Too Dangerous to Desire

by Cara Elliott

  She snorted into her sherry. “Don’t ye ever worry about Bow Street Runners?”

  “Good God, those plodding oafs?” The knots unraveled, and the wrappings loosened. “If I can’t stay several steps ahead of their hob-nailed pursuit I deserve to end my days in Newgate prison.”

  “I hope yer feet stay as light as yer fingers. I’d miss yer company.”

  “I’m exceedingly…” His words trailed off as the inner paper fell away, revealing a pair of teardrop-shaped pearl earrings. The settings were a classically simple design made of flame-kissed gold, each one highlighted by a faceted emerald. They were elegant, understated—and undeniably familiar.

  His throat tightened. The jewelry had belonged to Sophie’s mother, and was the one possession of any value that had been passed down to her eldest daughter.

  Lost in a frown, Cameron continued to stare in mute consternation. He knew that for Sophie, the sentimental value of the earrings had always been worth far more than money. He couldn’t imagine her ever parting with them willingly. This meant…

  Trouble, hissed the most vociferous of his Inner Demons. But that’s no surprise—Sophie Lawrance has always been Trouble.

  Curious, Sara rose and came over to see what had silenced their bantering. “Oooo, ain’t they nice.” Lamplight dipped and danced over the perfectly matched pearls. Slanting a sidelong look at his expression, she hesitated and then added, “What? Decided ye don’t like them?”

  He slowly turned the earrings over in his palm, setting off a winking of dark and light sparks as the jewels caught the light from a nearby candle. They sparkled with an unusual smoky green color, just as he remembered them.

  “Actually they’re a good match for yer eyes,” said Sara appraisingly. “Why don’t ye keep the pair fer yourself rather than sell them to a flash house?”

  Cameron roused himself to speech. “I only have one pierced ear, and two would be rather de trop, even for me.” He slowly closed his fingers around the earrings. The pearls were cool to the touch and yet they burned like hellfire against his flesh.

  Don’t, he told himself. Don’t stir up embers from the past.

  “Well, if they are for sale, maybe I’ll consider buying them. I don’t much care for flashy baubles, but those have a rare inner fire.”

  “I haven’t decided.” He began rewrapping the jewels. “Kindly pour me another drink. This one you may put on my account.”

  “Not that ye ever pay it.” Sara huffed out an aggrieved sigh but picked up his empty glass and moved to the sideboard.

  Muted clinking punctuated a papery whisper as Cameron slowly unfolded the note that had been tucked in with the earrings. There were only a few lines, lettered in Sophie’s neat script. He read them over several times, and felt a pensive frown pull at his mouth. The message itself made little sense, but the tone was clear enough.

  Something havey-cavey was afoot.

  Which is all the more reason to run like the Devil, jeered the Inner Demon. Sophie Lawrance chose to turn her back and walk away from you years ago. Whatever Trouble she is in, it’s none of your concern.

  Shifting his stance on the carpet, Cameron told himself the Demon was right. It would be foolish to stray from his chosen path. He had taught himself to be a solitary, stalking predator—a hardbitten Hellhound who cared for naught but his own survival. Through bitter experience, he had learned how to outrun the past, moving swiftly and leaving only a quicksilver blur of shadows.

  So yes, I should run like the Devil. I’ve come too far to stumble now.

  Fisting the paper, Cameron shoved it back in his pocket.

  “Here ye go. But the next time, yer getting cheap claret.” Sara paused, drink in hand, and cocked an ear as the echo of an outraged shout drifted down from the gaming rooms. It was followed a moment later by the pelter of hurried footsteps in the corridor.

  “Sorry te disturb ye, Miss Sara.” Rufus, the big mulatto head porter, stuck his dark head through the doorway. “But Lord Dudley is cutting up something fierce.” A flicker of his chocolate brown gaze was the only acknowledgment of Cameron’s presence. “He claims someone stole a package of valuables from his pocket.”

  She swore. “I’ll come sort him out. The pompous prig probably dropped it at one of his many other haunts.” Her harried sigh ended with a word no gently bred lady would know. “Ye better go back and keep him from kicking the faro table to flinders. I’ll be along in a tic.”

