The Lady Who Came in from the Cold (2 page)

“We are fighting a war to protect those who cannot protect themselves. As soldiers, this is our duty. What does it say about you that you’d take advantage of someone weaker and less powerful than you?”

Weaker and less powerful?
Pandora stifled a snort. If she’d chosen to employ her trusty garotte, she could have strangled Bradley before he could let out so much as a squeak. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but be charmed by Harrington’s moral code. His chivalry was rather quaint, like that of a knight of old.
As much as she enjoyed watching him make that worm Bradley squirm, however, she couldn’t allow matters to get even more out of control. She had to contain the situation.
In and out.

“No ’arm done, sir.” She addressed the Lieutenant-Colonel with a whore’s pragmatic cheeriness. “Just a misunderstanding is all. Be obliged if you’d let the lad off—if word gets out ’round camp, it’ll be bad for business, if you get my meaning.”

Harrington’s gaze roved over her, so intently that for an instant she fancied that he could see through the curly blond wig designed to distract from her features, the layers of paint she’d meticulously applied, the torn and tawdry dress. That he could somehow see
her
…

Her heart quickened; her breath jammed in her throat.

Turning to Bradley, Harrington said curtly, “Report to my tent at eight o’clock sharp. You’re dismissed.”

Like a cur with his tail between his legs, Bradley slunk off.

Harrington advanced toward her, unbuttoning his scarlet jacket. Immediately, Pandora took a step back, but he was too quick for her. He reached out… and a moment later, she was engulfed in warmth and a clean, masculine scent.

The cove gave me his jacket?
She blinked up at him, bemused.

“I’ll walk you back to your tent,” he said.

“No. That is, no need, sir.” She gathered her wits. “I’ll find my own way back—”

He took her arm, his grip on her elbow gentle yet firm. “It’s dark. You shouldn’t be out alone at night. It’s not safe with a battalion of soused soldiers roaming about.”

Did he not see that she was dressed and painted like a whore? Where else would she be but plying her trade in precisely such circumstances? Before she could think of a reply, he was steering her through the darkness toward the cluster of small, glowing tents in the distance, home to the camp followers.

“May I ask your name, miss?” he said.

Blooming hell.

“It’s Kitty, sir. Kitty, um,”—her gaze latched on a clump of dead bushes—“Brown.”

“Marcus Harrington, at your service. I must apologize, Miss Brown, for my subordinate’s behavior. Rest assured he will be punished for his offense.”

She slanted a look at Harrington. His dark hair was cut in a short, no-nonsense style, and his features were too rough-hewn and stern to be handsome—but handsome was too paltry a word to describe a man with such an aura of command. No, a more apt adjective was… compelling. Disturbingly masculine. Magnetic to the senses.

This isn’t a promenade through Hyde Park, you stupid chit. Focus. You’ve got to get out of here.

“Be obliged to you, sir, if you left it alone. Like I says before, a girl’s got to make her livin’. If talk spreads,”—she looked up at him through heavily sooted eyelashes—“I’ll be out o’ work.”

“Would that be so bad?”

She heard no judgment in his voice. Just a calm curiosity.

Shrugging, she said, “Do what we ’ave to do to survive, don’t we, guv?”

In her case, that meant protecting her country by any means necessary. Something that he’d never find out. Octavian’s warning rang in her head.
Military and espionage are like oil and water: the two don’t mix. Those mushrooms in uniform are too stodgy to trust us, and we’re too clever to trust them.

“One can’t argue against the importance of survival.” Harrington’s lips formed a tight line. His was a nice mouth, if a trifle stern. “Yet every profession has its downside.”

She tilted her head at him. “Even yours?” He was a respected officer of high rank; surely he had few complaints.

“Especially mine.”

“What’re the downsides o’ your job?” she couldn’t help but ask.

In the silence, the ground crunched beneath their boots.

After a moment, he said, “If I fail at my work, people die. If I succeed… people die.”

Her chest tightened. She understood. All too well.

“We do what we must,” she said.

“Yes.”

The glance he gave her made her feel more transparent than ever. Something was shifting inside her, an awareness she’d never felt before. A sensation intangible and cataclysmic. She realized that they were nearing their destination. Their conversation would soon end. After that, she’d never speak to this man again.

