To Distraction (10 page)

She was going to do it—she was going to have an affair. With Deverell.

Later that night, a full hour after the last guest retired to his chamber and the house at last fell silent, Phoebe started down the main stairs on her way to take care of the last outstanding item on her immediate agenda. Once she’d dealt with Jessica, she would be free to devote her mind entirely to Deverell and his seductive abilities.

Not least of those was the ability to stir her, to excite her as no man ever had. Just by looking at her. One touch, and her skin came alive; one darkly whispered word, and her desire took flight.

If she was ever to learn of passion, he was the one to teach her.

He was obviously godsent, for the most impressive of his
abilities, the one she valued most, one she knew was rare among men of his type, was not so much his control but his willingness to exercise it on her behalf.

That
was impressive. It was also comforting and reassuring, especially to her. Time and again, he’d drawn a line and stuck to it. He could have gone further tonight—she wouldn’t have minded taking one step more—but no. They’d agreed on one step at a time, so one step at a time was what she’d got.

She might be impatient, but she wasn’t about to argue with that. Instead, she was fantasizing about what their next step would entail.

But first…

The front hall was wreathed in deep shadows. Stepping off the last stair, she listened, but everyone, including the exhausted staff, was slumbering deeply; no sound of any human reached her ears. Reassured, she walked across the hall to the library.

This part of their rescues always fell to her; if anyone saw her walking about at night, they wouldn’t question her. If any servants chanced to happen by, she could easily dismiss them.

Opening the library door, she walked in and shut it behind her. The room lay in darkness; the curtains weren’t drawn, but the moon had waned. She searched the dense shadows but saw nothing. Walking forward, she halted in the center of the room. “Jessica?”

The girl audibly gulped. “H-here, ma’am.” She rose and came forward from the nook beside the fireplace where she’d been crouched. She was clutching a small satchel and a bundle in her arms and was wearing a thick coat over a plain gown.

“Good.” Phoebe nodded approvingly. She spoke quietly and clearly as she turned to the French doors. “Not long now and you’ll be safe away. Come along.”

She’d arranged to meet Jessica in the library because it gave onto the side lawn, which in turn gave ready access to the wood. Unlocking the French doors, she led Jessica through, then closed the doors, leaving them unlocked. Turning, she crossed the terrace, beckoning Jessica to follow, then went down the steps to the lawn.

“This way.” She kept her voice down, as whispering only increased the tension unnecessarily. She led the way directly across the side lawn. “The carriage will be waiting in the lane on the other side of the wood. There’s a break in the wall, so we won’t need to climb over.”

When she glanced at Jessica, scurrying, huddled, beside her, the maid nodded, but her eyes were wide, and her pallor owed little to the poor light.

Mentally cursing Lord Moffat, Phoebe faced forward and walked steadily on.

They reached the wood and marched into the dense shadows beneath the trees. The way was dark, but Phoebe knew it well enough. She’d exchanged her fringed silk shawl for a more serviceable woolen one, but the wood was kept well-thinned; there was no undergrowth on which to snag her skirts.

She unerringly led Jessica between the trees to the spot where the stone wall circling the manor’s park had crumbled, leaving a gap large enough to easily climb through.

Scatcher was waiting, silhouetted in the gap.

“Don’t worry,” Phoebe told Jessica. “He’s a friend.”

A friend who looked like a disreputable shopkeeper, but then that was what Scatcher was.

When they reached the gap, he held out mittened hands to help her through. “There you be. We was starting to wonder.”

She wasn’t late, but she knew they would have started “to wonder” the instant they’d arrived. Phoebe waited until
Jessica joined her in the lane, then turned and led the way to the waiting carriage.

It was old and unremarkable, but ran exceedingly well. Birtles and Fergus made sure of that; tonight it was Birtles up on the box, saluting her with his whip.

She smiled and waved back, then Scatcher opened the carriage door. Smile deepening, Phoebe exchanged a glance with the carriage’s occupant—Emmeline Birtles, the first woman she’d helped—then turned to Jessica. “Emmeline here and her husband—he’s Birtles, the driver—will take you to the agency in London. You’ll be safe with them. I’ll come to see you once you’re settled, and we can talk about your next position.”

Jessica peered into the carriage; the worst of her tension dissolved. She looked up at Phoebe. “Thank you, miss. I don’t know as how I can ever thank you enough.”

