A MF story by Maren Smith
Perched atop his deep brown thoroughbred, Everett Garrison, the fifth son of his father, the previous Duke of Ross—not that titles meant anything in these modern times– kept his Glock unwaveringly trained on the two men who held his dazed and injured fiancée, Vetta Carr, between them via a leash of her own auburn hair.
Hoodlums, Everett thought as he stared them both down, taking in their grubby, well-worn clothes and judging them both to be solidly within England’s lower-to-middle class income levels. Thieves, in other words, and how politically incorrect it was of him to make such assumptions based solely upon appearances.
Well… that and their joint grips on Vetta’s long hair.
He’d feel guilty about it later, maybe, he decided. For now…
“Attacks on the nobility,” Everett wryly intoned, “are still punishable by hanging, as was proven not eighty years ago by one William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw-Haw. Barbaric, I know, but let her go or I will personally champion bringing executions back. In specific, drawing and quartering, just for the two of you.”
Licking his lips, the shorter of the two men tipped his head, his eyes narrowing as he glared back. “Not if we shoot you first, mate.”
The taller but visibly more nervous of the thieves edged half a step back, as if fighting not to bolt from the entire confrontation. “I told you someone would see us,” he hissed at his short companion. “I told you!”
“What was I supposed to do, eh?” Shorty snapped back, barely taking his eyes off Everett to shot him an irritated glance. “Wait until they pulled up to the house and do it there?”
“He’ll get us hanged!”
“England doesn’t execute anymore, idiot!”
Nervous fretted and sharply jerked Vetta in closer to him as if trying to use her as a shield, but Shorty quickly yanked her back in front of him. Nervous skittered away, clearly feeling exposed, and hissed, “Give me the gun!”
“Ain’t nobody giving you a gun,” Shorty irritably told him.
Nervous glanced at Everett next.
“I’m not giving you my gun, either,” Everett clarified, because of course not.
And so there they all stood, amidst the smoking three-car wreckage that Everett had just discovered on the southern-most driveway access to Brookshire, his country estate. That he wasn’t the only one with a gun surprised him. Such firearms, while not rare, were harder to get in England than America, for instance. That Shorty also had one, trained right back on Everett was an interesting feeling. In all his life, he didn’t think he’d ever felt anything more gut-curdlingly cold. And yet, Everett was nothing if not his imperial father’s son. His voice didn’t shake, and the Glock he held remained steady as a rock as he stared down the two men.
Of the three cars involved in the accident, two belonged to Everett—tangled and twisted together at the head of a thirty-foot debris trail of broken glass, twisted metal, and plastic debris starting where the collision
had obviously occurred. The BMW for the bodyguard he’d sent was a total wreck. The 1990s red Ford Fiesta hatchback Corvette that he’d bought just for Vetta hadn’t fared much better. It had rolled, and poor Vetta looked exactly as he imagined one would after an accident this horrific.
Clothes, luggage and two motionless bodies—his trusted driver, Archie Williams and the brand-new bodyguard his estate manager, Emerson, had hired just last week—lay in the ditch, side by side. There was no way this accident had planted them together like that. They had been alive at one point and the only way Everett could imagine they got where they now lay was if they’d been dragged alive from the wreckage and then shot execution-style. Had Everett not decided to go riding this morning, hoping he might catch a glimpse of his soon-to-be bride as she first arrived at Brookshire, he wouldn’t have known this had happened—on his own property, by god—or been in time to catch red-handed the two men who’d been rummaging through the wreckage when he first rode onto the scene.
Suitcases were tossed in the ditch, their contents thrown across the neatly-trimmed grass. As if they’d been searching for something. As if the thieves—murderers—had known he’d be sending these cars on this exact route to the airport and back with his long-awaited marriage prize in tow. As if this had all been planned, by someone somewhere with far more intelligence than these two idiots were capable of scrounging together.
That Vetta was still alive, her white dress dirty and torn, her hand cupped to the bleeding cut on her forehead, Everett knew meant something. It meant she wasn’t just his prize alone. She was a ransom and he was the actual target, he was sure. He also knew he’d be boiled in oil before he let anyone waltz onto his property and take what belonged to him. His ‘mail-order’ bride, his babygirl fresh from America with just the right amount of neediness to pique his Daddy Dom interest, but no knowledge on British royals and no interest in targeting one for a husband just to marry into a title, even one as useless as his ‘Lord’, bequeathed as it was upon the fifth son of the Garrison family line.
In other words, she was someone who’d fallen in love with him as a man, and these two men had targeted her as a source of income.
“What’ll we do?” Nervous whimpered to his companion.
