The Mercenary Major (11 page)

Charlotte’s light-brown eyes expressed a vivid recollection of the event, and she shuddered once, a delicate little tremor. “Oh, Letty, I couldn’t endure it. He raged so. He broke his hand on my lovely table. He threatened to . . .”

“Yes, but . . .” Letty kept her eyes locked with Charlotte’s, willing her sister-in-law to remember the important details of her husband’s anger.

Charlotte’s brows drew together in a frown as she made a visible effort to understand what Letty was suggesting. “But . . . he . . . didn’t . . . He didn’t stop you. He didn’t come to town.”

“And he won’t come now,” said Letty. “He’ll rant and storm over to . . . Edward Carr, and kick things, but he won’t stop you. So bring the girls, and we’ll carry on just as we planned. You can stay for weeks.” Letty held her breath. Nothing was less certain than the possibility that Charlotte would defy Walter. She was watching Katie again, and at that moment when all Letty’s plans were in doubt, Katie smiled up at her partner.

Charlotte reached out and gave Letty’s hand a squeeze. “We’ll do it. We’ll come to you at the end of the week.”

That sentence, uttered with more resolution than Lady Dorward customarily showed, was the first Victoria heard when she returned to the ballroom. Fate liked irony, she supposed. Why else would Lady Dorward defy her husband now, now that Victoria knew how very dangerous the supposed Jack Amberly was?

Jack found Gilling waiting up for him, but no sign of his other friend.

“Hengrave’s bolted, sir,” was the corporal’s terse report. “And left his finery here.”

Jack began to ease himself out of the black evening coat, and Gilling stepped up to assist him. “Not headed for his sister’s then,” Jack said. The sergeant had been the least fortunate of the three friends. His uncle’s bankruptcy meant that his aunt and cousins, and the other family members who had been employed in the cloth trade, were now dependent on the slim resources of the one sister whose husband still had his farm.

Gilling shook his head. “I tried the Swan. He wasn’t there tonight, but they know him. He’s been there often enough.”

Jack knew that, too. The Swan had some lure for the sergeant that Jack did not fully understand. Somehow the welcome they had received there their first night in London had convinced Hengrave that the raucous tavern was the most congenial place in town for a man down on his luck.

Jack stripped the linen from his neck and shed his waistcoat, pumps, and pantaloons in favor of the remnants of his worst uniform. It wouldn’t hurt to pay the Swan a visit himself.

“And Bertram?” he asked Gilling. Jack had known Lady Montford’s belated welcome-home party for her son would fail in its purpose.

Gilling gave a wry smile. He picked up the clothes Jack had discarded and began to restore them to order. “A good night, sir. Two hells, one fight, and he’s safe in bed.”

Jack grinned. Looking out for one another was the chief tenet of the riflemen’s code, and though they were not in the hills of Spain, he and Gilling were still on patrol. Jack opened the dressing-room door and scanned the hall. In his first week with his aunt he had discovered how to come and go from his dressing room without calling attention to his movements. And tonight he needed something to do to keep his mind off Victoria Carr’s kiss, not that he was likely to hold off thinking about it for long.

How had he come to kiss such an obviously inexperienced young woman with such a degree of passion? He had begun playfully enough, teasing her for her offended scruples. She’d been surprised and curious and unfamiliar with evasion. But for him their kiss had gone beyond the playful almost at once.

He had wanted her and shown her his hunger. That she could not recognize how much she stirred him was the only advantage he had had in the end. He wondered how long he could hold on to that edge.

**** 8 ****

V
ictoria considered the charming room in Letitia Faverton’s house that was to be hers for the coming weeks. The room exactly suited her, pretty without frills, the white wallpaper as fresh as a spring muslin with a little sprig of red berries across it, the chintz curtains bordered by thin lines of the same deep-red. Her protests over the move to Letty’s had failed. Her suggestion that they stay in a hotel had been met with horror. “What would Dorward say of the expense?”