  “On second thought, never mind about the drink. Seeing as you are busy, I’ll let myself out.” Cameron turned up the collar of his coat as Rufus rushed away. “Dudley ought to be more careful with his possessions.”

  Sara gave him a fishy stare before pouring the brandy back into the decanter. “Aye, the stews are a dangerous place. Ye never know when a beast is going to leap out of the shadows and bite ye where it hurts.”

  “How true.”

  “Hmmph.” The empty glass scuffed softly against the silver tray. “And yet, it seems a rather odd coincidence that an agitated young lady requested a clandestine meeting with Lord Dudley earlier this evening, and now he’s had his pocket picked of a valuable.”

  Their eyes met.

  “Life is full of serendipitous occurrences,” said Cameron, maintaining a bland expression. “That’s what makes it tolerably interesting.”

  Sara refused to be distracted by the quip. “I can’t help but wonder…” Tapping a finger to her chin, she fixed him with a searching stare. “Ye had a very odd sort of look on yer face when ye were looking at the earrings. Call it what you will, but I had one of those argy-bargy feelings in my gut…”

  “Female intuition?” he drawled.

  “Aye. And it made me wonder whether for some serendipitous reason, you have decided to become the lady’s knight in shining armor?”

  “God perish the thought. You know me better than that.”

  “Ha!” she scoffed. “The truth is, I don’t really know ye at all. Even to them who should know ye best, ye are a mystery, a…conundrum. Why, Haddan, one of yer closest friends, says that as far as he knows, ye emerged like a puff of smoke from some brass lamp in a fancy foreign fairy tale.”

  “Poof.” With a sardonic laugh, Cameron fluttered his hands, setting ghostly gray flickers scudding across the wainscoting.

  “Who the devil are you?”

  A nameless longing rose up in his throat. He turned away, masking his momentary weakness in the shadows. “I’m just a friend, Sara. Let’s leave it at that. There are certain secrets that are best left buried in the past.”

  No wonder pirates are counted among the most dangerous creatures roaming the face of the Earth.

  Sophie touched her plundered lips, her fingers blessedly cool against the still-burning flesh. A kiss. Dear Lord, it had been so long since she had been kissed that the sensation of liquid fire sizzling through her blood had left her feeling thoroughly singed.

  In an instant, crimson flames and the smell of sulfurous brimstone would probably fill the carriage, she thought. To remind her that devilish desires were evil.

  The carriage lurched as it turned off the bridge and headed for the more genteel surroundings of her uncle and aunt’s neighborhood near Red Lion Square. “And yet,” she murmured, daring to say it aloud, “for an instant I wished he would sweep me up and carry me away to sail the wild, wanton seas.”

  Clouds now hid the sliver of moon and the stars. Sophie was grateful, not only for the cover of darkness to creep into the scullery door unobserved, but also for the black panes of glass that swallowed any reflection of her wicked wishes. It was dangerous—and foolish—to long for what could never be.

  After all, she was prim, prudent, practical Sophie Lawrance. The hard-edged words bounced against her brain as the wheels clattered over the cobblestones. She may once have indulged in a streak of wildness, but that was long, long ago. She couldn’t afford to find danger alluring.

  I must be the glue that holds my family together, Sophie thought to he
rself. Pressing the Pirate’s scented handkerchief to her cheek, she blinked back tears. No matter that my own heart was left cracked in a thousand little pieces when I made that long-ago decision to let Reason overrule Love.

  There had been no real choice. Her father had been too ill, and the young man had been too wild. Too volatile, too impetuous. And he had proved it by abandoning her without so much as a word of good-bye. Oh, that had hurt…

  Rain began to patter against the hackney window, and for a moment she was tempted to give in to self-pity. But after a few watery sniffs, the spicy cologne seemed to seep and swirl through her limbs, giving her the strength to shake off such bleak thoughts. Leaning back, she squared her shoulders against the lumpy squabs.

  The past was the past, and the present held a far more pressing problem. There had to be a way to keep Lord Dudley from destroying her family, and she vowed to herself that she would find it.

