by Stacy Reid
Earlier, Nicolas discovered he quite enjoyed playing the rake with her, delighting in her quick wit and replies to his banter. He had found himself wanting to know so much more about her than the snippets gleaned whenever he stole into her chambers, and the desire had flummoxed him.
But tonight, when she smiled up at him, Nicolas felt like he was given the key to a secret kingdom—he only had to reach for her and everything he’d never known was missing from his life revealed itself. Through Maryann.
All that from a damn smile.
But to be so provocatively carnal in his thoughts toward the lady would not do.
Run. It makes no difference, he’d taunted, desperate to drag her into his arms and ravish that delightful mouth.
It was that feeling of desperation that had allowed him to draw back on the impulse and allowed the fires of passion stirring to life to die an unceremonious death. The only thing he should be desperate to do was complete his retribution.
Only that.
The viscountess arched a brow in affected dismay. “You are distracted.”
“I was never engaged.”
She pouted. “Are you minded to be disagreeable?”
His gaze cut to Lady Maryann before he controlled the impulse.
A curiously thoughtful expression settled on her face. “How astonishing…you are attracted to the mouse,” she said with feigned amusement. “I had thought it so odd you would dance with such a wallflower.”
A mouse. If they only knew the fire that rested below the facade Lady Maryann showed the world. Perhaps they did know, which was why they hurried to give her the sobriquet of wallflower, hoping it would dim her piquant prettiness and vivacity.
Tonight, she presented a lovely picture, with her lustrous hair piled on her head, exposing the graceful curve of her neck, with curls kissing along her forehead. Her slender, willowy build was draped in an elegant dress of cerulean blue. The off-the-shoulder bodice revealed Maryann’s unblemished shoulders, accentuating the fullness of her bosom and slenderness of her waist. Her prettiness was sublime. And one had to be blind to miss it.
“Spitefulness does not become you, Viscountess,” he drawled.
Outrage flared in her eyes, and her lips flattened.
“Keep your claws away from the lady.”
She sniffed, an air of offended dignity settling about her. He almost laughed at the hypocrisy.
“And if I do not?” the viscountess said tightly.
“My retaliation will be felt for years to come.”
Shock bloomed in her eyes, and he cursed himself silently and virulently. He allowed a carnal smile to curve his mouth and the viscountess flushed, her eyes darkening. “When I am done with her, then you can do what you will.”
“Oh, you are very wicked. She is an innocent or isn’t she?” The viscountess leaned in. “Whatever happened when you climbed into her chamber?”
“Are the rest of us to be privy to the conversation?” David asked archly in a timely intervention.
The conversation continued to flow at his end of the table, and he tried his absolute best not to allow his gaze to linger on her. Her vibrancy, her lush prettiness, that heart-bewitching smile seemed diminished. Or perhaps contained. She pushed back her chair and offered a small smile to their hostess at the end of the long table.
The viscountess said something to him that he missed, for Lady Maryann leaving the table snagged his awareness. Though Nicolas stared at David, he was very conscious of her walking past his chair and heading in the direction of the ballroom.
It was strange that he could not rid himself of the aching, perplexing desire to want to know her. Earlier in the shadows of the gardens, he had felt different, that the darkness that clung to him, the hatred that blackened his heart had vanished. It had been replaced with something unknown, but it felt warm and curious.
With every word they exchanged in conversation, something in him shifted, reshaped, and whatever that was, it surged to life whenever he spied her. He felt it in his heartbeat, that brief, alarming way it would stutter at his first sight of her before settling in a normal rhythm.
It made no sense to Nicolas. What was it about her? Certainly, she was very clever and amusing, with a wit and fierceness that bordered on scandalous. He liked that about her. That didn’t warrant his current preoccupation.
He excused himself several minutes later and made his way outside into the gardens, where he had a perfect view of the inside of the ballroom. She wasn’t there. Footsteps sounded behind him, and he did not have to turn to know it was David.
“Let it go,” his friend said, coming to a halt beside him.
Nicolas allowed his lips to curve in a humorless smile. “I am at a loss as to what you refer.”
“You left shortly after Lady Maryann,” David said mildly.
“You mistake the matter; I simply needed fresh air.”
David cocked an eyebrow. “For years I’ve lamented your brooding inscrutability, and just now I could tell that you were chasing after her. I do not understand it.”
Neither do I. But Nicolas did not give a voice to those sentiments.
David offered him a cheroot, which he took. “Did you not just meet her? Or is there more to the story you are not telling me? Is she a past acquaintance?”
“She really is nothing to me. You are giving more thought to it than what is warranted. I feel regret for embarrassing a lady tonight, nothing more.”
David sighed. “I understand why you did it. Anyone at that table could see the hurt in her eyes. If you cared about her, you would not have put it there. The enemy, if they were watching, will think she is nothing to you. And she should be nothing to you.”
He regarded his friend with interest. “I give her no importance. I am curious to why you are doing so.”
“Then why are you searching the ballroom for her?”
“Do not presume to know my thoughts.” It shocked Nicolas to even think he could be obvious in his reactions. He had spent so many years mastering his emotions to be the finest actor the ton had ever seen.
