Always a Temptress (21 page)

Just what would happen if he found out she really was mad as a mongoose? Surely someone else could tell him. Maybe that way it wouldn’t sound so bad.

“You goin’ in or not?” Bivens demanded, hands spilling over with diamonds.

Sucking in a deep breath, Kate strode through the boudoir to Harry’s room. Giving the door one good knock, she opened into his changing room door. And stopped dead in her tracks. Harry stood before her, and he was half naked.

S
he’d seen him naked before, she kept thinking. Of course she had.

But he’d been on his back. He’d been asleep. Now his legs were braced, as if he were standing on the deck of a sailing vessel, and his muscles were alive with movement.

Clad in nothing but uniform trousers, he had one arm over his head, a rag in his hand, scrubbing under his arm. It should have only embarrassed her. After all, she was intruding. But somehow the sight of water sliding down his ribs, of that strong, raised arm, and the naked, hair-dusted expanse of rippling torso, struck her deep in the belly, in the knees, in the blood that rushed to her face and thickened in her veins.

Oh, dear sweet heavens. She couldn’t look away. She couldn’t breathe. All she could think of was Harry’s promise to seduce her into his bed.

“When I extended the invitation,” Harry finally said, “I didn’t expect you to take me up on it so quickly.”

She managed to shake her head. “I…um…”

She did finally see how wicked his smile was as he slowly lowered his arm to his side. She saw that he hadn’t dried off the soap or water, which made her want to grab a towel and do it for him. She heard the rasp of his sudden breath. Or was that hers?

Finally, as if moving underwater, Harry picked up a towel and dried himself off. “I’m sorry, Kate. What did you need?”

She managed to clear her throat. She had to clench her hands, though, to keep from reaching out. “I’m sorry. I should have…uh…”

“You did knock.”

“Waited.”

She swore her skin was buzzing; she could hear her pulse, and her breasts seemed to swell against the slick silk of her robe. She was suddenly sensitive to everything. She had the most inexplicable urge to rub herself against Harry’s chest like a cat looking for a good stroking around the ears, and it frightened the stuffing out of her.

“Kate?”

“Hmm?”

“I have to be at Horse Guards sometime this evening. And,” he said, grabbing a shirt and throwing it over his head, “I can’t do that till I dress. Can this wait?”

The scintillating flush died a terrible death as she thought that maybe, yes, they should postpone it. They shouldn’t talk about it at all, so that he never again had reason to look down on her in pity.

She would never forgive herself if she succumbed to cowardice. “No,” she said, straightening. “I don’t think it can.”

It had been so easy to tell Drake her suspicions. Maybe she should send Harry a note. To be read at Horse Guards. Or Naples. Keeping her eyes down, she walked into his bedroom and dropped into one of the cream armchairs by the crackling fire. Looking completely bemused, Harry followed.

She kept her eyes focused on the feathers that wafted along her wrists. “Drake asked me to tell you about the note I asked Mudge to take him last night.”

Harry looked back toward the door. “Mudge didn’t say anything.”

“I think Marcus asked him not to.” She drew in a steadying breath. “Something happened in…in the asylum. I heard someone. A woman who had a room by me, I think. At least, that’s where I remember hearing her.”

“Do you know who?”

She managed a thin smile. “Well, that’s the issue. You see, I believe I heard Lady Pamela Riordan in the asylum. But Lady Riordan has been dead these six months. Drowned at sea.”

For a long moment, Harry didn’t move. He seemed to be studying the Stubbs over the mantelpiece. “You’re sure.”

“No. How could I be? But I know her voice. We were on several committees together, and I swear it was she. She kept saying that she was Lady Riordan and that she’d been locked in that room where no one could find her. She kept saying she didn’t mean to find out.” Kate swallowed, hating the memory of that sad, small voice.

“Did she say who put her there?”

She looked up now, bracing for a verdict of madness in Harry’s eyes. “Her husband. He’s a Lion.”

“She said that?”

Kate shrugged. “She kept promising Richard—it’s her husband’s name—that if he’d let her have her children, she wouldn’t say a word about the Lions.”

Harry was silent for such a long time that Kate came perilously close to losing what certainty she had. She suddenly felt suffocated by dread. Would they search, just as she’d asked, only to find nothing but her own ghosts? Would it be Harry’s turn to lock her in a room?

“Do you think she’s the only wife who’s been put away?” Harry finally asked, startling her.

Kate blinked. She hadn’t even considered the idea. “I’m not sure.”

“Any other wives die mysterious deaths recently in the ton?”