“Shut it!” Clearly the leader of the two, Shorty retreated a half step, but that was all. He stiffened his arm, his attention diverting from the injured woman
at his feet back to Everett. He immediately switched the aim of his pistol from Everett to Vetta, then smiled, a cold, mean stretch of his lips. “You can’t shoot me, not what I don’t shoot her first. And if you miss, mate…” Shorty tsked, even as he nudged the end of his gun into the side of her ear.
Dazed as she was, Vetta barely flinched, but she did reach for the gun, blinking in confusion, as if touching it might help her realize what it was. She didn’t seem to understand the danger she was in. When Shorty yanked the gun away, she reached for it again, only reacting when he smacked her hand with the barrel. Her whole body flinched and, hugging her chastened hand to her chest, she burst into tears. “Owie!”
Shorty and Nervous both looked at her in surprise. Shorty rolled his eyes, snapping, “Jesus, woman. Get your shit together, yeah?”
“Don’t do that again,” Everett coolly cut in, every Daddy Dom instinct he had instantly and angrily ready to throw hands.
“I barely touched her,” Shorty scoffed back.
Vetta bowed over on her knees, crying and rubbing her hand. Her Little was right there, parked just beneath the surface of her outwardly adult self, desperately crying for the reassurance only a Daddy would recognize. That she seemed unable to control it, Everett was ready to blame on her obvious head injury.
Don’t fall apart yet, babygirl. Daddy’s almost got you.
And yet, for him to move now would be to risk her life.
“Exactly how many bullets do you have left?” he asked instead. “Having killed my driver and bodyguard, I don’t imagine you had time to reload before I got here.”
“You think my pistol’s spent, eh?” Shorty scoffed again. “Tell you what. Turn your horse around and leave, and I won’t make you count how many slugs I plug into your head, right between your fucking eyes, yeah?”
Growing more anxious by the second, Nervous shot his companion a horrified stare. “We really will hang now!”
“No death penalty,” Shorty sing-song reminded him, then rolled his eyes again.
“Oh, but I’m nobility and we have our own set of laws,” Everett lied. “I can bring anything back, including public executions. Especially since I intend this to be the first and last time anyone ever lays hands on my—“babygirl”—wife.”
A glint of dark calculation
flitted through Shorty’s narrowing eyes. “She ain’t your wife, Noddy. She’s gone and married someone else, and he wants her back. So… sorry, love.”
The shift of Shorty’s hand on the hilt of his gun was Everett’s only warning before the other man abruptly took aim. They both fired.
They both missed.
Everett’s horse startled, but already Everett had his leg up over the saddle. As he leapt off, the murderers bolted, dashing off the road and into the surrounding woods with Everett in swift pursuit. He didn’t follow far. Stopping just off the road, he listened to the men’s receding crashes through the underbrush until the sound was so distant, he knew they wouldn’t be coming back. Racing back to Vetta, he dropped to his knee and wrapped her in his arms.
“Shh, shh, my little duck.” Pulling her in closer, he got his first good look at the bruising bump and cut on her head. “Shh,” he murmured again, wincing at the nastiness of it. “It’s okay, babygirl. Daddy’s here.”
She turned her head into his shoulder, but something in her expression made him think she really meant to turn away. The entire left side of her head was matted with blood, turning the shiny auburn of her hair an ugly reddish-mud hue. Her fingers trembled when she raised her hand, looking first at the flushed back where Shorty had struck her, and then at her palm and bloody fingertips.
Everett had to catch her hand to keep her from touching the oozing head wound again.
“Wh-what happened?” she slurred, her American accent heavy.
“I don’t know,” he told her honestly. Snapping his handkerchief out of his breast pocket, he pressed it to the lump. “Where else are you hurt, lovey?”
She tried to shake her head until he clasped his hand on the back of her skull, holding her still.
With her other hand, she rubbed the back of her neck instead.
“Little bit of whiplash, eh?” Slipping his bigger hand under hers, he gently rubbed it, too. “We’ll get it looked at right soon. Anything else hurt?”
Hesitating only a moment, Vetta shyly offered up her hand. Which was strange, because for the last ten months that he’d been conversing with her back and forth across the pond, shy was the last word he’d have thought to describe the woman he’d proposed to. Still, the back of it was barely pink, but the woe of her expression was all too real for
him to so much as crack a smile.
“They weren’t nice blokes, were they?”
She had a nice bump on her head, some bruises and scratches, but otherwise, she seemed unharmed.
“Come on.” He gave her hand a careful squeeze. “Let’s get you home so the doctor can look you over.”
Blinking, she looked at him directly, her green eyes the greenest he’d yet seen. God, how easy it would be to fall into those lost little emerald pools and just lose himself for the rest of his life.
“Who are you again?” she asked.