“I am heading to White’s; do you accompany me? There are several wagers I want to take part in. Farringdon and Beswick will meet us there.”
He clapped David on the shoulder. “Another time. I have business to attend.”
And that business included the very “friends” David mentioned. Instead of calling for the carriage he traveled in, Nicolas made his way on foot until he spied a hackney, which he hailed. Hopping into the coach, he ordered the coachman to take him to the edge of Covent Gardens, where he would meet Rhys Tremayne, Viscount Montrose, the man the underworld knew as the Broker.
Montrose was a decent sort, even if he kept away from the underworld more often of late, since he married his young and very ravishing duchess. The man had been lucky in love, and Nicolas astonished himself a few times by feeling envy at the man’s state of contentment.
Hazel eyes, a really poor description for Lady Maryann’s lovely eyes of brown flecked with vibrant green swam in his thoughts. They didn’t glow with mischief and daring but with hurt. It confounded him that it mattered that he had wounded her. He should not care, since he made no allowance for anything outside of his current purpose. Nicolas had been extraordinarily selfish in his desire for vengeance. Even his father he had distanced himself from for a number of years until he had fallen ill. Only then had he returned to his side, hoping to mend the hurt of the past.
“She is nothing but a lightskirt, a thing for your amusement. What does it matter that a few gentlemen took their pleasure with her?”
He loathed that those words from his father, which had been a mild rebuke in a tone of amusement, had been interred in his memory. His father’s blithe dismal of the rage he felt for the atrocity visited upon Arianna always lingered under the hardened surface of his heart. When he’d
discovered her death and what led to it, the person Nicolas went to had been his father. And the man he admired most in the world for his honor had dismissed the facts that she had been cruelly used.
His father’s honor only extended to those of similar ilk—aristocratic families. Miss Arianna Burges had been the daughter of servants. Insignificant. Even the magistrate had lost his interest in the case after he discovered her origins. The man had put on a show, but Nicolas had named those he suspected, and the man hadn’t the balls to question the sons of earls and dukes.
Nicolas had then met with those in Bow Street himself, demanding justice for her. There had been none to be had. No one was willing to ruffle the feathers of such powerful men and their families. Not even the law.
He’d had a terrible row with his father when Nicolas’s persistence had been discovered.
“Do you wish to humiliate and antagonize powerful men for that bit of a lightskirt?” his father had roared, angered enough to draw a rapier and point the tip against his son’s chest. “Do you wish to embroil some of the most prominent families in a scandal, compromise the reputation and personal liberties of their sons? I am ashamed of you!”
He had stared at his father’s heaving chest for several moments and had quietly said, “I am ashamed you are my father.”
The very next day he had run to Paris and drowned his sorrows in drink, a steady, reckless hate growing in his heart. There he had lived through the revolution, the terrors of the Committee of Public Safety and the horrors of Emperor Napoleon’s bid to conquer Europe. He had fought precisely six duels, all defending women who had no one to right the wrongs done to them, until he had been compelled to return to England with one thought driving him. Arianna’s pain and death would not be in vain, while those responsible laughed and made merry as if they had not stolen something precious.
The hackney rumbled to a stop, and he alighted into a crowd of people in the streets heading to the entrance of the gardens. He spied the large frame of Montrose hovering in the shadows, almost unrecognizable unless a man was used to seeking danger when it was not obviously presented.
Nicolas made his way over to his friend and stood beside him.
“Farringdon holds scandals and secrets on many in society. He uses the information to shamelessly bribe and blackmail those he wants under his power. He even has a file on Viscount Weychell.”
That surprised Nicolas. The two were thick as thieves, their debauchery and dishonor a shared affinity.
Viscount Weychell— Blond hair and blue eyes with a scar splitting his lower lip. He laughed through my screams, tis a sound I shall remember on my way to hell, for I am no longer worthy of heaven.
This man was almost within Nicolas’s grasp. He had enough to embarrass him, perhaps, but he wanted the icing that would let the man feel his punishment for years to come.
“Farringdon…” The dragon wings spread wide, a rose of coronet upon its head…how merciless this dragon was, tempting me with chances of escape only to catch me again when I tasted freedom.
He ignored the haunting whisper of Arianna’s voice and said, “The Duke is suspicious of me.”
“It wasn’t he who asked me about your secrets,” the Broker murmured.
The duke was indolent and spendthrift, and the dragon in Arianna’s letter. Farringdon shamelessly importuned on his late father’s connections, which had made him a powerful man in his own right. He had genuinely believed him to be the one questioning Nicolas’s motives in their lives. “Viscount Weychell?”
“No.”
Rhys had a reputation of protecting anyone who came to him to trade information. Though he and Nicolas had been friends for some years, Rhys would not betray any link within his network.
“That is interesting,” Nicolas said. “Someone else has placed themselves on my board. Someone I did not account for.”
“Be careful, my friend.”
A warning. Disquiet sat heavy in his gut and with a jolt, he realized it was not for himself. “You believe this person is dangerous to me.”
“Very.”
“That means he is powerful. Even more so than I?”
