The Marquess (23 page)

“I think we need to see those papers, or at least
assure ourselves that they’re protected.”

He wanted to bite his tongue the minute the words escaped
his heedless lips.

“I thoroughly agree, your noble lordship.” Gavin
could almost hear the laughter in Michael’s reply. “Shall we hop in
the carriage and journey to London?”

Gavin growled a curse, and wondered if he could gnaw his
hand off and escape the iron teeth of the snare. Dillian saved him from
immediate reply.

“They’re my papers. I’ll fetch them. We
have no assurance that’s what the arsonist wanted to destroy. I want
Blanche staying here, where it’s safe.”

Blanche kneaded her hands in her lap. “Dillian, that
might not be so wise.”

Gavin waited in silence. Michael did the same.

Dillian looked at her cousin. “Why not?”

Blanche looked at her hands. “I put the smaller things
in the vault in the London town house.” Everyone waited silently. “I
never use that vault. I have to write the numbers down that open it.”

Gavin groaned inwardly, seeing where this led. Dillian still
sat there expectantly.

Blanche turned her head to him as if looking for his
absolution. Gavin merely waited. She sighed and murmured, “The numbers
were written on a piece of paper I carried in my daily journal.”

“Daily journal?” Michael and Dillian echoed each
other.

Blanche nodded. “The one that the fire destroyed.”

Blanche’s declaration fairly well left them at
wit’s end. The night grew late. They had all reached the edges of
exhaustion, and the general consensus was to sleep on it and work out the
problem in the morning.

Only Dillian knew the problem wouldn’t resolve itself
in the morning without a push in the right direction. She’d seen the look
on the marquess’s face. He would vote to throw them all out of here and
let them go to the devil without him.

She couldn’t really blame him. She and Blanche were
virtual strangers who had disrupted his reclusive existence. He undoubtedly had
better things to do than chase around half of England saving them from unknown
and possibly imaginary villains. She’d have reached beyond irritation by
now had she stood in his shoes.

For herself, it wouldn’t have mattered. She would just
have caught the next mail coach into London, retrieved her father’s
papers and journals, burned the lot of them, then dared anyone to come after
her.

But whoever or whatever the arsonist was after had
endangered Blanche. Dillian considered her own life relatively worthless, but
Blanche had the whole world at her fingertips. For the sake of both their
mothers, for her own sake, for Blanche, she would see nothing happened to
prevent her cousin from taking her rightful place in this world.

And the marquess of Effingham held their future in his
hands.

From the shadows of the hall, Dillian watched the marquess
stride down the stairs to his lair in that disreputable room he called a study.
She’d heard Michael go out the front door earlier. She couldn’t
imagine what kind of hold a footman could have over a marquess to allow him as
much leeway as he had, but she didn’t think it would last much longer.
Unless something drastic happened soon, Effingham would throw them out on their
ears in the morning.

Dillian had left Verity looking after Blanche on the excuse
that she would go to the room she’d made her own. She would go there, but
only to change into something a little more respectable than this thin robe.
Then she would confront the marquess.

The thin French dress wasn’t much more concealing than
the robe, and Dillian shivered as she let herself down the back stairs a little
while later. She pulled her borrowed shawl more tightly around her. She
didn’t fear the servants hearing her. She imagined an entire army could
hide themselves in this place and the servants wouldn’t hear. No, she
feared the beast lurking in the gloom of that study down the hall and how he
could affect their lives.

She shouldn’t think of him as a beast. He was a
soldier. Upon occasion she had considered her father a beast because of the
life he led, but military men were a different breed. She’d learned to
deal with her father. She could deal with the marquess.

She scratched briefly at the study door but didn’t
allow Effingham the opportunity of denying her entrance. She walked in before
he could answer.

He’d lit the lamp on the desk. She had grown so
accustomed to walking about in darkness that the light startled her. The man
standing beside the desk startled her even more.

