Mistress by Midnight (9 page)

“Come along, Merryn,” Joanna said, sounding like a governess.

They went out. Garrick could hear Tess Darent’s voice fading away as she chattered to Joanna about the new winter wardrobe she would purchase with some of her thirty thousand pounds. He saw that Churchward had overheard Lady Darent, too. The lawyer grimaced.

“The late Lord Fenner’s daughters are all very different from one another,” he murmured.

Garrick thought that of the three, Tess was actually the one most like Stephen Fenner. Stephen, too, had been blessedly short of moral scruples when it came to money. Joanna, he rather suspected, had hidden depths. She might appear to be a society butterfly but she could not have attracted and held the love of a man like Alex Grant without some substance. As for Merryn, well, she was as transparent as glass, painfully honest and demanding the same integrity from all those that she met. He winced as he remembered her disillusion on hearing Tess’s response to the deed of gift. Life could be very cruel to idealists. Which was another reason why to tell her of her brother’s true character would be wantonly cruel.

He stood up, stretched, feeling the tension drain away from his body.

“Thank you, Churchward,” he said, shaking the lawyer by the hand. “I appreciate your support.”

“One hundred thousand pounds,” Churchward mourned. “You are sure you will not change your mind, your grace?”

Garrick laughed. “Too late. Lady Darent will already be spending her share, I feel sure.” He sighed, straightened. “Please let me know as soon as Lady Grant responds formally to the offer and please have all the estate papers ready to send over to her.” He smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Churchward.”

He went out. He felt a huge wash of relief to be outside in the fresh air. He resolved to ride out that afternoon. His ducal duties could wait a little. He needed space and speed and the opportunity to outrun his ghosts. Merryn Fenner filled his consciousness with her vivid passion and the sharp awareness that undercut every one of their encounters.

You will not buy me off…

He had not for one moment thought that he could.

“H
AVE YOU A MOMENT, GUV’NOR?”

The man who had stuck his head around Tom’s office door was Ned Heighton, one of the men who worked for him picking up information in the rookeries and coffee shops of London. A former Army Provost, Heighton had fallen from grace through some misdemeanor and been court-martialed and dishonorably discharged from the army. Tom had never inquired into the cause of his disgrace, although he suspected it was drink-related. Heighton could be a little too fond of the bottle. Still, the army’s loss was Tom’s gain. Heighton was a very sound man.

“What is it?” he asked, as the old soldier came in and shut the door.

“Your six o’clock appointment is here,” Heighton said. “Nice-looking lady.”

“Mrs. Carstairs,” Tom said. “Her husband has absconded and she wants to find him.”

Heighton shook his head. “Best leave him be. He’ll have run off with an actress, like as not.”

“Or he is at the bottom of the Thames,” Tom said, reaching for a file from his drawer, “if my inquiries into his financial affairs are anything to go by.” He raised his brows. “But you did not call in to act as my secretary, did you, Heighton?”

“No, sir.” Heighton scratched his forehead. “There’s something I thought you should know, sir. Someone has been asking questions. About her ladyship, sir.”

Tom waited. Heighton always took his time in divulging information. Also he had a love-hate relationship with Merryn, whom he thought too grand to work for an inquiry agent. Heighton had strict ideas about rank. Interesting, Tom thought, that despite his disapproval the old soldier seemed to be on Merryn’s side now.

“A rich cove,” Heighton added eventually. “Titled, probably.”

“The Duke of Farne,” Tom said softly. Garrick Farne, it seemed, had not wasted any time.

“Nice clothes,” Heighton said. “Expensive. But not a soft lad, oh, no.”

“Soft lad” was Heighton’s ultimate insult for any man whom he thought a bit of a dandy. Tom repressed a grin. “Go on,” he said.

Heighton sighed. His eyes looked sad, like a dog left out in the rain.

“Took his business to Hammonds,” he said dolefully, mentioning Tom’s most successful rival.

“Well,” Tom said, “he wouldn’t come to us if he wanted information on Merryn, would he?”

“Might do,” Heighton said surprisingly. “Looked the sort of cove who wouldn’t mess around. Dangerous, if you ask me. He carried a pistol, Jerry said.”

