A Week to Be Wicked (Spindle Cove #2)(85)

Chapter Twenty-five

“Corporal Thorne!”

Samuel Thorne paused in the act of lifting his shovel. He’d know that voice anywhere.

Damn it. Not her. Not now.

“Corporal Thorne, I—” Miss Taylor turned a corner and stopped short when she caught a glimpse of him. “Oh. There you are.”

Blast. Weren’t gently bred ladies supposed to have some rules of decorum that prevented them from surprising half-dressed men at their labor? How the hell was he supposed to greet her with mud streaking his shirt and sweat matting his hair to his scalp?

Throwing aside the shovel, he hastily wiped his face with a bit of sleeve. He jerked his collar closed.

She didn’t even have the good sense to avert her eyes. She just stared at him, wide-eyed and curious. He had half a mind to pull the shirt over his head, cast it aside, and say, Here. Look your fill. This is what years of thieving, prison labor, and battle do to a man.

He almost chuckled at the thought. Oh, she’d run screaming then.

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to interrupt your . . . digging.”

“Why are you here, Miss Taylor? What can I do for you?”

She waved a paper clutched in her hand. “I’ve come to prove it to you. The truth of the elopement. I have here a love letter, addressed to Minerva Highwood from Lord Payne himself. Miss Charlotte found it in Minerva’s stocking drawer.”

“Impossible.” Thorne would swallow nails before he’d believe Payne to be in love with Miss Minerva Highwood. It still ate at him, that he hadn’t chased after the couple that very first night. But what was he to do, when the girl’s own mother forbade it?

Now if only Miss Taylor would let the topic rest. He suffered enough torment in her presence already, without this added deviling.

She approached and offered him the letter. “Read it for yourself.”

Good God. Now she meant to test his alphabet. Thorne eyed the envelope. A queasy feeling curdled in his gut. He knew his letters reasonably well—better than most men of his station—but he needed time and concentration to sift through a missive of that length. And he’d have an even harder time of it, trying to read with a raging beauty hovering over his shoulder. How was he supposed to put two sounds together in her presence?

He held up his grimy hands in excuse. “You’ll have to read it to me.”

She shook open the paper. “ ‘My darling beloved Minerva,’” she read aloud.

And that was the last bit he heard. Oh, she kept reading. And he kept listening. But he wasn’t hearing the words anymore—just her clear, bright voice.

So strange. She had music in her voice, even when she wasn’t singing. The melody hummed in his body. Not in a pleasant way. It hurt. The same way it would feel if he drove his shovel full-strength into soil and met unyielding rock instead. The shock of it reverberated all through his bones, his teeth.

His heart.

And now he hadn’t a damned idea what the hell she was reading anyway. He would have had better luck staring stupidly at the paper himself.

“Enough.” He held up a hand. “Payne did not write that.”

“He did. He signed his name.”

Thorne cocked his head and stared at the address on the paper’s reverse. “That’s not Payne’s handwriting.” That much he could discern without effort.

“What?” She flipped the paper back and forth.

“It’s not his hand. I know it’s not.” Wiping his hands on his breeches, he strode over to the turret Payne had been using as his personal quarters. He unlocked and opened the door, proceeding straight to the small writing desk.

He rifled through a stack of papers until he found one in the right penmanship. Then he handed it to her. “See?”

She held up the two and compared them. “You’re right. It is different penmanship.”

“I told you so. He didn’t write that letter.”

“But I don’t understand. Who else would write this, then sign it with Lord Payne’s name?”

He shrugged. “A cruel joke, perhaps. To build up her hopes. Or maybe she wrote it herself.”

“Poor Minerva.”

He watched as Miss Taylor’s bottom lip folded beneath her teeth. Then he forced himself to look elsewhere.

She said, “But somehow, it seems to have worked out anyway. They did elope together.”

He snorted, resisting the urge to tell her everything he’d learned from Mrs. Ginny Watson the other day. When confronted, the young widow had told him all about Miss Minerva’s midnight visit to Rycliff Castle. Thorne knew the truth now, beyond all doubt.

Payne and Miss Highwood had not eloped.

They would, however, end up married. He would ensure that much. If Payne dared to come back from this jaunt a bachelor, he would not remain so long. He’d walk Miss Minerva down the aisle of St. Ursula’s if Thorne had to prod him at knifepoint. Protecting the women of this village was his duty, and he took it seriously.

Which was exactly why he kept his mouth shut now.

Miss Taylor didn’t need to know the particulars of all Mrs. Watson had told him. If it pleased this girl to believe in true love and tales that ended happily for all concerned, Thorne would carry all manner of unpleasant truths to his grave. After all, this secret was hardly the first. Just one of many he’d vowed to keep, for her happiness’s sake.