Kasey Michaels - The Bride of the Unicorn

“Dulcinea! You are not to speak of such things,” Miss Twittingdon warned her direly, although she did not rise from her chair, seemingly preferring to continue sipping her “tea.”

“Ah, go ahead, dearie,” Peaches prodded, giving Caroline a short poke in the ribs. “About time his worship got hisself a peek at the world most of us live in, and no mistake.”

Caroline looked past the marquis to see Ferdie Haswit, who was sitting cross-legged on Miss Twittingdon’s bed, his mouth stuffed with sugar comfits, nodding his agreement with Peaches.

“Very well,” she said at last, lifting her chin and glaring straight into Morgan’s bottomless-pit black eyes. She’d tell him the truth, and watch for him to flinch, to turn away in disgust. That would give her a true measure of the man. “His name is really George Ustings, but we call him the Leopard Man because he refuses to wear clothing, either summer or winter, and decorates himself by drawing circles on his bare body with his own excrement. Not that it matters, for everyone knows—or so they say—that lunatics can’t feel the cold or the heat. But to answer your question, in the mornings, when I am passing down the corridor in order to get through to the women’s side, George waits for me, then grabs hold of his—” She hesitated only momentarily, then swallowed hard, and continued, “He grabs hold of his cock, my lord, and speeds me on my way past his cell by chasing me with a spray of hot urine. I know it is hot, my lord, because George has very good aim.”

Her “party piece”—as Miss Twittingdon had once dubbed any public recital—completed, Caroline suddenly realized that she was embarrassed, not by what she had said but because she had used an innocent person, George Ustings, to her own purposes. No longer wishing to observe the marquis’s reaction, she lowered her eyes to stare at the ruby stickpin and asked, “Do you still wish to believe that I am the long lost daughter of these people, the earl and countess of Witham? Or perhaps you’ve changed your mind.”

She watched as Morgan lifted one well-manicured hand and removed the stickpin, twirling it between his thumb and forefinger as if the shiny bauble were some small treat he was about to offer her. “I do not recall putting forth the theory that I believe you to be Lady Caroline Wilburton, young lady. I’ve only said that Lady Caroline—an innocent child orphaned by the brutal murder of her parents fifteen years ago, to then disappear from the face of the earth and be presumed dead after an extensive search that undoubtedly included the countryside around Glynde proved fruitless—should be returned to the bosom of her still grieving family if at all possible. And, for my sins, I’ve decided that you should be that innocent child.”

Peaches pushed against Caroline’s shoulder and whispered none too softly, “Mad, his bloody worship is, Caro. Mad and bad. He don’t care a flip who ye are. It’s usin’ ye he’s after, and no mistake. Listen ta me, darlin’. Tell him it’ll cost him—tell him it’ll cost him dear.”

Caroline looked at Morgan Blakely’s clean well-shaped nails and at his strong hands that were free of chilblains.

He was so clean. And he smelled good. She felt certain he had never gone to bed hungry or been forced to tie down a screaming inmate while other, beefier servants administered emetics and purgatives to cleanse her system of ill humors.

Caroline’s gaze traveled from Morgan’s hands, past the glittering ruby stickpin, to his handsome, expressionless face. No, it was not completely without expression. She was certain that there was a hint of disappointment deep in his eyes. “You say you don’t care whether or not you have discovered the real Caroline Wilburton. But that’s a lie. You do wish to find her. I can see the longing in your face. So why are you still here, since you are already convinced that I am not she?”

The marquis lifted one expressive eyebrow, a movement that fascinated Caroline against her better judgement. He spoke quietly, so that only she and Peaches could hear him. “Why? That is a very good question. Perhaps I am terminally afflicted with an undeniable affection for happy endings. Perhaps I am no more than a bored English dandy out to enliven his life by stirring up a fifteen-year-old hornet’s nest. Or, just perhaps, my reasons are my own. If you wish to ask questions, Miss Monday, ask them of yourself. Which would you rather do—live as a rich heiress with the world at your feet, or continue to spend your mornings dancing out of the way of George Ustings’s squirting cock?”

MORGAN SAT ALONE in the private dining parlor he had ordered for himself at the Spread Eagle, the inn where he had decreed he and his odd party would spend the night before continuing on to Clayhill. As he sat nursing the snifter of warmed brandy he had requested of his host, he remembered Peaches’s declaration at Woodwere.

“Mad. Mad and bad,” she had said, and maybe the crusty Irishwoman was right. It was mad, what he was about to do, and he must be bad clear through to the marrow of his bones to be contemplating doing it. He felt dirty, soiled with a filth ten times fouler than anything to be found in the sweepings of the cells at Woodwere. But then, he had been to the depths before….

What he really could not justify to himself was the great length to which he had already traveled in his effort to revenge himself on his enemy. It was one thing to have saddled himself with a foul-mouthed, thieving foundling-home brat turned servant at a lunatic asylum. But to have agreed to drag along the insufferable, too insightful Peaches, as well as the sadly confused Miss Leticia Twittingdon and the morose (and quite easily remembered) dwarf, Frederick Haswit, was stretching the boundaries of credulity.

And yet, it was the only way he could persuade Caroline Monday to leave Woodwere—by agreeing to her demand to be accompanied by her friends and, lest he forget it, by turning over to her the ruby stickpin that had so lately adorned his cravat.

“Excuse me, my lord, but might I come in for a minute?”

Morgan, who’d had his back to the door, lifted his booted feet from the wooden table top and turned in his chair to see Caroline Monday standing directly behind him.

“I’m a quick learner, my lord,” she said, grinning, as his reaction to her quiet breaching of his private domain showed in his eyes before he could hide his surprise. “All it needs is to walk balanced on the balls of one’s feet. That, and to rid myself of my wooden clogs—something I would not do at Woodwere even if it meant risking a wetting from the Leopard Man. I cannot begin to tell you of the filth that is on the floors all over the public side.”

“Yes, I can imagine—and already have, as a matter of fact. And for the small indulgence of sparing me a cataloging of that assorted filth, Miss Monday, I vow you will have my undying gratitude,” Morgan drawled, moving his hand to indicate that she should sit down in the chair beside his. It did not occur to him to rise, as a gentleman should, until she was seated. “Now, what might I do for you? Are you having trouble sleeping? Shall I ring for our host to bring you some warmed milk, which you surely must be accustomed to having before you are tucked up in your comfortable four-poster bed? Or perhaps, if you merely find yourself at loose ends, you might like to mingle downstairs in the common room for a space, separating some of the local farmers who patronize the place from their purses. Anything I can suggest to ease your way to your rest. In other words, which Caroline Monday are you this evening?”

He watched as Caroline took her seat, a small smile flitting at the corners of her mouth. “You truly enjoy listening to the sound of your own voice, don’t you, your lordship? I had a terrible time calming Aunt Leticia so that she would agree to go to bed. She believes you are Don Quixote come to life, and we are setting off on a glorious quest. Ferdie is at this very moment composing an ode to your determination. But I believe Peaches has the right of it. She thinks you’re plotting something much deeper than rescuing an earl’s daughter and returning her to her family.”