Rakish black curls fell in tangled disarray over the
marquess’s brow, accenting deep-set dark eyes. A muscle tightened in his
jaw as he saw her standing there, and the thin white scars of his cheek
stretched thinner and whiter, curling his lip up in an expression of mockery.

That look alone ought to make her shudder, but Dillian
couldn’t resist letting her gaze fall to the open neck of his shirt. More
bronzed skin shone in the lamplight. The marquess obviously did not spend all
his days hiding in his hermitage.

“You are going somewhere?” he asked with almost
a pleasant rumble, eyeing her lacy gown.

That interpretation of her change of garments hadn’t
occurred to her. She had only meant to make herself respectable. This meeting
hadn’t got off to the best of starts. She clasped her hands in front of
her and wondered why she was suddenly nervous. She had faced down Neville often
enough, and he was a bloody duke.

She ignored his question and plunged right into the topic at
hand. “I’ve come to beg,” she said with as careful a tone as
she could muster. She didn’t want to beg, but she would—for
Blanche.

Effingham lounged against the desk and crossed his arms.
Dillian hated it when he did that. It made him seem enormous and important and
intolerably bored with the whole proceeding. She hated it when he didn’t
respond but waited for her to continue without giving a clue as to how he felt.

“Blanche is my only living relative,” she
continued. “She is young, and the duke’s family is rather
overpowering. I’ve protected her these last five years, but I don’t
think I can protect her from a murderer. If the villain is actually after me, I
must leave her at once. I just can’t leave her unprotected. I thought, if
I could go to London and find my father’s journals, I could take them to
someone in authority, and they might know what to do with them. Perhaps they
could discover who threatens us.”

The flickering light played over the marquess’s
scarred cheek. Dillian thought he may have deliberately turned the damaged side
of his face to her. She almost felt grateful that he had chosen this side to
show her. The other side was too handsome by far, and she didn’t need any
added distraction.

“You have a higher opinion of authority than I have,”
he replied, his dark eyes shadowed as they watched her.

That wasn’t the reply she wanted. Doggedly, she pushed
a little harder. “My father had a great many friends in government. I
will find someone to listen. It may take a little while. I’ll have to
open that vault somehow, and Blanche’s solicitor isn’t too fond of
me, so he’ll likely stall. But I can do it. And once I make someone
listen, perhaps I can get them to protect Blanche. It’s just that, until
then...” She waited, hoping he would understand and make the offer she
wanted. He didn’t.

She finally doffed the demure plea and glared at him. “Damn
and blast it, Effingham! Help me out a little. Blanche is no trouble at all.
You’ll not even know she’s around. She can pay you well. She has a
maid now. What more do you want?”

“Did you by any chance live with your father in a
military barracks?” he asked with satirical interest.

Dillian clutched her fingers into fists, closed her eyes,
and prayed for strength. If only she were a man, she could just run her fist
into him and release some of this frustration. Bloody damn hell, anyway!

Fighting for control, she opened her eyes and glared at him.
“My mother died when I was twelve. After that, my father’s idea of
companion for me was anyone who owed him a favor. I can ride a horse like a
man, shoot like Manton, fence with the best of them, and even know boxing,
although it’s relatively useless due to my size. Does that answer your
question?”

She thought he smiled. Since this side of his mouth had a
permanent upturn, she couldn’t tell for certain. Either way, she wanted
to kick him.

“Yes, I believe it does. It answers many questions,
not the least of which is why you’re not married by now. You must scare
these milksop aristocrats to death.”

Dillian thought she might tear her hair out in rage and
frustration. Better yet, she’d like to tear his. “What has that to
do with anything? You’re a bloody damn aristocrat, for pity’s sake.
Do I scare you?”

He considered that a minute, looking her over thoroughly as
he did. Dillian suddenly realized she didn’t shiver from the cold, she
shivered from the way he made her feel. No man had ever made her feel like this
before.

The masculine interest in his eyes made her recognize
herself as a woman. Her breasts suddenly felt immense. They ached. A tingling
feeling settled into the place below her belly, and it grew stronger the longer
he stared. With shock, she realized what was happening to her.

