She faltered a step, her eyes glittering. “I’ve managed quite well alone.”
“You’ve managed to land yourself in an incredible mess.”
“You mean being back in your arms?”
He chuckled, drawing her into his body. “You might have eluded the best detectives in London, madam, but there’s no escaping me.”
She lifted her hand to straighten the sash that lay across his chest. “I never went anywhere, Sebastien,” she said in a soft voice that stirred guilt and longing inside him. “You could have found me whenever you wanted.”
His throat tightened. She had a siren’s touch. He wanted to know it all over his body again. She also had a tongue as sharp as a Toledo steel sword. Her words cut.
“Is Will here?” she asked, her hand slipping to her side.
He ground his teeth; his gaze raked her in unhidden demand. If she felt the steamy heat that smoldered between them, she showed no sign of letting it wilt her. Barbed tongue, beautiful body, guarded heart. He might have to revise his strategy and take her by nefarious means instead.
He glanced across the room at the harlequin standing alone in front of a high marble fireplace. He wasn’t sure whether her cousin Will had encouraged Eleanor’s quest for excitement, or if it was the other way around. He only knew the misadventurous pair had to be reined in. “He just came in from the garden.”
Laughter and conversation welled in the sudden void of silence as the orchestra ended their set. Sebastien released her with reluctance. He noted that she resisted looking around to acknowledge her cousin. How self-composed his wife had become.
Was this what befell a woman who had learned to live alone? He realized he had changed. It was reasonable to assume she would not have remained the uncomplicated person he had married. To be honest, though, he had never considered that love in absentia could present this intriguing predicament.
How did a man earn back his wife’s trust when that wife had become a man about town?
“Any moment now,” he muttered. “If something goes wrong, you mustn’t give in to panic.”
She gave his arm a condescending pat. “Nor you, my lord. I shall bear full responsibility in the event we are caught. Blame it all on female madness. The duchess will find a way to get me safely out of the country.”
“Excuse me?”
“I have everything under control, Sebastien.”
“As long as you believe that, darling, I won’t disillusion you.” He stared down at the slender hand that claimed his arm. “Not in public, anyway. In private, it’s every man for himself. Even those who only aspire to manhood.”
He waited for her to react. Another man would have risen to the insult.
Instead, her eyes locked with his in unspoken assessment. He realized he hadn’t affected her at all. Then her lips parted, and the sheerest of sighs escaped her.
It might have been a sigh of exasperation.
But his blood still heated, his pulses raced in male resolve.
He had a chance.
He knew it.
No matter how impenetrable her shield of coolness, they had made vows to each other. The instant she weakened, which she would, he’d seize the advantage.
“Follow my lead,” he instructed her, withdrawing his arm from her charmingly assertive hold, the matter decided, at least in his mind.
“As you say, Sebastien.”
He nodded. That was more like it.
It was an evening to impress her, to demonstrate his profound experience in subterfuge. He wasn’t going to brag. She would soon understand how a professional handled covert matters. Even frivolous ones like pinching old love letters for a demanding duchess.
Confident that the course of his own true love would run smooth, he was irritated when he turned to discover a portly gentleman bedecked as King Charles the Second, in a black curly periwig and knee breeches, positioned in his path. Sebastien could have pushed the annoying fellow aside as rudely as he’d presented himself. Regrettably the same could not be said of the deep-bosomed, low-bodiced Nell Gwyn who cheerfully brought up her sovereign’s rear.
A gentleman did not rough house a lady, although certain exceptions applied.
Eleanor slowed to chat with them. Sebastien hesitated to intervene. She knew her game. Did she need help?
It did not appear so. She gave no indication that she had anything better to do than exchange meaningless pleasantries with a couple they would never encounter again.
“Darling,” he said, in the lightest of censures, as if at any second the ballroom would not go up in smoke at her cousin’s hand.
“Darling,” she said, smiling up at him ingenuously, as if the world could erupt in flames and she would manage to escape unscathed. “Do you remember Major Dunstan and his wife?”
