Linda Needham (19 page)

“I’m fine, Mr. Pembridge.” Except that she must have fallen to sleep right in the middle of a conversation with the doctor. “Where’s Lord Wexford?”

“Ah, he’s at a meeting.”

“Can you take me to him?”

His gray brows dipped as he shook his well-groomed head. “Only if you can prove to me that you can stand and walk alone. I don’t want you falling.”

“I never fall.” To prove she was capable of walking and talking, Caro stood and then staggered backward into the settee. She sat down hard, but in completely different clothes than she’d been wearing.

“Where’s my dress?” It had been a pale lavender satin, and now this new one was not only yellow, but it was homespun and much too big for her.

“Sorry, Princess.”

Drew! He was coming through the doorway, his smile huge and a bit lopsided.

“We had to remove your gown after we put you under.”

Under? That didn’t make any sense either. “I fell asleep. For no reason at all.”

“Well, you’re looking much better, Princess Caroline,” Drew said easily, locking his dark gaze with hers as he approached her. “How are you feeling?”

He seemed even larger and more powerful than he had before, the master of this perplexing place.

“Surprised. And a little sore.” She touched her side, finding a neatly flat bandage. “I seem to be fine.”

Drew nodded at Pembridge. “Thank you, Pembridge. I’ll take her from here.”

“It’s been a pleasure, Your Highness.” Then the older man gave an elegant bow and left the room.

“You were given a gas called ether to put you to sleep, Princess.” Drew sat down in the same chair that Pembridge had been sitting in. “And according
to Fitzgerald, it’s being used very successfully by an American dentist, and now here in England.”

“For what?”

“As an anesthetic. The doctor put you into a deep sleep, which allowed him to examine your wound, then clean and dress it without your feeling pain.”

Caro touched her side, the loose-fitting blouse. “So I was asleep?”

“With the after effects, for well over an hour.”

She looked up at the mantel clock. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“You’re not supposed to, Caro.” He peered closely into her face in a very clinical way.

“Did you really need to take my clothes, Drew? I liked that gown.”

He smiled and kissed the middle of her forehead. “It was in the way.” And then her temple.

“I like that, Drew. I like that a lot.” She closed her eyes—or maybe they were already closed—and offered her lips for another kiss.

But instead of kissing her, he took both her hands and helped her stand.

“Come with me.” He offered his arm and then gently led her out the doorway through a warren of busy corridors, allowing her just a passing glimpse into rooms that were filled with a variety of incongruous activities.

A photography studio.

A tailor’s shop, with a long rack of clothes against the back wall.

An enormous printing shop, clanking away.

A large room with at least a dozen chattering telegraph machines.

And finally a lushly appointed yet windowless
chamber dominated by a marble-faced fireplace, plush chairs and two men standing at a large oak conference table.

And they were staring at her.

She looked sideways at Drew and found him grinning at her. A very private smile, which he then shifted back to the other two men.

One of the men stepped forward. “Gad, Drew, you look much better with a princess on your arm.”

“Princess Caroline, this rude fellow is Ross Carrington, Viscount Battencourt.”

One of Drew’s longtime friends. “I’m so very pleased to finally meet you, Lord Battencourt.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Your Highness.” He bowed elegantly and took her hand, every bit as dark-featured and handsome as Drew. And just as tall. “Though, I must say, Princess, you pulled the short stick on this bodyguard business. Wexford was obviously asleep at the switch. Now, had I been your bodyguard—”

“Bottle it, Ross.” Drew poked an elbow into Lord Battencourt’s ribs and gestured to the other man who had been smiling at their antics. “And this is Jared Westbrooke, the Earl of Hawkesly.”

“A great honor, Princess Caroline.” He too, bowed from a height equal to Drew’s and Battencourt’s, incredibly handsome, with a grand smile and a deep sense of contentment in his dark eyes.

“My Lord Hawkesly, I couldn’t be happier to meet you. I’ve heard so much about the both of you. And I would know you both by your buttons.”

Hawkesly had a thoroughly inviting laugh. “Our what, Princess?”

