To Tempt a Saint (16 page)
Authors: Kate Moore
“Where?”
“Out.”
“But your dinner party?”
“Not till nine. Go.”
They spent the chill, wet afternoon outfitting Charlie in fine style. Only the proprietor of a shoe shop questioned Cleo’s right to patronize his establishment. When a haughty accent and ready money failed to persuade, Charlie mentioned Sir Alexander Jones by name. To Cleo’s chagrin, the mere name rendered the shopkeeper humbly apologetic. He promised to deliver Charlie’s new boots as soon as they were ready.
At every turn Charlie and Cleo made a game of counting errand boys with caps—brown caps, tweed caps, checkered caps—none of whom seemed inclined to follow them. Cleo made one last stop at a chemist’s shop in South Audley Street. A stiffening wind sent them home.
X
ANDER turned from the table gleaming with silver and plate to stare at the street below, willing his bride to appear, his patience fading as night took over Hill Street. She and her brother had vanished without a word to anyone in the house. On a whim or as an act of willfulness she had put herself at risk. He knew she had gone about London on her own in the past, but that was before they crossed Archibald March, before she’d been followed, before George Tucker had been arrested and bullied out of his integrity.
ANDER turned from the table gleaming with silver and plate to stare at the street below, willing his bride to appear, his patience fading as night took over Hill Street. She and her brother had vanished without a word to anyone in the house. On a whim or as an act of willfulness she had put herself at risk. He knew she had gone about London on her own in the past, but that was before they crossed Archibald March, before she’d been followed, before George Tucker had been arrested and bullied out of his integrity.
In Newgate he had been cross-questioned as Will suspected, until he no longer knew what was true. Fear ruled his thinking. He would be turned out of his curacy. Prosecution would ruin him. His wife and children would starve. His immortal soul was damned. Xander had counted on March’s legal moves. Now that he knew March’s underhanded style, he would shift his own tactics. All he needed was time. If Norwood could keep delaying their hearing, Xander would have it.
Today, he had answered March’s tactics by setting up signs on Bread Street, offering prime wages to any man willing to bust up the street with picks and haul off the stones and filth of London. A pair of former pugilists of formidable size had put the signs in place on the old building facing the open court. In a week Xander would employ the same giants to hold interviews and sign up workers. At the other end of town, he had reopened the failed gasworks, and the engineers had begun to assess what needed to be done.
He stared into the dark from his lighted window, a reasonable, civilized man, a forward-thinking man, a man in control of his passions and appetites. He, of all men, knew that a woman valued her independence, and that Cleo Spencer had long fought for hers, but in this she had to let him rule. Their bargain would work to the advantage of both, if she would let him manage things and not fight so to take charge of the plan. The game Xander played with March was not meant to put her at risk, but he found he had an unexpected savage streak when he thought of March spying on her.
Reasonableness vanished when he saw them come round the corner. He turned for the stairs, checked his stride, and looked back, scanning the street behind them. Early evening traffic passed unconcerned below his window. Cabs, carters, servants, a pair of gentlemen—no one sinister, no one who seemed to follow the two heading for his door. He went to welcome his wife home with some heat.
She came in laughing, looking much as she had the first moment he’d seen her, green eyes wide and fringed with dark lashes, bedraggled cloak, cheeks pinkened by the cold. Her hair, loosened from its pins, caught fire in the lights of the entry, as it had two nights before every time his gaze had turned toward her down the Fullers’ long dinner table.
Her gaze met his, and she sobered at once. He made a note to buy her a new cloak.
“Charlie,” he said.
“Sir?”
“I want a word with your sister. Mrs. Wardlow has supper for you in the kitchen. You and I will speak later.”
Charlie cast his sibling an imploring glance.
“Dearest, I’m sure you’re hungry,” she said, and he took himself off.
Xander didn’t shift his gaze from her. “Were you followed?”
“No.” The green eyes sparked with interesting fire.
“Did you look?”
“At every shop and errand boy. Believe me, we were beneath the notice of your common pickpocket.”
