“I’d say he had his reasons.” As long as he could talk about these events as if they weren’t discussing details of his life he revealed to no one, he might get through it without losing his temper. This was just another of the many roles he assumed for his job.
“I wonder if I might know what those reasons are.”
“What gives you the idea they’re any of your affair?”
“Call it curiosity, for one. I know of no one born to a titled family who walks away.”
Dysart pressed his lips shut. Yes, he understood her surprise. Though he could not see the room’s furnishings, he recalled the opulence, the brocades and velvets, the carved wood, the plush carpet, the gilt wallpaper. Richness surrounded him. Wealth such as he’d walked away from entirely of his own choice.
“You might also say,” she went on after a moment, “I have a personal stake in this now.”
“How so?” he burst out. “What does any of this have to do with you?”
“What would your wife have to say about what happened in the maze earlier?”
God, the maze. That kiss. That too short, wholly unsatisfying kiss. “I haven’t got a wife.”
“Then please tell me what happened. I believe I deserve to know.”
Heaven help him, she did, since he’d gone and acted on his attraction to her. “I was married. To Sally. And if you add in what I told you about Pendleton and her, you can probably piece the rest of it together.”
“I’d rather hear you tell it in your own words.”
He wanted a cheroot and a wall to lean against while he wreathed himself in smoke. Preferably on Bow Street, where the air might smell of coal fires and the Thames and streets full of horse dung, but at least it wasn’t tainted with the stench of privilege. The kind of stink that led a man to raise his own nose so high, he never saw those he considered beneath him.
But Dysart had seen. He hadn’t been able to turn away from Sally in her need.
“I’m no hero.” There. He’d destroy that notion straightaway. “I didn’t come to Sally’s rescue immediately. It was only a month or so later when I heard her crying again.”
“Had…Did Pendleton come back?”
“No, he didn’t need to. He left Sally with a permanent reminder of what he’d done to her. As if she’d ever forget. But the housekeeper discovered she was increasing and was going to turn her out with no references. She’d have been for the workhouse—or worse. So I offered myself as a solution.”
Over a dozen years later and he still didn’t know why he’d made that offer. All he knew was the pitiful echo of Sally’s sobs in his brain every time he saw the lass. At times, they woke him from a sound sleep, carried on the thought he should have intervened directly when he came upon Pendleton abusing her.
“I took her to Scotland and married her over the anvil.” At eighteen, he’d been too young to go through the proper formalities in England. “When we got back home, my dear puh-pa was livid.”
Stupid. That was what the earl had called his son. Stupid and idiot and half-witted. “You could have paid one of the footmen to take her,” the man had railed. “One of the grooms. There was no need to throw your life away.”
But there had been, even if the old man couldn’t see it. Another husband would have demanded his conjugal rights. Dysart had been willing to make that particular sacrifice to ensure Sally’s safety and to save her the horror of reliving Pendleton’s brutality on a nightly basis.
“He turned me out, so we went to London, and I had to learn fast how to scrape by, especially with a babe on the way.” He’d taken whatever work he could get, and soon enough his soft, aristocratic hands bore the calluses of a dockside laborer. The day he chased down a pickpocket for nabbing his meager wages turned into a windfall. That incident had led him to Bow Street, where his talent for mimicry and ability to blend in stood him in good stead.
“And what happened to them?” Her whispered question emerged on the husky rasp of one caught up in a tale.
“I’ve hired someone to see to the boy. I’ve made certain he’s had schooling as best I can. A fever took Sally a few years back, so I’m all he has.” He still didn’t know how he felt about that turn of events. Part of him still harbored resentment that he hadn’t been able to save her a second time, but another part—one he didn’t like to examine—acted like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. When he was a lad of eighteen, no one had warned him the burden of his choices would only increase with the passing years.
“The boy?” The rustle of silk told him she’d shifted. If she did anything ill-advised, such as standing and approaching, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. Because now that she knew of his past, he felt naked before her. “Doesn’t he have a name?”
“He does.” A name Dysart hated. “She named him after me.” Poor lad. Bad enough one person should be saddled with such a designation, let alone two.
She stood. He heard as much in the swish of her skirts. “Gus—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Then tell me, why do you call yourself Dysart?” Her voice reached his ears from someplace considerably closer than the settee. Damn it. The plush carpeting beneath his feet had muffled the pad of her slippers.
“You haven’t worked that out? It was Sally’s family name. As soon as I got to London, I left everything else behind. No one needed to know my real family name was Childress or my father was the Earl of Norcott.”
“I still don’t understand.” She stood before him now. He more than heard as much. He caught her scent. He felt her presence as something tangible. Something he could reach out and touch. Something he very much wanted to touch. “Why hide who you are?”
“Because no one in his right mind would walk away the way I did.”
“You’re afraid people will say you’re mad? I don’t think you’re mad.” The tips of her fingers grazed his arm, but the contact soon became far worse, as it skated upward to land on his cheek. “I call it admirable.”
He clenched his hands to stop them from taking her by the waist. A clean vanilla fragrance filled his nostrils as she leaned in. Damn it, was that softness against his upper arm her breasts?
