The Secrets of a Scoundrel (5 page)

Young, squeaky-clean Edward looked slightly terrified to have been assigned this duty, but he needn’t have worried. Nick had no plans of causing trouble.

Indeed, it seemed Virgil’s daughter had done the impossible—had inspired the old Scot’s problem agent to be a good boy.

And that in itself, thought Nick, was probably cause for alarm. Then he trailed after her, damned near ready to do whatever she said.

Chapter 3

G
in watched him climb the stairs with a weary, prowling stride, like the pitiful big cats kept on public display at the Tower of London’s menagerie. Embittered and broken as the animals became from too many years in a stone cell, they were still capable of mauling a well-meaning keeper on occasion.

She knew she would have to be on her toes with him, and yet he was beautiful, dangerous as he was, with an innate nobility. “Lord Forrester?” she called, as he followed Edward to the landing of the staircase.

He turned. “Yes, my lady?”

“Do you have a favorite dessert, by chance?”

He did not seem to comprehend the question.

“Dinner is served at seven, and since you are our guest, we would like to make you happy.”

“Anything,” he forced out with a catch in his voice, as though he had become so unaccustomed to kindness that he almost preferred cruelty. At least cruelty was predictable. “Anything,” he repeated in a stronger tone, clearing his throat slightly.

“Very well.”

Edward continued up the steps. Nick started to follow, then hesitated. “I have always been rather partial in autumn to a baked apple pudding in pastry.”

“Ah, apple pie?” she answered with a startled smile.

He nodded. “As it is also known. But it’s not important—”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He smiled back cautiously, then they went on their way and soon disappeared as Edward showed him up to his room. As Gin stood there, pondering the presence of this hard, dangerous man in her home—and hoping she wasn’t making a big mistake by bringing him here—she got the feeling he did not quite know what to make of her gentleness with him. It was not difficult to see that his mode of life had often been unfair to him and robbed him of all ability to trust.

Blazes, the only reason he had the connections she so desperately needed was because the Order had wanted him to walk the line between spy for the Crown and criminal. Who could be surprised that moving in that world would eventually affect him?

Well, she thought, he ought not to place too much trust in her, either. Her expression darkened. After all, she had only told him the bare minimum about her quest.

With that, she summoned Mrs. Hill. “Have Cook prepare an apple pie for our guest. Also to ensure that large quantities of food are available over the next couple of days. I fear the baron has been much deprived of late.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Mason.” She next turned to the butler. “Send down to the village for Dr. Baldwell to come and examine my guest.”

“Right away, my lady.” Mason hesitated with a look of concern. “Is Lord Forrester ill, ma’am? If there’s anything we can do to make him more comfortable—”

“No, it’s all right. He’s spent too much time in unhealthful surroundings of late. I just want the physician to look him over and assure me about the state of his health before I send him into danger.”

Her staff knew the nature of her investigations, and though they worried for her safety and rather disapproved, they were unshakably loyal.

“Very good, ma’am.” Mason took leave of her and went to send one of the younger servants off to the village to fetch Dr. Baldwell.

N
ick shed his filthy prison clothes and wrapped a towel around his waist, then went into the bathing room, where the tub was almost full. His architecturally inclined friend Trevor would’ve been so impressed with the hot running water at Lady Burke’s estate, he thought.

The water that came out of the pipes was ordinary well water, not the mysterious healing flows from the hot springs outside. But no matter.

Nick shut the door, removed the towel, and stepped into the hot water, feeling like a veritable king as he lowered himself into it.

He bathed with gusto, submerging himself under the suds, washing his hair, soaping himself all over, and getting the stink and the coldness of the dungeon off him, hopefully never to return.

It was already starting to feel like it all had been nothing but a bad dream.

Meanwhile, in the next room, Edward dutifully aired out the three sets of clothes that had been stored in Nick’s box of belongings during his incarceration.

The tidy young footman pressed his shirts, coats, cravats, and trousers, then shined his boots for him in the next room. This done, he left to go and burn Nick’s prison clothes, as ordered.

In the bathing tub, meanwhile, Nick took a razor in one hand and a mirror in the other and gave himself a careful shave. It seemed a great luxury.

