Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 02] (30 page)

“He
didn’t
? What did you do?”

“I apologized.” He chuckled darkly in memory. “Loudly and publicly. I told him that I was sorry he was so poorly endowed that no woman would have him unless forced to it.”

She laughed and wrapped herself more tightly around him. He stroked her hair in silence for a moment.

“Your turn,” he said. “What was the largest he you told me?”

“Hmm. It isn’t so much what I said as it was what I did. Your Widow Simpleton is not at all like me. I’m afraid I’m not fashionable at all. I never wear face paint. I rarely tighten my corset. Most of my clothing is demure and dull… excepting the green dress, of course.”

“What green dress is this?”

“Oh, sorry. I wore that one for Nathaniel, not you.”

“Who is Nathaniel?”

“Nathaniel,” she said smugly, “is my beau.”

“Is that so?” he growled. He rolled her over in a quick movement and covered her with his body. “Your beau?”

She grinned up at him, glad to lighten his mood with a bit of teasing. “You’re jealous.”

“No, only amused. Nathaniel is no threat whatsoever.”

“Oh? How can you be so sure?”

“Because I made you squeak.”

Her jaw dropped. “What?”

He nodded arrogantly. “Indeed. You squeaked several times. Quite loudly at that.”

“I did not!”

He leaned to nuzzle her ear. “Eeeee … eeeeee,” he teased softly.

She hit him on the shoulder. “Stop that.”

He shifted himself to he between her thighs. He was hard and swollen, pressing gently against her sensitized cleft. “Eeeeee …”

She hit him again, and this time when her body stirred with her blow, he slipped a fraction of himself within her. He was so thick that he parted her deeply even so. A jolt of pure sensation shot through her. She gasped and clutched at his shoulders. He raised his head to smile down at her. “Do you know who’s next?”

“Who?” she asked faintly, stunned at the instant awakening of her desire.

“We are.” He arched his body to kiss her as he began to press gently but inexorably into her body. She squeaked.

Pulling on his wrinkled clothing, Dalton tried not to listen to Clara bathing with the cold water in the basin. Her gasps of chilled surprise were very nearly erotic.

When she finally allowed him to turn around, he found her wrapped demurely in the stolen cloak.

“What are you wearing under that?” Her nightgown had been put to its final use as her washcloth. “None of your business,” she said primly. “Well, don’t catch a chill in that damp cloak. And don’t let James get so much as a peek of you under that when he arrives. He should be here with your things soon.”

“Dalton…”

Her tone was serious. He gave her his full attention. “Yes?”

Her chin went up. “I don’t want to go.” Damn. He’d thought it had been too easy. “You must. Going into hiding until I uncover the culprit is the only way to keep you safe.”

“I don’t want to flee. It will only mean they win, don’t you see? The men like your marquess and my father’s
earl—if the people who see them for what they are hide away, then who will speak out? Who will save the innocent and the gullible?”

She was so valiant and so naive. “Who will save you when Kurt comes after you again? How can I both protect you and solve this?”

“I can help you. I’m very good at what I do, Dalton. In the months that I’ve been doing it, I’ve never once been caught.”

“It only takes once,” he said grimly. How was he to turn her from this? “Clara, you will leave with James this evening if I have to tie you in a sack and strap you on top of the carriage.”

She gazed at him evenly. “You would force me?”

It was an unfair card for her to play and she knew it, for he could see the darkening of shame in her eyes. Damn, she was stubborn.

“If you won’t flee to safety, then—” He couldn’t bear it. He spoke before thinking. “I can think of another way for you to secure your future.”

“What is that?”

“Wed me.”

She could not help a disbelieving laugh. “I could not.”

He was affronted. “Why not? As Lady Etheridge you would be nigh untouchable.” He warmed to the idea even as he spoke. “It is the perfect solution. You could live far from town. I have several estates for you to choose from. That way you would pose no distraction to my work. I would care for you beautifully. You would have everything. You would have such wealth you would never need to draw again—”

She flinched. “No, not everything. I would not have you. Nor my self-respect.”

“As my wife, you would have everyone’s respect! I offer you my name and my fortune.”

