Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 03]

by One NightWith a Spy

“You’re very narrow,” he whispered. “Are you all right?”

  She held him harder, not wishing him to see the tears that ran down the sides of her face. She was not generally a weeper. The tears surprised and dismayed her, and she was afraid what he would think if he saw them.

  The problem was—and it was a problem in truth—that the moment he’d come to rest inside her, she’d known.

  She was in love with Marcus Blythe-Goodman. Not simple, uncomplicated lust, not “isn’t he handsome I want him as my lover” desire, not simple admiration for his finer qualities, but love.

  It ached. It burned. It made her want to throw everything she’d ever wanted away with one careless wave, just to sink into his skin and disappear forever.

  It slid away logic and good sense as wave after wave of impossible fantasies ensued of life with Marcus. Fat, green-eyed babies playing on the lawns of Barrowby. Sharing a single wide bed until they grew old and gray together. Living a long and happy life as ordinary Mrs. Blythe-Goodman—

  The Fox was far away. She felt it slipping from her grip, for her hands were full of Marcus.

  The most alarming thing about all this was that she was not alarmed at all. That frightened her deeply, but not enough to let go of the man she clung to so tightly.

  Then he began to move inside her and she forgot to think at all.

  With every stroke, the pleasure increased, rippling from her center to run glittering through her veins. “Oh!” She had never—in all her wildest imaginings—it was—

  Beyond speech, beyond thought, she could only hold on as each deep thrust sent her higher and deeper within herself. She was dimly aware of her own sharp cries, but cared nothing for the danger of discovery. She was nothing but a ball of quivering response, held in the hands of a man who knew precisely how to touch her.

  Her passion stunned him. She gave herself over to him so trustingly. If Marcus had been a better man, he would have walked away. If he had been a saint, perhaps, for what man could leave such a woman? She was all giving response and wordless passion. He’d never experienced making love to someone so free and unquestioning. Her cries of innocent discovery shattered his heart even as they drove his own passion higher. She was his tonight, no matter what. Tonight, she held nothing back from the traitor in her bed.

  He wrapped his hands over her shoulders and drove deeper still, just to make her eyes roll back and her cries come anew. Her trust made him want to cherish her, to keep her safe—yet it also made him want to press her farther, demand more, extort more wicked acts for both their satisfaction.

  “I want you to take me in your mouth,” he told her huskily as he drove her to madness.

  “Y-yes,” she gasped.

  “I want to take you like a stallion takes a mare.”

  “Yes! Oh, please—yes!”

  “I want to take you in the lake.”

  She fell apart beneath him, shaking and clinging and crying out wildly. Her tremors grabbed his own passion by the neck and threw him over the cliff. He cried out sharply as he lost himself in her in the most profoundly intense orgasm of his life.

  Somewhere, in the back of his mind, alarm bells rang.

  Then thought slid away as he spent himself into her quivering, throbbing body and threw himself to her side.

  She turned wearily into him, throwing her thigh over his hip to keep his fading erection within her. Marcus tugged her closer, wrapped her safely in his arms, and slept.

  16

  How can I bear to find him, only to let him go?

  When Julia awoke, it was to find herself still in Marcus’s strong embrace, her head on his chest. She’d never actually slept with a man in her life. It was surprisingly comfortable, as if she and he had been made to fit together.

  “Pieces of a puzzle,” she whispered to herself.

  She felt him move, then felt him kiss the top of her head. She lifted her face to gaze at him with a smile. “Good morning!”

  He grinned sleepily. “Good middle-of-the-night, more like.”

  She smiled and snuggled deeper into him. “Mmm. Wonderful.”

  “Oh, are you Lady Lie-abed, then?” he teased. “And here I’d thought you the industrious type.”

  She poked him. “I’ll have you know I’ve had an exceptionally wearing week.”

  He let out a breath. “True enough.”

  “I’ve scrubbed privy stuff. I’ve hauled water. I’ve fought fire and rescued someone from a well.”

