Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3)

by Pearl Darling

  “Shall we start again?” he said. “My name is Hades.” The earl coughed and gazed at her directly, the blaze of warmth in his eyes apparent again. She blinked and it was gone. “How did you become the Viper?”

  She drew her arms sharply into her body and stood.

  “If you will excuse me, I will not join you for dinner.” Picking up her book, she marched to the door and slipped through it. Without waiting for Carter, she made her own way blindly to her bedroom.

  Without bothering to undress, she pulled back the coverlet to the bed and flung herself back against the mattress. He still thought she was the Viper! Laying her spectacles on the bedside table, she patted the sheets for her book, and sighed as she brought it close to her nose to read its title. In her haste to escape she had picked up Cicero and not the book on naval medicine.

  Rolling onto her side, she rested the book on her pillow and started to read, her eyes catching on the inscription on the flyleaf. Dearest Hades, it began. Melissa shivered and read on, pausing only to pull the coverlets up over her body, the warm cotton sliding tantalizingly against her skin.

  CHAPTER 7

  Hades leant low into his horse’s mane and pressed his knees into its heaving sides. Four rides in half as many days—it was unheard of. But she… she affected him in a way he didn’t understand. She had looked like a cat, curled up in the familiar leather cushioning of his chair. He gripped at his reins as the horse flew over a log. She had been the victor in their exchange. By taking the green chair, he had just descended the slippery slope to more compromise.

  It had been thus with Lady Elsa Dalston. She had taken, and taken and taken, until Hades had had nothing more to give. Hades shivered and hunched. She had rejected him, just as he had been about to make her his bride. He gritted his jaw and jerked at the reins, slowing the racing horse. Melissa would be allowed no further quarter, Viper or no.

  The horse was in no mood to slow. Pulling and heaving at the thin leathers in his hand, Hades turned the horse toward the exit to the park and thundered hard towards home. But the Hill Street house was not the haven he had left it. From the outside he could see that the customarily drawn drapes in the front room were open and as he pushed open the large front door, loud singing filtered up the servant’s stairs from the kitchen.

  He stood for a few moments in the large hall, but still the singing did not abate. “What is going on?” he thundered.

  Carter scuttled into the hall and coughed nervously. “Nothing my lord, just a little spring cleaning.”

  Hades frowned at the butler and resisted the urge to growl. “Where is she?”

  “In the study… but…”

  Of course. Whacking his riding whip against his thigh, he crashed through the door of the study and stopped abruptly.

  She had done it again. Melissa’s small body lay curled up in his chair, her slippers on the floor and her glasses lying on the oval table. His book on Cicero was nowhere to be seen. And she snored; the cleaned low-cut gown he had captured her in barely containing her breasts that rose and fell as she breathed deeply.

  Hades resisted the urge to go any closer. He closed the door quietly and, stepping back into the hall, thrust his whip on the hall table. Carter and four footmen stared at him, all incongruously armed with small dusting brushes.

  “What?” he roared, unable to contain himself. The men scattered fearfully and mercifully the singing from the kitchen stopped. Head down, he stomped into the front room and sat down in a red velvet chair, the twin of the green one that now sat in his study.

  Carter knocked and edged his body to just inside the door. “A…Are you sure she is the Viper, sir?” he asked, his eyes wide.

  “What do you think, Carter?” Hades asked dejectedly.

  Carter clasped his hands together and his face adopted a dreamy look. “I don’t think she is, sir. She seems far too nice. I think she was a debutante at one point too. She keeps reading all of the medicinal tomes you have, and has already cured Charles’ cough.”

  “Mmm I heard. He still can’t sing. Perhaps she can work on yours next.”

  Carter blinked at Hades’ unexpected joke. Hades sighed. No one ever expected him to have a little levity. Least of all himself.

  “And yes she was a debutante. I danced with her myself, as a matter of fact.”

  “She must have been an excellent dancer.” Carter’s eyes unfocused, and his arms came up as if holding an imaginary partner in his hands.

