Shameless

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  Only he and she were left below, which, as he had determined the order of ascent, was how he had intended it, given that it was difficult to coax her out of the sullens with six pairs of nosy ears listening to every word he said to her and every snippy reply she made to him in turn. Unfortunately, having the others up while he and Beth were down did not provide them with the privacy he had hoped to achieve. Having all too quickly gotten over the excitement of Jane’s arrival, the women were all looking down at them from the passage, once again ably fulfilling their roles as the duennas from hell.

  There was nothing for it but to adjust to adverse circumstances. He couldn’t make them vanish with a wish, and, as he had already discovered, he couldn’t just leave them behind, either. And not solely because Beth wouldn’t like it. It was a shocking thing to discover about oneself after all these years, he reflected, but he found that abandoning six helpless women inside a cave system that they would almost certainly never find their way out of alive was beyond him. Even if he was hoping for a private moment or two with the woman beside him, and they were, once again, decidedly in the way.

  “Your turn, then.” With an inner sigh that signaled capitulation to forces beyond his control, he wiped the smile from his face and turned to face Beth, with—truly!—nothing any longer but the business at hand on his mind.

  She gave him an evil look. Under its influence, his determination to stick strictly to the business at hand wobbled. Unfortunately, at least from her point of view, the first foothold was some five feet off the ground. His role had been to boost the ladies up to it, and the process clearly required more contact than she was in a mood to allow him.

  “Come,” he said, beckoning.

  Looking as if she tasted something sour, she stepped closer.

  “Well?” she prompted when he didn’t immediately make a move to boost her up.

  “You’ve forgotten to tuck up your skirt,” he pointed out. Just as she was, her fellow females were once more wearing their gowns, and they had most sensibly tucked the fronts of their skirts into their waists so as not to catch their feet in them as they climbed. He expected that she would tell him to close his eyes, as some of them (really, all except the brazen blonde) had done, but she did not. Instead, with an expression that clearly told him that she trusted him not an inch, she turned her back. Despite her precaution, he was treated to a pretty glimpse of a froth of ruffled petticoats and elegant calves in white silk stockings, along with a tantalizing flash of bare thighs. Having seen the lady’s legs in their lovely entirety only the night before, he was already acquainted with their slender shapeliness. Still, his body responded with appreciation, and as nature intended.

  Having arranged her skirts as modestly as she could under the circumstances, which meant that a considerable amount of leg was still on display should anyone—ahem!—care to look, she turned back to him, shooting him a wary glance.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” she demanded testily.

  “Certainly not.”

  Thus summoned to his task, he thrust the torch down between two rocks to hold it steady and stepped up to her, grasping her by the waist and lifting her clean up off her feet before she had a chance to guess what he would be about. She was no feather, but she wasn’t heavy, either, and he liked the way she felt beneath his hands.

  “What . . . ?” She looked down at him in surprise as her hands flew to his shoulders for support. Their eyes met, she glared at him, and he had a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to let her slide down into his arms and kiss her until the glare was replaced by another expression entirely. Only the thought of their by now probably wide-eyed audience above caused him to refrain.

  “Is ought amiss?” he asked, as innocent as if he had no idea what the problem was. Without waiting for a reply, he shifted into a better position vis-à-vis the wall and at the same time lifted her incrementally higher despite a warning tightness in the vicinity of his wound.

  “You know there is!”