“It’s Daddy, little one. Daddy Everett. Sit still, please.” He gave her hand another squeeze, trying to impress upon her that his command was not an idle request. “I’m going to fetch my horse. Stay right here, understand?”
He hoped she wasn’t too injured for a minor trip on horseback to the sprawling country estate he’d renamed Brookshire on the day he’d bought it. While he couldn’t hear so much as a twig snapping in the woods that flanked his driveway, that didn’t mean their assailants had gone, so he didn’t want to move too far from her side. Despite his assurances, he knew lingering wasn’t safe for either of them, but neither could he afford to leave her here long enough for him to go for help.
Everett started to stand, but Vetta caught his hand. Her beautiful eyes searched his, the confusion and pain mingling there suddenly replaced by fear.
“Daddy Everett,” she pleaded, the hurt she was feeling evident in her shaky voice, and yet that special word on her lips making his insides turn warm and lovey-dovey. “Daddy, please…”
“It’s all right.” He kissed her on the forehead, careful not to brush her wound. “I’m not going to leave you, but I have to get my horse. See? Goliath is right there. Guess what special little girl is about to get a ride on his back. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
“No!” She struggled to her knees, trying to stand up with him but her legs refused to hold her. “Please,” she begged, falling back onto her knees.
“Daddy… tell me… please. Wh-who am I?”
***
The minute those words were out of her mouth, Porscha Carr regretted them. Who am I? Really? Nobody was going to believe she had amnesia, and yet she was desperate, scared, and boy, did she ever run with it.
She even had a bump on the head to help the ruse along… but only because she’d taken her seatbelt off, ready to bail from the car from the moment the chase had started and bullets began flying. Tuck and roll, that had been the only thought in her head. Well, that and how the hell had Rick found her so fast?
The need to run had locked every muscle she had during the worst of that car chase. She’d known from the first tap on the bumper that she’d stood a better chance of getting away by running through woods and fields where the hatchback in pursuit of them couldn’t follow. But no, every time the Corvette had slowed down, she’d chickened out. Jumping from a moving car was harder than she’d been braced for, and what the fuck? If anyone was supposed to have a gun, shouldn’t it have been the bodyguard in the BMW directly behind them? But, nooooooo. Not only was he unarmed, he was in a different vehicle entirely. He might just as well have been another of her ex-husband’s incompetent hired gunmen. God knows, he’d crashed into their bumper so many times, he might as well have been working for them.
Either way, she was definitely better off on her own. Even in England, a country she’d never been to before. Hell, she’d never been out of the United States before. Why, oh why, had she let her twin sister, Vetta, talk her into this?
Who am I?
She knew damn well who she was: Porscha Carr, twenty-five years old last March, gullible idiot who’d thought she’d been marrying for love when she’d said yes to Rick’s marriage proposal. But then on the eve of their marriage, he’d tried to kill her. She’d escaped, barely, and the ink on their annulment wasn’t even dry yet when Vetta had come up with this cockamamy plan.
“Marry my fiancé in England,” she’d said.
“He’s rich and powerful. He’ll keep you safe,” she’d said.
“We’re twins!” she’d said. “He’ll never know the difference. No one could ever come up with a better plan than this.”
Staring up into Everett Garrison’s worried eyes—her new Daddy now, whether or not she’d ever talked to or seen more than a photo of him—Porscha panicked and now here she was, being helped up off the ground by the fiancé her sister hadn’t actually wanted.
Porscha couldn’t imagine why not. The man was gorgeousness personified, but in a blond and blue-eyed way, while Vetta had always nursed a life-long fascination with dark, handsome men weak-willed enough for her to control.
Everett was tall, too. Much taller than Porscha expected, since her twin also had a penchant for only dating men she could tower over in all those high-heeled, fuck-me shoes she liked to wear. How Vetta could walk so gracefully in those things was one of many life skills that Vetta knew like the back of her elegant hand and Porscha never managed to figure out.
And yet, what had Vetta done the instant Porscha came crying when her husband of less than four hours tried to run her over with her own stupid car? She’d dropped everything, tossed Everett—figuratively if not literally—straight into Porscha’s lap before putting her on the first plane leaving for England. Where in that mess Vetta had also sent Everett a “Yes, I love you and can’t wait to be your wife” text Porscha didn’t know, but here she was. With Rick still gunning
for her and Everett the only safe harbor she had, albeit only because she and her sister had lied through their collective teeth to make him that.
It was wrong. So wrong, and yet what had she done but immediately expounded upon all the untruths that had brought her to Everett with yet another untruth?
Porscha hated lies.
“It’s all right,” Everett murmured, cupping her face between his strong hands as he gently forced her to meet his concerned eyes. “Ducky, your name is Vetta Carr and I know exactly who you are.”
