Melissa shook her head. “I’m afraid he doesn’t even know I’m here,” she said ruefully.
“What? But how come Carter let you in? I will have to have words with him.”
“I have been a guest here before,” Melissa said delicately.
Dowager Lady Harding’s eyes widened slightly. She made a rolling motion with her hand. “Do tell?”
Melissa was surprised. Dowager Lady Harding’s tones were not censorious, nor damning. They sounded light, and more interested than anything else.
“It’s a long story.”
“Believe me, my dear, when Izzy Mayhew said that my son had a smile on his face, and that a strange woman was seen walking his silly dog, I decided I had all day to find out what had changed his fortune.”
Melissa started to protest.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Dowager Lady Harding said firmly. “I also decided that whether it was a servant or a courtesan, I don’t think you are either, I would believe it to be a good thing. Since Elsa…”
Not Elsa again.
“Since Elsa,” Lady Harding said with a sniff, “my darling boy has been a right… cad.”
Melissa was so surprised she laughed. She hadn’t expected the dowager’s cant phrase. She had more expected a lecture on his bookishness.
“I was more expecting you to have blamed his love of books,” Melissa said carefully.
Dowager Lady Harding looked at her sharply. “You know about him and books.”
“It is hard not to if one is forced into his company for days on end!” Melissa shut her mouth with a snap.
Hades’ mother looked at Melissa sideways. “You love him,” she crowed, stamping her rod on the floor for effect. “Face it girl, you are not here avoiding something, you are here running to something!”
“That’s not true,” Melissa said hotly, but her heart thumped in protest and her ears burned. Love? To love a man who had kidnapped her, left her as bait, and who thought that she was running after him? What lesser recipe was there for love? It was as harsh as if her mother and Edgar were back again.
“And do you know if he feels the same way?” the dowager continued, flattening all of Melissa’s protests as if she could not hear them. “I would be surprised if Hades admitted to himself that he loved another woman. He has a problem with what he thinks of as losing, you see.”
“Behind every defeat there is a triumph,” Melissa muttered.
“What? Oh. You’ve found my present to Hades? I gave him that on his thirteenth birthday after he had dyed all those silly older boys red. He hadn’t quite understood at that point about personal victories.”
Dowager Lady Harding stopped speaking as Carter arrived to take the plates away. She gave Melissa a long hard look. “I don’t care about your pedigree. So long as you make him happy. Now what’s for pudding?”
CHAPTER 25
“Welcome back, my lord.” Carter stood back to allow Hades into the hall. “Umm.”
Hades could already see that there had been some changes in his absence. A lady’s hat lay on the hall table and even from the outside of his house he could see the front room drapes had changed.
“Is there any lunch, Carter? I’m famished.” Hades said brusquely. He’d find out why his house was so topsy turvy after he had eaten. He couldn’t think straight after the breakneck coach ride back to London, and the knowledge that he now knew who the Viper was.
“Would you like lunch in the dining room or in the study, sir?” Carter asked nervously.
“In the dining room? Why would I have it in the dining room?”
“Because that is where I am having it, Hades.” Melissa appeared at the entrance to Hades’ study. Hades grasped the hall table with clenched fingers in shock. He had thought of Melissa often in between the Viper. In his dreams, her black hair had curled into snakes, and she had wrapped her body around his. He took a step towards her and lifted up his hand, at the same time as she stepped towards him.
Carter’s cough brought him to his senses. Without losing Melissa’s gaze, he dropped his hand to his side. “I will join Miss Sumner in the dining room.”
It was a wrench to drop his gaze. Melissa. She exercised a sort of sorcery over him.
As he slowly sat down at the dining room table, a walking stick dropped away from the chair he sat in. “What is my mother’s cane doing here?” He leaned down to pick up the dragon-headed rod.
“She left it here last night,” Melissa said calmly. “After dinner.”
“Dinner, but she would never stay to dinner unless—” Hades sat back up with a start.