  Given that he had hoisted the others upward by means of their feet in his cupped hands, her reaction was not unexpected. But the mood of devilry that seemed to have taken possession of him over the course of the morning and in the face of her ill-humor was really quite irresistible now, almost as irresistible as the lure of putting his hands on her again had been. He’d been forbearance itself since she’d first greeted him with a lift of her chin and a dismissive glance when he’d come to wake the ladies that morning, only to find her already up, dressed, feeding the fire, and in no mood to talk to him. But the desire to tease her a little had grown with every cold glance and curt syllable she’d thrown his way. Now he had his chance, and he made the most of it. Lifting her slowly, his hands tight around her waist, his fingers splaying across her lower back and pressing into the resilient flesh beneath layers of silk and muslin, he measured the trimness of her waist and the gentle flare of her hips with pleasure while she eyed him grimly. She was tense and her muscles had tightened as a result, but he remembered the normal softness of her curves very well. It had been a while since he’d had a woman, so perhaps his memory of his own usual response had grown dim, but the heat that last night’s relatively chaste exchange had engendered in him seemed truly quite remarkable, now that he thought back on it. A few kisses and a caress of her not-quite-bare breast should not have left him riven with lust, nor should the memory of it have stayed with him the way it had. But, like the memory of their first encounter when he’d been treated to a full, unobstructed view of the luscious globes of her breasts, it seemed to have lodged indelibly in his mind. Even feeling the fully clothed shape of her waist beneath his hands now was engendering a salutary response, he discovered. Last night had shown him that she was far from indifferent to him, too. Under the right conditions, and given sufficient privacy, which he hoped to achieve at some point, helping her overcome her apparent aversion to physical intimacy would provide him with a great deal of gratification. He would never take what she was not willing to give, of course, but once they were on their own he was confident of his ability to seduce her with her full cooperation.

  Are you really that big of a bastard?

  That disgusted inner voice belonged, he was astonished to realize, to his own conscience. Having been almost completely silent for a number of years, its interference was unexpected, unaccustomed, and most decidedly unwanted.

  “Can you not lift me up there any faster than this?” Her eyes shot sparks at him.

  “Would you have me hurt my shoulder?”

  His shoulder repaid him with a decided twinge for his mendacious response, but he ignored it. As the veteran of numerous wounds from bullets, knives, and various other assorted weapons, he was accustomed to functioning through far more pain than this mere bagatelle of an injury caused him. But under the watchful eyes above them he could only stretch out the moment for so long, so with regret he lifted her high enough so that she could gain a toehold on the rock that was the starting point, held her while she got her balance, and finally, reluctantly, let her go. Clinging to the rock face now, she shot him a fulminating look.

  “Having failed to mention it last night, may I take this opportunity to tell you that your legs are truly lovely?” he said, his voice pitched to her ears alone, his eyes sliding admiringly over her legs, one of which was on charming display from midthigh down as a result of her tucked-up skirt. “Almost as lovely as your beautiful breasts.”

  “Oh,” was her indignant reply. Situated as she was, she was unable to cover herself, or to reply as she might have wished. But the temper in her glance said everything she was clearly biting back. “I’ll have you know that a gentleman wouldn’t look, and certainly would have better taste than to comment on anything he might accidentally have seen.”

  “Leaving me to once again reflect how fortunate I am that I’m no gentleman.”

  “Come on, miss, there be nothing to it a-tall,” Mary called down in response to what she clearly interpreted as Beth’s hesitation
. The dove gray girl—Alyce—thrust the torch she held out into the cavern so that more light fell on the cliff face, and the others offered advice and encouragement in such a vociferous tangle that he, for one, could not make out one word in ten of what they said. But it quickly became apparent that Beth needed no help from anyone. Though he stood watchfully below, most fully prepared to catch this particular female without fail should she slip, there was little danger of that: fueled no doubt by anger at him, she scaled the wall with ease, and without mishap.

  Once her hands reached the lip of the passage, the others pulled her in and out of sight.

