All Through the Night (21 page)

Jack handed the boy the note he’d written Knowles just as Anne entered the small sitting room. The thin cloak still covered her slight shoulders. Even from across the room, Jack could see her shivering. The black witch locks hanging wildly about her shoulders trembled and her lips quivered.

He pulled out a battered chair by the fire. She blinked at it suspiciously.

“Please,” he said.

She nodded and sat down, regarding him steadfastly. Such a dirty face, so solemn and sincere. One would think he’d be comfortable with street urchins with earnest faces and black hearts. He smiled grimly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d so misjudged a person.

Apparently, where the lovely and treacherous widow was concerned, his cock had taken over making decisions. Even now he felt himself growing hard. Sex.

Who’d have thought sex would control him so utterly? Or try to control him.

He moved to the far side of the room and lit the candles on the side table. Best to keep as many obstacles, tangible and otherwise, between them.

“There’s a man,” he began without preamble. “His name is Jamison.”

“Your father?” she broke in.

He looked at her sharply. It didn’t matter that she knew his possible parentage.

“Yes, he could be my father. He is involved in politics.” He paused, uncertain how to explain what Jamison did, what
he
did. “In the least conspicuous aspects of politics but, in many cases, the most important.”

Though she nodded, her expression conveyed confusion.

“Jamison is interested in the letter you stole.” He held his hand up, forestalling her predictable protest.

“More than interested,” he went on. “Originally he wanted it returned. Now he wants it destroyed—and anyone who’s seen it. He’ll do anything to accomplish that end. He owns”—he looked around as if hoping to find some way to emphasize the gravity of her situation, the enormous power of the man who sought her destruction—
“lives.
He doesn’t have employees or agents; he has men and women in his thrall.”

She’d started shaking her head as soon as he’d mentioned the letter and continued shaking it stubbornly. Her dark wet locks writhed like Medusa’s snakes around her grimy face. He wanted to haul her from the chair where she sat perched like a recalcitrant child and beat some sense into her.

“I’ve told you, I don’t have the letter,” she said. “I never did. What can I do to convince you?”

“Whether I believe you or not is no longer the point.
Jamison
doesn’t believe you.”

What skin was visible beneath the layer of soot paled as the implication of his words sank in.

“I don’t have the letter.”

He took a step forward and stopped. She tested his patience and his self-control as no woman had ever done before. “I can’t guarantee your safety. It’s only a matter of time before he gains access to you.”

“Access?” she echoed blankly. “You speak as if I’m a thing.”

He looked away from her. “It’s simply a way of speaking and it’s hardly the point.”

“What is the point?” she asked.

He slanted a savage look at her. “The point is you’ll be dead very soon unless that letter is retrieved.” She stared at him mutely. He wasted his time trying to read anything from her expression. She was, after all, a consummate actress.

“Whom did you steal that jewelry case for?”

“Myself.”

“Don’t ask me to believe in a coincidence that has you stealing a jewelry case holding such an important document,” he said tiredly. “Especially considering your father’s connections.”

“What connections?” Her surprise looked genuine.

“Well,” Jack said in a dangerously gentle tone, “he was knighted for stealing things at Jamison’s behest. In addition to the names of good fences, I’m sure he also told you the names of men who would pay enormously well for sensitive missives.”

“No.” She shook her head once more—in response to his charge or her father’s history he could not tell.

He masked his growing frustration. “Perhaps I should clarify our respective positions.
I
do not believe one single word you utter—”

“Why would I lie?” she exclaimed plaintively. “You tell me if I don’t give you this letter, I’ll die. Why would I possibly try to keep the truth from you?”

“Because you are more afraid of whoever you sold this letter to than Jamison. Which is a very grave, a potentially fatal, mistake.”

“I’m not lying,” she said piteously, stretching out her hands in supplication. The skin of her palms was torn and filthy. He nearly went to her.

A very nice pose, my dearest. One’s heart bleeds. My heart would bleed if you hadn’t already drained it so utterly.
The theater had lost a star when Anne Wilder had taken to treading the rooftops rather than the boards.

“Fine,” he said, his tone disinterested. “You are not lying. You don’t have the letter. The jeweled case had no secret compartment.”

She could not completely mask her relief. But it was premature. He would have his answers. He’d spent a lifetime refining the skills to discover secrets. She was afraid of him, yes, but she also wanted him. The combination of fear and lust made for a particularly potent combination, one he would use ruthlessly. In fact, he would use any means at his disposal to unravel the mystery of Anne Tribble Wilder Seward.