Hearing the catch in the girl’s voice, Phoebe smiled and stepped back. “Just do as Emmeline tells you, and we’ll count ourselves repaid.”

Then Scatcher was there, helping Jessica into the carriage. Emmeline, a warm, motherly woman, welcomed her and settled her beside her on the seat. Emmeline nodded to Phoebe, then Scatcher shut the door.

He turned to her, eyeing her frowningly from beneath wildly overhanging brows. “You sure you don’t need me to see you back to the house? It’s dark in that wood.”

Phoebe grinned at him. “No—I’d much rather you climbed up and let Birtles get you all back to London without more ado.”

Scatcher muttered something, but knew better than to argue. He climbed up to sit beside Birtles.

Phoebe stood back. Birtles gave the horses the office, then flourished his whip in farewell. Phoebe raised her hand, then lowered it. She waited until the carriage had rumbled
quietly around the first bend in the lane before she turned and climbed back through the gap in the wall.

There was a ditch just inside the wall. She clambered down and then up the other side, lifting her skirts as she toiled up the short slope and back under the trees. Reaching level ground, she released her skirts; marching on, she glanced at her elbow, tugging her shawl into place.

She looked ahead—and walked into a wall.

Of muscle and bone.

T
he breath she sucked in stuck in her windpipe; she almost panicked, but in the instant before she would have lost her head and screamed, he caught her arms and steadied her, and she knew who he was.

She let out her strangled breath with a whoosh. “Deverell.”

A second ticked by in complete and utter silence.

It was then she noticed that his grip on her arms was tight, that instead of the comforting sense she usually derived from his strength, what was reaching her was the scarifying aura of an angry male.

A powerful, strong, highly irate male.

In whose control she was.

She jerked her gaze up to his face; not enough light reached it for her to read his expression or his eyes, but she could feel them on her—burning.

Then he spoke; his voice cracked like a whip.

“What the devil are you about?”

She stiffened, then lifted her head. “Unhand me.”

He stared at her. He didn’t immediately do as she asked.

Phoebe waited, breath bated, but then his jaw clenched and, finger by finger, he peeled his hands from her arms.

His compliance should have reassured her, but her nerves were leaping, alarmed beyond being easily allayed. It was difficult to breathe. They faced each other in the darkness; he was blocking the path to the house.

“What were you doing?”

His tone was more measured, his words even, but the steel running beneath reminded her of what, over her recent interludes with him, she’d forgotten. His background, his links with the authorities.

She couldn’t tell him anything. Elevating her chin, she fixed him with a look that, darkness or not, should have had a duke stepping back. “What I do is none of your concern.”

He studied her for a long moment, then simply said, “Think again.”

His tone sent cold sluicing through her; the man facing her was the dangerous male she’d always sensed lurking behind his languid façade.

He scared her, yet…she knew it was him, that no matter the situation he wouldn’t harm her.

His gaze didn’t waver from her face; his attention was locked entirely on her. “I saw you leave the house with another woman. I saw you lead her through the wood and give her over to some men waiting with a coach—they knew you, and you knew them. You put the woman into the coach, then watched it leave. Who was the woman? What’s going on? And what’s your role in it?”

If she’d entertained any doubt over how effective he’d been as an “operative,” that speech would have slayed it. His tone was clipped, his diction precise, rendering every word
an indictment, imbuing each phrase with authority and unrelenting pressure. More, with the promise of
infinite
unrelenting pressure until she surrendered and told him all.

Bad enough; simmering beneath his outward, clearly professional detachment was something not detached at all.

Something that set her senses clamoring, but as she stood in the dark, her gaze locked with his, her logical mind repeated what she’d already learned—that with him she was safe—and more forcefully reiterated that her business was none of his affair, had no bearing on their affair, or vice versa.

Regardless of any liaison that might or might not develop between them, telling him of her “business” was a risk too great to take.

“I have nothing to say to you, my lord.” Her words matched his in evenness, in underlying determination. “Regardless of what you may think, I see no reason, no justification, no relationship that necessitates my answering to you.”

Head high, she held his gaze for an instant, then inclined her head. She started to step around him. “If you’ll excuse—”

“No relationship?”

The words were soft, quiet…dangerous. His tone sent a dark shiver down her spine. Halting, she lifted her head. He hadn’t moved an inch; her step had brought her closer to him. She met his eyes across the inches; her gaze stony, she enunciated, equally quietly, equally clearly, “None.”