“I knew that face looked familiar.” He paused. The couple looked no more familiar to him than the footmen who had refilled their champagne flutes. Sometimes his memory lapses seemed to be a blessing. At others they posed an embarrassment. “One never forgets old friends or—”
“—those made during our travels,” Eleanor said quickly. “How unremarkable our stay in Bath would have been without the major entertaining us with his pithy jests.”
He glanced at his wife in reluctant gratitude. He resented that she understood his problem; he wanted to rescue her, damnit, not the other way around.
“We are relieved to see you home, and in such good form,” the major’s wife said, shouldering in front of her husband for a better view of Sebastien.
He bowed over her heavily powdered décolletage. One good sneeze and the friendly beldame would take out his eye. “And how good to see that you are”—he floundered for an apt description—“fit for a king.”
Eleanor smiled, taking a subtle step back. He restrained the impulse to grab her by the tail and keep her at his side.
“The major and his wife have written frequently to ask when you were coming home.”
“How gracious of them.”
“A gentleman cannot sire an heir while he’s away,” Major Dunstan said jovially.
“True,” he said. Sebastien slanted a meaningful look at his wife. She had lowered her gaze, but for a moment her eyes had been shadowed.
“Then what are you doing here, my lord?” the major-king asked with a sly wink at Eleanor.
Sebastien shook his head, wondering the same thing himself as Eleanor rattled off some vague response.
As far as the rest of England knew, he had served honorably in the British infantry under Wellington’s command until battle injuries had forced him to fulfill his duty in a quieter capacity. One assumed from appearances that he had returned home to fulfill his next role as a privileged member of Society—the begetting of heirs.
Of course, appearances deceived. Not that he wasn’t eager to do his duty.
But what lay beneath the appearances of this particular marriage would have shaken Society to its hollow marrow.
Well, the fact that he now worked for the duke’s home agents probably would have only raised a quizzing glass or two.
But that he and his elegant wife had become rivals in a heated race of personal intrigue? That while Sebastien had been carrying out subversive assignments for the duke in obscure French ports, his dearly beloved had earned a place of notoriety in London’s history that neither of them could live down?
The duchess considered Eleanor to be her best spy.
Espionage? Sebastien had to smile.
The weapons Eleanor employed were but emotions and grand gestures. The battlefield of fidelity she defended on behalf of the duchess was not fought on some foreign soil, but here in the bedrooms of England.
How the bloody hell had this transpired?
How during their separation had his beloved become the man who scandalized the whole of London?
Sebastien had learned of her involvement only because he worked in British intelligence.
From what he gathered, the Duchess of Welling
ton, a neglected wife in her own right, had taken Eleanor under her wing. The duke and duchess both held Eleanor’s father, a surgeon of uncommon skill and compassion, in the highest regard.
Presumably the duchess’s affection for Dr. Prescott had been transferred to his daughter, who had developed some uncommon skills herself.
How the two ladies had cooked up the Masquer scheme, Sebastien wasn’t sure.
He supposed the pair of them had masterminded this nonsense over tea—the sort in which one adds liberal splashes of sherry to the pot. He could picture their plot growing more outrageous with every sip until one had convinced the other that their plan bore merit.
Their purpose, as he understood it, was to find a series of twelve letters written to various women across England by a lady who claimed to have been cast aside as the duke’s mistress. Her name was Lady Viola Hutchinson, and she now resided in either Belgium or Ireland. This disgruntled authoress hadn’t been sighted in quite some time. But the threat of her letters being made public had apparently provoked the duchess to take action.
Wellington did not give a damn what anyone said of him. He had won a brilliant war. He was busy in Paris doling out portions of the world to its powers as one would a tasty Christmas pudding. He had been accused of infidelity before. He’d even been named in a lawsuit.
