Bridal Favors (15 page)

With one last, careful look around, Justin turned the knob and slipped into the office, quietly closing the door behind him. Once inside, he made for the manager’s office.

He found a crowbar on a shelf just inside the door and went to the crate. As quietly as possible, he wedged the end of the bar under the wooden lid and pushed. Nothing. He looked closer at the crate. The damn thing had been nailed shut every four inches. Bloody hell. He jammed the crowbar more securely under the lip and heaved down. He’d just heard a recalcitrant groan when the office gaslights flared to life. Blast!

“Is that you, Mr. Powell? Whatever are you doing?”

Justin turned his head. Sully Silsby stood in the front doorway, weaving slightly on his feet. Hovering behind him stood Archie Flynn and two others Justin didn’t recognize.

Many years ago, Justin had learned that the best reaction to being discovered in a compromising situation was to play put-upon. He sighed in exasperation.

“I’m trying to get this blasted thing open,” he said. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

It worked. Sully nodded as if indeed, now that he thought of it, of course that was what Justin was doing. “So you are. But how’d you get in here, sir?”

“Through the door.” Justin rolled his eyes, the picture of exasperation. He dropped to the ground. “What does your wife put in those sausages, anyway?”

Sully flushed guiltily. “I haven’t been home yet. I stopped by the pub and was just about to leave when Archie here come back to say how he seen a cart behind the station.”

“And you rounded up this stalwart band to see who’d breached the sanctity of your office?” Justin asked.

“That’s right.” One of the men in the back hiccuped.

Justin lifted his hands, palms up, at his sides. “Just me, I’m afraid. Lady Evelyn informed me that if I didn’t hurry, the crates would be doomed to wait here until Monday. Couldn’t let that happen. So hither I flew.”

“But how’d you get in, sir?” Sully insisted.

“I tried the door. It was open.”

“I could have sworn I locked it.”

“Maybe the latch didn’t catch,” Justin suggested.

Sully nodded, convinced. “Needs replacing.”

“But if you was coming to get the crates, why’re you trying to break ’em open here?” Archie demanded, blast him.

“To determine just who owns the bloody things,” Justin explained with exaggerated patience. “If they’re mine, I figured I’d leave them until Monday and save myself the effort of loading them myself. But if they are Lady Evelyn’s, well, she’ll need them.” He didn’t miss the wink Sully sent his nearest mate.

“So, that be the way of it?” Sully asked with all the subtlety of a twelve-year-old. “And whose crates are they?”

Justin shrugged. “Haven’t found that out yet.”

“Ach! We can get that lid off for’n you,” one of the strangers, a rabbity-looking fellow with a sunburned complexion, offered. “Can’t we, Jim?”

His friend, stouter and already sporting a stunning map of capillaries across his bulbous nose, nodded.

Justin didn’t want an audience when the contents of the crates were revealed. He wrenched the iron bar out and dropped it on the floor. “Thanks for the offer, but I’d just as soon wait until I’m back at the abbey to open them, since I seem to have found some fine fellows to lend me a hand loading them. That is, if you wouldn’t mind helping?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Powell,” Sully agreed. Justin always paid well for any effort expended on his behalf.

Justin looked over the strangers. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure. You are . . . ?”

“New to town,” Sully answered for the pair. “Come down from London only a few days ago. Salesmen for a new line of combine harvester. They’ve decided to make Henley Wells their ‘center of operations.’ Leastwise that’s what they said, and right official-sounding, too, don’t you think?”

“Very,” Justin murmured.

“Good fellows,” Sully said, which, in Sully’s lexicon, meant they’d paid for a round of drinks. “We’re quite chummy over to the pub. You stop by, Mr. Powell. Got us a merry little crowd. The deacon’s cousins—what he didn’t even know he had afore they appeared on his doorstep last night—they’re over to the pub, too.”

