The Edge of Desire (8 page)

He sat, then eyed the dishes the footmen Meadows waved in placed before them. “You’re new chef is Austrian.”

“Clever boy! Yes, indeed, Frederick is my new find. Quite a novel craze, Austrian dishes. They say Wellington and the others brought back the taste after the Congress of Vienna. The congress was a complete failure, of course, but the food, apparently, was excellent.” Cordelia glanced at Meadows as
the last dish was set in place. “Leave us, please, Meadows. I’ll ring if we need you.”

“Very good, ma’am.” Meadows bowed low. “My lord.” With a second deferential bow to Christian, Meadows retreated.

The instant the door closed behind him, Cordelia fixed Christian with an interrogative eye, the same gray hue as his own. “Well, my boy—what do you need to know?”

The direct attack had him blinking.

Ermina smiled gently—and closed in for the kill. “Well, dear, you never do appear without a summons, not unless you need something from us, which is usually information.”

Her earnest soft gray gaze was quite enough to make him inwardly squirm.

Ermina’s smile deepened as she shook out her napkin. “I daresay it’s about Letitia and this dreadful business of Randall’s murder.”

Christian glanced from her to Cordelia. From the eager gleam in Cordelia’s eye, she was only too ready to answer whatever questions he had; clearly, delicacy and tact would be wasted. “Indeed.” Delicacy and tact aside, he wanted to reveal as little as possible; his aunts rated among the most well-connected gossips in the ton. “As you say, Randall has been murdered, and so the question of whether Letitia has a lover, and whether together or separately, for the obvious reason, they killed him, naturally arises.”

Both his aunts stared at him. Their expressions initially suggested shocked surprise; that was quickly replaced by censure.

Cordelia snorted. “For
men
the question might ‘naturally arise,’ but I assure you no such nonsensical thought has surfaced in any female brain within the ton.” With that statement, uttered in a tone even he would think carefully about questioning, Cordelia returned her attention to her plate.

From across the table, Ermina shook her head at him. “No, dear—you’re quite wrong in even suggesting such a thing. Even putting such an outrageous suggestion into words.”

It hadn’t seemed outrageous to him—Letitia was a highly passionate woman—but there was clear rebuke beneath Ermina’s words.

“Letitia is a Vaux, after all,” Ermina informed him with not a little dignity. “I would have thought you would know what that means. She has taken no lover—absolutely not—not in all the years since she wed that man. We never did approve of him, of course—there was something not quite right there, as I’ve always said.”

Chewing, Cordelia nodded. She swallowed, then said, “Not that he—Randall—was ever anything other than polite. He always behaved just as he ought, but…” She waggled the beringed fingers of one hand. “There was just
something
that didn’t feel quite right about him.” She mulled for a moment, then rallied. “But enough about him—he’s dead and gone. As for Letitia, as Ermina said, she’s a
Vaux,
for heaven’s sake—they’re sound, fury, and high drama on the surface, but absolutely unshakable rock beneath. A vow for them is sacred. Nothing would induce them to break one, and Lord knows you must have noticed how stubborn they are.”

He’d known that, all that, but…Letitia had broken her vow to him. Why not her vows to Randall? He felt a pang of unaccustomed jealousy…for a dead man.

Shaking off the feeling, burying it, he returned to the point at hand. “So, no lover?”

Cordelia snorted. “Absolutely not.”

Late that afternoon, his mind grappling with a number of irreconcilable “facts,” Christian stood in the graveyard of the church in South Audley Street and watched George Martin Randall’s earthly remains laid to rest a mere two blocks from his house and close to the center of the ton’s world.

Given that, the lack of mourners was remarkable.

The short service in the church had been brief. Very brief. No one had come forward to read the eulogy. Letitia, it transpired, hadn’t known any of Randall’s friends, and as
none had called or written to convey their condolences, the minister made the best job of it he could, but his knowledge of Randall was cursory.

Letitia, Hermione, Letitia’s aunt Agnes, and Randall’s servants had made up the congregation in the church; other than Christian, no one else had attended. As was customary, all the females and the younger males had returned to the house at the close of the service, leaving Christian, Mellon, and two older footmen to observe the interment.

