Never a Gentleman (14 page)

That brought her back to a sitting position. “At all?”

He looked down, the taste of her still strong on his tongue. He had to get out of here before he threw her back down on the
bed. His wife.

Good God. What had he gotten himself into?

“Not if you don’t want it to.”

She frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”

He gave her an abrupt nod. For some reason, that was when he realized that he was looking at her legs; long,
strong legs. Well, the left, anyway. The right was a bit thinner, the muscles not as pronounced. And that was when he made
his next mistake. He flinched.

“How could I have forgotten about your leg?” he said. “I hope it wasn’t affected.”

And he looked up to see that he had finally gotten a reaction out of her. She sat frozen at the edge of the bed, the cloth
still clutched in her hand, her face ash pale and taut. Her eyes suddenly seemed huge and deep, and he realized that they
were gray, like his. But not like his. Hers were soft, like storm clouds. Except for now, when they were bleak. He was obviously
making a right bollocks of this. He shook his head, not knowing how to apologize.

“I won’t wear this gown again,” she offered, as if it would relieve him.

He shook his head again. And then, not knowing what else he could possibly do that wouldn’t hurt her worse, he grabbed the
rest of his clothing and left.

Grace sat for a long time, the cloth cooling in her hand, her leg aching from rough usage, her throat clogged with humiliation.
Her father had been right. No decent woman should have hair that color. Good men wouldn’t stand for it. Other women would
disdain it. She just hadn’t thought.

She wished she knew what to do now. She felt as if she’d been battered by a strong surf and tossed up on a cold beach. She
felt hollow and sad. It had been the most shattering experience of her life. A door had been opened, a lamp lit. And then
Diccan had brutally doused that wonderful light by turning the most magnificent experience of her life into one of shame.

If only her skin didn’t still hum. If she could forget the stunningly wicked smile on his face as he’d bent to… to
taste
her. She could still feel it, like being laved by fire. She could still hear his throaty chuckle. Her body felt lit up like
an evening storm. Her heart still hadn’t slowed. It had been so wonderful, right up to the moment he’d realized she was a
virgin.

He hadn’t meant to hurt her; she knew that. In fact, he’d endeared her with his shock at his own actions. But it didn’t change
the outcome. She had been given a revelation, a peek into a far country into which she’d never been invited. And then, quickly,
brutally, it had been snatched away again, and she didn’t know how to recover it.

Not knowing what else to do, she finally got up. It was pointless, after all, to waste the rest of the night agonizing over
what had happened. She might as well get on with things. Taking a few minutes to clean herself with hands that shook, she
returned to her room and traded her gown for one of cotton. Then, careful not to snag the beautiful silk on her still-rough
hands, she folded the gown and stowed it beneath her practical gray clothes, where she wouldn’t be faced with the miscalculation
it represented. Where, hopefully, she could forget how close she’d come to happiness.

She had thought that maybe, with Diccan, she could step outside the plain gray life she had always led. She’d been wrong.
He had been appalled by what he’d done. What he’d thought she had tricked him into. Well, it was a mistake he would never
make again.

She found herself standing before the mirror above the little vanity staring at the ghost-pale woman who stared back and wondering
whether she would ever find her way past what she was. A plain woman. A useful woman. A
competent nurse and loyal friend. A woman who hungered for intensity and settled for silence.

If only her body didn’t ache. If only he had left before he’d taken her virginity. It had hurt. She had never had anything
hurt as much. She couldn’t imagine getting used to that sense of fullness, of invasion, of complete surrender. She couldn’t
imagine
wanting
to get used to it. She would want it to be a surprise every time, an explosion of wonder and possibility and belonging. For
those few moments, she had been part of him. He had been a part of her, as inextricably bound as two humans could be. For
that brief, hot, exquisite instant, she had not been alone.

Deliberately, she turned away. Braiding her hair into order, she built up the fire and pulled out her lists. She would never
be able to sleep tonight. She might as well be busy.

He hadn’t known where else to go. He certainly couldn’t stay in the Pulteney.
She
was there, calling up every lascivious moment he had spent with her. Confusing him with the urgency with which he’d taken
her. Infuriating him with her air of innocence, when he’d seen the proof himself that she couldn’t have been. Just what the
hell had she learned in India?

