Chapter 6
Unpleasant dukes aside, there was something to be said for English hospitality.
Andrew, calling a servant aside and murmuring quiet instructions, made his exit. Beyond the open doors, footmen hurried past with Juliet's trunks. A matronly servant breezed in, took Charlotte, and whisked her away to wash and change her. Several fresh-faced, bright-eyed maids streamed into the library, lining themselves up for Lady Nerissa's inspection. The young noblewoman smiled and beckoned one of the girls forward. "This is Molly," she said, introducing Juliet and the girl. To the maid she said, "Please draw a bath and lay a fire for Miss Paige. She is to be our guest."
"Which room, milady?"
Nerissa turned and, thoughtfully tapping a fingernail against her lip, looked at Juliet. "In Lord Charles's rooms, I think."
Juliet gasped. After the robbery, meeting Lord Gareth, and the awful interview through which she'd just been put, could she possibly endure sleeping in Charles's bed without falling apart completely? Lady Nerissa gave her no time to think further upon the matter. Chattering happily, she bade Juliet to follow her from the library.
"Now, you must not allow Lucien to upset you," she said, lightly touching Juliet's sleeve as they walked side by side. "He can be a monster even at the best of times, but he's been particularly bad-tempered ever since Lady Hartfield tried to blackmail him into marriage last month. Needless to say, my brother does not have the highest opinion of women at the moment! But never mind. Would you like to say good night to Gareth before you retire for the evening?"
Still reeling from the thought of sleeping in Charles's bed, Juliet was caught by surprise. "I, uh...."
Lady Nerissa mistook the reason for her hesitation. "It would make him very happy, I think," she prodded softly.
"But is it proper?"
"Of course. I shall be with you."
She beckoned Juliet to follow her and, skirts whispering over ancient stone, led her up a flight of stairs so magnificent and wide that five people standing arm to arm could have climbed them with room to spare.
At their top was a long, paneled corridor with several doors leading off it. From behind one of them came a drunken verse of song and an answering roar of laughter.
Without hesitation, Lady Nerissa pushed the door open and the guffaws immediately stopped.
"Gentlemen?" she said, stressing the word in a way that led one to think she didn't consider the inhabitants of the room to be such at all. "I have a visitor to see Gareth. Behave yourselves."
She opened the door wide for Juliet, motioning her forward.
Hesitantly, Juliet stepped over the threshold and paused just inside. The room was velveted in gloom and shadow. Ornately plastered ceilings rose some fifteen feet above her head. A few burned-down candles, their tongues of flame swaying in the drafts, struggled to give the huge chamber light. Juliet blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the rich dimness.
And then she saw Lord Gareth's friends, lying about the bedroom in various states of repose — Chilcot, perched on a window seat, his forefinger stuck in an empty bottle and swinging it back and forth; Perry, sprawled in a damask-backed chair with his waistcoat unbuttoned, his cravat askew, and a bleary smile on his handsome face. The names of the others had escaped her. There was the one with the big nose, his eyes bloodshot beneath the straggles of wavy brown hair that had escaped his queue; the one who was as wide and burly as a draft horse, flat on his back and snoring, his wig looking like a dead rat on the floor beside his head; a third, thin and cocky, hiccuping drunkenly and saluting Juliet with his bottle: "To the lady ... hic! ... o' the hour!"
And Lord Gareth de Montforte.
He lay propped against a mountain of brocaded pillows in a massive bed of carved oak, his hair tousled, a sheet drawn loosely over his bare torso, a sleepy little smile flirting with one corner of his mouth. His gaze lifted to Juliet, and for the second time that night, her hand went to her heart to still its sudden wild palpitations.
Beneath that sheet she knew he was naked.
It was suddenly too hot in the room. It was suddenly too hard to breathe. Juliet felt every part of her that made her a woman go up in flames, thrumming and tingling in wild response to the sight he made against the bedsheets and pillows. She would have turned and fled had Lady Nerissa not been standing just behind her.
Candlelight made his skin glow like honey, bathing his upper body in warmest gold. It picked out the hollows created by bone, sinew, and beautifully honed muscle, flowed over the taut bulges of his upper arms and the base of his neck. Whorls of brown hair brushed his chest, but in the kiss of the bedside candle, each one glinted a mellow gold, as did the stubble just hazing his jaw. As he looked up at Juliet her knees went suddenly weak, for he had a certain, lethal charm that even Charles could not have matched. The thought — and her own physical reaction to the seductive picture he made against those sheets and pillows — made her feel oddly guilty, as though she was betraying the man she loved. She swallowed, hard.
"Come here," he said, softly.
The room went still, with only the candles throwing moving shadows and light up the walls, the carved moldings, and across the high ceiling.
Juliet moved forward, aware that every eye in the room was on her. Her heart pounded madly. Her palms went damp. As she neared the bed Lord Gareth reached out, took her hand, and kissed it.
"You're ... an angel," he said thickly, his fingers warmly enclosing her own.
She smiled. "And you, Lord Gareth, are foxed."
"Shamefully so. But useful, under the circumstances."
"Are you in much pain?"
He grinned, still holding her hand. "To be honest, Miss Paige, I cannot feel a thing."
Behind her, Chilcot guffawed, but Juliet, entranced, never heard it. As Gareth gazed up at her through the loose hair that fell endearingly over his brow and tangled in his lashes, she saw, at last, that his eyes were a pale, sleepy blue.
"I guess you were right," she said and, pulling her fingers from his grasp, reached over and brushed the strands of hair off his brow. Her hand was trembling. "You're not going to die after all."
"Wouldn't dream of it. I rather like being a hero, you know. Think I'll stick around and rescue damsels in distress more often." He looked up at her, those beautiful blue eyes of his warm, earnest, and reaching areas of her heart that she'd forgotten had existed. "Don't let Lucien scare you off, will you?"
"I won't."
He nodded once, satisfied, and let his eyes drift shut. "Thank you for coming to see me, Miss Paige."
She swallowed, trying to find her voice. "And thank you, Lord Gareth, for what you did for us tonight." And then, on a sudden impulse, she bent down and, through the loose strands of his hair, dropped a kiss on his brow. "We owe you our lives."