The only other observer was Barton, the Bow Street runner. Christian spied him watching proceedings from the shadow of a monument, no doubt imagining he was inconspicuous. Barton scanned the cemetery, as did Christian rather less obviously, but no one else appeared at any time—not even after the sods had been cast and the mourners drifted from the grave.

Christian found it difficult to comprehend the startling absence of any friends. Given that Randall had been murdered, the ton’s ladies—those who would otherwise have been present to support Letitia in her grief—had not been expected, but where were Randall’s male acquaintances, let alone friends?

Regardless of the nature of his demise—indeed, even more so because of it—they should have turned out, one and all.

Yet not one gentleman had appeared. As a comment on a life lived within the ton, that was extraordinary.

Admittedly the ton were only just returning to the capital for the autumn session of Parliament, and perhaps some who might have known Randall had yet to hear of his death, yet this absolute dearth of acquaintances seemed bizarre.

As he left the graveyard, Christian heavily underscored his earlier mental note—he had to find out more, a lot more, about George Martin Randall.

L
ater that evening, deliberately later than a gentleman would normally call on a lady, Christian rapped on the door of the house in South Audley Street.

Mellon opened the door and promptly looked scandalized.

Christian ignored him and walked in. “Please inform your mistress that Lord Dearne requests a few minutes of her time.”

Mellon blinked, then recalled himself and bowed. “Ah…I believe her ladyship has already retired, my lord.”

All the better to rattle her. “I doubt she’ll be abed yet.” Christian looked down his nose at the obsequious Mellon, then raised one brow. “My message?”

Flustered, Mellon turned to the drawing room. “If you’ll wait in—”

Christian strolled toward the front parlor. “I’ll wait in here.”

Mellon dithered, then surrendered and flapped away toward the stairs.

Smiling intently, Christian walked into Letitia’s domain and looked around. On the end of one sofa table, a candelabra still burned, bathing the silk rug in golden light and shadows.

The sight brought the phantom scent of jasmine back to his senses. Tightened his belly and his groin.

He drew in a breath and looked around the room, and
felt her there, around him. While he waited—he knew she wouldn’t hurry—he studied her things, searching for some insight into how she’d changed in the twelve years they’d been apart, but there was nothing he saw that seemed in any way different. More intense, more powerful, more well-defined, perhaps, but in all respects she was still the same Letitia Vaux he’d fallen completely and irrevocably in love with more than thirteen years before.

She’d grown, matured, but she hadn’t changed.

Presumably that meant that the same rules applied—that the ways he’d used to deal with her in the past would still work.

He had to learn more about Randall, and most especially about Letitia’s marriage to the man. Whatever else Justin Vaux was, he was sharply intelligent; he had to have had some compelling reason to believe Letitia had killed Randall. Christian needed to learn what that reason was in order to do what Justin had obviously felt needed to be done—protect Letitia from suspicion.

That was his logical, rational reason for what he was about to do.

His emotional reason had nothing to do with Randall’s murder, but everything to do with his marriage.

“He’s
what
?” In her bedchamber, seated before her dressing table mirror, still in her black gown but with her long hair tumbling about her shoulders and back, Letitia turned to stare at Mellon.

“He said he’d wait in the front parlor.” Mellon all but sniffed. “Quite at home he seemed.”

Letitia felt her temper stir. “I daresay.” Turning back to the dressing table, she set down her brush. She held her own gaze in the mirror for an instant, then said, “Tell him I’ll see him in the library. Show him in there, and shut the doors to the front parlor.”

In the mirror she watched as Mellon, his lips pinched in disapproval, bowed and withdrew.

Her lips quirked; ironic that in this she agreed with Mellon. If he could have told her how to avoid Christian Allardyce, now Marquess of Dearne—a nobleman accustomed to getting what he wanted and ensuring he always did—she would happily fall in with any plan.

But she knew how futile running from a large and powerful predator was; he would only pursue her all the more intently. And from past experience she knew that if pushed, he could, and would, act with a supreme disregard for convention every bit the equal of her own.

They were who they were; society’s rules only applied if and when they chose.

As the door closed behind Mellon, her dresser, Esme, engaged in laying out her nightclothes on the bed, straightened. “Do you want me to go down with you, my lady? It is late, and you being so recently widowed and all.”

