Twice Tempted by a Rogue (Stud Club #2)

“Now, then. Let’s see if you can keep step.” With a wide grin of encouragement, Gideon danced Cora right out from behind the bar and into the space he’d cleared at the center of the room.

The men crowding the perimeter roared their approval, hiding their envy with varying degrees of success. Meredith knew they were probably all wondering why they hadn’t come up with the idea themselves. Because they weren’t Gideon, of course. And even if they had thought of it, none of them were so ingenious, so crafty, or so devilishly arrogant as to try.

Gideon and Cora hadn’t made but a few sweeping twirls of the room, however, before the men’s collective intelligence drew a new conclusion. Cora might be taken as a partner, but there was one other woman in the room.

Several pairs of ale-merry eyes turned on Meredith at once.

“Oh, no,” she laughed as Skinner came toward her, his huge mitts outstretched. “No, I don’t dance.”

But Gideon’s outlandish display had emboldened them all. Despite her protests, Meredith found herself swept out from behind the bar and spun from partner to partner as Darryl’s frantic fiddling went on. The faster they turned her, the more gaily she laughed. In the center, Cora looked similarly flushed and breathless with enjoyment. Those who weren’t dancing clapped and stomped. Meredith began to fear the uproar would bring down the roof.

But then, Darryl’s fiddling died a quick, mournful death, and a fresh gust of night wind froze them all in place.

Rhys stood in the tavern door. Meredith briefly wondered if the man was capable of making anything other than a dramatic entrance. Was it his sheer size, or the intensity he exuded? It certainly wasn’t her imagination. Everyone in the room was transfixed.

Meredith rejoiced. His timing couldn’t have been better. Rhys could join the party, socialize with villagers, and perhaps even smooth things over with Gideon. Thanks to Cora, the smuggler was in good spirits tonight.

“Good evening, my lord.” Though everyone else in the room remained frozen, Meredith put out her hand and crooked her finger in invitation. “Come dance with me?”

“Another time perhaps.”

He staggered in from the night, wearing a strange expression on his face. His complexion was unnaturally pale. He looked just like the living phantom of Darryl’s stories.

With one hand pressed to the back of his head, he reeled to a halt. His glassy eyes shifted from Meredith to Cora and back. “Are either of you ladies handy with a needle?”

“Why?” Meredith asked.

“I’ve something that needs stitching up.” He pulled his hand from his head. In it, he grasped a wad of torn fabric, soaked through with blood.

At the sight, Cora shrieked. Gideon slipped a protective arm about her waist.

Rhys just stared at the bloodied rag for a moment, blinking.

Meredith started toward him. She knew that expression. Any tavernkeeper would.

He was going down, hard.

And before she could reach him, he did. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped to the floor, landing with a thud that rattled the candlesticks.

Chapter Thirteen

When Rhys came to for the second time that evening, he found himself slumped over a chair. The chair was backward. His legs straddled the seat, and his bare chest rested against the back. Another moment, and he’d recognized his surroundings as the kitchen of the Three Hounds. He looked down to see two of the eponymous animals curled at his feet.

He blinked, and they became four.

“Ah.”

The dogs’ ears twitched at his low cry of pain. All eight of them.

Someone was digging a needle into his scalp. His eyes told him it couldn’t be Meredith, because two of her were currently adding peat to the fire.

The heat from the blaze swam before his eyes and warmed his bones, but the smoke made him gag. Rhys swallowed hard. The last thing he wanted was to retch in front of her.

“Oh, Rhys. Thank God you’re awake,” she said, noticing his next wince of pain. She took a cup from the table and waved it under his nose. “Local gin? Cures all ills.”

At the smell, his stomach clenched. He declined with a careful shake of his head. “Just a drop of water, if you would.”

She offered him a battered tin cup, and he managed to take it in one shaking hand and lift it to his lips. “Sorry I interrupted the party.”

Meredith pulled up a stool and sat next to him. “You gave us a fright. What happened?”

“Thought I saw a light up at the ruins. I went up to investigate.”

“Alone? Unarmed?”

He nodded and took another sip.

“And … what did you find?”

Was it a trick of his bashed-in brain, or did he discern a strange note in her voice? As though she already had in mind the answer to her question.

A jab to his scalp sent the thought right out of his head.