“Luncheon is served, your Lordship.” Carter was followed into the dining room by a train of footmen. They held bowls of salmon en croute, asparagus, butter and new potatoes.
Hades gazed at the spread in silence as Melissa helped herself. “What have you done with Carlos and Charles?”
“Oh, they are still here. They’ve just had some help from Mrs. Hobbs.”
“You’ve moved Mrs. Hobbs in as well as changing my curtains and meeting my mother?”
Melissa nodded. “I thought that you might appreciate something other than biscuits.”
“I do, but I…”
“And the salmon en croute is rather nice.”
Hades took a bite. It was. “That still doesn’t take away from the fact that you are in my home pushing me out!”
“I’m not pushing you out!” Melissa took her glasses off and narrowed her gaze at him. Distractedly she put them back on again, pursing her rosebud lips. In that instant Hades was struck anew by her beauty, with or without the spectacles. He swallowed and stood up.
“I have to go.”
“But you only just arrived here!” Melissa said quickly. “Have you any more news of the Viper?”
Hades gazed at the beautiful woman in front of him. He just wanted to protect her. “No,” he said uncomfortably. Protect her, ravish her, lock her away and use her for his own. “No,” he repeated.
Hades pushed himself abruptly away from the table and walked blindly into the hall. Carter was busy dragging his bags in.
“Sir, where shall I put this bag of books?” Carter huffed as he pulled in the still unopened saddle bag of books that Hades had tossed with the rest of the luggage. “I wish you would stop visiting the Temple of Muses’ book shop. We haven’t anywhere else to put all these old things.”
Hades waved his hand impatiently. “Just leave them on the hall table.”
He pulled open the front door. “Are my travelling bags still on the coach?” he asked Carter.
Carter nodded. “Yes sir, I’m sorry, I have only just started to unload it.”
“No matter. I won’t be staying.”
“But sir!”
“If anybody wants me, I shall be at Lord Lassiter’s. And if he won’t have me, I suppose, my mother’s.” Hades shook his head in disgust. He didn’t really want to hear what his mother had to say about the lone woman that had taken over his household.
“Hades, wait.” Melissa appeared in the hall. The candlelight from the chandelier glinted off her glasses. It was hard to know what she was thinking. As she moved closer Hades could see a furrow in her brow.
He turned to yank open the door. Pulling it open jerkily, he stopped as a soft hand was laid upon his arm. Melissa looked up into his face, cornflower blue eyes wide with worry.
“You will come back, won’t you, Hades? I… I need to talk to you.” Melissa took a step closer to him. Hades inhaled her familiar scent of lavender and closed his eyes.
“Is it important?” he asked tersely, his arm rigid where she had laid her hand. He desperately fought the urge to take her in his arms, to smooth away the worry from her face. He had a name for the Viper now. He would spend a day planning, and then he would pounce on the man. Professor Lisle’s days were numbered. He would lay the Viper at Melissa’s feet. It would be his wedding present to her. It was her victory. He knew when he was defeated. That was, if she would have him
. A sudden doubt assailed him and he swallowed.
Melissa’s frown deepened, and she removed her hand suddenly. “I suppose it can wait,” she said slowly.
“Good.” Hades stepped out onto the front step and pulled the large door shut after him. But not before her whisper reached his ears.
“Be safe.”
The coachman was surprised to be given the order to get moving again, but the journey wasn’t far to Freddie’s townhouse. In fact, Hades had only just dropped the Freddie off the hour previously. He took the steps two at a time and pulled impatiently at the door knocker.
Freddie answered the door himself, already clad in a dressing gown, a snifter of brandy in one hand and a cheroot in the other.
“Harding!” he said, waving his cheroot in the air. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
“Freddie.” Hades eyed his snifter. How many had he had in the last hour? “May I come in? I need somewhere to stay.”