Jerry was one of Heighton’s most useful informers and was correct nine times out of ten. Tom sighed. This was precisely what he had feared. Farne had got wind of Merryn’s activities and was out to find out about her and, no doubt, scupper her plans.

“Any idea what questions he was asking, Heighton?” he said, a little wearily.

Heighton shook his head. “Jerry couldn’t hear. Only heard her ladyship’s name—and the sound of money changing hands. Big money, Jerry said.”

“All right,” Tom said. “I’ll warn Merryn to be careful. Thank you, Heighton.”

The old soldier paused. “One other thing, sir.”

Tom looked up at the note in the man’s voice. “Yes?”

“The rich cove—the Duke—was asking after you, too, sir.”

Tom put down his pen very slowly. “Me?” he said. His voice did not sound quite right, even to his own ears. He could feel cold fear crawling up his neck. “He was asking about me?”

Heighton was looking at him with concern. Tom swiftly rearranged his expression. “I expect,” he said, “it was only because I employ Lady Merryn.” He picked up the pen again, noticing that his hand was shaking slightly. “Thank you, Heighton,” he said casually. “I will be out to see Mrs. Carstairs directly.”

Heighton nodded and went out, and Tom paused for a moment before getting to his feet, walking across to the decanter, pouring a glass of the vile sherry and drinking it down in one mouthful. He followed it with a second one.

So Garrick Farne was asking questions, about Merryn, about him. That was at best inconvenient and at worst could prove fatal. Tom returned to his desk, drumming his fingers on the pile of paper that reposed there while he tried to think clearly. If Farne discovered his connection to the Dukedom then everything would go spectacularly wrong. That was the reason he had been hiding behind Merryn from the start, using her, feeding her the information about her brother’s death that he had known would set her off on this blind quest for justice. She did not know the full extent of his interest, of course, and he could never tell her. Equally he could not permit Garrick Farne to discover Merryn’s purpose. The whole matter was delicate, poised on a knife edge. And there was a Dukedom at stake.

Tom ran his hand through his hair. He had already warned Merryn to be discreet and careful. She had thought it was because he was concerned for her safety. In fact it had been pure self-preservation. Unfortunately Merryn was easy to manipulate but difficult to control thereafter, because when she became inspired by a cause it tended to arouse such passionate fervor in her that everything else—caution, discretion, prudence—went by the board. Tom had seen it happen before when she had taken on cases where there had been a miscarriage of justice. In this particular case her personal feelings were involved and so the effect was twenty times the greater. She was proving more difficult to manage than he had anticipated, and he would have to think of a way to rein her in before Farne caught up with her and she ruined everything. If the worse came to the worst, he thought, he would simply have to cut her loose and use her as a decoy to draw attention away from him. He nodded. The idea had some appeal.

He went out into the waiting room. Mrs. Carstairs was sitting patiently, her fingers locked tightly together, a mixture of hope and fear in her eyes as she looked up at him. Tom sighed. On his desk was a fat file detailing her husband’s spiraling debts and the mess he had got himself into trying to pay them off by borrowing from some deeply unpleasant moneylenders. Tom did not care much for his clients’ pain. He had seen and done it all—thwarted eloping lovers, exposed bigamists, found lost heirs, even destroyed inconvenient evidence if the price was right. He had no sentiment left in him. It amused him that Merryn worked for him because she thought she was working for justice. In some ways, Tom thought, Merryn Fenner was extremely naive. But she had also been extremely useful to him. It would be a shame to lose her.

Now he turned his most compassionate manufactured smile on his latest client. Mrs. Carstairs was paying him enough money. The least he could do was give her his undivided attention and some apparent sympathy.

“Mrs. Carstairs,” he said, “I am very sorry. You must prepare yourself for bad news…”

CHAPTER SIX

G
ARRICK DID NOT
have an invitation to Joanna Grant’s ball that evening. He would hardly have expected it. It would take more than one hundred thousand pounds and the handing back of the ancestral Fenner lands to make him welcome in Tavistock Street. But since he wanted to see Merryn again he had no choice other than to arrive uninvited. He left it very late, when all the guests had arrived and the footman on the door was wilting at his post, and then he simply walked in. No one stopped him. No one appeared to notice him at all in the crush.

