Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
“ I t’s just so gross,” Amelia said for what felt like the hundredth time that day. After reading Taffington’s unpleasant little missive that morning, she’d spent the rest of the day seething. Her annoyance with him had given her some useful extra power for her workout, which she appreciated, but even beating the hell out of a straw-stuffed punching bag for an hour hadn’t been enough to banish the unpleasant feelings completely. It was almost impressive, how gross he’d managed to be with only the technology of the day available to him. She’d received unsolicited photos of men’s private parts that had been less unpleasant than his letter.
Hamish, too, was furious. The two of them had met for dinner, something that was quickly becoming one of her favorite ways to spend an evening. He’d spent his own day deep in deliberation with Laird Donal about how to deal with the letter that had accompanied Taffington’s — arguably a more important subject, which made Amelia appreciate his attention to her own complaints all the more. At her urging, he’d read Taffington’s letter himself. After a whole afternoon of seething, Amelia had begun to wonder whether she was blowing things out of proportion — maybe there was some kind of cultural mistranslation taking place, and Taffington wasn’t really being as creepy as she felt he was. But one look at Hamish’s face when he set the letter down told her that she wasn’t overreacting in the slightest.
“No, Amelia,” he agreed. “This is — at best, this is insultingly overfamiliar from a man you met once. And in difficult circumstances, at that, even with him not knowing about your time traveling,” he added — she’d told him the whole story of her confused arrival at Weatherby Manor, including the details of the way Taffington had conducted himself around her. “You’re right to be insulted. Duels have been challenged over less,” he added, and there was a dark note in his voice that made her fiercely curious — but at the same time, a little wary of questioning too closely.
“What am I meant to do about it?” she complained, taking the paper back from him as though she was handling something diseased. “If he said half this shit in person, I’d have hit him in the face. But writing a whole letter back just seems like — giving him too much attention. Would ignoring it completely be the move?” She grimaced. Social media had its drawbacks, but at least there was a reasonably reliable block function. “What if he just sends more?”
“If he were a gentleman, he’d assume that a lack of response indicated a lack of interest, and gracefully withdraw his suit,” Hamish said, scowling. “Though I hesitate even to compare this kind of unpleasantness to courtship. At any rate, we aren’t dealing with a gentleman here. I’d imagine a lack of response will only provoke him to write more, as you’ve said.”
She grimaced, remembering a particularly unpleasant guy she’d matched with on a dating app. After exchanging a few promising flirty messages, she’d gone to bed at her usual hour, mindful of her pre-dawn training regime. When she’d checked her phone on the way to the gym, she’d found no less than forty-three messages from the same guy, running the gamut from teasing queries about why she was suddenly ignoring him, all the way to a foaming all-caps tirade about how all women were manipulative psychopaths who led good men on then left them high and dry. The whole meltdown had taken place over less than three hours. In certain ways, it seemed, men hadn’t changed much over the years.
They eventually settled on a compromise — a way of responding to Lord Taffington without offering him more attention than he deserved. She still had Sir Baldric’s freshly laundered cloak in her room, waiting for an opportunity to return it to him. With Lord Weatherby’s messenger still waiting for the Laird’s response to Lord Weatherby, this was the perfect time to do so. First, she scribbled a quick note addressed to Sir Baldric, thanking him for lending her the cloak and informing him that she’d cleaned it personally. She added a request that he pass on her greetings and well wishes to Lord Weatherby, whose hospitality she still hoped to repay someday. Then, as a postscript, she asked Baldric to let Taffington know that if he ever tried to lay a hand on her — a hope he’d described in disgusting detail in his letter — that he’d find it broken in several places.
“Too violent?” Amelia asked Hamish, whose blue eyes were sparkling with laughter as he scanned the letter. “Is it going to incriminate me, putting a threat in writing?”
“Not in a letter that isn’t addressed to him,” Hamish said, grinning. “I know Baldric well — you can trust him to handle this. I don’t doubt he’ll relish the opportunity to put Taffington in his place, too.”