  “To be precise, that was me.”

  “Yes, well, I helped.”

  “Indeed. That gaping bodice was an inspiration to us all.”

  She smacked him in the ribs with a gentle fist. “I lost a fiancé.”

  “Yes, you did,” he said with great satisfaction.

  “And I took a lover.”

  He rolled her over swiftly, until he had one muscled thigh pressed between hers and his lips were inches from her mouth. “I think,” he said slowly, “that the lover took you.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, very well. The lover took me. Still rather tiring, no matter how you phrase it.”

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “But you are well? I did not hurt you?”

  “I am entirely well,” she said, and stretched languorously beneath him. The motion made his green eyes go forest dark, just as she’d hoped.

  “You are entirely beautiful,” he replied. “And you are entirely mine.”

  Julia felt something give way, deep inside her heart. Could it be that she had found the one man whom she could be—almost—entirely truthful with?

  Or—and she scarcely dared think it—had she found someone she could share everything with?

  The Four were forbidden from sharing their roles with their families … but the Fox would need a protégé. A rising thrill ran through her.

  Marcus was just the sort the Four needed. Honorable and brave and intelligent and … well, she would worry about the required investigation later. He wasn’t strictly highborn, but he was high enough.

  It was so simple and yet perfectly brilliant. For her first act as the Fox, she would marry Marcus and tap him for her apprentice!

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell him yet. She dared not break any more of the conventions of the Four than necessary. After all, they were going to have enough to do to warm up to her presence among them.

  Yet she wanted to return his confidence with something of her own … something that would show him that she understood his need to prove himself.

  “Marcus, do you remember when I told you about the Hiram Pickles Variety Show?”

  “If you start to carry on about your maid dancing in the altogether, you’ll find that nothing can douse my flame tonight.” He wiggled his eyebrows in comic lust.

  She put a hand to his cheek and gazed into his eyes. “Marcus, listen. This is important. I am trusting you with something that could do me a great deal of damage.”

  He sobered instantly. “Julia, perhaps you shouldn’t—”

  She smiled. “I’m not worried.”

  Something was hurting Marcus, deep down inside.

  Julia went on, oblivious to the chill that had entered his gut.

  “I did not grow up with all this.” She waved a hand about the luxurious room. “I grew up in a wagon, eating my dinner about a campfire, with only my mother and the fair folk as my family.”

  Yes, there was definitely something wrong inside of him.

  She smiled absently, lost in recollection. “So now you know. Once upon a time, Lady Barrowby was Jilly Boots, a trick rider for the Hiram Pickles Variety Show.”

  Ah. The confession explained everything. Her way with horses, her unusual staff, her bizarre pet. Even her careful speech.

  It also destroyed her.

  He had her now. He could take that simple admission straight to the Three and be confirmed as the Fox by noon tomorrow. It would be so simple.

  He heard himself as if from a distance. “Tell me more.”

  Yes. Tell me h
ow it is that the most beautiful and accomplished lady I have ever known could be a common-as-dirt fair performer. Tell me so I can tell them how it is that you are unfit for the office you hold.

  She told him, leaving out nothing about her life with the ragged band of travelers who were her family. They worked the roads in summer, with their show of animals and acrobats.

  “Then, when I was seventeen Mama got sick with a rattling that wouldn’t leave her chest. I left the band to get the gold to take her to Bath. I took the plate from a grand country house that had almost no servants and no family about. Easy mark, until I got inside. There wasn’t a thing in the safe box, and there wasn’t a thing in the secret drawers. I was desperate, searching every room that didn’t have a sleeper in it. Finally, I found a—well, I ought not to say. I found a treasure trove, holding jewels and banknotes and papers, too. I took it all, not willing to stay a moment longer to sort through it. I left just in time, for the servants were moving about.”

