Twice Tempted by a Rogue (Stud Club #2)(12)

Awareness sharpened her gaze. “Oh no,” she said.

Oh, no?

Oh no, indeed. That wasn’t the reaction he wanted. This would all be much easier if she’d simply accept the rightness of it. The inevitability.

But it wasn’t him she’d focused on. Her gaze trained on a spot somewhere behind his left shoulder. “Here comes your welcoming committee.”

He turned around. Coming toward him were the two brawling apes from last night—Bull and Beak to him; he couldn’t remember their real names—surrounded by a dozen other men. Rhys recognized some of them from the inn yesterday, but other faces were new.

To a one, they all carried flaming torches.

“Ashworth,” Bull said, “we’ve come to escort you out of the village. For good.”

Inside the stables, Rhys could hear the ponies growing restless and uneasy. He was uneasy, too. He couldn’t abide open flames this close to a horse barn. But the band of fools holding the torches … they inspired nothing in him but derision.

“Harold and Laurence Symmonds, what the devil are you doing with torches?” Meredith asked. “It’s full daylight, you idiots.”

“Go inside to your father,” Rhys murmured to Meredith. “Make certain he’s safe. I’ll handle this.”

She disappeared into the stables.

Rhys stepped toward the center of the courtyard. “Very well. You’ve got my attention. Now say what it is you mean to say.”

Harold Symmonds spat in the dirt. “The Ashworths were a scourge on this village. Fire burned Nethermoor Hall to the ground fourteen years ago and drove your folk from the moors forever. You should have stayed away, too. Now we’re here with these torches to show you, fire will run you off the moor again.”

“Ah,” Rhys said, scratching his neck. “And yet I seem to be standing in place.”

A gunshot cracked through the air.

Rhys wheeled around, searching for its source. He didn’t have to search hard. Gideon Myles stood in the doorway of the stables, smoking pistol in hand.

“You peat-for-brains idiots. I’ve a wagonload of”—he threw a glance at Rhys—“of dry goods in this barn, and I’ll put a lead ball in each of you before I’ll allow you to burn it down around my ears.”

The mob was abashed.

“It was all his idea.” Laurence jabbed a thumb toward his companion.

“It was not, you lying cur!”

Here they went again.

Laurence made a sweeping gesture with his torch, sending men leaping backward to avoid being singed. The two faced off, circling one another in the middle of the courtyard. Their band of followers, who’d clearly come on this errand for its amusement value, seemed happy enough to attend another fisticuffs in lieu of a lynching.

This time, Rhys was not going to stand back and watch. He stepped between the two men and grabbed each of them by the shirtfront. He grimaced as the torches’ greasy smoke assailed his nostrils. One flex of his arms, and he could bash their skulls together and put an end to the whole scene. But he couldn’t keep addressing every problem with violence. He didn’t want to live angry anymore. “All right,” he said, easing his grip. “That’ll be enough.”

“Fire! Fire!”

The panicked shout rose up behind him. Before Rhys could register its origin, a wave of ice-cold water sloshed over his head, dousing him to the skin. The shock of it froze him in place for a moment. An icy rivulet crawled down his back, and he shivered.

“I’m sorry,” a meek voice behind him said. Rhys recognized it as belonging to Darryl Tewkes. He turned around, and there the youth was, twitchy eye and all.

“So sorry,” he stammered again. “I was aiming for the torches, you know.”

With a gruff sigh, Rhys shook himself. Water droplets flew everywhere. He took the fizzling torches from the two men, turned them wrong-end-up, and stubbed them in the dirt.

“Listen up, every one of you.” The sound of gunfire had drawn gawkers, and had the whole village listening now. Damn it, he hated making speeches. He tried to keep his voice even. “You can bring your torches and your guns and your”—he rolled his eyes and flapped a wet sleeve at Darryl—“pails of cold water, and whatever else you please. You can’t intimidate me. Fire, gunshots, drowning … I’ve been through each, and I’ve survived them all.”

He stared down Harold and Laurence. “You fancy yourselves good in a fight? I fought for eleven years with the Fifty-second, the most decorated regiment in the British Army. Light infantry foot guards, the first line to attack in any battle. Fought my way through Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium. At Waterloo alone, I personally gutted seven members of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. And those are just the ones I killed up close.”

Calmly, he turned to Gideon Myles. “You want to play with guns? I can do that, too. Rifle, musket, pistol … take your pick. I can clean, assemble, and load any one of them in under a minute. I don’t waste black powder, and my aim is true.”

And since he had the town’s ear, he went on, “I’m also impervious to idiocy, I’ll have you all know. A couple of Portuguese peasants once found me bleeding in a field, shot through the shoulder in a skirmish. Dragged me back to their henhouse and kept me there for the better part of a week, just sticking a poker between the slats every so often to jab me in the side and judge if I was dead yet.” He turned to Darryl. “You there, with the bucket. Do you know how to say ‘water’ in Portuguese?”