Porscha did her best not to flinch.
“You’re safe with me, I promise. Daddy’s got you, and no one will ever hurt you again. That’s a promise you can believe.”
She wished.
His brawny arm lent her more than enough strength and stability to help pick her up off her knees. Tucking her under his protective side-embrace, he walked her to his horse.
His horse, for god’s sake.
Like a knight of old in full-blown tan and red British riding gear, complete with a stupid-looking hat that buckled under his chin, and a handgun tucked into the waistband of his britches.
Stop being bitchy, she told herself sternly. Everett had saved her from her ex’s assassins; she ought to be grateful for that. But all she felt was shock, the pain in her head, and the sadness of knowing she had screwed up her life so badly she’d had to flee her own country under her sister’s identity to avoid being murdered.
Tucking her hand into his, Everett brought her around to face the side of the massive animal or, rather, his horse’s saddle. The stirrup dangled higher than her thigh. No way was she going to be able to get her foot that high.
“Alley oop,” Everett said in faux cheerfulness. “Don’t worry, Daddy will help you up.”
Daddy…
The word shivered through her, prickling up the ladder of Porscha’s spine to burrow into the back of her skull. Rick was supposed to be her Daddy. That was the kind of dating site she’d first met him on, and they’d clicked so hard. He was kind, gentle, strong, protective, and he’d had the Daddy routine down pat. He’d given her rules and consequences, and he’d proved himself to be one hell of a good spanker once she’d worked up the nerve to meet him in person.
He'd been everything she’d ever dreamed her someday Daddy would be.
Right up until he tried to kill her.
That her sister, Vetta, also had a desire for a Daddy Dom of her own had been something of a shock. Porscha had never known her twin was a Little, or even that she craved domination. If anything, Vetta had always seemed more like a domme, always needing to be in control, and definitely enjoying a measure of authority over every man Porscha had ever seen her with.
The warmth of Everett’s hands dropped to her waist, leaving Porscha barely enough time to grab the saddle horn before he lifted her straight up off the ground, hefting her high enough for her leg to swing up over the saddle. She plopped into the seat while Everett continued to hold her, keeping her there until he was certain her balance was secure. His lingering hands on her hips sent a whorl of butterflies dancing through her stomach. Probably because of all the trauma, or so she told herself.
Grabbing the saddle horn himself, Everett stuck his foot in the stirrup and jumped up behind her onto a saddle built for one. His powerful legs encircled her buttocks and thighs, his muscular chest bumped solidly against her back, and the embrace of his arms as they came around her, gathering up the reins to turn his horse toward home, were horribly, terribly, awkwardly… comforting.
Porscha kept her back straight, unwilling to let herself fall victim to another man’s embrace. She tried to ignore him, but the horse loped along in the direction Everett steered it, the natural roll and bump as her bottom bounced in the saddle, sending all the wrong feelings jolting through her. Every up followed by its inevitable down began to feel more like the rhythmic swats of a gentle spanking, something she didn’t need…
Well, okay. She did need it and had ever since Rick had destroyed her confidence and her life. But that didn’t mean she wanted it.
She hated being in this situation. She hated being called by the wrong name, thought of as the wrong sister, and now she was telling Everett she didn’t even know who she was? She hated lying, but the unescapable truth of it was, the lie was the perfect solution to the most immediate problem in the scheme Vetta had cooked up. No one, including
Everett, would think it odd if she made a mistake, said something that contradicted whatever Vetta might have told him in their many text and face-timing sessions online when all she had to do was say she couldn’t remember who she was.
It was the perfect alibi.
And a horrible lie.
Porscha hated herself for both.
It wasn’t yet noon, and already Brookshire had received more visitors than it had in perhaps two years.
Dr. Watts was the first to arrive and, with Mrs. Morris, his head housekeeper, they vanished into the Blue Room where Everett had taken Vetta, depositing her gently upon the bed. As soon as the constabulary arrived, Everett allowed the housemaids to replace him at his bride’s bedside and gratefully took his leave. Although not one to admit to a weak stomach where blood was concerned, it was something altogether different to have to hold a struggling, sobbing woman down while the gash in her head was washed, sterilized with stinging liniment and carefully sewn shut using fine thread and many very small stitches in an effort to prevent notable scarring. He’d much rather face down two armed murderers than to have to stand strong in the face of his woman’s tears while her already tender head was repeated attacked by Watt’s surgical needle.
Escorting the constable and deputies back to the scene of the robbery where his BMW, Corvette, and all their assorted contents still lay scattered across the road, Everett did his best to give accurate descriptions of Shorty and Nervous and their direction of flight.
“We haven’t had this kind of robbery in years,” one deputy said, looking over the luggage scattered across the road.
“If it was a robbery,” the constable corrected.