For just a moment, he considered finding out. If she’d learned to dye her nether hair, what else had she picked up? Would
she do it with him? Ignoring his shaking hand, he shoved a key into the door to his rooms. She would
not
do that with him. God’s blood, he couldn’t imagine wanting her to. It would be like disporting with a nun. A horsey nun.
A dull horsey nun. The fact that he was being completely unfair only made him angrier.

He’d simply been celibate too long. He should have just thrown a bag over Minette’s head and carried her off with him back
to London. Not only would he have continued to get his intelligence, he could have avoided what had happened tonight. He would
have been too sated to even think of debauching his wife.

His wife who had dyed her goddamned thatch. Hell, he’d had to
ask
Minette to do it.

He was thankful he hadn’t given up his rooms at the Albany. He needed a bit of distance tonight. Someplace to bathe off Grace’s
scent and the evidence of his mistake. He needed to be alone.

“Hello, old man. Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Diccan came to a screeching halt in the doorway. His sitting room was full of people. Briefly he wondered if he’d walked into
the wrong room. But no. There was his brown leather sofa, the hunting prints the last tenant had left on his walls. Tidy stack
of
Edinburgh Journals
sharing his end table with the sketch of Gadzooks that his sister Winnie had drawn. Those were even the etched brandy snifters
he’d brought back from Ireland. Yes, definitely his place, being used, evidently, as the clubhouse for Drake’s Rakes.

While Diccan was orienting himself, Marcus Drake unwound himself from his chair and stood. “Didn’t think you’d mind. We needed
someplace out of the public eye and all.”

Marcus might have been blond and blue-eyed, but Diccan had always thought of him as a wolf. Cautious, predatory. A natural
leader, both as Earl Drake and as founder of the Rakes.

Not so Chuffy Wilde, who followed Marcus to his feet. Round and bespeckled and still prone to spots, Chuffy
was the group’s tentative hold on innocence. It was Chuffy who offered a hand, as if Diccan had invited them all over. “Good
to see you, old man.”

The rest of them simply lounged on his furniture, fouling his air with cigarillos and draining his supply of alcohol. Ian
Ferguson. Alex Knight. Beau Drummond. Nate Adams, which made a quorum, even if Nate was snoring off an evening spent among
the champagne bottles at Madame Lucille’s.

Usually Diccan would have been pleased to see any of them. But tonight he wasn’t sure he was up to it. He had the most disconcerting
feeling he reeked of sex. Of debauchery. Of Grace.

“One hopes you’ve at least saved a bit of my own brandy for me,” he drawled, taking Chuffy’s pudgy hand. “Come to celebrate
my nuptials? I might have expected you at the ceremony, Drake.”

Marcus Drake smiled. “I was as surprised as you, old thing.”

Diccan cocked an eyebrow. “Not
quite
as surprised, I imagine.”

“All the same,” Drake said, his expression knowing, “celebration is in order. I like her.”

“The lady could have done better,” Diccan answered.

“Quite so,” Chuffy said, completely oblivious to the undercurrents as he plopped back down on the sofa. “Wonderful woman.
Saved m’brother’s leg after the Battle of Cornwall, don’t ya know.”

“I believe that’s Corunna, Chuff,” Alex Knight advised, from where he lay sprawled in the armchair, brandy and cigar in hand,
white-blond hair straggling over his undone collar.

“Is it?” Chuffy blinked, then laughed. “Course it is. You should know. Incomprehensible names. Should fight someplace a man
can pronounce.”

“Like Cornwall?”

“Exactly!”

Diccan strolled over to get his own drink. “What brings such
bon vivants
together?”

“I’ve been bringing them up to speed on the news,” Drake said, sitting back down.

“Bad luck about Evenham,” Chuffy said, the light glinting off his glasses. “Poor sod.”

It was Beau Drummond who finally spoke up. “He was a traitor,” the saturnine viscount said in an uncompromising voice. Beau
had lost a brother at Talavera. “He was lucky it wasn’t me there.”

“Would he have been any more dead?” Diccan drawled, sipping at his brandy. Oddly, the discussion settled him. This was something
he knew. A familiar problem to be solved.

