How to Master Your Marquis (37 page)

He was used to the slow passage of time in prison, the eternal passage of seconds and minutes. You couldn’t fight it. You simply accepted the hours as they were given; you anchored yourself in place and let the clock tick and tick around you. You paid attention to the warmth of the woman in your arms, the darling shape of her elbow, the shadow of her eyelashes on her cheek. You unbuttoned her waistcoat and loosened her shirt and laid your hand over the promising curve of her belly, and you thought to yourself, this is my child, my child who will be born and cry and love and live on after I am gone. This is the woman who will give him life, who carries my heart inside her body.

Stefanie lay quietly under his caressing hand, curled on his lap. Her hand wrapped around his knee. Every so often she let out a shuddering breath, and he stroked her hair with his other hand.

She turned in his lap to look up at him. “You have to live. We have to find a way to save you.”

“They will hang me, Stefanie.”

She sat up. “Let me save you. For God’s sake. Let me tell them who I am, that I was the woman you were with.”

“You can’t.”

“To save your life, Hatherfield!”

He hesitated, brushing her cheek with his finger. “It wouldn’t change anything. Even if they believed you, it’s not enough to call a new trial. And you weren’t with me all the time. There was that gap, half an hour, right when the murder was supposed to happen. Right when the duchess went up to her boudoir. So it would all be for nothing. And you would expose yourself irrevocably, and I would still be here in this damned prison, unable to help you.”

“There’s been no attempt on me since the night of the ball. Nothing at all.”

“Because they don’t know who you are. Where you are.”

“I don’t care. I’ll face that danger if it comes.”

“You’ll be put in jail yourself, then, for impersonation. For—I don’t know, whatever the crime is, fraudulent representation to the court.”

She took his lapels. “Better that, than your death!”

“I can’t let you do it. I can’t let you put yourself in danger . . .”

“You won’t have a choice.”

“Stefanie, no . . .”

She was running her hands over his chest, his shirtsleeves, back to his face. “Don’t you understand? I need you. I’ll do anything.”

“Shh . . .”

“You are not allowed to sacrifice yourself for me. You are not allowed to do that to me, to make me live without you.”

Her lips touched his. Her fingers found the waistband of his trousers, and he covered them with his hands.

“No,” he said. “Not here, we can’t . . .”

“Hatherfield. James. Jamie. My dear, dear love.” She whispered the words into his mouth. “I need you so. Let me touch you, just once. Let me comfort you. Please.”

“The guard.” His resolve was disintegrating under the sensation of her touch, under the whispered word
Jamie
, under the pressure of desire that had settled into his loins for months now, unfilled and aching, a natural and necessary part of him.

“He’s never interrupted us before, has he?” She undid the first button, and the next. His erection was already straining at the placket. Had been straining since she walked into his prison cell.

“Stefanie.”

She looked up at him. Her eyes were large and round. “You’ll let me, won’t you? You’ll trust me? You’ll let me touch you?”

His hands went to her head. He ran his fingers along her short, silky hair, the delicate bumps of her ears, and said nothing. His breath had stopped in his chest, anticipation and fear and
need
, oh God, this craving for Stefanie, so acute and profound and lasting it was written on his bones.

She spread apart the placket of his trousers, and he sprang into her gentle hands.

A slow sigh rushed from his lungs, a gust of relief.

This was right and true and beautiful. This was Stefanie.

“You are so perfect,” Stefanie whispered. She ran her fingers up and down his length, from base to tip, and then, without warning, she bent her head downward and took him into her mouth.

The wet heat of her lips and tongue surrounded him so unexpectedly, so intense and so pleasurable, he nearly came in that instant. His torso jerked, while his hands tightened around her head.

She didn’t stop to ask if he was all right, if he liked it, if he wanted it, and he was grateful. How could he tell her how many times he had imagined this, aroused and shameful in his prison bed, when the lights were out and he had only the darkness for company? How could he say the base words?
God yes, suck my prick until I spend, work me with your tongue and your hot mouth and your sliding fingers until I lose myself in you.