“The crest on your buttons.” She tapped one of the
topmost buttons on his waistcoat, causing him to look down. “Lord Wexford told me about them.”

Hawkesly arched a scandalized brow at Drew. “Telling tales again, Drew?”

If you only knew, Ross
, Drew thought, still vastly uncomfortable keeping Caro’s secret from his two friends, two men of great skill and even greater honor.

“Best that you stuff it, Jared,” Drew said, because the man would be expecting a suitable comeback.

“And you, Lord Wexford,” his princess said, with a furious cast to her soft brow, “can stuff it, too!”

Drew blinked at her and then at Ross and Jared. “What’s that, Princess?”

“This isn’t any kind of a factory, is it?” She looked back toward the closed door.

Damnation, she must have heard him bellow. He hadn’t really been thinking beyond her safety at the time.

“What did you mean, ‘factory?’” she repeated. “I heard you shout to the driver to take us to ‘the factory.’” She gave the room a long stare, then walked forward to the table with all the reports strewn across its top. “This place is not a factory.”

Drew glanced at Jared and Ross, but received only their haughty you’re-on-your-own-chum smiles. “No, it isn’t, Princess.”

She harrumphed. “Police stations don’t have printing shops or doctors on call, not to mention a room full of telegraph machines.”

“She’s very good, Drew,” Ross said as he dropped into a chair, doubtless to watch how Drew would squirm out of this one.

“So, are we in the basement of Whitehall?”

An excellent assumption, however wrong. But it would serve to satisfy her curiosity and sound reasonable to anyone she might mention it to, including Palmerston, who knew all about the Factory. And he doubted that Caro could ever find the entrance to the Factory, should she ever decide to go looking.

Jared leaned against the mantel, wearing a very serious expression. “We can’t answer that, Your Highness. National security and all.”

She eyed them all, finally shaking her head. “I really didn’t think you could.”

She picked up one of the doctor’s very clinical diagrams off the table. “And is this an outline of me?”

Hardly that. Curves and angles, but nothing at all like the real Caro. Which Drew had gotten an eyeful of as he’d help to change her out of her clothes.

“It’s a drawing of your wound.” Trying not to appear amused, Drew pointed to the V-shaped mark just below the sensuous line of her breast. “This angle shows where the blade entered. By the way, it was deflected by one of the whalebone stays in your bodice.”

“Ah, that must be why I was wearing this”—she grabbed hold of her too-big skirts—“instead of my own clothes when I woke up from my little nap?”

“Sorry, Your Highness,” Drew said. “I needed to tear your bodice apart to get to the stays.” He showed her the page of calculations. “Your height, in your shoes, when compared to the angle of the nick that the blade made in the whalebone tells us that your assailant is left-handed and between five foot six inches and five eight.”

“You can tell all that?”

“And much more,” Drew said, leaning on the edge
of the table in order to better see her reactions. “Do you recall the face of anyone on the path who fits that description? Someone wearing a cap, disguised as a workman. Doubtless he would have made eye contact with you as he approached, just to be sure of your identity.”

She looked at Drew with earnest eyes. “I don’t think so, Wexford. I can’t remember.”

“His glance might only have been for the briefest moment. Take your time. Let your mind recall the path we took, the gravel, the mud, the jostling crowd…”

She sat down gingerly in one of the tall chairs, favoring her injured side. The gesture sent a chill of terror through Drew’s shoulders. She’d been that close to death. The width of a blade, a longer stride.

“We were traveling so quickly.” She seemed to be reaching carefully back into her memory of the afternoon. “Your agents seemed to be all around us. You had my arm, and—oh!”

“What?”

“Someone ran into me. Hard. Don’t you remember? I almost fell. I dropped the goblet and my folio.”

He had remembered all too well. But he hadn’t wanted to cloud Caro’s own recollection with his own.

“Sorry, Princess, but I didn’t see anything about him. I was waving to the carriage driver.”

“But I must have seen him.”

“And you’ll remember much of it if you just give it a bit of a—”

“He had light hair.”

“Go on, Princess.” Drew knelt in front of her and took her hand. “Light hair.”

