“It is your heir's property unless that knife is on the floor in three seconds.”
The knife clattered to the floor. Tong Wei picked it up and threw it across the chamber. It embedded itself deeply in the far wall.
“Please collect what you came for, ladies,” Easterbrook ordered, his pistol still aimed directly at Harry Timble's chest.
Tong Wei reached down, grabbed Brian's arms, and had him slung across his body in a trice. He led the way from the chamber.
Once they were out of the house, Easterbrook joined them. The pistol now pointed to the ground from his dangling arm.
“Lord Easterbrook, you have my gratitude,” Lady Lynsworth said.
“My pleasure to serve you. I assume that is your carriage there?” Already Tong Wei was lowering his burden through its open door.
“Miss Montgomery suggested that I take my brother to the country and remove him from the temptations here in London. She thinks it may help him.”
“Tong Wei will go too,” Leona said. “He will aid Brian through the initial pain of abstinence. You must command the servants to obey him, Madam. It would be better if you are not there yourself. You should return to London once all is arranged.”
Easterbrook watched the preparations for departure silently. Once Tong Wei and Lady Lynsworth were in the carriage and it began to roll, he spoke.
“It is fortunate that I arrived, Leona. Had I not, you would now be alone in London's worst rookery without any protection, assuming that you were even still alive.”
“Tong Wei would have stopped that man. I do thank you, however. It was more efficient your way.”
He held out his arm toward his coach. “I will bring you back to your house, Leona.”
CHAPTER
TEN
She kept gazing at him in the carriage. Her dark eyes tried to read his mind, much as he would have liked to read hers.
The noxious odor of the opium parlor hung on his clothing. He pulled back the carriage curtains to let in air and light.
“Did it oppress you? Being there?” she asked.
“Not at all.”
“That is good. You have been so quiet that I thought that perhaps.…” She smiled kindly then shrugged.
“I have been quiet because I am deciding how to punish you for being so foolish as to go into that hell. There are places in London that are uncivilized and the rookeries are among them.”
“I could not refuse Lady Lynsworth.”
“It was a fool's errand. Tong Wei will nurse her brother through the torture that is waiting, and after two weeks he will be on his pallet again, smoking in his death through that pipe.”
“It might not happen that way. You know it might not.”
Again those eyes. Those knowing eyes. Seeing too much and looking for yet more. It had always been thus, and her gaze created more intimacy than she realized.
A small, sardonic smile formed on her full lips, but her eyes remained inquisitive.
“Or do you think it was different for you because you are Easterbrook?” she asked quietly.
Her allusion called up a memory, one both cherished and hated. He was in his chamber in her father's house late at night, and the door had opened. She had been there, much as he had dreamed by night and plotted by day, with her dark curls rippling down her white nightdress and wonder and fear and determination in her eyes.
Despite her fear she had come to him, to the desire that perfumed the air between them, to the mysteries waiting. She had risked everything to come, only to find him with pipe in hand and the fog blanketing the chamber despite the open window.
“Do you want to die? Because you will die, like a coward. It is a coward's escape from life that you seek with it. Whatever it is you run from is inside you, and if you will not face it at least have the courage to use a gun so you do not die in ignoble disgrace.”
Her words had been furious, brutal, and so loud it was a wonder the household had not been woken. There had been no more desire in her that night, but only anger and a pity that he could not bear.
“You do not know for certain that it was different for me,” he said.
“I knew at once. So did Tong Wei. I saw you in there, and your expression of anger as you looked at the people and the pipes, and I knew even more certainly that you no longer crave that false paradise.”
She was wrong there. One always craved it a little. If he did so less than most, it was because the man she had upbraided that night had been in search of a soul, and the one he was now had accepted the only soul permitted him.
“Do you assume that Lady Lynsworth's brother will have a knack for meditation, Leona?”
“I think Tong Wei will have to resort to cruder methods. Your willingness to learn the breathing techniques spared you the worst. Also, you were not enslaved yet, and Tong Wei said Brian is lost.” She cocked her head, and looked at him even harder. “It is odd. I am not sure that Edmund would have survived, but it is clear that Easterbrook has and will. You are not the same person.”
“Is that what you have been thinking since that afternoon I had you brought to my house? That I am not enough like Edmund? Not sad enough? Not weak enough?”
“I did not mean—”
“I assure you that I am the same person, much as a man is the same person as the boy he once was. I had to choose whether to live or die. Just facing the choice resolved many things, Leona. Making the choice settled many others.”
“Then I am glad that you are no longer Edmund, Christian.”
It was the first time she had addressed him by his real given name. That, as much as the warmth in her eyes, told him that she had begun to reconcile the present with the past.
He regretted it when the carriage stopped. A row waited for them inside the house, and it would spoil what had been the true reunion between them.
He handed her down, and ignored her farewell at the door. He stepped in after her and sent Isabella away with one glance. “I came looking for you today for a reason, Leona. The conversation that I sought cannot be delayed.”