  Hades frowned. He couldn’t remember much about dancing with Melissa apart from being angry with Freddie Lassiter and Melissa saying her name was Diana. And drowning mesmerized in her eyes of course. Where had her spectacles been then? His frown deepened. And why had she according to rumor refused at least ten marriage proposals and attempted to marry Lord Stanton?

  Carter coughed, and his arms fell back to his side. “I think you will find that your young lady is awake, sir.”

  Hades uncrossed his legs, blinking fiercely. His young lady? The important thing was that she was now awake. He had some questions he needed to ask her.

  He re-entered the study, glancing towards the leather chair. But she was not there. She stood on the highest step of the library chair, fully extended trying to reach a book at the top of the flora and fauna section.

  With an oath, he crossed the room quickly and, grasping her by the waist, swung her to the floor. As her feet touched the carpet, she gasped softly and stood as rigid as a board. But still he kept his hands on her waist.

  “What is the Viper to you, Miss Sumner?” Hades needed to know, had to know. What if she was the Viper’s woman?

  “The Viper is nobody to me.” Melissa’s voice dipped and strengthened. “I do not know who he is.”

  Hades started to remove his hands. She was lying. He could tell it in the sound of her voice. But she stepped forward and pushed his hands back onto her waist.

  “If I kiss you, will you let me go? Will you let me leave here?” she asked in a low voice. Hades could not say anything. Nothing had robbed him of his senses before such as this.

  In the silence she removed his hands from beneath hers, and stepped away, leaving him oddly bereft, as though he should have taken the chance when he was offered it. But then she returned, dragging the library chair behind her. With supple grace, she stood on the first rung and leaned forward and hesitantly brushed her lips slowly against his. His breath hitched at the fleeting contact, but almost matter of factly she stepped down off the chair and made to put it away again.

  Not fair. Grasping her again by her waist with his strong hands, he pulled her back towards him and bent his head. Her mouth was round in surprise. Without giving her any time to protest, he plundered her sweet mouth with his. She tasted of coffee and hazelnuts. With a groan, he deepened his kiss. Melissa moaned beneath him, and her hands stole up to rest lightly on his shoulders—

  A cough at the partially opened door stopped him from going further. He had been about to push Melissa into the bookshelves and work his way down to her sweet-smelling neck and then… damn Carter for never knocking. Releasing Melissa, he stepped away and she collapsed like a rag doll to the floor.

  He squared his shoulders and stared at the fireplace. “I think you will find, madame, that in the end it was I that kissed you. And no. You cannot go. You have something to do with the Viper, and I want to know what it is.”

  Melissa looked up at him, her spectacles askew on her nose, her skirt splayed out across the floor. He laughed harshly. She had tried to play him and he had taught her a lesson, the one that Lady Elsa had taught him. But gods, the sweetness of her lips!

  Pulling the study door open he strode into the hall. “Next time knock, Carter,” he said angrily to the bulging eyes of the butler. Hades needed something to drink again. And then he was going out to the Temple of Muses bookshop. There was nothing like a dry book to take one’s mind off… off… well things one didn’t want to think about.

  The Temple of Muses Bookshop didn�
��t help. Even the musty smell of books didn’t console him. It smelt like the study at home.

  Hades roamed among the dark, double stacked shelves, picking out books at random, ignoring the other customers that paid him startled glances as he brushed roughly passed them. He had a copy of everything in the military section, everything in the strategy section and he wasn’t interested in anything else.

  “Earl Harding, sir?” The elderly gentleman at the counter bobbed him a quick bow as Hades paused by the door.

  “Yes, Harry?”

  “We have that order you made last week, De Re Militari by Vegetius. Would you like to take it now?”

  “Oh, yes of course.” Abashed, Hades walked back into the shop to the long mahogany counter. Melissa was fuddling his brain. He’d been waiting for De Re Militari for weeks. He leaned on the polished wood with his elbows and stared at the humorous bookend the counter clerk had enterprisingly displayed. ‘I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.’ Hades snorted and rubbed at his face with his arm.