  Snuffing the torch, which he then did, added the odor of charred wood to the pervading scent of earthy dampness. With the thing still smoking, Neil called up to the women to stand back, and threw the blackened stick up amongst them. The flint and steel had already been carried up by Mary in the pocket of her dress, and used to light the torch that Alyce now held, which he had thrown up to them earlier. Without any light, the caves would be black as the most impenetrable night, and practically impossible for even someone who had knowledge of them, such as he himself, to navigate. With light so critically important, he kept the candles by him, in the pocket of his greatcoat, which he wore. He’d had to abandon his frock coat and waistcoat because of the hole that had been blown through them and the blood that had soaked them as a result. His shirt he’d likewise had to leave for the same reason, but at least he’d managed to exchange it for another, though ill-fitting one. His decimated neckcloth now adorned his shoulder rather than his throat, but he was wearing his own trousers and boots. His greatcoat was a trifle heavy, and the length of it occasionally got in his way, but he was loath to abandon the perfectly good garment. Aside from the growing paucity of his wardrobe, it was quite possible that, given the uncertain spring temperatures, either he or his unsuspecting hostage would be glad of its comfort as soon as the caves were left behind, and their flight—sans her de trop companions—resumed. He might be safe from Clapham and his ilk for the moment—only a select few even knew of the caves’ existence, although he had little doubt that his pursuers would learn of them soon enough if he didn’t resurface elsewhere—but as soon as he was above ground again he would be in mortal peril once more. Those who were chasing him would not stop until either he stopped them or they saw him dead, and that was the hard truth of the matter.

  “Can you not reach the first foothold? ’Tis not so very high.” Beth’s taunting voice, calling down to him, made him look up. They were all looking down at him, he discovered, but hers was the only face he saw. Her expression, he discovered to his delight, was pure mockery.

  By way of a reply, Neil smiled and began to climb.

  As he did, it occurred to him that he had smiled more since meeting her than he had in years. Amusement, enjoyment, even an urge to tease—he had almost forgotten what those felt like. They belonged to his all-but-forgotten youth, and feeling them took him back to a place he wasn’t sure he wanted to go. Toying with this innocent young woman was making him feel almost like a stranger to himself, and he wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad thing. For a moment he played with the notion of abandoning his plan to use her as bait, and instead considered just trying to remain in hiding—in the caves, perhaps—until, hopefully, his existence was forgotten. She was, quite simply, a darling, and to cause her pain, which killing her brother-in-law might reasonably be presumed to do, was something that he would prefer not to do could he avoid it. But there was no choice: Richmond was the only one who knew the truth of his identity beyond the fearsome assassin who killed on the government’s command. And beyond that, it required only the briefest reflection to know that he could not remain hidden away in the caves, or indeed anywhere, forever, or even for very long. Besides, even were it possible, he had no wish to live for months or years constantly looking over his shoulder. If he was going to live, then he wanted a life, and to have that he was going to have to eliminate the largest obstacle in his path: Richmond.

  Although, strictly for Beth’s sake, he was sorry for it.

  “Have we much farther to go?” Dolly asked as he climbed into the passage and straightened again to his full height, which meant the top of his head almost brushed the low ceiling. The buxom blonde stood the closest to him, while Beth, of course, stood the farthest away, with her back turned to him—deliberately, he was sure—as she appeared to study something absolutely fascinating on the plain stone wall of the tunnel. Even though Dolly was looking tired and unkempt, she wriggled and batted her eyelashes at him and essayed a hopeful smile. She was comely enough, and might, at some other time, have stirred his interest sufficiently to earn a brief sojourn in his bed. But at the moment she held no appeal for him at all.

  “Not far,” he said, and brushed past her.

  “Not that I mean to tease ye, yer worship, but ’ow far’s not far?” Mary asked.

  “Two miles. Three at the most,” he replied, his eyes on the ground as he looked for the torch he’d thrown. Finding another such stick would be well-nigh impossible until they were out of the caves, so he had no intention of just leaving it behind.

  “I don’t think I can travel such a distance,” Jane said, wringing her hands. “The air is so close in here—sometimes I think I can’t breathe.”

  Mary gave her a disgusted look. “So what do ye plan to do, sit ’ere and ’ope a wind blows through?”

  Peg, who had apparently picked the torch up before he’d reached the passage, handed it to him.