“I trust the topic is entertaining.”
“Do not try to be clever with me. You have been abroad in this town looking for more than alliances for your brother. You have also been looking for trouble, and I have cause to think that you have found it.”
There was no choice but to face what was coming. She wished that she could put this off, however. She had found a bridge to the past on this carriage ride, and to the soul-wrenching intimacy she had shared with him back then. She feared that he would once more become a stranger whom she could not trust if they broached the topics he alluded to.
She led the way into the library, and closed the door so that Isabella would not overhear. She faced her inquisitor and sought to control the way her heart warmed just being near him.
His expression said he would brook no nonsense. “Does your brother know what you are up to?”
“Of course he knows. He did send me.”
“For your stated purpose, yes. I do not believe he knows about the other.”
“I think he suspects that I hope to bring him back a wife, if that is what you mean, but I never told him of that plan.”
“Stop it, Leona. Do not try my patience.”
“Then do not try mine. What other purpose do you imagine me to have here in London? State your suspicions and perhaps I can ease whatever troubles your mind.”
He looked away and rubbed his eyebrows with his thumb and finger, as if containing his exasperation took effort. “I think that you are hoping to prove what your father failed to prove before he died. That the smugglers attacking his business were the agents of powerful men here in London.”
Disappointment slapped her out of her silly daze. It was as she feared. He had been one of them from the first. “How do you know what he suspected, or wanted to prove?”
“Your father told me about it.”
“If he had known who you were, he would not have revealed anythi
ng. You learned what he knew and what he planned only because you deceived him.”
“I think he guessed I was other than I said. He was suspicious of me. He still told me.”
She dared not believe him, much as she ached to. It would be reassuring to know that her father had found cause to trust him. Her father had been good at sizing up a man.
Unfortunately, her father may not have trusted him at all. Easterbrook could have learned everything by reading her father's notebook. It disheartened her that the evidence now indicated he had it in his possession.
“What did you learn from him?”
“That for two years before I arrived in Macao, your father's business had been suffering a series of incidents that were threatening its solvency. Accidents. Lost cargo. Pirate raids. He was sure it was retribution. At first for not aiding smugglers who wanted him to help move opium into China. Later, for his efforts to expose what was happening. That fire on my last night there was more of the same.”
“Not exactly. You saw Lau King among the men who set fire to that ship. That was new.”
“I really saw that there was far more danger than your father suspected.”
Yes, danger. Too much danger. Especially for Edmund. To have seen Lau King meant he had to flee. Lau King was the servant of the Hoppo of Canton, the Mandarin who controlled customs. Lau King's involvement in that fire meant that the smugglers who coerced her father had friends in very high places in China as well as England. The emperor might forbid the trade, but his own officials were enriching themselves with it.
The truth had disheartened her father. The strength had drained out of him. He had believed that he was protecting foreign trade in Canton, and even the Chinese people themselves, by exposing the smuggling. He had even written to the emperor, describing all he saw and knew.
The evidence that Chinese Mandarins were com-plicit had been a terrible blow. The fight had gone out of him, and soon the life had too.
Leona looked at Christian and saw him that night, resisting her warning that he must leave at once, denying that the men who set fire to the ship had seen him just as he had seen them.
The scents and sounds came to her, the glare of the fire and the moans of her father's despair. She smelled the smoke on the water as she and Tong Wei dragged Edmund onto a small boat and spirited him away. She remembered the last view of him before he climbed onto the ship at Whampao.
She tasted again his farewell kiss, feverish and hungry and angry, before he let her go.
Easterbrook faced her now, not Edmund. The kisses were the same, though. He was the same man during their passion. She had learned that in the garden, to her undoing.
“Are you trying to learn if your father was correct, Leona? Are you trying to discover if there are men here in London who control some of the opium smugglers in the China Sea?”
Are you trying to bring scandal and disrepute to men I know and friends I love? She pushed thoughts of the garden's thrilling pleasure out of her mind so she would not turn into a puddle. “I can't imagine why you would think that I am.”
“I read Minerva's Banquet. You threw down a gauntlet there. You also knew your way to an opium den in London, so you have been investigating something.”
“If I am curious about my father's theory, what would it matter? It is not as if I could do anything about it.”
“The threat of scandal and exposure is not nothing. If you are correct, and if you get close, there may be efforts to stop you.”
It could have been a warning, or a threat. Her rising emotions could not tell which, or if there was even a difference.
“As they tried to stop my father? Perhaps they will use one of their later, more subtle tactics. Maybe they will only send a man to gain my confidence and learn what I know. Maybe they will have one of their own use persuasion and seduction instead of coercion.”
He strode to her. He cupped her face in both of his hands and pierced her with his angry gaze.
“Is that what you have been telling yourself since you learned who I am? That I went to Macao to stop him, or to learn what he had discovered? That I am one of the men he spun theories about? I knew nothing of this until he confided in me.”