Well, this was something Kate did know. Bea adored memorial services almost as much as weddings.

“Sally, Baroness Sanbourne. Died of smallpox. Miss Mildred Weaver-Fry. A fall down the stairs.” She thought, but could come up with no others. “I’ll ask Bea.”

Harry was already shaking his head. “Sanbourne? He’s assistant to the exchequer. Did you tell Marcus?”

She shrugged. “No. Just about Pamela. It never occurred to me about the others.”

Getting to his feet, he grabbed his uniform tunic. “I’d better tell Marcus. Lord, if these women are alive, it could be a treasure trove of information.”

Kate’s head came up. “You believe me?”

He looked rueful. “I don’t know. I do know that it isn’t a possibility we can overlook. If it’s true…” He shook his head. “It opens incredible possibilities.”

“And if it’s not?”

He lifted a hand to cup her cheek. “Then it’s not.”

This time Kate was too preoccupied to anticipate Harry. When he pulled her to her feet, she all but bolted. He never gave her the chance. His mouth was gentle, but the kiss was deep. Kate tasted coffee and peppermint. She smelled fresh linen and leather and man. She fought the whirling giddiness that threatened to engulf her.

Then he lifted his head, and she was caught by the intensity in his eyes. “A nightmare is still only a nightmare.”

She felt shaken to her toes. How could he say this so blithely?

“How about sharing a bit of warmth tonight?” he asked. “Maybe the nightmares will ease for us both.”

She was suddenly so tempted. There was something so seductive about being held. She might actually get to like it.

Which would only make it worse when it was gone.

In the end, she only had enough courage to say she’d think about it. Harry dropped another kiss on her forehead and ushered her through to her boudoir, leaving her with her awakening, anxious body, a bad painting that reminded her too well of what she’d lost, and an invitation to take a first tentative step forward.

Not far away in a lane off St. Martin’s Lane, the door swung open to the Black Cat pub and a man stepped out. He was unremarkable for the pub or the area, deep in the Seven Dials, where commerce was conducted in used clothes and produce, and the poor held on to respectability by a thumb. Of medium height and coloring, the man wore a collection of mismatched clothing he’d taken off his victims: brown hacking jacket, greasy emerald-green waistcoat, six watch fobs, and a brand-new bell-shaped rough beaver hat. He was whistling, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, but his eyes never stopped moving along the crowded, dingy street. He had just pulled out a shiny gold pocket watch and clicked it open when a beautiful redhead sauntered up to him.

“
Ah, bonsoir
,” she cooed, smiling. “You are Monsieur Mee-chell,
oui
?”

Mitchell jerked to attention, his eyes growing wide. “Do I know you, ducks?”

With a conspiratorial smile, she took him by the hand and led him away. “I ’ave been told by
les Lions
that you and your friend are to kill the Duchess of Murther. But
you
were the bold one to go in ’er ’ouse and show ’er the way down the steps.”

After a quick look around, Mitchell grinned. “Never knew I were there. Billy says as how I should make it look like an accident, and that’s just what I did.”

Stopping in the side alley, she ran a delicate finger down the front of his bright green vest. “Mmmm, yes. Most daring. ’Ow sad she did not die.
Les Lions
asked that I, Mimi, give a message to Billy about this valiant but sadly failed attempt.”

She looked up, the whites of her eyes faintly gleaming. Mitchell was smiling so widely that he forgot to protect himself. By the time he thought to run, his throat was slit from ear to ear and his brand-new hat lay in a puddle of blood. It took Mimi only five more minutes to carve the quote into his forehead.

The next afternoon, Harry was in the library talking to Thrasher when Finney popped his head in the door. “’Scuse me, Major. You wanted to know. We ’ave guests.”

Damn. Flipping open his watch, he saw that it was one. He’d meant to talk with Kate alone before the meeting Drake had arranged with all the Rakes at three. It seemed that he was going to be sipping tea with society dames instead. “On my way.”

“ ’Ey,” Thrasher protested, motioning to his crimson-and-gold livery. “You can’t desert me now. I got all tarted up to talk to you, din’t I? Took a baff and ev’ryfing.”

“So you did. But Lady Kate looks much better tarted up. So quick with you. What do you know?”

Thrasher scratched his near-white-blond hair. “Right. Ain’t…
haven’t
cast me glims on Axman Billy. Unless he’s takin’ the dirt nap, he’s layin’ real low.”

Harry nodded. It fit with the information Drake had. “My thanks.”

He was halfway to his feet when the boy objected. “But that’s not all!”