  “I will not give in to despair.” The words sounded very brave and defiant when said aloud. But as the minutes spun by and no brilliant idea came leaping to mind, they began to ring a bit hollow.

  After all, how could she fight back? She was naught but a country clergyman’s daughter. And he was…

  A snake. A slithering serpent, a venomous viper—though that was maligning the reptiles.

  An ugly description, but blackmail was an ugly, ugly business.

  Her first acquaintance with the viscount had occurred a little over six months ago at the local Assemblies near her home in Norfolk. He and his friend, the Honorable Frederick Morton, had been staying with the imperious Marquess of Wolcott, whose vast estate abutted her family’s modest lands. And while the lord of the manor was far too high in the instep to ever rub shoulders with the country gentry, Dudley and Morton had come, though for the first hour they merely stared and did not join the dancing.

  Then, strangely enough, Dudley had asked for her hand in a country gavotte, even though she had been sitting in her usual place with the other spinsters and matrons, keeping a watchful eye on the younger, high-spirited girls.

  From the first touch of his hand, she had found him repellent. There was something cold-blooded about his smile, and his eyes had a reptilian flatness that sent shivers down her spine.

  And her instincts had been right. Sophie felt her chest constrict. Oh yes, she had known he was evil—she just didn’t guess how evil.

  Dudley’s blackmail notes had started a fortnight later. The demands had been small at first, and she had managed to cobble together payments by giving a few extra music lessons. However they had quickly escalated. Her jaw tightened. The earrings would buy a bit of respite. But after that, she had nothing left to offer. No more money, no more jewelry. No more excuses.

  I’ll think of something before then, thought Sophie, trying to put some force behind the assertion.

  The hackney came to a jolting halt, saving her from further brooding. Drawing up the hood of her cloak, she slipped out the door and darted into the alleyway, praying that none of the neighbors would notice a flitting shadow stir the darker shades of night.

  The carefully oiled scullery door opened with nary a squeak and Sophie quickly made her way up the back stairs to her bedchamber overlooking the tiny garden.

  “Thank God for small favors,” she muttered under her breath, shaking the mizzle from her cloak and hanging it inside the painted armoire. However, her relief at having her absence go undetected was punctured in the next instant by a whisper from the drapery-shrouded window seat.

  “Where the devil have you been?”

  Damnation. Swearing a silent oath, Sophie carefully removed her veiling and bonnet before turning around. “Don’t say ‘devil,’ Georgie. It’s not acceptable language for a proper young lady.”

  Georgiana retorted with a far worse word.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are a clergyman’s daughter,” scolded Sophie, mustering her sternest older-sister voice.

  “So are you,” pointed out Georgiana. “And I daresay that sneaking off for a secret midnight tryst in the Capital of Sin is a much more serious transgression than taking the Devil’s name in vain.”

  “I may have to start keeping a closer eye on your reading material,” replied Sophie tartly. “It appears that Lady Vere is right in warning me that horrid novels stimulate the wrong sort of thoughts in impressionable young females.”

  “You are trying to change the subject.”

  For all her tender years, Georgiana was sharp as a tack. That fact was usually very welcome, but at the present moment it was proving decidedly uncomfortable.

  Lighting a candle, Sophie carried it to her dressing table.

  “If you weren’t trysting, then what were you doing out at this hour?” pressed her sister.

  The soft ping of hairpins dropping upon the wooden top seemed to amplify the ensuing silence.

  “By the by,” added Georgiana after waiting through several more pings. “It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if you were trysting. You’ve spent most of your life shouldering all the responsibilities for our family. Once in a while, you ought to cut loose and kick up your heels, even if it means sneaking a few forbidden pleasures, before…before…”

  “Before I turn into a dried-up old spinster?” Sophie gave a tight smile. “I’m on the shelf, Georgie, with my heels primly tucked under my skirts.” Picking up a hairbrush, she set to work on her unruly curls. “My days of indulging in anything forbidden are far in the past.”

  “You make yourself sound as aged as Methuselah,” grumbled her sister. “Twenty-seven is not so very old.”