  “Fresh air be what we need, all right,” she said. “We must just walk to reach it.”

  “Where will we come out?” Nan asked, and all eyes fastened on him as they awaited the answer.

  “An inn.” His response was brief, but that was all they needed to know. The caves opened into the cellar of an inn that was the lowest of the low, a place where criminals ranging from murderers to smugglers to grave robbers to pickpockets came and went without ever a question being asked. Outsiders were not welcome; the too curious might never be seen again. It was notorious enough that it was left alone even by the local constabulary, yet secret enough so that only those who needed to knew of its existence.

  “An inn!” The prospect appeared to energize Jane.

  “We can get a hot meal.” Nan clapped her hands together.

  “Oh, and a wash!” Dolly exclaimed.

  “And then go home,” Peg said. Then she looked at him, suddenly less certain. “Can’t we?”

  Lighting the torch from Alyce’s, hesitating over the answer, he looked at the circle of expectant faces around him with grim acceptance: for the moment they were his responsibility, whether he liked it or not. What he wanted to do was continue his dalliance with Beth, who was now standing a little way back from the others and once more regarding him with a frown, while putting as much distance as possible between himself and those who would kill him. What he was going to do was lead this gaggle of gooseberries out from underground, see them safe, and then rid himself of them forever before proceeding with the previous agenda.

  “Why not?” he answered, and they all seemed satisfied except for Beth, who still frowned at him. When she found out that she would be accompanying him to a destination quite remote from London, instead of remaining with the other females in some quiet country inn until her family could fetch her, or returning home under his aegis, she was sure to treat him to fireworks aplenty. And that, he discovered as he set off once more with the chatterboxes in tow, was something he was actually looking forward to.

  It would be a most pleasant interlude—until he killed her brother-in-law and made her hate him.

  “’Tis getting narrower,” Peg observed in a nervous tone as they had to pick their way over piles of rock and squeeze one by one past a fallen slab. “I’ll be that glad to get out in the sunshine.”

  Dolly sneezed. “It smells of damp.”

  “Doesn’t water weaken rock?” Nan asked, glancing around uneasily. Neil, knowing the answer
, didn’t reply. When he’d last passed this way, this passage had been clear. Now it wasn’t. From the evidence, it seemed there had been any number of rock slides over the years, some of them quite recent.

  “What happens if the way out be blocked?” Jane’s voice quivered. “What will we do then?”

  “Find another way out,” Beth said shortly. It was such blunt good sense that the rest were silenced. Her brows were knit, and she seemed to be in such a brown study that Neil let Alyce take the point with the other torch and fell back to discover what—besides her snit with himself, of course—ailed her.

  “Does being kissed always make you angry?” He’d come up behind her to murmur wickedly in her ear when, thanks to the remains of a rock slide that partially blocked a passage, they found themselves momentarily alone. Just as he had expected, her head came up and her shoulders squared and she, who had been studiously ignoring him since he had fallen in behind her at the end of the line, shot him a killing glare over her shoulder.

  “I have no idea,” said she, with her nose in the air and icicles dripping from every word, “what you are talking about.”

  And marched on.

  “Well, there was Rosen: I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but he definitely roused you to anger. Then there was my poor self, who, after having done you the not insignificant service of assisting you in that matter, chose to take payment in the form of one paltry kiss. You were furious, you can’t deny it. And after last night . . . ”

  “Hush.” Her whisper was fierce as they caught up to the others. “You will be overheard.”

  Smiling to himself as he watched that slender, now ramrod-straight back, Neil waited until another tunnel blockage left them once again to all intents and purposes alone.

  “Almost you make me afraid to kiss you again,” he said pensively when the others were out of sight. “Almost.”

  She was right in front of him, facing the outside wall with her hands flat against the rock as she began to traverse the severely narrowed passageway. Her head snapped around so that she was looking at him. Her brows practically met over her nose and her eyes shot sparks at him.