When Sebastien told Wellington what he had learned, the duke bellowed to let the blasted letters be published. Why did it matter what a spurned lover said? Let the accusations fly like arrows. He’d shrugged them off before. No doubt he would again.
His wife, the Duchess of Wellington, decided otherwise. She would tell the duke to his face if he’d bother to listen. These letters affronted her dignity. She had her children’s reputation to consider. Why should her boys grow up believing their brilliant papa had committed adultery? The alleged sins of their father would not be weighted on their young shoulders.
Thus, motivated as only a caring mother could be, not merely content to be the wife of a warrior, she had commissioned her faithful friend, Lady Boscastle, to assist her in retrieving these scandalous missives.
Sebastien, upon learning of this scheme, had hastened to intervene as quickly as he could. Quite frankly, he’d been looking for any excuse to return home. Although he and Eleanor had drifted into their estrangement, he had never stopped thinking of her as his wife. He disliked the idea of her involved in any type of intrigue, even this tea-cup sneaking about. He hadn’t realized the potential danger she risked until arriving back in London. And he had lied, baldly, when he told her that his superiors had ordered him to monitor her affairs.
But, unexpectedly, instead of stopping her, he had become involved himself in her questionable intrigue. In the course of the past few months, he had leapt from a window into a cart to impress his wife. The police had chased him through alleys.
Instead of persuading Eleanor to give up her folly, she had convinced him to help her.
And still she had kept him at arm’s length, a temptress who would soon find herself taken.
He frowned, his thoughts returning to the masquerade. Nell Gwyn had just nudged him in the ribs.
“Is your wife afraid of him, my lord?” she asked quietly.
He blinked. One of Nell’s beauty patches was sliding down her chin. He observed its descent in concern. “Afraid of—”
“You know who,” Eleanor said with a conniving shiver, pressing Nell’s beauty spot back in place. “That rascal who is terrorizing all the bedchambers of London.”
Major Dunstan tapped his scepter against Sebastien’s sash of office. “What do you say, my Lord Mayor, if we combine our authority to put this Mayfair Masquer in the Tower?”
Eleanor’s eyes widened in alarm. “You don’t think he’s here, do you? Good heavens.” She glanced across the candlelit room. “Not one of the guests?”
She stared up helplessly at Sebastien, pressing closer to him. Even though he knew this feminine plea to his masculinity was an act, his masculinity responded. His theory had always been to take what was offered, and offer apologies afterward. He faced a considerable amount of taking and apologizing to even out their marriage.
“Perhaps we should go home, after all,” she added. “I never dreamt that the miscreant would be so brazen as to appear at a party. I believe my knees might buckle.”
“I’ll be sure to catch you,” he said gallantly.
She gave him an ironic smile. How brave she was to tease him. “What a comfort you are, dear heart.”
“I’ll do anything to protect you from the Masquer, my precious pearl,” he replied.
“I doubt he presents a danger to you, Lady Boscastle,” Nell Gwyn said, sizing up Sebastien from the corner of her eye. “It’s hard to imagine the plucky devil getting past his lordship’s guard.”
“He has more pluck than any of us can imagine,” Sebastien said with an unwilling laugh.
The lady cocked her head. “Do you have a personal association with him?” she asked shrewdly.
He grunted. “Not as personal as I might—”
“My husband knows him as little or as well as anyone in London,” Eleanor broke in promptly. “And he admires him, as I do.”
He sent her an appreciative smile. “My admiration for him knows no bounds. Nor does my desire to see him retire for his own sake before he strikes again. I should love to meet him alone in the dark and convince him to cease his dangerous adventures.”
“You’d have to be quite persuasive,” the major remarked.
“Take my word on it,” Eleanor said. “He is.”
“This all sounds a little wicked,” Nell said, pursing her lips in speculation.
Eleanor tapped her tail against her thigh. “Wicked is his lordship’s middle name.”
“I’m enjoying this conversation immensely,” Nell confessed. “Why have we waited so long for our reunion?”