Harry leaned his hip on the desk. “What? Quick with it, now.”

“Well, Axman ain’t…
hasn’t
been heard of, but two o’ his bully boys has. Dead, they was, in the Dials, slit from ear to ear.”

Harry shrugged. “Not much of a surprise in the Dials.”

“Word is that them two was seen ’ereabouts the last coupla days. An’ ’ere’s the weird part. They had words carved in their skin.”

Harry sat up. A shiver of portent snaked down his neck. “Words? What words?”

“Two-finger Martin, ’oo works for Charlie the costermonger, said it was somefin’ like—” Thrasher screwed up his freckled face in concentration. “‘Ambition should be made of some kind of stuff.’”

“Sterner. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. It’s from Shakespeare.” But that was impossible. It was the Surgeon’s signature to leave a quote carved into his victims. And the Surgeon was dead.

“Martin was sure?”

“Handwritin’ was real clear.”

Harry rubbed at his forehead. They had a new player, and Harry had no idea who it was. “You think they got in here somehow?”

Thrasher shrugged. “Mitchell the Mouse was the slickest second-story man in Lunnon. Reckon he could sneak in Windsor and make off with the crown, ’e wanted.”

Harry nodded. “I need you to take a message to Lord Drake. The back way, now. No one can know.”

Thrasher scowled. “Teach y’r granny to suck eggs.”

Harry dashed off a note, folded it, and sealed it. “I know I don’t have to tell you to be careful. Lady Kate would fair skin me alive if I let anything happen to you.”

“Got that right.” The boy chortled. “She likes me better ’n you.”

After Thrasher bolted, Harry took a moment to double-check his own new livery: mulberry jacket, buff inexpressibles, Coachman knot, and riding boots. After all this time in his Rifles green, he felt uncomfortable in Weston and Hoby. But this was his new uniform, designed to camouflage him among the upper reaches of society.

The outfit highlighted what a fish out of water he was. Oh, he had friends in the ton. Men he’d known through the army or the Rakes. But trusting a man with your life tended to blur class distinctions. He was about to step out of that comfortable pond onto hostile territory, where he would be scorned for marrying so far above him. If he stayed, he would face a lifetime of snubs, a daily battle with small-minded aristocrats who would delight in telling Kate how unfortunate she was in marrying him.

Did he want to do that to himself? To her? Should he leave before she got used to him? Or should he just kidnap her and toss her on the first ship out of England? Would his dream accommodate a wife?

Wife. He shook his head. When had he begun to think of Kate that way? Had it been when she’d wept in his arms? He’d definitely felt protective. He’d found himself wanting to make it up to that girl who had left bouquets for her father on an unwelcoming desk.

But she wasn’t that young girl anymore. She was harder, sharper, as wary as a wild fox, living in expectation of the hounds. Just like him, she bore scars that would never fade. Had she changed too much for them to reclaim their relationship? Had he? Was she enough to make him sacrifice the life he’d been planning for the last ten years?

Why, for God’s sake, had her father made such accusations?
Was
there something in her to fear? And why, Harry wondered, hadn’t he at least faced Kate with her father’s accusation all those years ago? What an arrogant ass he’d been.

Well, he thought, shooting his cuffs. That wasn’t a mistake he could undo. All he could do right now was get on in and act the besotted husband.

He heard the female chatter long before he reached the Chinese Drawing Room, where Kate held her At Homes. Standing in the hall, his white-gloved hands looking like wrapped hams, Finney scrunched up his doughy, misshapen features.

“You want I should announce you?”

Harry frowned. “Good God, no. Notice anything unusual today?”

“Quiet as a whorehouse on Sunday.”

Harry nodded. “I’m expecting several guests coming in the back. They’re for the library. Tell Mudge, and make sure we’re free of suspicious lurkers.”

Briefly he filled Finney in on what he’d learned and waited for him to lumber off in the direction of the kitchen to apprise the staff. Then, taking a breath, he turned back to the room.

If he stood just shy of the door, he could see the room reflected in the mirror on the front wall. Seated on the red sofa, Kate was handing tea to three women who’d obviously dressed to impress, with plumed, high-crowned bonnets and fussy pastel dresses. He’d been right, he thought. Kate had once again donned her strongest armor. Nodding and chatting as she passed a plate of little cakes, she glowed in one of her signature dresses, this one emerald with a high ruffled neckline and long sleeves to hide her bruises. She’d wound a matching ribbon through her piled-up hair, which succeeded in making her look like a deb fresh on the marriage market.