Rhys sent him a chiding look, and Nicolas opened his arms wide as if to imply the query was innocent. But the knot in his gut drew even tighter. Whoever wanted to know his weakness was connected and powerful.
Who have I offended?
“What must I know about Weychell?” Nicolas asked, driving to the heart of why he had met Rhys. Nicolas had paid handsomely for the underworld to be on the lookout for anything in regard to the men he would bring down.
“There are whispers he might be leaving England soon and may not return for some time.”
Bloody hell. “Is it a certainty?”
“It is just a whisper.”
The fact that it existed was cause for worry, though. “Thank you, Montrose.”
“Our word is our business,” Rhys murmured calmly.
They shook hands, and Nicolas walked away. He needed to move a bit faster. It was important that he procured whatever Farringdon had on Weychell. Montrose would not sell the information to more than one buyer—honor among blackguards and devils.
“If she is important, cast a net around her,” Montrose said, some distance away.
Ice formed in Nicolas’s veins, and he faltered into stillness. “If who is important?” he asked with dangerous restraint.
Rhys’s chuckle was filled with mocking amusement.
“You stopped, my friend…you stopped.”
And Nicolas supposed the theory was that if the lady were insignificant, he would have kept walking. “You are a friend…aren’t you?” Nicolas drawled, unable to do anything about the dark throb of warning in his voice.
“Definitely a friend,” Rhys said, coming up beside him. “And I will keep it in mind that she means something to you.”
“She does not,” he said flatly. “I barely know the chit.”
His friend melted away in the dark, his low, mocking laugh lingering in the air.
It was Rhys’s turn to stop when Nicolas asked, “Did he ask you about her?”
He closed his eyes, hating the fact that he asked, for it confirmed a belief that he himself did not understand.
He…the shadow that might prove to be Nicolas’s most dangerous adversary in the long game he played.
Rhys did not answer for several moments, then he replied, “He was most interested.”
The shadows swallowed him, and Nicolas took a deep breath to calm the sudden pounding of his heart.
You little fool, how recklessly you linked our fates and I danced with you tonight.
He took a hackney from Covent Garden to Berkeley Square and exited the equipage a few houses down from her home. Gripping his cane, he made his way in the shadows of the gas lamp of her home. He waited a few beats before crossing the streets and climbing over the side gate, walking with careful stealth around to the gardens that faced her windows. Standing there, he peered up. There was a light in her room, and she sat at the open windows, her chin resting on her drawn-up knees, staring out into the night.
Her glorious hair was unbound, a few long curls waving in the gentle wind. She looked wildly desirable and forlorn. Nicolas stared at her, perfectly hidden in the dark of her gardens. He was almost tempted to climb the trellis to her small balcony. Would she scream? Slap him?
No, she would be dignified in her hurt. He blew out a low breath. How presumptuous of him to even dare think his remark had been enough to cause her injury. Lady Maryann had exerted no effort to captivate him, yet he was unwillingly entranced.
“I know you are there,” she said so softly, he wondered if he imagined it.
How had she known? Was it the same for her, that her skin burned with awareness at their proximity? Nonsense, but deep inside, something purred. The need stirring to li
fe felt unusual, foreign, and it shook him to the core. It made no earthly sense that his resistance to her allure was so fragile.
He was not a man to be entangled with matters of the heart or of the flesh. He’d only taken four lovers in the years he’d spent abroad, all Parisian actresses, and only a few since he returned to England. Each connection had been a momentary burst of pleasure; all had been easily obtained and relinquished with greater ease. He had formed no attachment, and he hungered for none. His mistress these last two years had been a deeper dive into vengeance, understanding its complexity and becoming the man it required.
Building a reputation such as he had did not happened overnight, but by layer of deceptive layer infused with a healthy dollop of cunning.
His heart jolted, and with a sense of shock, he realized he’d not taken a lover in about six months, and whom Nicolas truly couldn’t remember. All the debauchery done in the most exclusive whorehouse to bestow him the moniker “the daring and the wicked” had been a part of his machinations. Those women had been paid handsomely to ignore him as he paced their boudoir and mentally calculated his next steps. Only when his need had been great did he tumble with one into true debauchery that would last the evening.
“Why did you come?”
“Did I place that wounded look in your eyes?”
She lowered her gaze briefly, and he detected the gentle shudder as it worked through her slender frame. She looked so young and innocent, her lashes long and thick against her pale skin. Her eyes opened, and a faint hauteur settled on her face. “How arrogant to think you would have such power,” she said with a smile of disdain.
That curve of her mouth was meant to mock, but the irresistible pull of its latent sensuality had his breath hitching in his throat. The part of him that he had silenced in his drive for vengeance stirred and stretched.
“I am sorry,” he said gruffly, unable to offer anything else. “I am so damned sorry.”
Chapter Eleven
Maryann inhaled at the flutter of warm sensations that erupted in her stomach and her heartbeat quickened uncomfortably. A dart of awareness prickled along her skin, as if she had summoned the devil who tormented her thoughts. It was inexplicable, but she had known he lingered in the dark. She had felt him in the sudden throbbing of her pulse, in that warm, unexplained ache low in her belly.