“Sandy and short. And he was carrying a bucket.”

“Do you recall which hand, Princess?”

“Um, well it must have been in his right. He might be a bricklayer, with something, maybe a wooden handle, sticking out of his coat pocket.”

“What kind of coat, Princess?” Ross was scribbling down her answers. “What color?”

She looked up at Ross without really seeing him. “It came only to his knees. Green canvas color, with leather or something brown, I think on the collar. Brown buttons.”

“Good, Princess.” Drew smoothed a strand of hair back behind her ear. “Anything else about his face? His age?”

“Your age. Pale eyes and an unremarkable moustache.” She blinked hard at Drew as though she’d just noticed him, then she shrugged. “That’s all, my lord. But it’s definitely the man I remembered in my dreams.”

“Your dreams?” Drew asked. “You’ve seen him before?”

“No. But his was the face I saw after you gave me that horrid gas to breathe. But I’m sure he’s the man. I thought he had knocked me off balance with his elbow, or…with a trowel, because I thought he was a bricklayer. But that must have been when he stabbed me.”

“Then he’s left-handed,” Jared said, looking down at Ross’s notes. “Otherwise he’d have been carrying that bucket in his left hand. He needed his knife hand free for the attack.”

Ross tapped his notebook. “And either he’s actually a mason and would have fit right in with the workers at the Crystal Palace—in which case someone should know who he is—”

Drew stood. “Or he’d have been noticed for being a stranger who was trying to look like a mason.”

“Come along, Jared.” Ross stuck his notepad into his jacket pocket. “Looks like we’ve got work to do. Good day, Princess Caroline.”

“You’re leaving, my lords?” Caro wobbled to her feet, terrifying Drew as he caught her elbow.

“It’s been a pleasure, Your Highness,” Jared said, bowing before her hand.

Then they were gone. Carrying only half the truth.

And there was a dark danger in that.

“They’re every bit as wonderful as you described, Drew.” Caro was smiling after them. “I’m so sorry that you had to involve them.”

“Like a pair of hounds on the scent of a hare.” Drew collected all the papers off the table and shoved them back into the book file. “Now let’s go see if we can jostle your memory even further.”

Drew led her through the well-lit rooms and corridors, past areas that drew her rapt attention, trying to keep his overly curious princess from seeing too much.

“This is a very busy place, Drew.”

“That it is, Princess,” Drew said, suddenly sick to death of dealing in lies and shadows.

They passed under the Huntsman then under the alley to the basement of the building next door and into the active reports department.

“If you’ll sit here at this table, Princess,” Drew said, making sure that she was comfortable, “I’ll bring you some photographs and drawings that might help you remember more clearly.”

When he returned from the archive room, Caro
was napping on her crossed arms, sleeping off the effects of the ether and the shock.

“Caro?” he whispered into her ear.

“Ready.” She raised her head, but was looking at him from under one droopy eyelid.

“I don’t think you’re ready for anything else tonight, madam.” Searching the identity box would have to wait until later.

“Do you smell that, Drew?” She sat up straight and sniffed at the air like a hound.

“Smell what?” He sniffed twice but smelled nothing out of the ordinary.

“Roast beef with a morel mushroom and burgundy sauce.”

“You must be hungry.” And still a bit delirious.

“I can smell it here in the basement. I smelled it outside, and nearly two weeks ago in the alley outside the Huntsman. So you needn’t put that damnable cloak over my head, Drew, because we’re in the basement of the Huntsman Gentleman’s Club.” She waggled a finger at him. “And don’t try to tell me otherwise.”

“Caro—”

“Don’t worry, Drew. I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

So am I, my love. So am I.

“Then let’s get you home to supper, Caro.” Before she stumbled onto anything else that might give away her identity.

She yawned and nodded as she stood up. “Mackenzie will know just what to do.”

Hopefully the man would know what to do with a slightly tipsy princess.

“W
ake up, Caro! Caro…” Drew’s voice brushed past Caro’s ear, soft and sultry. “Hey there, Princess, we’re nearly back at Grandauer Hall. Time to wake up.”