Following the officer as he walked carefully around the destroyed car, Everett asked, “Do you think it wasn’t?”
Poking through the wreckage, the constable looked over the shattered windshield and bodies of Everett’s personal employees. “Looks like the vehicle rolled twice, so they were travelling at a fairly high speed. They knew they were being chased.” An older man, his experienced eyes must have followed clues too subtle for Everett to recognize. All he saw was an awful mess, but he dutifully trailed the constable the length of the lead car until they were standing in front of the hood. “Driver and bodyguard either jumped or were thrown. That bloke there looks to have a broken arm, but death came from a bullet to the head each. Which takes us to the survivor.”
“You mean Vetta.” Although grateful to move on, instead of staring down at the bloody faces of men he had employed, Everett found himself once more standing at the rear of the car.
“Two shots to the boot,” the constable said, pointing out the bullet holes. “But nothing in the BMW. Were your bodyguard not lying in the ditch by your driver, I’d suggest his hand is where these bullets came from. Only thing I don’t quite understand is, where’s the robbery?”
Everett studied the sprawling mess of suitcases, all of which had been unpacked with contents strewn all over the road and ditch. “What do you mean? They rifled through everything. Evidence of that lies all over the place.”
“Does it really?” The constable pointed to a broken suitcase some ten feet down the
road behind them. Smashed open when the car rolled, ladies’ underwear, clothing, and two sets of shoes lay in the dirt and gravel. “Is that or is that not a jewelry box?”
“Where?” Everett closed the distance by at least half before he noticed a glint of daylight reflecting off of a pearl necklace abandoned in the grass. After that, his eyes had no trouble picking out stray necklaces, pendants, bracelets and rings. Some looked quite expensive; most to his admittedly uneducated eye looked like costume jewelry, and as for the rest… well, those were jewelry meant for a child. Plastic butterfly bracelets and the lot. He almost stepped on what looked like a pink plastic broach, tangled up in a handful of hair bows and ribboned barrettes and hair scrunchies with Disney characters on them.
Hunkering down, he picked up the nearest bow. It had mermaids, fish and crabs on it. “How did I not notice this?”
“Because, sir,” the constable said wryly, “you see jewelry all the time. I don’t. Neither do our thieves. So why would they leave it behind? Why has nothing been rifled through?” He pointed back to the bodies of Everett’s employees. “The pockets aren’t turned out. Both still have their wallets in their coats, money and credit cards still in them. If the point was robbery, why didn’t they take the money or the jewelry? Or at least the pieces that look real.”
“Because I interrupted them,” Everett answered, but now he was wondering too. He thought back, trying to remember exactly how it had happened, from the moment he heard the squealing tires, shots and crashes, and spurred his horse toward the scene of… was it really an accident? Because the more the constable said, the less likely it seemed to Everett that it was. “They didn’t take anything because I arrived too soon?”
“They had time enough to shoot the witnesses and drag your lady out of the backseat,” the constable pointed out. “Why not shoot her like they did the others where they found her in the car?”
Everett looked at the torn back of the carriage. “Ransom?”
Shaking his head once, the constable said, “No, sir. This was murder, pure and simple. Leastwise, that’s how it looks to me. And the best witness we have as to the why of it all is lying in your house—”
“—with no memory of who she is,” Everett finished for him again.
“Awfully convenient, don’t you think?” The constable circled the crumpled BMW, but if he saw anything else of note, he didn’t say so to Everett. “We’ll
put out the notices, send out a description and a few runners, and see if we can’t flush out the bastards who did this. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll remember who she is or something that can help us catch them.”
And if she didn’t? Everett kept that question to himself. If Shorty and Nervous really were thieves, using murder as a way to keep from being identified, what was the likelihood that they’d risk prison by coming back to finish what they’d started? Everett doubted that was likely, especially since they’d now have to kill him too. But if they weren’t common thieves, and after having added up the constable’s observations on the matter, he was beginning to think they couldn’t possibly be, then the likelihood that they might come back was much, much higher.
What in the world was going on?
Everett sent every groundskeeper he had to help clean up the mess on the road. Old Edmund Mosley, the auto wizard who took care of all Everett’s cars, cried when he saw the BMW. That was almost as hard to watch as was the ambulance that came to collect the bodies of his men. He had no idea what he was going to tell Maggie Morris, his housekeeper, who suddenly had the extra duty of being nursemaid to his injured babygirl. He’d talked to the police, he’d talked to the doctor. The only person he hadn’t talked to was Vetta herself, because the instant he’d taken her home and shown her the Little bedroom he’d spent the last five months creating just for her, she’d crawled immediately into bed, covered her head with a pillow and pretended to fall asleep.