For two days as the Favertons moved from the house on Grace Church Street to Lady Letitia’s larger home on Mount Street, Victoria endured Jack Amberly’s praises from Katie and Reg. None of the questions she raised diminished their hero’s merit in the eyes of her friends. He was a prime gun, top-of- the-trees, an out-and-outer to Reg, and clearly a prince to Katie. It was apparent, too, how much more complete his influence on her Faverton friends would be now that they were at Letty’s. Victoria tried not to think about her own shameful susceptibility to the man.

She crossed her room again and stood at the door listening to the sounds of the household. She could hear the soft rapid murmur of Katie talking to her mother’s abigail, who had accompanied them to London, and the brusque replies of that worthy. Someone passed in the hall, a footman perhaps. Victoria turned from the door and paced back and forth, reminding herself that unconventional and immediate measures were necessary in this situation. She must do something to resolve her doubts about the man. And her best chance to act would be this first night in Letty’s house.

It was after midnight. Jack Amberly was out. She had endured his gaze at dinner as best she could. Afterward she and Katie had talked for hours. Katie, still excited by the Montfords’ ball two days before, had described in great detail Jack Amberly’s kindness to her. Victoria could not deny it. He had been clever, as well as kind, to teach Katie how to read for character from the faces in the portraits.

Victoria had said nothing of her own encounter with Major Amberly. It still puzzled her. He had been pleased with her distrust, and because she’d distrusted him, because she had declared herself unable to respect him, he’d kissed her.

Whatever he meant by it in the beginning, the act had gone beyond his intentions. Of that she was sure. He had been unable to pull away. His weakness had confessed itself in the clinging of his lips to hers, the tightening of his arms about her, and the harsh breaths he’d drawn. And she had been seduced by that weakness as she had not been by his strength. She had wanted to feed that hunger, to give of herself endlessly.

Victoria paused in her pacing and listened again at the door. The sounds of activity in the rooms around hers had ceased. She pulled her wrapper tight about her, opened her door just a crack, and slipped out into the darkened hall. She had a book, a candle, and a ready excuse. If need be, she could say she was unable to sleep and had lost her way returning from the library below. She began walking, her bare feet soundless.

When she reached the door that by her count must be his, she stopped again to listen. Letty’s remarks at dinner had revealed that the major would be out all evening, and though it was very late, Victoria had had no evidence of his return. She had listened particularly for the distinctive tread of his servant, a short, broad-shouldered man with a quiet but resolute appearance. Victoria had seen him ascend the service stairs at the end of the hall.

She turned the handle and pushed the door in. No sound came from inside. She peered through the narrow opening she’d made. A lamp was lit on a table beside the large bed, but there was no sign of the room’s inhabitant or his servant. She entered the room and closed the door lightly behind her.

Another door stood open to a lighted room that must be the dressing room. She listened for any betraying movement from within. When she heard none, she scanned the mantel, desk, and table by the bed and decided to begin her search with the desk. If the major had any papers, any correspondence that might reveal another identity, she reasoned it would be there. She crossed the room and set her candle and book on the handsome cherry-wood escritoire. Slowly and carefully, she began to pull out the little drawers. The six drawers, however, yielded nothing except a few invitations that any visitor to London would envy. Victoria turned to the rest of the room.

Touches of Letty’s taste were apparent everywhere, but nothing suggested the major. Across the room from where she stood was the open door that apparently led to the major’s dressing room. Victoria took up her candle and started for that inner door. As she came around the bed, however, she saw something on the wall she had not noticed at first. Above a low chest of drawers, the light from her candle showed three ovals of wallpaper in which the little gold print that marked the paper was darker than it was elsewhere. Victoria knew at once that pictures had been removed from the wall. She moved closer and traced the spots on the wall with her finger.

Two ovals above and one centered below had been removed. If Letty had chosen this room for Jack Amberly as carefully as she had chosen for her other guests, whose pictures had been on the wall? Victoria put down her candle and reached to open the top right-hand drawer of the low chest. She concentrated on sliding the drawer out as noiselessly as she could, wishing for more light so that she could see into the dark recess.