During his sentence, he had only been permitted to use his razor once a week, and he had to give it back as soon as he was finished; knowing his skill with a blade, the guards took many precautions about such things.

He was not a vain man, but he had no intention of letting himself start to look like some half-wild hermit from a Wordsworth poem. He’d got accustomed to shaving in near darkness, so the sunshine streaming in through the window astonished him with its beauty—and made his task much easier.

In due time, he emerged from the bathing room, feeling like a new man. With a towel wrapped around his waist once more, he walked, barefoot, across the luxurious bedchamber to the chest of drawers with a mirror.

There were a couple of bottles of masculine cologne on the dresser. Nick smelled each of them and chose one with a faint scent of frankincense and citrus. But before slapping it on himself, he paused and looked over at Edward, who presently returned. “Say, did Baron Burke used to wear this scent?” he inquired.

He did not wish to smell like her dead husband.

“No, sir,” the lad answered in surprise. “Those are just for guests.”

“I see.” Nick arched a brow at him. “And does Her Ladyship get a lot of male guests here at Deepwood?”

Edward blanched. “That’s not what I meant, sir. Sometimes the young master brings his friends home from school. The young gentlemen often use this guest room.”

“The ‘young master’?” Nick echoed in confusion.

“The current Lord Burke, sir. Phillip.”

Phillip?
he wondered, intrigued.

“Sir, might I ask which of these clothes you prefer to wear tonight to dinner?”

Still wary about all this, Nick prowled over and inspected his three choices. He winced at the sight of his full-dress military uniform; it was the last thing he had worn before they’d put him in his cell.

He had been escorted by the Order’s kilted guards straight from the Regent’s ceremony at Westminster Abbey, honoring them for their service with showy medals and all pomp and circumstance, immediately north to the Order’s Scottish headquarters and down to the gloomy dungeon to pay for his misdeeds.

At least the graybeards had spared his pride, refraining from having him shackled in front of the populace there at Westminster Abbey.

Thankfully, they had chosen to handle his punishment as an internal matter, hidden from public view. But that was the Order way.

“Sir?” Edward prompted.

Nick shrugged off bad memories, determined to put the past behind him now that Lady Burke had given him a second chance. “The black merino wool.”

“Very good, my lord.”

While Edward went to finish getting his clothes ready for him, Nick wandered over to the box of his belongings that had been returned him. Of course, the graybeards had kept his weapons, the bastards, but what could he do?

In the bottom of the box, he found his necklace—the one they all wore—the white Maltese cross on a silver chain, the hard-won symbol of the Order of St. Michael the Archangel. He had worn it for years like a talisman to ward off the danger that lurked in every shadow during their years of fighting the rich and highborn members of the Promethean conspiracy throughout Europe.

In time, the necklace had come to feel more like wearing a tag of ownership that one would put on a dog.

Now it just looked like a symbol of Nick’s disappointment in himself. He left it in the box, turned away, and started getting dressed: short drawers. He tied the drawstring. Black socks. He hooked them onto the knee straps, then pulled his white shirt on over his head. The clean white linen felt blissful against his skin. He smoothed the open V of the neck down his chest, feeling almost like a human being again.

After pulling on his black trousers, Nick stopped cold. “What the hell?” he uttered, shocked at the change in how his clothes fit.

They hung off him. He drew the waistband of his black trousers away from his waist, astonished to find several inches of excess fabric.

Good God, he had kept up with his regimen of daily exercises as best he could in prison to avoid wasting away to nothing. But the restricted rations must have cost him a good stone of weight that he hadn’t needed to lose.

Jolly good thing he had a pair of suspenders among his belongings, he thought indignantly. Then he leaned closer toward the mirror, finally noticing the gauntness under his cheekbones, the sharp angles of his jaw, the hollows around his eyes.

No wonder Edward seemed afraid of him. He looked as lean and hungry as a wolf. And yet he remembered that Lady Burke had not seemed intimidated. But then, she was Virgil’s daughter.

“Waistcoat.”

The footman bravely held it up and stepped forward; Nick slipped his arms in the holes.

Edward next fetched his freshly ironed cravat, reaching out his arm to hand it gingerly to him from the greatest distance possible.