“How can you think I would accept? You offer me desert and sand, and call it paradise.”

“You think my offer bears no worth?”

“Your offer is an affront. I don’t want your pretty exile, Dalton.” She sighed, obviously reaching for restraint. “Your sense of responsibility is commendable, but I will not sell my future for your peace of mind. I deserve more than that.”

“You are impossible!”

Her gaze turned to stormy green sea. “You are entirely possible, and that is my misfortune.”

He gritted his teeth. “You feel nothing for me?”

She only looked at him. “I feel a great deal for you.”

He thought of this Nathaniel, for whom she had worn green. “Is there another you love better?” He clenched his fists, fighting for control over the wildness and desolation inside of him. “Tell me who! I must know who it is that I lose you to!”

She paused. “Myself.”

He couldn’t answer that, couldn’t justify a single argument in his mind. They stood unmoving, facing each other, together yet very far apart.

A click resounded in the silent room and a panel in the wall opened. Clara blinked. For the first time she noticed that the room had no obvious door. She’d been imprisoned all night and never been aware.

James poked his head through the opening, eyes tightly shut. “Are we all quite decent?”

“We are,” Dalton said tightly. “It remains to be seen about you.”

“Ah.” James swung Clara’s case into the room, careful not to make a thump on the floor. He then passed
through the opening carrying a thick folio and another hamper.

“Here are your things, Mrs. Simpson. Agatha told me to tell you that she sewed your notes into a false bottom. It wouldn’t pass a real search, but it’ll keep them from the light-fingered.”

He handed her a stiff card, printed with two passages on a ship leaving that night for Scotland. “This is for us. I thought we’d travel as brother and sister.”

She carefully put it down on the desk. “Thank you.”

James dropped his heavy file next to the ticket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Dalton, I think you’d better see this.”

Dalton reached for it, but James shot Clara a glance. “Outside.”

Clara waved them on. “Go. I need my privacy for dressing anyway.”

Dalton gazed at her for a moment, then followed James through an entirely different panel in the wall. Clara blinked. What a maze of secrets this place was.

After she was sure they were gone, she shed her damp wool cloak and pulled clean clothing from her case. She was just tying the waistband on a fresh set of knickers when she accidentally knocked James’s file to the floor.

Sir Thorogood’s cartoons flew in a scattered swath onto the rug. Sighing, Clara knelt to pick them up. The last thing she wanted at this moment was to be reminded of what she’d already lost.

As she gathered them up, she absently named off the faces she’d drawn. Mosely… Wadsworth… Nathaniel…

She stopped.
Nathaniel?
She’d never lampooned Nathaniel. Flipping back through the stack in her hand, she pulled out the drawing. Then she laughed.

The sheet was upside down. At this angle it only
looked
like Nathaniel. Shaking her head, she turned the Fleur cartoon upright to sort it into a neat stack with the others.

The face did not change. She held it closer. The jaw… the brow …

Clara had only seen this mysterious character once, during one of Wadsworth’s meetings. The three men had bored her silly by arguing over some woman. She’d avenged her boredom with a scathing drawing that had made quite a splash when published ten or twelve days ago—

The same time Dalton had been ordered to find her.

She sat back on her heels, thinking furiously. Someone wanted her found. Someone wanted her dead. Could it be Nathaniel?

In her mind she saw that brief flash of intensity in his eyes when he’d watched her draw.

He’d known. Right there in the park he’d known. Heavens, she’d even presented him with the evidence herself!

And then he’d pursued her. Calling on her, gifts, extending invitations… as if a man like that would be seriously interested in her.

Dalton is
. The obnoxious little voice was back.
He wants to marry you
.

“No,” Clara muttered. “He wants to bind me up in cotton wool and
preserve
me, like a boy collecting a butterfly.”

But what could Nathaniel want, other than to lure her out where he could stop her pen forever?

She placed the drawing on top of the others and finished dressing quickly. As she dug through the case for a warm gown, she pulled out her servant’s dress. She
held the simple muslin in her hands for a long moment.

Nathaniel was dining with his cousin tonight. He’d be out for hours. She could investigate—find out for certain before accusing the man to this half-mad spy guild.