“Sure thing old boy!” Freddie said expansively. “Mi casa es su casa and all that.”
With a sigh of relief Hades stepped into the large hall of the townhouse, Freddie drawing back so that he could enter.
Freddie took another sip of his whiskey and placed the cheroot on a vase on the hall table. “Tell me Hades… why exactly do you need to stay with me?”
Perhaps Freddie wasn’t as inebriated as Hades had first thought. “It’s a long story,” he said with a sigh. “Could we talk about it over dinner?”
“Hmm, might be hard, old chap. I’ve given the cook the night off. I can get you a sandwich?”
Freddie had given his cook the night off on the day that he had come home? Things were definitely very odd in Lord Lassiter’s household. If only he had had some of the salmon en croute that he had left on his plate in his own home. The first real meal that he might have eaten there, were it not for his nemesis who had sat opposite him, daintily picking over the food.
“A sandwich would be fine.”
“Good, good. I’ll show you to your room. Lovall normally stays there so it should all be shipshape. I don’t know about the state of the other rooms in the house. I never normally bother with them.”
Hades nodded. It wasn’t up to him to pass judgement on how other people lived. He couldn’t talk, what with two pastry chefs, an over-familiar butler and a woman who had pushed him out of his home.
Hades followed Freddie up the curving stair and into the first door that appeared at the top. It opened into a large well-appointed room, with a bay window facing onto the back of the house. The room was clean, if crowded with more military pictures and regalia. It was almost the mirror image of the morning room downstairs where pikes were leaned negligently up against the wall. This time however, the regalia was of an older type, from the civil war and perhaps earlier. Thankfully, the bed itself was clear—a four-poster heavy oak monstrosity without drapes.
“This will be fine,” Hades said, edging round a suit of armor. “I’ll send my coachman in with the bags.”
“Mmm, do,” Freddie said, kicking at a helmet. “Sorry ‘bout the mess. Went through a phase of collecting a while ago. I think it might have got a little out of hand.” He laughed a little too forcefully. “Lovall calls it a reflection of my mind.”
Hades nodded, embarrassed, and turned towards the bed.
“I’ll get on and make you a sandwich and you can tell me all about what is bothering you.”
Before Hades could turn around in surprise, Freddie and his snifter was gone. The man was mercurial. Shaking his head, he called his coachman up to the room, and made arrangements for his bags to be delivered.
Freddie was waiting for him in the morning room. He had made a giant sandwich of bread and beef. Hades fell on it with gusto. It was a long time since he had last eaten. Freddie waited in silence, smoking a new cheroot. His glass now contained port. He stretched his leg out in front of him on a second chair and puffed silently at the cigar.
When at last Hades pushed his plate away, Freddie nodded. “There is no point in holding it in, you know. Sometimes things become so big that they want to burst out of you. You start leaking emotions at every step.”
“Leaking emotions?”
“Ye…es. I could tell you were agitated as soon as you turned up here. You would barely look me in eye and hopped from foot to foot like you were in quicksand. That is not the earl I know. If any deb saw you like this they would put you in the ‘nice to look at but a queer fish pot’, if you see what I mean.”
“Err, yes?”
“Yes. Debs don’t go for the damaged man. They want a cad. Believe me, I know.”
Hades grimaced. He didn’t really want to follow this conversation down that path.
“It’s got to be a woman,” Freddie said, suddenly sitting up straight. He subsided backwards with a howl. “Oww my leg!” He rubbed gingerly at the elevated leg and stuffed his cheroot in his mouth, puffing hastily at the cigar.
“I’m not sure that is going to help you,” Hades said dryly.
“I don’t care,” Freddie said plaintively, “it takes my mind off the pain, just as you hope running away from your home will take your mind off whatever is bothering you there.”
“I never said that there was a woman in my home!” Hades said quickly.
Freddie looked up from rubbing his leg and gritted his cheroot between his teeth. “If you remember, neither did I!” he said hoarsely around the cigar. “But since there is a woman in your house that you have just admitted to, then tell me more about her?”