He couldn’t blame her. She’d just had the most terrifying experience any person could fall victim to. Hell, had it been him in her place, he probably would have crawled into the nearest bed too. Except, of course he wouldn’t. If nothing else, his father had stalwartly ingrained in all his sons that the nobility never hid. Not from scandals, not from the press, and although murdering thieves had never been one of the examples his father had used to drive the point home, Everett was pretty sure it would have been if only his father had thought of it.
At this point, however, there was nothing more he could do… except go home. When he got there, however, his normally quiet house wasn’t.
“Oh! She’s a witch!” he heard one of the maid’s exclaiming as he pushed open the door. “An absolute witch!”
Closing the door behind him, he was just in time to see Mary flying down the second-floor balcony staircase to join Mrs. Morris as she was racing up them.
“She bit me! She actually bit me!” Mary cried, shoving back her sleeve to show her arm. “All I did was try to help her up. She was all dizzy and could barely sit the pot! And she bit me!”
“Poor lamb,” Mrs. Morris clucked.
“Poor lamb, my arse!” Mary indignantly squealed. “She has a mouth full of very sharp teeth!”
They both stopped when they saw Everett. Instantly, Mary dropped her arm and ducked back behind the housekeeper to become a shadow against the wall, her head bowed and shaking hands demurely folded.
“Lord Garrison, sir,” Mrs. Morris greeted, coming immediately to him. “The mail arrived an hour ago. Will you be retiring to your office and may I
bring you biscuits and tea?”
She stopped when Everett waved his hand.
“Forgive my bad manners and eavesdropping,” he said as he climbed the stairs to Mary. “Dare I conclude the biting witch and our injured houseguest might be one and the same?”
The maid flushed under the look Mrs. Morris tossed her. Drawing herself upright, his matronly housekeeper both firmly and politely told him, “She’s had a bump on the head, a fright to boot, and lord only knows what else. Any of those would make anyone out of sorts.”
With the unpleasant images of the car wreck still fresh in his mind, Everett wasn’t about to argue. “That it would, Mrs. Morris. That it would.”
He continued up the stairs, with his housekeeper falling into obedient step behind him. Mary waited long enough for them to pass, before grabbing up her skirts and scuttling off to find something to do anywhere in the house that her royal employer wasn’t. Everett had no objections and he wasn’t at all upset by her complaints against his future wife. He did, however, know how to deal with it. After all, he and Vetta had talked at length about the first things they would do once she got here. She had told him how nervous she was to finally meet him, and how overwhelming the packing to move had become. She needed a spanking, needed to know through all of her senses that she belonged to him, and he had agreed. What better way was there to start any relationship, but by building the routines that would govern the rest of their lives?
He was a Daddy Dom, with an American Little with whom he could practice all the kinky desires he’d always had and which would limit the risk of world-wide scandal should it ever become public knowledge that he liked to Daddy his women with rules and routines, stories at bedtimes, and spankings—both the fun kind as well as those for discipline. Apparently, just as Vetta had suggested last night on the phone, it was time for Daddy to step in and make his naughty little biter a good little girl once more.
Everett stalked the length of the second floor, passed the guest suites and his mother’s favorite sunroom, back when she’d loved living in the country and before she became so immune to the British chill that she refused to leave her London home.
His room was at the absolute end of the hall, with Vetta in the blue room next door so he could keep her close until they married. Sooner or later, he
ought to send a letter to his brothers, apprising them of the situation. In it, he had no idea what he was going to say.
Taking hold of the handle, Everett ran into the door before he realized, while the latch moved freely, his entrance into the room had been blocked from the other side. It barely rattled when his boot and knee struck the wood. He was lucky. If he’d been paying a little less attention, he would have struck it face-first.
“Gracious!” Mrs. Morris said, her gray eyes widening as he rattled the knob, then braced his shoulder against the wood and gave an experimental push. “The doctor said he gave the girl enough sedative to keep her sleeping all day and night long!”
“Apparently not.” Sizing up the door, Everett gave it one more push before deciding whatever she’d blocked it with wasn’t worth the inevitable injury to his shoulder. “I guess we’re going in the side way.”
Stepping around his housekeeper, he headed for the Pearl Room one door down.
Her house keys jingled as Mrs. Morris pulled them from her belt. Quickening her step, the aged housekeeper reached the locked door that adjoined the two bedrooms just before he did. Sliding the key into the lock, when she pushed, again the door was barricaded from the other side.
“Well, how do you like that?” Pushing harder barely rattled the door in its frame, and Mrs. Morris entire attitude shifted from startled to disgruntled
in a single huff of breath. “Oh, I’ve half a mind to cut a birch!”
She sidestepped when Everett gestured and then he too tried the door, not that it budged for him any better than it had for her.