She shifted uneasily beneath his gaze. “We’ll concentrate on finding the jewelry chest,” he said mildly. “Perhaps if the letter is still in it, we’ll be able to convince Jamison you know nothing of its contents.”

She opened her mouth to protest again, but he forestalled her.

“Towards that end I want as complete a description of that chest as possible,” he said. “I want to know the names of every contact you have ever heard about who is associated with the criminal underground. We might as well start with what you
are
willing to admit.”

“We?”
She seized on the word, and he cursed himself for handing her this leverage and himself for giving it to her. “Why should you care? Why should you help me?”

“Why, because, my dear,” he said, his voice ironed of any intonation, “you are my wife.”

It was an unfashionable hour in this least fashionable of London’s coffeeshops and the place was nearly empty. A pair of merchants with gentlemanly pretensions crowded the front bow window. Their new top hats sat prominently displayed on the marble-topped tables. Their posture was as stiff and artificial as their newly acquired accents.

God, Knowles hated a cit. Nearly as much as an aristo. Troublesome children, the lot.

He stirred another lump of sugar into the thick black brew before him and waited. He’d arrived early for this meeting Seward had insisted upon, expecting the man to have beaten him here. But Seward had new distractions to impair his efficiency.

An interesting enigma, Jack Seward, one with which Knowles had never been completely comfortable and, therefore, one he valued. Too many men became complacent as they got older and more entrenched in their positions. They took their power for granted. One would never make that mistake with Jack Seward.

Jack had always been something of a dark horse. His inscrutable loyalty to Jamison manifested itself at the strangest times and in the oddest manners. Yet, at other times, his actions proclaimed him an avatar of remorselessness, with no agenda but his own.

And, too, Knowles thought, reaching for a little sugared cake and popping it into his mouth, aside from his usefulness, Knowles rather liked the man.

“Do you suggest the almond or honey cakes?”

Knowles wiped his mouth and glanced out of the corner of his eye at Jack. He returned his gaze to the plate before him. Jack looked awful. His eyes appeared cavernous in his lean face. An incipient beard shadowed his jaw and chin. But the most telling point was the disarray of his cravat. In all the years Knowles had known Jack, he’d never been less than impeccably dressed.

“Honey,” he answered as if he’d been pondering the query. “The almond is a touch off.”

Jack motioned for the servant to bring him a pot of coffee and took his seat. “I need your help, sir,” he said without preamble.

Good,
Knowles thought. Helping Jack could prove of lasting benefit. He said nothing, however, merely sipped his coffee and looked askance at the man.

Jack leaned forward. “Jamison is trying to kill someone. I don’t want him to succeed.”

“I see. Do have a cake, Jack. You look positively undone.” He held the plate out invitingly. Jack shook his head.

With a sigh Knowles replaced the plate. “I may be able to obstruct Jamison’s plans for a while,” he said. “Perhaps even until this person’s usefulness to you has spent itself, but beyond that ...”

Apparently this was not the response Jack sought. He ran his hand through his hair, as if in need of restraining his emotions. Odder and odder. An emotional Jack Seward. He’d seen it all now.

Knowles shrugged apologetically. “You know how tenacious Jamison can be when he’s set himself on a course.”

“Yes, I do, and that’s why I want this person’s welfare assured, sir, and not merely for a day or a week. Forever.”

“Ah!” Knowles laced his fingers across his stomach and smiled sadly. “Who of us is assured a healthy ‘forever’?”

Jack did not return his smile. “I want hers to be.”

Hers?
The interview could not possibly get any more interesting. “Are we speaking of your new bride, perhaps?”

Jack nodded curtly.

“I see.” Knowles pursed his lips, giving the matter his full attention. The waiter brought a fresh pot of coffee and disappeared.

In truth, he saw a great deal more than even Jack would surmise. He had agents no one even knew about.

Secret people whose sole job was to keep him informed about the nuances in the lives of certain people whose job was to keep a finger on the movements of even more important people and so forth and so on, up to the mad old king himself.

Jack’s bride and her propensity for heights had only recently come to his attention. Knowles applauded Jack on his ability to discover Anne Wilder’s interesting talents before he had. But he knew now. Just as he knew Jamison wanted her killed. What he did not know was
why.
Jamison’s insistence that the thief must be killed on the supposition that she had read the letter seemed extreme behavior even for him. Atwood’s description of the letter, a description related in a note Atwood had sent Knowles shortly before his death, had certainly been interesting, but enough to warrant bloodshed? Knowles began to suspect he didn’t know all this letter contained.

