To Seduce an Angel (23 page)

WALLOP had a beef and pigeon pie, a rasher of bacon, and a plate of cockles in front of him. His napkin wore the usual assortment of stains, but his manner was grim. He stared at Emma's well-covered chest and shook his head.

Behind him the cupboard door was open a crack.

Wallop must know that the attempt on the roof had failed. He could see for himself that the carriages full of Daventry's family had passed through the village. Daventry and his people were alone at the hall, and Ned's dog had never returned. Emma tried to think of something she could tell Wallop to divert his attention from the hall.

“Did you bring me the whelp's box?”

“I saw no chance to take it with his family about.”

Wallop pulled his napkin from his neck and tossed it down. “The inconveniences is getting out of hand, missy. A businessman has to deliver the goods, you know. But here's the whelp surviving accidents like a cat. Here's his mother, the whore of Hill Street, dining in that fine big room with a thousand candles blazing on her jewels. Here's the biggest by-blows in London strolling the grounds like lords with riffraff running about beside 'em.”

“His mother and brothers left today.”

Wallop shot her a nasty look. “Always telling me wot I know, aren't you? Wot's 'Is Lordship to think? He's thinking you're an inconvenience is wot. He's thinking you're wearing silks and satins and sleeping in a soft bed and eating fine victuals and where's 'is profit? No profit in you, missy. You've got to do better, or you're wearing hemp.”

“Daventry plans to leave the hall this week.” It would be her last chance to escape. She had to be ready to take it. No lingering. No regretting Leo's pin or the ponies or the boys or the warrior angel.

“Oh, 'e does, does 'e? And where's he going, missy?”

“To fight in a mill.”

Wallop rocked back in his chair. “So, he's going to do it. The whelp thinks he can face a real brawler? He won't last twelve minutes. No wonder 'Is Lordship wants 'im stopped.'E 'as no sense of place. Always getting above himself like'is brothers.”

He stroked his side whiskers, watching her. “That open match in East Thorndon?”

Emma tried not to show him how right his guess was. She did not have to serve Daventry to Wallop on a plate.

“Only place that'd give a rank amateur a bout. It's soon, too.” An ugly slow smile cracked his wide face and pressed its folds closed like dough being kneaded. “Josie Wallop knows the ways of the fancy. Josie Wallop knows all the milling coves. Wasn't Josie Wallop there at the Fives Court when the champion—”

He broke off and frowned at Emma. “Now the real work begins, missy. He's a raw one, to be sure, won't stand a chance if we get the right man against him, but you've got your part to do, mind. Daffy and doxies is what does a fighter in. You follow orders and you put those dairies of yours in his face every day, you hear me?”

 

 

AUBREY reminded himself that the old man would die. The timing was all. Right now, for instance, would not be a good time for his uncle's grand funeral. Right now was a good time to find his uncle standing by his library fire with something of his old air of icy command, prodding a giant log into place.

“Uncle, good to see you up, sir.”

“What's the word, Aubrey? Have your tools produced any results?”

“What are you drinking, Uncle?” Aubrey looked for the good wine his uncle always kept. Wallop's plan had failed and probably alerted the inconvenient cub to the danger he faced. The girl had yet to prove of any real value. Wallop needed to apply more pressure there.

“Don't ‘uncle' me, Aubrey. Just give me your full report and tell me that damned whelp is out of my house.” The duke put aside the poker and turned his back to the fire. Aubrey saw that the troublesome leg was holding at the moment.

“You'll have to endure his irksome presence a while longer.” He helped himself to a fortifying glass of wine and sank into a leather armchair so that his uncle could enjoy looking down at him again. He tasted the wine, French, the Beaune region. The cellar at Wenlocke was remarkable considering his uncle's acid nature, which hardly seemed the stuff of which wine connoisseurs were made. Aubrey really would have to cultivate that cool tone when he became duke to keep the Wenlocke tradition alive.

“What's happened that you lack the bollocks to tell me?”