His brows rose.

Then he moved.

One second she was standing on the path, in the next she was backed against a tree. A hard hand at her waist pinned her there; before she could blink he caught her chin and tipped it up—and his lips came down on hers.

No relationship?

She knew what he was trying to prove; hands fisting on his shoulders, she tried to hold firm, to deny—but he’d invaded her mouth in that first instant and immediately set about plundering. Her senses, her wits—her strength. The strength she needed to stand against him.

Tightening her fingers in his coat, she tried to push back, but the tree was behind her, and he was immovable.

She gasped through the kiss, desperately searching for some way to end it.

Abruptly his lips lifted from hers.

Eyes closed, she dragged in a breath.

“Tell me.”

An outright order. She hauled in another breath, bolstered her courage. Opening her eyes, she met his—an inch away. “No.” She pushed at his shoulders. “Let me—”

Again he moved so fast her mind was too slow following; he plucked her hands from his shoulders, raised them above her head, and locked them against the trunk, manacled in one of his.

Fear leapt to life inside her, then he leaned into her—and panic
roared
.

Exploded as his mouth came down, hard, crushing, on hers.

Deverell fully intended to kiss her witless, to distract and overwhelm her, lay waste to her resistance until she softened and told him what he needed to know.

He fully expected to succeed.

Fully expected her to melt under the primitive onslaught and give in.

Instead, she started to fight him.

Which seemed ridiculous. She couldn’t…

But she was.

His mind locked on sensual conquest, it took him a good minute to realize, then accept that she was indeed struggling, albeit ineffectively.

That she was trying to escape, not simply resist.

That she was growing increasingly frantic.

He immediately lifted his head. Her breath sawed in, one step from hysterical panic. He eased his body back from hers but didn’t let her go.

Her eyes, open and wide, had locked on his face.

He couldn’t read their expression, but he saw enough—she was frightened, panicked.
Afraid
.

Of him.

To his intense surprise, his heart constricted and abruptly felt like lead.

But…confused, he frowned at her. His hand was still locked at her waist; the other held both of hers, but not hard enough to bruise.

And he hadn’t, even in those most forceful moments, gone as far as they had earlier that evening.

She sucked in a tight breath. Her wide-eyed gaze, that of prey trapped by a predator, never shifted from his face. “Let me go. Now.”

Her voice quavered; gone was her earlier confidence—all hint of defiance.

It was very nearly a plea.

He complied instantly, releasing her hands and stepping back.

His heart sank further, but he remained nonplussed. Through the shrouding shadows he stared, trying from her face to get some hint of what was happening, trying to make sense of her fraught reaction.

Her hands fell to her sides, grasping the tree trunk. Her chest heaved as she dragged in another breath. He waited,
unmoving, silent—not daring to do or say anything in case it was the wrong thing.

A minute ticked by.

On the surface she’d calmed, but he sensed she remained one small step from senseless panic. Slowly, carefully, her gaze trained on him the entire time, she pushed away from the tree.

He couldn’t bear that look. He’d never intended…she couldn’t think…He put out a hand to steady her. “Phoebe?”

She stepped quickly sideways, avoiding his hand as if he were a leper. “Stay away from me.”

The words were low, pained. They struck him like a blow.

He let his hand fall. Stood and watched, unmoving and silent, as she edged around him onto the path. Then she abruptly swung around and started for the house, her steps rushed and not quite steady.

“Stay far,
far
away from me.” Her words drifted back to him, a fading whisper as she put space between them. “Don’t
ever
come near me again.”

Jaw set, he waited until she was far enough ahead, then trailed her; stopping within the shadows of the wood, he watched until she disappeared into the library.

And then there was just him and the night, and an abject sense of failure. Of a mistake he’d inadvertently made, a misstep he’d unwittingly taken. He stood in the dark, replaying the scene in the wood again, and tried to understand what had happened.

He was down early for breakfast the following morning, but she, along with the majority of other guests, didn’t appear.

Accepting a copy of the latest London news sheet from Stripes, he retreated to the peace and quiet of the library.

He sat in an armchair at the other end of the room from the chaise on which he’d first sighted Miss Phoebe Malleson reclining and eating grapes. Flicking out the news sheet, he held it before his face and pretended to read; the last thing he wanted was for some other guest to engage him in cheery conversation.

