Page 43 of Who’s That Earl

Chapter 16

At first, Thomas wasn’t sure what had woken him. With some difficulty, he levered himself onto his side in the plush bed and scanned the room. Sunrise? No, well past. Though the windows were high and narrow here, as everywhere else in the castle, they faced east. Light flooded the room and made him blink drowsily and rub his eyes.

Beside him, Jane slept on, her back turned toward him, her hair strewn across the pillows. One pale, plump shoulder peeked from beneath the covers, tempting him to trace its curve with his fingertips. God, but she was so beautifully sensual. Three times he’d taken her last night—twice more than he’d intended and thrice more than he ought—and still his ungrateful cock had woken hard and eager. His hand moved, almost involuntarily, to touch her.

But no, he cautioned himself, forcing himself to lean back into his pillow and close his eyes. They’d spoken only of one night. And it was most definitely morning.

He didn’t think he’d drifted off, but the sound of voices—a pair of them, at least, and one of them agitated—came from the sitting room and jerked him to wakefulness again. Was that what had disturbed him before? He glanced at the door; thankfully, the key was still in the lock. Probably just Esme, chattering to herself as she swept the hearth.

Before his body had begun to relax again, the door to the bedchamber shuddered in its frame as if struck. He sat bolt upright. From the sitting room came another muffled but urgent-sounding exchange.

“Jane!” he laid his hand on that tempting shoulder to jostle her as he spoke softly but sharply near her ear. “Wake up! I think someone’s trying to break down the door.”

Shoving hair from her face, she scrambled upright and clutched the sheets to her chest, evidently startled as much to find herself sharing her bed as by the news he’d imparted. “Wha—what did you say?”

But he had no need to repeat himself, for at that moment, something again rammed into the door, followed by a low moan and more scolding. And then a voice spoke near enough to the keyhole that the words could be clearly heard. “Och, Dougan, get up wit’ ye, ye worthless lump. Mrs. Higginbotham, canna you hear me? Oh, what am I t’ do?”

“Mrs. Murdoch.” He and Jane spoke as one, and he felt sure it must be his imagination, but Jane looked...amused.

Whether or not she found the housekeeper’s attempt to barge in upon them entertaining, she scrambled from the bed to put a stop to it. Thomas caught no more than a glimpse of her naked curves before she snatched up her dressing gown from a bench at the foot of the bed and slipped it on.

“You’ll have to hide yourself,” she urged, gathering up his clothes and boots and shoving them in his direction, “while I try to sort out what the devil has gotten into Agnes. In the wardrobe,” she added impatiently, pointing toward that ancient piece of furniture while he was still searching for the doorway to a dressing room or the like. “There’s nowhere else you’ll fit.”

Fit was overstating the case, for though the wardrobe was both tall and deep, it was also full of Jane’s clothes, both mourning gowns and many others in brighter and paler shades, perhaps from before the time she had donned her Mrs. Higginbotham disguise. No chance of slipping into his breeches while hidden inside; try as he might, he couldn’t even close both doors behind him.

The narrow gap between the doors did have an advantage, however. It allowed him to watch as Jane marched with surprising calm to the chamber door, twisted the key, and flung it open. Dougan, who had evidently been primed for another assault on the stout panel, came barging into the room instead, head lowered, and tumbled onto the floor.

Sweet Jane hurried to the man’s side and bent to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, Dougan? Have you hurt yourself?”

“An’ if he has, ’tis no more than his duty,” declared Mrs. Murdoch from the doorway. Aphrodite and Athena darted past her and began to sniff their mistress anxiously. “Gracious, Mrs. Higginbotham, what a fright you’ve given us.”

“Fright? I don’t—”

“It’s not like you to lock the door, ma’am. Are ye feelin’ poorly? I knocked and called for a quarter of an hour, and when you didn’t answer, I went to fetch Dougan. It’s nearly ten, and I couldn’t think what…” She shook her head in evident distress. “And then, o’ course, there’s the state of the rooms…”

“Rooms?” Jane echoed again, absently patting an agitated Aphrodite before she rose. “What rooms? Will one of you please tell me what is going on?”

“When Esme took Mr. Sutherland his breakfast,” the housekeeper explained, a trifle impatiently, “she found the gatehouse empty and things in such upheaval—the tea tray overturned, and clothes thrown from his trunk—she feared something dreadful must have happened to ’im.”

“I heard her scream.” Dougan took up the story in his slow, methodical way. “Checked the bailey, just as he’d told me. No one in or out last night.”

“Just as who had told you?”

“Mr. Sutherland,” Mrs. Murdoch broke in. “Evidently he thought fit to warn Dougan that we might have an intruder at Dunnock. I wonder he didn’t accord me the same courtesy.”

“Well…” He heard the smile in Jane’s voice, though he couldn’t see her face. “Dougan is the guardsman.”

Mrs. Murdoch’s lips scrunched as if she’d bitten a lemon. “Be that as it may,” she sniffed, “when I came up here to see that all was well, imagine my shock. Papers strewn about, a puddle of wax on the carpet, books on the floor…” She shuddered, a trifle theatrically to Thomas’s way of thinking. So far as he recalled it was only one book. Surely, she’d seen worse messes than that? “I knew you’d never leave the study in such a state, ma’am. At least not willingly. An’ then there’s this.” With a note of triumph in her voice, she produced her most damning piece of evidence: his battered greatcoat. “Mr. Sutherland’s. Thrown behind a chair, it was. As if someone had aught to hide…”

“Mr. Ratliff received a threatening letter,” Jane interjected smoothly, and he could not help but admire the calm in her voice as she plucked the garment from the housekeeper’s bony fingers. “I was understandably alarmed. I worked late, but I asked Mr. Sutherland to keep watch last night, patrol the castle as it were. No doubt he came into the sitting room after I’d gone to bed, found things a mite, er, warm, and laid his coat aside.”

Those words were rightly met with skepticism. No one had ever found any part of a castle in the Scottish Highlands in January “a mite warm.”

Mrs. Murdoch’s attention was quickly diverted by something else, however. “What’s that you’re fidgeting with, Dougan?” she demanded.

When Thomas realized what had caught her eye, he could no longer consider the distraction fortunate.

“Funny sort of a knife, innit?” Dougan held out the object. “Just lyin’ there on the floor.”