by Kate Moore
“Truly.”
Chapter Fifteen
Inevitably, the husband hunter will get herself talked about. She may be a person of calm good sense and placid temperament, yet the fashionable world sees her as a volatile commodity, like one of those elements in the laboratory of the medieval alchemist, ready to be transformed by her interaction with the human substance around her. She must never act so as to be censured for impertinence and want of conduct. Above all she must never let herself be singled out for enacting a farce or a drama on the dance floor.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
From Lynley’s point of view, Lord Ravenhurst was having a bad night. His Foreign Office friends treated him like a pariah, and now his wife danced a waltz with a much younger man. Ravenhurst drank steadily, lurching from one drink tray to another.
Lynley was not without sympathy. Ravenhurst appeared to be a man caught up in currents he did not understand. No one appeared glad to see him, and as far as Lynley could see, no one approached him. If a spy hovered near, he had not made himself known tonight. All Lynley had gained from watching Ravenhurst’s wanderings was separation from his betrothed.
Something had changed in her with the decision that she and Lynley would be partners in spy catching. He had yet to determine what. She had put up a boundary between them, like a prickly hedgerow enclosing a field. Briefly, the barrier had come down in the wake of their adventure in the prison. But she had put it firmly back in place after her round of morning calls the day before. Lynley’s ribs no longer ached with every step. He thought that if he could manage one waltz with her, he could find a way through the barrier again.
The first waltz of the evening ended in a burst of chatter and movement. Lynley positioned himself to face a pair of doors opposite, so that he could see both ends of the ballroom as well as the entrance. As dancers cleared the floor, he spotted Emily entering the room, arm in arm with a golden-haired girl in white. He started toward her when a hand gripped his arm and spun him around.
He shook off the hand and faced Ravenhurst at the edge of the crowd.
“Lynley, I demand satisfaction.” Ravenhurst waved an empty glass in Lynley’s face.
Lynley noted the drunken slur. The man could not mean what the word usually implied. “Satisfaction? From whom? If your glass is empty, man, apply to a footman.”
“Do you deny your attentions to my wife?”
Lynley stiffened. There it was, a direct if wrong-headed challenge. Around them heads turned, talk died. “Utterly. You’ll have to pardon me, Ravenhurst, I’m about to dance with my betrothed.”
Ravenhurst’s eyes closed and unclosed as if he could blink away some fog. He stared at Lynley. “No, that’s not what you say.”
“You’ll have to advise me of my lines, then, old fellow. Are we rehearsing a play?” If it was a script, Lynley guessed that someone had prompted Ravenhurst to make the challenge.
Ravenhurst straightened and went at it again. “You come to London from nowhere with an insignificant title and you make up to my wife and encourage her in folly at a gaming club. Do you deny that you were there?”
At the mention of the club, Lynley knew who was behind Ravenhurst’s challenge. Barksted. If he glanced around, he would find the man watching. Lynley thought of his pistols at home at Lyndale Abbey. If anyone deserved a bullet, it was Barksted, not the poor lost soul in front of him.
“I was with Woodford.”
“Woodford? The man never gambles.” Ravenhurst took an unsteady step forward. “You were there to expose my wife to the contempt of society.”
“Let it go, Ravenhurst. You’ve been misinformed.”
Ravenhurst shook his head. “No, you’ve confused my wife, made her forget her duty to her husband and her sons. I should call you out.”
Lynley’s throat contracted painfully. Every instinct prompted him to answer the man’s insults in kind. But this was what his father must have looked like, confronting the Russian officer who was his wife’s lover: wounded, confused, and desperate, sure that the man in front of him was the author of all his grievances.
He made himself speak calmly. “But you won’t.”
Ravenhurst blinked at him. “I won’t?”
“Go home.”
“Are you calling me a coward?” Ravenhurst’s voice grew shrill.
“You’re a gentleman and the father of two young sons. You have a duty to the Foreign Office.”
“What do you know of my Foreign Office duties? Are you the one who’s taken papers from me?” Ravenhurst staggered forward and tried to take Lynley by the lapels. The glass hindered him, so that he ended up clinging to Lynley’s coat with one hand. Lynley reached out to keep the man from falling.
* * * *
Emily wished for anything solid, a cobblestone, a cricket ball, rather than a pair of gloves in her hand, something she could chuck at Lord Ravenhurst’s fuddled head. She could not hear what the man had said to Lynley as she and Allegra stepped up to them, but she could guess at the folly of it from the tense, expectant faces of the onlookers. Lord Ravenhurst was enacting a drama.
When he grabbed Lynley’s lapel, she could not refrain from crying out.
“Lord Ravenhurst.” Emily used her most quelling voice, like her old governess calling unruly charges to order in a park. Her mother would cringe to hear of it.
Ravenhurst spun her way, managing to stand only because Lynley had a grip on his shoulder.
Emily ducked and stepped between the two men. It was a bit like being caught in a children’s game of falling bridges. She reached for the glass in Ravenhurst’s hand.
“Could you release Lynley’s lapel, Ravenhurst? I fear you are damaging his valet’s work.”
