Lord Branwell sighed.

Seconds ticked along as time stretched to its breaking point. Artemis’s fingernails dug into her palms. At last, he shifted in his chair and turned to fully face her, and she suppressed a gasp.

Except she hadn’t suppressed the gasp—not entirely.

His eyes narrowed into golden slits. She remembered that about his eyes. They were golden. “My lady.”

Again, the growl.

How that growl did, indeed, fit the man before her.

This wasn’t the Lord Branwell Mallory of ten years ago.

This was an altogether different Lord Branwell Mallory.

A Lord Branwell Mallory who had become a soldier.

A Lord Branwell Mallory who had been wounded, nearly fatally.

The evidence was there on his right cheekbone. A scar not cleanly gotten, as from the swift slice of a sword, but rather red and slightly raised, the skin still angry at the world for having marred what once had been masculine perfection.

How many times had she pressed her mouth to the once-smooth skin where there was now scarred flesh?

Too many to count.

Again, he angled away and returned his gaze to the fire, denying her further opportunity to stare.

For that was what she had been doing— staring .

And he knew, of course.

She could tell from the bitter curl of his mouth, evident even in profile.

She’d once known Lord Branwell Mallory— Bran —in the most intimate ways one person could know another.

But this man possessed a hardness composed of flint.

She knew him not.

The reflexive step she’d almost taken forward was simply that—reflex born of shock.

He wasn’t a man she would wish to know.

Instinct bade her to turn on her heel and sprint back to the Grange as fast as her legs could carry her—or as fast as Bathsheba’s three legs would allow.

Yet she remained rooted in place for one simple reason— curiosity .

Before this night was through, she would know what in the blazes this supper party was all about.

Sir Abstrupus’s quick eyes flicked between her and Lord Branwell. He’d scented something in the air. “Do you know one another already?”

“No,” flew from Artemis’s mouth too quickly and too loudly.

Lord Branwell turned and shot her the lift of an eyebrow.

The man could speak volumes without uttering a single word.

That wasn’t new.