He should step back. He needed distance between them, but somehow the entire length of Sherrington Manor seemed insufficient.
Then her lips brushed the corner of his mouth, and his mind went blissfully blank.
—
Dysart. Lizzie would never be able to apply any other name to this man—not even the one his parents had bestowed on him. Lady Whitby had divulged that particular secret, along with a few other details. Details she’d tried to make sound as shocking as possible.
But what did Lady Whitby know? Yes, the story was scandalous—too much so to have ever reached her protected ears at the time, or even later. Of course, so many years had passed since Dysart’s disappearance from polite circles that it hardly struck Lizzie as a surprise she’d never heard rumor of the tale. Busybodies had found other juicy tidbits to dissect with the precision of an anatomist.
At any rate, the truth hadn’t provoked the sort of reaction Lady Whitby had hoped.
Admiration, indeed. Dysart had been utterly selfless to walk into an unknown life—one for which he’d been completely unprepared—and all for a girl his upbringing told him was beneath his notice.
Such an action didn’t merit whispers behind fans at parties. It did not warrant society shutting him out, even if he’d turned his back on its members. No, it deserved praise and admiration and a reward of some sort, but Lizzie had little to offer that he might accept.
Although he was accepting the surge of affection his story had aroused well enough. His arms slipped about her waist, settling into her embrace and returning it with the solidity of his presence. His body.
Her breasts were pressed against the hard planes of his chest until she wanted to sigh with the pleasure. But she couldn’t release the sound, for without her conscious will directing them, her lips somehow sought and f
ound his.
He reacted with surprising softness, a simple press and release repeated over and over, the opposite of what he’d done in the maze. There, his kiss had been sudden and driving, fueled not so much by passion as necessity.
A dark well of emotion, one she’d uncovered just now, lay beneath each movement of his mouth, igniting an answering spark inside her. She pushed her fingers into his hair and when the tip of his tongue flickered against her mouth, she opened for him.
At his invasion, the spark roared into flame, but she could only respond as he took control of the kiss. His arms tightened about her until she bent beneath him, and all the while he devoured her.
When he tore his lips away, she gulped in air, but the respite was only momentary. With a growl, he set his mouth to the throbbing pulse just below her ear, and his teeth scraped sensitive skin.
Sweet God in heaven, she’d never known a kiss like this. Any of the gentlemen who’d tried had been just that—gentlemen. Not Dysart. He’d learned the hardness of the world, and it came through in this intimate moment. But she drank in every last drop of the darkness he offered her and thirsted for more.
Ravenous lips trailed down to the edge of her bodice, while one of his hands skated up her torso until it curved about her breast. His thumb traced over her nipple once, twice, until the tip hardened into a peak of aching need.
“Ah!” She threw her head back in offering.
His other hand moved up to plump her other breast, as if he meant to test its weight. She stared down at those tanned, calloused fingers over fine silken fabric. Oh, the contrast. The roughness of his skin might snag her gown, but she didn’t care, because she understood its source.
What he was doing to her was scandalous. It was wrong, but heaven help her, she didn’t want him to stop. Not now, not ever. She wanted his bare flesh touching hers, abrasive against her softness.
Raising her arms, she reached for the buttons at the back of her gown.
But the sort of morality that had driven him to toss society aside reared its unfortunate head, for he pulled away and gripped her wrists, his breathing a harsh rasp in the evening quiet.
“We can’t do this,” he muttered after a moment. “Not anywhere, but especially not here.”
Dear Lord, Papa lay in the next room. Dysart’s passionate onslaught had driven the knowledge from her mind. And yet, the response he’d aroused in her still simmered, tempting her to suggest they find a better place to continue the exploration. She’d learned about the man before her, but she still didn’t know him.
And she desperately wanted to.
He drew in a breath. “I should go.”
That statement smacked her in the face as effectively as a winter downpour. “What do you mean? Go back to London?”
“No, but I should do that, too.”
“You…You can’t. You’re not finished here yet.”
“I’m not, no. Not with the job.” His tone had taken on an officious detachment that she despised. “But I think it’s best all round if I avoid the party guests in the future.”
Blast it, she was a member of the party, in a real sense. He meant her, too.
“I will report in when necessary, but we will conduct our business in proper form—in the public rooms of this house.”
Chapter 13
The bloody corridor was endless, but that was a good thing, Dysart mused as he strode down the passage. If he didn’t place some distance between himself and the duke’s chambers—between himself and Lady Elizabeth—he’d march back into that blasted sitting room and finish what they’d started.
To hell with the lady’s father in the next chamber. To hell with the fact that she was a lady and he was hardly a gentleman. God, she’d melted in his embrace, as soft and pliant as the finest silk. So sweetly responsive. He’d never known the like.
His groin still ached with frustrated desire, although he ought to be used to that state after his marriage to Sally. Other men would call him mad if they knew he’d taken a wife in the full realization he could never avail himself of the haven her body provided.