She impulsively pulled the garment over her head. She needed out and away from Dalton at the moment, and this would help him in his goal as well. Not to mention, it was certainly an improvement on being shipped off like an embarrassing relation.

Clothed and shod, she pulled on her own thankfully dry cloak and moved to the first panel in the wall, the one that James had come through. She pressed on a bit of carving the way she’d seen James do to the other on his way out and the narrow door popped open.

She’d made her way out of the attic study. Now how was she going to get out of the club?

Miss Kitty Trapp threw herself down belly first across her mattress and glared at her sister’s tidy bed across the room. Bitty was already petitioning their parents to move into Aunt Clara’s room—which was larger and had a lovely big window—even though poor Aunt Clara had only been gone for two days.

Her sister would likely get the room too, for Mama and Papa were still angry that she hadn’t told them immediately when Aunt Clara left.

They’d let that tall man into the house and called him “my lord,” but darling Lord Reardon hadn’t been allowed to so much as put a toe over the threshold when he’d come calling yesterday afternoon. Kitty didn’t think that Papa really believed all that talk about treason, but
still he’d canceled all outings and callers until he could decide what to do about it.

So here she was, banished to her room when she could be sitting in the parlor with the handsomest man on the face of the earth.

Kitty sat up and moved to the dressing table she shared with Bitty. Turning her chin this way and that, she wondered if Lord Reardon liked blondes. She fancied her hair was ever so slightly shinier than Bitty’s, for she brushed it one hundred times every night, while Bitty sometimes skimped.

Other than her hair, what had she to compete with Aunt Clara? Her aunt was very smart and talented, but her figure was only adequate, while Bitty’s and Kitty’s threatened to be nearly as rounded as Mama’s …

Kitty sighed. There was no point in deluding herself. Lord Reardon had never so much as glanced her way when Aunt Clara was in the room.

Bored, she wandered to the little desk and sat down to finish tracing the cartoons that Bitty had claimed first. Bitty always claimed things first, just because she had been born a few short minutes earlier than Kitty …

As she began to trace a very scandalous drawing that she was sure Mama would confiscate if she ever saw, Kitty wished she had thought to ask Aunt Clara to draw Lord Reardon for her. He was so divine, with his noble brow and his perfect jaw and lips that quite frankly fascinated one—

Kitty frowned down at the paper before her. Her tracing of one of the faces in the cartoon looked very much like Lord Reardon. Hmm. If she filled in here and drew this line a bit longer—there! She had her own portrait of his lordship and she’d done it herself.

With the help of the cartoon, of course. Silly, though.
Lord Reardon couldn’t possibly have anything to do with a cheap hussy like this Fleur person. Mistresses went for those rich men who didn’t have wives and whose titles made them so important that they didn’t care what anyone thought and …

Men exactly like his lordship. Kitty’s hp trembled as she looked at the drawing of
her
Lord Reardon—a lewd, immoral, awful
womanizer
!

Tears welled up in her eyes as she contemplated her betrayed love. Deceived by a scoundrel, a blackguard! Well, he wouldn’t get away with this! Hiding his face behind that fat hussy’s rear wouldn’t keep him safe when Beatrice Trapp got through with him. Mama knew everyone who was anyone. She’d fix that worthless rake!

“Maa-maa!”

Dalton stood very still in the secret office, hating himself. She was gone. Gone into the night and the rain without leaving a clue. He had lost his maddening, magnificent Clara. He should not have left her. He should have stayed by her side until he could see her to permanent safety.

Dalton stared down at his desk where lay the one sodden slipper he’d found on the floor this morning. He gently laid his hand over it. His palm and fingers outstretched the small silken object by a good inch.

He’d lost her
. His fingers slowly curled into a fist, crumpling the soft slipper until a puddle formed on the desk beneath his fist.

James stood silently watching him. The stolen cloak lay over one arm of the chair, wrinkled from its stay on the floor of the office and its turn beneath their tangled bodies.

Clara
. Dalton knew that he must stay in control, must quell the wildness in him that was part panic and part rage. His hands clenched more tightly, desperate to wrap themselves around the throat of whoever was threatening Clara.