  “Very popular that’s been.” The clerk tapped the bookend. “The book it’s from less so. It’s by a woman. I think her name is Austen.” He shook his head and stepped down into the backroom behind the counter.

  “Harry?” Hades lifted his voice slightly.

  “Yes, sir?” The clerk bustled back with a book wrapped in brown paper.

  “You don’t happen to have anything else new in in the back there? Anything to do with military? Strategy?”

  The clerk shook his head. “I keep everything new for you my lord. But this week, what you see in the stacks is all we have. And I believe you already have a copy of most of them.”

  Hades hesitated. “Have you anything on flora?”

  “Flora, sir?”

  Hades shuffled his feet. “Yes. Flowers and such like.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll just take a moment to look in the back. It’s not really our normal fayre.” The clerk ducked back into the room behind the counter. “Is this a new theme of reading for you, my lord?” His voice filtered softly out of the back room, the sound deadened by the many books in the shop.

  Hades took a furtive look around the shop. Strangely, most of the customers seemed to have made their way to the ends of their shelves and loitered shamelessly, one eye on the books, and an ear pointing in the direction of the counter.

  He turned back as the clerk staggered back into the main part of the shop and dropped the pile of books on the counter.

  “I’ve got a bit of everything here, my lord, but they all go together so I don’t really want to split them up.”

  Hades shook his head. “I’ll take them all. Put the flowery ones in a separate parcel. It’ll make it easier to carry.”

  “Of course sir. And might I say that is a mighty fine Dianthus Carrolus.”

  “What?” Hades started. “What did you say?”

  The clerk took a step back from the counter, his face paling. “Your carnation, sir. I thought it was your newfound passion for flowers that—” His voice trembled to a stop as Hades looked down at the carnation that Carter had pushed in his button hole and frowned.

  It was red. It always was at the moment.

  “Dianthus Carrolus.” He rolled the words quietly in his mouth. “Yes. You are right. I have found I’ve gained a somewhat dangerous passion for flowers recently.”

  “D…d…dangerous, sir?” the clerk stuttered.

  Hades gripped at the ledge of the counter. Dangerous for whom? “It distracts me from my other activities.” He shut his mouth with a snap.

  The clerk sighed with relief. “Yes, books can do that, can’t they? I remember one time when I had a first edition of…”

  Hades rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “The books please, Bob.”

  “Oh yes, of course.” Laboriously the clerk wrapped the books in brown paper and then carefully drew string around the two parcels and tied them with a neat bow at the top.

  “Do you need anyone to help you, sir?” The clerk lifted the books and stared at him as Hades gazed into space.

  Help? Gods, that was exactly what he needed. Melissa would probably call it an antidote. He clapped a hand to his forehead as a hot shiver ran through him. Help from what, though, exactly?

  CHAPTER 8

  Melissa rubbed underneath the glass of her spectacles at the rogue tear that had collected at her nose. It had been her last resort. She had had to offer a kiss. It was the only bargaining chip that she had ever known that any man she met had ever wanted.

  She slowly rose to her feet from her ignominious position on the floor. It was a case of more fool her. Testing his will had been like flying a red flag at a bull.

  She hung her head. She hadn’t been able to stop her hands stealing up the contours of his massive back, and encircling his powerful shoulders, her body unconsciously pressing itself closer to his broad torso.

  She righted her glasses on her nose and leaned against the bookshelf with a sniff. Absently she stroked her lips with her hand. How many other women had he kissed in the same way? He had reacted so strongly to her taking over his chair, she couldn’t believe that he had ever let a woman into his inner sanctum, which did not say much for any of his relationships, mistresses or otherwise. Oh dear. These were dangerous thoughts.

  And yet he did not seem like the same boy to whom the book on Cicero was dedicated. She rolled his name around on her tongue, Hades, Hades Harding. It was the name of the god of the Underworld. It was apt, she found the earl as beautiful and handsome as sin, and as muscular as any Greek god statue. And yet she could see why he did not advertise it.

