Cates, Kimberly (19 page)

Grabbing up the pieces of the latch, he eyed one of the iron spikes that had anchored it to the wood. Frustration burned in him, so hot the metal should have glowed red. The infernal thing had cracked off in the middle. He could only pray there was another one left in the mess of accoutrements he and Fletcher had spread out on the bench in the garden house.

He stalked through the interior of the house to the rear door. Sunshine struck his face as he stepped out into the garden, the musty scent of herbs and the rich odor of flowers and freshly turned earth mingling in his nose.

He wanted nothing more than to retrieve another nail and return to his hellish task—without running into anyone who giggled or flirted or dithered about. But he'd barely taken three steps when he saw her.

Garbed in coral pink, a sheer white linen apron about her waist, Juliet knelt beside a clump of green stuff, the cloth at one shoulder drooping to expose a pure curve of pale skin. The sunshine of her curls played hide-and-seek with the edge of a delicate white lace cap just visible beneath the broad brim of a straw hat with cherry-colored ribbons holding it in place. A beatific smile curved her lips, and her eyes purely shone as she tilted her face up like a blossom to the sun.

It would have been hard enough on Adam's pulses to see her thus, but the fact that she was casting that smile up at another man yanked at the most primitive part of Adam— the secret corner where knights still made war on those who dared so much as touch the hems of their ladies' gowns.

At that instant, Juliet tucked a sheaf of flowers into the crook of one arm, brushed the dirt off her fingers, and offered her hand to the figure, rising to her feet. Blast her innocence! The gate was wide open again. And the man who had entered by it could have a slaughtering knife tucked up his sleeve! Not that it would matter. She'd probably still be offering him tea and biscuits!

Adam bolted toward her, his fingers tightening on the pieces of the lock he held as the vaguely familiar-looking gentleman swept a low bow and raised Juliet's dirt-smudged hand to his lips.

Shifting the pieces of iron into the crook of his left arm, Adam snatched Juliet's hand out of the man's grasp so suddenly she gave a startled cry.

"Adam, what—"

The man turned, and Adam felt a jolt of recognition. Barnabas Rutledge. The idiot from the tavern come to irritate him again. That was what came of not slitting an imbecile's gullet the first time one had the chance.

Rutledge looked as stunned as if Adam had just cleaved him down the middle. "What is this—this person doing here? Miss Grafton-Moore—"

"What the blazes is
he
doing holding your hand?" Adam countered, scowling at the crow of a man. "I was informed that such attentions from a man are not allowed at Angel's Fall."

"Mr. Rutledge is not a man!" She flung out the questionable defense hotly. "I mean, he's not that kind of... of threat!" she stammered, drawing a pointed chuckle from Adam as he cast a scathing glance the length of Rutledge's form. Color flooded her cheeks, outrage sparking in her eyes. "He is our dearest neighbor, and great friend—and you will apologize to him this instant!"

Adam felt hackles of something damnably like jealousy rise at the back of his neck. Her dearest neighbor? Great friend? Pink-cheeked grandmotherly ladies who should fill that role must be in short supply.

He glared at Rutledge—the man looked as if he had gruel for blood and there was something about the way those beady eyes regarded Juliet that made Adam want to clobber him with the pieces of that infernal lock.

All things considered, Adam would sooner swallow a ball of fire than say he was sorry to the wretch. "What the devil is your neighbor doing wandering around in this garden? It's forbidden, isn't it? The blasted gate should be locked tighter than the portal to the Garden of Eden. We agreed—"

"We
didn't agree on anything," Juliet insisted.
"You
started bellowing orders. I was merely gathering up some fairyfingers for Mr. Rutledge's tea."

Adam slanted the man a mocking grimace. "Haven't you ever heard of cream and sugar, Rutledge? There's nothing so unsightly as a fairy flitting around with little bloody stumps."

"That's disgusting!" Juliet shuddered. "It's a plant, for heaven's sake." She gestured to the stalks bearing clusters of cornucopia-shaped blossoms she held cradled in her arm. "Foxglove. Sometimes called fairyfingers. Mr. Rutledge has palpitations of the heart and the tea brewed from these plants eases it."

