A Bride by Moonlight (32 page)

She opened her eyes and looked at him with as much honesty as she dared. “I want, for this one evening, not to be lonely,” she said, “or alone. I want to be with you. To just spend an evening with you. An ordinary evening. Does that seem so implausible?”

“Oh,
ordinary
,” he murmured. “How could any man resist such flattery?”

“Don’t twist my words,” she said. “You know . . . you know how you make me feel. I mean ordinary as in . . . the sort of evening partners—
lovers
—might spend. The sort of evening where we stop bickering and just pretend we’re normal.”

“Nothing about this is normal,” he said. “That’s the hell of it, Lisette.”

She regarded him in silence a moment. “Do you despise yourself that much, Napier, for wanting me?” she finally whispered. “Am I that far beyond redemption?”

“
Lisette
,” he said, tipping up her chin with his finger. “Oh, too harsh, my girl. Do I wish you trusted me? Yes. But you never will; you’ve learnt to trust no one, I think, and it’s not my place to judge that choice. But last evening did not end especially well for either of us.”

“No, but that middle part”—she managed an unsteady smile—“oh,
that
, I thought, was wickedly wonderful.”

The little muscle near his mouth twitched tellingly. “Ah, so under certain circumstances—in exchange, perhaps, for certain pleasures—the lady might tolerate my cold, hard heart?”

“Oh, the pleasures seem
very
certain,” she whispered, leaning near enough to brush her lips over his cheek. “And no, it is not your hard heart that intrigues. It is your . . . well, your very hard, exquisitely firm . . . mind.”

“Ah,” he said. “My mind, is it?”

Lightly, she shrugged. “Stubbornness, apparently, arouses me,” she said. “It’s the only explanation I have for this hold you have over me.”

His gaze did not much soften, but he pushed the door open on silent hinges. “Well, my dear, on that great tarradiddle, I bow to you,” he said. “By all means, come in.”

She brushed past him into the room to see the bed had been turned down and a fire burned in the grate, a feeble defense against the day’s incessant damp. The air was faintly warm and redolent with his scent, and even in utter darkness Lisette would have known the room was his.

On the table, Napier’s dressing case sat open, while at the foot of the bed lay his neatly folded nightshirt. A pair of slippers was tucked beneath his night table, while atop it a book rested, marked with an old envelope. It was a scene so personal, so utterly intimate, that it made something in Lisette’s heart well up.

Napier had lifted his chin high and was yanking impatiently at the elaborate knot of his cravat. “There’s sherry on the side table,” he said, cutting his eyes toward it, “and some brandy. Make yourself at home.”

“Here,” she said, moving to face him. “Let me. Or will your valet turn up?”

Napier snorted. “Not of his own accord.”

Having occasionally worn one herself, Lisette found it a simple matter to untie his cravat. But it was not so simple a matter to stand near him—near enough to inhale his shaving soap, that now familiar scent of lime and bayberry mingled with his own male essence.

“There,” she said softly, her hands falling away.

On an efficient jerk, Napier stripped the loosened cloth from his collar and tossed it on the bed. Lisette went to the table and poured both sherry and brandy, watching from one corner of her eye as Napier shrugged out of his coat.

After hanging it in his dressing room, he joined her on the small sofa by the fire, his shoulders appearing even wider beneath his snug waistcoat and the fine cambric of his shirt. She pressed the brandy into his hand, feeling suddenly anxious.

“So,” she asked lightly, “how are we doing so far? At being ordinary?”

Napier hesitated a moment, then looked away. “It feels surprisingly domestic,” he said, “and not unpleasant.”

“Not . . .
unpleasant
.” Lisette let her head fall back against the sofa. “Lord, we are like alley cats, Napier, tiptoeing round one another.”

He barked with laughter. “Fine, then, it feels good,” he said. “Disarmingly so. There, happy?”

“Oddly, I am happy,” Lisette whispered. “Sometimes. With you. But I think I told you that at the cottage. And I . . . I meant it, Royden. When all this is over, I hope you will look back and remember that you brought me both pleasure and happiness.”

His gaze fixed somewhere beyond her, Napier said nothing. Still relaxed against the sofa, Lisette tilted her head to the left, her eyes drifting over his profile, taking in those dark, weary eyes and that harshly aquiline nose she loved so well. Past the long turn of his jaw, already shadowed with tomorrow’s stubble.

