Lady Rogue (19 page)

“And?”

“And so I thought you wanted to avoid rumors and that I was already too much trouble, anyway.”

She was right, and the servants had likely guessed a great deal more than he cared to inform them. They’d already proven themselves a discreet lot, however, for shortly after Mary’s death, he’d had several spectacularly disastrous affairs which had for the most part escaped the ears and sight of the
ton
.

“The omnipotent Earl of Everton will do his best to satisfy your wish,” he said dryly, trying to make light of the fact that he knew damned well he had other things to be doing, and that being alone anywhere in private with Christine Brantley was unwise.

He followed her into the hallway, and instructed Wenton and the footmen who had gathered at his summons to move his mahogany desk, the overstuffed chairs, and the occasional table to the far end of the room.

“Wouldn’t it simply be easier to move the couch in the morning room? We could picnic in there just as easily,” Kit suggested from beside him.

“No. Not the morning room,” he said flatly, turning his back so she wouldn’t see that her remark had agitated him.

“Oh.” She took a step closer. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, her low lilt at his shoulder making him pause. “It reminds you of Mary?”

He stiffened again, then took a breath. By now he should have known that Kit would not let up on something that had caught her attention, until she had an answer that satisfied her. “It reminds me of perfection,” he answered, stepping into the library. “Wait here.”

Kit stood looking after him for a moment. In the short time she had known him, Alex had spoken of his late wife very seldom and only reluctantly. She glanced over her shoulder at the morning room. The earl certainly hadn’t left her with the impression that he continued to
deeply mourn his wife, but from his conversations with both her and Barbara Sinclair, neither did he seem anxious to lose his heart again. And though with him it was difficult to be certain, his voice for a moment had sounded almost contemptuous. Odd, that.

“Kit, m’boy,” Alex’s voice drawled several minutes later from the library as the footmen trooped out again, “do come in.”

She smiled at the summons. Ten days ago she had never expected to be invited for a picnic in the Earl of Everton’s library; even less would she have expected to feel pleased about the notion. Her smile faded. After she betrayed him to her father, she doubted she would be left with any pleasant memories of London at all.

She stepped into the library, and stopped. Alex sat cross-legged on the blanket that had been opened out in the middle of the floor, the wicker picnic basket beside him. The painting on the far wall, a beautiful white country manor she had assumed to be Everton, had been removed and sat on the floor facing the blanket. The other side of their picnic spot was flanked by one of the paintings from the formal dining room, a pastoral with a lake and deer and a flowering meadow.

“Welcome to the country.” His eyes dancing, he lifted a bottle of Madeira in her direction.

Christine couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t do anything but stand and stare at the Earl of Everton sitting on the floor of his library, just for her. Her heart hammered, trying to burst through her ribs. That was what it felt like, then, a rush of lightning through every nerve and muscle. Quickly she turned her back as though looking for something, hoping that Alex wouldn’t see it in her eyes, hoping he wouldn’t see that she was in love with him.

“Is something wrong?” his voice came after a moment.

With a deep breath she turned around and flashed him a grin. “I was merely trying to imagine you doing this sort of thing with Barbara Sinclair,” she replied, plunking herself down on the blanket beside him.

“I wouldn’t,” he noted mildly, handing two glasses over for her to hold while he poured. “She would hardly appreciate it.”

“Why not?” Kit queried, furtively studying his profile. Everything had been an impossible muddle before. That, though, was nothing compared to this. Her father would be furious.

“I don’t believe she would find it dignified,” he commented, drawing out the last word and sniffing at the end.

Kit laughed. “So she is always ‘dignified’?” she returned, imitating his pronunciation.

He pursed his lips and glanced sideways at her. “Almost always.”

This was becoming interesting. “When is she undignified, then?”

His amused eyes holding hers, Alex took one of the glasses back. “You may look something like a boy, chit, but I happen to have it on very good authority that you are a virgin who wishes her purity maintained. I am not going to relate any sordid sexual tales to you.”

Kit made a face at him. “You’d rather enact them with me, I suppose?”

