Lady Rogue (11 page)

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t sit there.”

“Why not?”

“You’re the Earl of Everton. You’re not supposed to sit in the gutter.”

He smiled, then gave a chuckle. “You are assuming, of course, that I have never had occasion to cast up my accounts in an untimely manner and in a less than private place.”

She sighed and unexpectedly leaned back against his thigh, so that he wanted to reach up and curl his fingers through her blond hair. First that peck on the cheek, and now she was actually leaning on him. And he was noting each moment of trust she showed in him as though he were measuring out precious gems. One of them was behaving quite foolishly, and he didn’t think it was Kit Brantley.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner who she was?” she asked accusingly.

“I was hoping to get you out of London without ever running across her. I hadn’t realized you were going to become the toast of the
ton
, and that, of course, she would want to meet you.”

“I remember her from when we were children. She always used to try to take my favorite doll. She was lovely, though, wasn’t she?”

Kit leaned back farther, her spine against his ribs. He wondered if she could feel the beat of his heart against her back. It would have been quite easy, and natural, for him to put his arm around her shoulder, and he sternly resisted the notion. Gads, Barbara would be teasing him for being a schoolboy. “Apparently looks run in your family,” he noted softly.

She sat forward, and he wondered if she considered the compliment to be stepping too far. She twisted to hit him quite soundly on the arm. “Why in damnation didn’t you warn me? You knew Francis and the others have been trying to set us together since I met them.”

She’d likely left a bruise. And that wouldn’t be the first one she’d marked him with. He shook his head, torn between awe at the resilience of her character and genuine contrition, rare though that emotion was for him. “I’m sorry, Kit. I should have.”

“Now I’ve flirted with her, and practically promised her a dance at the next soiree.” She blanched again. “Oh, good God, what if she falls in love with me?”

Alex quickly stifled his amusement as inappropriate. “Kit, I don’t think—”

She shot to her feet. “And Father will be furious.”

“Your father is in Paris,” he countered, somewhat surprised by the strength of her reaction. A liar and a thief, she might well be, but apparently one damned loyal to her father. “There’s no reason he should find out. And Caroline will never know you were anything but a charming flirt.” He stood and gestured her back to the coach. “Come, my dear, you look in fair shape. Do you feel all right?”

She nodded. “As long as I don’t think about it.”

“Then don’t,” he returned practically. “Care to join me for lunch at White’s?”

She climbed into the coach and slid over to huddle in the far corner. “I don’t have much of an appetite.”

“Are you certain?” he cajoled, resuming his own seat. “I’ll take you anywhere you like—Boodles, the Traveller’s, the Society, even.”

That roused a look of slight interest, but then she sat back and shut her eyes. “I think I’d just like to lie down, if you don’t mind.”

He nodded, pretending not to be concerned, and rapped on the door. “Waddle, home.”

Whatever it was that had happened between Stewart and Martin Brantley, it was obvious that Kit took it very seriously. Fleetingly Alex wondered if their familial troubles might be the reason she’d been left to her own devices in London. He hoped that was it. Not that a family feud excluded her from participation in other, more nefarious activities, but it seemed a reasonable explanation. “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly was it that Furth did to your father?”

The green eyes opened and looked at him for a moment before they shut again. “You told me you weren’t interested.”

“Nonsense,” he countered. “I find you endlessly fascinating.”

Her breathing stilled for a moment, then she looked at him again. “Are you flirting with me?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “I suppose I might be. Habit, you know.”

“Well, stop it. I just cast up my accounts.”

“Apologies,” Alex murmured, realizing it was the third time today he had begged her forgiveness. “So what happened between them?”

She straightened a little. “And another thing,” she continued, her voice stronger and color returning to her cheeks. “I don’t appreciate being dragged about like a sack of greens.”

“Quit turning the subject,” he replied succinctly. “Why does your father hate Furth?” He had his own reasons for asking, besides a surprisingly intense wish to set things right for her, but nothing he could possibly discuss with Kit Brantley.