And that mouth; yes, that wide, mobile mouth that could thin to the point of ruthlessness, then in the next moment soften with a tenderness so apparent to Lisette that it belied his outward demeanor.

She had come to love him desperately, she realized—so much so, she’d sooner die than disappoint him. And it was that realization which had been the font of last night’s tears. Royden Napier was a decent man, one of the few she’d ever known.

What a pity she had not chosen that light Lady Anisha had spoken of, instead of a vengeful darkness.

On a sigh, Lisette lifted her hand, and stroked a finger lightly along the firm line of his jaw. “Do you not think,” she murmured, “that if we’d met under different circumstances, if we were different people—just a little, mind—that we might have got on like a house afire?”

Instead, he merely snared her hand and carried it to his lips for an instant. “I’m too old for you, Lisette,” he said. “At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself.”

“Good Lord.” She blinked at him. “You cannot be above five-and-thirty.”

“Too old in a way that has little to do with years,” he said quietly. “And I’m thirty-four, by the way.”

“That is no difference at all,” she said dismissively, “and when it comes to being old beyond one’s years, Napier, I think you forget to whom you’re speaking.”

“Aye, perhaps.”

They fell into a pensive silence for a moment, the quiet pierced only by something that popped in the fireplace, shooting a shower of sparks up the chimney. From without, the day’s heavy mist had turned to rain that still spattering lightly at the windowpanes. Napier sat now with his head hung almost broodingly, staring into the golden depths of the brandy he cradled, warming it with his palms.

“Tell me you found something of interest in Saint-Bryce’s study,” he said after a time.

Lisette straightened, and shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “The file drawers were empty and recently dusted. I saw no safe. No ledgers. No books of interest. The desk, oddly, I found locked—just before Mrs. Jansen found
me
.”

Napier cursed beneath his breath.

“It was quite all right.” Swiftly, Lisette explained.

“And she suspected you of nothing?”

“Merely of being a goose,” said Lisette, “which I often am. Case in point, here I sit with you, giddy at the pleasure of it, ignoring all risk to my heart. In any case, after finding me, she took me through to the schoolroom.”

Napier was looking at her oddly now. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “She took you through how?”

“There’s an old butler’s pantry that connects it to the schoolroom.” Lisette turned and tucked one leg beneath her, cradling her sherry in her lap. “At one time, the study must have been a breakfast parlor.”

“Or a nursery,” he said musingly. “These great houses sometimes had a place to prepare trays for the children. Is it possible to hear from one room to the other?”

Lisette shook her head. “I think not, but if one were in the pantry—yes, almost certainly. But it’s full of Bea’s books and toys. Dolls, mostly. I can’t think why anyone else would go in there.”

“Dolls, yes,” he murmured, shifting his gaze to the fire. “She mentioned it one day in the orchard. That her dolls lived in the pantry. That she played with them while her father wrote letters.”

“
Hmm
.” Lisette set away her sherry, her head still a little light from dinner. “Well, in any case, that’s what little I learned. Now, what did you discover from that sheet of paper you rooked out of poor Mrs. Jansen?”

Napier sighed, and slid forward on the sofa. A large morocco-bound book entitled
A Geographic Survey of North Africa
lay on the tea table before him. With a flick of his wrist, he opened it and extracted two pieces of thick, creamy vellum, one two inches shorter than the other.

“Have a look,” he said. “Though I can already tell you the two are a dead-on match. Jolley’s checked the watermarks—they’re Dutch, by the way—but the first one, the letter, has been trimmed across the top.”

They exchanged knowing glances. “That cannot be coincidence,” she said. “And this was sent to you? Anonymously?”

“Yes, as you guessed days ago,” he admitted. “It came to my house in Eaton Square—and, more interestingly, addressed to Baron Saint-Bryce.”

But Lisette was reading it now. “Good Lord,
a concerned citizen
?” she muttered. “And
wickedness
?”

“Not exactly damning language, is it?” said Napier dryly.

“Well . . . no,” she admitted, “but whoever wrote it wanted you here. And they knew your new title. Your home address.”

“And the paper came out of Mrs. Jansen’s drawer,” he added.

Lisette winced with doubt. “Yes, but anyone could have found that paper.”