“Let me remind you that dozens of reputable tradesmen are quite willing to come to this house. If you must go out, let Amos or Alice know where you are going.”
“Just as you let your wife know where you go at night in this wicked old city.”
“I can take care of myself.”
She looked away. It would be a mistake to think he saw something wounded in her eyes. She thought he sought another woman’s bed. Any wound he offered was to her vanity, not her heart.
He watched her gather some resolve, shaking off whatever momentary injury he’d dealt her pride. She opened a bag, so old and shapeless he had not seen it hanging from her arm against the folds of her cloak, and offered him an apothecary’s jar filled with black curls of lazy movement.
“I bought you a gift. To remind you of me.” This time there was a wicked glint in those eyes.
He took the thing. Living black coils wriggled in a murky, watery mass. “Did you cut off the tails of all the blind mice with your carving knife?” He held the jar to the light.
Leeches
. He couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. “You persist in thinking our coming together will be a medical procedure.”
Leeches
. He couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. “You persist in thinking our coming together will be a medical procedure.”
She brushed by him, heading for the stairs. “Would you prefer a commercial transaction?”
Xander caught her arm, arresting her easy escape. She had no idea of the temptation she offered. He leaned close to whisper against her ear, “If we ever come together, I guarantee you your twenty thousand pounds’ worth. Remember we have dinner guests tonight.”
C
LEO strode across her room, feeling a rush of satisfaction. She searched her memory for some sensation to match this wild elation. She flung off her gloves. She was an indifferent rider, but she supposed she might have felt such exhilaration once or twice when she managed a good jump. She loosed her cloak. Or perhaps it was more like the feeling she had when she faced down a snarling dog at the edge of the village. Perhaps it was nothing more than pleasure in the startled look on her husband’s face when he realized she’d given him leeches.
LEO strode across her room, feeling a rush of satisfaction. She searched her memory for some sensation to match this wild elation. She flung off her gloves. She was an indifferent rider, but she supposed she might have felt such exhilaration once or twice when she managed a good jump. She loosed her cloak. Or perhaps it was more like the feeling she had when she faced down a snarling dog at the edge of the village. Perhaps it was nothing more than pleasure in the startled look on her husband’s face when he realized she’d given him leeches.
Her dress for the evening, the garnet silk, hanging on the outside of the wardrobe, checked her jaunty stride, a reminder that her goal was seduction. This time Perez had said the dress would show off her sweetness. That, Cleo thought, would be a miracle. She doubted her husband could be induced to think her sweet even if she offered him treacle instead of leeches. Certainly, he was learning that she was not biddable.
The dress glowed in the candlelight, and she tried to believe in its magic. Dressed in its soft folds she would dazzle him, and he would come to her bed. She took her knife from beneath her pillow and tucked it into the sheath she had devised in the elaborate border of the gown. The hem dipped under the weight, but not noticeably. Tonight she would be ready.
In plain terms she needed a babe in her belly to keep Charlie safe, to defeat Uncle March, to keep courts and papers and lawyers from taking control of her life again. Xander Jones could give her that babe in the time-honored way of husbands whatever their feelings or lack of feelings for their wives. Later, once they defeated March, they could be friends or whatever people became in such marriages.
She threw open the balcony doors, and the breeze blew them back with bang. A cool rush of night air met her, and a dark shadow uncurled in one of the plane trees. She caught a glimpse of a white, upturned face, young and male. In a blink it was gone, a fleeting phantom vanishing in the dark beyond the lights’ glow. Cleo doubted for a moment that she’d seen anything. Then her heart began to pound until it shook her body.
Chapter Ten
A
little after midnight Xander stood with his arm around his wife as their guests departed, reflecting that for a man who wanted to impress his partners as a host, such a dinner was a disaster. For a man who as a host, such a dinner was a disaster. For a man who meant to resist his wife’s charms, it was nothing short of catastrophic.
little after midnight Xander stood with his arm around his wife as their guests departed, reflecting that for a man who wanted to impress his partners as a host, such a dinner was a disaster. For a man who as a host, such a dinner was a disaster. For a man who meant to resist his wife’s charms, it was nothing short of catastrophic.
