Viscountess of Vice

by Jenny Holiday

  Her short, clipped tones said she was upset, yet she moved to stand so close to him that he could feel her legs beneath her skirt, brushing against his. He felt his own spark of annoyance. She was clearly trying to unsettle him with her sudden aggression, to scare him and his questions away. Her bosom pressed against his chest and, looking down, his eyes were drawn once again to where the creamy white skin gave way to a dark chasm. To the V. Which, despite his better judgment, he very much wanted to trace with his fingertips. Or his mouth.

  She tilted her head back and licked her lips. “Eight pounds is an outrageous sum.”

  He had angered her, and she was punishing him, baiting him. Fine. He would not allow himself to become flustered—he could play this game as well as she. Games he understood. They had rules, and he was good at rules. But he wagered she wasn’t prepared to follow through with her teasing. “It is indeed. What do you suggest?”

  Standing on her tiptoes, she placed her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. She leaned up and in, and he could feel the tickle of the mask’s feathers against his nose. Her mouth touched his, ever so lightly. “I suggest this,” she whispered.

  He inhaled deeply, filling his nose with her rose scent. But there was something else there too, something lighter, a fresh scent almost completely obscured by the roses. Lemon? He couldn’t put his finger on it. She was not exactly the wanton she pretended to be. Her combative words were at odds with the tentative, almost chaste kiss she offered. She was giving him the opportunity to back away, to end things here, and she would follow his lead, but he was not a saint. And she was right about one thing: social reform was a lonely business.

  He kissed her back.

  Snaking his arms around her, he lifted her off her feet a little. Her kiss had been light, tentative. His, as he crushed his mouth against hers, was nothing short of demanding. He knew it was wildly inappropriate, but he didn’t care. He wanted for one moment to possess this lovely, mysterious creature, to forget about his measurements, his statistics, his examinations and just…live.

  She exhaled against his mouth, a little mew that went straight to his groin. He nudged her mouth open with his tongue, though he didn’t have to do much persuading, as hers met his eagerly, soft and demanding at the same time. He groaned. She was delicious. And a masked lady playing the part of a whore, he reminded himself. Someone who valued her own entertainment above decorum, propriety—above what was right. He was supposed to be here in service of a greater cause.

  He disengaged and gently pushed her away, despite the angry protestations of every part of his body. It seemed he could not escape the confines of his controlling mind, after all. Forgetting was not a particular skill of his.

  One of her cap sleeves had fallen down her arm, exposing a pale shoulder. Sighing, he reached out and righted it, then stroked the side of her face with the back of his hand, starting at her hairline, drifting down over her mask, and then, finally, making contact with her skin where the mask stopped below her cheekbones. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I must go.”

  He half expected her to object, but she merely nodded and stepped away, clearing a path for him. Moving around the room, he collected his coat and gloves as quickly as he could and made his way to the door. He paused and turned back to where she stood near the bed, watching him. Once more, he allowed his eyes to fall to her décolletage. “What does the V stand for?”

  She was silent for a long moment. “Viscountess.”

  Chapter Two

  Tears threatened behind the feathers. Why was she so upset? As soon as the door clicked shut behind Dr. Burnham, Catharine slid the bolt into place and removed her mask, tossing it onto the bed behind her. Whatever the reason for this uncharacteristic impulse to weep, she would not give in to it. She’d shed her last tear two years ago after Charles’s death in Portugal. After a month lost in grief, she’d picked herself up and moved back to England, where they would have to accept her, given that she returned with her late husband’s title—and his wealth. She then proceeded to reinvent herself, eradicating all traces of the deferential wallflower who’d been sent to the Continent by her parents.

  The transformation had been wildly successful, she needed to remember that. She needed to remember who she was: Catharine, Viscountess Cranbrook, a much-sought-after and slightly scandalous widow, as famous for her string of deposed young lovers as for her legendary wit.

  The Viscountess Cranbrook was not a woman who cried. And if she were going to make an exception, it would certainly not be over such an inconsequential encounter. Really, there was nothing to be upset about. James Burnham had not been her usual sort of client, and she’d allowed him to unsettle her a bit, that was all. In certain circles, he was a well-regarded social reformer, working on prison conditions, the abolishment of workhouses, and the like. These “circles” did not include most members of the ton, who were too concerned with their own pleasure to spare a thought for those less fortunate. It was through her friendship with Robert and Daisy Watson that she knew of Dr. Burnham’s writings and of the somewhat unfortunately named Society for the Comfort and Elevation of the Poor and the Betterment of Their Children. The Society was run by a man named Mr. Alan Phillips, a former vicar who’d been run out of the Church under circumstances that remained somewhat murky. He was determined to advance an ambitious secular reform movement, and took every opportunity to declaim that men needn’t act out of a sense of duty to God, but out of a sense of duty to one another.

  Catharine agreed with the sentiment, even if she didn’t always support some of the Society’s particular positions. She, too, did what she did out of a sense of duty—not to God, but to her fellow man. The comfortable, independent life she lived now had been hard-won, and she felt as if she owed something in return. She was also moved to act on behalf of the memory of her husband, whom she had greatly respected. She pulled the ruby from her décolletage and gave it a squeeze. And, of course, because Blackstone had asked her to. Bonds forged on the battlefield were strong indeed.

  She replaced the ruby and smoothed her skirts. This disquiet was no doubt prompted by the appearance of a man so unlike her usual visitors. He’d been respectful and sure of himself. It wasn’t uncommon to meet a gentleman here who was one or the other, but she almost never encountered both qualities simultaneously. The confident gentlemen tended to be rude and condescending. The ones who afforded her a modicum of respect tended to be the young, tentative ones.