On impulse, she said, “If you weren’t an officer, what would you be, sir?”

He stopped, pivoted to face her. “Do you know,” he said in a strange voice, “no one has ever asked me that before?”

She instantly regretted her error. “Ain’t my business, don’t mean to pry—”

“A husband and father,” he said.

Those four words, laced with quiet desire, hung between them like a garland of smoke. Clouds parted, revealing a velvet sky dizzy with diamonds, yet to Pandora, the glitter in his eyes was even more brilliant because she had never met a man like him in her entire life and was certain she never again would.

He was a true gentleman. One whose inner fire wasn’t sparked by ambition or fame or fortune, but something different altogether. What Harrington, Britannia’s much-heralded hero, fought and yearned for was… a family.

He wanted a wife and children of his own. A family that he would provide for, protect, and—she knew it in the deepest depths of her soul—
love
. That was what beat in the heart of this man.

She became aware of her wildly thrumming pulse. His scent curled in her nostrils, his jacket warming her from inside out. She swayed a little closer toward him, his hard face and sad eyes—

“Lieutenant-Colonel Harrington! Sir!” A panting voice, pounding footsteps.

The skeins of the moment snapped.

“What is it?” Harrington said alertly to the approaching soldier.

“’Tis Major Starky, sir. He was found in his tent. Doctor’s looking at him, says his heart gave out—”

“Let’s go.” Harrington started off, then turned to look at her. “Miss Brown?”

Pandora’s heart was racing now for an entirely different reason than just moments before. She prayed the breathlessness in her voice didn’t give her away. “Yes, sir?”

“Merry Christmas.”

The briefest smile touched his lips, yet it was enough. Far too much. She remained for a few precious seconds longer, watching him disappear into the night.

“Merry Christmas, Marcus Harrington,” she whispered.

Then she too, vanished, into the darkness.

Chapter Two

London, September 1829

Marcus awakened fully alert, a habit from his days in the army. Another part of him was also standing at attention, but that had nothing to do with his military past and everything to do with the gorgeous woman curled on her side next to him. His wife. His lucky Penny, who’d changed his fortunes from the moment he’d first met her at a ball. Twelve years of marriage and three strapping sons later, his desire for her had only deepened. Like a fine wine, the passion between them had grown richer, more robust and satisfying with time.

Leaning up on his elbow, he admired her sleeping profile. Her lashes were lush black fans against her alabaster cheeks, her sultry features soft and sweetly relaxed. A sound escaped from her rosy lips: half-sigh, half-moan, it was as adorable as it was tempting. When she shifted in her sleep, her plush backside nudging his cockstand, he could resist no longer.

Gently pulling the heavy raven tresses off her neck, he nuzzled the curve of her shoulder. He inhaled the fragrance of her sleep-warmed skin: jasmine and neroli, her signature scent and a potent aphrodisiac to his senses. His lips skimmed along her smooth white shoulder, his hand roving under the covers. Blood pumped through his veins as he palmed one rounded breast, savoring its firmness and silken heft.

Gently, he rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She was still asleep, but her breathing changed, the cadence quickening, the surges more shallow. Smiling to himself, he played some more, drawing the covers down so that he could see what he was doing. The sight of those luscious tits, their blushing tips hard and saucy against his fingers, threw kindling onto his fire.

His hand followed the sweet dip of her waist to the even sweeter flare of her hip. God love his wife’s curvaceous figure. And the fact that, over the years, he’d won her over to the habit of sleeping in the buff… although he had a hunch that she was no longer sleeping. As he kissed her ear, his caress slid farther down to one of his favorite places of all.

Satisfaction poured through him. Just as he’d suspected.

She was wet, hot, and ready for him.

“Good morning to you, too.”

Her throaty words, uttered with her eyes still closed, made him grin.

“And it’s about to get better,” he murmured.

“Confident, are you, Lord Blackwood?”

“Let’s just say you’re rather a sure thing, Lady Blackwood.”

