His Sinful Secret (28 page)

“Five,” he argued, drawing out his pistol and checking it.

“This alley isn’t particularly safe either,” she pointed out. “Would you leave me here alone?”

“No, it isn’t safe with you in it,” he agreed with a flashing grin. “Don’t terrify any footpads while I am gone.”

He slid down the damp wall of the building and made his way, light-footed and quiet, to the entrance door. The building wasn’t familiar but he’d been in places like this before, he decided as he entered the dirty foyer and noted the sweating walls and rat droppings on the filthy floor.

It was unlikely a master spy like Roget would be in such surroundings, but it also was exactly where Johnson had tracked the man who had made an attempt on Longhaven’s life. The mystery of why this was all happening was still unclear, and Lawrence carefully counted the doors until he found the right one. It was best to start this interview without Antonia, he knew, if their quarry proved to be home. She was too passionate about Roget, too vengeful. His name having been linked to the murder of her family gave her very little perspective.

To knock or not to knock? He opted to go ahead and rap sharply on the warped wooden surface. Already he’d made some assessments of the enemy. Truly dangerous men usually had better accommodations. Special skills gave you a value most governments—or other potential employers—noted, and you could afford more.

There was movement inside the room. He could hear the scrape of boots on the floor, and a woman’s sleepy murmur.

Johnson had better not be wrong. . . .

Lawrence put his hand in his pocket and grasped the handle of his pistol. He timed it perfectly, so that when the door opened a crack a single forceful kick did the trick. The man answering was caught off guard and staggered backward, tripping over a small rug. He landed on his arse, and it gave Lawrence the opportunity to step forward and plainly show his weapon. “I just need a few words.”

The man was built with whippy leanness, his face slightly pockmarked, and Lawrence saw he was not well dressed. Nor was the flat, at a swift, assessing glance, prepossessing. It contained a few sagging chairs and a disheveled bed with a half-naked woman sitting up, her mouth agape, and there was a distinct odor of spoiled food in the air.

If Roget wanted Longhaven killed,
Lawrence thought with sardonic amusement,
he wouldn’t go about it by hiring such an obvious amateur.

Who
had
hired him?

As expected, he heard a noise behind him, and knew it was Antonia. She wasn’t patient in bed either.

“Is he armed?” she asked, not waiting for an answer as she shouldered past Lawrence with a long, wicked knife in her hand. In her black clothing, her hair caught up under the concealing hat, she resembled an avenging angel, if, albeit, a fallen one.

“No,” the man squeaked, holding out his hands. “I’ve no weapon on me.”

The woman on the bed whimpered and pulled the blankets over her head.

Lawrence had to actually stifle a laugh, because the sight of Antonia brandishing a knife was not for the faint of heart and their suspect was clearly petrified. He moved forward, grabbed the man’s shirt, and hauled him to his feet. “As I said, we just need a word.”

As soon as the quivering suspect was shoved into a chair, Antonia said, “Earlier this evening you tried to kill the Marquess of Longhaven. Tell me why.”

“I . . . n-never did.” It was an unconvincing squeak.

The light still gleamed off Antonia’s knife as she tilted it and touched the blade with the pad of her thumb. The dim illumination cast shadows on her aquiline features. “Truly? For I have a friend who followed you here, and I trust him far more than I trust you. If I slit your throat, I suspect I will never know the truth, but I also think no one will care about your unexpected demise.”

The response was silence, as if the man was afraid to speak. Lawrence said calmly, “I can keep her at bay if you will just tell us the truth.”

“
Perhaps
he can keep me at bay.” Antonia purred the words with definite menace, her gaze intently fixed on the man shivering in the chair. “But he is right. The sooner you tell us everything, the better your chances are of surviving this interview.”

As always, her evident sincerity was enough to break any man. Especially the way she pointed the tip of the knife downward toward the man’s crotch.

“Jest doing a favor for a friend,” he blurted out, shivering in Lawrence’s grasp, still trying to twist away. “I missed him anyway. Couldn’t get a clear shot. No harm done. When I looked, he was gone.”

