Chapter 8

Eight

I f any man possessed a blade for a tongue, it was Mr. Sacks. As soon as Keats set foot out the door until they reached the threshold of Hawthorne House, he cursed not only Keats but himself for allowing Keats to stay on.

He whirled in the doorway, slinging out his arms to block the entrance. "You swore you'd keep the secret. Swore you only wanted to see your sister safe." He seemed to have ground his teeth down in the short distance between the cottage and the house. If he knew what Keats had been doing before he'd slammed through that door, he'd likely snap Keats's neck. Not a single question asked.

Keats held his hands up. "I am entirely ignorant of your meaning. Are you mad? I would never —" The words clogged his throat, emotion, too, because he had . Griff. "Damn me. I told him to stay away."

Sacks dropped his arms and shook his head. "I knew it! You feather-brained nodcock!"

A wail from inside. They ran—up the stairs, down a hall, up more stairs to a long, narrow hallway lined with even narrower doors. Few sconces lit the space, and the shadows held dominion, hiding a tableau at the very end. A woman, her arms rigid at her sides, and two bloody giants toying with a mouse.

Not a mouse. Griff.

Hands pushed Keats roughly aside, and Mr. and Mrs. Beckett stormed down the hall. Doors eased open, revealing curious faces. The women. Curious? Scared?

"Back to bed!" Mrs. Beckett roared.

The doors snapped shut.

Mr. Beckett pushed up the sleeves of his banyan, revealing muscle-corded forearms. "What in hell is happening out here?"

The figure in skirts stepped out of the shadows, and Keats's heart clenched.

"Alex," he whispered, wanting to go to her, to apologize, to promise to make everything right.

"He is an intruder here!" Alex pointed a brazen finger at Griff, caught arm for arm by the hulking footmen. One had a gap between his teeth and shockingly red hair. The other was missing a front tooth and possessed a swollen ear. Lucy had not been joking. The Hawthorne House help had been procured from a boxing ring.

Griff jerked his arms, kicked out his legs, but every hit seemed but a fly's annoying buzz to the footmen. They merely held him tighter. One twisted an arm, and Griff caught a howl behind clenched teeth. The footmen shoved him to his knees.

"I may be an intruder," he said, "but I'm not going to hurt you. God, Alex, it's me."

"Precisely." A world of sorrow in that single word as Alex turned her back on Keats's friend. What in hell had happened between them? They used to be friends of a sort, too.

"Do you know him?" Sacks hissed in Keats's ear.

Keats couldn't find the words to respond.

Mrs. Beckett was looking at him, her keen eyes like a predator's in the dark. "What are you doing here? Get back to the stables."

What was he doing here? Hell. Alex would see him.

Alex had seen him. She walked toward him slow as a dream. "Keats? Is that…"

He made for the stairs.

And ran right into Lucy. She wobbled, and he steadied her, met her gaze briefly, so full of worried curiosity, before a hand wrapped tight about his wrist and tugged. And really, Keats was nothing more than a leaf on the wind; he went where he was blown, apparently.

Once face-to-face, Alex's eyes became blue moons, then she threw his wrist away as if touching him had burned her. " You ! What are you doing here, too?"

Ah, hell.

Lucy stepped to his side. "You know Mr. Keats, Alex?"

"Mr. Keats?" Alex threw her head back and laughed like a banshee, clutching her belly. A laugh that didn't last long enough for Keats to escape down the stairs. Oh, no, she cut the laugh off as neatly as you would a pat of butter and settled a deathly calm gaze on him. "He is not Mr. Keats. He is Keaton Godwin, Earl of Ennis. My brother."

Beside him, Lucy turned stone bit by bit, her arm closest him then everywhere else until even her breathing stopped. Stone had no lungs to take in air, had no heart to beat for love. He had to revive her, to transform stone to soft curves once more.

He put one hand on her shoulder, his other hand on his heart. "Lucy, I?—"

She knocked his hand away.

"What is going on here," Mr. Beckett bellowed.

"Should we break 'is bones?" the redheaded footman asked, almost lifting Griff off the floor.

"No bone breaking yet." Mrs. Beckett stalked toward Keats, crossing her dressing gown more tightly over her front. "You. Is it true? You are an earl? Lady Alexandra's brother?"