She didn’t want to wake up, because that would mean Drew would no longer have his arms wrapped around her, that he wouldn’t kiss her, that the carriage wouldn’t just keep rocking down the road.

But it didn’t. It stopped, the wheels crunching in the gravel.

“Thank you, Drew.” Which was all she managed to say before Runson opened the carriage door.

“Hold on tightly, Princess.” Drew scooped her out of the carriage and into the cool night air.

“Go on ahead, my lord,” Runson said, “I’ll bring in your things.”

“And my folio please, Mr. Runson!” Caro said as Drew carried her up the front stairs, feeling slightly
guilty for a little act of thievery she’d committed back at the Factory.

“Can you walk, Caro?” Drew asked, peering into her eyes as he entered the foyer, his manner still coolly clinical despite the warm thumping of his heart against hers.

“I’ll be fine.” Though she didn’t want to leave his arms. Not ever.

“I’m sure of that,” he said, setting her on her feet, then offering his elbow. “Let’s get you to bed. Then I’ll bring you up a tray of supper.”

“I’m not hungry anymore. But I do want my folio!” Caro caught Runson as he was heading for the library.

“I’ll take that, Caro,” Drew said, startling her as he grabbed the handles before she could get to it. “I’m sure you won’t be needing this tonight.”

She laughed in relief. “No, but I think I’ll stay in bed in the morning and catch up on some of my paperwork.”

“You, madam?” His eyes flew open as he offered his steadfast arm again. “Linger in your bed? Somehow I can’t imagine that.”

“I couldn’t have imagined being shot at or stabbed, until after I met you.” Couldn’t have imagined that she would ever have come to like the beastly Earl of Wexford.

Let alone admire him, or long to see his grin or feel the brush of his hand against hers.

“Touché.” He smiled and led her with great care up the stairs and into her room. He lit a candle on her dressing table, then turned to her, seeming taller than before, the planes of his face deepening the mystery of him. “I’ll call Mrs. Tweeg to help you undress.”

“No, Drew. Please don’t bother her. It’s late.” Caro
yawned as she wrestled with the clasp on her cloak. “I can do it.”

“Here, Caro. I’ll do that for you.” His fingers were warm and so capable as he opened the clasp, made her gasp a little as they brushed across the base of her neck, leaving a trail of heat and yearning.

She looked up into his eyes, those glittering dark pools that she could so easily fall into and happily drown.

“Thank you, Drew.”

“At your service, Princess.” He smiled crookedly and draped her cloak across the back of the chair. He hadn’t gone far, but he’d taken his heat with him, his strength. “Now into bed with you.”

With you, Drew?
Dear Lord, where did that come from? Inviting a man into her bed?

“Yes, Drew. Good night.” She felt suddenly shy and wanton and altogether cheeky.

“Good night, then, Princess,” he said from the door, closing it gently and disappearing into the night.

But certainly not from her thoughts.

Exhausted and aching and eager to be in bed, Caro unpinned her hair then reached too quickly around behind her to undo the buttons down her back and was reminded the hard way that she had been stabbed that afternoon.

“Ouch. Ooooo!”

“What is it, Caro? Are you all right?” Caro hadn’t heard the door open, only knew that Drew had magically appeared in front of her in his shirtsleeves, his eyes fierce.

“Sorry, Drew, I forgot about my little accident. I can’t quite reach the buttons of my blouse. Would you help me, please?”

He snorted as if she’d asked him to paint the barn with a toothbrush. “Then turn.”

Caro turned, sweeping her hair up off her neck. “Thank you again, Drew.”

She waited for the delicious feel of his fingers at her back. And waited. She knew he was still standing close behind her; she could hear him breathing, deeply, steadily.

“Is something wrong, Drew?”

“No.” He dove into the buttons as though in a race, had them unfastened and the tails of her blouse hanging loose in an instant. “There.”

“Thank you.”

But he just stood there, tantalizingly close, his spicy heat pouring off his chest, seeping into the bare skin at her back.

