“Well, I thought you’d want him there.”
“My lord, why on earth would I care if my father attends your wedding?”
The corners of Rhys’s mouth twitched with amusement. Hell, he suspected he was close to grinning, and he didn’t grin. Ever. But he was rather looking forward to learning how it felt.
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?”Darryl shook his head no.
“Neither did I, damn it. And yet I’m still here. I’m bloody well indestructible. Add to that, I’m Rhys St. Maur, your legendary living phantom, and you sure as hell can’t scare me off my own cursed estate.”
Silence.
Rhys had spoken all the words he intended to say. No one seemed to know what to do next. Harold, Laurence, Gideon Myles, Darryl … they all just stood there, gawping at Rhys, then gawping at one another. Band of bloody fools.
A yeast roll bounced off of Harold Symmonds’s forehead, breaking the collective trance.
“Go home.” Meredith was suddenly next to him, still holding her basket of bread with both hands. Her voice rang through the courtyard. “Go home, all of you.”
One by one, the villagers turned and left. Myles disappeared back into the stables, presumably to resume keeping watch over his precious wagon. It struck Rhys that the man was inordinately protective of a load of “dry goods.”
He released his breath slowly, feeling the tension in his muscles dissipate as well.
“Are you all right?” She looked him over from crown to boots. “I’m so sorry for that scene.”
He wrung the water from his shirtfront, standing back so as not to drip on her bread. “Don’t be. Wasn’t your fault. And I needed a bath.”
He looked up to find her frozen in place, her eyes riveted to his sodden shoulders and chest. He couldn’t quite name the look in her eyes, but he suspected it was revulsion. With his shirt clinging to his body and his hair matted to his head—not to mention the fact that he’d just been met by a torch-bearing mob—he must have the look of a gothic monster.
“A bath,” she said suddenly, shaking herself to life again. “Yes, of course. I’ll have water drawn and heated.”
“No, don’t. The pump will do well enough for me.”
“As you please, then.” She turned to leave.
He caught her arm. “I … Merry, I’m sorry to bring you so much trouble. I’ll make it up to you.”
He’d make it up to all of them. To be sure, some of the residents of Buckleigh-in-the-Moor were right fools, and he’d never win any popularity contests here. But the majority of the villagers had to be decent, honest souls, and they had good reason to view him with suspicion. They’d all come around in time.
Meredith bit her lip. Her cheek dimpled with a fetching, lopsided smile. “You bring all sorts of trouble, Rhys St. Maur, and you always have done. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of Harold and Laurence and the others.”
“I’m certain you will.” She seemed to be taking care of the whole village. This inn, the travelers, her invalid father, the lives and fortunes of all these idiot men.
But who was taking care of her?
He asked, “Have you eaten your own breakfast yet?”
She shook her head no.
“Let’s do this, then,” he said, backing away. “I’ll wash at the pump. You find us a morsel to eat. And then we’ll sit down to breakfast together and fix our wedding date.”
Chapter Four
As she laid the table for breakfast, Meredith refused even to think about Rhys’s words to her outside. Surely her ears had deceived her. There was no way in Creation that he meant to propose marriage to her after a single night at the Three Hounds. Her accommodations were nice, but not that nice. She didn’t even have any ham or bacon. Until Mrs. Ware came in, there’d be no meat to serve except cold mutton pie. Just rolls and the whortleberry jam. And fresh cream and boiled eggs, and coffee made with cool spring water. Here was one consolation: The Three Hounds brewed the best coffee in England, or so a well-traveled guest had once proclaimed. Not that Meredith could know from experience. The farthest from home she’d ever been was Tavistock.
She’d just finished setting the table for two when Rhys entered the dining room, freshly bathed and dressed in a clean shirt and breeches. His hair was so short, it was already dry. She wanted to run her fingers over it, to see if it felt soft like goose down, or blunt, like clipped grass.
Lord, what was she thinking? That scene in the courtyard had made it perfectly clear that for Rhys’s own safety and the harmony of the village, she needed to feed him and send him on his way. Today. No hair-stroking would be involved.
“Won’t you be seated, my lord?” She tried for a breezy, casual tone. “Do you care for coffee?”
“I do. And please, just call me Rhys,” he said, settling onto a wooden stool. “Not enough people do.” He accepted the mug of coffee she handed him. Their fingers brushed in the exchange, and the sensation was electric.
He took a fearless swallow of the scalding brew. “So,” he said, plunking the mug to the table, “when does this curate come into the village next? How soon can we be married?”
That electric tingle became a full-body shock.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Of course I can. I’m quite frequently serious. Do you think I’d enter into marriage lightly?”
A startled bubble of laughter escaped her. “What else can I think, when you’ve just walked through the door yesterday?”
“It’s not as though I’m a stranger to you.” He sipped his coffee again. “You’ve known me since you were a girl.”
“Before last night, I hadn’t laid eyes on you in fourteen years.”
“Mm.” A little smile crooked his lips. “That’s what makes it destiny. We’re fated to wed.”
Meredith felt as though she’d been wedged into an old wine cask and set rolling down the rocky slope of Bell Tor. Rattled, disoriented. Just a bit drunk.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, I don’t want to marry you.” And she didn’t, not anymore. They needn’t discuss the scraps of foolscap she’d covered with “Meredith St. Maur, Lady Ashworth” when she was twelve. “I don’t want to marry at all.” As a widow, she owned this inn outright. That wouldn’t be the case if she took a husband.