Her husband scowled at her. “Hoist up the ear trumpet, dear. Didn’t you hear? His lordship’s just come back from France.”
Sebastien glanced over at the fireplace, then back at Eleanor. Major Dunstan had lowered his vizard to inspect her gray-striped doublet and close-fitting black breeches, or rather the ample curves accentuated by the snug wool.
“What a novel costume,” he remarked.
Sebastien loudly cleared his throat and frowned at Eleanor. “Do you want me to fetch your cloak?”
“I’m quite comfortable,” she said. “Are you feeling a chill, my lord?”
“I could be warmer.”
“Perhaps you should stand by the fire,” she suggested.
“But then who would be here to protect you?” he asked quietly, shifting his stance to remind her he had reclaimed that duty.
“The good major, possibly,” she answered.
He let the comment pass, aware that she was trying to provoke him. His interference in her work for the duchess had not helped heal their estrangement.
“Would you like a cup of hot tea?” she asked solicitously.
He gazed at her. “Not unless you’re offering to go home and boil it for me.”
She turned.
It was time.
Straightening to follow his wife, he gave a faint nod to the harlequin waiting beside the fireplace.
A basket of oranges gripped against a wrinkled pair of bosoms obstructed his path. “What do you think the Masquer wants?” Nell Gwyn breathed, her obsession with the man who was his wife grating on his nerves.
He shrugged, counting backward. “Only he can answer that.”
Five.
“Do you know that at least one description of this villain could match your own?” she asked, edging a little closer.
He curbed his exasperation. “Say it isn’t so.”
“Oh, yes. Well, as far as I can remember. How tall are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Four.”
She giggled. “You’re ever so much bigger than that.”
“Mrs. Dunstan,” he said in mock rep
roach, “do not tell me that a lady of your good sense ascribes heroism to this character’s acts?”
“Well, one feels a certain sympathy for the rogue.”
Three.
She attempted to squeeze her husband to the side to continue the conversation. “I will admit only this—if the ladies of London are hesitant to venture out after nightfall, it is only because they hope he will visit them in the privacy of their homes. I—I wish he would come to my bedchamber, my lord. I would give him what ever it is he seeks.”
Two.
“Madam.” He touched his heart, a perfect gentleman embarrassed by this candid confession. And—where the hell had Eleanor gone?
“Cat giving you the slip?” Major Dunstan asked with a shrewd glance at the black-trousered form weaving across the ballroom, tail swishing across her backside.
One.
A series of deafening cracks and impressive flashes of red-gold light erupted from the fireplace. Smoke followed in tendrils that writhed toward the chandelier like unleashed demons.
Nell Gwyn shrieked, flinging her basket in the air. Her oranges flew into orbit.
Before Sebastien could escape, she feigned such a dramatic faint that he was obliged to catch her in his arms. The instant she appeared to be steady on her feet, he thrust her back at her partner, who had not uttered a word, his face chalk-white under the sausage ringlets of his long black peruke.
Swearing to himself, Sebastien picked up several oranges and plopped them back into her fallen basket.
It was tempting to waste time reassuring the bewildered guests that they were in no danger from this illusionary pyrotechnic peril, as convincing a display as it was. Sebastien had practiced similar effects a few times himself in empty brandy kegs when he’d hidden aboard French schooners and had required a distraction to jump overboard.
Still, he should have known better than to dally admiring the amateurish trick.
Before the smoke thinned, he realized Eleanor had taken the opportunity to escape. As should he.
À bon chat, bon rat. It took a good rat to outwit a good cat.
He cut a path across the ballroom to the door behind the corner stage where the orchestra had burst into a deafening rendition of “Rule Britannia.” He’d lost an opportunity, hoodwinked by his wife. While he had been gathering oranges, Eleanor had sneaked off to search Lady Trotten’s bedchamber for the next letter in the missing collection. So much for impressing her with his professional wiles.
A Wicked Lord at the Wedding Page 4