“
Someone
has a big head.”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” He slid his erection against the cleft of her bottom, the blunt tip prodding the soft base of her spine. “Very big, as it were.”

“
Marcus.
”

But since she was giggling and her pussy, which he’d been petting all the while, had gotten wetter and hotter, he didn’t take her admonition to heart. He knew his Penny, and she liked her games. He liked them, too.

He ran a possessive hand down her silky leg, pulling it back over his. With both of them laying on their sides, this position presented rather intriguing prospects. Never a man to waste a good opportunity, he positioned his shaft and thrust home.

Ah, Christ. So good. Always so good.

“Penny,” he groaned.

Her reply was a breathy mangling of his name. He didn’t need further encouragement. Holding her steady by the hip, he drove himself into her lush passage, deep and deeper, the fit snug and bloody perfect. He played with her pearl, circling and rubbing, pressing that sensitive little knot against his stroking cock in a way guaranteed to drive his lady wild. Moaning, she bucked wantonly against him, and he held on, not wanting this pleasure to end, not just yet.

Gritting his teeth, he kept his pace measured. Waited for her crescendo, her hitched breaths and the flush on her jiggling breasts betraying that she was nearly at her peak.
Thank God.
Gasping, she threw her head back to look at him, her stunning violet eyes bright with love and passion, and in that moment the truth reverberated within him.

I have everything. Everything I’ve ever wanted.

His thoughts vaporized in the blaze of their kiss. In the love and lust of their tangling tongues, their joining bodies. Only when he felt her climax did he let go. He hilted himself and held, burying his groans in his wife’s hair as her rippling sheath pulled joy from him, their shared heat melding them as one.

Chapter Three

Sipping chocolate, Lady Pandora Blackwood—Penny to her husband—was sorting through a pile of invitations at the breakfast table. It was an ordinary event, but she had a newfound appreciation for routine. This moment marked the passing of an all too recent danger: four months ago, an enemy had risen from her past. The once notorious spy who called himself the Spectre had reemerged to threaten her and her former colleagues. After months of blackmail and threats, the bastard had attacked her ex-comrade, Gabriel Ridgley, the Marquess of Tremont.

Tremont had dispatched the villain.

With the Spectre gone, the world was made safer—and Penny’s secrets would remain where they belonged. In the past. Locked away where they couldn’t harm the ones she loved.

She breathed a silent sigh of gratitude and relief before sliding a glance at her husband.

Seated to her right, Marcus was reviewing his business correspondence while he drank his coffee. One of the things she adored about him—and there were admittedly many—was the fact that he was so proper on the outside. A perfect gentleman whose style was marked by restraint. Sometimes, he erred too much in that direction, and it took plotting between her and his valet Gibson to ensure that he didn’t wind up looking downright funereal.

Under Gibson’s tutelage, she’d learned that the art of men’s dressing lay in the details. Thus, she made sure that fine cufflinks, cravat pins, and other stylish accoutrements found their way into her husband’s wardrobe on a regular basis. Gibson, for his part, employed those items to stark yet superb effect when grooming Marcus.

One of Penny’s secret pleasures was knowing that beneath the plain, crisp linen and somber waistcoat lay a virile and hot-blooded man, a husband who, after a dozen years of marriage, still liked to awaken her in the manner of a randy newlywed…

Marcus set down his cup, the slight furrow between his dark brows conveying his concentration on the task at hand. Her heart fluttered as she watched him. From the moment they’d met, her soul had recognized him as hers, and the intervening years had only heightened her attraction to him.

At forty-one, Marcus was even more compelling to her senses than he’d been at five-and-twenty. He’d grown leaner, harder, the threading of grey in his thick, dark bronze hair adding to his distinguished air. His hawkish features might not be classically handsome, but their fierceness spoke of integrity and authority. The strength of moral character that had made him a military hero. In fact, his visage might have been described as overly harsh were it not for the subtle laugh lines around his eyes and mouth—lines, she liked to think, that she and their three sons had contributed to.

Marcus’ gaze suddenly shifted to her; the smile in those steel blue depths made her sex quiver. He reached over and gave her hand a husbandly squeeze. He returned to opening his letters while her heart continued to pound like that of a silly debutante.