The Leopard Prince

“That’s where you learned to read and write.”

Harry nodded. “Bennet was better at letters than I, even though he was younger, but I best him at numbers. So, yes, I spent quite a bit of time with him.”

“What happened?”

He looked at her. “His father whipped my father when I was twelve and he ten.”

George thought about what it would be like if she’d lost someone close to her when she was twelve. Someone she saw every day. Someone she fought and played with. Someone she took it for granted would always be there. It would be like having a limb cut off.

How far would one go to correct such a wrong?

She shivered and looked up. They were at the river that divided the Granville land from her own. Harry slowed the horse to a walk as it splashed into the ford. The rain was coming down hard now, making the muddy water jump. George looked downstream where the water deepened and swirled in a whirlpool. A shape floated there.

“Harry.” She touched his arm and pointed.

He swore.

The horse waded from the stream, and he pulled the gig over, tying the reins off quickly. He helped her down from the gig before walking to the bank ahead of her. George’s shoes sank into the mud as she followed. When she reached him, Harry was very still. Then she saw why. The body of a sheep twisted slowly in the water; the rain pelting the fleece gave it a strange, lifelike movement.

She shuddered. “Why doesn’t it float away?”

“It’s tethered.” Harry nodded grimly to a branch hanging over the water.

She saw that a rope was tied around the branch and disappeared into the water. Presumably, the other end attached to some part of the sheep. “But why would anyone do such a thing?” She felt a frisson run down her spine. “It’s mad.”

“Maybe to foul the stream.” He sat and began to pull off his boots.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to cut it loose.” He unbuttoned his coat. “It’ll fetch up on a bank farther downstream and a farmer will pull it out. At least it won’t spoil the whole stream.”

By now he was in shirtsleeves, soaked through by the rain. He pulled his knife out of his boot and slid down the bank into the stream. The water came to midthigh, but as he waded slowly out, the water quickly rose to chest level. The rain had made the normally placid stream boil.

“Do be careful,” George called. If he lost his footing, he might be swept downstream. Did he know how to swim?

He didn’t acknowledge her call and kept wading. When he reached the rope, he grabbed it where it stretched above the water and started to saw. The strands unraveled rapidly, and suddenly the sheep spun away downstream. Harry turned and began to wade back, the water whirling angrily about him. He slipped and his head disappeared beneath the water without a sound.

Oh, God. George’s heart leaped painfully in her chest. She started for the bank without knowing what she could do. But then he was upright again, his soaked hair plastered to his cheeks. He emerged and wrung out the front of his shirt, transparent now from the water. George could see his nipples and the swirl of dark hair where the shirt stuck against his chest.

“Someday I’d like to see a man nude,” she said.

Harry froze.

Slowly he straightened from pulling on his boots. His green eyes met hers, and she could have sworn a fire burned there. “Is that an order, my lady?” he asked, his voice so deep it was almost a dark purr.

“I—” Oh, goodness gracious, yes! A part of George desperately wanted to see Harry Pye take off that shirt. To see what his shoulders and belly looked like naked. To find out if there really were curls of hair on his chest. And after that, if he removed his breeches… She really couldn’t help it. Her eyes dropped to that part of a man’s anatomy that a lady never, ever, under any circumstances let her gaze wander to. The water had done an exquisite job of molding Harry’s breeches to his lower limbs.

George drew a breath. Opened her mouth.

And Harry cursed and turned away. A cart and pony were coming up the lane.

Well, damn.

“YOU CAN’T REALLY THINK Harry Pye is poisoning your sheep.” Bennet’s words were phrased as a question but said as a statement.

Not two minutes back and the lad was already setting himself against him. But then the boy had always taken Pye’s part. Silas snorted. “I don’t think. I know Pye is doing the killing.”

Bennet frowned and poured himself a tumbler of whiskey. He held the decanter up in question.

Silas shook his head and leaned back in the leather-covered chair behind his study desk. The room was his favorite, all male in its feel. Mounted antlers circled the study, just below the ceiling. A deep, black fireplace took up the entire wall at the room’s far end. Over it was a classical painting: The Rape of the Sabine Women. Swarthy men tearing the clothes from fair-skinned, screaming wenches. He sometimes got prick-proud just looking at the thing.

“But poison?” Bennet threw himself into a chair and started tapping his fingers on the arm.

His younger son aggravated him; but even now, Silas could not help feeling proud of him. This one should have been his heir. Thomas would never have the balls to confront his father. Silas had known it the moment he’d first seen Bennet, bawling and red-faced, in his mother’s arms. He’d looked into the infant’s face and a voice inside him had whispered, this one—this one out of all his other get—would be the son he, Silas, would be proud of. So he’d taken the babe from that whore’s arms and brought him home. His wife had pouted and wept, but Silas had soon let her know he wouldn’t change his mind and she’d had to relent. Some might still remember that Bennet wasn’t legally born, that he’d come from the loins of the gatekeeper’s wife, but they wouldn’t dare speak that knowledge aloud.

Not while Silas Granville ruled this land.