“What’s the matter, Drew?” She whirled around to face him, clutching at the front of her blouse, the back now gaping off her naked shoulders.

His gaze smoldered as he looked at her, his eyes darker than ever. “You’re not wearing anything under there.”

“You knew that. You dressed me yourself today, after ripping off my bodice, then drugging me and stealing my clothes.”

“True, Caro. But at the time, I was terrified for you, hadn’t given a thought to…well, to your state of undress.”

She ought to be shocked to her soul, embarrassed by the intimacies he’d seen. Instead, something inside her seemed to be calling to him, her skin aching for his touch.

“But now you
are
giving it a thought?”

“More than a thought, Caro.” He was standing close, towering over her, filling her field of vision.

“Are you really?” Every breath she took brought more of his wondrous scent inside her chest, swirled and eddied there.

“More than I dare.” His face was deeply shadowed, devilish, his nostrils flaring as he suddenly slipped his huge, hot hands over her bare shoulders and drew her closer and closer until her nipples were brushing against the linen of her shirt and his shirt, making her gasp, wanting more of him. More of this.

“Your motives were irreproachable, Drew.”

“
Were
, Caro.” He was bending his head to hers, parting his lips as though he was planning to kiss her at last.

Please!

“What are your motives now, Drew?”

His eyes flickered, his mouth full and moist.

“Ohhhh, myyyyy!” And then she knew, because he was suddenly kissing her, thoroughly tasting her, holding her tightly, as if he would never let go.

“Ah, Caro!” His touch was mystical and everywhere, he possessed her mouth with his own, explored it with his marvelous tongue, calling her name and groaning long and low when she kissed him back. Her beastly earl turned generous lover, the delicious change in his body, the singular hardness pressing against her belly.

He was a powerful heat that seeped through her clothes and spread through her like a dizzying fever. The very same way he had spread so generously through her life and into her heart.

“Christ, what am I doing?” He set her from him
abruptly, his eyes wide with horror, his mouth glistening with the remains of her kiss.

“You were kissing me, Drew.” Wondering why the man had stopped, she reached her arms up around his neck.

“No, Caro.” He pulled her arms away and backed away from her.

Which made her blouse fall to the floor and left him staring at her bare breasts, his mouth working, little growling noises coming out of his throat.

She really ought to be at least a little embarrassed, but all his staring only made her want him to touch her there, to kiss her—

“Christ, Caro!”

Drew had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. Her soft, lush breasts, buoyant and pliable, candlelit and tipped in subtle rose. His palms ached to hold them, to cup them and taste them.

God, he wanted to claim her for himself!

To steal her away to some exotic island where no one had heard of princesses and spies and conspiracies. Where he could wed her and bed her and they could raise their children—

But that was impossible.

Moving a muscle was impossible, dangerous, because she was temptation made flesh.

“Enough!” His voice came out strangled as he stalked to her bed and grabbed up her wispy nightgown and tossed it toward her, not daring to look at her. “Put this on.”

“Thank you, Drew.”

He remained fully turned away, still quaking for her, listening to the rustle of her, dying of the scent of
her, until he was sure she had donned the nightgown and stepped out of her skirts.

“Finished?”

“Yes.” It was a confused little whisper that made him feel like a lout. Which was exactly right.

“Now, into that bed, madam.” He pointed to the pillows and glared at her as she crossed in front of him.

But his glare only seemed to encourage her to smile back at him as though she knew exactly the extent of his problem.

Exactly the extent of his erection, still at full attention, still alive with the need for her.

She gingerly slipped under the thick counterpane. “Ohhhh, Drew, you’re right. This feels wonderful! Thank you…”

Tempted beyond his ability to continue looking at her, he stalked away from her unfettered moans, her settling under the covers, and picked up the clothes she had dropped on the floor.

“Now then, Princess, I want you to stay in bed all morning and well into the afternoon. Do you understand me? As much as you believe that you’re indestructible, and that you’re feeling fine because you think that the bastard only pricked you, you need your rest. Is that clear?”

“Mmmmmm…” and then a soft yawn was her only comment, though he still couldn’t risk looking her way.