  She smiled in recollection. “I thought I’d made it clean away. It wasn’t until I tried to pass on the rubies that I was caught. Aldus simply walked into our squat as if he owned it and sat down at the table. Mama was sick on the cot and I was in my nightdress, yet he simply bowed and introduced himself.

  “ ‘You’ve taken something of mine and I’ll be needing it back now.’ he told me.

  “I didn’t argue. I fetched everything that I hadn’t sold and poured it into his hands. He shoved the jewels aside and checked the files first. Then he nodded and sat back in his chair. ‘I ought to call the law on you, my little miss, but I’ll consider letting the matter go, provided you turn your cohorts over to me now.’ “

  “ ‘Naught helped me, sor,’ I told him. I couldn’t let anyone else take the blame for what I’d done. Of course, he didn’t believe me.”

  “ ‘Tell me quick, girl, or tell the magistrate!’ “ “I swore I’d done it alone and he finally seemed to believe me. He leaned forward. I remember the eagerness in his eyes. ‘Then tell me how you did it, for I must guard against it happening again—and I shall take my goods and leave you be.’ “

  “That made sense to me, so I took the deal. I told him every bit of how I gained entry, how I searched the rooms and then found the—well, that doesn’t matter. I could tell I was impressing him.”

  “Then I made a mistake. I let slip something I could have only known if I had read those papers he wanted back so desperately.”

  “ ‘You can read?’ he asked me.”

  “I should have realized why that mattered so, but I was proud of my ability and I admitted it comfortably.

  ‘Then the look in his eyes made me stop and I remember how the fear froze me inside. I knew who he was, because I’d read every word of those files. The knowledge frightened me, but I loved knowing—no, I craved knowing. I felt the power of that information.”

  Marcus nodded, his gaze distant. “Knowledge is a heady brew.”

  “Aldus must have seen it in my eyes, for he shook his head. ‘Pretty cat, but too curious for your own good, aren’t you?’ He stood then and said, ‘You must come with me.’

  “He took Mama as well. I thought he was taking me to the magistrate and I fought him, but he wasn’t weak then. He held me by the arm, never hurting me but never easing his grip.

  “His man carried Mama, sick and damp and smelling of vomit, right into the grandest carriage I’ve ever seen. He gave Mama a beautiful room and called the physician, but there was nothing to be done. She held on for a few weeks, for she was desperately worried about me, but I think Aldus finally convinced her that I was in safe hands, for she died peacefully then.

  “Aldus allowed her to be buried here, in his family’s resting place. Then he wed me within a fortnight.” She snuggled back into his arms and yawned. “And that is how I became Lady Barrowby.”

  It was every bit as bad as anything he could have imagined. The first rule of the Royal Four was high birth. There must be no climbing, no ambitions, no such leverage on such powerful leaders. There was nothing he could do but report the truth to them and cost her the Fox’s seat.

  And this has nothing to do with the fact that you will be the Fox?

  Marcus realized what it was now. The thing that was hurting his soul? It was the pain inflicted from being sold.

  Julia woke at the first scarce glow of morning. He was already gone.

  There was a note lying on her escritoire. “I have business in London. My deepest regards, M.”

  She pulled on her wrapper and padded barefoot across the chill room to look from the window. In the faint gray dawn light there were only skeletal trees standing among misty hills.

  Well, that was … unexpected. She sat on her bed, blinking at the note in her hand. Should she be angry? Injured? Grateful that he had saved her from herself?

  Or ought she simply to go about her day and look forward to his soon return?

  She smiled slightly. Of course he was coming back. She could not be wrong about his level of attachment to her, not after last night. And wouldn’t Marcus tease her when he returned in a day or two to find she had imagined her own bit of melodrama with him in the starring role?

  She laughed and shook away her uncertainty. What a ninny she was. This was Marcus.

