Elizabeth Boyle (4 page)

The young lord wheezed to a stop. “This pace, my lady. Can’t we rest for a moment?” Lord Delaney’s round eyes looked about to pop out of his florid face, and his breath heaved in and out in big, steamy clouds.

So much for saving her best lines for later, she realized.

“But my lord, I’ve heard it rumored that you—” Unable to stomach the remainder of her enticement out loud, she leaned over and whispered it into his ear. She finished her words with a heavy, dramatic sigh. “I do so hate to be kept waiting.”

The young lord groaned, his face turning an even brighter shade of mottled red, his eyes glazing over.

No, I can’t wait much longer
, she thought. She tugged him down the front steps and nearly pushed him into the carriage-clogged street. “Which one is yours?” she demanded.

Before her lust-addled victim could find his powers of speech, a deep voice called out from the top of the steps. “Are you leaving so soon, my lady?”

Trahern
.

She glanced over her shoulder and realized she’d overplayed her hand this time. Lanterns at either side of the door illuminated his dark figure. He loomed above her like the Devil himself. While she didn’t believe for a minute he could be in league with the likes of Lyle and Rostland, his dangerous reputation was enough to send her catlike senses out in points.

Taking one last wistful look at Delaney, a man whose secreted trove of gems could have ended her charade forever, she realized the best she could hope for tonight was to escape Trahern.

“I promise we will meet again, my love,” she whispered to the wealthy, though perverted, lord. Blowing him a kiss, she dove between two carriages, the horses prancing nervously in their braces.

“But you can’t leave me now. . . . I’m ready,” Delaney whined.

Weaving between carriages, she ran. Behind her the sound of hard-booted footsteps chased her onward.

Her wide-paneled skirts and high heels made the pace difficult, but she knew if she reached the open square at the end of the block, she’d be free. When her skirt caught on the edge of a carriage, she jerked to a stop, her fingers frantically tearing the fabric.

Glancing back, she saw that Trahern had stopped about six carriages back. For a moment they stood still. She could feel the tension rippling between them, binding them together in an ancient unity. As it had when she’d first glanced at him in the ballroom. Now she understood what the union between them was.

The hunter and the prey.

Even if she escaped him tonight, she knew this wouldn’t be the last time they stood like this, at cross purposes, separated by more than just a few feet. The dark challenge of his eyes promised he would hunt her until he’d unmasked her.

“Wait,” he said, holding out his hand.
^“
I won’t harm you. Just let me help.”

“Not bloody likely,” she muttered, shaking off whatever control he had over her and gathering up what remained of her skirt. She dashed past the last carriage and into the open square.

His deep voice boomed through the night like a church bell tolling the darkest hour. “You can’t escape.”

Let’s hope you’re wrong
, she thought.

She stood in the middle of the street, looking left and right.

Oliver
, she prayed silently,
where are you?

Trahern’s resolute pursuit echoed in the night with a steady and confident rhythm. At the corner he stopped. “It seems you have nowhere to go.”

“Your overconfidence, my lord, is your weakness.”

From down the street the thunder of hooves drew their attention. A plain dark carriage hurtled toward her as if out of control. She couldn’t help herself. She grinned at the shocked expression on Trahern’s face. With the carriage careening down the street it must have looked as if she were about to meet her demise.

The horses swerved at the last second and the carriage clattered to a halt.

“A pleasure to meet you, Lord Trahern,” she offered with a flirtatious tip of her head and shoulders. As if on cue, the door swung open. Without any thought for appearances she dove in head first. The horses leapt forward, sending the coach lurching left and right, as the driver shouted at the animals.

A pair of firm hands hauled her forward, while behind her, Lord Trahern’s curse followed her unlikely escape.

Bouncing along on the floor of the carriage, it took a few seconds for her to realize she had truly escaped her adversary. While relieved, she couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that she’d had to flee from him so quickly.

“Sophia, I thought we agreed to choose only targets you could outrun.”

Still lying on the hard floor, Lady Sophia Maria Julietta D’Artiers pushed the brocade of her skirt off her head so she could give her chaperon the withering stare the woman’s sarcasm deserved. Considering the way her heart pounded and her throat burned, she doubted she would be able to speak.

