The Arrangement. Lyn Stone

beyond ordinary compassion. She wanted to hold him and protect him against a world she knew could be hostile and cold.

      Kathryn began dressing for the trip back to London. As her hands worked the bodice of her dress over her breasts, she suddenly recalled Pip’s long-fingered hands, ink-stained and tanned, clutching a violin to his chest, caressing it as tenderly as a lover.

      She shoved the errant thought away. Heavens above, what had happened to her propriety and good sense? First she’d gone weak-kneed over Jon Chadwick, a world-weary cynic who probably wallowed in depravity, and now she was lusting after his innocent, younger brother. Pip was just a child, not a man to think of in such a way. He was a large, precious boy in a rather perfect adult body. A body she must learn to overlook, not look over.

      Pip needed motherly care and nurturing. The haughty Jonathan Chadwick could hardly be expected to understand that. Men simply were not born to nurture. In his overprivileged, autocratic way, Jon probably did all he knew how or had time to do.

      He simply needed help with Pip, Kathryn decided. Her help.

      Chapter Three

      

      

      Jon spurred his stallion to a lather on the way home, his feelings a jumble of agitation, anger and embarrassment. Riding full tilt failed to calm him as it usually did. Truth told, he felt more like Miss Wainwright’s Pip at the moment than he had last night in the ballroom.

      He despised the feeling. Trust a woman to twist a man’s guts like taffy. Just when he had everything more or less worked out in his life, she had to come along. Now she had tangled him up in a lie that could grow to impossible proportions. Almost worse than that, she had stirred up the lust he needed to have lie dormant. And she threatened his career, all he had left in the world at this point.

      At least all he could claim as his. His survival as a composer was definitely at stake. If Kathryn Wainwright ever found out he was Pip, she’d crucify him in print, if not in deed. His career would stop dead in its tracks. Then he might as well be that slowtop bastard writing ditties in his underwear.

      Damn. He hated that anyone—especially a woman—held that kind of power over him. Female influence ought to stop when a man shucked off his mother’s control. But even then, he’d been unable to get out from under that completely. Thanks to the promise he’d made his dying father, Lady Caroline Chadwick had kept him partially under her thumb right up until the hour she died.

      Women wielded guilt, love and old promises like weapons of war. The time had come to erect some defenses, before this new battle got out of hand. He would see Kathryn Wainwright once more, on neutral ground in London, and make it abundantly clear that she was to leave him, and that simple fellow Pip, alone. He would charm her first and, if that didn’t work, he would employ a few threats of his own.

      Jon lifted Imp’s reins, shouted a command and leapt the high stone fence by the brook. Imp sailed over the barrier, landed solidly and jerked to a halt. The mighty Chadwick sailed over his head as though weightless and landed facedown in the mud.

      “Ah, hell!” he groaned and rolled to one side, nursing his stone-bruised temple. Immediately he checked his hands for damage. God, he had twenty fingers! He’d cracked his head for certain, to be seeing double like this.

      Slowly, carefully, he staggered to his feet and caught up the dragging reins. Imp whinnied and snuffled, nudging for an apology. “All right, then! It was a damn stupid jump. And the next time you dump me, dog meat, I’ll sell you to the knackers.” He mounted after three tries to find the stirrup with an unsteady foot.

      This was the last time, he promised himself as he rode home, the very last time, he would leap before he looked.

      With Imp stabled and fed, Jon dragged himself to the back entrance of the house and into the kitchen. This morning’s bathwater, now cold as a frog’s ass and scummy with soap, stood waiting to be emptied. Without pausing to dread it, Jon peeled off the wig and muddy clothes, draped them over a chair for Grandy to clean later and stepped into the tub.

      He submerged his head and came up shuddering. When he cleared his eyes, a long-haired tortoiseshell feline greeted him with a perfunctory growl and an angry green glare.

      “Dagnabbit, I just fed you not two hours ago. God knows there’s enough four-legged food in the house to keep you busy if you weren’t so damned lazy.” He slung a spray of water in the cat’s direction. “Get out of here or I’ll give you a bath. And it’s bloody well cold, I can tell you!” Jon rose and grabbed for the still-damp toweling draped over a rickety chair.

      When he was mostly dry, he wrapped the length of cloth around his hips and scrabbled through the pie safe, searching for bread and cheese.

      “Aha, look, Dag! Grandy’s been and left us some grub. Here.” He tore off a mouthful of a mutton pasty, swallowed greedily, wolfed another bite and tossed the rest on the bare floor for the cat. The lone bottle of stout was emptied with a few noisy gulps.

      His hair dripped, sending chilling rivulets down his chest and back. Taking the stairs two at a time, he dashed to his room and shrugged into his old velvet robe. The ash-coated coals in the fireplace leapt to life when he added kindling and poked them up.

      Jon peered warily into his small shaving mirror. At least only one of him stared back. Maybe no concussion, then. He probed the bruise on his head, wincing as he touched it. Ah, well, it could have been worse, he supposed.

      He whistled Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” aria from The Magic Flute, changing a few notes as he went along. While he snuggled into his overstuffed wingback, he looked around the bedroom at the years of dirt and clutter. The Wainwright woman had a point. He ought to take better care of Pip. The thought prompted a lazy smile.

      Exhausted and comfortably warm, he drifted into a half-waking dream of a furious Kathryn Wainwright prancing around in her diaphanous little underthing. Sassy little baggage. He could even imagine her scent of lilacs.

      A clatter downstairs brought him upright and onto his feet in an instant. Good God! She was back! He tore downstairs to see what she’d tripped over. God help her if it was one of his ladies. Had he left the Strad on the floor?

      As he rounded the corner into the ballroom, a fist connected with his jaw and sent him spinning backward. Hands caught and pinned his arms behind him while a blow to the midsection took his breath away. Gasping he lifted his head and got another fist in the mouth for his trouble.

      “Now that I have your attention, Chadwick, let us get down to the business at hand. All your markers are mine. I’ll have five thousand pounds or the Stradivarius. Now!”

      “Bunrich.” Jon spat blood out of his mouth, aiming at the man’s feet. “I should have guessed.” Jon cursed his luck. Ned Bunrich had approached him several times about buying the Strad. His best guess was that the man had a wealthy client hot to add it to a collection. Fat chance of that. He slumped between the goons holding him and played for time until his head cleared.

      The violin in question, his most beautiful lady, lay on the table near the door, where he’d stuck it last night on the way up to bed. The shuffled-up sheets of his opera score camouflaged it, thank God. No one with his wits intact would be expected to treat such a treasure so casually. Scattered amid the pages of music left on the floor lay the antique lyre and his precious lute.

      Damn Kathryn Wainwright. Anyone who could make him forget his ladies, even for a moment, was dangerous. He glanced toward the large wall safe where he usually stored them. Standing wide open and empty, just as he had left it.

      The two instruments on the floor looked forlorn and helpless. There was no way he would fight the bastards in this room and risk shattering his ladies. Somehow, he had to move the conflict to another place.

      If only he’d saved the old violin he had dragged around while on campaign. Perhaps he could have fooled Bunrich with a switch. Suddenly a plan formed. Not a perfect plan, but with a bit of luck, it could buy him time to raise the money.