London's Most Wanted Rake (15 page)

Chapter Fifteen

N
ice and ordinary would have made things easier, Channing thought later that afternoon. He sat on his side of the desk at Argosy House and Amery DeHart sat on his, but their roles were decidedly reversed for once. It was Amery who pushed a hand through his hair and said with an angst Channing recognised as a tone he himself had used not long ago with Nicholas and Jocelyn, ‘What the hell have you got yourself into?’

Channing hardly knew. One day he’d simply been taking over a standard assignment for Amery. The next, he was faced with a ghost from his past, the very inspiration for the agency. Even then, he might have been all right. He had his boundaries entrenched, the lessons he’d learned firmly in place. She would
not
sneak past his defences again. Yet she had. ‘She’s in trouble, Amery. There’s a man who has stolen from her family.’ Channing went on to explain the situation with Roland Seymour, how she’d wanted the introduction as a means of anonymously insinuating herself into Seymour’s influence in order to trap him, how she’d used a false deed.

‘Don’t you dare scold me,’ Channing concluded with a pre-emptory argument when Amery would have protested. ‘She would have asked you to do the same had you been there. It was what she’d hired you for.’

Amery gave him a wry look. ‘Was that
all
she wanted with you?’ He played idly with the pen on the edge of Channing’s desk. ‘She and I did not have a carnal relationship, merely a social one. She liked how I looked on her arm, nothing more. I am imagining from your tone, Channing, that she liked how you looked on more than her arm. In her bed, perhaps?’

It was Channing’s turn to look discomfited. Amery’s arrow had hit the mark most accurately and it was unnerving. He was used to being the one who read people so flawlessly. ‘Originally, I was glad you were back a little early,’ Channing replied drily, but Amery wouldn’t be put off the scent.

‘I was worried about you.’ Amery’s gaze was even now, unafraid to meet his. It was a sign of how Amery had matured in the past year, a sign, too, of how their friendship had deepened with Jocelyn’s absence. Once, it would have been Jocelyn Eisley, co-founder of the League, who would have sat in Amery’s chair, probing relentlessly for information from his friend. But Jocelyn had married and his wife held his attentions now.

‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ Channing denied. But it was a blatant lie. There was everything to worry about, everything to sort through and reassess—not all of it was about Seymour, but also about that cruel cur of a husband.

‘I disagree,’ Amery answered. He leaned forward, hands steepling on the desktop as he fixed Channing with concerned hazel eyes. ‘Consider the facts.’ Amery ticked them off on his long fingers. ‘You are gone barely a week to a standard house party, to carry out a standard assignment, one that didn’t even expect physical intimacy, and yet you come home ready to slay dragons for a woman you didn’t even know or want to know. As I recall, I had to beg you to take the appointment.’ He paused, a certain gleam in his eye. ‘I’d have reconsidered taking time off, if I’d had any idea she was such a marvellous—’

‘Don’t you ever talk about her that way.’ Channing was halfway out of his seat before he realised Amery had deliberately provoked him. He sat down, feeling foolish, and worse, exposed. Amery would know something was up now.

Amery leaned back in his chair, wearing a satisfied but sad smile. ‘So it’s that way, is it? She got to you. She’s very beautiful, is she not? But there’s something hard and unyielding in her. She’s broken in some way. It’s what gives her that edge she carries.’

‘She’s not broken,’ Channing argued quietly. Far from it. She was strong, like a finely forged Damascus blade. ‘I think she was betrayed by a husband who had destroyed her trust in marriage and in men.’ He’d had time to think in the interim since the house party of what her disclosures meant, how those events had shaped her. Sex was power to her, the one weapon she had to turn men into playthings so they could not hurt her any more. It explained her hesitation today when things had moved beyond the lightness of flirtation.

‘I never dreamed Elizabeth Morgan would appeal so strongly to you,’ Amery put in.

Channing studied his hands. It wouldn’t be fair to keep the truth from Amery. ‘That’s not her name. She gave a false name in order to keep her identity a secret from Seymour. She’s Alina Marliss, the Comtesse de Charentes.’