Garrick went straight to the ballroom, where he saw Merryn almost immediately. She was dancing with a young sprig of fashion, dancing very badly moreover, and with the expression of one who was having a tooth pulled or perhaps whose slippers were pinching. Her partner looked grim and bored. Garrick could not help but smile. Most young ladies at least made a pretense of enjoyment when they were with the opposite sex. Merryn clearly saw no need to do so.

He took a calculated bet that she would soon tire of the ball, helped himself to a bottle of champagne and two glasses from an obliging footman and slipped out of the ballroom and up the stairs. He was aware that he was abusing Lord and Lady Grant’s hospitality quite shamefully since not only had he not been invited, he certainly had not been given the freedom of the house. But he needed to discover how much Merryn knew. He needed to stop her quest for justice. And this was the quickest way.

The first bedchamber he came to quite clearly belonged to Joanna Grant and was lush with exotic drapery and scented with perfume. It had a connecting door standing open to her husband’s dressing room. The second chamber was less easy to apportion to a member of the family and for a moment Garrick wondered if it was Merryn’s. There was a set of very beautiful and very explicit pencil drawings spilling from a folder on the dressing table—nudes in various stages of debauchery with gods, satyrs and nymphs. The drawings were good—and extremely erotic. One of the nymphs, small, lush, curved, looked a little like Merryn. She was lying on a bench, her hair spread, her drapes sliding from her rounded limbs, a small cherub bending to kiss her breast. Garrick felt his evening dress tightening in various strategic places as he contemplated the picture. His breath strangled in his throat.

Concentrate.

This was not the time to be imagining Lady Merryn Fenner stripped of her clothes and lying small yet voluptuous, naked, perfect, among the tangled sheets of his bed. Despite that it was, Garrick admitted to himself, the image that had haunted him since the moment he had met her. Then he had not known her identity; he had known nothing but the blazing attraction that had drawn him to her. Now, even though he knew she hated him, even though he knew all the barriers that stood between them, the attraction was no less.

This was not Merryn’s room, though. There were no books. Garrick closed the door softly behind him and wondered briefly if the rumors of Tess Darent driving all her ancient husbands to death with her incessant sexual demands were in fact true. He, accustomed to being the target of slander, had thought it nothing but idle gossip. Now he was not so sure.

The third room he entered was most definitely Merryn’s. It was plain and tidy, almost austere. There were no exotic furnishings here: a bed with a simple white cover, a wardrobe, a table with a pile of books. French love poetry, in the French language, of course, jostled with Thomas Hobbes’s
Leviathan
. There was an illustrated set of fairy stories and St. Augustine’s
Confessions.
And on the top, a bound book that looked suspiciously like a diary. Garrick picked it up, settled himself in an armchair, opened the book and started to read.

Ten minutes later he heard the patter of footsteps on the carpet outside and the turn of the doorknob, and then Merryn ran into the room. Because she was not expecting him to be there Garrick saw her in a totally unguarded moment. She wrenched the rose-colored bandeau from her head and cast it aside, kicking off her slippers at the same time. Her movements were jerky and exasperated, almost angry. She put both hands up to cover her face, digging her fingers into her intricately arranged golden curls, scattering the pins that restrained them. She made a sound of relief and release that was so heartfelt Garrick felt a stir of sympathy. She dropped her hands and put her head back so that her hair tumbled over her shoulders and down her back like a silver river. Her eyes were closed and her eyelashes—very fair and not artificially darkened—were spiky against the curve of her cheek. The line of her neck was pure and tempting. Garrick found that he wanted to grab her and bury his face against that silken skin, dropping his mouth to the vulnerable hollow of her throat, inhaling her scent, burying himself in her. She looked lush, sweet and very seductive.

He must have made some involuntary movement because her eyes snapped open and she saw him. Her gaze widened with shock and she took a breath.

