Captain Durant's Countess(3)

Durant raised a thick black brow as he buttoned a cufflink. Maris was delighted to see that he continued to dress as she stared over his head at a painting that featured several bodies writhing in presumed ecstasy. Or indigestion. It was impossible to tell which from their facial expressions.

“Is this supposed to persuade me? I have no time for reading, Lady Kelby. It doesn’t matter to me what becomes of Kelby Hall’s library.”

Maris wanted to scream, but losing her temper wouldn’t help. “It matters to my husband. By the terms of the entail, every single thing housed at Kelby Hall must remain on the property to be passed on to the next earl, but it doesn’t specify the condition.” The Kelby earls had been an eccentric lot. And hoarders, too. It was dangerous to navigate the attics for the jumbled collection of boxed antiquities amassed by generations of globe-trotting aristocrats. Henry’s dream was to turn part of the house into a museum, with Maris as its curator. His work would be its centerpiece, but many other centuries’ detritus would be on view as well.

“So smuggle out some papers.”

“It’s not just papers. There are priceless artifacts. By law, Henry’s nephew can’t sell them, but he’s threatened to simply drop them into the lake. They’d still be on the property, wouldn’t they?” she asked bitterly. “David knows just how to hurt Henry. My husband spent years in Tuscany at excavation sites. He is the foremost expert on Etruscan civilization in England.”

“A worthy endeavor, I’m sure, Lady Kelby. But the Etruscans, like the Romans and the Greeks, are dead, thank the gods. As a schoolboy, I always found classical studies to be quite gruesome. Rape and swans and swallowing one’s wife. Daughters bursting out of one’s head. Rubbish, really. Why should I—or anyone else living—care?”

The Kelby Collection had been of paramount importance Maris’s whole life. Her father had been the earl’s secretary and general factotum. She’d accompanied the two men on their digs as soon as she was old enough to be useful, and was an expert on Etruria. Since her husband’s eyesight was failing, it was she who did the translating, she who prepared the papers for his lectures and publications.

What she’d been unable to do was provide him with a son.

It was probably too late anyway. She was thirty-four, and had pulled out a wiry white hair from her dull brown curls just that morning.

“Look, it seems to me you can box up whatever’s so valuable and hide it somewhere. How’s this nephew to know? He’s no expert, is he?”

“David knows everything. And it’s more than what I’ve just said.” Maris hadn’t planned on revealing the worst of it . . . and she wouldn’t. Even Henry did not know what she had done five years ago. She had been a fool for all her pride and intelligence, and paid with her guilt every single day when she looked into her husband’s proud wrinkled face.

But she could see she wasn’t firing up Durant intellectually. He’d even bragged that he was virtually illiterate.

Why was Henry so set on Durant? Henry was a brilliant man, if a bit single-minded. He’d be risking turning Kelby Hall over to a son of this ignorant rakehell.

Though any child conceived might not even be a son. Henry’s longed-for heir with his first wife had been a daughter. Poor Jane. Poor dead Jane.

“My husband believes his nephew David was responsible for the death of his daughter.”

Ah, that stopped the man from thrusting an arm into the ghastly waistcoat. “Why hasn’t he told the authorities?”

“It’s complicated.” The truth was that Jane took her own life, but David might as well have stitched the stones into her hem. Jane had been his victim as much as Maris, but at least she still lived.

“You begin to interest me, Lady Kelby. So what you are saying is this mad scheme is really a noble cause. I’m meant to prevent a murderer from inheriting.”

“Exactly.”

“Why don’t you just hire someone to murder the murderer? Not me, mind you. I’m done with killing for a living. Hire a proper assassin. Surely there’s some other male Kelby waiting to be unearthed somewhere like one of those Etruscan artifacts you’re so keen on.”

“My husband’s family seemed to collect things rather than children. There is no one but David. The title and estate would revert to the Crown.”

“Would that be so awful? Surely some provision has been made for you.”

“I’m not worried about myself.” Oh, untrue.

David was ever edging into the perimeter of her life. Maris was not entirely certain she could protect herself from him should anything happen to Henry. She wouldn’t be safe in the dower house alone, that was for sure. She’d not been safe from his attentions at Kelby Hall five years ago. She had lived in the enormous Elizabethan house since she was a little girl. She would miss it, but she would have to go someplace farther away when David was earl.

Unless she had a baby to care for. But what if she and the child still were not safe?

“You look pale, Lady Kelby. Why don’t you sit down?”

She could hardly sit on the bed after what had just transpired on it, and his jacket and neckcloth were still folded on the only chair in the room. She lifted her chin in false bravado. “I am perfectly well, Captain Durant.”

“You don’t look it.” He swept his clothes to the floor and pushed the chair at her. “Here. Sit.”

“I am not one of your recruits to be ordered about.” Nevertheless, she sank gratefully into the chair. The day was proving to be too much.

Or not enough.

“No, you are as haughty as a queen. I reckon you’d be the one giving the orders. ‘Explore the New World, Walter. Write me a play, Will. Kill my heir.’ That would be Mary, Queen of Scots, not David.”

“I am not Elizabeth, sir,” Maris said, irritated and somewhat surprised by his knowledge.

“The Virgin Queen,” Durant mused. “You have a virginal look about you still, Lady Kelby. Lord Kelby was an ancient old bird even when you married, was he not?”

Maris’s spine turned rigid. She was, unfortunately, no virgin. “You overstep yourself, Captain Durant. I can see it was pointless to waste my precious time and money to find you. A man like you has no sense of honor or accountability. I cannot even believe I am conversing with you in your current state. You are . . . you are . . . words simply fail.”

Durant’s lips quirked, unruffled by her insults. “Why talk when there are so many other things we might do?”

He was teasing her, but she was horrified nonetheless. “Here? Are you mad? Dream on, you degenerate! If you were the very last man in the kingdom, I would not permit you to put a hand on me in this revolting room!”

“And yet I somehow want to. In fact, I cannot think of anything that would please me more. Please us both.” He stalked across the carpet like some kind of feral cat.

Maris scrambled up from her chair and backed into the wall, an instrument of torture prodding her in the back. She stuck a hand behind her, her gloves slipping on the smooth leather whip. She could not get purchase to grab it from its hook and hammer it down on Durant’s dark head in time before she felt his warm breath on her cheek.

“Just one little taste, I think. To see what I’ll be missing,” he murmured, before his lips came down on hers.





Chapter 2


Reyn Durant was a dog. A right bastard, even if his rackety parents had been married. His behavior thus far had been outrageous. He knew it, but how was he supposed to have recognized the very proper Countess of Kelby? She was the last person in the world he expected to see at the Reining Monarchs Society.

It was not uncommon for an interested party to wander into a discipline session, and the unpredictability of the place had amused him for a time. However, once she’d identified herself, he should have insisted she leave immediately, then crawled into the bed to shock her further if she wouldn’t. Or draped himself in a fringed curtain. At the very least, hollered for Fisher.

He’d done none of those things. He’d flaunted himself like an actor on a stage in his vain attempt to drive her away. And instead of firmly refusing her offer and leading her to the door, he was pressed against her, the quivers of indignation unbelievably tempting.

Damn it, the woman needed kissing in the worst way. Reyn had been in enough scrapes with uncertain outcomes to have learned to always seize the moment, so he touched her lips intending to teach her a lesson and scare her away for her own good.

And was rewarded for his trouble by a sharp knee to his groin.

Fortunately his reflexes were excellent and he avoided the worst of it. The least of it was still painful. He took a deep breath and steadied himself against the wall.

He was an idiot. He should be putting yards between himself and Lady Kelby, but her struggle against him only intensified his desire to master her.