The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance (34 page)

They walked two streets over to a busy tavern that catered to both tradesmen and well-dressed merchants, and found a table in one of the corners. Kenneth ordered two whiskeys from the harried barmaid, and folded his hands on the scarred wooden tabletop, lifting his dark brows. “So, what has you so blue-devilled? A difficult client?”

“Who says I’m blue-devilled?” Stephen muttered.

“The clerk, for one. As I came in and asked for you, he mentioned you hadn’t been yourself lately. Just the few moments I stood there waiting for you to as much as notice my arrival supports his claim.”

It was true, but galling to admit it. He’d finally realized his deepest fantasy, made love to Sabrina, not just once, but for a good deal of the night, drifted to sleep with her luscious naked body in his arms … and now he was at a loss as to what to do next. If he declared himself, exposed his true feelings, and she declined to accept an honourable offer of marriage, their friendship would be shattered.

It was a possibility. He knew her well enough to have no illusions. Sabrina had no desire to give up her adventurous lifestyle for a staid husband who made a living poring over legal documents. She would have to want him more than her freedom, and was one night of passion and a childhood friendship enough?

He accepted the glass from the barmaid and took a searing drink that burned as it hit his throat. He suppressed the urge to cough, and confessed, “It’s a woman.”

Kenneth, five years his senior and recently married, the heir to the title and what modest fortune their family had left, simply nodded. “Sabrina.”

Arrested with his glass at his mouth, Stephen stared.

“We’ve all known since …” Kenneth furrowed his brow. “Well, since you were both children probably.”

“Known what?”

“Don’t look so surprised.” His brother chuckled. “It was obvious, always, even when you squabbled and got into trouble. There was a special connection between the two of you. Does it strike you how she’s never been interested in pursuing the kind of highbrow marriage an heiress from a family so high up in society could contract? She’s beautiful also, don’t forget, so—”

“I’m not likely to forget,” Stephen interrupted more curtly than he intended, recalling satin soft skin, and golden hair spilled across the bed sheets.

“No, I don’t suppose you are.” Fingering his glass, Kenneth said mildly, “While I don’t think any male living on this green earth could claim to understand women, I am a married man, so I have some experience trying. Maybe I can help if you explain what precisely our lovely Sabrina has done lately to put you into such a dither.”

“Dither?” Stephen shook his head. “Couldn’t you have chosen a more masculine word? I’m not dithering, for God’s sake, I’m … conflicted, that’s all.”

“In what way?”

“I cannot decide if asking her to marry me would be a huge mistake or not.” He took an inelegant gulp of whiskey before continuing. “I should, but she doesn’t seem to think I should, or at least I’ve gotten no indication of that kind. It’s a devil’s own dilemma, to be honest, for you are right, we have a very comfortable friendship. It is inevitable that would change if she knew how I feel about her.”

There was a burst of raucous laughter from a small group of patrons, punctuated by the clink of glasses. At least someone was celebrating, Stephen thought morosely.

His older brother cleared his throat. “You
should
marry her?”

Stephen gave him a level look and said nothing. Not even his brother, of whom he was very fond and trusted implicitly, would he tell about that magical night at the inn.

“I … see.” Kenneth sipped his drink, a faint frown furrowing his brow. Then he sighed. “Sabrina is unconventional, I’ll give you that, a direct result of her father’s fascination with travel and antiquities. She has the means to do what she wishes.”

“Exactly,” Stephen agreed, not encouraged by the observation — not that he didn’t already know that point to be valid. “Personally, jungles, remote mountaintops and blistering deserts don’t hold a lot of appeal, but she’s always been adventurous. Even if she agreed to marry me, I worry if I held her here in England she’d grow restless, but I can’t picture letting her continue to travel to dangerous places. Even now, when I have no influence to stop her, I worry constantly.”

“Marriage is about compromise, little brother.” Kenneth leaned back in his chair, his expression a hint of sardonic amusement. “Tell her you’ll ride a camel and sail with her to tropical islands if she wishes, but she must also agree to stay here for part of the year and share the kind of life you enjoy.”

