Vexing The Viscount (22 page)

Not as long as they weren’t caught at it.

In any case, if Uncle Gabriel trusted Daisy to manage her own affairs, what business was it of Lord Wexford’s?

Still, she ought not be rude to her great-aunt.

“Isabella?”

The silence from the other side of the door was deafening.

Daisy swiped her eyes and dragged herself of the bed. She trudged to the door, favoring her sore ankle only a little, and opened it. Isabella was standing there, arms folded beneath her breasts with an air of resignation.

“Well?”

“Come in,” Daisy said. “Please.”

“You know, dear, you don’t do yourself any favors by flying into a rage. I know that pirate who raised you has the devil’s own temper, but even Gabriel Drake knows when to control himself and when to unleash the beast.” Isabella swept into the room and settled into one of the two wing chairs flanking the hearth. “I know you won’t credit it, but Geoffrey means well.”

Daisy laughed mirthlessly as she sank into the other chair. “If he meant well, he’d at least give a reason for his highhandedness.”

Isabella pursed her lips, a sure sign she knew more than she
was about to say. “In this instance, I fear you’ll just have to trust him. Sometimes, knowledge can be a dangerous thing.”

Daisy scoffed. “I can’t believe you said that. You, who have always championed a woman’s right to learn, to pursue what ever field of study caught her fancy. What ever happened to ‘Ignorance is not always conducive to bliss’?”

“That’s about a woman’s right to understand how her own body functions—a totally different subject.” Isabella waved the objection away. “Dearest, please trust me when I tell you there are things afoot here that will endanger you more if you are cognizant of them.”

Daisy looked askance at that. “Things that will not endanger you, since it is obvious you know of them?”

“Geoffrey is taking steps to ensure—You’re pulling me of subject. We are talking about you, my dear. The point is, while you are a guest in our home, Geoff feels responsible for your welfare. He’s an honorable man, Daisy. And sometimes honorable men must do unpleasant things to serve the greater good.”

“How is the greater good served by my not seeing Lucian?”

“Until Geoff can sort this whole thing out, you’ll simply have to trust that it is and be satisfied with that.” Isabella sighed. “Do you believe I love you?”

“Of course.”

“Then you know that if I could offer you a more thorough explanation, I would.” Isabella’s shoulders hunched in an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry, sweeting.”

“May I at least be allowed to write to Lucian? You know, to say good-bye?”

Isabella cocked her head, considering the request. “I think perhaps we could manage that, but I’m sure Geoffrey would insist upon approving any correspondence you sent to Lord Rutland.”

Resentment fizzed along Daisy’s spine. “Very well. I’ll have something to post within the hour.” She stood, signaling her wish for solitude. “If you’ll excuse me…”

Isabella came and kissed her cheek before gliding over to the door. “I know you care for the young man. Perhaps there will come a day when circumstances change.”

“Perhaps,” Daisy said, unconvinced. As long as she was kept in the dark at present, how could she feel any hope for a change in the future?

Once Isabella left, Daisy stared at her writing desk for a long while. What could she say to Lucian that would pass muster for Lord Wexford and yet be truthful?

Several crossed-out and wadded-up attempts later, Daisy hit upon a plan. She sharpened the end of her quill and started with a fresh piece of paper.

My Dear Viscount Rutland
, she wrote.

“My very dear viscount, indeed,” she said softly.

Heaven knew that much was true.

She couldn’t begin to name all she wished for him.

Now, how to end it? She screwed her face into a frown. How could she put into words what she felt for him and still pass Lord Wexford’s demanding eye? She could scarcely mention their torrid kisses or the fact that he’d all but promised to pounce upon her if he managed to catch her alone. Finally, she settled for:

“Don’t I just wish I really were his,” she said.

Daisy signed her name with a flourish and went down to tell Isabella and Lord Wexford that she would be returning to Dragon Caern on the next available coach.

Of course, once Daisy Drake left, Blanche La Tour would shortly be returning to London. Daisy had access to her own funds. It was high time she used them.

