A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (30 page)

“Will.” James’s voice was loaded with warning. “What is the matter? You look like a terrier at a rat fight.”

“That I am. So if you’ll excuse me—”

“Would you be so kind, Commander,” Miss Preston interceded in her soft, cautious voice. “Lord Jeffrey, would you be so kind as to fetch me a glass of something to drink? I’m very thirsty, and I’m … sure your brother Commander Jellicoe will be … happy to keep me company.”

Will staved off his annoyance at being delayed by pointless civility—both brothers could do nothing less than comply.

“Of course. My pleasure,” James said, before he turned and gave Will a look so sharp and pointed it punctured some of his belligerence. It was a look that clearly said, “Hands off.”

As if he would make a play for his brother’s girl. God’s balls. Cassandra Preston wasn’t even remotely his type. She was too soft and yielding.

But the moment James was gone, Miss Preston became decidedly unyielding. “Do you care for my sister?” she asked in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper, but all the more insistent for its quietude.

Will was instantly on his guard. Had they sent the Madonna to take her turn at warning him off? He kept his polite smile firmly in place. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll come straight to my … point, Commander, while we are free to speak,” she said in a quiet rush, as if she were in danger of losing her nerve. “Please don’t go to her. Please. It would make it … so much … worse if she … were to see you here.”

“Much worse than what, Miss Preston?”

Cassandra Preston’s lavender gaze fluttered away from his and her delicate cheeks colored in a becoming display of shyness—or was it guilt? Did the stammering Madonna know as well, and think to keep it from her sister? Could a woman who looked so angelic be so selfish to her own flesh and blood?

Will pushed some of the anger and resentment he had been saving for Aldridge into his voice. “I have some information that I think will be greatly to your sister’s benefit, Miss Preston, and I, for one, see no advantage whatsoever in keeping it from her.”

Her eyes darted back to his. “Do you mean to propose?”

The question knocked the wind out of him more effectively than a blow. “No. I—” He meant only to stop her from marrying Aldridge. He had nothing to offer her himself.

“Then there is nothing you can say to her here and now,” she insisted, “that won’t cause her the most acute distress. I beg you.”

Miss Preston edged half a step closer, and lowered her voice even more, so that he had to bend down to hear her. “Forgive me if I … overstep, but I think you … care for her. You would not be … so angry otherwise. I hope you do, because I very much fear she … has fallen in love with you. If you mean not to offer for her yourself, them speaking to her will only be a … cruelty.”

“Not speaking would be the cruelty.” His voice had risen enough so that people around them began to take notice.

Across the wide room, Mrs. Preston was taking unfortunate note of their tête-à-tête, and was beginning to advance in their direction.

Let her come. Let them all come. What he had to say needed to be heard by all—even the delicate Miss Preston, who, for all her stammering sweetness, appeared to be using her sister as ruthlessly as any Borgia or Boleyn to find her own happiness with his brother. The thought made him so furious, he could feel his hands clenching into frustrated fists.

“You are a man of the … world. You know that … that obstacles in life are … rarely so cleanly delineated. You know that there is a great deal of gray shading between the black and the white. And that sometimes, we don’t get what we want, and sometimes we have to do things we don’t like.”

It
was
black-and-white. “It is obvious to anyone with eyes that your sister
is
doing something she doesn’t like. What I want to know, is why?”

Miss Preston closed her eyes to let a single tear leak out of her eye, and trace its slow way down her perfect cheek. “Please. Think of the … scandal if you were to … speak to her here and cause a scene. Think of her reputation—she never does, but … someone has to. You had seemed to me to show some understanding that first afternoon when you came to call. I thought that showed something rather fine in your character.”

For the first time in his life, a woman’s tears left him entirely unmoved. Did she think she could flatter him into holding his peace, into becoming her silent accomplice? Not bloody likely. “What would you have me do, Miss Preston? Leave her to live in misery?”