“Don’t scream,” Garrick said. “It would not do your reputation any good.” He laid the book aside and got to his feet.

Merryn expelled the breath softly. He could hear a tremor in it though her voice was steady. “I never scream,” she said. “Not for mice, not for pickpockets and certainly
not
for intruders.”

She half turned aside from him, shielding her face, reaching for the shawl that was folded neatly over the back of her dressing table chair and wrapping it about her shoulders to cover the rose-pink ball gown. The room was hot, lit by a fire in the grate. Garrick thought she was wrapping herself up as much to add another layer of protection as for warmth. He could feel the withdrawal in her as she retreated from those moments when she had revealed so much of her feelings.

“I take it,” he said, “that balls are not to your taste.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I only went to try to please Joanna. Your generous offer this morning—” scorn colored her voice “—has caused much trouble in this household, your grace.”

Garrick could imagine. If Tess Darent wanted to accept the money and Joanna and Merryn did not, or worse if Joanna
and
Tess wanted to accept and Merryn did not, then he could see that the Fenner family would be split down the middle, wrangling over an issue that could not but wake painful memories.

“I am sorry if that is the case,” he said. “Such was not my intention.”

Merryn fixed him with a very direct stare.

“What was your intention then, your grace?”

“To give back something that should never have been mine,” Garrick said.

He expected her to contradict him or at the least to make some derisive comment but she did neither. Her blue eyes searched his face as though she was weighing the truth of his words and after a moment she gave a tiny nod of acceptance. Garrick released the breath he had not been aware that he was holding. He felt relief and something more, something that almost felt like gratitude, as though she had given him a present beyond price. Then she straightened and the moment was gone.

“Were you looking for something?” she asked.

“Yes,” Garrick said. He smiled. “As were you, when you ransacked my bedroom.”

Her gaze flickered. She stiffened a little. It was interesting, Garrick thought, how transparent she was. Interesting, but extremely inconvenient for her. The lies she had spun him that night in his bedroom had been imaginative because she was clever, but deceit was not her natural state. She would always prefer to meet an enemy head-on.

She ignored his comment. “We must stop meeting in bedchambers,” she said. “It is not respectable. I suggest that you leave.”

Garrick smiled. “I am merely returning your visit, as a courtesy,” he said. “I don’t believe we finished our conversation at the library. I’d like to talk some more.” He phrased it politely but with iron beneath his words. She heard the note in his voice and her head jerked up; he felt her antagonism. It shivered like a mirage between them. Her anger was palpable and with it bitterness, and something more, something not so easily defined. Garrick knew she was acutely uncomfortable that he had invaded her bedchamber, a space she had thought was private to herself. And she was even more uneasy about the fierce physical awareness that trapped them both. Garrick knew that she felt it as much as he did and he sensed that she, so much less experienced than he, did not understand their mutual attraction. Nor did she like it. But she could not deny it.

“I do not suppose that you were invited tonight,” she said, her pansy-blue eyes considering him thoughtfully.

“No,” Garrick said.

“Then you could at least have shown a modicum of courtesy and sensitivity by staying away.”

“I could have done,” Garrick agreed, “but I did not. This is too important.”

Their gazes locked. The antagonism flowered again, strong and dark between them, once again with that undercurrent of something else, something hot and turbulent.

Garrick gestured to the champagne bottle resting on the table beside Merryn’s pile of books. “Would you care to join me?” he asked.

She paused and then nodded. “Thank you.” She motioned toward the glasses. “What a civilized intruder you are, your grace,” she said. “You think of everything.”

“It would be an insult to the vintage to drink straight from the bottle,” Garrick said. He returned with two glasses and handed one to her. Their fingers touched. He heard the little catch of her breath she could not conceal as his hand brushed hers.

He poured for her and clinked his glass softly against hers in a mocking salute, two adversaries meeting and acknowledging that the game was going to be a fierce one. She waited for him to make the opening move. Garrick obliged.

“Does Lady Grant know that when you pretend to be attending lectures and concerts you are actually stalking innocent noblemen in their own homes?” he asked. “Does she know you have been sleeping in my bed?”