No one told Blanche whom she could see. Or whom she couldn’t.

Relentless as an executioner delivering forty stripes, rain lashed the tall palladium windows of the Montford library. A jagged fork of lightning brightened the low sky for a brief flicker, and then the day sank again into dreary grayness.

Lucian rubbed the back of his neck. It was far too nasty out to do any more digging, but there was little point, in any case. He’d already found the last piece of the puzzle.

But after two weeks of intense study, he still had no idea how it all fit together.

Perhaps if Daisy…No
, he ordered himself sternly. He wouldn’t pine for a girl who obviously didn’t care enough for him to even say good-bye properly. As soon as he’d received her note, he slapped a saddle on his horse instead of bothering with hitching up the gig and rode hell-for-leather to Lord Wexford’s residence with little heed for the uneven cobbles and less for the foot traffic that scurried out of his path. He might have saved himself the panicked ride. He was turned away at the door.

Daisy was already gone.

It made no sense.

And neither did Caius Meritus’s cryptic love poem.

Lucian painstakingly retranslated the tablet himself, taking into account Daisy’s view of it, and spent every waking moment poring over the document. But every time he reread
the blasted thing, the bit about a wet tongue called to mind Daisy’s kisses, and he slipped into reverie. Her mouth was a whole world of delight, slick and warm. A man could lose himself in her kiss and never wish to be found.

Then if he managed to drag himself back to the document before him, once he reached the part about “her legs she spreads,” he was utterly lost again. That one time, when she was disguised as Blanche, she’d allowed him to reach under her skirts and rest his hand, however brief y, on her blessed soft mound. That intimate skin was smooth and beguiling, but hadn’t yielded to him.

What delights would he have discovered if he’d been able to convince her to spread her legs? The bare thought rendered him hard as iron.

The ping of a steady drip in the corner yanked him back from his imaginings. Avery, ever quiet and unobtrusive, had slipped into the library and placed a tin bucket under the worst leak. Now instead of a widening but silent puddle on the old Persian rug, Lucian was treated to an incessant reminder of why he desperately needed to find the Roman hoard before the place fell in on them.

The double doors of the library swung open and his father stomped in.

“What are you doing there, boy? Why aren’t you getting ready?”

“Ready for what, sir?”

“The Duke of Lammermoor’s masquerade, of course,” his father said. “Lady Brumley told me specifically that you promised to attend, so I hired a costume for you.”

“Father, you shouldn’t have done that,” Lucian said. “If you’d bothered to ask me, I’d have told you I have no intention of going to any silly masquerade when I have so much work to do.”

The earl glared down at the single sheet of paper on the desk. Before Lucian could put it away, his father snatched it
up. Unfortunately, the page contained both the Latin and the English version of Meritus’s poem. His father was no scholar, but he read English well enough.

The earl chuckled softly, then burst into full-throated guffaws. “Work? This sounds more like play, lad.”

“You don’t understand. The poem has a deeper meaning. It’s the key to the treasure’s location.”

“There’s definitely treasure between a woman’s legs, all right.” The earl laughed all the louder. “Deeper, yes, indeed. The deeper the better. If you’re after spreading some slut’s legs, there’s no finer place to do it than a masquerade. Just make sure it’s Clarinda Brumley’s you’re spreadin’, though. We already know what kind of dowry she’s hiding between her thighs.”

“Father, you may as well know it now. I have no intention of wedding the Lady Clarinda. Not ever.”

Even if it sent his father to Bedlam, Lucian had avoided this unpleasant truth long enough. To his surprise, the earl didn’t erupt in the fit of temper Lucian expected.

“Then how do you intend to do what’s needful by the estate?” his father asked, his tone rumbling with danger. “With this Roman nonsense?”

“Yes.” Lucian stood to look him squarely in the eye.

For once, his father’s skin wasn’t flushed with too much drink. His gaze sparked with intelligence, though Lucian sensed barely contained rage behind the earl’s gray irises. “You’re certain of it?”