“Sounds grand. But first things first, eh?” Justin said. Salesmen, ailing Prussians, long-lost relatives—was there no end to his possible adversaries? He suddenly felt tired. If there
had
to be an enemy within, why couldn’t the fellow have the good grace to don a black cape and twirl pointy mustachios?

“Right. You and me, Archie,” Sully clamped a paw on little Archie Flynn’s shoulder, “we’ll take this one and you lads take t’other.”

Amidst general camaraderie, the men hoisted the crates to their shoulders and shuffled out into the street, where they made quick work of loading them. Then they stood back and gazed expectantly at Justin.

“Well, I’d say you’ve earned yourselves a well-deserved round or two.”

Justin fished some money out of his pocket and flipped the coins to Sully.

“Now that’s right kind of you, Mr. Powell. Don’t say you aren’t going to join us?”

“Not tonight, Sully. Lady Evelyn—”

Archie dug his elbow into Sully’s side. “Never thought to see you struck by Cupid’s arrow, Mr. Powell.”

Justin regarded him dryly. “Not to worry, Archie. I don’t think it’s an arrow so much as a dart.”

He winked as the men broke into laughter, and swung up into the carriage. But as he drove he could not help but consider how easily the local men accepted this role of unwilling lovesick swain. Perhaps because it wasn’t far from the truth. . . . Ruthlessly, he hauled his thoughts back to the task at hand.

He wouldn’t think of her. He spent far too much time thinking of her as it was. Thinking of her, wanting to be with her. Wanting her. Damn it, next thing he knew, he’d be mooning about like that fool Blumfield!

Thirty minutes later he was back at the abbey, rousing the poor stable boy to help him manhandle the crates into the library. By the time the boy left, the grandfather clock had struck sonorous notes that echoed down the deserted corridors.

Justin shrugged out of his jacket and turned up the gas jets. The claw hammer lay where he’d left it. He picked it up.

“Well,” he said softly, “I suppose there’s no time like the present—”

Swoosh!

He ducked. The blackjack caught him a glancing blow behind the right ear. The hammer skittered across the floor as he went down hard, driven to his knees by the explosion of pain.

Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed movement and rolled. The second blow missed his face, pounding with nerve-numbing force into his shoulder. He turned to face his adversary just as the room went black.

Blast! The man must have come in earlier and hidden when he’d arrived. Justin froze. Listened. By turning off the lights, his enemy had leveled the playing field. The sudden darkness would be more to his enemy’s detriment than Justin’s—which meant his assailant didn’t want to be seen.

Footsteps slid along the floorboards. Justin crouched, holding his breath. A figure slipped across the rectanglular murk of the doorway and dissolved into the darkness to his right. Dressed for the occasion, had he? Justin thought, bitterly aware of his own white shirt. This would teach him to ask Providence for villains in black.

A floorboard creaked close by. He waited. Felt more than saw the looming presence behind him. Tensed. Heard his assailant’s breath catch, and at that instance pivoted, driving up with a clenched fist. His knuckles connected with bone-crunching force.

“Ahh!” His assailant bellowed.

“Bloody hell!” Justin swore, violently shaking his injured hand and ducking the wild swings of an all but invisible arm.

One should never,
ever
hit something without being able to see it.
Bloody
hell, that hurt!

Justin ducked another swing, glimpsed a black, featureless face, and, gritting his teeth, drew back his fist and drove straight from his shoulder. But this time the man saw his arm coming and ducked in time to avoid it. Then, just when Justin was vulnerable, the figure plunged headfirst into Justin’s unprotected belly.

“Uff!” Justin gasped and stumbled backward, knocked to the ground. He curled, protecting his head, but the man was apparently now simply intent on escape. Before Justin could regain his feet, his enemy had stumbled out of the door, slamming it closed behind him and pitching the room into even deeper darkness.

Justin leapt to his feet, intending to give chase, but tripped over the sodding hammer, flung open the door, and collided straight into Evie Cummings Whyte.