“Your room,” Mrs. Morris said. “The adjoining door.”
Everett stopped her before she could march more than a few irate steps from his side. “I’m willing to wager, Mrs. Morris, that door is every bit as blocked.” Frowning, he drew a breath for patience and then knocked. “Vetta, my duck,” he called as he leaned into the unyielding wood. “Open the door, love.”
He waited, listening carefully, but he heard nothing—not even the faintest whisper of movement—from the other side.
“Young lady,” he tried again, knocking sternly a second time. “I am willing to be as patient as any man can. However, I find that patience sorely tested when I am being locked out of a room in my own home. I bear you no ill will. Now please, open the door.”
Everett waited almost a full minute, but there was nothing. No sound at all came from within.
“Blast,” he said mildly, then remembered his sensitive housekeeper. “My apologies.”
“It’s not the first blue word I’ve heard, sir,” she said, but the lines around her mouth were deep with disapproval. “What next?”
Taking off his coat, Everett handed it to her and turned his attention to the Pearl Room’s balcony windows. He opened the glass-paned doors and stepped outside. Although early in the evening now, plenty of daylight still brightened the world enough for him to clearly see every handhold hiding within the thick growth of ivy that climbed the trellises up the side of the manor house. He rolled his sleeves.
“I haven’t done this since I was a boy,” he commented as he threw his leg over the rail and found his first firm footage on the trellis.
“Oh, be careful!” Mrs. Morris hovered just behind him, her hands at the ready in case he should slip.
He didn’t for a second think her strong enough to catch him. Glancing to the ground a good broken-neck’s distance below him, he resolved not to think about that. He eyed the Blue Room’s balcony rail some fifteen feet across from him.
“Mrs. Morris,” he announced as he reached into the ivy to find his first steady hand and foothold on the hidden wrought-iron trellis. “Should I fall, you have my permission to cut that birch.”
“Oh-ho!” the housekeeper laughed, not at all amused. “I’ll not be writing any of this to your brother! You mind where you step, or I’ll be cutting one for you too!”
Everett cracked the smallest smile. That’s what happened when one was born the fifth son of a Duke—even the servants failed to give the proper respect. Of course, it didn’t help matters that the stalwart housekeeper had started her tenure as his nanny. Still… thirty years old and still threatened with a good thrashing.
The trellis gave an ominous creak when he tested it under his full weight. After that, the only thing on Everett’s mind was finding the next sturdy hand and foot hold. Within a few tense steps, he reached the other balcony and was safely over the rail onto firm floor once more.
Hands shielding his eyes, he tried to peek through the interior curtains, but it was bright outside and the curtains too tightly drawn. Mary might have
done that, or Mrs. Morris herself, as a way to help their guest sleep. He’d have felt better about entering if only he could see where Vetta was or what her defensive plans at this point might be. His hand found the door latch and pushed. Half expecting this access to be barricaded too, he was surprised when the door opened without the slightest hitch.
Parting the curtains, Everett slipped inside. There was plenty of daylight spilling in around him to banish back the gloom of an otherwise darkened room. At first glance, he saw no hint of her, but the barricades she’d built behind each of the three doors—the teddy-bear wardrobe blocking access to the hall; the white-and-pink-painted writing desk, two chairs and the toy chest he’d built just for her and which should have crowned the foot of the bed, completely hid the Pearl Room door; and the dressing table, diaper changing table, her naughty chair and every stuffy in the place thrown up against his bedroom door—were truly impressive. The only thing she hadn’t moved was the bed, and he understood that completely. That giant four-poster monstrosity was so heavy, he wasn’t sure he could move it. Which was the only reason he hadn’t replaced it with a crib.
Opening both halves of the curtains, Everett let sunlight into the room. Considering most of the rooms in this house, the Blue Room wasn’t the largest and yet it had been perfect for what he wanted: a proper bedroom for a little girl who needed a Daddy to make her feel safe and protected, loved and wanted.
“Hello,” he called, announcing his presence in the most congenial way he knew how, although if she was hiding, then she surely had to know he was here.
A faint scuttling noise drew his attention back to the only thing in the room big enough and undisturbed enough to hide an entire person. Approaching the foot of the bed, Everett hunkered down on one knee. Moving slowly, so as not to frighten her even more, he lifted the bed skirt and looked beneath.
She was huddled under the headboard as close to the wall as she could flatten herself. Her eyes were huge, her face pale. In one arm, she fiercely hugged a stuffed sloth in cowboy garb, and in her hand, she was armed with a rather sharp and effective-looking letter opener shaped like a dirk.
“Hello, baby,” Everett said softly.
She stared at him, her shifting grip on the letter opener her only movement.
“Do you remember me?”