She had no rhythm, no skill at all. She had obviously never done this before. But this was Stefanie, this was her mouth on him, slick and firm and eager and loving, and in less than a minute his climax tingled in his stones and built and built, and he tried to pull away but she held on with the eager mewl of a kitten lapping a bowl of cream, and that single sound was his undoing. He let himself go, he spent luxuriously in her mouth as his hands cupped the curve of her head and his tears wet the corners of his eyes.

W
hen Stefanie arrived in Cadogan Square, dinner had already been cleared and Sir John sat alone in the dining room, rolling the brandy about his snifter and staring into the fire.

He looked up and saw her. “Come in, Mr. Thomas. I expect you’re just back from Old Bailey?”

“Yes, sir.”

She stepped reluctantly into the room, which reeked of smoke and melancholy. Sir John’s face hung in folds of pasty gray, and his eyes were rimmed in red. He sat with his shoulders slumped over the cloth. A cigar sat smoking in a tray near his elbow.

“How is his lordship holding up? Were you able to buck his spirits a bit?”

Stefanie raised her fist to her mouth and coughed. “A bit. I had hoped to go out again, go over the evidence. Something we missed, perhaps.”

“I’ve gone over it a thousand times.” He shook his head. “The interviews with the witnesses, the physical evidence. If only someone had seen something. And that’s the devil of it. There isn’t any actual evidence, not a shred of it, that Hatherfield did the deed. The whole damned house was seething with people. Fairchurch, I believe, did a decent job of establishing that. And yet the jury convicted him. They wanted someone’s blood, I suppose. Wanted someone to pay. Or perhaps wanted to believe that there wasn’t some crazed murderer still on the loose.” He shook his head. “Poor fellow.”

“I haven’t given up hope. Somebody did this, somebody murdered her. There’s got to be some clue somewhere.”

“After all these months? Something new?”

Stefanie shifted her feet. She was itching to be off, to go upstairs with her papers and books, to find something, some technical aspect of law, some overlooked statement that even now might be presented before the court. She had to do something. Something to relieve this ache in her chest, something to think about other than the feel of him on her lips, the knowledge that she might never feel him there again.

Because tomorrow at noon, if nothing else arose, she would have to play her last desperate card.

“Where is her ladyship?” Stefanie asked quietly.

“Out with her maid. I don’t know where. I don’t particularly give a damn.” He picked up his cigar and drew in deep. “I’d wash my hands of her, if I could.”

“She told the court what she knew.”

“Spiteful bitch. That poor fellow. I sent off letters to the Queen today, to the Prime Minister, begging for some sort of clemency. I don’t know if it shall have any effect.” He went to stub out his cigar, and then thought better of it. His hand shook as he lifted the end to his lips. “Do you know something, Thomas? I don’t believe I ever want to see the interior of a courtroom again.”

U
pstairs, she tore off her collar and her mustache and jacket. She undid the buttons on her waistcoat and drew a long sigh of relief. After months of blessed flatness, her belly had suddenly begun to swell a fortnight ago, increasing daily, fluttering and quickening with life. Soon she would be too big to hide, and what would she do?

She had to save him. She had to.

She turned to her wardrobe for a dressing gown, and in the corner of her eye she saw a small square envelope on her desk.

Mr. Stephen Thomas, Cadogan Square, London
, read the address on the back, but it was not the words themselves that stopped her short.

It was the lettering.

The unmistakable copperplate of Miss Dingleby’s cultured handwriting.

S
tefanie had been gone half an hour when the guard announced another visitor.

Hatherfield rose to his feet and straightened his collar.

“Mr. Wright,” he said. “Welcome. I’d offer you a glass of sherry, but . . .” He made an apologetic gesture to the stone walls around them.

“Hardly necessary, under the circumstances.” Nathaniel Wright removed his hat and set it on the table. “A rather decent system of civil bribery you’ve got in place here. I wasn’t asked to grease a single palm.”

Hatherfield shrugged. “They’re good chaps, really. Expensive, but well worth the cost.”

“I quite agree. What can I do for you, old man?” Wright’s tone was that of one friend greeting another in the confines of a club library. Not a single note of awkward sympathy clouded his tone; not a single shade of softness obscured his dark gaze.