“Who hired you?” Antonia demanded, her lethal expression enough to frighten even a grown man—including Lawrence, and he didn’t think he frightened easily after what he’d endured in his life. He’d be squirming too, with her bent over him and that particular look on her face. The blade was inches from the culprit’s most vulnerable area.

“I was sent a note . . . I swear.” His pasty face held a hint of sweat. “Giving me the direction to his lordship’s grand lodgings. I was to wait, and if the opportunity was there, to take a shot. I wasn’t close enough, and whoever hired me didn’t want me to take a chance on being seen or caught. That’s all I know.”

“A friend would have told you more.” The knife edged closer and her smile was chilling. She did that very well.

It reminded Lawrence very much of when he’d first met her.

They’d been drawn together by Longhaven . . . of course. He was the recurring theme in their relationship. After the marquess—who was not a marquess then and not first in line for a ducal title either, but just Lord Michael Hepburn—had introduced them, Lawrence had immediately fallen for the raven-haired beauty. It wasn’t a consideration at the time Longhaven and Antonia were lovers. It was war. That was different.

Lawrence wasn’t quite as willing
now
to be passed over. The marquess had moved on and married. Antonia needed to move forward too.

“Tell her.” He gave his prisoner a small shake. With his scarred face and size, he knew he was intimidating.

“I’m a fair shot,” the man blabbered. “I know a bloke who spreads it around, and occasionally I get asked.”

“Asked for what?”

“You know.”

Such the wrong phrase to use with Antonia. She leaned in. “No, I don’t. I want it all perfectly clear, you little toad.”

The man sent Lawrence such a terrified look that he almost felt sorry for him. “You said—”

“I said I only
thought
I could keep her at bay.” Lawrence kept his smile cheerful. “I’ve been wrong before. Were I in your position, I’d tell her.”

“I get asked to do a little favor here or there.” The would-be assassin’s face was a peculiar shade of green.

“Specify.”

The tone of her voice made Lawrence stifle a flinch, and he wasn’t even the target. Bonaparte and Wellington would have backed away from that battle line.

It had the same effect on their prisoner. “Of the deadly sort.”

“To not put too fine a point on it, you are admitting you are a hired killer, correct?” Antonia’s voice was silky smooth.

Under that direct inquiry, the small man paled. “Please—”

“Just answer.” The knife moved a fraction, ripping cloth.

“I’ve done a favor or two,” he admitted, his voice quavering. “Now and then. For those who could pay.”

“Who could pay this time?” Antonia lifted the knife and inspected it, the blade catching the flicker of the one meager lamp. “Don’t lie to me.”

Their prisoner was visibly sweating, his face like soapstone. “A woman. I don’t care to die for her, so I’ll tell you. Bright red hair . . . I don’t know nothing else, I swear it. She wore a cloak. . . . All she gave me was instructions on how to find him and what she wanted.

She gave me half up front, half to come when the job was finished.”

A woman?
Whatever he expected, Lawrence hadn’t expected that. “What woman?”

“I’m telling you I don’t know. I never asked her name. You don’t, not on a job like this.”

“If you are lying . . .”

“I’m not!”

“What do you think? I am not sure I believe this one.” Antonia asked Lawrence silkily. “Shall I kill him or just maim him?”

Lawrence dropped the frightened man, who collapsed to the dirty floor, and drew his companion back, his arm around her slender waist. “No, my love, I think he will be better punished to live the rest of his life with the shadow of your vengeance hanging over his worthless head. Our time would be best served to look for whoever wants your marquess dead.”

“He isn’t mine.”

Now, that was progress. She’d never admitted it before.

If he pointed it out, he would only lose ground, so he said quietly, “Perhaps we should pay Longhaven a visit in the morning and apprise him of this new development.”

 

So, a
woman
wanted Michael dead.

Interesting.

As she pondered this new development, Antonia tossed her hat on the bed and tugged free the piece of ribbon securing her long braid. It still could be Roget, of course, for he might have hired this unknown female to seek out the inept assassin, but there were other possibilities. It was sloppy. She hated him with every fiber of her being, but Roget would have been dead a thousand times over if he were sloppy.