“You were looking for me, Lady Emily?”
Lynley disengaged Ravenhurst’s hand from his lapel.
“Yes. If you could spare a moment.” Emily managed a smile for Ravenhurst and turned to Lynley. “Miss Walhouse is here for the waltz you promised her.”
His brows lifted, and a brief flicker of amusement flared in his dark eyes.
With a bow to his new partner, Lynley led Miss Walhouse to the floor. Emily could hear the murmur of Lynley’s voice, deep and easy, as he charmed Miss Walhouse. She could see the girl’s somewhat stunned expression looking up into Lynley’s face.
Emily signaled a passing footman to take the empty glass from her hand. “Lord Ravenhurst, could you give me your arm? There is a question I want to ask you about Foreign Office policy on elephants.”
“Elephants?” he breathed.
Emily tucked her arm in his. His breath nearly knocked her back on her heels. “Yes. Shall we take some air?”
Resolutely, she turned away from the sight of Lynley holding the golden-haired young beauty in his arms as the music started. Emily had no cause for pangs of dismay at the sight of another woman taking her place in Lynley’s arms. It was not really her place. They were spy-catching partners, not lovers. Their betrothal was a ruse to deceive society. She was simply eager to tell him what she’d discovered about the gloves. Well, it could wait until she got Ravenhurst out of the way.
Chapter Sixteen
Talk may be the most important element in both courtship and marriage. Not gossip, nor conversation about philosophy or the affairs of the nation, but talk that is play, talk that is a game. It is through talk that men and women chiefly play. With the exception of the hunt and cards, men and women play few games together, and yet, play, liveliness of mind, is essential to any relationship that is to last longer than a fortnight.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Behind them in the grand apartments of Vange House the party continued hardly abated, though the neighborhood bells were sounding four. Lynley was glad to leave the heat and din behind and breathe cool night air as he led Emily to their waiting carriage.
They’d caught no spy, and he’d been too long apart from her.
Grooms and footmen bustled about, moving the line of waiting carriages along, but the noise faded away under the last stars.
“Did Ravenhurst share his views on elephant policy?” Lynley asked as he handed her into the carriage. They were alone. There were distinct advantages to being engaged. Her father, having made his bow to Lady Vange, had left hours earlier.
“Sadly, no.” She yawned. “It was necessary for his lordship to commune with a potted orange tree on the terrace. When he had emptied the contents of his stomach, I sent him home.”
She sank onto the seat. Lynley settled beside her, leaning back against the cushions and stretching his legs out. A carriage was a fine and private place, though not designed for a man of his height. The door closed.
“Are you going to thank me?” she asked.
“For trapping me on the dance floor with a girl whose best friend must be her looking glass?”
“For rescuing you.”
“Is that what you call it?” He rapped on the roof to signal their readiness to leave, and the carriage lurched into motion.
“Yes, I call it a rescue from whatever drama Ravenhurst was enacting in full view of Lady Vange’s guests.”
“He was attempting to challenge me.”
“Then I regret that I had nothing to chuck at his thick head.”
“Someone put him up to it,” he said.
“Lord Barksted.”
The instant reply banished his languor. “What makes you say that?” he asked.
“Earlier in the evening Barksted encouraged me to use my influence with you to keep you out of his business.”
She spoke in that matter-of-fact way of hers, intent at the moment on adjusting her cloak around her and settling more comfortably on the seat.
“Tell me more,” he said. It chilled him to think that Barksted had gone after her. Somehow even in the most fashionable ballroom in London, she managed to encounter danger.
The rustling of her garments stopped. “Really, there’s nothing more to tell. Except that Barksted broke away from his chat with me to chase after Ravenhurst, which rather supports the idea that Barksted put Ravenhurst up to challenging you.”
“Em.” Lynley turned her to face him. She wore no bonnet. Her hair was simply parted, coiled, and secured with a row of pearls and roses. The scent of warm woman and crushed rose petals filled his head. “You have a remarkable way of not telling me what I ask.”
She started to protest, but he put a finger to her lips. The carriage moved steadily through the dark streets. He lifted her onto the sloping plane of his body and settled her against him so that they pressed hip to hip.
“How are your ribs?” she asked, a little catch in her breath.
“They’ll survive. Tell me everything that happened between you and Barksted.”
“We have more important things to talk about.”
“Do we?”
She fumbled a little, her hands under her cloak, her body twisting against his. Just that, a little movement, a brush of female parts against male parts, and his thoughts veered back to the question she’d asked him about lovemaking in a carriage. It could be done, he knew. What man hadn’t thought of it? What mother hadn’t warned her daughter about the perils of being alone in a closed carriage with a man?
Between them were layers of wool and silk, but under the frothy cloud of her skirts, only a thin veil of muslin covered the heat and soft, liquid center of her. He raised one of his hands to his mouth and pulled the glove off with his teeth.
Then she held up a pair of gloves between them. Even in the uncertain light of the carriage lamps, Lynley recognized those gloves. His grip tightened on her waist. “Where did you get them?”
“In the ladies’ retiring room.”