He reached out and selected another sugar cake from the plate. Fascinating, he thought, popping it into his mouth. The entire affair was fascinating. He couldn’t remember being so diverted.

“Jamison and I have a tacit agreement,” Knowles finally said. “We do not interfere with each other’s business. You’re asking me to break a rule which has stood us both in good stead for decades.”

“Spare me the demurrals, sir. You told me once if I should ever need anything, I should come to you. Well, I need something, sir. And I’m here.”

Knowles wiped his fingertips on his napkin and nodded gravely. “I will see what I can arrange. But nothing will be accomplished quickly, and during that time I suspect more attempts will be made on your, er, wife’s life.”

If Seward were the sort of man who sighed in relief, he would have sighed then. As it was, Knowles watched the slight ease of tension in the set of his shoulders. Not that they could be said to have unbent.
Really,
he thought in grim amusement,
what had Jamison used on the boy to achieve that punishing posture?

He lumbered heavily to his feet, a portly old man with a waistcoat dusted in sugar powder. With the conscious penuriousness of the merchant class, he carefully counted out the coin for the coffee and cakes. He did not pay for Jack’s untouched pot.

He placed his hat upon his balding pate and looked down at Jack before leaving. “I will, of course, expect something in return.”

“Of course,” Jack replied.

They kept bringing hot water, buckets and buckets of steaming-hot water. And when the soot and grime from the chimney flue had soaked off and floated on that water, they’d emptied the hip bath and filled yet another one. Anne drifted in the steaming liquid. The hot soapy water stung her lacerated hands and penetrated her aching muscles. Physically and mentally drained, she allowed herself to be scrubbed by Spawling.

She had nothing left to fight with. Someone wanted her dead, and the only one who stood in his way was a man who had every right to hate her, who’d already stated—and with every justification—that he disbelieved every word she uttered. She should fear for her life, and she did, but the fear lay buried deep beneath a glacier of pain.

It was Jack’s enmity that kept rising in her thoughts, like a bubble of acid, destroying the blessed numbness. His hatred alone had the power to wound her profoundly, where the last of her heart survived. The combination of hurt and fear finally depleted her, consuming the last of the fevered energy she’d been existing on.

Jack might be keeping her safe for some future revenge, or to be used as leverage, or as a show of power to his father, or for any number of reasons that she could not discern. All she could do was wait and see what he would do with her ... to her.

Mechanically Anne lathered her hair and waited while Spawling silently rinsed it with ladles filled with clear, warm water.

“Thank you,” she murmured, and allowed the maid to help her out of the tub and into a thick, Turkish cotton robe. Anne sat at the dressing table while the woman started working through her tangled knot of hair with a fine-toothed comb.

“Do you ever speak?” Anne asked.

“Aye.”

She glanced at Spawling’s closed, tight face reflected in the mirror. “Have you been with Colonel Seward long?”

“Two months. Mr. Griffin hired me.”

So much for insights into Jack, Anne thought tiredly. A knock at the door sent the maid to answer it. She returned a minute later.

“The colonel be wanting to see you, ma’am.”

Anne quelled the temptation to refuse. What would it accomplish? She had nowhere to go. Her parents had died, her dead husband’s mother hated her . . . she had no home of her own.

She could refuse Jack nothing. She relied on his sufferance just to draw breath. She rose. The maid had already opened the wardrobe and withdrawn a gown.

“This ‘un, ma’am?” she asked, holding up a bright-orchid
robe de chambres.
It was Sophia’s. Her maid must have packed it by mistake.

“Yes,” Anne replied listlessly. “Fine.”

Fifteen minutes later Anne followed Griffin to the little room where Jack had interviewed her before. He held the door open and closed it behind her.

She didn’t see Jack at first. Only the weak glow of the fire and a poorly trimmed lamp offered illumination. The heavy drapes had been pulled tight against the night ... or whatever else might seek entrance.

The thought chilled her and she rubbed her arms. She turned to go, unwilling to wait in this inhospitable room, and saw him. He sat in a chair pulled deep within the shadows. His elbows rested on the arms and his hands were steepled beneath his chin. His head was lowered but his eyes were raised, watching her. She started, confused that she’d not perceived his presense.