Adam should have felt chagrined at the mention of the man's supposed illness. Or at the very least chastened by the blatant disapproval in Juliet's features. But he fought back the tide of red threatening his cheeks by taking refuge in his most favored mode of defense—a biting wit. "I'm certain the fairies will be most relieved."

"Miss Grafton-Moore, forgive me, but what is this
person
doing on the grounds of your establishment?" Rutledge demanded, stiffening his meager shoulders beneath their sheath of oversize frockcoat. "He's most dangerous, I can assure you!"

Adam took unholy pleasure in piercing that waxy skin with a glare. "I
live
here."

"L-Live... no! That's impossible!" The last drops of blood seemed to evaporate from under the scrawny man's skin.

"Adam!" Juliet wheeled on him, looking as if he'd just described in detail their bedchamber arrangements— adding a few embellishments to the kiss they'd shared. The temptation to follow through with it was almost more than Adam could withstand, but he managed to leash his tongue with great effort.

"I'm here as a guardian angel of sorts until these threats die down," he said with a mild arch of one dark brow.

"You? Serving as guardian?" Rutledge challenged, incredulous. "Isn't that like having the king of thieves guarding the crown jewels? Miss Juliet, I must insist you listen to me! This man is a reprobate! The worst sort of scoundrel! I encountered him in the worst sort of tavern in London. A veritable den of iniquity."

"The two of you have already met?" Juliet asked, dazed.

"The night your friend Percival broke a chair over my head," Adam said. "Of course, I had no way of knowing I'd entered such a degenerate tavern. I was a stranger in town, merely quenching a hellish thirst in the first establishment I ran across after my encounter with that mob." Adam turned to flash a glare at his outraged rival. "Perhaps a more interesting question is what were
you
doing there, Rutledge?"

The pawnbroker fairly swelled with indignation. "I— how dare you question me! Miss Grafton-Moore knows the mettle of my soul, sir. But you are nothing but a stranger preying upon her innocence!"

Adam felt a dashed uncomfortable twinge of conscience.

Rutledge raged on, imploring Juliet. "You cannot tell me you've allowed him into your home! It is that—that insatiable baggage Millicent who has preyed upon your generous heart to gain entry for him! Or Violet or any of the others! You cannot let them corrupt you! How many times have I pleaded with you to be on guard against their licentious influences?"

Frost crystallized Juliet's smile, turning it brittle as a rose petal glazed in ice. "I have warned you before that I will not have you speaking of the ladies in that tone, Mr. Rutledge. As it happens, you accuse them unjustly. I am the one who asked for Mr. Sabrehawk's help."

Rutledge staggered back as if she'd booted him in the solar plexus. "You? I don't believe it!"

"Mr. Slade was a friend of my father's. And—"

"Your father? The Vicar of Northwillow befriend a scoundrel like this man? Impossible! No man of God would lower himself to consort with such sin-begotten filth! How could you believe such a thing for a heartbeat?"

Adam started to rap out a sharp-edged jibe, but stopped himself, as he saw Juliet bristle. "Mr. Slade helped my father when he was dying of fever. He aided a complete stranger lost by the side of the road, gave him comfort, when heaven only knows how many people had passed by, terrified for their own skins."

A swift stab of pleasure jolted through Adam at her defense.

"By whose words were you told such a thing?" Rutledge argued. "Your father's? Or this lying scheming womanizer's?"

The truth flashed across Juliet's face. "I received letters from Mr. Slade and he returned mother's necklace," she insisted, flustered. "Mr. Slade sent Papa home to Northwillow."

"You cannot know for certain how that all came about! For all we know, Slade might have trampled the vicar with his own horse and attempted to hide it with lies. The one thing I know for certain is that your father would be rolling in his grave if he suspected this depraved cur was anywhere near you! Think, Miss Juliet! You already walk a dangerous path and Slade's presence can only make it more perilous. There are those just waiting for you to make a misstep."

"There are a hell of a lot more ready to shove her off a blasted cliff if they get the chance," Adam snarled, but the man ignored him.

"With a man like Slade in your household, people will believe this is no more than another brothel."

Every ridge in Juliet's spine seemed to straighten, the fetching straw hat taking on the militant angle of a colonel's plumes. "Mr. Rutledge, you're overwrought," she said in precise accents. "I don't care what such people think. I know the truth, and so do the ladies. It's vital that I protect them."