Hades hesitated. How could he describe the one woman that had finally trapped him, and that he feared would vanquish him?
“It can’t be a Cyprian,” Freddie mused into Hades’ silence. “I would have heard about that. Nor a deb, that would have caused a ton uproar, and there had barely been a murmur.” He looked into Hades’ face. “Now who have I seen you with recently? Hmm the last time I came to your house there was a lady there with an appointment. One who desperately wanted to leave…” He stopped as Hades’ took a deep breath. “That’s the one, isn’t it?” Freddie said with a chuckle. “Neither a deb nor a Cyprian, but she has had a hand in both. No family to be concerned for her and a history of causing chaos. My, my, Miss Sumner does have a lot to answer for.”
“She has been caught up in this business with the Viper,” Hades said tightly. “She is under my protection.”
“Is that what you call it?” Freddie said archly. “Hmm, I recall the same used to be said about men and their mistresses.”
“She is not my mistress, Freddie.” Hades banged the table.
“At least you didn’t plant me a facer like old Anglethorpe did to you when you insinuated something similar.”
“That was different.”
“Yes. You said that the light of his life was a spy.”
“I didn’t know that she was the light of his life at the time.”
“You have hardly claimed that Miss Sumner is the light of your life.”
“Well, what if she is?” Hades banged the table again defiantly. Freddie’s mouth dropped open. Hades clenched his fist on the table
“I don’t believe it,” exclaimed Freddie, “the mighty elephant, felled by 1816’s greatest beauty. I seem to remember you left her alone on the dance floor that year.”
“So did you,” Hades said plaintively. “I thought she was deaf and mute at the time.”
Freddie choked. “What? What! Ha! Oh ho.” Pulling a decanter of port closer to him, he poured a fresh glass and pushed it across the table at Hades. Hades picked it up willingly. Taking a sniff and a sip. he savored the mouthful. Freddie had chosen beautiful wine to get drunk on.
“What was your excuse?” Hades asked.
“My leg hurt. And she was too sympathetic.”
“Mmm. That sounds like Melissa. She is too kind for her own good. She’s moved her charity case couple into my house to teach Carlos and Charles how to cook.”
Freddie choked again. “I can’t wai
t till your mother meets her.”
“She already has,” Hades said, thinking of the walking stick he had dislodged from the table. “I haven’t plucked up the courage to go and see her yet.”
“What did Miss Sumner say about the encounter?”
“She didn’t. There wasn’t time.”
“Time before what?”
“Before I left.”
“Ha. I told you, you were running away.”
“Escaping.” Hades took a swig of his port. It really was rather good.
“Avoiding defeat?”
Hades nodded. Freddie was too perceptive, even when he was bosky.
“I’ve always rather thought,” Freddie said, “that some defeats could be perceived as victories.”
“My mother would agree with you there,” Hades said glumly, thinking of his book on Cicero.
“I mean, take for example some of our greatest defeats on the Peninsular. They only allowed us to regroup and take the final victory. I rather think love was a bit like that.”
Hades spat out his mouthful of port. “Hold on, I might have mentioned that she was the light of my life, but I said nothing about love.”
Freddie looked at him in surprise. “But isn’t this what this is all about?”
CHAPTER 26
Melissa stood glaring at the door that had been shut with a bang in her face. Her lips trembled, although she kept her shoulders straight. She could feel the moment coming when her glasses would begin to steam up as hot tears cascaded down her face. That would not happen to her. She folded her lip under her teeth and bit slowly. Ow, but that hurt. But it also worked. She swallowed and allowed the heat to fall away from her face before she turned round.
The smile Melissa gave to Carter was tremulous but seemed to work. His look of concern cleared slowly, although he kept darting her quick looks as if expecting her to crumble at any moment.
“May I be of any help, miss?” he enquired.
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