She’d developed a sixth sense, like the sleeper’s awareness of another’s regard. It had never failed her before.

She moved away from that relentless, inimical regard. His gaze tracked her with the calm purposefulness of a predatory animal. He was in shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled up his forearms. Against the pristine white, his skin appeared dark. His wrists and forearms were elegant and strong. Not all the darkness on his lean face was due to shadows; he looked in need of a shave.

She suddenly realized she’d been staring at him and, disconcerted, glanced away. His intense stillness was not the result of camouflage. Nor did she sense that he achieved it by drawing in on himself, burying the essence of himself so deeply it couldn’t be found.

On the contrary, she felt as if she were looking at a man whose soul has been caught in a hurricane, each layer ripped from him, piece by piece, until his soul had become diffused, so thin as to be imperceptible.

He was neither darkness nor light, but he was perpetually haunted by the potential for both. A twilight man, existing in some slender moment of glimmering darkness.
My Lord,
she realized,
I have never seen him in the daylight.

She had to say something. He unnerved her.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yes. I wanted to
see
you.” Only his lips moved. A brand popped in the hearth and a shower of embers reflected against his clear gray irises. A fanciful mind might think they revealed a fire deep within the man. She was not of a fanciful nature. She swallowed.

“Why do you do it?” he asked.

It would be futile to pretend she didn’t understand the question. But how could she explain what she didn’t understand herself? So, as she didn’t have any answer, she gave him the thief’s flip retort.

“Haven’t you ever stolen anything, Cap?”

She was unprepared for his response. He surged forward then jerked to a halt as if caught on the end of a barb hook. She backed away. Her pulse kicked into double time.

An evil smile crept over his lips. “Nothing compared to what you’ve stolen.”

She knew he was speaking of the night she’d tied him up and done the unimaginable.

His smile became knife sharp. “I see you understand me. Did you think I was bluffing when I promised I’d have you? Or did you think that when I discovered that the woman who fondled my body with such enthusiastic eroticism was the modest and dignified widow, I would renege? I won’t. I never break a promise.”

Her knees went rubbery and her hand shot out, searching for support. He rose, coming to her as gracefully and attentively as a court swain to his lady’s aid. He took her arm and led her to the small, straight-backed chair she occupied earlier.

“Here. Sit by the fire.” He held it for her. Confused by this combination of suitor and enemy, she obliged. He took a position looming unseen and silent behind her.

“I think I deserve a little compensation for that evening, don’t you?” he asked softly.

His hands came down on her shoulders. She jerked half out of her seat. He pressed her back down.

“Easy,” he murmured, as if gentling a horse. “You’re cold. Your hair is still damp. Let me help you.”

His voice rippled over her like rough silk. He threaded his fingers through her hair and slowly separated the thick mass into dark strands, spreading it like a net over her shoulders and breasts, his knuckles brushing lightly over her bosom as he worked. His hands were beautiful. Even the ruined one had a certain tortured grace.

It disconcerted her, having him standing behind her, as she was unable to see him. He touched her familiarly, almost casually. She wanted to read his expression but could not bring herself to turn. It would be too intimate.

More intimate than this?
She caught back a burble of laughter. Her head swam with fatigue and increasing tension.

He ran his thumb lightly along her neckline and dipped it beneath the laced edge. She went as still as a hind in a woodsman’s net. She shivered. He’d sworn he’d have recompense. Fear added its unique flavor to her tumultuous emotions.

“You really are exquisite.” He might have been a sightseer commenting on a particularly nice vista. His voice was detached. Idly he pushed down her gaping neckline, revealing her breasts nearly to their tips.

If he heard her slight gasp, he ignored it.

“One cannot help but wonder how someone so exquisite, with so many advantages, decides to take up thievery as a pastime.”

She could barely think. His hands flowed down over her. The heat from his broad palms penetrated through the silk, warming her flesh. He cupped her breasts and massaged them, testing their texture and weight with ruthless gentleness.

Tongues of firelight flickered over her skin, bathing her in stripes of light and shadow. He scared her. She couldn’t remember a time when her body had been caressed so deliberately and with such obvious intentions.

“Was it boredom?”

“What?”

His thumb had found the peak of one breast beading beneath the tissue-thin silk. “Was it boredom?”

