Never Kiss a Rake (34 page)

H
E SLEPT BESIDE HER
, a fact that astonished him. It was far from a comfortable position, half wrapped around her body. Dr. Brattle had tethered her arm to a board that was strapped to the side of the bed, to keep her from reopening the wound, and he’d simply had to move around her, arranging himself carefully. Her final words had been the ultimate mistrust, though they’d come as no surprise. She thought him capable of the most heinous crimes, of murder and embezzlement, of leaving his former business partner’s daughters destitute. With his wife’s bloody disappearance she might very well think him capable of even worse.

His mind should have been a whirl of questions, and instead he’d simply held her, offering her the warmth of his body, the strength of his arms, the shelter of his protection, and the comfort of his…

He wasn’t sure what he was offering her. Certainly nothing more than temporary surcease of pain and despair. And he expected he would be handsomely rewarded eventually. If he were a decent human being he would be lying beside her with only caring thoughts in his head, the wish to provide comfort for one in distress. Unfortunately he was a very bad man, his cock had been hard for so long it ached, and it was all he could do to keep from sliding his arm up to rest against her small, lovely breasts.

And they were lovely. He could remember from the shadowy kitchen, when she lay stretched out in front of him, ready for him, hot for him. Tipsy, and a virgin. And he’d been a damned gentleman for once in his life, the ultimate act of stupidity. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. He’d have to wait, of course. It would be all the lovelier when she was awake, alert, and bared herself to him knowing what she was doing. He’d never been fond of unconscious partners.

Sex was about give and take. Desire and retreat, need and generosity, control and abandon. He’d never waited so long for a woman, which amused him, considering it had only been four days. In his experience most women fell at his feet. And if they didn’t, there were always other women available. Unfortunately, at least for the moment, no other woman would do.

Bryony. He liked it. His very dear Miss Greaves was Bryony Russell, eldest daughter of Eustace Russell, a woman who was purported to be an invalid, one who was judged too frail to appear in public. He’d snorted with laughter at that one. Bryony Russell was about as frail as a steamship. She’d stormed through his house like a typhoon and swept everything in front of her. It had been days since he’d seen so much as a speck of dust.

He didn’t want her weak, broken like this. He wanted her strong, fighting back, and he wasn’t going to consider why, or whether it had anything to do with this strange fascination she held for him. Indeed, he should probably just take her and get it done with. But she was going to have to be feeling just a little bit better before he became the complete villain he knew himself to be.

He woke up before she did, a knot in his neck, the arm beneath her numb. He slid from the bed, careful not to wake her. Her skin was cool, her color good. She hadn’t taken on an infection, and since the bullet had thankfully landed in a fleshy part of her arm she should be up and about in a few days, a week at most. In the meantime, he had things to do.

If Collins was surprised to see him strolling from the housekeeper’s bedroom he didn’t show it. “I’m afraid Mr. Peach’s men are here again, my lord. Would you like me to send them away?”

“How noisy are they?”

“Not very, my lord. I shouldn’t think they’d disturb you, and they’ve promised to finish today.”

He grimaced. “It was Mrs. Greaves I was concerned about. She’ll need peace and quiet while she recovers.”

“I don’t believe they’ll present a problem, my lord. Your rooms are at the opposite end of the house. If they disturb her we could always see they’re sent away to a more opportune time.”

He nodded, dismissing him, but Collins wasn’t so easily dismissed. “Might I be bold enough to inquire whether your lordship might like assistance with his toilette this morning? I am accounted an excellent barber—my gentlemen always said I had a most delicate hand with a razor.”

He was damnably tired. “I prefer to shave myself. In fact, I believe I’ll take a bath first, unless the workmen are mucking about in the bathing room.” He was very fond of the huge copper bathing tub and the hot water that traveled by pipes directly into it.

“Not at the moment, my lord. Allow me to draw one for you.”

There was an odd note in Collins’s voice, and Kilmartyn looked at him sharply. The imperturbable Collins was looking decidedly perturbed, almost… guilty. Odd. And interesting. Instead of sending him about his business, Kilmartyn nodded. “Do so then. And I believe I’ll sample your skills with the razor after all.”

Collins bowed, and most men wouldn’t have noticed any difference in his behavior. But Kilmartyn wasn’t most men. Something was off. Was Collins going to cut his throat when he shaved him? He could try, of course, but he wouldn’t get very far. If he were dealing with the gently reared son of a British lord then he might succeed. But Kilmartyn hadn’t been gently reared, he was Irish, and even if he hadn’t developed an unexpected distrust for his butler-cum-gentleman’s gentleman it would require someone of great cunning and skill to best him.

A man of great cunning and skill wouldn’t be letting his current agitation show. Something was disturbing Collins, and Kilmartyn had every intention of finding out what it was. His initial thought, that Collins harbored romantic feelings for the housekeeper, had evaporated. There was
nothing of the worried lover in the man’s bearing. Something else was troubling his manservant, the one who had been thrust upon him despite his protests.

There was a logical conclusion. Collins arrived soon after Bryony, at her behest. There was a strong probability that they were in this together. But he didn’t think so. For one thing, what would a gentleman’s gentleman care about an embezzlement scheme? There was no doubt that was exactly what Collins was—he was too good at his vocation to be an imposter. And Kilmartyn had sensed no collusion between them. His housekeeper had secrets, and he’d known that, but Collins came as a surprise.