A lover? Another woman who might resent his marriage, besides Antonia? Surely Michael hadn’t been celibate since his return to England, and certainly he hadn’t been sleeping with her, no matter that she’d offered the privilege freely, so that was possible.

Damn him. He was too honorable to use her body when he couldn’t give her more.

She was not nearly as noble. Dropping the ribbon on her dressing table, she began to unfasten her shirt.

Lawrence had kept his distance lately and it had bothered her more than she cared to admit. She wanted him, wanted to taste the fierce passion of his kiss, the rough, almost wild way he took her, and then the solid feel of him next to her in the bed afterward while they lay amid the chaos of rumpled sheets. There was nothing tame about him as a lover. While Michael had been controlled and skillful, Lawrence held nothing back.

Tonight she needed him. Strangely enough, she was starting to wonder if it had anything at all to do with Michael. It was simply between her and Lawrence.

How to seduce him was an interesting dilemma. In the past it had never been a problem, but he had developed a resistance since Michael’s marriage, as if before he didn’t care that she was in love with another man, but now that Michael was unavailable and the matter settled, Lawrence was not open to being the alternative prize. When the Marquess of Longhaven had been competition, he was willing to play the game. Now, when the option didn’t exist for her, he had withdrawn.

How to convince him to change his mind was a challenge she never thought she’d face. He’d always been so hungry for her.

Still was, if the way his aroused body had pressed up against hers earlier was any indication.

A good place to start.

She undressed, dropping her clothes haphazardly, and then sat nude at her dressing table, picking up a small vial of perfume, the scent of attar of roses drifting out as she lifted the crystal stopper. In the flickering lamplight, she brushed out her hair first, the long dark tresses soft against her bare back. She touched perfume to the delicate dip under her ear, the pulse point at her throat, and the valley between her bare breasts. Antonia smiled into the gilt-framed mirror and picked up a small pot of rouge she rarely used, and scandalously touched a hint of deeper color not to her cheeks, but to her nipples.

In her armoire there was a thin, lacy dressing gown she’d never worn, for it revealed more than it covered. On impulse she donned it, slipping her arms into the wide sleeves and tying the sash, wondering with uncharacteristic uncertainty if she could actually do this. Lawrence wasn’t governable. If he’d come to a true conviction he wasn’t going to bed her, he might still refuse.

For a man without principles, he had a great many rules, all of his own making. In his own way, he was as complicated as Michael.

Shaking back her hair and giving her appearance one last glance, she surveyed the courtesan’s image of flowing hair, a provocative gown, and flushed cheeks with a critical eye. The outcome of this evening—no, it was already morning—would depend a great deal on the level of his resistance compared to his desire.

She intended, of course, to win.

Instead of using the bellpull, she slipped out the doorway and padded down the hall to his room. Though no doubt it caused gossip, he didn’t sleep near the servant’s quarters but in the family apartments, though his small suite was suitably far removed from hers. Antonia liked her privacy anyway, and her staff was limited. The polished wooden door was firmly shut, but Lawrence was still awake despite the late hour, judging from the line of light visible beneath it.

Her knock was at first met with silence, as if all activity in the room was suspended.

There was no doubt he’d know it was her.
Or he’d better,
she decided possessively as she waited for him to answer the door.

It swung open and he stood there, curly dark hair rumpled, still half dressed, shirtless but in his breeches, barefoot, his smile sardonic. The muscled contours of his chest gleamed in the light of the small lamp she carried, and his facial scar, as always, gave him a certain rakish air, as if he were a pirate escaped from the azure seas of the Caribbean, or maybe a highway brigand set to rob a coach in the midnight depths of a summer evening. In that way he was different from Michael, who outwardly did not bear the signs of his injuries, but when he removed his clothing, the reminders of what he’d endured were all too evident.

Lawrence had a very beautiful body in an entirely rugged sense of the word. Heavily muscled, almost overpoweringly masculine, and he used that dominance in bed in a way that made her shiver inside. . . .