“No.” She sounded breathless. She
was
breathless. She started to rise but he abandoned his languid fondling of her bosom to push her down into her seat again. She began to turn but he braced her head gently between his hands, keeping her facing forward and away from him.

“Stay there,” he whispered, his warm breath rushing over her ear. She could judge nothing from that soft, rasping voice. “A few touches. Surely you had more of me.”

He set her hands carefully on the arms of the chair and covered them with his own. “Hold on. You aren’t required to do anything, to acknowledge anything. Just feel.” His low voice hypnotized her with unspoken promises of a dark knowledge she longed to share; it sucked her will from her.

She looked down. His dark hands were casually fiddling with the satin loops decorating her neckline, his knuckles rubbing artlessly against her nipples.

“Well, Anne? Why do you steal things? Just blood running true?” His voice held a trace of amusement or pain, impossible to tell which one.

“No.”

He quit playing with the satin decoration. Disappointment and relief flooded her in equal portions until she heard him move. He’d knelt behind her chair. She stared straight ahead, unsure and apprehensive of what he planned.

He reached around her and slid the back of his hand down her skirts to her knee. Slowly, incrementally, he crumpled the material in his fist until he’d exposed her calf. His fingers slipped behind her knee, making small, delicate little circles on the too-receptive flesh.

“Relax,” he whispered in her ear. “There was a night when you wanted me. Do you remember? I do.”

Her face and body flushed with mortification. “I’m sorry.”

His hand stopped for a heartbeat. Then he began touching her again. The laughter fanning her cheek held no amusement. “Liar. You are not. But I am.”

“Please.”

He drew lazy designs on the soft downy flesh inside her thigh. “You never allowed me to participate. Unkind. One might say discourteous. I would have been happy to oblige you. Service you. But you know that.” For an instant an edged note penetrated his languid tone. “You demonstrated quite clearly just how willing I would have been.”

Yes.
Her eyes fluttered shut, reeling beneath the casual assault he made on her body.
Yes.
She’d wanted him. Wanted to control all that masculine power and sexuality. From the start she’d been drawn to his strength, his power, his control. It had been such a contrast to her own lack of power, her own lack of sexuality, her own lack of control.

“I want to oblige now. Let me pleasure you.”

Pleasure?
The concept beckoned her. She’d never been allowed pleasure for pleasure’s sake, uncomplicated and in its rawest form. No man had ever done things to her just to gratify her senses. The idea enticed her.

She wanted him. Like a moth to fire, his ability to destroy her bewitched her. His free hand lifted her heavy mantle of hair and swept it aside. She felt his open mouth on the nape of her neck. Her head fell back, her throat arched, offering itself to his exploration. Warm lips brushed feathery kisses at the corner of her eye and on the curve of her chin.

“Let me service you.”

“
Yes.”
She breathed the consent in surrender. She no longer cared what he sought from her, revenge or shame.

She felt his smile against her temple. “First, explain to me, Anne,” he said. “Tell me why you stole.”

She started to lift her hands in a gesture of defeat. He caught her wrists in midair, returning them to the arms of the chair.

“Keep your hands there.” His voice held no cajoling note, and for the first time she understood that in teasing her, he teased himself. The thought occurred and disappeared, drowned in sensation: moist kisses and featherlike caresses, darkness and heat, an unseen figure pleasuring her with casual disdain. She clenched the rounded knobs ending the chair’s arms.

“I’m waiting, Anne.” His hand moved higher and higher up between her legs. Her pulse raced. Her nerve endings felt charged with an electrifying jolt as his fingertips brushed between her legs.

“Well?” he asked.

She didn’t have an answer for him. She couldn’t explain it herself. She fumbled around, trying to find the answer he wanted. Anything. She shivered, stretched on tenterhooks of sensation, needy and gasping.

“They deserved it,” she said at last, gulping.

He laughed gently in her ear, a warm and unconvinced sound. “Try again.” His fingertips returned to the juncture of her thighs and lightly caressed the swell of female flesh.

She gasped, heeling back. His teeth nipped her ear, a salt of pain seasoning the growing pleasure. “Why?”

“I needed the money for the Home.”

“No.”

With one hand he clasped her knee and spread her legs wide. Without strength, her thighs fell apart, allowing his careless exploration. With his other hand he dipped beneath the swell of her right breast and lifted it above her neckline, freeing it from her bodice. She looked down at herself: legs wide, Jack’s hand fondling her sex, one breast pulled above her bodice that his other hand might play with her nipple.