Letitia glanced at her and smiled fondly. Esme, whom she’d brought with her on her marriage, tall, lanky, and rather severe, but an excellent dresser, was the only servant in the household she trusted. “Thank you, but no.”

Whatever Christian had in mind, she had a strong notion she would need privacy to deal with him. “Lord Dearne probably has more questions.”

She could imagine he would have. When they’d parted the previous night, her temper had been on edge, hard and bright, sharpened by disappointment that he’d actually followed through on his plan to use her vow to give anything in return for Justin’s safety to try to hurt her. To in some small measure pay her back for what he thought she’d done. To make her want him again, and then perhaps deny her.

Regardless of what his plan had been, she’d refashioned it in a way that had resulted in an interlude she could accept. What had been between them was still there; she hadn’t been entirely surprised that that was so.

As for the power of it…that had been both a surprise and a delight.

She’d slept better last night than she had for twelve years. Not since the night she’d seen him off to the wars.

And the sight of him afterward, the way he’d just lain there—as if sensually flabbergasted—had gone a long way toward salving any slight she might have felt. All in all, last night had gone far more her way than his.

Which almost certainly explained why he was waiting downstairs in the library.

Not the front parlor; she was far to fly to the nuances of place to let him use the lingering echoes of last night to distract her.

He’d stood by her side at the funeral that afternoon, but in public, on such a somber occasion, they’d exchanged only the barest greetings. He’d been nothing but unfailingly supportive; she’d leant on his arm, and been grateful he’d been there.

By now, however, he’d be champing at the bit, wanting to know everything. Ready to demand she tell him all that she was well aware he didn’t know—all she still had no intention of telling him.

Years ago he’d made his decision—and by that made his bed and hers, and made them separate. Now he’d come back from the life he’d chosen, but if he thought, with Randall conveniently dead, she’d blithely open her heart to him again, he would learn he was mistaken.

Pride was one of the few comforts left to her, pride that regardless of her wishes, she’d done the right thing.

She wasn’t about to let him take her pride from her. Wasn’t about to explain to him what his long ago decision had wrought. Wasn’t about to—ever—let him know what that decision had cost her.

How many heartbroken days and nights.

How many lonely years.

The sudden swell of emotion snapped her back to the here and now, to her reflection in the mirror.

She studied her eyes, then deciding she’d made him wait long enough, she considered her hair, debating whether to
wind it up into a quick knot. She was otherwise fully dressed, gowned, hooked and laced.

Her hair down, a silky, shining, shifting veil, would distract him more than it would her. He’d seen it down before, usually rippling over her nakedness.

She smiled approvingly and rose.

She glanced at Esme. “Don’t wait up for me. Dealing with his lordship might take some time.”

Unhurriedly, she left the room and headed for the stairs. A vivid memory of when they’d first met swam across her mind. As she started down, she recalled, and felt her lips curve.

She’d been barely sixteen. He’d been twenty-two. They’d met at a local fair; they’d seen each other over the bric-a-brac stall. Their eyes had met—and that had been that.

He’d been atrociously handsome, even then. The sight of him in his guardsman’s uniform had literally made lesser women swoon. While she’d never done anything so maudlin, seeing him standing tall and proud, the wind ruffling his light brown hair, she’d certainly understood her weaker sisters’ affliction.

For her, however, looking hadn’t been enough.

It hadn’t been enough for him either.

In rapid succession they’d become acquaintances, then friends, then sweethearts. He wasn’t always in the country; he was often called away. But every time he returned, their connection only seemed stronger, more definite, something that linked them each to the other and grew with every passing day, regardless of whether they were together or not.

Needless to say, they’d spent every moment they could together.

But they hadn’t become lovers until nearly a year later, when he’d come home and then come north to tell her that his upcoming assignment would see him on the Continent for some considerable time. That he was going into danger had been implicit; she hadn’t needed to be told.

It had been she who’d grasped the moment, who had
pulled him down into the hay in the old barn and insisted he educate her in the ways of passion.

Not that he’d fought all that hard, but she’d been well aware that she couldn’t leave it to him to initiate any intimate link. Men like he had certain lines they wouldn’t cross, and seducing her—even though he’d intended eventually to marry her—had been one of those lines. While she was usually a stickler for honor, in that instance she hadn’t seen the point.