He draped the clothes over his arm, trying not to notice that they still clung to the heat of her body. “I’ll return these to the tailor shop at the Factory tomorrow. Mr. Matthews will clean them, then return them to his stock…Princess?”

She’d been very quiet. Too quiet.

“Caro?” But she was asleep, breathing deeply.

Her cheeks were a soft, healthy pink, her golden hair spread out on the pile of thick pillows. Her fine, slender body was resting, healing itself for the grueling days ahead.

And the long years of her life.

“How I’ll miss you, love.” He lightly brushed the backs of his fingers across her forehead.

Cool and dry. So very soft.

He leaned down and touched his mouth to her temple, lingered until she sighed and slipped deeper into the pillows.

“Sleep well, Princess.” He tucked the edge of the counterpane under her chin. “It’ll keep till morning.”

“And ever after,” she whispered in a voice that evaporated into her dreams and out of his reach.

Four days and he would be free of her.

And his heart could start beating again.

“Drew?” Caro came awake with her skin alive and her insides yearning for him, for his kiss.

But daylight had come and he wasn’t still here in her chamber—though his scent lingered, along with that lovely memory of him.

As well as the guilty memory of her recent assault on his vaunted Factory.

Feeling like an unrepentant sneak thief, with the man she’d stolen from sleeping innocently in the room next door, she padded over to the desk for her folio, then back to her bed, where she dug herself into the covers.

She hadn’t actually stolen anything. Merely a few
papers from a file that had just been lying there on the table in the Factory with her name on it. And one couldn’t really steal something that belonged to oneself.

She’d lived by that rule for years now, and yet it seemed a bit shoddy now that she’d applied it to Drew.

But shoddy or not, it had to be done if she was going to launch her own investigation.

She opened the folio and pulled out the first document.

“From Palmerston.” His note to Drew asking him to meet with him about taking the case of the Princess Caroline.

But scrawled across the bottom in Drew’s bold handwriting were the words: “No. Not another foul-hearted, spoiled, despicable royal as long as I live.”

“Well, thank you, Lord Wexford.” No wonder the man had been so prickly and impatient with her at first.

And how surprising that he had kissed her so fiercely, so finely last night.

Well, this piece of paper obviously didn’t belong to her, which made her feel even more like a fraud, like she was looking into Drew’s private journal.

The next appeared to be a quickly sketched map of Grandauer Hall and its grounds, with red
X
s at the gate and around the perimeter, with other notes and arrows.

“Security.” He and his agents had certainly done a fine job with that.

And then a three-page report listing the same chronology of the initial investigation that Drew had
explained to her. Before he knew that she was the target.

Before she was just another foul-hearted, spoiled, despicable royal.

Ah, but here was something that surely belonged to her.

An 1817 letter to the prince regent from her father, complimenting him on the fine greyhounds he’d received from the English king as a birthday gift.

“What an odd thing to keep in my file.”

And here was an even more inconsequential note, dated 1823, from her own mother to Lady Minorhoff, inviting her to that afternoon’s tea.

Both messages were plainer than plain. Hardly evidence in a conspiracy against her.

The same could be said for a household accounting page from a family clerk, or the Tovaranche cook’s Candlemas menu and his list of ingredients.

Or this shaky scribbling from old Nanny Lambton…

“Caro?”

“Drew!”

His rap on her hallway door came a second later. “Are you decent, madam?”

Struck speechless, feeling like a lying, cheating swindler, she blinked down at the contraband documents strewn across her counterpane.

“Your breakfast and your bath, Princess.”

“Yes, come, Drew,” she called out as she stuffed the pages beneath the covers.

A whole parade happened next. Mrs. Tweeg and her minions, the tub and the steaming water, and then Drew himself entered from the corridor. After they all had left, Tweeg and Drew stayed behind, in
tently peering down at her, a breakfast tray in the maid’s hands.

“His lordship tells me you’ve been wounded in battle, Your Highness.”

Drew bent over her like a spreading oak. “You’ll mind Tweeg while I’m in London, won’t you, Princess?”