“What do you offer her instead?” She spoke quickly, as if she needed to screw her courage down fast to get the words out, before she could think better of speaking to him. “Please. I can’t help her, yet—neither of us can. But if you would … just give me some time. If you would just be patient, and keep whatever it is you feel you … must say to yourself for a … little while longer, at least. Please.”

She shot a nervous glance at her mother, who was weaving her way around the edge of the dance floor toward them. “If you promise me not to cause a scene, I will tell you my sister very often … visits her horse in the evenings, in the … Clarges Mews behind Lord Aldridge’s house on … Queen Street.”

“Queen Street?” It was no more than a city block away from Sanderson House. The carriage had driven down Queen Street that very afternoon on his way to his father’s townhouse.

“Yes. She goes there … often of an evening. Mama doesn’t know. And … neither does Lord Aldridge. Or if he knows … he does not care.”

“Oh, he cares.” It was just as James had predicted—Aldridge had gotten his greedy, acquisitive hands on Preston’s mare. “The fucking bastard.”

In the matter of language, Miss Preston was not her more earthy sister. She was shocked. “Sir! I had thought to give you this information because my sister likes you very much and I want to see her made happy, but also because I had believed you to be a man of devoted character, and hopefully, honor. I should like your word as an officer and a gentleman that you will … conduct yourself with my sister with the utmost … character and honor, no matter where you … might encounter her.”

“Miss Preston, I may appear to be a lazy, laughing fellow in comparison to my brother, but I assure you, for all my scattergun ways, I am not the least bit dishonorable.”

To his surprise, beneath her shy, shocked stammer, Miss Preston appeared to be made of much the same steel as her sister. “Commander, I think we … both know your honor has never before met with the … provocation of my sister,” she returned with equal seriousness. “Annie is of such an open, impetuous … character that her love of the … world often leads her astray. A lesser man might see her … liveliness and high spirits and question her … morals. I merely wanted to assure myself that I was … right about you, and that you are not such a man.”

The last embers of his righteous anger were snuffed out by the truth in her politely veiled accusation. She had him dead in the water—he had taken advantage of her sister’s liveliness and high spirits on every occasion they had been together. He was as guilty of taking advantage of Preston as she.

“You are assured, Miss Preston. I am not.” Will straightened up to see James coming from one direction, and Mrs. Preston bearing down upon them from the other. He would have moved away, but the Madonna laid hold of his arm, and spoke one last time in her breathless rush.

“Promise me you’ll give me time. Please. If you do, I swear I’ll make it right.”

He tried to harden himself to the plea in her glistening lavender eyes. But what could another day hurt? “All right. But heaven help you, Miss Preston, if you don’t.”

Chapter Eighteen

Which was how Will found himself asking Broad Ham to leave him at the far north end of the Lambeth and Clarges Mews just after midnight that very night, to make his careful way down the rain-slick alley.

Will had grave misgivings about the entire proposition. Despite her pledge to do what was right and help Preston, he was deeply suspicious of Miss Cassandra Preston’s motives. If she informed anyone about this clandestine meeting—or any of Preston and his prior clandestine meetings—there would be some sort of hell to pay, and Will reckoned a scandal that would force them into a wedding.

But perhaps that was what Miss Preston—or even Preston herself—wanted. All he wanted was to discharge his duty—and, if he were honest with himself, assuage his guilt. He might not be able to offer for her himself, but he would leave her free to find happiness where she could. Yet he was deeply conscious that a meeting in Lord Aldridge’s mews could be a trap. One set with the perfect bait—Preston.

And so he would spring the trap early, before it could be properly set.

A cold, damp, enveloping fog settled in, wreathing him in obscurity and muffling his footsteps along the alley. An occasional lamp hung outside a gate or two as he walked through the mist, but their weak light failed to penetrate much beyond their immediate vicinity. He was sure he would pass unseen.

The carriage house and stable behind number 10 weren’t yet closed and locked up tight for the night. Through a crack in the door, he could see a lad sweeping the aisle between the carriage horses’ stalls. Behind him Velocity stood quietly in her stall, watching the lad with her large, baleful eyes. But of Preston, there was no sign.