A scowl would have to suffice.

Sophia shoved back her voluminous skirts, ripped off her wig, and hoisted herself onto the tufted seat. Their driver, Oliver, had the horses tearing along at a horrible pace, their hooves pounding against the cobblestones. Clinging to a strap, she glared at Emma Langston, her hired companion.

“My, my.” Emma shook her head. “Such an awful face. No wonder Lord Delaney chased you off like that. Oliver was quite clear in his information. Lord Delaney likes a woman who—”

She held up her hand to stave off the description. “There wasn’t anything wrong with Oliver’s information. Besides, that wasn’t Lord Delaney.”

“Well, I should hope not. We paid good money for that information,” Emma complained as she peered out the window, trying to gauge if they had truly made their escape. “So who was that handsome rogue? He looked a fine sight richer to pinch than Lord Delaney.”

Yanking off her gloves, Sophia tossed them atop her discarded wig. “We will do no such thing. I want nothing to do with that man.”

“What’s wrong with him? He looked rich enough.”

“He’s as rich as Midas.” She took a deep breath and tried to push away the last lingering sensations of his touch on her arm and the way his rakish gaze left her weak in the knees.

“So, you’ve changed plans before. Why not tonight? What was so different about him?”

“I didn’t think it would be all that wise to drug and rob my betrothed. At least not before our wedding night.”

“C
ome in my good fellow. Come in,” Lord Dryden said in his usual gruff tones, ushering Giles into his private office at the Foreign Ministry. Dryden, never one for fashion, wore a plain black coat and trim, serviceable breeches. No wig for the gentleman, he wore his white hair brushed back and tied with a black ribbon. His boots glowed with a military sheen.

Where the nut-colored eyes behind Dryden’s gold-rimmed spectacles usually burned with unrivaled intensity, Giles noticed at once a strange solemnity there that left the older man’s gaze tired and sad. Before he could comment, the older man nodded curtly to a young assistant hovering near the windows. The nervous fellow nearly collided with Giles in his effort to escape the room.

Giles knew how he felt. When he’d first started working for Dryden at the age of sixteen, he blundered about much the same way in the man’s presence. Fifteen years of experience had lessened the effect of Dryden’s intimidating posture. Now Giles looked upon the older man as his mentor, a good friend, and a challenging foe in their occasional chess matches.

“I came as soon as I got your message.” Giles stood patiently next to the seat Dryden offered. Pushing his hand in his jacket pocket, he fingered the scrap of fabric he’d recovered from the carriage wheel just hours ago. He traced the pattern of silver embroidery, while in his mind he tried to remember where he had seen the strange design before—a swan encircled by a
fleur-de-lis
.

He’d already decided to spend the day visiting fashionable modiste shops until he found a seamstress who recognized the unusual remnant.

Taking the seat Dryden offered, he brushed the dirt and lint off his evening clothes. Having spent most of the night with Monty searching for the Brazen Angel’s carriage, he knew he probably looked less than respectable for this early-morning call. Was it his fault Lord Dryden’s invitation—summons, rather—arrived about the same time he’d come home, near dawn? The older man had even sent his carriage to speed Giles’s journey to the Foreign Office’s building near Westminster.

“I know it’s rather early,” Dryden said, clearing his throat and settling down behind his cluttered desk. Though the chill fog of the Thames had yet to burn away, it appeared Dryden had been working for hours. “I take it you haven’t been keeping regular hours since you decided to come home.”

“I don’t remember my taking up residence in London as strictly my decision.” Giles dared what few men would, contradicting Lord Dryden. “In fact, I remember the words ‘You’ll stay put and get married if I have to order guards stationed at either side of you.’ “

“Yes, well, I want to talk to you about that.” The man shuffled his papers and cleared his throat several times. “Is your marriage still set for the twenty-ninth of next month?”

Giles nodded. He knew better than to ask how his superior knew the date of his upcoming nuptials.

“Good. I promised your father I would see you wed, and by all that’s holy, I will.”