The bathing room was large, a converted bedroom at the back of the third floor, a fact which had annoyed his wife to no end.

He shook his head. He really was a heartless bastard. He’d been so worried about Bryony that he hadn’t given a thought to the fact that the woman he’d been married to for almost ten years, the woman he’d once loved to distraction with all the passion of a twenty-year-old, was almost certainly dead. They’d hated each other so intensely that it was impossible to summon the grief he knew he should be feeling, but at least he should remember she’d been murdered. Unless she was perpetrating some complicated sham as revenge.

He didn’t think so. He was Irish enough to trust his instincts on this. Cecily was well and truly dead. He was now a widower. Whether he could prove it, and whether that proof might send him to the gallows, was another matter entirely.

He saw the merest shadow out of the corner of his eye as he walked down the hallway, but he moved quickly, grabbing the child by the scruffy shirt he wore and holding him while he struggled.

“And what are you doing on this floor, young Jem?” He gave him a gentle shake. “Are you spying on me?”

The child looked both indignant and guilty, and Kilmartyn remembered with a flash that his reaction to Bryony’s being shot had been similar to Collins’s. Remorse.

“Am not, guv’nor. Me lord,” he amended hastily, his dark eyes shifting. “I was just wanting to make sure Mrs. Greaves was all right.”

“Why should you care?”

Again the guilt. “She hired me, didn’t she?” he said. “No one ought to have shot her. He said… I mean, she should have been safe.”

Kilmartyn froze. He forced himself to take a slow, calming breath. “He said?” he prompted gently. He’d known boys like this, rough and desperate and determined not to show it.

“Nuffin,” the child said stubbornly.

“You said, ‘he said.’ Exactly whom are you talking about?” The child was squirming, trying to get away from him, but Kilmartyn’s fingers tightened on the collar of his shabby shirt.

“Nuffin!” he shouted, and yanked. The shirt tore, and the child, Jem, was off, disappearing through the door to the servants’ stairs in a flash.

He could have caught up with him. Despite his generally indolent air he could be as fast as any street rat, something that would have shocked his titled friends. But he let him go. Time enough to deal with him later. He had Collins to deal with, Collins who would undoubtedly know more, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

Bryony blinked rapidly, trying to clear her brain. It was one of those rainy, gloomy days that plagued London, and the light in the room was so murky she had no idea what time of day it was. She lay very still, trying to assess her surroundings.

Her head ached abominably. She tried to move, but for some reason she’d been tied down, and the pain that shot through her arm was almost as bad as her headache. That’s right, someone had shot her. Or so Kilmartyn had insisted.

Though she couldn’t quite remember when she’d seen him. Had he been there when she’d been brought back? And who had found her? Perhaps she’d made it as far as Berkeley Square, collapsing at the servants’ entrance in a dead faint. It was all a blur. But she could hear his caustic voice, telling her to lie still.

Had he been in the room last night? She turned her head automatically, and the pain slammed through it. They’d given her laudanum again to help the pain. She hated the stuff—it always made her ill the next day, dull and foggy, with a thundering pain in her head, and the only cure was fresh air. She tugged at her arm, letting out an unbidden cry of pain as it held.

She could see him in that chair, stretched out lazily. But that was ridiculous. Why in the world would he be in her room in the middle of the night? Well, there was one obvious reason, but with a gunshot wound she was hardly a good candidate for bed sport. Perhaps he thought that once she was tethered she wouldn’t be able to fight him off.

No, that wasn’t Kilmartyn. He would never resort to force—careful seduction was more his style. Had he been the one to shoot her? No. If he’d wanted her dead he’d had time enough to finish her, alone in the room with her. Instead he’d curled up around her, held her like she was a precious, delicate creature. Like she mattered to him.

Which was, of course, impossible. At the very best he was involved in his wife’s disappearance, and her own father hadn’t trusted him. At worst, he was a murderer twice over—his wife and her father. And why should he stop at two?

Why in heaven’s name hadn’t she simply gotten on the train and disappeared? What had made her come back here, to a house of secrets and lies? But she knew the answer to that, fool that she was. Whether she trusted him or not, she came back for Kilmartyn. She couldn’t leave him, not yet.

Rufus walked through the burned-out ruins of the Russell house on Curzon Street, the devastation calming his tumultuous thoughts as night fell on the city. He’d failed again. No, it hadn’t been his fault—he didn’t make mistakes. But that whore had managed, by sheer luck, to get away from him with only a bullet in her arm. Just a few inches to the left and she would have been dead, no longer a problem.

But then, perhaps things had worked out for the best. Having informants in the household served him better than he imagined. He’d merely expected them to keep track of the housekeeper’s movements; he’d never hoped for the added information. Collins had spied her searching Kilmartyn’s office, rifling through his papers. Had she been selling information rather than baubles when she disappeared among the warrens of the moneylenders? Had Kilmartyn already been destroyed?

No. Kilmartyn was barely aware of his existence—they’d met once or twice on social occasions. He would have no idea that Rufus was behind the satisfying destruction of Eustace Russell and everything that was dear to him, including his reputation, his house in London, his daughters. He would have no idea that own his wife had helped him, and therefore had to be silenced. And that he was about to become the perfect scapegoat for the entire affair.