“Ah, a place no gentleman can enter. Feeling clever, are you?” She was clever. He liked that about her. He lifted his bare hand to push aside the curls around her ear. She shivered at the touch.
“Exactly. Archer. He gave them to Allegra Walhouse to give to her brother Clive. Apparently, neither his friend Archer nor his sister Allegra knows where Walhouse is, but he could be our man, couldn’t he?”
The question was important, he knew, but he had found the edge of her skirts and worked his ungloved hand under them to take hold of one warm, muslin-covered thigh, just above the back of her knee. He pulled gently. Her knee bent, and he guided it to the bench.
“Lynley?” she stilled.
“I don’t want you to slide to the floor,” he said. The change made his head swim. It brought the warm cove of her body at the apex of her thighs in flush alignment with the ridge of his cockstand. A tilt of his hips would bring them both pleasure.
Then she waved the gloves in his face again with one hand, while the other hand pressed firmly against his chest. The pressure of her palm against him sent urgent messages to his cock to move against her. “Do you know where Clive Walhouse is?” she asked.
He held himself as still as he could in the moving coach and made his brain work. “Our information is that he left the country.”
“Our information? As in you and others? You and some other partner?”
“As in the Foreign Office.”
“And how do you get that information?”
“Remember, Em, there are things I can’t tell you.” As soon as he spoke, she tensed in his hold.
“Lynley, we’re almost home. You can let me go now.”
His body protested. He was enjoying her weight against him. She seemed unaware of the nature of the contact, or the thinness of the barriers of silk and wool and linen and propriety between them. Her breath reached him, smelling of sugar and oranges. She had let down her guard, not through a waltz as Lynley had planned, but through talk about the case. There was a lesson there, his brain said. Pay attention. His body, meanwhile, said, Kiss her.
He tried a compromise. “You did good spy work tonight, Em.”
“What’s next, do you think?”
“This,” he said, and he kissed her. And realized that he had been wanting to do so for some time. In the carriage after the opera when she’d pushed him away, on the sofa in the drawing room when she’d discovered that he was a spy, in the carriage after their escape from the prison when he had wanted to strip off her black gown, and now, and in between, whenever he’d thought of her. He didn’t know what she would say next, but her mouth intrigued him.
He had only a moment. In the back of his brain, he knew the coachman was bringing the horses to a stop. The footman, however weary he might be, would jump down to open the door.
But under his mouth hers softened and opened. She kissed with ardor and inexperience, and something more elusive, something he hadn’t felt before.
He was trying to name that rare element in her kiss and at the same time thinking there were still too many garments between them, when she broke away from the kiss and pushed against his chest. He let her slide off of him and kept her from falling.
The carriage stopped, rocking and settling into stillness, while Lynley’s body throbbed in protest. His blood raced on in his veins.
He had always had contempt for his uncle’s weakness in the face of temptation. His uncle had been a man whose eye followed every exposed bosom, whose hands had reached to grab every swaying hip that passed. Lynley had believed himself immune to the temptations of coarse abundance. He had not realized that something else, something very different, something one could not squeeze and hold and press oneself against, could yet provoke strong desire, something made of wit and sharpness and fierce independence.
Beside him on the bench she righted herself in a furious rustle of garments. He reminded himself that neither of them wanted marriage. Their engagement was a cover. He might enjoy the temptation, but he must not give in to it. The door
opened, and he climbed down to help her alight. Instead of taking his hand, she slapped the pair of gloves into it and descended without his assistance.
“I assume you’ll want to begin looking for Clive Walhouse as soon as possible.”
“Tomorrow.”
“You mean today.” She lifted one dark brow. “I do have one piece of further information for you.”
Chapter Seventeen
The husband hunter must be under no illusion that the path to happiness is perfectly straight and smooth, for it is a shifting path made of the smallest grains of human experience—our feelings. Varied, changeable, and passing in rapid succession, they are the most difficult to fix in our minds. Who among us remembers at the end of a carriage ride precisely how we were rattled, shaken, and jolted along the way? Both the husband hunter and the gentleman who appears interested in her may mistake or misread their feelings through inattention or distraction. A dangerous moment arises in the growth of a sincere attachment, when one or the other first realizes the true nature of his or her feelings with no certainty that those feelings are returned.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Lynley tossed the pair of York gloves onto Goldsworthy’s desk. He’d slept until one, and now late afternoon light streaked through the room’s shutters, making a slanting pattern across the floor. The big desk stood in the shadows at the back of the room, its surface illuminated by a single lamp. Goldsworthy looked up from the usual pile of scattered papers.
“Do we have concrete evidence that Walhouse left the country?” Lynley asked.
Goldsworthy took up the gloves. “Strong signs, lad. He took his passport and emptied his bank account. No one has seen him in weeks.”
“Those gloves suggest a different story.” Lynley sat opposite the big man.
Goldsworthy raised one brow. “What story?”
“It turns out Archer was supposed to give the gloves to Walhouse.”
“Are you sure?”
Lynley nodded and explained that Archer had given the gloves to Allegra Walhouse to give to her brother. He omitted Emily’s role in acquiring the gloves.