“You know the verdict that came down today.”

“Yes, I heard. Hard luck. I’m sorry if my little testimony had anything to do with it. I wish I might have helped you.”

“You did help me. You forbore to mention your encounter with . . . with the lady downstairs, and that has meant everything. Has quite possibly saved her life.”

“While sacrificing yours.” Wright’s eyes were sharp as they regarded him.

Hatherfield motioned to the single chair. Wright settled into the hard wooden seat as if it were an armchair before the fire; Hatherfield lowered himself on the edge of his cot. “You haven’t asked me who she is.”

“It was not my affair.”

“Would you mind particularly if I make it your affair?”

Wright picked up his hat from the table and fingered the edge. “In what way?”

How dim it was, in this cell. No matter how many oil lamps were brought in, it never seemed enough to chase away the dark summer, warm and oppressive. The skin of Wright’s face was dusky, his eyes shadowed.

Say it, old boy. Go ahead. Your time’s run out.

He began.

“I expect I shall be sentenced to hang tomorrow, and the execution will likely be carried out shortly thereafter. Stefanie . . .” He steadied himself. “She is five months gone with child, she is moreover in danger of her life, and I would go to my end with a far easier heart if I knew that someone capable—someone loyal, someone with the power and will to protect those under his care—were looking after her affairs.”

The words, as he spoke them, caused a peculiar stabbing pain in the region of his heart. As if someone were slicing the organ from between his ribs.

“I see.” Wright’s fingers were long and brown as they circled about his hat. “Are you asking me to marry her?”

“That’s not something I can ask of another man. In any case, the choice remains hers.”

Wright spun his hat and watched him. “You love her,” he said at last.

Hatherfield breathed quietly. When he could speak, he said, “More than my own life.”

“So it seems.”
Tap tap tap
went Wright’s fingers on the smooth felt of his hat. “If I were to take this charge, I would need, as a practical matter, to know who she is. What danger threatens her.”

“She is the youngest princess of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof.”

Wright startled in his chair. “By God!”

“Yes. You perceive the peculiar nature of her case. Why I could not allow her to identify herself. At the moment, there is no one of her own family to protect her, no one to restore her to her birthright. The Duke of Olympia is her guardian, but he’s left London entirely, and I haven’t heard from him in months.”

Wright rose from his chair and paced across the room. “By God.”

“I have already endowed her with all I have. The houses, the rest of the money from my mother’s side. The properties are nearly ready to sell, and I hope you’ll assist her in obtaining the best possible price.”

“I have a question,” Wright said, facing the wall.

“What is it?”

“Why me? You will pardon my observing that we are hardly friends.”

Hatherfield watched the back of Wright’s dark head, his straight shoulders. “Because you’re a man of your word. A loyal protector of a sister with no necessary charge on your duty or affection. The most trustworthy gentleman of my acquaintance.”

Wright turned. His voice was low and respectful. “By God, Hatherfield. What a man you are.”

Hatherfield rose to his feet. “Will you do it?”

Wright stood quite still, his large black body filling the space against the wall. He regarded Hatherfield with a peculiar expression. “I am honored beyond measure by your trust in me, Lord Hatherfield. I shall endeavor my utmost to carry out your wishes.”

“And the child?” He could hardly say the words.

“Will be raised under my protection.”

Hatherfield turned away. “Thank you,” he whispered.

The wall stared back at him, gray and lifeless. How many days left? Hours of this life? How was it possible that you could count the minutes and seconds remaining to you in this world, with the woman you loved? How did you find the courage to leave, while your precious child grew inside her?

Behind him, Wright made not a sound.

“I have carried a special license in my pocket, in hope of a favorable verdict,” Hatherfield said at last. “You may want to do the same.”

“If she agrees.”

“She will not, at first.” Hatherfield held up his hands and stared at the palms, crisscrossed with old lines, thickened with callus. “She has a regal will. And the noblest heart in the world.”

“I shall endeavor to be worthy of her.”

Two knocks shook the door, closely spaced and urgent. The thick wood slid open.