“There is a treasure hidden, sir,” Lucian affirmed. “And I will find it.”

“Keep me apprised of your progress then. I have some plans for this treasure when you locate it. You’re not the only one who cares about Montford, you know.” Lucian started to protest, but when the earl narrowed his eyes, madness glinted behind them. His father cut him of with a dismissive gesture. “But if you do not find it, I expect you
to consent to the match with the Brumley chit. You can begin by dancing attendance on her at the ball this night.”

“Sir, I have ever been a dutiful son to you, but what you ask is impossible.” Lucian set his jaw. “I will not do it. My affections are…otherwise engaged.”

“Otherwise engaged? Your affections be damned.” A red flush crept up his father’s neck, and a vein bulged on his forehead. Lucian almost wished the earl would explode in anger to release the pressure that was obviously building, but he continued to speak with soft menace. “Don’t tell me you’re nursing a fondness for that French whore.”

“No, sir. The lady in question is no whore.”

“Courtesan, then, but it’s the same thing, and certainly not worth losing a fortune over.” His father pulled out his snuffbox and took a pinch, a luxury they could ill afford, but one Lucian couldn’t deny him. Not if the white powder calmed his father. “Rut her blind, if you must, but a bint on the side should not detract a man from marrying well.”

“And did you keep a mistress when you married my mother?”

The snuffbox clattered to the floor, and the earl’s fist came flying before Lucian had a chance to duck. It connected squarely with his jaw, and he tasted the coppery tang of blood where his teeth cut into the inside of his cheek. When his father reared back for another blow, this time Lucian caught the earl’s fist and held him immobile. The manual labor of digging for the past months had strengthened Lucian, and when he tightened his grip, the earl winced.

“You will not strike me again, Father.” Lucian’s tone matched his father’s for silky menace.

Avery burst into the room, bobbing and darting about them like a wren on a narrow windowsill, looking for a spot wide enough to settle upon. “Beggin’your pardon, milord, young sir.”

When Lucian and his father turned to glare at him, Avery gave them a stiff bow and held out a much-polished pewter tray with a sealed note on it. “This came for you by special courier just now, Master Lucian. One is dreadfully sorry to intrude, but since the writer didn’t wait for the regular post, one thought it might be important. And, perhaps, timely.”

It didn’t feel timely to Lucian. He was ready to have it out with his father once and for all. Whether or not Lord Montford was going of his cracker, Lucian was
not
going to marry Clarinda Brumley. The sooner his father got that little tidbit into his brain, the happier they’d all be. He nearly waved Avery away, but he caught sight of the script on the outside of the note.

It was definitely written by Daisy’s hand.

“I’ll take that.” Lucian released his father with a slight shove. The earl cradled his bruised fist and shot his son a look of pure malice, but didn’t move to interfere.

Lucian strode away to have a bit of privacy, broke the seal and ran his gaze over the familiar round script. Being without her for a fortnight had left a dull ache in his chest. Now the ache faded. He should have trusted Daisy. A smile spread across his face. Then he tossed the note into the small blaze in the grate, lest it fall into unfriendly hands.

“What sort of costume did you hire for me, Father?” Lucian asked. “It seems I will be attending the duke’s ball this night, after all.”

Once all the debutantes went home, the Duke of Lammer-moor’s masquerade was no less wild than the last one Daisy attended. It almost seemed the same cast of characters from her great-aunt’s bacchanalia was in attendance. But this time, Daisy was in a stranger’s home, not her great-aunt’s.

She felt like a circus performer swinging high above the crowd, flying without a net.

Daisy willed herself not to shrink from the pointed stares of the men she wandered past. She’d managed to sneak Blanche’s red tulle dress, feathered mask and ridiculously high heels out with the rest of her belongings for her supposed trip back to Cornwall. It was deucedly inconvenient that she’d forgotten to include the white powdered wig and, more important, the filmy fichu to cover her exposed nipples. She walked slowly to hide her slight limp.