He crossed to the other side of the mews alley, and propped himself against the wall in a dark corner to wait. His future sister-in-law had not specified what time Preston normally made her ill-advised forays out into the night. But he did not have to wait long.

She came along the alley in her disreputable-looking redingote with the same forthrightness with which she did everything—moving purposefully and directly down the dark, rain-slick cobbles with a familiarity that made him angry and restless. Damn their eyes. Did no one else care what she did with her time, or where she was? Did no one else warn her that the choices she made were dangerous? Did she have so little value for herself that she would constantly put herself into danger?

“Preston!” he hissed into the darkness.

She froze, her braid whipping around as she turned in his direction. “Jellicoe? Will, is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me.” He stepped out into the shivering lamplight. “Who the hell else were you expecting in your stables in the middle of the night?”

She skittered across the alley. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.” She gulped in a deep breath, and looked up at him as if she were starved for the sight of him. “God help me, Will, but I’m happy to see you.”

And there she was, throwing herself into his arms, and burying her head against his chest. Holding on to him as if he were the last piece of flotsam in the shipwreck that was her happiness. “My God, Will. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you about Lord Aldridge. But I just didn’t want to. It was as if telling you would make it real.”

She pulled back and looked up at him, and the lamplight revealed the bright sheen of unshed tears shining in the corner of those clear, direct blue eyes.

Fuck all. He was all but powerless before her tears. He made an inarticulate, strangled sound of defeat deep in his throat, before he speared his hand into her hair and pulled her mouth to his.

But she was already there, already in his arms, already kissing him. Her hands were grasping at the cape of his greatcoat, pulling him in and tangling him up with the restless tension that seeped out of her body. Their lips came together before he had the power of thought, before he could decide whether or not this was madness.

He backed her into the wall, leaning his weight into her body as she pressed hot, ardent kisses along his jaw. His hands found themselves tangled in her soft hair, wrapping tightly around her braid, tugging it back until her neck arched and her mouth fell open to his exploration.

He dove into her heat voraciously, sucking and stroking with ravenous hunger. Her absence from his life had only served to fuel the fire in his belly, a fire that was spreading like a flame through dry tinder. He tried to tamp it down, tried to hold back the heat. He tried to kindle the blaze slowly, but her desire rose rapidly with his. Her skin heated, her breath shortened, and her hands fisted tight on his lapels.

With only one kiss his cock had grown achingly erect. And he was done with restraint. He just took. Held her still with his hands as he ravaged her mouth, and gave in to the mounting fire of need. His hands were strong, not gentle, as he held her, pulling her into him, letting her feel the hard length of his arousal between them, willing her to give him more. More of the sweet taste of her mouth, more of the flushed silk of her skin, more of her very essence, her very self.

When he insinuated his tongue into her sweet mouth, Preston gasped with gratifying astonishment. Will knew he should try harder to hold back, but he was too hungry, too drunk with possessiveness, to give restraint any conscious thought.

And she was little better. She opened herself to him wholeheartedly, without hesitation or affectation. He cradled her jaw, to angle her head, to kiss her more deeply, and she answered him stroke for stroke, kiss after kiss until they were both breathless and gasping for air.

He slid his hands down to her shoulders, and pushed himself gently away from her. Their breath rose in frosty clouds as they broke apart.

“Do you love him?” He had to ask. He couldn’t not ask. It might kill him, but he had to know.

“No.” She didn’t hesitate. Not for a second.

It should have made it better. But it didn’t. It made it worse. “Do you at least like him?”

Again, her response was immediate, and uncompromising. “No.”

“Then why in the hell are you going to marry him?” He wanted to shake her. He wanted to push her back against the hard, unforgiving stone of the wall and knock some sense into her.

This time, she took a long while to answer, as if she were asking herself the same thing, and was struggling to find an answer. “I’m not. I mean I don’t intend to—I never have. But—”

He stepped away and let his hands fall. “But what?”

She closed her eyes and banged her own head against the wall. “I have a duty to my family. You of all people should understand that. I don’t have any other choice.”