  So she matter-of-factly tucked the note away in her desk and dressed herself. She would set herself to putting Barrowby back in perfect order. The new privies had been dug and the sturdy sheds could withstand even the Igbys. The well had freshened and the extra fair folk would arrive today to help keep watch for further sabotage. The horses were fine in the north pasture until the weather turned, and Sebastian …

  She bit her lip. Sebastian had not returned, nor had any local farmers complained of chickens gummed to death. It was possible the lion was lurking in the Barrowby woods, nursing a petulant grudge against all things people—Sebastian could be a mighty infant sometimes—but he must be so hungry by now …

  There was nothing to be done for it except wait for him to return. At least her darling had not burned to death, thanks to Marcus.

  She smiled and set about her day with good heart. When Marcus returned she would ask him to hunt for Sebastian. She could just picture his expression!

  17

  Honor and loyalty are magnificent concepts, but what good do they do if one is alone?

  Julia was called from her duties by the arrival of surprise guests.

  “Their lordships are back,” Beppo told her.

  Julia started, then smiled. She’d been thinking of little but Marcus for the past day and a half and had nearly forgotten about the verdict of the Three.

  She was not worried. She had passed their tests with honors, and as soon as she was confirmed, she intended to give them all an earful about putting innocent servants in danger. She removed her apron and smoothed her hair—pity she hadn’t more time, for the scrubbing of the paneling made it frizz so—and donned her Lady Barrowby serenity.

  She entered the parlor with a smile. “My lords, how lovely to see you all again so soon.”

  They turned to her as one and her belly went to ice. Their expressions were not congenial at all. The Cobra, the Lion, and the Fox stared at her coldly. Lord Liverpool’s expression was more haughty satisfaction.

  The Falcon stepped forward. “Lady Barrowby, we will not waste time. It has come to our attention that you are not, in fact, of noble birth. We have recently discovered that your real name is Jilly Boots and that you are, in fact, a member of a traveling troupe of actors.”

  She swallowed. “Fair performers, actually.” Oh, dear. This was not good, not at all.

  How could they have found out? All these years, and no one had found out—

  Marcus, of course.

  No. It simply wasn’t true. Marcus would never do that to her, she would wager her life on it. It had been someone in Middlebarrow, some gossip spreading tales of tightrope-walking butlers and bouncing footmen. That knowledge reinforced her, calming her panic
.

  She raised her chin. “I very much doubt that you can produce an unimpeachable source for such an outlandish claim.”

  “And yet, we can.” The Falcon raised one hand. “May we introduce you to our new Fox?”

  That hit Julia like a blow to the gut. She’d been replaced? She turned to the door. Who—

  A dark man clad in somber, expensive clothing entered the room and turned familiar emerald eyes her way. He bowed. “Lady Barrowby.”

  Marcus. Julia felt her heart break, right in her chest, just the way people had always described. Yet somehow the stories had not adequately portrayed the pain that sliced so deeply she could not breathe. She staggered very slightly, reaching for the back of a chair to steady herself. Even in her breathless agony, she could not bear to let them see it.

  Marcus knew it the moment he saw her again. It hit him deep in his chest, in his gut, like a spike through his heart.

  Regret.

  For she’d trusted him completely. He’d seen her perfect belief in her face when he’d walked in the room. Until that moment, she’d had no doubt that he had held her confidence, that he was coming back to be with her, that he was the one person in the world who she could give her full and complete trust.

  He’d taken that trust and dashed the perfect, fragile thing on the cobbles—and why?

  Naked ambition, of course. He had very nearly convinced himself that he was doing the honorable thing—saving the Four from a mistake, saving Julia from danger and strenuous demands, saving England from the possible manipulation of one of its leaders …

  His capacity to lie to himself was astonishing. He’d wanted nothing but the Fox’s seat all along. That aim had driven every action, every word, every single moment of the last week.

  His own ruthlessness sickened him.

  You did what needed to be done. That’s who the Fox is.

  I broke her heart.

  She’ll recover.

  Possibly. Will I?

  He didn’t think so, for her wide shocked eyes would surely haunt him to his grave. She stood there, absolutely frozen, betraying nothing but surprise to those around her.