“I didn’t ever know. I mean—” She broke off, her head jerking toward the blacksmith’s shop as Hero became aware of a beefy man in a leather apron descending on them, his powerful arms crossed at his chest, his broad, heavily jowled face dripping sweat, the cords in his neck rigid with his fury.
“I’m sorry,” said the smith’s wife in a rush, bundling up the shirt in her hands and thrusting it into her basket. “I can’t talk no more. Truly I can’t.” She seized the basket and disappeared into the cottage, leaving half the clothes still hanging on the line.
“What ye doin’, comin’ round here?” shouted Miles Grant, his voice booming out as his long stride closed the distance between then. “Comin’ round here, makin’ trouble? I’ll teach ye to go pokin’ yer fancy nose where it don’t belong.” He uncurled his arms, his knotted fists coming up as he descended upon her. “I’ll show you.”
Hero calmly withdrew the small, brass-mounted flintlock pistol from her reticule and thumbed back the hammer. “Come any closer and I will kill you. Without hesitation or compunction.”
He drew up abruptly, eyes widening with surprise as much as anything else. She knew from the twitching of his heavy straight brows that the definition of the word “compunction” eluded him. But he understood the meaning of a loaded flintlock leveled unflinchingly at his chest.
“Ye wouldn’t shoot me,” he said, although his voice lacked conviction.
“Believe me, I would more than welcome an excuse to put an abrupt end to your miserable, brutish existence.”
He obviously believed her because he took a wary step back, his hands dangling loosely at his sides, his face dark and swollen with the impotence of his fury.
She wiggled the muzzle of her pistol. “Now turn around and go back to whatever you were doing.”
“Ye can’t order about a man in his own house!”
Rather than keep the pistol leveled on his chest, Hero readjusted her aim so that the muzzle now pointed at his crotch. “Let me assure you that I am an excellent shot. Now, turn around and go away. You are boring me.”
He didn’t turn around. But he did back away from her, one step at a time, his dark, angry gaze fixed on her face. She waited until he’d backed all the way to his forge before she calmly walked away, the pistol still in her hand.
She doubted he would actually have been so foolish as to harm her, although she had no intention of taking any chances. More likely he had intended to use his size and his aggressive maleness to intimidate and frighten her. But she also had no doubt that he was dangerous, and this day’s events had both humiliated and enraged him. She had challenged his comfortable belief that as a man he was superior to any female, no matter how wellborn.
And if he came at her again, it wouldn’t be directly or out in the open where anyone could see.
Chapter 34
Sunday, 8 August
Pleasant Park, the ancestral home of the powerful Turnstall family, lay to the southwest of Tenbury, in the rolling, verdant country of Herefordshire.
Nursing his chestnuts in easy stages, Sebastian arrived there in the afternoon. The sky was still overcast, with thickening gray clouds that robbed the day of light and warmth and cheer. Stately and pretentious, the house rose at the end of a sweeping, oak-lined carriageway. Its walls were built of massive, carefully hewn sandstone blocks, the roofline bristling with tall chimneys that thrust up pale against the dark foliage of the wooded hillside behind it. The gardens were as stiff and formal as the house, with close-cropped lawns, trim yew hedges, and old-fashioned box-edged parterres.
“Gor,” breathed Tom as Sebastian reined in before the house’s grand, Palladian-influenced portico. “’Er family owns this?”
“This, and another half dozen estates, besides,” said Sebastian, hopping down to the gravel sweep.
To arrive unexpected at such a grand country estate was considered bad form, so Sebastian wasn’t surprised when he was shown to a small waiting room by a stately butler and left to cool his heels for a number of minutes. He’d about decided the current Earl must not be receiving when the butler returned with a bow to say, “This way, if you please, my lord?”
He led Sebastian to a cavernous salon with figured pink silk–covered walls, richly colored marble pilasters, ormolu-mounted marquetry bureaus, and clusters of stately, throne-like chairs and settees gathered around each of the room’s three marble-decked fireplaces.