Aubrey shifted in the chair and crossed one booted leg over the other. “Actually, Uncle, Wallop's had some success. I have his report here.” He removed the papers from his pocket and placed them on the side table. “Wallop's man has penetrated the perimeter and brought down a row of chimney pots on the roof.”

“Chimney pots!” A spasm briefly twisted the granite lines of the duke's face. “Don't expect me to rejoice in falling masonry, nephew.”

“Wallop reports the pots weighed upward of twenty stone, put a sizeable hole in the roof, and smashed the balustrade to powder. Sadly, of course, they missed the whelp.”

“What's the girl done for us? Has she bedded him yet?”

“The girl told Wallop about the cub's habit of roof walking.”

“Anyone in the woods with a glass could see that he walks the roof.” The duke worked his fist open and closed with quick, impatient starts. “She's got to do better than that to earn her scrap of paper.”

“I agree. It would be most helpful if she'd get close enough to stab him in the ribs.”

“Aubrey, don't attempt to humor me. We both know your interest here.”

“Well, Uncle, if you are in good health, I'm prepared to let Wallop do his job.” Aubrey lifted his glass to the duke.

“My health is fine, but I want more pressure on the girl.” The duke moved to take up the papers on the table, tottered a little, righted himself, and scanned Wallop's notes.

When he looked up again, his face had gone queer, as if the left side had subsided, lost its underpinnings.

Aubrey put down his glass and came to his feet. “Uncle?”

“Tha whore wash in my housh.” The cold voice had slowed to a thick slur of words. Wenlocke was opening and closing his fist again, and Wallop's report fell to the floor.

Aubrey seized the duke's arm, led him to a chair, and rang for a footman.
Not now, damn it, Uncle.

A liveried servant appeared.

“Send for His Grace's physician. Now!”

 

 

EMMA wore the wicked gold dress to supper. Ruth did not say a word, but Emma heard Tatty's voice like a dozen warnings in her head.
Only practice seduction on a man you love.
She wanted to say that it was all part of the plan—patience, opportunity, and distraction. But that wasn't the whole truth.

Tatty's advice was wise, Emma supposed, but she knew something Tatty did not know. A person had to have someone to love. If life took those someones from you, took mother and father and grandmother and brother and cousin until you had no one, it was hard to begin again. And if you were so lucky as to find another someone to love, even if that person was the last person who could love you back, then you had to begin again to love as she had begun to love Daventry. If you didn't, you might as well let the crows have you.

With the family gone, Lark and Rook still missing, and the younger boys restored to the dining room, they were an intimate and listless party. Fewer candles were lit, and the room seemed to contract around the seven of them.

The dress did everything Emma expected it to do. It distracted Daventry more than she thought possible. He hardly listened to the boys, so he did not hear that she had finished the story. He would not guess that she would be gone by morning. On the surface he was his usual cool, polite self, but Emma felt the heat between them rise and shimmer like the air on a hot afternoon.

Dav wanted everything the dress revealed and everything it pretended to conceal. He had no idea what passed in front of him while he imagined taking her to his library, to the north drawing room, to the south drawing room, to the hall, to one of the guest bedrooms. He pictured furniture arrangements, doors, drapery, rugs, and tried to calculate how much time they would have and where they would be certain to remain undiscovered.

A cautious voice in his head distrusted the change in her appearance, but need kept drowning that whisper of sanity. He who had noted so little of women's apparel knew the number of buttons on the backs of her dresses between the neckline and the folds of her shawl, and how the loops passed from right to left over those buttons. Tonight she wore no tucker, no scrap of lace across her chest, no shirt with a prim collar. Tonight the dress dipped low in front and in back. There could be no more than a single button above the band under her breasts.

Emma felt the change in Daventry's attention, but the boys took no notice of either their tutor or their guardian. Their concern was the absence of Lark and Rook. Even the excitement of Daventry's coming match could not make them forget their missing friends.