She met his gaze. Then, apparently accepting that he was genuinely interested, she sighed and shut her eyes once more. “Because of my mother. Furth hounded her from the day my father brought her home, would never give her a moment of peace, even after she begged him to do so. It finally killed her.”

He examined her wan countenance and wanted to hold her, to comfort her and to kiss the lonely expression from her face. “How old were you?”

“Six.”

“And do you remember your uncle?”

“Stop interrogating me, Everton, or I shall cast up my accounts again.”

That reminded him that she was not any watery-eyed, weak-willed chit, but a strong-willed, beguiling, evasive one. He raised an eyebrow, but kept his silence. She had a right to be moody and depressed if she wished. Or, to pretend to be so. He was having some unexpected difficulty deciding what he wanted to believe about her, it seemed.

When Kit rose from her nap it was early evening, and as she had thought, Everton had gone out for the evening and hadn’t bothered to inform anyone where he might have headed.

Swiftly she changed into one of her new evening suits, and left for the Traveller’s. It seemed a good place not to find Alex or one of his bosom cronies, for Augustus Devlin had several times complained about the poor state of the liquor the club served. And much as she was beginning to enjoy Alexander Cale’s company, she had a task to complete, and she damned well couldn’t do it with him about.

She dearly hoped that her father’s quarry would not be Hanshaw. Aside from Reg being Alex’s friend, and a witty fellow in general, she preferred not to have to inform Stewart Brantley that the blue blood they’d been seeking was practically betrothed to Caroline Brantley. And as for Alex Cale—well, if he was involved…She took a breath. He couldn’t be.

Alex was not at the Traveller’s, but Francis Henning was, and he spied her before she could turn around and make her escape. When she was unable to dodge his company, she couldn’t help but win ten quid off him at hazard. He did introduce her about the club, and the patrons, as she had suspected, were mostly minor nobles and fringe
ton
who hadn’t yet or never would acquire the wherewithal to be admitted to the more exclusive haunts of the nobility.

“So what does a peer do all day, anyway?” she asked, tallying up points from the latest round.

“Oh, House of Lords on Parliament days, deciding on investments, keeping track of income from estates. Seeing, being seen, making certain everyone knows you’re an Important Personage.”

“What about those government appointments I keep hearing about?” she pursued. “I make it three crowns this round, Francis.”

Mr. Henning sighed and nodded. “You’ve the devil’s own luck, Kit.” He sighed, then chuckled. “But then you are the devil’s own cousin, eh?” Still chortling at
his own brilliance, he glanced toward the door as another gentleman entered. “Thadius Naring,” he informed her, jutting his chin in that worthy’s direction. “You want to know about government appointments, ask him.”

Kit turned to glance at the tall, thin-framed man taking a seat at an already crowded table in the center of the room. “He has one?” she asked, though she already knew something of it.

“Gads, two or three, probably. Trying to get in with Prinny. Any patriotic nonsense will do. Bought a knighthood, trying to slide into a barony. Likely do it, too.” He grimaced and leaned forward. “Thing of it is, he don’t need the money. Mother’s side of the family’s into textiles, I hear. He might leave a place for those of us who could use the income, damn him.”

Kit poured her companion another glass of port. “Surely there are others besides Naring who have appointments,” she suggested, trying to turn Henning’s attention away from her quarry now that she had him well in her sights. When Francis looked at her, she shrugged. “As you said, it’s extra income.”

“If you’re after an appointment of your own, you should be asking Everton,” he commented, draining the glass. “I’ve been badgering him to put in a word for me for months, and he laughs it off. You’re family, though, so you might be able to turn him to it.”

Kit forced herself to take a slow breath, and swallowed a large portion of port before she sat back. “His appointment doesn’t seem to amount to much, though,” she noted, keeping both hands against the table so he wouldn’t see them shaking. After all, it couldn’t be that unusual for a peer to have an appointment. It could be any stupid duty. Counting cattle in Cumberland, or some such thing. “I doubt he has much influence.”

Francis laughed. “Everton, no influence? I can name only three people who have more influence with Prinny than Alex.” He raised a hand and folded his fingers over one at a time. “The Duke of Wellington, the Earl of Liverpool, and the Duke of Furth.”

