Between a Rake and a Hard Place (3 page)

“I'm not here to see and be seen. Turk needs the exercise.” And Jonah needed the measure of peace those few moments spent flying over the ground afforded him. Sometimes he thought they were all that kept him sane.

“You need to punish yourself as well. I understand.”

Jonah's fingers curled into fists, but he bridled himself. Knocking Alcock into next week would be satisfying for a moment, but it would only give the man more power over him.

“Don't look so surprised. I've read your dossier, remember. It's only natural that you'd seek absolution for your deeds. Riding yourself and your horse to exhaustion is a socially acceptable method of self-flagellation,” Alcock said with an oily smile. “You have a long history of doing very bad things, Sir Jonah, albeit for very good reasons. The ends may justify the means, but I doubt a past like yours makes for restful sleep.”

“How I sleep is my own business.”

“And where you sleep is mine,” Alcock countered. “How is your current assignment coming along?”

Fortescue Alcock was determined that the line of Hanoverian kings would die out with the Prince Regent. If the younger sons of King George were thwarted in their race to produce an heir, the Crown would devolve to another ruling house. Jonah had been tasked with seducing and ruining Lady Serena Osbourne so she would no longer be considered as a possible wife for the Duke of Kent.

No,
tasked
was the wrong word.
Coerced
was more like it.

“It's proceeding apace.” Jonah narrowed his eyes at Alcock. “Don't worry. I agreed to do it. It'll get done.”

“It had better. I understand your brother is keeping company with a lady well above himself. It'd be a shame if, say…new information about your dishonor at Maubeuge should put an end to such idyllic love.”

Jonah had been implicated, along with his friends Rhys Warrington and Nathaniel Colton, in a disastrous defeat in France just days before the decisive Battle of Waterloo. Facts were fluid things, Alcock had explained. They could be bent to whatever use he chose. He claimed to have evidence that would either exonerate them or, if he so wished, see them all convicted of treason for colluding with the French and leading their men into an ambush. The ensuing scandal would ruin Jonah's family.

“I imagine it would be impossible for your brother to marry the Earl of Enderling's daughter if—”

Fast as thought, Jonah snatched the man up by his lapels and held him aloft, feet kicking as he tried to scrape his toes on the ground.

“I agreed to do your dirty work, Alcock.” Jonah gave him a quick shake, like a terrier might a rat. “I didn't agree to listen to you talk about it. Bother me about this again and I'll find a way to permanently close your mouth.”

Alcock paled to the color of rancid suet, but his lips remained firmly shut.

Sometimes
, Jonah thought as he shot the man a wolf's smile,
it's good to have a dangerous reputation.

The London Lyric Opera opened their season with a ponderous production of Mozart's
Cosi Fan Tutte
. It was not the company's finest effort. However, ham-handed acting and a tenor of dubious talent aside, the premier was judged by all to be thoroughly entertaining. Of course, this is most likely because the real theatre is always being played out among the bon ton that makes up the audience.

From
Le Dernier Mot,

The Final Word on News That Everyone
Who Is Anyone Should Know

The tenor muffed his high note, but his claque insisted on applauding loudly and long in any case. The practice of having a paid group of clappers was new to English opera, but the Italian singer had brought this devoted group with him. Serena suspected the long trip from Italy had rendered them all tone deaf, but they made enough noise that the maestro was obliged to give the downbeat for a reprise.

“Maybe he'll have better luck this time,” Serena said to her friend, Lysandra Grey, who was seated beside her in the elegant Wyndleton box.

“And this opera will last long past midnight if they keep repeating arias till the singers get them right.” Lysandra sighed. Then she leaned over to stage whisper into Serena's ear, “He's staring at you again.”

Serena lowered her opera glasses. “Who?”

“Sir Jonah Sharp, of course,” Lysandra said. “Who did you think? He's been ogling you all night. I haven't seen such an intense stare since my terrier treed a squirrel in the garden.”

“There's a flattering comparison. Squirrels are merely rats with fluffy tails, you know.”

“Shh!” Amelia said from Serena's other side. “You'll miss the cadenza.”

“So will the singer, most likely.” Serena sent her governess an apologetic grimace. Amelia had always had a weakness for Italian tenors, whether they choked on their high notes or not.

Lysandra made a “hmph-ing” sound and sat back in her seat, arms crossed beneath her exquisitely displayed bosom.

Serena often envied her friend's curves, but she allowed that a buxom figure might have its drawbacks. Binding her less than generous breasts to fit into the men's clothing had been hard enough. It would have been impossible if Serena had been shaped like Lysandra. No one would ever mistake her friend for a man, no matter what she wore.

Of course, Sir Jonah hadn't been fooled by Serena's disguise one bit. She wondered what had given her away.