Suddenly a hand clamped over hers, shoving the drawer closed with a sharp crack, and a body pinned hers against the chest from behind. She gasped and struggled to turn, but her hands were caught and held and the weight against her hips and legs could not be moved.

“Miss Carr,” came a familiar voice at her ear, “this is taking your investigation too far.”

Victoria stilled. Her heart was pounding. “Not quite far enough. You must be hiding something in this drawer,” she said, her voice as level as she could make it. The hand that trapped hers against the lowboy tightened, and she felt a tiny surge of satisfaction. She turned her head to look at him and found a bare shoulder looming above hers. Her mouth opened in a little O, and above her Jack Amberly laughed.

“I’m decent, Miss Carr,” he said. He eased the press of his body against her, and his hands released hers to grip the edge of the chest.

Instantly she spun to face him and then had cause to regret her haste. Her new position was, if anything, more awkward than the old. She was forced to lean back against the dresser, for to stand tall in the circle of his arms would bring her face mere inches from his. But leaning back was unsatisfactory, too, because that position thrust her breasts forward, and she’d never been so conscious of having breasts before. His eyes were not helping either. He was clearly amused at her discomfort.

“I was wrong the other night to tell you there was no danger in a kiss between us,” he said.

“Then we must not kiss.”

He smiled his wicked smile. “Then you must not come to my bedroom, Miss Carr.”

“But I must know who you are.”

“Were you planning to discover the truth and denounce me at breakfast?”

“I want the truth, yes,” she answered. He made her sound heartless, but he was the one who was taking advantage of her friends.

She lowered her gaze from his, past his mouth and chin and down his throat, past the ridge of his collarbone to the dark, curling hair of his chest. There was no end to the awkwardness of this situation. Then her gaze was arrested by a gold ring dangling from a chain about his neck. In the next instant her fingers closed about it, a woman’s wedding band, heavy with a raised design of thistles on it. As she tried to think what it could mean about his past, Jack Amberly took it from her and pulled it around behind his neck out of her sight. Then he stepped away.

He wore faded, dark-green trousers with a distinctly military cut and a strip of black braid from the waistband to the ankle, and Victoria realized he must have been in his dressing room when she entered the bedroom. She remembered how his evening clothes had suggested the lean, powerful-looking body before her. She straightened, tugged her wrapper more securely around her, and moved toward the door.

“Miss Carr,” he pivoted so that he faced her, “I give you fair warning. The dangers of being obliged to share a household increase considerably when you bring your investigation into my bedroom.” He was advancing toward her with a distinct air of menace.

She stood her ground. “You are trying to scare me.

“Yes. Be scared, Miss Carr. Unlike the other fellows you’ve met in town, I did not spend my youth learning to respect the virtue of gently bred English maidens.”

He now stood directly in front of her, between her and the door, in that same wide, defiant stance of his. His gaze raked her person from her bare toes to her loosely braided hair.

“Surely I am safe here. In Lady Letitia’s house your imposture requires that you
act
the part of a gentleman,” she told him with as much assurance as she could muster.

After a moment he answered, “You were safer in the midst of a bread riot.”

The words and the look that accompanied them affected Victoria in an odd way, sending hot shafts of sensation through her. She knew without doubt that she must leave, but her legs felt shaky and unable to obey her. “Excuse me.” He moved aside, and she took a careful step toward the door.

When she had the handle in her grip, she turned to look over her shoulder. “Tell me just one thing,” she urged him. “Is there someone, anyone, who knew you before you joined the army? Someone who could corroborate your story?”

He denied it. But Victoria saw the glitter of the chain at his throat and wondered to whom the ring on it might have belonged. She had a sudden painful recollection of the beautiful lady in rose.

Victoria turned to the door, but before she could open it, he was there, seizing her shoulders, spinning her around, and pressing her against the wood with his body. Again the fiery shafts of sensation pierced her. His hands framed her face, his gaze held hers.

“Your eyes are steel one minute, smoke the next,” he told her in a low thick voice, his mouth inches from hers. Then he tipped his head and pressed his mouth to hers in a slanting kiss to which the only answer was to give and give and give.