“He doesn’t seem to be the only one,” Amelia observed, lifting an eyebrow as she gave Hamish a pointed look.
He flashed her one of those rueful ‘you got me’ smiles that always made her heart skip a beat, and nodded. “I’ll admit I don’t harbor particularly fond feelings for the man — especially after the stories I’ve heard about his conduct in the villages between here and Weatherby’s.” His expression darkened. “Men who treat women that way… it’s only a matter of time before they get violent. I’m not surprised the Laird sent for me to deal with him.” He sighed. “With any luck, he’ll decide you’re too much trouble and leave you alone.”
But it seemed that had been wishful thinking on both of their parts. The cloak and the letter went with the servant that evening, and a scarce two days later, yet another letter arrived, twice as long as the first and even more lascivious and revolting. In it, Taffington commended her for what he referred to as her ‘feminine machinations’, implying that the message she’d conveyed through Baldric contained some underlying sexual connotations that had been intended to drive him wild. Horrified, she consulted with Hamish as well as with her friends, all of whom agreed that the man was dreaming.
“Ignore this one,” Delilah said firmly.
Hamish agreed.
But ignoring the letter proved to be about as effective as her rebuke. Letter after letter kept arriving via increasingly more tired-looking messengers from the Manor, each more lascivious and revolting than the last. She took to skim-reading them, torn between simply tossing them into the fire and her determination to keep the evidence of the campaign of revolting harassment he seemed determined to wage against her. What glimpses she got of the man’s psyche were both predictable and horrific. He kept repeating the same observations about her having ‘paraded herself before him’, apparently forgetting the part where she’d physically wrapped a cloak around herself to stop her from looking at her, and in the time that had passed since they’d been in the same room, he’d clearly twisted their brief interaction into some kind of psychosexual saga to rival every great work of art in the canon.
When the twelfth letter arrived in as many days, though, Amelia knew that she had to do something. She was growing to hate the sight of the pile of letters on her table — every time she returned to her little room at night, she itched to throw all of them into the flames. At Hamish’s suggestion, she had sent a letter directly to Lord Weatherby advising him of the conduct of his guest and politely requesting that he amend the situation. As Hamish had grimly predicted, she received no response — except in the form of yet more letters from Taffington, of course.
“At least he’s consistent,” Hamish confessed to her one night, looking tired after an afternoon spent discussing the same issue with the Laird and his advisors. It seemed Lord Weatherby was stonewalling them, too, on the subject of his unpleasant houseguest and the way he was treating local women — they’d sent several letters, and where Weatherby had even bothered to respond, his response had been utterly noncommittal.
“Why’s he protecting this creep?” Amelia wanted to know. “I know they’re cousins or whatever, but from the way he acted around him I got the impression that Weatherby hated Taffington. I’d have thought he’d jump at the excuse to send him home to London.”
“There’s more to the situation, I’m afraid,” Hamish said heavily, shaking his head. “We’re looking into the situation in more detail, but from what I’ve learned from my contacts in London, there’s a debt situation that might be contributing to Weatherby’s reluctance to alienate his cousin. That being said, it’s all very clandestine. The English nobility hate having their personal affairs known, especially when it comes to wealth.” He rolled his eyes — then glanced at her, struck by a sudden thought. “I hope it goes without saying that these matters are confidential.”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “I won’t tell anyone. I don’t really have anyone to tell,” she added, winning a soft laugh from him.
“It’s good to talk all this out with someone I can trust,” he said.
She felt a warm glow suffuse her chest. She trusted him too, she realized. That might have been foolish of her, given how little she really knew about him… but she’d always trusted her gut, and her gut was telling her that this man was an ally and a friend.
It was telling her he was a lot more than that, too… but that particular subject was one that could wait. At least until she’d dealt with the creepy suitor who wouldn’t stop sending her letters.