Amery’s body stilled. ‘I know who that is. But I had never met her.’ The
comtesse
might run in high circles, but she was socially reserved. Channing nodded. Amery would not have met her. ‘It was why she waited to come to the agency when I was gone.’

‘You knew her.’ Amery’s mind was racing. ‘Not just from London circles, but from before, didn’t you? She’s the one Jocelyn told me about.’ It was like watching a candle light the darkness and Channing regretted ever complimenting Amery’s quick mind or trusting in Jocelyn’s sense of discretion.

‘Not by name,’ Amery rushed on, trying to minimise Jocelyn’s culpability. ‘He told me once you’d met someone in Paris, years ago, but nothing had come of it—

‘Nothing is coming of it,’ Channing interrupted. ‘It was an old and ill-timed affair.’ One that had taken six years to consummate.

Amery laughed. ‘Except that now she’s back and she’s in trouble and you want to help her the way you’ve helped all of us, from the footman at the door to the boys in the kitchen.’

‘Is it so wrong to want to assist those in need?’ Channing fired back, feeling entirely too vulnerable. Argosy House and the agency had become so much more over the years than just a strike against broken hearts.

Amery leaned forward. ‘Of course not. What can I do to help?’

‘After our meeting today with David Grey, I think we might need reinforcements,’ Channing said. Alina had left the meeting with Grey dead set on establishing that nearly impossible trend Grey had mentioned and he’d all but promised her under the oak tree to help. ‘I’ve already notified the agency’s team of solicitors to get on it right away. I want her protected against charges of forgery.’ He paused. ‘We’ll need protection of another sort, too. I don’t think Seymour is the kind who will leave this battle to the courtrooms. When he finds out what she’s done and what she knows, he’ll be furious and strike out of self-defence, if nothing else.’

Amery nodded and grinned. ‘No worries, I’ve already sent letters to Nick and Jocelyn. They’re in town for the Season.’

Channing raised his brows in a bit of surprise. ‘I didn’t know.’

Amery shook his head and rose to take his leave. ‘That’s just how far gone you are, my friend. You’re in over your head and you don’t even know it.’

Ridiculous. He was Channing Deveril, London’s luckiest man. Was he in over his head? Was that even possible? Not just with sexual games that offered overwhelming pleasure, not just with Alina’s bedazzling beauty, both of which would have been enough to overwhelm any other man. It was the revelations that had him spinning. The marriage had not just been one of discontentment as he’d originally believed, but one of humiliation and degradation. Danger was not new to Alina. She’d lived with it before. No wonder she felt immune to whatever threat Seymour might pose, no wonder she didn’t take the man seriously.

It still turned Channing’s stomach to think of the faded brand pressed so cruelly into her skin, to think of the humiliation of being chained to her bed without basic comforts until she capitulated. Those were the only episodes she’d mentioned and only because he’d discovered the one and pushed for the other. Left to her own, she would not have told him.

She doesn’t trust you,
came the answer. And why should she? He’d told her he’d wished she’d come to him from the first, but that was hindsight speaking. When she had come to him for help re-integrating into English society, he’d been all business. Perhaps she had been looking for something more? He’d not understood at the time that her request to hire an escort had been a plea to start over.

He’d done his job, even indulged in physical intimacy with her at last. But he’d made sure he’d remained emotionally aloof and that she knew it. She was just another appointment in a ledger full of them. He’d even gone so far as to flirt with another, Catherine Emerson, the neighbour’s daughter who’d gone on to marry his brother.

He’d kept his ‘interest’ in Alina purely professional and she hated him for it. He’d played a game of revenge just as he’d perceived she’d played one with him those years ago in Paris. But what he knew now called all that into question. Had she scorned him that day in the park or had she protected him? Even in the early days of her marriage, had she already been in danger from the
comte
’s cruel gambits? These were the details, the difficulties he’d alluded to today in Hyde Park, the things that must be discussed.

Alina felt knowing the details of her past couldn’t change anything, but Channing disagreed. It had the power to change
everything
, to call into question all he’d assumed to be true. He hadn’t known about the darkness of that marriage—could he assume the
comte
didn’t know about him? If he did know, had he made Alina pay?