It sounded logical, but when it came to women, Stephen had discovered, the term all too often didn’t apply. Quietly, he said, “I really have nothing to offer her, Ken. No fortune and no title. As you pointed out, she could marry any time she wishes and she certainly would not have to settle for a junior solicitor who most definitely works for his modest living.”

“Actually, what I pointed out was she
could
have married, but hasn’t. It seems significant to me. Perhaps she is just waiting for you to ask.”

Was she? Stephen wasn’t sure, devil take it.

Perhaps she was wanton.

Sabrina had never thought of herself that way, but maybe it was true. In any case, all she had done since her return to London was dwell on the outrageous — and marvellous — way Stephen had touched her that fateful night after their mission to retrieve her father’s notes. She blushed when she recalled the less than ladylike eagerness with which she’d responded. She’d lain against his lean body, neither one of them wearing a stitch of clothing, and he’d ravished her mouth with long, passionate kisses, while his hands—

“You are certainly distracted.”

The prim sound of her aunt’s voice interrupted the delicious recollection. Startled out of her reverie, Sabrina glanced guiltily over to where Beatrice sat on a brocade settee in the drawing room, busy with her embroidery. “I was … well, thinking of something.”

“I would guess so,” Aunt Beatrice replied. “You had quite the oddest look on your face. I take it this subject is a pleasant one?”

Before Sabrina could mumble another nonsensical answer, a voice spoke from the doorway, “Madam, My Lady, you have a visitor.”

The butler delivered the engraved card to Beatrice, who sat closer to the doorway. She peered at it — she needed spectacles but refused to admit it — and then nodded. “Please show His Lordship in, Seton, and see that a bottle of claret is brought up from the cellar, if you please.”

“Very good, madam.”

Lord Bloomfield. Sabrina didn’t have to be told; she knew it. She’d been expecting some sort of communication from her father’s colleague once he discovered the notes were missing and nothing else had been taken. While he couldn’t come right out and accuse her of stealing what he claimed not to have in the first place, she didn’t think for a minute he’d not try to at least wheedle them back from her. He was due to present a paper to the Royal Society in a few months and he undoubtedly needed those notes. He wasn’t a scholar in his own right, and he never had been. Her father, on the other hand, had been a devoted scientist, and his scrupulous, detailed observations were like beautiful prose poems.

Had Lord Bloomfield asked for permission to use her father’s research material instead of acting as if the papers were his own work, Sabrina probably would have loaned them to him. But the moment she’d read the published work that had brought Bloomfield such acclaim, she’d known it was her father’s composition.

“Be polite.” Beatrice said it in a brisk tone. “I know neither of us care for His Lordship, but he was a friend of your father.”

“Some friend,” Sabrina muttered, but she obligingly plastered a false smile on her face when Bloomfield strolled into the room.

Instantly, a quiver of alarm went through her. The Viscount was a large man, going to fat in his middle age, with a shock of thick brown hair just beginning to show grey at the temples. He was dressed for the evening in tailored formal wear, their drawing room evidently not his final destination. His immaculate cravat was tied in an intricate, fashionable knot, and above it his florid face wore what could only be described as a triumphant smirk.

“Good evening, ladies.” He bent over Beatrice’s hand, and then turned to Sabrina who reluctantly allowed him hers, though she longed to snatch it back immediately and give it a good wash.

“So nice of you to stop by, My Lord.” Beatrice smiled graciously. “Please do sit down and have a glass of wine, won’t you?”

“Perhaps one glass,” he answered, choosing a chair and lowering his not inconsiderable bulk into it. “I have a full evening of social engagements but I could not keep from stopping by to offer my congratulations to Lady Sabrina.”

What did he have up his sleeve? Sabrina eyed him warily and said nothing. It was Beatrice who asked, “Congratulations?”

“On her recent marriage, of course.” Bloomfield watched her reaction with a gloating expression. “I must have missed the announcement in
The Times
but I understand she and her husband recently stayed at an inn near my country estate in Sussex.”

Damnation
.