He smiled, something very enticing touching his eyes for a moment. “So bold, you are. One would almost think you were trying to seduce me.”

It gave her an idea, a sort of last chance. Remembering how Mercia Cralling had flirted with her, Kit lowered her head to look up at Alex from beneath her lashes. And she had no idea whether she was acting to help her father or to help herself. But she had begun to doubt very seriously whether she could follow through on any plans to help Stewart Brantley that would in some way hurt Everton. Distracting him from his duties seemed to be the only option left her. Her fingers shaking a little despite her efforts to keep them steady, she reached out to brush them along his collar. “What if I were?”

His eyes had followed her hand, but slowly he lifted his head to gaze at her. “Hypothetically speaking, of course,” he murmured, the change in his eyes pointing
out that she had just stepped into a game in which he had far more experience than she, “what would this seduction entail?”

It would have been easier if he’d simply fallen upon her. Now, though, she was expected to answer in kind. Thinking as quickly as her muddled thoughts would allow her, Kit leaned closer. “Perhaps a trip to Everton, just the two of us?” Just for a few days, until her father’s shipment was in Calais and Alex would be safe from him. She would be lost, of course, but then she already was.

He tilted his head a little and then took a slow sip of Madeira. “And for this journey would you wear lace instead of lawn, and pearls rather than pocket watches?”

Christine swallowed. “If you wished it.”

For a long moment Alex looked at her, then slowly he shook his head. “You give in too easily, chit. What is it you want?”

She scowled, then covered it up by batting her lashes at him. “You’ve simply worn down all my resistance,” she breathed.

Alex threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, good God.”

That hurt. “I don’t think it’s amusing that you find me laughable, Everton,” she snapped, the part of her that said the conversation was just a game, flattened by the part of her that wanted him to take her seriously as a female.

He blinked and sat back, his smile fading. “I hardly find you laughable, Kit.”

“You’re always teasing.”

“No, I’m not,” he protested.

“Always, always, always,” she countered. “And I’m sorry if you think the way I look is so stupid. There’s nothing I can do about it!” she shouted, climbing to her feet. She still held one glass of Madeira, and angrily looked about for a place to set it down.

Alex stood as well, and she shoved the glass at his chest. Reflexively he grabbed it, and she turned and strode for the door. Behind her she heard both glasses
hit the carpet, and then came to an abrupt halt as Alex’s hand clamped down on her shoulder. He spun her around and shoved her back against the wall.

“I was not teasing,” he said, his eyes glinting, and bent his head to close his mouth over hers.

After a stunned moment Kit leaned up into him. His hard, strong body pressed her into the wall as a tingling rush of arousal ran through her. Alex’s arms came around her waist, pulling her closer against him. This was what she had always imagined. All the times she had seen couples embracing and had wished to someday, somehow, place herself there, this was what she had imagined it would be like—the breathless, time-stopping sensation of being on fire. He lifted his head to look down at her, but before she could protest his absence, he captured her lips again in a deep, hard kiss.

His mouth teased at hers, and when she parted her lips in response, he ran his tongue slowly along her teeth. The gesture felt shockingly intimate, as did his hands as they stroked down to her hips. Her own hands lifted to run across his muscular chest and shoulders. She took a shallow, ragged breath when his mouth released hers again. “Alex,” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, but gently pulled her short tail of hair and tilted her head back. His lips, his mouth, caressed the sensitive hollow of her throat, so that she gasped. One thigh shifted to press up between her legs, rubbing slowly at the sensitive, throbbing place through her breeches. A growing swelling pressed against her abdomen, achingly hard. She held desperately to him, aware of nothing but his warmth enfolding her. If not for his body against hers, she thought she must fall to the floor in a boneless heap.

Thunder boomed so close that the window rattled with the force of it. Alex lifted his head and looked down at her, a dazed, disjointed look in his beautiful eyes. “My God,” he murmured, drawing a ragged breath. “My God.”

Farther away thunder rumbled again, and he blinked and took a step back. Another step followed the first,
and her hand reluctantly slid from his chest. “What is it?” she asked, her voice and body trembling.