Bennet shook his head. “Poison isn’t the method Harry would use if he wanted revenge on you. He loves the land and the people who farm it.”

“Loves the land?” Silas scoffed. “How can he? He doesn’t own any land. He’s naught but a paid custodian. The land he tends and works on belongs to someone else.”

“But the farmers still come to him, don’t they?” Bennet asked softly, his eyes narrowed. “They ask him his opinion; they follow his guidance. Even many of your own tenants go to Harry when they have a problem—or at least they did before all this started. They wouldn’t dare come to you.”

A line of pain shot along Silas’s left temple. “Why should they? I’m not the tavern keep, someone for the farmers to bawl their troubles to.”

“No, you’re not interested in other people’s troubles, are you?” Bennet drawled. “But their respect, their allegiance—that’s a different matter.”

He had the allegiance of the local people. Didn’t they fear him? Stupid, dirty peasants, to seek the council of one of their own just because he’d risen a little from their ranks. Silas felt sweat drip down his neck. “Pye’s envious of his betters. He wishes he was an aristocrat.”

“Even if he was envious, he wouldn’t use this method to get back at his betters, as you term it.”

“Method?” Silas slammed the flat of his hand on his desk. “You talk as if he were a Machiavellian prince instead of a common land steward. He’s the son of a whore and a thief. What type of method do you think he’d use other than sneaking around poisoning animals?”

“A whore.” Bennet’s lips thinned as he poured himself another finger of whiskey. Probably how he spent all his time in London—on drink and women. “If Harry’s mother—my mother—was a whore, who do you think made her so?”

Silas scowled. “What do you mean, talking to me in that tone? I’m your father, boy. Don’t you ever forget that.”

“As if I’m likely to forget that you sired me.” Bennet gave a bark of laughter.

“You should be proud—” Silas began.

His son sneered and emptied his glass.

Silas surged to his feet. “I saved you, boy! If it weren’t for me—”

Bennet flung his tumbler into the grate. The glass exploded, flinging sparkling shards onto the carpet. “If it weren’t for you, I would’ve had a mother, not your frozen bitch of a wife who was too proud to show affection for me!”

Silas swept the papers from his desk with his arm. “Is that what you want, boy? A mother’s tit to suckle?”

Bennet turned white. “You’ve never understood.”

“Understood? What’s there to understand between a life lived in the muck and one in a manor? Between a starving bastard and an aristocrat who can afford all that’s good in life? I gave you that. I gave you everything.”

Bennet shook his head and stalked to the door. “Leave Harry alone.”

He shut the door behind him.

Silas raised his arm to swipe at the only thing still on his desk, the inkstand, but he paused when he saw his hand. It was shaking. Bennet. He sank into his chair.

Bennet.

He’d brought him up strong, made sure he could ride like a demon and fight like a man. He’d always favored the boy and made no bones about it. Why should he? Couldn’t anyone see that this was the son a man could be proud of? In return he’d expected… what? Not like or love, but respect, certainly. Yet, his second son treated him like a pile of dung. Came to Granville House only for money. And now took the side of a baseborn servant against his own sire. Silas pushed away from his desk. He needed to deal with Harry Pye before he became any more of a threat. He couldn’t let Pye drive a wedge between himself and Bennet.

The door opened a crack, and Thomas peeked around it like a timid girl.

“What do you want?” Silas was too tired to yell.

“I saw Bennet rush by. He’s back, eh?” Thomas eased into the room.

“Oh, yes, he’s back. And that’s why you invited yourself into my study? To exchange the news that your brother has returned?”

“I heard some of the words you had with him.” Thomas crept another few steps forward as if approaching a wild boar. “And I wanted to offer my support. About seeing Harry Pye punished, I mean. He’s quite obviously the one doing this, anyone can understand that.”

“Lovely.” Silas eyed his eldest with a curled lip. “And what, exactly, can you help me with?”

“I talked to Lady Georgina the other day. I tried to tell you.” The muscle under Thomas’s right eye had started to twitch.

“And she told you she would hand over Pye, tied with a pretty bow, at our convenience?”

“N-no, she seemed charmed by him.” Thomas shrugged. “She is a woman, after all. But perhaps if there was further evidence, if we had men guarding the sheep…”

Silas chuckled hoarsely. “As if there are enough men in the county to watch all the sheep on my land every night. Don’t be more of a fool than you can help.” He crossed to the whiskey decanter.

“But if there was evidence linking him—”

“She wouldn’t accept anything but a signed confession from Pye. We have evidence—Pye’s carving, found right by the dead sheep—and she still thinks him innocent. It’d be different if instead of a sheep, a man, or—” Silas stopped midsentence, staring sightlessly at his newly filled whiskey glass. Then he threw back his head and began to laugh, great, bellowing guffaws that shook his frame and spilled the whiskey in his glass.

Thomas looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

Silas slapped the boy on the back, nearly bowling him over. “Aye, we’ll give her evidence, boy. Evidence that not even she can ignore.”

Thomas smiled tremulously, the pretty boy. “But we haven’t any evidence, Father.”