“I’ll do it myself. I’m not going to kill you, Edward.”

“Of course not,” the lad said abruptly with a nervous gulp followed by short laugh of relief. “Thank you, sir.”

Nick eyed him warily. “What did they tell you about me?” he asked as he stood in front of the mirror tying his cravat.

“Oh, nothing, sir.”

“Something, surely?” Waiting, he glanced at the tongue-tied footman in the mirror.

Edward plainly cast about for some polite escape from this question. “Oh, just some whispers in the servants’ quarters, sir. Nothing important.”

“Humor me, please. I won’t hold it against anyone, I promise.”

“Well, sir, one of the maids overheard Her Ladyship telling Mr. Mason that you had been trained by Master Virgil.” Edward shrugged. “Seeing the sorts of things that Master Virgil also taught Her Ladyship, we just put two and two together. That you work for the Order,” he whispered, wide-eyed.

Not that I was in prison?
He was touched she had shielded his reputation. “So Virgil came here to visit?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Quite a lot. Her Ladyship and her father were very close.”

Nick stared at him in fascination, absorbing this.
Why, you old fox, with your secrets.
It seemed their taciturn handler was growing even more mysterious in death than he had been in life.

Just then, there came a knock on the door. “Lord Forrester?”

Edward glanced toward it. “That’ll be Mr. Mason, sir.”

“Come in,” Nick called just as he finished tucking in the tied ends of his cravat.

The butler stepped into the guest chamber and clasped his white-gloved hands behind him, nodding politely. “Lord Forrester, allow me to present Dr. Baldwell, our local physician.”

A little gray-haired man with stooped shoulders and a black leather bag stepped into the room behind him.

Nick stared at the newcomer, instantly suspicious.

“Her Ladyship has asked that Dr. Baldwell give you a brief examination to make sure you are in the best possible health,” Mason informed him.

Nick looked at him in shock. “Has she indeed?” he retorted, bristling at this new request. “Whatever for?”

Lady Burke herself appeared in the doorway, apparently anticipating his resistance. “Considering your recent living conditions, I want to make sure you’re well enough for duty.”

“I’m well enough for duty!” He scoffed. “I don’t need some quack poking and prodding at me to confirm my health. No offense, Doctor.”

“You will cooperate,” she informed him. “I cannot risk your passing along anything catching to my staff. Check him,” she ordered the physician, then shot him a no-nonsense look. “Cooperate, Nicholas. You gave me your word.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. So he had.

With that curt order, Her Ladyship left him scowling and gritting his teeth. But was it worth it to fight?

One had to choose one’s battles, after all.

“I didn’t give my word to agree to be inspected like a bloody farm animal,” he muttered more to himself than to them. He glared at Edward, who quickly scurried out behind the butler.

Dr. Baldwell then proceeded to ask him all the usual impertinent questions that were part of taking down a patient’s history. The old, unflappable physician was no more affected by Nick’s resentful glares than he would have been at the tantrums of a child with the chicken pox.

He measured him by various methods, height and weight; inspected his tongue; bounced the light off a little mirror into his eyes; peered into his ears with a little funnel thing; checked his head for lice; banged on his knees with a dainty hammer; checked his pulse; listened to his heart; and palpated his abdomen, checking the healing around his solar plexus where he’d taken the bullet for the thankless bloated Prince of Whales.

“Tell me about this bullet wound,” the doctor said, inspecting it.

“It hurt,” he drawled.

“Did it pierce the bowel or other internal organs?”

“No,” he said with a sigh. “The distance saved me. It hit the muscle and went flat. Hurt like hell, though.”

“I imagine so.” He paused. “You’re very lucky.”

“You wouldn’t think so if you ever saw me in a card game. I’m bloody cursed.”

The doctor snorted. “Drop your trousers.”

“But we only just met.”

The irked physician shot him a baleful glance. Then he made him piss in a cup and examined the color of his “water” by the sunlight.

“Are we quite through here?” Nick demanded, sufficiently humiliated for one day.

“Don’t button up just yet.”

Good God!
Nick let out a wordless exclamation as the old country doctor finished his inspection by checking to make sure he didn’t have the French disease.