“Oh.” His eyes widened and then narrowed on her. “If I remember correctly I rendered more services than you did.”
“Oh,” she breathed indignantly. Her hand itched to smack the arrogance right out of him, which was so unlike her. She had never been moved to violence in the whole of her life. “I heard no complaints. You appeared quite satisfied to me. Do not act as though you were not equally pleasured.” She shook her head. This was a dangerous path, the two of them recounting that night. She would rather they not speak of their previous intimacy. It left her tingling in places that should not be feeling anything and filled her head with thoughts and images best left to her private reflections. Determined to steer the conversation in a different direction, she demanded, “Why are you here? Truly? I am afraid you are wasting your time. These lands are ours and no court in the land will honor your claim based on your word alone.”
“That is true,” he acknowledged with an evenness that felt unsettling and at odds with the dangerous glitter of his eyes. “But I am not going anywhere just yet, Miss Kittinger.”
Chills started at the back of her neck and rolled over her scalp. “What do you mean? You cannot stay here.”
“Oh, but I can. I am.”
“No.”
He nodded and his absolute confidence made her feel slightly ill. “You see, I am not in the habit of engaging in random liaisons.”
She snorted at that with deeply felt skepticism. A man as rich as he? As handsome? As urbane? “Indeed?”
“Indeed,” he returned.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“You don’t really know me at all though, do you?”
She pressed her lips together and held her tongue. He was correct, of course. What did she know of him other than her brother’s descriptors? Ruthless. Powerful. Intimidating. Thus far, in her brief although thorough experience with him, she would not say her brother was incorrect.
She moistened her lips and adjusted her footing. “Why would you possibly wish to remain here?” He lived in grand London. He could not find this remote little corner of the country appealing.
“Let us say I have a vested interest.”
“You have a vested interest here?” She pointed to the ground at her feet. “In my home?” She shook her head. “Too bad. It is not yours to concern yourself with.”
“No. I am not interested in your home.” He sounded disdainful at the suggestion.
“Then . . . what?”
Was it revenge? On her? On Bede? Did he have plans to exact retribution on them? Was that why he was here?
“My interest is in . . . you.”
“Me?” Mercy inched back a step.
“Yes. I realize now that you are not as savvy as I initially believed you to be.”
Savvy?
She angled her head, his meaning lost on her. “I do not understand—”
“Your manner was quite seductive. As seductive as the most veteran courtesan. Not an untried country lass. And we both know you were untried.”
She flushed. Oh. He was speaking of that. Of their . . . time together. Just because she wanted to avoid that topic did not mean he did.
She was not about to explain the reason for her seeming carnal knowledge. Her ripe imagination had filled in the gaps of her knowledge. Not that she had too many gaps. Her brother’s lewd books were quite detailed.
“But you seemed to have failed to consider one very important matter,” he added.
She stared at his handsome features blankly, waiting breathlessly, apprehensively.
The murkiness of the orangery did nothing to obscure him. He looked starkly dangerous in the shadows, reminding her that he was not a man to trifle with and yet she had done just that—and it had brought him here. To her doorstep. She was right to feel apprehensive.
She wet her suddenly dry lips. “What matter is that?”
“You could very well be carrying my child.”
Chapter Nine
Silas had never thought to sire a child. He had always been so careful when it came to such matters. But if he had, if he did, he would never abandon the child. Not even if the mother was as seemingly capable and intelligent as the one before him.
Silas’s own mother had been lovely and intelligent. It had not saved her. Or spared him.
His father had abandoned them. Then his mother had died, but not neatly. Not an easy death that. Not a natural death that took her in her sleep. No, it had been her second husband who took her, who brutally claimed her life and snuffed it out as simply as one put out a candle.
Not that she and Harold had ever truly been married. That could not happen as long as her first husband, Silas’s father, was still alive, out there in the world somewhere. And yet his mother and Harold had lived together as man and wife in a decrepit tenement in Seven Dials, pretending to be married. Harold had insisted Silas call him Papa even though the man was the furthest thing from a father to him.
Harold rained his fists down on both Silas and his mother daily until one night, one of those fists had landed one too many times, turning Mama into a broken heap, leaving Silas alone. An orphan for all purposes.
He would never leave a child of his out there to fend for himself. Children needed protectors. He had needed protecting.
Things had been no better after his mother’s death. Silas was sent to live with her family. A proper Christian family of modest fortune who had disowned his mother when she eloped with his father.
They had a nice house in Belgrave Square. As a lad of eleven Silas had no idea nice homes like that existed. With multiple rooms and servants and fresh flowers and clean sheets that smelled of lavender. And food. Oh, the glorious endless supply of food.
He had gone from a scrawny lad whose ribs poked against his skin to a strapping well-fed lad of ten and four.
And yet his grandfather despised the sight of him.
Apparently Silas bore a striking resemblance to his wastrel father and his grandfather could not forgive him for that. It was too great a sin.
He used the rod on Silas for any and every seeming infraction. Sometimes Silas hid. The cook had a soft spot for him. She was always plying him with food and often concealed him in her pantry behind sacks of potatoes, flour and sugar, but eventually he would have to surface. Eventually, he would have to take his due beating.
Those thrashings became predictable. He could count on them. As reliable as the daily delivery of milk at the back door. And he perhaps would have stayed with his grandfather, existing as his most contemptible relation . . . until that last thrashing.
He had been caught in his mother’s bedchamber, the room she had once occupied that now stood as a shrine to her memory. Silas imagined he could still feel her presence in that space. He could see her there with all her things—the old teddy bear on the bed. A pair of ribboned slippers near the window seat. Her feet had been quite small. He remembered that. The afghan folded neatly at the base of her bed. The face cream and colorful hair ribbons on her dressing table, scattered as though she had just been there only moments before and would soon return.
His grandfather had caught him there in that forbidden room. He had seized a thick-handled hairbrush from the dressing table and set upon Silas in a furious frenzy.
Usually he took it. Usually he endured the beatings because that man in the nice house with a kind cook who fed him gingersnaps was his mother’s father, his grandfather, the only family he had left in the world, and he had felt a deep sense of loyalty to the man.