Her silk dress glowed like candlelight gleaming through port. It gave to her skin a sweet, creamy luster that was driving him mad. All evening whenever he looked at her, he was caught by some tantalizing bit of flesh that made him want what he saw in his dreams. Now he stood with the curve of her waist warm in his palm, and her hip brushing his as she waved their guests into carriages.
It was the first time he’d observed the bustle of le ave-taking from his own door. He had an odd sensation of watching himself play host and husband, not knowing exactly who he was. Tonight his partners had seemed like friends. They had come to his mother’s house, curious perhaps about its scandalous past, but easily settling down to their endless talk of London’s future.
Ruxley and Phillips were arguing even now as they waited for Ruxley’s carriage to come round, with Phillips declaring that the overcrowded city would soon be a heap of ruins, another Babylon, and Ruxley staunchly countering that the Metropolitan Works Group would change all that. Xander hoped Ruxley would win the argument. They needed Phillips’s vote in Parliament for the charters to build some of their more ambitious projects.
Just at that moment Fuller’s wife discovered she was missing her gloves. A servant was dispatched to recover them, and Mrs. Fuller entered into the debate asking Ruxley whether their plan would cure London of its stink, which, she claimed, was the source of all disease in the city.
Xander willed himself to patience. He had only to endure his wife in her maddening dress for a brief spell longer. In a few minutes his guests would be gone. Within an hour the hired servants would be off, among them, he had no doubt, at least one spy for March. As impromptu as the dinner had been, and as reputable an agency as he’d employed to hire the extra kitchen and serving help, Xander knew that he and Cleo were being closely watched. He didn’t need Will’s experience as a spy to feel the scrutiny.
Will lurked somewhere in the recesses of the house with another reeking set of clothes Xander would need for their evening search for Mother Greenslade. So far they had been unable to locate the woman, but Will’s sleuthing had turned up some chilling information on March. He owned the brothel on Half Moon Street where Cleo Spencer’s father had died.
Amos interrupted Xander’s thoughts with his search for Mrs. Fuller’s gloves by opening the main entry closet not six feet away. As a boy he’d spent long hours in that dark place, eyes seeing nothing, ears filled with muffled, distorted sounds of voices—angry, yearning, bereft.
Xander had not willingly opened that door in years, but now he tried to calculate the closet’s dimensions. It could not be as small, as close, as dark and stuffy, as he remembered. After all, tonight it had held all his guests’ cloaks and coats and more besides. Light probably seeped in under the door. In that closet, he could do what he could not do in the full view of departing guests and hovering servants. Images of the possibilities distracted him.
“Do you think they liked the potatoes?” His wife’s voice recalled him to their present, public position.
“Let’s hope so. You served them five ways.”
“Best to offer guests as much as they can eat. Which did you prefer?” She looked up at him, and the little lift of her chin exposed her throat to his view and pressed one creamy breast against his ribs. He felt the slight give of soft flesh against the wall of his chest and a swift answering pulse of desire in his groin.
He pressed his mouth to her hair and tried to think rationally about the entry closet. Its interior was at least the size of a roomy carriage. He rode in carriages every day without feeling trapped. He imagined the closet walls fading away as he pushed his wife’s flimsy sleeves over her white shoulders, yanked her corset down to release her breasts, and buried his face between them where the flesh was sweetest.
“You think the house is being watched in this cold weather?” she asked. She reached down and made an adjustment to the elaborate hem of her gown where it covered her evening slippers.
Apparently she was not overcome by lust as he was. Whatever else she was, she was ignorant of the full sensual surrender he could wring from her. He was a good judge of desire in a woman. He knew all the stages of interest that led to an encounter. His bride might be aware of him and alert to his presence in a room, but she had not taken even the first tottering step on the path of sensuality that would lead her willingly to his bed. She had only her single-minded concern for escaping March and protecting her brother.
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