She said nothing.
“Everett Garrison. Do you remember where you are?”
Her hand on the dirk flexed again, knuckles whitening where she gripped it.
“I’ll take that as a no. All right, I suppose it only fair that I make myself available to answer any and all questions you might have.” He looked at the floor, then back under the bed at her, and finally up on top of it. He cleared his throat, then dropped down far enough to risk losing himself in the gorgeous green of her eyes. “Would you care for a pillow? Forgive my saying, but you don’t look at all comfortable and since I’m beginning to suspect this might take a while, would you mind if I fetched us each at least one?”
She didn’t so much as squeak.
He nodded once. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Starting to get up, Everett stopped, thought about it, and then dropped back down where she could see him again. He held up a warning finger. “I am going to go to that end of the bed. I will take two pillows, put one on the floor for you and bring the other right back here to this spot. Now you know exactly what I am going to, but sad to say, you have me at a disadvantage since I cannot say the same thing about you. So, let me narrow your options. I am not threatening you. I am not going to try to grab at you or take away your knife. However, if you try or, God forbid, succeed in stabbing me with that thing, I am going to be extremely put out. So put out, in fact, that I will put you immediately over my knee and paddle your bottom far harder and longer than the spanking you already have coming for biting poor Mary.” He gave her his sternest look. “Extremely. Put. Out,” he emphasized. After that, there was nothing left for him to do but fetch the pillows and pray she didn’t hobble him.
His ankles prickled with every step that carried him to the head of the massive. Selecting two pillows, he placed one upon the floor—his hand tingled the entire time it was within stabbing range—and then he retreated. He didn’t breathe easier until he was back down on the floor, with her where he could see her.
She hadn’t moved an inch, although it did look as if she were hugging the sloth tighter. With him watching, she deliberately put the letter opener down on the floor.
“There’s Daddy’s good little girl,” he soothed, smiling gently when some of the stiffness slipped from her tense shoulders. “Are you thirsty? Would you like a drink before we start?”
She shook her head
in fast, tiny jerks.
“Very well.” He lay down on the floor at the foot of the bed, stretching out on his back with his head upon the pillow, his hands folded upon his stomach and his long legs crossed at the ankles. “Much better. All right, who am I? Let’s begin at the beginning. On a cold and snow-cast winter morning some thirty years ago, after a full two-day’s exhaustive laboring, I was born. As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, this not from any clear memory of my own, but because my mother lamented each and every one of those forty-six hours loudly and often throughout my childhood whenever I, boys being the mischievous chaps we are, did something wrong…”
Vetta was a captive audience at best, but he did his best to regale her with stories of his school days, the fascinating history of the house, its ties to the Crown and how the estate had come to be gifted to his family before Everett bought it for himself. He even talked about what it was like to live in the country, in a home he had loved every summer they’d come here.
He talked about his past dating experiences and how miserable it had been to find every proper British woman he’d ever dated hadn’t want him. Oh, his family ties, sure. His money, absolutely. But not him, the man, instead of the royal bloodline that didn’t even matter in society these days.
He told her all the ups and downs he’d discovered when he first expanded his search to Italy, Spain, Russia, China and finally to America. He’d met a lot of women on a lot of dating apps, but Vetta had been the first that he had talked to who he felt had really listened to him. She’d been engaging and cheerful, and she’d had a beautiful sense of humor. She’d actually made him laugh, and for Everett who would likely forever be haunted by the edicts his father had browbeaten into all of his sons—don’t talk with your mouth full; men of power have no friends, family or lovers, only users; and the capper of them all: stop laughing, you look like a braying donkey—that was probably what had drawn him to her so fast and so hard.
He didn’t feel royal when he was with her. He felt human, and damn if he didn’t love her for it.
And then, midway through telling her that, he glanced over at her under the bed to find her sound asleep, still clutching her sloth to her chest, the pillow he’d given her finally tucked up under her head and her face turned
towards him, as if she’d been watching him talk right up until exhaustion—or Dr. Watts’ medication—overwhelmed her.
Either that, or he’d just bored the poor girl clean out of consciousness.
Climbing up off the floor, he crawled up the length of the bed until he could reach in under the frame and stroke her soft hair. Her only response was the softest, cutest snore.
Pulling a blanket down off the bed, he had to crawl halfway under the wood frame to cover her up. For fear of waking her, he dropped a soft kiss onto the back of her hand rather than her forehead. Or the sweet bow of the lips he’d been aching to kiss since long before she’d ever arrived.
There’d be plenty of time for that once she was feeling better. Safer. No matter how much he wanted it otherwise, he could wait.
Smoothing stray wisps of auburn hair back from her all-too-innocent face, he crawled out from under the bed and let her get her rest. ...