Mistletoe and Mayhem - Cheryl Bolen Page 0,23

marry Mr. Blatherwick.” She turned and ran up the stairs.

Chapter Nine

“Leave!” David thundered.

Fear swept over Blatherwick’s face.

Few men—no, no man—had ever been the object of such rage from David.

Blatherwick’s chin jutted out. “You can’t go ordering me about. It’s no longer your house.”

David closed the gap between them and shoved his face into the other man’s. “I’ll rephrase. Leave or I’ll remove you.”

Surely The Buffoon hadn’t forgotten the many times David had bested him in play yard fisticuffs. Surely he was aware of David’s advantage in height and strength. Surely he hadn’t recently acquired courage—something he’d lacked throughout his privileged life.

A deep red flush climbed up Blatherwick’s face. “This. Is. Not. Fair. She’s my betrothed. Why should I have to leave her with you?”

His face still close enough to detect Blatherwick’s trembling, David spoke gutturally. “Because if you don’t your coachman will be scraping you off this floor.”

Blatherwick’s eyes narrowed to where David was incapable of telling what colour they were. “Very well. But I’ll be back tomorrow and expect to receive a warm welcome from my affianced.”

David locked the door behind The Blowhard, then raced up the stairs to Mary’s bedchamber and began to pound upon her door. He waited a moment, but there was no response.

“Mary, my darling, are you in there?”

Still, nothing. He pounded harder, but he heard not a sound. He thought perhaps she had gone to another room, so he swept through the entire house looking for her.

“Do you know where Mrs. Milne has gone?” he asked Mrs. Ballard, whom he found in the linen closet on the top floor.

She nodded solemnly. “She’s locked herself in her chamber. She was crying.”

His heart sank. He must comfort her. He hurried back down to Mary’s bedchamber. This time instead of pounding, he knocked in a more civil manner. “Mary, please open this door. I must speak to you.”

Once again, there was no response. He listened carefully. Now that Mrs. Ballard had told him Mary was crying, he strained to hear signs of it.

And he heard a faint feminine sniffle.

It broke his heart. Or broke it all over again. He was still reeling from the pain of her declaration that she was going to marry The Buffoon.

He stood there in the dimly lit corridor where he’d frolicked as a lad. Only now he felt destroyed by a slender woman who’d enslaved him with her loveliness, and her purity, and her charitable ways. How could this same woman have treated him so cruelly?

He moved closer to the door. “I know you’re in there. I know you love me. You must know I love you. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone in my eight-and-twenty years. We’ll have the special license tomorrow and can marry.” He paused and waited for a response.

There was nothing.

“I credited you with honesty. You said you loved me. You promised to marry me. How could you deceive me so?”

Nothing.

“And I forbid you to marry Benedict Blatherwick. Absolutely. I believe I’d kill him first rather than have him sully you by such an association. Would it make you happy to see me hang for murder?”

The only sound he heard was a lady’s gentle weeping.

What in the hell had gotten into her?

Once more, he started pounding upon her door.

And he finally heard her say something! He stopped to listen.

“I fell in love,” sniff, sniff, “with a man who misrepresented himself.”

He pressed his face to the thick wooden door and spoke gently. “How was that?”

“I thought you were the kindly man your father was.”

He stood there in the ever-darkening corridor shaking his head. “No, I never purported to be half the man my father was.”

Now she started crying. Loudly.

All his further efforts to get her to communicate went unanswered.

Darkness came. As he stood there shrouded in gloom, Ballard climbed the stairs. “My Lord, you have a caller.”

“If it’s Blatherwick, toss him out.”

“No, sir. He’s come from London, and he says it’s urgent.”

David morosely descended the stairs. Standing at the base of the stairs beneath the wall sconce Ballard has just lighted was Mr. Stonehouse’s young clerk, his cheeks bright red from the cold. He wore heavy leather gloves, a thick woolen muffler twirled about his neck, and a voluminous greatcoat. Had the fellow ridden a horse all the way from London?

“My lord! I have come in the hopes of arriving before the post, for I realized I’ve made a most dreadful mistake.”

Ballard, who still stood there, cleared his throat. “Two pieces of mail were delivered around noon