Even now, after all the lonely years of nursing a broken heart, she still couldn’t find it in her to regret those passionate moments, those long interludes over one glorious summer when she’d given him not just her heart—that had already been his—but her body and her soul.

The memories still burned bright; for long moments they held her.

Then she blinked, and realized she’d halted outside the library door.

Drawing in a deep breath—girding her loins—she reached for the doorknob.

Only to have the door swing open.

Christian stood there, frowning down at her. “I presume you’re intending to join me at some point?”

She struggled to keep her lips straight. He would have heard her footsteps approach, then stop outside the door.

Thankfully, he didn’t know what had held her immobile.

With the faintest lift of her brows—she could do arrogant every bit as well as he—she glided past him into the room. And saw the book open on the table beside one of the armchairs by the hearth—instantly appreciated the scene he’d set, that he’d expected her to walk into—he calmly reading while waiting for her.

Memories of them in flagrante delicto had ruined his preparation.

The Fates, she decided, were on her side tonight.

Halting before the fire, she turned to face him. “You have more questions, I assume?” Chin high, she locked her eyes on his.

Saw the exasperation that swam through the gray orbs.

Christian didn’t bother to hide his frustration. He needed answers—answers he was well aware she wouldn’t want to give.

And she was stubborn, and intractable, and ungovernable, and generally uncontrollable. He’d tried to set the scene so she’d be at least a little off-balance. Instead she’d already evened the scales. “I had a surgeon I know examine Randall’s body. What he found showed that, contrary to all assumptions, Randall was killed by a single, relatively weak blow to the back of the head.”

“The back?” She saw the implications in a blink. “So…the person who was in the other armchair, sharing a drink with him.”

“That’s my interpretation. Others might have a different view.”

She frowned. “What different view?”

“That you killed Randall, and that later Justin delivered the blows to Randall’s face in order to conceal your involvement.”

She paled. “I didn’t kill Randall.”

He nodded. “I know. But Justin thought you did. At the very least he believed you might have.” He trapped her eyes. “Let’s assume Justin came upon Randall already dead. Dead of a relatively weak blow to the back of the skull from the poker conveniently nearby, a blow a tallish woman—you, for example—could easily have struck. We know Justin had heard you and Randall arguing—violently as usual. When he came upon Randall dead, he instantly jumped to the conclusion that you’d killed him—and set about covering up what he thought was your deed.”

She was frowning more definitely now, following his argument, not, he noticed, protesting his reasoning.

The hope grew that, in her need to find her brother, she would answer the myriad questions crowding his brain.

He moved closer, so he was standing before her, a little to the side so he wasn’t directly confronting her; he’d try
persuasion first. “Why did Justin believe you had killed Randall?”

She glanced at him, puzzled, met his eyes—but her puzzlement wasn’t over Justin’s reason, but that he’d done what he had. She saw him searching, and refocused—recalled his question, and put up her shields. She looked away. “I have no idea.”

He looked down. The rug beneath their feet wasn’t anywhere near the quality of the one in her parlor. “Letitia.” He tried to keep his tone even, patient. “It’s patently obvious that the rift between you and Randall went far deeper than his views on Hermione’s future.”

“And that, my lord, is none of your business.”

Her tart accents had him looking up—directly into hard hazel eyes.

“If Justin was so misguided as to believe I might have—in a fit of Vaux temper, no less—killed Randall—and yes, I accept that it appears he did just that—then presumably he had some reason. When you find him, you might try asking him—not that I imagine he’ll share details of my private life, not with you.”

He felt his lips thin, felt control and success slipping from him. “Letitia—”

“Don’t you ‘Letitia’ me.” Her eyes narrowed to shards. She faced him directly. “You have no right to demand to know details of my marriage. You gave away that right years ago.”

No, he hadn’t. She’d
taken
that right away from him. He felt his face set, clamped down on his temper. “That’s not how I recall it.”

She opened her eyes wide. “It isn’t? How do you recall it, then?”

The flagrant challenge hit him like a gauntlet in the face. “Like this.” He caught her arms, yanked her to him and crushed her lips with his.

She resisted—tried to hold firm, passive, against him—for all of two heartbeats.

Then the fire that, apparently, never stopped smoldering between them leapt to life. Hungry and greedy, eager for more, heightened and strengthened by the previous night’s encounter.