“Then why do you care if I try to expose them now?”
His hands held her more gently, but no less firmly. His thumb stroked one of her cheeks. He looked at her as if he held and studied a fascinating possession.
“If I knew who they were, I could protect you. But I do not know who they are, or how dangerous they may be.”
“So you think my father was right! You believe—”
His lips brushed hers, silencing her. “You will give this up, Leona. There is nothing to be gained by it.”
His touch and kiss stole her breath. Excitement began to vanquish good sense. “They killed him,” she whispered. It sounded more like a plea for help than an accusation. “Little by little they destroyed him until he was broken. Even if they violate no English laws, the world should know them for what they are.”
Again his lips teased at hers. The warmth of his palms on her face made her whole body flush. “He would not want you doing this. He would have charged you with this duty if he did want it, and told you everything he knew so you could carry on for him. Did he?”
She looked in his eyes, into dark depths that both thrilled and frightened her.
“Did he?” he repeated.
She barely shook her head. She barely breathed.
No victory showed in his eyes at her response. He held her to a different kiss, one that closed the door on their argument.
There was care in that kiss, as if he mostly sought to soothe the turmoil this discussion had raised in her spirit. If he also wanted to influence how she weighed the truth of what he said, he failed, because the kiss distracted her from making any judgments at all.
His embrace wrapped her with strength and support. The dark intimacy surrounded her too, both comforting and exciting this time. She did not know if he intended a seduction. She did not care. Her heart sensed kindness in him, and genuine concern. Both altered his desire and even his power to something less threatening.
He lifted her chin with the crook of his finger and stroked her lips with his thumb. He kissed her again, almost discreetly. “You believe me, don't you? That I did nothing to harm or betray your father and you?”
Right now she did believe him. His embrace had banished the anger and suspicion. The sweetest calm settled on her, a calm so complete that she could feel and note the little beats and pulses in her body that said she would not stay calm long if they remained like this.
The waters of a wave were gathering. She and he were not in a garden near a party now. It was time to run and hide again, or be swept away.
He kissed her again. He drew her deeper into the intimacy. Trickles of pleasure began a hundred trembling paths through her body.
He was good at seduction. Too good. The pleasure in the night garden had left her with fewer defenses. Delicious anticipation spoke louder than any caution.
Whatever his intentions had been with that first kiss, he had others now. There was nothing tentative in the way he held her, or in his expression as his kisses sought her neck and pulse. His caresses moved over her body. Luscious sensation flowed and crested and finally submerged her.
She gasped as his mouth sent lively heat to her blood. She arched against the firm strength of his body and turned her head so he could make it worse.
An embrace, so close and tight that she felt his heartbeat. His voice, ragged and low near her ear. “Where is your chamber?”
“Isabella.…” she murmured.
“She will not interfere.” He lifted her in his arms.
His arms cradled her above his long strides. She barely saw the doors and walls slide past. Her heart remained in her throat and her eyes on his face. She experienced the climb up the stairs in a dreamy, half-stunned state.
He found her chamber. He held her to one hot, reassuring
kiss, then laid her down. He cast off his coat, then joined her immediately, boots and all, as if he knew that the shock of her position raised misgivings. He kissed her, and all questions and thoughts retreated. She grasped him to her, for reassurance and warmth. His sure hand caressed down her body, raising delicious expectations of that stroke on her flesh. He dominated her with his body, his embrace and his power, and she surrendered.
Hunger slashed through him. Hard. Aggressive. The acceptance in her embrace, the fire in her biting kisses and clutching hands, stretched his control. It was all he could do to restrain himself, and a wonder he did not tear her skirts off and take her at once.
His hand was between her thighs and his caress sliding in her cleft before he tamed the ferocity in himself. Her hips flexed above his hand. Her cries and slickness said she was aroused enough, but it would be stupid and thoughtless to ravish her, no matter how ready her body might be.
He kissed her soundly while he bridled the ruthless drive that compelled him forward. He drew her back from her own frenzy for now. A frown of frustration said she was less than pleased.
He kissed her furrowed brow. “It will end badly for you if it continues like that, and I do not want to hurt you.”
She nodded but her expression remained petulant. He rolled her to her side and worked at the dress's fastenings.
She began to roll back when she realized what he was doing. He stopped her with gentle pressure against her shoulder. “You will not stop me. There is little enough left for me to see, and I will not be denied.”
She did not stop him again. He guessed her state accounted for that as much as anything. Or perhaps her resistance had been more instinct than will.
It pleased him to undress her. He slid the dress off completely and went to work on the stays. Her breaths came deeply, as if this affected her as much as love play. He rolled her onto her back.
Her dark eyes watched him from beneath lowered lids while he slipped the stays away. The full sensuality of her body was already visible beneath the filmy chemise. He slid it down until she was naked except for her hose and the pretty garters above her knees. They added a piquant erotic touch. He decided to leave them on her.
The Sins of Lord Easterbrook Page 12