And he hadn’t. In eight years, he’d never demanded anything of his marriage bed. True, he hadn’t been a monk, exactly, either, but the number of interested women he deemed clean enough to take to his bed were few and far between at his adopted level of society. The last thing he’d wanted was to trade an hour’s fleeting pleasure for the French pox.
But Lady Elizabeth is different.
Damn that niggling little voice, tempting him to turn back. Because he knew that voice was right. Due to his marriage, he’d gone out of his way to avoid romantic entanglements, but one had seemingly found him.
Elizabeth aroused in him the same sort of protective streak Sally had, but the feeling this time went far deeper. Sally had been a stranger to him when they married and her experience with Pendleton had given her a healthy mistrust of the masculine gender. She’d been doomed to maintain a wall of reserve against the world, which included Dysart himself, even if, in his youthful desire to right a wrong, he’d acted as her savior.
But Elizabeth—even after such a short acquaintance, he felt he’d learned more about her than he ever knew of Sally. The carriage ride to Suffolk had taken hours rather than the days required to reach the Scottish border, and yet even the few words he and Elizabeth had exchanged accounted for more conversation than had transpired with Sally. He’d fully expected Elizabeth to behave like the spoiled little misses he’d encountered in his youth, and yet all that leapt to mind when he thought of her was her natural ease as a hostess, seeing to all her guests and taking care of the crises in the kitchen with a level head.
Her cool competence reached out and touched something in his mind the same way her body called to his.
She was going to make some titled blue blood a damned perfect wife. The bloody bastard.
And that was the reason Dysart needed to stay away from her. Whatever family he’d been born to, he was no longer part of that world. His choice. He’d walked away and did not regret it when he saw a man like Pendleton accepted. Any association Elizabeth developed with Dysart would only drag her down. Soon enough, he’d return to Bow Street, and when she came to Mayfair with the fashionable next social Season, their worlds would remain separate.
Once he’d finished this case, he’d never meet her again. If some strange chance saw them pass each other in the street, there would be no acknowledgment. That alone was reason to leave her untouched, no matter how his body demanded fulfillment.
Yet he still turned to stare down the corridor at the door that stood between them—willing it to disappear.
A flutter of movement at the far end of the passage scattered his thoughts. Sodding hell. Shrouded by the late evening shadows, a figure was edging along one wall. Not a female, either, to judge by height and dress. Sneaking, and not just anywhere. The interloper was making his way toward the duke’s chambers.
“You there.” Dysart moved to intercept. “What are you about?”
The figure halted in his tracks. Closer to, a face solidified out of the gloom. Snowley. What the devil was he doing here this time of night? He might be after either the duke or Elizabeth—but that would mean he was aware of Elizabeth’s chosen sleeping arrangements. That thought did nothing for Dysart’s temper.
Eyes narrowed, Snowley raised his chin. “I might ask you the same thing.”
“No one gets in to see his grace without my permission.” Lord, Dysart sounded as imperious and disdainful as the king’s own butler confronted with a lowly street urchin. “Owing to the lateness of the hour, you’d best wait until morning. The man is too ill to be disturbed.”
“Did someone hire you on staff and neglect to inform me?” If Snowley wished to earn the title of most contemptuous, he was doing a splendid job. “I cannot fathom any other reason for your presence or taking that tone.”
Dysart placed himself squarely between the other man and the entrance to the duke’s apartments. “
Lady Elizabeth may have hired me, for all you know. Either way, I’m not about to let you by.”
Snowley went dangerously still.
Dysart hadn’t reckoned the man for a brawler, but in this moment, doubt crept in. He flexed his fingers. A fight to start the day, a fight to close it. He might even take pleasure in smashing his fist through Snowley’s face, if only to burn off some of this excess frustration.
“You know what they’re saying about you?” The question may have sounded nearly innocent, but an edge crept into Snowley’s tone.
“Oh, are you going to trade on-dits with me? Shall I ring for tea and we can be all civilized like a pair of old ladies?” Provocative, perhaps, but now that Snowley had put him in the mind to fight, he might as well enjoy it.
“What does someone like you know of civilized behavior? Pendleton told me a very interesting story this evening. Turned out of your own family, and they will not have you back. No one in polite society will receive you.”
“Is that a fact?” Dysart crossed his arms over his chest. “Funny how his grace asked me to this house party, then, isn’t it?”
“Pendleton says you have a taste for the maids, the younger the better.”
“That’s rather rich coming from him.”
“And we won’t get into your predilection for the stable boys.”
Dysart choked back a bark of laughter. Was that the best Pendleton could do? “Why should I care what Marcus Pendleton says about me?”
“Because of Lizzie.”
Lizzie. The familiarity hit him like a knife to the gut. “What has Lady Elizabeth got to do with any of this?”
“Let’s make matters perfectly clear. I am going marry her. She just needs a little convincing.”
Convincing. This time the knife struck home and twisted. The hairs at the nape of Dysart’s neck stood on end. If Snowley modeled himself after Pendleton in any manner when it came to dealing with women…No, Dysart couldn’t allow himself to complete that thought.
To Lure a Proper Lady Page 12