"Actually, I'm a marquess now." Keats cringed. It was not the time for technicalities. "My… Our"—he met Alex's gaze—"father has just died."

Alex blinked, reaching out and grasping for something, someone, finding Lucy, and letting herself give up strength for just a moment. "Dead? Oh, God."

"That's what I came to tell you," Griff shouted. "Now you—ow, ow, ow!"

The giant with the swollen ear twisted Griff's arm at an unnatural angle. "Now the bone breaking, Mrs. Beckett?"

"Not yet." She covered her mouth with a hand and looked at her husband. "This is a disaster. What do we do?"

A disaster? Keats was not a disaster. A liar, clearly. A hedonist, formerly. A marquess… it appeared so. But a disaster?

He stepped between the husband and wife. "I do not wish to cause you disaster or to alarm you. I followed my sister here the night Miss Jones took her from London. I stayed using a different name in order to watch over her. I wrote to my friend"—he strode down the hall, holding out an arm to Griff—"the Earl of Finley, requesting he keep my father calm, so that my father would not attempt to find Alex. I have tried for the last month, longer, to do what is best for Alex and for this place. Finley should not have snuck in here." He reached for his friend, to pull him to his feet.

The red-haired footman boxed him in the ear.

Keats leaped out of the way, muffling a curse. "Maybe I deserved that, but Finley means no harm, I swear. Alex…" He searched out her gaze along the dark length of the hallway. "I mean you no harm. I plan to dissolve the marriage contract with Palmerson. You may marry whom you please." He took two tentative steps toward her. "I have been a horrid brother, inattentive and selfish. But I promise to do better."

Her eyes gentled, but her hands were still fists at her belly. Then they went limp, and her shoulders slumped as she leaned farther into Lucy's embrace. "My brother is a fool. Mischievous to the point of calamity. Clueless, selfish, barbaric?—"

Griff laughed. Then yelped when a footman kicked his arse.

Good. The man deserved it. And Keats deserved Alex's ire. He hung his head and took every damn word.

And there were waves of them, still coming, never once disrupted for the farce between earl and footman. "Addlepated, foxed most hours of most days, idle, shiftless." She could stop any time now. Lucy's eyes grew colder with each new description. "Careless, easily distracted, bit of a fop." Now that he did take exception to. "But he's never been cold. Or heartless. Or cruel." Alex stepped out of Lucy's hold and took precise, confident steps toward him. "I believe him."

"That's all well and good"—Mr. Beckett barreled down the hall—"but what about that one?" He stabbed a finger toward Griff.

"That one, you can throw to the wolves."

"Alex!" Griff cried. The footmen yanked him to his feet, dragged him toward a window. Oh hell, an involuntary defenestration. He dug in his heels. "Keats! Do something!"

"Frankly, I don't think I will. Clearly, you've done something to enrage my sister." He sighed. "I suppose I'll want to know what, though." And since no one seemed willing to stop the footmen from throwing Griff out the window, Keats would have to save him. "Stop." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Mr. Beckett, Mrs. Beckett, what if, instead of having to clean up a mangled body from your lawn, you shove us both in a locked room until you've decided how to handle the situation. We will be at your mercy, and hopefully, by submitting to your power, we will prove to you our loyalty."

Griff nodded like the action alone could save him.

Mr. and Mrs. Beckett shared a look that likely held an entire conversation.

"Take him upstairs to the attic," Mr. Beckett said. "Both of them. And stand guard."

An arm with more muscle than Keats had ever seen hitched under his shoulder, almost hauling him off his feet, and dragging him toward a narrow set of stairs in the shadows that he'd missed.

"Up you go," the footman said.

"And your name is?" Keats asked.

"Fred."

"Well, Mr. Fred, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Shut up, Keats," Griff groaned.

"I'm Pat," the other footman said.

"Pleasure to meet you, too." Keats wielded cheer and charm like weapons. They gilded his every word. A necessary self-preservation strategy. Because his heart strained to cut itself out of his chest and remain at Lucy's side. Stone-faced Lucy. Silent Lucy. Who'd said not a single word since learning of Keats's lies.