After untold hours reviewing all that had passed between them, he was feeling unrepentant, and just a trifle sour. Last night—that unsettling interlude in the wood—had been her fault first to last. It had been her fault that, rather than sleeping, he’d once again been pacing the darkened gardens, walking off the effects of the lust she’d evoked.

That was why he’d been there to see her slipping so suspiciously away from the house with another female in train. Of course he’d followed. The only thought in his brain had been to ensure she was safe.

Until he’d seen her hand the girl over to the unknown men.

Then he hadn’t known what to think.

So he’d asked her.

All that had followed had been a direct result, as far as he could see, of her refusal to explain and set his mind at rest.

A simple explanation, that was all he’d asked for—surely not too much to ask of the lady who, just hours before, had unequivocally indicated that she was willing to let him seduce her, ultimately into marriage. Her acceptance had been implicit in all they’d said and done.

She’d made her decision, but then, when faced with the need to explain her suspicious actions, she’d changed her mind.

His reaction to that was so sharp, so intense, he paused and turned over a page of the news sheet just to give the feeling a moment to subside.

For her, he’d ridden his desires more strongly, more
rigidly than he had with any woman before; the previous evening, he’d exercised restraint he hadn’t known he possessed. She’d appreciated that at the time, but later how had she repaid him?

By refusing to trust him and, to his mind even worse, refusing to take adequate care.

Why that last aspect should head his list of grievances he didn’t know, but the danger inherent in her flitting through a dark wood, without any protection, to meet with rough and uncouth men in a lane after midnight, was the point that did most violence to his soul.

If anything had happened to her…

He inwardly snorted and told himself that the reason her safety mattered so much was because if anything happened to her, he wouldn’t be able to marry her, which would leave him where he’d started….

Even in his present mood, the argument wasn’t convincing.

The damned woman had got under his skin in a way he didn’t understand. Regardless, she was now there, and he would have to cope with the ramifications.

So would she.

On that, he was unalterably determined.

He checked on and off through the morning, but none of the ladies came downstairs.

Stripes informed him that that was often the case after a ball. “Getting their beauty sleep, my lord.”

He suppressed a snort, but as Stripes had prophesized, it wasn’t until after the luncheon gong sounded that he heard the tap of female footsteps on the stairs. Folding the news sheet—in desperation he’d read every word—he laid it aside and rose.

When he reached the dining room, where a cold collation had been laid out upon the sideboard, he discovered Phoebe
already at the table—surrounded by the other young ladies. She knew he’d walked into the room, but while the others—Deidre and Leonora especially—looked up and smiled brightly in welcome, Phoebe avoided his eye.

Preserving his urbane mask, he returned the others’ smiles with one merely polite, then walked to the sideboard.

After heaping his plate, he retired to the other end of the table where Lord Cranbrook and Lord Craven, one of the few older male guests, sat chatting. They welcomed him, and the talk turned to horseflesh.

More gentlemen drifted in, followed by the older ladies in twos and threes. Audrey glided in; she paused and considered the table, then glided to the sideboard.

A few minutes later, he looked up to see her approaching. He rose to hold a chair for her.

Instead of immediately sitting, she paused beside him and laid a hand on his sleeve. “What have you done?”

Her tone was long-suffering. He fought back a scowl. “Nothing.” Before she could scoff, he added, “Something’s going on.”

She’d always been able to read him well; she didn’t make the mistake of thinking he was inventing something to distract her. Concern crept into her eyes. “What do you mean?”

Grim, he drew out the chair. “If I knew…”

She hesitated, patently thinking, then patted his arm and finally sat. As he resumed his seat beside her, she murmured, “Edith and I have every confidence in you, dear, so do get whatever it is sorted out.”

Feeling as if he were twelve again, he gave his attention to his plate.

At least outwardly; most of his senses were focused on Phoebe.

The older ladies continued to arrive in trickles. Luncheon
was almost over when Lady Moffat, a female he’d labeled a tartar with a liking for histrionics, swept into the room, out of breath and transparently out of temper.

“Maria—
Gordon!
” Her hair straggling wildly, her gown obviously hastily donned, Lady Moffat appealed to Lady and Lord Cranbrook. “It really is
insupportable!
My maid has up and disappeared, and no one seems to have any idea where the ungrateful chit’s gone!”