A shiver skipped up her spine. “You spent last night outside in the rain? After exhorting me to find a bedchamber in which to sleep?”
“I fully admit to being a hypocrite. Throw me in irons and bear me to the hangman’s noose, if you wish. I will be there soon in any case.” He said this last seemingly as an afterthought.
“Now who’s the nonsensical one? You are irrational. You should go to sleep.”
“Thank you, I will remain here. But you are welcome to go yourself.”
“It is only dusk.”
For a moment his eyes flashed bleakly, a shadow of desperation like that night in the hotel corridor in Knighton when he had touched her, that night that he did not remember because he had drunk too many spirits.
Then, abruptly, she understood. Or thought she did.
“But you won’t have a few fingers of brandy now,” she said slowly. “Or even one. Will you?”
His gaze shifted to her face but he said nothing.
“You have ceased drinking spirits, haven’t you? Altogether.”
“You—” He paused, and seemed to reconsider, then said only, “I have.”
“And it is making you ill.”
A moment’s silence, then: “Yes.”
Another silence stretched during which she was entirely unable to say the many things that rushed to her tongue. Her virtue and his honor were now tangled in a piteous mess.
“Because of what happened between us at the inn in Knighton,” she finally said.
“Because of that,” he replied.
Her unsteady hands found a chair and she lowered herself into it. “You should sit down.”
“I am comfortable standing.”
“You look about as comfortable as my sister Charity when my mother tried to marry her to Lord Savege. Before he married Serena, that is.”
A smile creased his delicious mouth. “I hadn’t heard that story.”
“They all keep it very quiet. It was one of the reasons my mother left, I think.” She could not look at him directly now. “She was disappointed in her high hopes for Charity.”
A pause. “And what of her hopes for you?”
“Oh, she had none to speak of for me. Charity is very beautiful and demure, of course.”
“Ah.”
He could not possibly understand, not this handsome gentleman, elegant and well mannered even when he was ill and in the impossible situation into which she had gotten him with her reckless quest and her brazen behavior.
“My father always said he would cease drinking spirits,” she said. “He did so once, but he didn’t last the sennight. I was very young, but I remember it because after several days when he wished to drink his whiskey again he told me to fetch him the bottle.”
“And did you?”
“I refused.” She shrugged. “I liked him better without the whiskey. He was more enjoyable to talk with. Not that day, of course. He was furious, and when my mother returned home she locked me in my bedchamber. Shortly after that my father became ill. My mother said he drank himself to an early grave.”
There was another very long silence then during which nothing stirred but muffled sounds from the kitchen and Ramses’ soft snores from the hearth rug.
“This is not the first time.”
Her breaths stilled. It seemed he would confide in her after all, this man who owned secrets she feared she could not hope to understand.
“How was it that time?” she asked. “Those times?”
“That time. Better than this. Considerably better.”
She took a big breath and stood up. “It goes against my feelings on the matter in general, but you should not do this. Not now, at least. If I promise not to—”
“No. Be still.”
“Be still?”
“Rather, as still as you are able.” It seemed that he wished to smile, but he looked remarkably poorly, for all his elegant cravat and coat and perfectly handsome face. His eyes were the worst, as though the hungry predator searched for something he could not find and the desperation was building even as they spoke.
“You look peculiar.” She moved a step toward him and this time he did not retreat. “You are thinking about taking me home again.” His mind must have gone where hers had. It would be so much easier for him if she simply weren’t his responsibility. Then he could do as he wished, go where he wished, drink whatever he chose without fear of her throwing herself at him. “I would be if I were you.”
“Then it is a good thing for you that you are not me.”
But she could not be satisfied with this, not when his gaze seemed now to consume her, each feature of her face at a time.
“Then what are you thinking about?”
His attention fixed on her mouth. “The . . .”
She could not breathe properly. “The . . . ?”
“I cannot stop thinking about”—his gaze rose to her eyes—“the cellar.”
She must be very stupid. “The cellar?”
He swallowed and she saw the rigid movement of his throat above his neck cloth. “Last night I emptied the bottles in the drawing room and the library, but . . .”
Oh. “But there is a wine cellar belowstairs, isn’t there?”
He nodded, a ripple of a shiver crossing his shoulders quite visibly. She had not really understood until this moment.
Now she did.
She set her hands on her hips. “Then we must empty those bottles as well.”
“No.”
“Do you want to give up on this, then, after all? It would be easier, of course, at least while I am demanding that you—”
“No.”
They looked at one another for a long moment.
He took a tight breath. “Down to the cellar it seems we must go.”
“I can do it alone,” she offered.
“No.”
“I really should tally the number of times you say that word to me.” Beginning with the moment he had stopped kissing her in the inn at Knighton, then had done so anyway. The moment that had led them here.
Chapter 14
As it happened, he was little help after all, except in keeping her company, and at least this way she could watch him and make certain he did not expire on the spot. The wine cellar was small and dark but remarkably dry and removed from the kitchen where Mrs. Polley had fallen asleep.
He leaned against the doorjamb and seemed more at ease. But he traced the path of liquid from each bottle into the drain with an increasingly feverish stare.
“The clarets must go first,” he murmured.
“Why? Are they the strongest?”
“God, no. I simply don’t care for claret.”
“Then we should empty them last.” She took up the nearest bottle of brandy and glanced over the racks stacked with bottles lying on their sides. “Uncorking each is something of a chore. I don’t know how butlers do this every day. My fingers are already beginning to blister.”
“Break the necks.” His voice was tight.
She did not look at him. She would beg him to go upstairs, but she knew he would not. He was a very strong man. He had borne with her for days already, after all, and now he was doing this. For her.
“Break them on what?”
“A rock.” He looked grim.
“Outside?”
“Outside.”
“In the rain?”
“On the side of the well.”
“The well? Then the water will be—”
“It is dry.”
“How do you know that?”
He stared at her, his eyes slightly glassy now.
“All right,” she mumbled. “But then I shall have to carry them all out there.”
“I will help.”
She donned her cloak and he his coat, and armful after armful they lugged the contents of the cellar—five score bottles in all—to the well beyond the kitchen door.