“But why would anyone
look
?” he said. “It’s a schoolroom. There’s better paper—paper that doesn’t require the letterhead cut off—in nearly every room of the house.”

“It sounds as if one of the servants could have written it,” mused Lisette. “Which one of them cleans the schoolroom?”

“Jane,” said Napier darkly.

“Jane?” said Lisette in surprise. “Isn’t she the maid who sometimes sat with Lord Hepplewood when Gwyneth and Diana weren’t about?”

“Yes, but Jolley tells me the girl is illiterate,” Napier mused. “I think it cannot be her.”

“Mightn’t she have taken it for someone else?” Lisette suggested.

“I fancy not,” said Napier.

“Then . . . Mrs. Jansen?” Lisette found it hard to credit. “Why would she? And if she had, why would she have given you that paper so readily?”

“Indeed, she is more apt to have wanted rid of Saint-Bryce,” said Napier, “not bring me running down here to investigate his death.”

Lisette stared at him. “Why would she have wanted rid of Saint-Bryce?”

Napier looked reluctant to continue. Then he exhaled sharply. “It seems she and Gwyneth wanted the dower house rather desperately,” he confessed, repeating all that Gwyneth had told him. “I gather Gwyneth quarreled with her father over it. On more than one occasion.”

“And you fear that they perceived Saint-Bryce was standing in the way of their happiness?” Lisette was walking it through in her mind. “Yet that assumes they imagined they could eventually get round
you
in his stead. And more easily. But they would have to be utter fools to think you softhearted.”

“Thank you,” he said dryly, “but I’m afraid I already promised it to her.”

“To . . . to Mrs. Jansen? You promised her a
house
?”

“No, to Gwyneth,” he muttered, looking vaguely embarrassed. “In a moment of weakness the other night, whilst you were giggling like a schoolgirl with Lord Hepplewood.”

“Ah, so I was acting like a schoolgirl and you were flinging away bits of property that you do not even possess as yet.” Lisette laughed. “Good Lord, Napier, are we both utter frauds?”

“Perhaps we are at that.” Then, his mouth turning up in a weary smile, Napier shifted around to better face her. “Ah, Lisette . . .”

“Yes? Go on.”

“Here we are again,” he said, one shoulder propped against the sofa. “Nothing has changed since that day in the cottage. I still want you so desperately it hurts.”

“Well, then.” A soft smile curving her mouth, Lisette toed off her satin slippers, and climbed across his lap, setting one knee to either side. “Let me encourage your desperation.”

Napier smiled faintly, then, sliding his hands around the turn of her face, kissed her slowly and lingeringly. It was their first shared kiss, she realized, not driven by temper or rash desire. Instead it was a slow exploration of each other’s warmth as Napier’s fingers slipped deeper into her hair.

When he lifted his mouth away an inch, his eyes had gone soft with desire and with something that looked like frustration. “Lisette,” he whispered, “is it just the here and now? Is that all we have?”

“It’s all anyone ever has.” Lisette held his gaze unwaveringly. “Take me to bed,” she whispered, her nails curling into his shoulders. “Please. Make love to me.”

“Tread cautiously, love.” He kissed her again, the mere brush of his lips over her cheek. “For I’m no gentleman, no matter how many titles they chain to my name. And for you—well, for you there’s an awful risk. You understand, yes?”

“A risk of a child,” she said, her face searching his, her hands warm and light on his shoulders as she balanced. “But there won’t be. I counted. Carefully.”

“Ah,” he said.

Faintly, she nodded. “I counted
carefully
,” she said again. “I’m very . . . predictable, you see. And quite good at arithmetic.”

“I wish to God you wouldn’t tempt me,” he whispered. “This—
us
—it’s so unwise.”

“Unwise for whom?” Lisette trailed a teasing finger around the turn of his jaw. “You desire me, at least a little. Even that first day in your office. I was half afraid, from the burning wrath in your eyes, that you might take me up on my foolish offer.”

“
Witch
,” he said hoarsely, cupping her face in his hands. “But I can’t believe that’s who you are, Lisette. You aren’t that woman at all, and—”

“Don’t romanticize this,” she interjected, pushing away a little to search his face. “Don’t you see? Therein lies the risk. If this is just desire—if it’s just pleasure—then it’s not so dangerous.”