Barbara Metzger Read Online Free Page A

patient enough. I shall not negotiate for what is mine.” Two long strides took him across the narrow room. He grabbed William’s shoulder and pulled the boy to him, then took those same two strides back to the door, despite the child’s objections. He ignored the shouts and the cries. He ignored everything until he heard the unmistakable sound of a hammer being cocked. That he could not ignore. He turned.
    A lioness could not be more dangerous in defense of her cub. Mrs. Henning had taken a pearl-handled pistol from its pegs over the mantel and had it in her hand, aimed at his head. “I assure you, my husband’s gun is loaded and I do know how to fire it. I will not hesitate an instant, sir, if you drag my son one more step out the door.”
    Her son?
    “Your son?”
    She nodded, but the barrel of the pistol did not waver from the center of his forehead, where she could not miss at this range and where she would not endanger the boy. William. Her son.
    “Yours?” he repeated, as if, if he kept trying, he might get a more satisfactory answer.
    “Mine. William Alexander Bourke Henning. Named after his father, William, and mine, Alexander Bourke. He has the same strawberry mark on his…posterior as his father and my other son, to prove it. Do you wish to see?”
    “Mama!” both boys cried in protest.
    Rockford looked down to see those same damnable green eyes. These were not spitting fire like the widow’s, nor were they aimed at relieving him of what little gray matter he had between his ears. The boy’s eyes were awash with tears, and his lower lip was trembling. “Yours,” he repeated once more, carefully taking his hand away from the child’s shoulder and gently brushing his fingers across the top of the lad’s head before nudging him back across the room toward his mother. For the first time in memory, Rockford found himself speechless, faced with such loathing and disdain. And that was his own opinion. Mrs. Henning must think worse, for she never lowered the barrel, even when the boy reached her side.
    What could he say to make amends for frightening an infant, for threatening to steal a woman’s child? His mind could not think of the words, and his tongue could not have spoken them anyway. Blast, he was a diplomat. He was fluent in a score of languages. He was a first-class fool. “My…my son’s name is William,” was all he could stammer.
    “So do you think you own the name, like you own half the county? The last I heard, not even earls had that right.”
    “Of course not. I just meant… That is, I had heard…”
    She took her eyes off his head for an instant, to glance out the window to where Fred Nivens was turning the coach. “I can well imagine what you heard.” Then she told her older son, “Go tell Billy to hurry with his bath, that his father is waiting.”
    With one look over his shoulder to make sure that his mother was well defended, Kendall hurried down a narrow corridor.
    “Billy?” Rockford echoed after the boy left. That was worse than Willy. He started to say something about the respect due to the son of an earl, but thought better of it, since the widow still held her weapon, although the barrel was lowered, as if her arm was growing weary from the weight. He did say, “His name is William, after his mother’s father.”
    She must have heard a hint of censure he could not keep from his voice, for the gun barrel rose again. “We already had one William, and since Billy is a good enough pet name for one of the king’s own sons, we deemed it good enough for Billy.”
    Another profligate, scandal-ridden royal, just what Rockford wished his son named for. But he let it pass. The sooner he had William out of here, the sooner he could forget his blunder, and forget the silly-billy name. “You say he is at his bath? In the middle of the day?”
    The little boy spoke up, braver now that he was back at his mother’s side. “He fell in the mud when we were feeding