Rutledge blustered. "You know exactly how I feel about your work, my dear. It's admirable, no matter how ill-advised. A gesture made because of a misguided passion for these women's redemption. But you might as well sweep the corners of hell itself, trying to reclaim souls shattered beyond repair. Consorting with such sinners will only put you in danger, soil your very soul."

"We sinners take special care to wipe our boots before we trample on her angel s wings," Adam muttered.

"Make a mockery of this, you spawn of Satan! She'll be the one to pay for your stubbornness. Is that what you want?"

"What I want is for you to take your fairyfingers and go before I boil
you
into tea, Rutledge." Adam threw the pieces of latch onto the ground, damned well ready to fling the insufferable vulture out of the gate bodily.

"That is enough, both of you!" Juliet cried, brandishing the stalks of pink and gold foxglove.

But Adam closed the space between himself and the toes of Rutledge's scuffed shoes. "Let me just say one last thing, Rutledge," he warned. "I am here to guard Juliet. Nothing—not these ravening masses you threaten her with, no, nor Satan and all his fallen angels—will harm her while I am at her side. You profess such devotion toward her, such fear at what she faces, that I have one question. When those cowardly sons of bitches were shattering her windows and that ugly mob was battering at her door, where the blazes were you? Hiding under your bed?"

"Adam! Adam, please!" The flowers fell in a cascade from Juliet's grasp, and she caught the rigid muscles of his forearm in a pleading grip.

"Arrogant fool!" Rutledge flung out. "Do you believe something so crude as one sword can stand between Miss Juliet and disaster? Her enemies will go to any lengths to drive her from this place. Aye, and so would anyone who truly cared about her!"

"I haven't noticed you mounting any campaigns to get her to leave."

"I did not offer her a sword. I offered her my name." Rutledge's lips twisted cruelly. "But then, for all your arrogance, that is one thing you could never give any woman."

Something dark and deadly hurled itself against the bars of Adam's soul—rage that this man would dare to even think of Juliet as a wife, and more infuriating still, a swift jab of self-loathing that he—Adam Slade—was jealous for just one instant, coveting anything belonging to a witling like Rutledge. Coveting the one thing Adam could never have—an honorable name.

But Adam would sooner have plunged his own sword in his chest than allow the man to see how well his blow struck its mark.

Adam looked down at Juliet, saw her face go scarlet, her eyes wide with distress. And he wondered if—even just for an instant with the mob swelling in the street and fear rising in the back of her throat—she'd considered becoming Rutledge's wife. The possibility sawed at some raw place inside him like a dull blade.

"It's hard to imagine any woman rejecting a fine specimen of a man like you," Adam sneered silkily. "But then, I'm forgetting. Like Juliet says, you're not a man."

"I never said any such thing!" Juliet sputtered. "This is abominable! Both of you should be ashamed!"

Veins bulged against Rutledge's white-marble skin, his eyes pits of loathing. "Laugh, you insolent bastard. Laugh. You have no idea what you are unleashing upon her head!"

Adam crossed his arms over his chest. "I fought off a hundred of England's finest soldiers at Prestonpans. Surely I can thwart a half-dozen London street ruffians."

"Whatever happens, the two of you will stop this bickering. Mr. Slade is residing at Angel's Fall for the time being. And Mr. Rutledge has been one of my few friends since arriving in London. I'll not tolerate this nonsensical masculine butting of heads between you. Is that understood?"

"You are making a terrible mistake," Rutledge said. "Send this beast away, for God's sake, before he brings out the lascivious streak in one of the women beneath your roof. Females are tragically weak!"

"Rutledge, I've fought on a score of battlefields, and witnessed the aftermath as well. This much I can tell you— if the men who fought beside me had half the courage of the women who come to bury them, I would never have had to sound retreat."

Rutledge turned to Juliet. "Do you wish to stumble across Slade and one of these lightskirts in your charge, groping in some corner? I guarantee you, he'll not be able to keep his hands off of them!"

Anger and a healthy dose of guilt seared Adam at the memory of just how full his hands had been—full of Juliet's kisses and precious tears, his arms filled with her softness as he gathered her against his chest, his mouth bursting with the taste of her as his tongue filled her mouth.