“I…apologize,” he muttered.

“But, Alex, I want—”

“And I want you.” He gave a grim smile. “But too much rests on it. Too many others might pay for my…weakness.” Slowly he reached out and touched her lower lip with fingers that shook a little. “I’m sorry.”

With that he turned and was gone, shutting the door softly behind him. A tear ran down Christine’s cheek as she turned back to their ruined picnic, the spilled glasses of burgundy wine staining into the blanket and the carpet beneath. He knew, then. At least part of it. He knew. Her heart felt like it was rending in two, and she closed her eyes for a moment to steady herself. There was more at stake than her stupid, shattered dreams of a life and a love she could never hope to have. Even with nothing else between them, she was a smuggler’s daughter, and he was the Earl of Everton.

One thing had become clear, though. She needed to find her father, after all.

Martin, Lord Brantley, Viscount Trawbry, Marquis of Fens, and Duke of Furth, disliked London.

It was not that he resented the amusements of the Season, or that he discounted the importance of Parliament or the rules of law. Far from it. Rather, and very simply, London was two days’ distance from Furth. That left him with a round trip of four days, at the least. And four days away from Furth, as far as Martin Brantley was concerned, was four days too many.

Circumstances, however, one opportune and one not nearly so, had dictated that he make the journey. And so it was with an annoyed, impatient sigh that he stepped down from his crested, mud-spattered coach and climbed the granite steps of his town house on Grosvenor Square in the heart of Mayfair, while his butler bowed in the entryway.

“Your Grace,” Royce greeted, straightening in time
to catch the hat and greatcoat tossed in his direction, “welcome to London.”

The duke pulled off a glove and dropped it into his hat, his eyes and his attention directed toward the interior of the house. “Spare me, Royce. Where is the duchess?”

“In the drawing room, Your Grace.”

“And Caroline?”

“Lady Caroline is out to luncheon, Your Grace.”

Martin Brantley returned his eyes to the butler’s solemn, efficient personage. “With whom?” he asked succinctly, playing the role of irritated, affronted parent with the ease eighteen years of practice afforded him.

“I believe it was Miss Cralling, Miss Montgomery, and Lady Feona, Your Grace.”

The lowered brow resumed its normal position. “Very well.”

“As it pleases you, Your Grace.”

“It does not, Royce.” The duke removed his second glove and deposited it with the first. Ignoring the downstairs servants who had begun popping their heads out of various doorways to verify for themselves that the master of the house was indeed in residence, he turned for the stairs. The drawing room door was open, and he stepped inside to view his wife embroidering, her back to the door.

Silently he reached into his pocket, and curled his fingers around the four-line missive that had provided him with the opportunity, or rather the necessity, of making the journey to London. Wordlessly he dropped the letter into the duchess’s lap.

“I am here, madame,” he stated.

The Duchess of Furth started, then stood and hurried around the chair to clasp his hands. “Thank the dear Lord you’ve come,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him on one cheek.

He returned the gesture, then stepped back and gestured at the missive, which had fallen to the floor beside the duchess’s embroidery. “Explain,” he commanded.

“It is even worse than I feared,” she said, taking her
seat again and fanning at her face with one hand.

“Do dispense with the theatrics,” he suggested. The duke stepped around and bent over to retrieve the folded piece of parchment. It crinkled a little as he opened it. “‘The worst has happened,’” he read, though he’d had ample time to memorize both that message and the one in his other pocket on the ride to London. “‘I fear our Caroline has fallen for a complete commoner. Come at once, before it is too late. Yours, Constance.’” He looked at his wife. “Who is this complete commoner?”

“Half the eligible misses in London are ready to swoon at his feet,” his wife complained, knotting her hands in her lap. “He is admittedly charming, from what I hear, but completely unacceptable.”

“Who is he?” Furth repeated, lowering his brow. His wife was given to exaggeration and hysterics, but it was possible Caroline could go against everything they had planned for her, in favor of some romantic flight.

“The Earl of Everton’s cousin.”