She stared at him in incredulity. Why, of all men, must it
happen with this one? A bloody damn Yank with a soul from hell, and she wanted
to know what his arms would feel like around her!

She knew what his arms felt like around her. She wanted to
know more.

As if recognizing the sudden flicker of desire in her eyes,
the marquess said gruffly, “Come here.”

She blinked. He didn’t move. He didn’t say more.
He just waited. Dillian moved one foot forward, then the other, stepping within
arm’s reach of him. Perhaps Effingham wasn’t as calm as he
pretended. His knuckles appeared white where his hands bit into the upper parts
of his arms.

She didn’t jump or even flinch when he finally reached
out and tilted her chin upward. Unable to read the opaque depths of his dark
eyes, she just held her breath until he lowered his mouth to meet her own.

It was bliss, sweet bliss—moist heat and hard pressure
and a tingling fire sweeping from her head to her toes. Dillian inched forward
until Effingham grabbed her waist and hauled her up against him. His mouth
crushed even more firmly against hers, leaving her gasping for breath. When her
lips parted, his tongue thrust in, and she melted.

She caught his shoulders to keep from sliding right through
his grasp and down to the floor. She had no muscles at all, just liquid fiery
heat racing through her veins and obliterating all else. He explored the
insides of her mouth, creating a hollow in her insides. He tasted her lips,
outlined them with his kisses, then drew her back for more, until she met his
tongue with her own, and she nearly cried with desire.

She knew his hands took unspeakable liberties, but she
ignored them as she stood on tiptoe and carried the kiss deeper, losing herself
in the sensation of heat and moisture, the taste of brandy, the impossible
pleasures his lips commanded.

Not until he caught her bottom in both hands and pulled her
up against him did she fully connect what their tongues did with what their
bodies wanted. When she felt the length of him pressed against her belly, panic
raced down all the pathways the heat had left, and she wrenched her mouth away.

He didn’t release his hold on her buttocks. She still
felt him intimately pressed against her through their clothing.

A hot flush of embarrassment flooding her cheeks, Dillian
stared at the V of his neck exposed by the open shirt as his voice rumbled
somewhere over her head. She had difficulty focusing on his words.

“I have no intention of marrying anyone,” he was
saying, “so if that is your ploy, you’d best be gone now, Miss
Whitnell.”

Dazed, still confused, Dillian let her gaze drift upward to
meet his eyes. They didn’t seem as cold as his words. They looked as
heated with desire as her own must.

“I hadn’t thought … Oh.” She could
actually read his mind, she thought. Or perhaps she had been on the receiving
end of this kind of proposition once too many times. She didn’t know why
this one felt different, but she didn’t run from him as she had the
others.

“Cleaning your rooms and mending your draperies
isn’t enough, is it?” she forced herself to ask as coolly as she
could.

This time, it was his turn to look startled. Perhaps she had
read him wrong. Perhaps he hadn’t even realized what he asked until she
pointed it out. His lips curled in a snarl, and then he thought better of it.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,”
he said gruffly, dropping his hands, waiting for her to step back. She did,
only because she couldn’t keep her balance this close without falling
against him.

“I think I do. If that’s what it costs to
protect Blanche, I’m willing to pay the price.”

His shirt had opened even farther, revealing the dark hairs
on his chest. The proximity of all that potent maleness made her belly churn.
She didn’t debate whether with fear or desire. She said what she had to
say without giving herself time to think about it.

“I have no wealth to support a mistress,” he
said curtly.

Dillian glared at him. “I didn’t ask for money.
You offer something I want. I offer something you want. It’s fair trade.
It’s done all the time.”

“Not by innocent twenty-two-year-old misses.”

“I’m twenty-five, and what makes you think
I’m innocent?”

That took his breath away. She saw him watch her warily now,
with a hint of speculation. She drew herself up to her full five feet, two
inches, and met his eyes boldly. “I’ll move into the big chamber
upstairs. It’s up to you.”