The unladylike word seemed the appropriate reaction to the current situation. Lord Bloomfield might not be much of an archaeologist, but apparently he was a fair detective.

“You must be mistaken,” Beatrice said with a small scowl. “Sabrina hasn’t married.”

“Ah.” There was a wealth of innuendo in that small word. He dug in the pocket of his jacket, produced a slip of paper and theatrically squinted at it. “How odd. The innkeeper at the Lamb and Rooster swears a young woman answering Lady Sabrina’s description stayed there a week ago with a tall, dark-haired young man, who several times in the proprietor’s presence called her by the name Sabrina. The man claimed they were husband and wife, and I assumed it to be true, because, after all, they shared a room.”

By now Aunt Beatrice had caught the not-so-subtle tension between them for she said in a frosty voice, “I am sure this innkeeper misheard.”

“Perhaps, but he had an uncanny memory for he could describe the young woman perfectly. Golden curls, he said, and the most unusual midnight-blue eyes. She wore a dark-blue riding habit and rode a sorrel mare, and—”

“I was in Cambridgeshire last week, My Lord,” Sabrina said as calmly as possible. “Visiting a friend.”

“I see. And here I was delighted to think my old friend’s daughter had finally decided to quit the mannish pursuits of her travels and settle into married life as a woman should.” He put the piece of paper back into his pocket and shrugged, but there was nothing casual in the menacing look in his eyes. “If it wasn’t you, then I’m glad. Because if you aren’t wed, of course, and it
was
you, I’m afraid that would spell social ruin.”

The arrival of Seton with a tray and a bottle of wine prevented any response to that overt threat. His Lordship took the opportunity to rise, decline refreshments after all, and take his leave.

The moment they were alone again, Beatrice demanded, “What was that all about?”

Though normally she drank sparingly, Sabrina reached over, filled a glass with claret, and took a bracing sip. She could lie, but then again, she wasn’t good at telling falsehoods and she adored her aunt. “As I have maintained all along, he had Papa’s research notes. I merely reclaimed my own property.”

Beatrice digested this, her plump face registering a succession of emotions from indignation, to dismay, to resignation. “Let me guess who helped you do this. Tall? Dark-haired? That was Stephen, of course, for no matter how foolhardy it might be, that normally level-headed young man would fall in with your scheme. You could persuade him to have tea with the Devil if you wished to do so.”

“Bloomfield
had
the notes,” she pointed out defensively. “It isn’t as if we stole anything. That odious man lied to us.”

“That odious man,” Beatrice said in clipped tones, “is going to smear your good name. Oh, Sabrina, what have you done, child? Did you and Stephen really spend the night together at the inn?”

A betraying blush heated her face. Despite her best effort to look bland, she could feel the crimson journey up her throat and into her cheeks. “The roads are dangerous at night and we could hardly waltz into His Lordship’s home during the day, now could we?”

Her aunt looked at her and shook her head. “You have escaped disaster in your wild travels more than once, my dear, but I am afraid it has finally struck.”

It was late. Stephen shook himself out of a half-doze and glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantel. Past midnight wasn’t an unfashionable hour precisely, but it was a strange time for someone to be knocking on his door. He snapped shut the book that had put him to sleep and rose to see who on earth was calling this time of night.

To say he was surprised to see Sabrina standing there was an understatement. She’d never once visited him in his modest lodgings before, for the obvious reason that unmarried young ladies didn’t visit gentlemen. He always went to the fashionable townhouse in Mayfair where she resided with her aunt. Nonplussed, he just stood there staring at her.

At least she’d had the sense to wear a concealing cloak. When he didn’t speak, she pushed the hood back. “The least you can do after I climbed out my window, bribed one of the footmen to hire a hack for me, and crept up your stairs like a character in a lurid novel, is invite me in.”

That explained why she was without a chaperone, but not why she’d gone to such lengths. He had a feeling he didn’t want her discussing it in the hallway, so there wasn’t much choice but to step back and watch her brush past him in a swirl of velvet and a drift of light sweet perfume.

Stephen finally found his voice. “Have you lost your mind?”