Abigail’s eyes popped open.
“It was not a bat, you silly girl,” he told her. “It was me. I was kissing you.”
“That’s it exactly. That horrid, furry feeling—” Abigail broke off, mortified. “I beg your pardon, sir!” she breathed. “I didn’t know it was you. You—you were talking about bats earlier at the Dower House. I’m absolutely terrified of bats, you see.”
He sniffed. “I had noticed a slight aversion.”
“I thought my heart was going to burst, it was beating so fast,” she said, climbing down from the bed. “I do hate them so.”
“What? Kisses or bats? I’m not often mistaken for a bat, cousin,” he said sharply. “I think you owe me an apology.”
“It—it must have been your beard I felt,” she explained, growing red in the face. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Wayborn. It’s just that it was dark, and I wasn’t expecting—” She broke off in confusion. It seemed to her, though perhaps she was wrong, that he was the one who ought to be apologizing. After all, she hadn’t given him leave to kiss her. She had never given anyone leave to kiss her in her whole life.
“You weren’t expecting it,” he scoffed. “Isn’t this what you came for?”
Abigail stared at him. “What?” she asked in a small voice.
“Why did you come to Hertfordshire? To see me again, that’s why. Admit it.”
Abigail gasped at the man’s unabashed conceit.
“I know when a woman is attracted to me,” he said. “You’ve been staring at me all afternoon. You stammer like an idiot whenever I get within two feet of you, and if your face got any redder, it would be a tomato.”
At this moment, Abigail liked Cary about as much as she liked Mrs. Spurgeon’s macaw. Indeed, Cato and Mr. Wayborn had a great deal in common. They were both physically beautiful and unforgivably rude. “I did not come here to see you again, you conceited ape,” she snapped. “You had a house to let. You obviously need the money. I was trying to help you. I had no idea of—of anything else. I thought you were safely married! I came here expecting to meet your wife. I did not expect to be mauled in a wardrobe.”
Cary shrugged. “It was only a kiss,” he said coolly. “A bit of fun. Most girls enjoy it.”
“I am not most girls!”
“Clearly.”
Absurdly, Abigail felt rejected. She turned away from him to look out the window. Her chin was going wobbly, and she knew she was about to cry.
“Who in the deuce let that dog up the stairs?” Cary muttered, just as Abigail became aware of a commotion in the hall. In the next moment, the corgi knocked the door open and bounded into the room, barking excitedly, followed closely by a servant girl carrying a jug.
“That wretched cur is not allowed upstairs, Polly,” Cary said severely. “He eats the plaster off the walls and hides marrow bones under all the pillows.”
“Yes, sir,” the girl said. “I’ve just come to build the fires, sir, and to tell you that the other carriage is stuck halfway up the drive in the snow. The lady says she can’t walk, sir. She wants to be carried up to the house in a chair. A sedan chair.”
Muttering under his breath, Cary left the room.
“I’m Polly, Miss,” said the servant, a sturdily built, blue-eyed lass with red cheeks. “I’ve brought you some hot water.” She set the steaming jug on the washstand and closed the doors of the empty wardrobe. “Whatever you do, Miss,” she said, giggling, “don’t let the master get you in the old press. He got me in there once and the next thing I knew, my skirts was over my head! Of course, he was only eleven at the time and hadn’t a clue what to do with me once he got me. I expect it’d be a different story now,” she added wistfully.
Abigail washed her face and hands, tuning out Polly’s chatter. She could not flatter herself into thinking Cary Wayborn had kissed her because of some powerful attraction; clearly, molesting young women was simply a matter of course with him. She wished she had never come here. Her hero, the gypsy prince who had rescued her in Piccadilly, was no hero at all.
Was there even a secret door, she wondered, leading through the wardrobe to the next room, or had that merely been a ploy to get her inside? When Polly was gone, she went into the wardrobe and felt along the back panel. When she pressed it at the top, it sprang back instantly.
With a sibilant hiss.
Chapter 5
“This takes me back,” Mrs. Spurgeon screeched in Cary’s ear. “To be in the arms of a handsome young man again—at my age, too! On my wedding night, my dear husband carried me across the threshold. Of course, I was a mere slip of a girl then. I was light as a feather.”
“You’re still light as a feather, Mrs. Spurgeon,” Cary muttered, grunting from the exertion of carrying the stout lady through the portico into the house. He would much rather have been carrying Mrs. Nashe, who was a good three stone lighter and extremely attractive. He tried to set his burden on her feet just inside the door, but the woman clung to him, crying, “Oh! Don’t drop me, sir! I break like the finest porcelain when I’m dropped.”
As he struggled towards the fireplace, his knees buckling under the lady’s weight, he saw Miss Smith enter the room. She looked as though she’d been crying, and he felt a stab of guilt.
He’d behaved very badly. Abigail was the first likely female to come his way in months, and he had pounced on her like a cad. Living alone in the country had left him more desperate than he cared to admit. Indeed, his housekeeper would have been shocked to know the young master had eyed her broad rear end more than once. He was definitely not a monk by nature, and Miss Smith had some right to consider herself ill-used.
All the same, he told himself, it was only a kiss. There was no need for the girl to carry on as if he were the villain of a horrid mystery. It was not as though he had made any serious attempt on her virtue. Frankly, she was behaving like a ninny, and he had no patience for ninnies. He could only hope that Mrs. Nashe would prove more congenial.
“There you are, Miss Smith,” Mrs. Spurgeon boomed, catching sight of her ward. “Take my muff. It fell in the snow. It’s quite wet. Where’s Evans?”
“No, don’t!” cried Abigail, darting forward as Cary nearly dumped Mrs. Spurgeon in the chair still occupied by Paggles. He managed to shift to the other chair in time, but lost his balance and fell on top of Mrs. Spurgeon as she landed. His nose lodged briefly in her bosom, and he doubted he would ever get the smell of sweat and talcum out of his nostrils.
“Oh, this does remind me of my wedding night,” she giggled.
Cary removed her arms from his neck and leaped to his feet, bowling into Miss Smith, who was standing behind him. Fortunately, the footstool broke her fall.
“Pardon me,” he said, offering her his hand. She gave him a look of such intense dislike that he flushed, and, withdrawing his hand, he went to help Mrs. Nashe instead. The pretty widow was struggling to carry a very large birdcage nearly filled by a scarlet macaw.
“What a gorgeous bird,” he said lightly, looking at the woman, not the bird, as he relieved her of the cage. She looked up at him through her dark lashes, which he took for encouragement. “Is it a canary or a canard?” he asked.
Mrs. Nashe laughed softly. Cary was enchanted by the flirtatious sound.
“Go and find his perch, Evans,” Mrs. Spurgeon commanded, and a thin gray woman seemed to materialize at her bidding. Cato caught sight of the lady’s maid and shrieked in a fair imitation of his mistress’s voice, “Evans! Where’s my yellow wig?”
Cary and