The last name made her flinch, and she covered it by
taking another drink. “No wonder he’s so high in the instep sometimes.”

“Selfish, too. Won’t help me out, and last Season he and Hanshaw simply vanished for nearly a month, and no one to spot me a penny for a shoe shine.”

“You mean they went somewhere together?” she queried. She was reaching the border between getting Francis drunk enough to talk, and too drunk to say anything remotely coherent. Admittedly, she had found some evidence that Alex might be involved in this mess, but it hadn’t seemed all that significant. Or so she had managed to convince herself.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Francis whined, thumping his hand on the table. “They never tell me a bloody thing. Say I can’t keep a secret.” He leaned forward again, breathing a fair amount of liquor in her direction. “I think it was about some money troubles Reg’s brother was having, but he wouldn’t confess.”

She and her father had smuggled fresh produce and various other items into France all last year, and until their current difficulty, they had been intercepted only once—during the Season—and her father had come damned close to being caught at it. She took another deep breath. Probably dozens of lords had exited London for various periods of time during the Season. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. But neither could she take the chance of ignoring the possibility any longer.

“Where is Everton, anyway?” Francis queried, peering about. “Thought he was keeping an eye on you.”

“He’s at White’s,” Kit decided. “I wanted a change.”

Francis was shaking his head. “No, he ain’t. I was there earlier.” He chuckled and drained his glass. “Making up with Barbara Sinclair, I’ll wager.”

That possibility hadn’t even occurred to her. An image of Alex kissing and holding that woman leaped unbidden into her mind, squashing all orderly thoughts. Kit pushed to her feet and shoved the half-empty bottle into Francis’s surprised hand. “I forgot,” she stammered. “I’m supposed to be at the Downings tonight.”

It made sense, she decided, as she hailed a hack and instructed the driver to take her back to Park Lane. Alex had wanted female companionship of the kind she’d denied him, so he had gone off to spend the evening with Barbara Sinclair. The thought left her with a queer, tight feeling in her chest.

In spite of her disarrayed thoughts, there was little further she could accomplish—at the moment, anyway. Ideally she should have been introducing herself to Sir Thadius Naring and getting him comfortably sotted, so she could ask him whether any of his government duties involved stopping smugglers along England’s eastern coast. Francis would have noticed, though, and would then likely complain to one of his cronies that Kit Riley had cut him, and Alex would hear of it, and would ask all sorts of questions and look at her with those beautiful, mesmerizing eyes, and she would have to lie to him again. She’d go after Naring the next time she could slip away.

When the hack pulled into the Cale House drive, she flipped the driver a groat before she made her way inside. Neither she nor Alex had instructed anyone to wait up, so Wenton and the rest of the servants were already to bed. Late though it was, she felt too restless for sleep. She had left
Robinson Crusoe
lying on the table in the library, but the castaway’s lonely solitude felt too familiar this evening. She set the book aside and walked over to peruse the bookshelves. Finally she lifted a book of poetry from its place and curled up in Alex’s chair by the fire, imagining she could feel the warmth of his body lingering somewhere deep in the soft cushions.

After reading for a few moments, she stopped and turned the book around to look at the cover again. She had heard somewhere that Lord Byron wrote rather biting, sarcastic poetry, but whatever this was, it wasn’t sarcastic. She opened the book again, wondering whether Alex had purchased it simply as an addition to his collection, or if he had actually read any of it. With a slight smile, she began again to read.

“Has poor Crusoe escaped the island yet?”

Kit started and nearly flung the book across the room. “Alex!” she exclaimed, flushing.

An amused smile on his face, he lounged in the doorway, lean and dark and achingly handsome. As she wondered how long he’d been there, watching her, he pulled off his gloves. “Didn’t mean to startle you, chit. Saw the light. So how fares poor Robinson?”

Kit glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly two in the morning. “He, ah, he’s fine,” she stumbled, closing the book and turning it so he couldn’t see what she’d been reading. If only she’d put
Robinson Crusoe
away, instead of leaving it in plain sight. It was too late to move it now. “How is Lady Sinclair?”