Chapter 11

IT HAD BEEN a long day. Evelyn had supervised the hanging of a new chandelier, started the workmen on the papier-mâché boulders, finally located the source of a noxious odor in one of the guest rooms and dealt with the rat’s disposal. By the end of the day, she was exhausted but too keyed up to sleep.

She took dinner standing up in the kitchen and spent the rest of the evening going from room to room, checking the progress of cleaning and repairs. She ended her tour in the room across from the library, one of the last that needed cleaning, and decided to take a little break.

The Brigadier General had used it as a trophy room. The walls were covered with photographs of him in various uniforms, the tables piled with scrapbooks, ledgers, and diaries from various generations. Idly, Evelyn sat down and began leafing through them. If Justin came in she would hear him and they could . . . talk. No one came. Justin least of all.

Soon even the General’s amazing record of tightfisted domestic tyranny failed to hold her attention and she fell asleep. Almost at once she began to dream.

She was driving a carriage, and Mr. Blumfield stood in the road behind her, applauding. All at once, the road turned into a track careening down the side of a steep mountain, and the carriage became a bicycle. She was losing control, going faster and faster, when her wheel hit a rut, hurling her out over the cliff face.

Terrified, she plummeted, screams freezing in her throat. And then she saw Justin hanging from a gnarled tree root halfway down the cliff face. Her terror vanished. She stretched out her hands and he caught her round the waist. The moment they touched, the air turned balmy and soft.

Gently, he gathered her in. “Evie,” he whispered. “What did you think you were doing?”

Somehow his shirt had come off and her hands were pressed against a chest as satin-smooth as Italian marble. He pressed a kiss on her brow and slowly, tenderly, sweetly, trailed it down her cheek. He was going to kiss her lips. . . .

A crash brought Evelyn rudely awake.

She lurched to her feet as a man’s voice rained curses outside the room. Confused, still half asleep, she groped for the door handle and stumbled into the dark corridor. The library door swung open and a tall figure in a ghostly white shirt bowled straight into her. She cried out and he grabbed her arms, steadying her.

“Evie, are you all right?” His voice was tense, having lost its usual insouciance. He gave her a little shake. “Are you all right? Evie!”

She steadied herself with her hands splayed against his chest. “Yes, yes, of course I am.”

His hands raced over her face and down her torso with even more outrageous impropriety than usual, but before she could react he stepped away and with a short, “Wait here,” he quickly disappeared out the front door.

From outside she heard the sudden sound of a man’s shout followed by the thunder of a horse’s hooves. Her heart raced. Had the house been broken into? Had something been stolen? A second later, a dark figure reappeared beside her and Justin turned up the lights in the hall sconces. He peered at her intently. What he saw must have relieved him, for he released a deep breath.

“Good heavens, Justin,” she whispered, pushing her spectacles up her nose. His hair fell over his brow and the top buttons of his shirt were missing, the throat gaping open well below the sternum. She tried, and failed, to keep her gaze from that wholly masculine expanse. “Were we robbed?” she whispered.

“No.” He shook his head. “I came in and caught him before he got away with anything.”

“But you’re not hurt?” she asked.

“I’m fine. Absolutely fine.”

Her relief gave way to a burgeoning awareness of him. His masculinity. His athleticism. Dark swirls of hair covered heavy shelves of pectoral muscle in a V, narrowing to a line that disappeared beneath the rest of his shirt. And he was dense and hard, like a well-toned animal, but not like stone. Nothing at all like stone.

He took a step closer, gathering both of her wrists in one of his hands and pulling them flat against his heart. It thundered, vibrating through her palms, spurring her own pulse. Shivers trembled through her limbs.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he demanded. “You’re shaking like a wet dog.”

She couldn’t move her hands, so instead she patted him awkwardly with her fingertips. “Yes,” she said shakily. “I was dreaming and I thought I heard you cry out. . . .”

He said, “I was in the library when the lights went off. I saw a figure run out of the room and ran after him, only it seems I ran into you. Did you see him?”