Page 12 of The Devil to Pay

Jules glared at him and sank the shovel into the thick turf again, glad he’d worn sturdy boots as he jammed his foot against it, pushing it farther in. His breath clouded on the freezing air, but he had long since rid himself of his coat and scarf and rolled up his sleeves. Sweat was trickling down his back, an unpleasant sensation that seemed very different to a vigorous workout at a boxing salon. If Briggs thought he was going to throw in the towel so quickly, however… well, he was wrong.

A clear if strident voice reached him from across the garden and he looked up to see Mr Dixey had returned, but this time he was not alone. Beside him stood a woman. Statuesque, she stood a full head taller than Dixey, who had to angle his head to look up at her. She wore a hideous gown, which might once have been a rich brown, but had faded to something muddy and unflattering, though the figure it embraced was… impressive. Full hips and a fuller bust bracketed a remarkably slender waist. Jules leant on his spade and followed the natural inclination of his gaze. Her neck was slender and elegant, her profile the kind that ought to be stamped on a coin, with an imperious nose and a jaw that spoke of a stubborn streak a mile wide. She held a steel-tipped umbrella in one hand and, though she leaned on it nonchalantly enough, she looked as if she wouldn’t hesitate to use it should the need arise. If that were not enough of a clue, the fiery red hair confirmed his suspicions. This, then, was she: his nemesis. Miss Selina Davenport was a woman built for warfare. She was Boadicea made flesh, and Jules’ instincts all fired with the desire for combat… or something of the sort.

Perhaps sensing his critical gaze, the woman turned her sharp blue eyes in his direction, and he felt burned by the contact. She stiffened as she saw him staring and Jules was about to touch his cap and give her the benefit of a crooked grin, he was well aware women regarded as a lethal weapon, when Briggs barged into him so hard, he fell over on his arse in the mud.

Jules glared up at him in outrage and opened his mouth to demand what the bloody hell he was playing at, when Briggs put a finger to his lips, silencing him.

“You. Don’t. Talk,” he whispered furiously. “And you don’t stare at your betters, neither!”

Jules swallowed an impatient comment and allowed Briggs to help him up.

“Carry on digging and keep your stupid head down,” his suddenly bossy valet instructed, before striding off to speak to Mr Dixey and Miss Davenport.

Jules could feel Davenport staring at him, the back of his neck hot and prickling at the indignity of her seeing him sprawled on his arse. His only comfort was that she did not know who he really was.

“Your cousin, I collect, Mr Briggs.” Her clear, carrying voice was easily audible as Jules listened to the conversation. “I hope he is settling in. You’ve rented the cottage I suggested near Mill Farm?”

“Yes, Miss Davenport. Mark is settling in very well, though I do apologise. He’s not used to being around ladies, so I hope you’ll not mind his manners, for he has none.”

Jules gritted his teeth. Cheeky blighter.

“Not at all,” Davenport replied easily. “I am no highbred lady to swoon at the slightest provocation, I assure you. I do not suffer with my nerves.”

No, thought Jules irritably, you make everyone else suffer instead.

“You’ve made reasonable progress today,” she said.

Such grudging approval, when his back was breaking! Jules was close to giving up his disguise for the pleasure of demanding she dig a few shovelfuls herself and see how she liked it.

“Thank you, miss. We aim to please,” Briggs said politely, the damned toady.

“Carry on,” she barked, her tone reminding Jules forcibly of his own father’s imperious tone before she walked off without a backwards glance.

“I’ll hope you’ll not mind his manners for he has none,” Jules parroted, in a high-pitched whiny voice once they were alone again.

“Well, maybe you can get away with looking at a lady like that when you’re the handsome son of a duke, but the rest of us would get our faces slapped,” Briggs told him bluntly.

Jules huffed, still indignant. “And, Mark? Seriously, that’s the best you could come up with?”

“Well, you’re a marquess, seemed sensible to keep to something I wouldn’t forget,” Briggs replied with a shrug.

Jules rolled his eyes and hoped the day would soon be at an end.

Selina walked to the arched walkway and hesitated, just out of sight of what she intended to be her new rose garden and, more importantly, her new gardeners. She had liked Briggs on sight when he came to the interview. He was a neat, clean, and well-featured man with an open manner, and she thought he would do very well. His cousin, however… She lingered behind the wall, watching surreptitiously. If that man was a gardener, she’d eat her umbrella.

Lord, but he was handsome, with thick black hair and dark slashing eyebrows that highlighted eyes of intense green. Oh, and the way he had looked at her! She had felt that look to her marrow. If his cousin had not knocked him to the ground—and certainly on purpose—she felt sure he would have smiled, and a wicked look it would have been too. A twinge of regret struck deep, for men did not smile at Selina as a rule. They found her voice too strident, her manner too authoritative, though they did not put it so politely. Men especially disliked it when she pointed out when they were wrong and corrected them, no matter how politely, and took offense when she declined their help in climbing over stiles or getting out of carriages when she could manage perfectly well by herself. They also made disparaging remarks about her hair and her… size.

Her first season had been a disaster, as her father had jovially predicted. He was a handsome fellow and had once been known as a dreadful flirt, but these days, horses and gambling took all his attention. Selina’s mother had been delicate and lovely, and Selina had never understood why she could not have taken after her instead. Papa said she took after his grandfather, who had been a great ox of a man with blazing red hair… she had not imagined he meant it as a compliment.

During her one miserable failure of a season, she’d attended balls thronged with tiny waiflike creatures who blushed if a gentleman so much as looked in their direction and then fainted because the idiotic creatures had laced themselves up so tightly. They also cried when Selina tried to gently point the fact out to them, but that was by the by.

The man Mr Briggs had called Mark picked up his shovel and began digging once more, and Selina’s eyes drifted to powerful forearms, dusted with dark hair. A jolt of something hot and unsettling shot through her and she sucked in a breath. Her instincts prickled with the certainty that Mark Briggs was not what he purported to be. Mr Archibald Briggs had intimated his cousin needed looking after, protecting even, a sentiment which had tugged at Selina’s maternal instincts, and of which she had fully approved. But those glittering green eyes had been sharp with intelligence and the kind of proud arrogance she had only ever come across in a certain breed of gentleman. That man did not need protecting. Quite the reverse was true, if she had her guess. The havoc a fellow like that could wreak among womankind boggled the mind.

Oh, here was a mystery, and one she had every intention of unravelling.

Chapter 5

Dear Bella,