Channing felt his gut clench again, as his mind replayed the pivotal scene in the park. Had he really seen a young devoted wife, clinging affectionately to her husband after a long absence? Had her husband draped her in jewels benevolently, or had there been a more malicious intent behind them? More importantly, what did those answers mean to him? He could not turn back the clock for her or for him. Was he in over his head? He could handle Roland Seymour, but where Alina and his emotions were concerned, maybe Amery was right. It was good to know, come what may, that his friends stood at the ready. All he had to do was say the word.

* * *

There was one word for the Comtesse de Charentes and that word was
bitch
. Roland Seymour swore it liberally and loudly, his hand coming down hard on the table surface where a few members of the syndicate had gathered for this meeting. He was calling it impromptu; the others were calling it an emergency. The
comtesse
had attempted to deceive him and she’d made him look the fool in front of Sefton and Eagleton, who would not hesitate to let the rest of the syndicate know what had occurred.

‘This is why we must be cautious. Our system works. We have to be the ones who go to the clients, not the other way around. If clients are not carefully vetted, this is what happens,’ Sefton preached.

Seymour wanted to shove all his caution up the man’s ass except that, in this case, Sefton was justified. Charlie the surveyor had returned home late last night with the news: there was no land. The deed was just paper, it represented nothing. Charlie had checked the local records, talked with local people. No one had ever heard of such a place.

‘It’s not the duping that bothers me. It’s the motives behind it which are clearly deliberate,’ Eagleton put in. ‘Our
comtesse
knew what she was doing. This was absolutely premeditated.’ He smirked. ‘She led you about the nose quite exquisitely from the flirtation to the walk about the room, right up to imparting the deed, which she happened to have with her at a house party.’ He snorted there. ‘That should have been the biggest red flag of all.’

Seymour tried to ignore the comment and he should have known better. He’d been overconfident. It had always been so easy, up to this point, to swindle the women. They were more desperate than men, they just wanted someone to come in and take care of everything for them and the
comtesse
had played the role to the hilt. Men, however, needed to feel this was business, that they were partners in this new and exciting venture that would revolutionise their finances.

Eagleton pushed a file folder at him. ‘This explains it pretty neatly. Have a look.’

Seymour opened the brief and read, listening begrudgingly to Eagleton’s commentary. ‘You may recall the family name from a few years ago.’

Marliss. Sir Dylan Marliss. Seymour did remember him, vaguely; a gentry farmer with a comfortable income, but a property that was vastly under-developed and he knew it. Marliss had known he could be doing better, but he hadn’t the ability or the financial connections to make it happen. Marliss and his wife were polite, quiet people with a younger daughter, just the sort the syndicate liked to do business with. They would neither suspect trouble nor make trouble once they discovered the syndicate’s duplicity.

Seymour shoved the dossier back across the table. The
comtesse
was none other than Alina Marliss, their older daughter of whom there’d been not a single mention. Had the syndicate known there was a French countess in the family, they would not have approached Marliss. The syndicate made it a practice not to do business with peers. Peers were too well connected, too protected and they usually had a network of friends in high places. The syndicate preferred country men like Marliss. The country was isolating. Nothing happened quickly and that suited the syndicate perfectly.

‘In my defence, Alina Marliss was never mentioned once in any of our conversations.’ Seymour was desperate to save his image. He was starting to look like a fool in front of these men.

‘The reason might be this.’ Eagleton pushed another file across the table. Good lord, how many files did Eagleton have? He talked while Seymour scanned. ‘At the time we were doing business with Marliss, the
comtesse
’s husband had recently passed away under a cloud of suspicion. It stands to reason that the family was trying to distance itself from any ensuing scandal. There was already some tension between the Marlisses and their daughter, but I’ll get to that in a moment.’

Seymour looked up from the documents. ‘It says here the cause of death was likely poisoning.’

‘A long and gradual poisoning,’ Eagleton added. ‘Which means one needs to have regular and consistent access to the intended victim.’

‘Are you suggesting the
comtesse
was suspected of such an act?’ Seymour’s mind began to move from defence to offence.