  The inscription in the book had been even more interesting.

  Dearest Hades, Wishing you every happiness, my serious darling, on your thirteenth birthday. Remember that as Cicero explains, behind every defeat there is a triumph, and every sadness, a joy.

  Mama

  It seemed at first sight rather imposing advice to write to a thirteen-year-old. But then Melissa had read the Cicero letters from cover to cover. The inscription did not mean to say that out of every defeat someone else will triumph, or even that someone else would feel joy at one’s sadness. It meant that a defeat could be turned into a victory, or even sadness into a joy.

  She could not comprehend why a thirteen year old would need such advice at such an early age. But clearly the man was still as serious as the day when he received the book.

  Shaking her skirts out, Melissa pushed herself away from the stacks of books and stepped gingerly towards the leather chair. Her legs wobbled slightly, shock, perhaps. She had seen similar symptoms in patients that had nearly been hit by carriages, or who had fallen from horses. Normally she recommended a strong cup of tea but in some cases they had sworn by a tot of rum instead.

  Her eyes fell on the tantallus on the mantelpiece above the fire. Just one sip wouldn’t hurt. When she had stayed with Lady Colchester whilst Lord Stanton had endeavored to draw Eliza and Edgar and their hellish plans out, the women seemed to have drunk strong spirits on a daily basis.

  With fuzzy movements, she unstoppered the glass jug and poured a measure into a waiting glass. As she stoppered the jug again, she caught a quick glimpse of herself in the glass above the fire. Her glasses glinted in the ever-present firelight and her hair stood on end.

  She smoothed her hair and took off her glasses, thrusting them in her pocket. Squinting slightly, she regarded herself in the mirror again. That was much better. Perhaps that was why her attempt to buy her freedom had not worked. Melissa eyed the glass of brandy. She grasped the glass and tentatively took a sip.

  The liquid slid smoothly down her throat. Licking her lips to gain all of the sweetness, she took another sip, and another. It really was rather good. Seeing that her glass was already half-finished, she poured herself another generous measure. Silently wishing herself good health in the mirror, she tottered to the leather chair and fell into it in a heap, without ma
naging to spill a drop.

  What she needed was another way to escape Hades. Her plan had backfired spectacularly on her; attempting to bargain with him with a kiss had only drawn his snare more tightly around her. His kisses had pulled her as tight as a spinning top, smoothing away any semblance of control she exerted over her own actions.

  And when he found out that she was seeking the Viper too, she would be even more at his mercy.

  Melissa shifted in the chair as the brandy warmed her stomach. As the study blurred around her, it was almost as if she was back in the sumptuous library of the home in Buckinghamshire that her father had bought when she was little. Her father, Arthur Sumner, renowned botanist and expedition leader, had bought the house for the fertile grounds where he could plant all of the different varieties of flowers he brought back from around the world. Melissa had played on the front steps singing nursery rhymes as her father gardened, and then later on in the winter, games of hide and seek until she knew the house backwards. It had also been useful in escaping Eliza.

  Melissa hiccupped and reached for her glass again. Eliza again. Melissa stared into the glass. Was she already giving the other deportees her own peculiar brand of freezing camaraderie or had that only been reserved for Melissa? It was only when Melissa’s father was away that she had first noticed the woman’s coldness. But her father had always soon thankfully returned, and Melissa would disappear with him into a happy haze of flower examination and tales of orchid hunting leaving Eliza doing… whatever she did.

  But then one expedition he didn’t come back. Arthur Sumner’s expedition partner had sent Eliza a letter that had turned her beautiful pale face white. Melissa had supposed it was grief. She had only ever seen the first page of the letter, the part where Professor Lisle recounted dryly how her father’s body had been found at the bottom of the crevasse, that there was nothing he could do for him, and that these things happened. He was buried in the town where they had been staying, and where would Mrs. Sumner like him to send Arthur’s belongings?