  Despite her worries, Sophie let out a wry laugh. “That’s exceedingly kind of you, for I know that to someone who is only seventeen, it must appear positively ancient.”

  “Not at all. You are quite well preserved. I only have to dust the cobwebs off you once or twice a week.”

  Their gazes met for a moment in the hazy glimmer of the looking glass before Sophie dropped her eyes.

  “Please look at me,” said Georgiana.

  Sophie reluctantly turned around in her chair.

  “You may still see me as a scrubby schoolgirl, but I’m not a child anymore.” To emphasize the assertion, Georgiana rose from the window seat, the hazy moonlight outlining her slim, long-legged height and womanly curves. “In case you have forgotten, I’m engaged to be married.”

  Oh, be assured it has not slipped my mind. Lord Dudley’s threats were a constant reminder of how her sister’s future happiness depended on someone being brave and resourceful enough to fight back and find a way to beat him and his friend Morton, who, she had been told, was a partner in the blackmail scheme. And that someone has to be me.

  “Anthony thinks me mature enough to share in his doubts as well as his dreams. I wish you would give me the same credit,” went on Georgiana softly. “You have been acting oddly ever since we arrived here in London. And it’s clear that something is amiss. Why won’t you let me help?”

  “I…I can’t.” Anthony Wilder, a cornet in the Blues regiment of the Horse Guards, was the son of a baron who possessed a large estate in Oxfordshire. His family felt the match was beneath him, but the young man had prevailed and won their reluctant consent. However, the slightest whiff of scandal would no doubt change that in a heartbeat. “Don’t ask me why.”

  Georgiana scowled and her left brow angled up to a martial tilt.

  It was the Be-Forewarned-This-Battle-Is-Just-Beginning look. And that it so rarely appeared caused another spasm of anxiety to clench at Sophie’s chest. Normally the very paragon of sweet temper and good sense, Georgiana could be frightfully stubborn—not to speak of unselfishly brave—when her passions were aroused. If she knew of the blackmail threat, she would demand to join the fight to counter it, even if it meant sacrificing her own future.

  And that must not—could not—be allowed to happen. Sophie knew that her best hope of seeing Georgiana happily married was to deal with the trouble quietly and discreetly on
her own.

  Her sister finally broke the silent clash of stares with a huffed grumble. “You are wearing that odious Don’t-Argue-Because-I-Am-Your-Older-Sister-And-Know-Best look.”

  “I am your older sister, and in this case I do know best,” replied Sophie. To soften the rebuff she added, “I promise that I will explain it when I can.” It wasn’t really a lie, merely a subterfuge. “But in the meantime, I am asking you to trust me.”

  The candle flame flickered as Georgiana released a long exhale. “Very well. For now, that is.”

  Yet another danger dodged, thought Sophie wryly. If I were a cat, my nine lives would likely have been used up by this evening’s adventures.

  “Did you enjoy Mrs. Hartwell’s recital?” she asked quickly, grateful for a chance to move on to a safer subject. Georgiana was very fond of music and played the pianoforte with great skill.

  “Yes, it was quite nice. Her daughter Marianne has a beautiful voice and we performed a number of duets, including a number of Aunt Hermione’s favorite Scottish ballads.”

  “It sounds like it was a lovely evening,” murmured Sophie.

  “Perhaps next time you will not be struck with a beastly headache that requires the absolute peace and quiet of your darkened bedchamber,” said her sister dryly.

  “Georgie, you need not hammer home the point.”

  “Oh, very well. I shall cry pax.” Georgiana was too good-natured to stay aggrieved for more than a fleeting moment. “But you must promise me that you won’t cry off from the outing on Thursday evening. Uncle Edward has purchased tickets for all of us to attend a concert at Vauxhall Gardens.”

  “Vauxhall?” The place was a renowned pleasure garden, drawing people from all walks of life—which was part of its allure. They came dine, to mingle, to stroll, and to savor the aura of adventure that skirled through the dark leaves.

  “Yes, isn’t that exciting? We shall dine on the famous shaved ham in one of the special supper boxes while listening to Italian arias. And then, we shall have time to explore the pathways and pavilions before watching a display of fireworks light up the heavens!”