In truth Giles had been doing his best to ignore Lady Dearsley’s planning until the last possible moment. If he had to get married to return to the Service, so be it. In his heart he understood why his father had extracted the strange vow from Dryden. After fourteen generations of Traherns, Giles’s father feared his stubborn son would be the last if he did not marry and sire an heir.

The call of service was too strong to keep a Trahern man at home for long, but he had one duty higher than that to his King: to see the family line continued. This, Giles acknowledged, must be done, though he disagreed with his father’s methods.

“Have you met Lady Sophia yet?” Dryden asked, his bushy eyebrows raised in a fatherly gesture.

Giles twisted in his seat. How could he explain his lack of interest in his bride? And truly, did his inspection matter? “No, I haven’t had the pleasure.”

Why did everyone care whether or not he had met the lady? They were to be wed, nothing more. Giles understood it was to be a union of convenience between two parties to perpetuate the necessary family lineage. That type of marriage was as much a Trahern tradition as was their call to the Foreign Service.

“Nice girl. Good bloodlines. Sad situation with her family in France and all, but her English blood will keep her steady. Your father chose well.”

“So I’ve been told.” He had been more than a little surprised by his father’s choice: Though noble, the girl’s father was French. There had also been a huge scandal when her mother left her English betrothed to elope with the foreign rascal thirty years earlier. Her relations had been hard-pressed to forgive their errant daughter, but her husband’s prestige with the French crown and rumored piles of gold and rich properties finally wore down their frayed sensibilities.

“Don’t listen to the wags and their disappointment in Lady Sophia,” Dryden told him, with a solid shake of his finger. “Her mother’s grace and beauty were unrivaled, and just see where that left her. I’ve always said common sense and a good head for household accounts are worth more than looks. Take Lady Dryden, for example.”

The situation was worse than Giles had imagined. Before it had mattered little to him what his wife looked like, just so she inspired enough of a response in him to perform his family duties. Now it was different.

And it had all changed last night.

Images of a silver-shrouded woman racing through the darkness flashed in his mind—an enticing smile daring him to catch her, trim ankles, and an even more daring flash of lacy stockings as she dashed between the carriages. A woman who fevered his imagination and challenged his mind.

What would it be like to share his life with such a wild, elusive creature?

His fingers itched over the fabric in his pocket. The scent of perfume clung to the threads, a hint of floral and something else. Something that dared his lungs to breathe deeply and his body to move closer. Like a sensual trap. Like the lady herself.

Monty hadn’t lied when he said the Brazen Angel would capture his imagination . . . and his desires.

But one didn’t marry a brazen woman.

No, one married common sense.

He looked up and realized Dryden was studying him quietly, his hands folded calmly in front of him on the assorted papers scattered across his wide desk.

Giles felt a tinge of embarrassment at being caught daydreaming like a school lad. “My lord,” he began, shifting in the high-backed narrow chair more suited for an interrogation. “I assume you didn’t call me here to discuss my marital state. Your note alluded to a problem of some urgency.”

Dryden cleared his throat again and pulled out a tattered dispatch from a drawer. “How right you are. There’s new trouble in Paris . . .” he began, handing a paper over.

The words sent Giles’s toes curling in his boots, yearning for the opportunity to tread the dangerous coves and alleys of Paris again. Excitement started to course through his veins, until the lines on the paper chilled his blood.

Giles looked up, wondering if he could force his mouth to speak around the lump in his throat or the dryness of his lips.

“Webb?” he managed.

“Yes, Webb.” Dryden’s voice held the same trembling reluctance to say the name, as if speaking it out loud would only serve to confirm the horrible truth.

For a time the two men sat in silence, each dealing with their own upheaval of raw emotions.

Giles glanced back down at the coded words in the message. They told of a city in chaos. Grim descriptions filled the page of how the terror of Madame Guillotine’s embrace now stretched out to every layer of the city.

And somehow, she’d found Webb.

Lord Dryden shook his head, reached for the dispatch, and set it aside. Removing his spectacles, he slowly cleaned the lenses with a white cloth.