“Oh, Mr. Blackthorne,” Marjorie, one of Cook's assistants, exclaimed with a blush as she entered the room carrying the day's eggs. She dipped halfway in some manner of curtsey. A curtsey! As though he were lord of the manor and not a servant like the rest of them.
Vera rolled her eyes.
“Mr. Blackthorne, have you had your breakfast? You certainly need better sustenance than that apple. Can I make you something?” She hastily unloaded her eggs from her apron onto the table, catching them from rolling off the edge. Satisfied they were safe on the surface, Marjorie sidled closer to him, lightly brushing a hand over his thick forearm with a breath of admiration.
He patted her hand gently. “That's very kind of you, lass. You needn't add to your work load for me.”
“It's no inconvenience, I assure you.”
Vera watched the by-play in disgust. He was always so kind and thoughtful to everyone. Everyone but her.
She told herself it did not matter. She told herself she didn't care. She didn't want or need his kindness.
Marjorie was not to be discouraged. “Are you certain, Mr. Blackthorne? Eggs? Kippers? A strapping fellow like you needs a hearty meal to get you through your day.”
Another eye roll.
Marjorie had been working here for at least two years, and she, like the majority of the female population at Haverston Hall, melted into puddles at the sight of Rufus Blackthorne. It was nauseating.
Vera was immune, however.
Ever since she came to live with her aunt at the age of ten and three, she had been impervious to the charms of Rufus Blackthorne.
She still recalled her first glimpse of him: a tall and brawny lad of ten and five with the shadow of a beard on his jawline. She had thought him a full-grown man.
Shortly after her arrival she had caught him kissing a buxom milkmaid several years his senior behind the stables, and hours later she had caught him flirting with another—different—maid—in the kitchen.
He'd been full of himself even then, working in the stables and building the muscles that thickened his frame now. He had been well aware of his impact on females all those years ago. Just as he was aware now.
He was a rogue, and she had no use for such men.
Her father had been a rogue. He'd seduced her mother and left her with a broken heart and, nine months later, Vera. Mama had worked as a seamstress in London and passed herself off as a widow up until her death.
Vera never forgot her mother's many warnings of men who took and used and crushed young girls' hearts. Handsome men were not to be trusted.
“If you'll excuse me. Some of us have work to do.”
She swept from the kitchen, but Blackthorne was there, following, even managing to reach the door before her. Opening it, he waved her ahead of him.
Lifting her chin, she preceded him out.
His bigger body fell in beside her, making no contact but she felt his nearness like a touch regardless. She told herself it was because he was so very large. He radiated heat and energy and strength.
She had always been aware of her unseemly size for a female and never felt an ounce of regret over it. Most men had to tip their heads to look up at her, and it made her feel indomitable, which, in her opinion, was not a bad thing. She was an orphan. She had no father or brothers to protect her. It was not an unwelcome thing to feel formidable in this too often unkind world.
According to Mama, Vera's father had been a tall man, thick-framed with hands the size of hams. That was the only explanation Vera had as to why she towered over her mother at the age of ten and wore adult shoes and men's gloves. While her hands were not quite the size of hams, they could not fit into her mother's dainty gloves.
Rufus Blackthorne was the only person to ever make her feel small and vulnerable, and she did not like that one little bit. He discomfited her and made her skin feel too tight for her body.
“Looks like rain,” he announced.
She cast him a quick look. His face was upturned, studying the clouds.
“Perhaps,” she allowed.
“No doubt about it.”
She squinted at the sky. “It will pass. Clouds are to the south.”
“They're moving north,” he countered.
“Tell me.” She stopped in the yard and faced him. “Does it ever exhaust you?”
“What?”
“Knowing everything about everything?” she snapped. “It must be beyond grueling to be so very clever.”
He chuckled and the sound rippled along her spine. She wiggled her shoulders, hoping to shake off the sensation.
“I'm right about this.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of the sky. "You're going to get yourself soaked and then catch ague.”
“I won't.”
He looked as though he wanted to shake her and she felt immensely gratified knowing she had irked him. That was the way between them. A constant battle. A skirmish of continuous barbs.
“Very well. Go on then. Be daft.” He waved one of his great paws in the direction she would be venturing to pick berries. “I've work to do.”
“How very good of you to decide to do it,” she retorted.
That impossibly broad chest of his expanded with an inhale of indignation. “I don't shirk my duties.”
That much was true, although she would not acknowledge it. He might be a womanizing rogue, but his work ethic could not be questioned.
The man was a bloody horse whisperer. Everyone in the shire came to see him about horses, mules, goats . . . generally anything on four legs. The Duke of Warrington's stables were impressive. Spotless as far as stables went. Organized and well managed, and she knew it was due to the arrogant stablemaster—arrogant being the key word. She would not give him further reason to pat himself on the back. He had an army of preening admirers (likely gazing at him from windows now) on hand for that.
She sniffed. “Unless there's a pretty diversion in skirts, of course.”
He stepped nearer, his leather boots crunching over loose bits of grit, his giant man thighs straining the seams of his trousers.
No man ought to look as he did in trousers. It was indecent.
He thrust his face a scant inch from hers. “Jealous?”
His face this close, his heat-radiating body this close, affected her breathing. Her lungs squeezed tight, air passing in and out at a trickle.
“Hardly,” she replied breathlessly, resisting the urge to shove him away. That would mean putting hands on him and she instinctively rebelled at the notion of that. He wore his shirt open at the throat, no cravat in sight and she could see the tantalizing skin of his throat and the top of his muscled, hair-dusted chest.
He smirked. “Perhaps the frigid Miss Wells longs for a man to lift her skirts.”
“My skirts are none of your business. And I'm not frigid… I am perfectly decent.”
“Decent. Of course. You are that.” His lip curled in a sneer and something in his wickedly dark eyes made her think decidedly indecent things.
She might make it a goal to avoid wicked men, but she was not ignorant of matters of the flesh. In her bedchamber, tucked beneath her mattress, hid several salacious books on erotic love.
She had not known what comprised the pages of the books until after she moved to Haverston Hall. The erotic works had been among her mother's possessions and Vera had hastily packed them up without even examining them until much later. It was some time after she had moved into her tiny bedroom belowstairs that she recovered the books from Mama’s chest and browsed them.