Serena glanced at the box directly across the theatre from her father's exclusive seats. Sir Jonah Sharp wasn't paying the least attention to the singers and dancers on the stage. He met her gaze without embarrassment at having been caught looking at her.

Throughout the overture, she'd felt eyes on her, heavy and knowing. She lifted her head, like a grazing doe that senses a watcher in the thicket, and met Sir Jonah's green eyes. She looked away immediately, but while the soprano sang an aria about how desperately she missed the tenor who'd been called away to war, Serena was acutely aware of Sir Jonah's steady gaze despite the dimness of the theatre.

Lysandra leaned in again and this time cupped her hand around Serena's ear. “Honestly, what have you done to attract the man's attention like that? Sir Jonah's been dogging your steps for the last fortnight.”

“I doubt that. If we've crossed paths, it's likely because London's circle is a tad small before the Season starts.” After the near disaster at Boodles, Serena had hoped to avoid Sir Jonah completely. Unfortunately, she'd encountered him at several social venues since then—the piano recital at Lady Harrington's, the Orphans of Veterans of Foreign Wars charity dinner, and she'd even spied him a few rows behind her at an Academy of the Arts lecture.

“The man seems to have forgotten he's only a baronet,” Lysandra said waspishly, earning her another shushing from Amelia.

“His father, Viscount Topfield, is well regarded,” Serena said, not sure why she felt compelled to defend the man. Even though her friend was an earl's daughter, Lysandra always put much more stock in titles than Serena did.

“I heard a rumor about a possible match between Sir Jonah's brother Harold and the daughter of Lord Enderling, an earl, no less,” Lysandra said, careful to confine her whisper to a mere wisp only Serena could hear. “Even if Harold Sharp stands to become a viscount one day, no one can deny his reach is exceeding his grasp with that match.”

“A man cannot be held to account for his brother's actions. What has that to do with Sir Jonah?”

Lysandra cocked a brow that suggested Serena was a dull-witted child. “Perhaps Sir Jonah has similarly high aspirations.”

Or
low
ones.
His direct gaze suggested nothing remotely resembling honorable intentions. He made her feel hot and irritable and as if her stays had been laced too tightly. He looked at her as if he
knew
her.

Which was ridiculous. Just because he'd aided her in an indiscreet adventure, it did not give him leave to assume a familiarity between them that categorically did not exist.

Serena stewed through the rest of the collections of duets and ensembles. Tepid applause interrupted her musings, and the curtain mercifully fell on the opera's first act. Liveried servants turned up the gas lamps for intermission and Serena blinked at the light.

She resisted the urge to glance in Jonah's direction. She knew without knowing how that he was still watching her. She'd felt partially hidden by the darkness. Now that Sir Jonah could see her by lamplight, she had the same odd sensation she experienced in dreams sometimes—the squirmish one where she appeared in public as bare as an egg.

Amelia stood. “I do so love Mozart, but he does tend to waffle on sometimes. It feels good to move about. Shall we take a turn around the lobby?”

Serena followed Amelia and Lysandra out of the box and down the corridor that curved around the mezzanine. Mr. Tunstall, her ubiquitous footman, followed. In the absence of another male escort, Tunstall always hovered in the shadows when Serena moved in public. He was tall and well-favored, in the manner of such servants, but he was her father's creature. Any misstep Serena made would be summarily reported to the marquis.

Now
is
when
it
would
be
exceedingly
handy
to
have
a
brother.
Of course, Serena didn't intend any activity her father would frown upon this evening, but if she did, she suspected a brother would have been much easier to bribe into silence than the footman.

By the time they reached the broad marble stairs leading to the lobby, it was choked with other theatre-goers and they had to thread their way through the crowd. Punch was being served off to one side of the lavish space and the other women gravitated toward it. Serena headed for the row of doors. The footman fell into step with her.

“No, Mr. Tunstall, you needn't accompany me. I only wish a breath of fresh air. Please see to Lady Lysandra and Miss Braithwaite instead.”

His mouth tightened into a thin line, but he couldn't very well countermand her direct order. “Very good, milady.” Tunstall turned on his heel and left.

Serena was free to squeeze past the knots of opera-goers, successfully avoiding being dragged into discussions on the relative merits of the mezzo as opposed to the saucy maid character, who was in danger of stealing every scene in which she appeared. Finally, Serena reached her destination, and the doorman opened the brass-studded portal so she could escape the press of people.

It was a fresh March night, not warm enough for the Thames to begin admitting its distinctive seasonal tarry fish smell, but cool enough to make her wish she'd brought her wrap.

“Good evening, Lady Serena.”

She realized that she'd been hoping all along to find him suddenly at her elbow. “Sir Jonah.”

He held out a cup of punch. “It's not Boodles' coffee, but it's wet.”