Ferguson shook his massive auburn head. “Even for a wee Sassenach, he didn’t seem the type.”

“If you can spot a traitor just by looking at him,” Drake suggested, “please let the Home Office know. It would save so much
work.”

The Scot frowned, his usually open face dour. “You know what I mean. The boy was a bloody choirboy. How did they turn him?”

“Don’t know,” Diccan said, with no qualms about lying. “He took it to his grave.”

“Are you sure the Home Secretary isn’t right?” Alex asked. “That Evenham isn’t part of a smokescreen the real revolutionaries
are throwing up?”

Ferguson let loose a hard laugh. “Sidmouth sees revolutionaries under the bushes. He might not be so paranoid if he’d spend
more time actually dealin’ with the real problems instead of tryin’ to arrest anybody who complains.” His smile was grim.
“Save that for us radical Celts.”

“We can discuss politics later,” Marcus suggested. “Let’s focus on the matter at hand. You seem to be the target, Diccan.
Any idea what they’re after?”

“Not a clue. I imagine I do look ripe for a fall, but I can’t imagine what they think I know.”

“Do you think they know about us?” Drummond asked as he passed through, refilling glasses.

“That the Rakes are government agents cleverly disguised as aristocratic wastrels?” Drake asked dryly. Without opening an
eye, Nate Adams raised his glass in tribute. Drummond refilled it.

Diccan shrugged. “Only one way to find out. We need an eye into their organization.”

For a moment, there was a thick silence in the room. Then Drake stirred. “If nothing else, we need to employ your household
army to infiltrate the homes of some of the people Evenham named.”

“Household army?” Chuffy asked.

“Oh, that’s right,” Ferguson said, looking up. “You weren’t on the Continent. Diccan here collected a store o’ maids and such
to listen at keyholes for him.”

Chuffy nodded wisely. “Nobody knows what’s going on faster than the house staff.”

“The information they were able to bring him in Vienna changed the course of negotiations,” Alex said. “Have they followed
you across the Channel, then?”

Diccan shrugged. “Some of them. I’ve been trying to
get a couple into Bentley’s. It’s a long shot, but maybe Bertie Evenham left something behind in his father’s house that could
prove useful.”

Drake nodded absently. “What about you? Are you going to let the Lions have at you?”

Diccan studied his own liquor, the brandy turning in slow eddies that gleamed in the light. “I don’t know. According to Bertie,
after blackmail come the threats. I don’t want to put Grace at risk.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Drummond suggested. “It’s not as if it’s a love match between you two. Just make sure everyone knows
it.”

“They may go after another Rake,” Alex Knight offered. “There are ten of us, after all.”

“And if our reputations are to be believed, all susceptible to blackmail.” Chuffy grinned. “Wouldn’t mind them coming after
me. An honor. Never was quite as notorious as you other lads.”

For another hour, they considered plans and contingencies. In the end, though, they agreed to wait on events. The bells of
St. George’s were tolling the hour of three when Drake shook Nate Adams awake so the Rakes could depart. But when the others
walked out, Drake stayed behind with Diccan.

“One thing, old man,” Drake said in a suspiciously calm tone. “I assume you arrived here from wherever you and your lady are
staying.”

The key in his hand, Diccan went still. “And if I did?”

“I detect signs that lead me to believe that your bride is no longer a maiden.”

Diccan stiffened like an outraged matron. “That’s not your goddamned business.”

“It is if it gets you or your wife killed. I agree with Beau. Your best protection is a show of indifference. At least for
now. You don’t want make her a target.”

Diccan resented the hell out of Marcus’s intrusion. Blast, wasn’t he having trouble enough with this marriage without other
people poking their noses in? Glaring at Drake, he downed his brandy and set the glass down. “Fine. From this moment, my thoughts
will be pure and my hands kept to myself.”

How odd that what he felt was not relief.

Not too many blocks away in a townhouse on Bruton Street, the Surgeon watched from the shadows as two of the senior Lions
faced off across a desk. They were sequestered in an oak-paneled library while a ball could be heard being enjoyed a floor
away.

“Why does it have to be Hilliard?” the gentleman on the visitor’s side of the desk demanded. “Surely there’s someone better
placed we can attract.”