A hint of color, rose-pink like her gown, stole into Merryn’s cheeks. “I don’t stalk noblemen in the plural,” she said.

“Then it’s just me,” Garrick said. “How flattering.” He waited until she had taken the window seat then sat down opposite her and stretched out his long legs. The leather wing chair was comfortable, enveloping.

“So,” he said again. “Does Lady Grant know?”

Merryn took a sip of her champagne. He knew she was buying time. A pulse beat in the hollow of her throat, betraying her nervousness.

“No,” she said, after a moment. “She knows nothing of what I do.” She looked up. Her eyes held a mocking spark. “What are you going to do about it?” she said.

“I could tell her,” Garrick said thoughtfully. “I could tell everybody.”

Merryn looked thoughtful. She caught her lower lip between small white teeth. “No one would believe you,” she said politely. “I am Lady Merryn Fenner. I am a bluestocking. I am above suspicion.” She held his gaze, her own steady and bright.

“Except that a woman’s reputation is so vulnerable,” Garrick said gently. “Was
vulnerable
not the word you used when you warned me at the library? A whisper of scandal and a reputation dies. Your reputation, Lady Merryn.”

Merryn’s gaze narrowed on him. “That is true, of course,” she said. She dangled her half-full champagne glass between her fingers. “If you want to frighten me, though,” she added, “you will have to use something more powerful than society’s censure. I don’t care for it very much.”

A point to her.

“You don’t seek to wed?” Garrick asked. “A tattered reputation might well put paid to your chances.”

She flicked him a look of contempt. “I’d rather become a nun.”

“I assure you,” Garrick said, “that you do not have the least aptitude for it.”

She blushed at his reference to her unrestrained response to his kiss but the look in her eyes was still one of deep disdain. “Oh, well,” she said, “if I change my mind I am sure that your thirty thousand pounds will repair any
tatters
in my reputation, your grace.” She shrugged. “That is if I find a man I prefer to my books. I confess I have not done so yet.”

“You are meeting the wrong men, then,” Garrick said.

She laughed. “Which is hardly surprising, I suppose, if I frequent the bedchambers of men like you.” She gave him a very direct look. “And you, your grace? Do you seek to remarry?” She paused. “I suppose not. It is not exactly your forte, is it?”

Ouch
. Two points.

“I wondered whether you wished me to return your possessions to you,” Garrick said, upping the stakes. “Return the evidence of your midnight wanderings, if you like? Your book, your spectacles… Can you see without them?”

“Perfectly, I thank you,” Merryn said.

“Then they are for disguise only?”

She gave him another pitying stare. “You have too vivid an imagination, your grace. My glasses are for reading, not for disguise. Fortunately I have two pairs.”

“There is also your underwear,” Garrick said.

She stiffened. “You have been rifling through my underwear?”

“You left it in
my
drawers.”

“Then I think perhaps you had better keep it,” Merryn said icily “I don’t really want it returned secondhand.”

“I haven’t been wearing it,” Garrick pointed out mildly. “Merely looking at it.”

“How singular of you.”

“Not really,” Garrick said. “If you know anything of men, Lady Merryn—”

“I don’t.” She cut him off. There was something defensive in the way that she withdrew from him as though he trespassed on forbidden ground. Her voice was soft but her fingers, rubbing ceaselessly over the embroidery of the window cushions, betrayed her agitation. Merryn Fenner, he suspected, was not accustomed to people getting close to her and stripping away her defenses.

“I know nothing of men,” she said, “nor do I wish to know.” Her tone eased a little. “My sisters… They are the ones to whom you should address your gallantries, your grace. They are wasted on me.”

Garrick wondered if she resented being in the shadow of Joanna Grant and Tess Darent, both such beautiful, charming women. Had she deliberately taken this step back, refused all competition, made her world in books and libraries, lectures and scholarly research where they could not and did not want to follow? And could she not see that she, too, was beautiful and oh so desirable, like a tiny pocket goddess with her tumble of silver gilt hair and those wide blue eyes? It seemed not. Or perhaps she simply did not value good looks. Perhaps she did not even
want
to be beautiful.