“Did they go in one of the servants' carriages, do ye think?” Finch asked.

“Quickest way if they wanted to get back to London.” Raven ate with apparent unconcern.

Jay seemed to take the other boys' absence the hardest. He pushed his food around his plate without eating. Emma sent him a questioning look, but he wouldn't meet her eye. He blamed her, she supposed.

From the beginning she and Lark had been at odds, but she'd never guessed he would leave. His dissatisfaction was more about the boys' uncertain position in Daventry's life than her lessons, but she had not helped.

Finch tried to give the older boys' disappearance a happy cause. “Maybe they set off on an adventure, through the country, like the boys in our story. Boys always have to go and make their fortune in the world.”

“Why must boys? Why don't girls have to go?” Robin wanted to know.

“Girls stay home and marry.” Swallow spoke with authority.

Robin struggled to spear a turnip on his plate. “But Miss Portland didn't.”

Swallow chewed an overlarge bite that swelled his thin cheeks. “She takes care of us, doesn't she? Same thing.”

Robin turned to Emma with a bright look. “You should marry Daventry and stay with us, miss.”

Swallow saved her the trouble of answering. “She can't. Daventry's a lord now. Lords must marry ladies like the misses at his party.”

Robin's brow puckered. He cocked his head to study Emma as if he'd missed something. “But miss
is
a lady.”

“No, she's a woman, a female. Ladies are like Dav's sisters-in-law and his mum.”

Robin shrugged. Swallow's certainty ended the discussion. He managed to get the errant piece of turnip onto his fork. When his plate was clean, he turned back to Emma. “Maybe that's why stories are about boys. Boys have adventures. Girls . . .” He shrugged. “Don't.”

Oh, but they do, Emma could have told him. They make hairsbreadth escapes from terrible dungeons and desperate dashes across continents and seas, until they are cornered and trapped and fall in love, but that was the one story she could not tell.

“Will we have lessons tomorrow?” Swallow asked.

“Yes, what will you teach us now?” Finch sounded eager.

“Will you start a new story for us?” Robin wanted to know.

The question woke Dav up from a contemplation of narrow bodice of the maddening dress. “You finished the story?”

The boys all turned to him when he spoke as if they had just remembered his presence.

“Will she be our regular grinder now, Dav?” Swallow asked.

Dav stared at her. She'd finished the story, worn a dress like no other, and used up her fortnight. His head rang like the clanging bells on a fire wagon. When the meal ended, it was the work of a minute to send Adam with the boys to the billiard room. What was she up to?

Dav ordered coffee for the south drawing room, picturing the room in his mind, as he tucked her arm in his. Desire crackled between them. It almost stopped him at the foot of the stairs. He took a steadying breath, and they began to climb.

He seated her in a red damask chair by the fireplace and took a seat next to hers. Tom, one of the footmen, lighted candles and brought in the tray of coffee. His quiet movements should have been calming, but Dav felt the tension winding tighter in him until he heard the click of the door closing.

Then he let himself look at her, unsure of what he saw, something reckless and determined in the lift of her chin. The dress was a deliberate provocation, a change from the way she usually concealed her femaleness. He did not know whether the dress was the truth or a lie. It was not the gown of the vicar's bookish daughter of those false papers.

He sensed that she had seized command with that dress, not of him, but of her own course. Only in the blue of her eyes could he find his pony-hugging, storytelling, nightmareridden would-be lover. He had wanted her in a shapeless gray gown in the desperate moment when she had told a story to save herself. But he had not foreseen that she could be this bright flame to his moth. The gold of the dress, like her hair, glinted in shades from rich amber to pale wheat. The bodice was merely a cord of twisted strands of gold and blue, no bigger around than his thumb.

He stood and doused all but one of the branches of candles. The room sank into rich shadows with only a flicker of light to make her skin glow and her eyes sparkle and the gold of the maddening gown gleam. He splashed a dash of coffee from the pot into each of their cups and extended a hand to her. Hers trembled in his.