She thanked him, took a sip, and made a face. It was as weak as she expected. “They must have borrowed the receipt from Almack's.”

“Careful—one of the patronesses may hear you,” he said with a chuckle. “Those ladies aren't ones to forgive a slight.”

“I rather doubt I'll be blacklisted.”

“They did refuse to admit the Duke of Wellington once, but I suppose you're right.”

He drained his own cup in one long gulp. Serena diverted her gaze. She wasn't used to such raw appetites. Most gentlemen sipped their punch in a genteel, measured manner. Sir Jonah obviously wasn't the type to do anything by halves.

“You'll have people fawning on you right and left once you're royal,” he said.

“So you thought you'd beat the rush and begin fawning on me now?”

“I never fawn. However, if it seems that I've been following you, you're right. I have,” he admitted, “but only because you interest me, Serena.”

She'd been called many things—accomplished, well-connected, even beautiful once or twice by people who wished to curry favor with her powerful father—but never interesting. “Why do you find me interesting?”

“Frankly, because you're different.”

She made the sound Amelia scolded her for often. “Ladies never snort, Serena,” she'd say. Unfortunately, Serena did so with alarming frequency. “In case you hadn't noticed, being different is not a quality which is highly prized by Society.”

“It is by me.” He fixed her with his almost hypnotic gaze. “In my experience, too many young ladies are as interchangeable as a matched set of andirons.”

Serena blinked, breaking the spell, and buried her nose in her punch cup for a moment. “Oh, you charmer, you. I wasn't aware your experience included many young ladies. Most say you favor lonely widows and wayward wives.”

“You mustn't believe everything you hear.”

What about the other things whispered about him? Like the mysterious way he came by his knighthood. Usually, the commoner who was honored with the elevation to baronet had performed some service to the Crown and that service was trumpeted about by said commoner until his listeners were tempted to box their own ears.

Sir Jonah had never uttered a word in public about how he'd earned his baronetcy.

But that didn't stop the rumor mill from grinding out possibilities, some of them quite unsavory. By the light of the gas lamp, she noticed a small scar bisecting one of his eyebrows. Instead of spoiling his appearance, it gave him a rather dashing air, as if he were a pirate king or a gypsy lord.

A
dangerous
man
to
know.

She burned to ask him how he came by the scar, but if she did it would seem as if she were interested in him as well. And she wasn't. Not a bit. He was too rough, too direct, too…taking off his tailcoat.

There, in front of God and everybody who cared to glance their way, Jonah Sharp was peeling off his jacket. Gentlemen never did such a thing. To be seen in public in only his waistcoat and shirt was more than a little scandalous.

And made her breath catch strangely in the back of her throat.

She glanced around at the other opera-goers who were taking the air. Anyone might see her with this half-dressed fellow.

He draped the tailcoat over her shoulders. “You were shivering.”

This
surprisingly
thoughtful
half-dressed fellow.
The fine merino was infused with the warmth of his body along with his distinctive scent—musky and rich as a deep forest with an undertone of leather.

“Thank you. The air is a bit brisk this evening.” She hoped he didn't think her shiver had anything to do with standing so closely to him. She handed him her empty punch cup and pulled the lapels together in front. It was almost as if he were holding her close.

She'd always had a vivid imagination, but no good could come from that sort of fancy.

“Why did you sneak into Boodles in the first place?” He set the cups down on the brickwork railing leading to the door.

She took a step back and found her spine pressed against the brick facade of the opera house. “I don't have to answer to you for my actions.”

He braced a hand on the wall next to her head and leaned toward her. “Since I risked a bit to get you out of there, I think I deserve to know why you were in the club in the first place. Never say it was for the coffee. I could plainly see that you didn't care for it.”

“You're right. It was as bad as that punch.”

“Then why masquerade as your cousin and invade Boodles? And may I remind you that you owe me?”

His face was only a hand's breath from hers. “If I tell you why I was there, will it cancel the debt?”

He nodded.

“Very well.” She straightened so he could see she wasn't intimidated by his nearness. “I did it so I could cross it off the list.”

“What list?”

This was trickier ground. “You'll laugh.”

“Perhaps, but tell me in any case.”

“It's my list of forbidden pleasures. Things I wish to do simply to revel in having done them,” Serena said. “Haven't you ever wished to do some secret thing?”

“I don't consider pleasures forbidden.” His smile was wickedness itself. “And if I want something, I make no secret of it.”

She blinked hard at that. “Well,”—she swallowed back the strange tightness in her throat—“in the case of my exploits in Boodles, the pleasure was overrated. Men's clothes are not nearly as comfortable as I'd imagined they would be, and as you said, the coffee is not as high a quality as I can find in my father's dining room.”

“Maybe so, but you have to admit the company was pleasurable.” The wickedness was gone from his smile, but it was no less engaging.