  Though Dr. Burnham’s respect had lapsed when he’d explained away his arousal as a “logical response” to proximity to a beautiful woman. Though she hadn’t been trying to arouse him, just to tease him a little—she was a somewhat infamous widow, after all, and that’s what she did—she’d been offended when he dismissed anything specific about her as the source of his obvious excitement. It felt at the time as if he’d slapped her. Even now, to think that she was nothing more than a warm body to the noble social reformer—a mere warm body he could resist through force of will—made her blood boil. Which was ridiculous because she had her pick of the ton’s young bucks. It was one of the advantages of both her titles, viscountess and widow.

  She shook her head. This wasn’t the ton. This was espionage. James Burnham was a lot of things: enigmatic, confusing, handsome. But it wasn’t James Burnham she was looking for. Not at all. She would do well to remember why she was here.

  A rapping at the door disturbed her thoughts.

  “Just a moment, please!” She fumbled her mask back on and patted her wig before opening the door to reveal a housemaid.

  “Madame Cherie wishes to see you before the midnight gathering. She asks, since it appears your gentleman has departed, can you please come as soon as it is quite convenient?”

  It was just as well. She didn’t intend to stay for the midnight gathering. Madame would not be pleased. Neither would Blackstone. But she needed to go home—Blackstone could go hang himself. She’d been at this nearly a month and had turned up nothing but a
few empty leads. It was time to discuss changing tactics.

  Reaching Madame’s office, the maid rapped on the door. Catharine entered to find Madame and Eric Woodley, the twelfth Earl of Blackstone, sitting opposite each other across a large mahogany desk. Blackstone drank tea; the house’s proprietress sipped from a glass of champagne.

  Dash it, this was all she needed now. Blackstone didn’t own her. She worked for him willingly, but he didn’t pay her wages. She was her own mistress, and if she wanted to go home early, that’s exactly what she would do. She forced a smile. “Good evening, Madame, my lord.” The earl stood, his dark eyes betraying nothing, and gestured to a chair. She shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling well. I need to go home.”

  “I need to speak with you,” Blackstone said.

  “And I’ve told you,” Madame said to the earl, “you can come to the midnight gathering and pay for her time like everyone else. That was our arrangement. When she’s here, you pay.”

  She had to get out of here. The house, which had at first seemed the setting for an exciting adventure, felt stiflingly oppressive tonight. “Madame,” she said, “I am unwell. I won’t be staying for the second gathering. I’m sorry. I’ll come tomorrow night instead.”

  Blackstone rose suddenly and dropped a sack of coins on the desk in front of Madame. “This will more than pay for the second and third gatherings.” He offered Catharine his arm. “I’ll escort you home.”

  Madame was obviously not pleased, but neither was she going to argue. Blackstone had more than compensated her for what she’d lose by not having Catharine in the house that evening, so she couldn’t reasonably protest. Catharine knew Madame had come to depend on her, though. Business was up since she’d introduced Lady V, the mysterious masked highborn lady who offered only conversation to her guests. So much so that Madame had doubled the price for Catharine’s time since she’d started a month ago. And, per their agreement, Madame kept every farthing.

  The older woman shook her head and flicked her wrist dismissively. “Get out, then. Both of you. You tonnish types pay the bills, but I’ll never understand you.” Blackstone bowed to the older woman, which, paradoxically, seemed to incense her. “You!” She lowered her voice and narrowed her eyes in disgust. “Look at you. An earl from one of the oldest, most respected families in the realm. Paying to have your lady friend pretend to entertain others. It’s absurd. It’s—”

  “It’s none of your affair.” As always, there was something in the earl’s tone that commanded attention, though he spoke evenly and did not raise his voice. This was the demeanor that had made him a successful officer. When he stood at his full height and looked down at the older woman, it brought Catharine back to Portugal. She’d been a little afraid of him then. Today, the injured right arm that had driven him out of the army hung uselessly by his side, making him, inexplicably, even more fearsome.

  The earl’s voice rose a notch, just enough to signal his growing displeasure and to call Catharine back from her reverie. “You will recall, Madame, that our agreement specifies that the nature of my intimate proclivities are not to be discussed, given how handsomely you are compensated for accommodating them.” Madame nodded, albeit grudgingly. “And they are not to be made public.”

  “It is not in my interest to make them public, my lord. Paying me to let your mysterious little doxy here set up shop a few times a week and pretend to cuckold you is the most lucrative arrangement I’ve ever made, if the most nonsensical. So you may rest easy on that front.” Another dismissive hand wave.

  “Madame, you may insult me, but you may not insult Lady V.”

  “Leave it,” Catharine whispered, tugging Blackstone’s good arm. “Please. Let us go.”

  He looked down at her, momentarily indecisive.

  “I will leave without you.” She meant it, too.

  He acquiesced, face hardening, and they made their way outside to his waiting carriage. Catharine always marveled that Blackstone took his own liveried carriage when he made his occasional visits to the house of ill repute, but she supposed that since members of the ton could freely see him inside, there was no point in disguising his conveyance. And none of them knew of their arrangement with Madame, so their true purpose remained shadowed. Others of the highborn set would assume he attended for the same reasons they did—intrigue, release, transgression. They saw merely an unmarried peer visiting Lady V. She, masked and anonymous, even to Madame, had to be much more circumspect, and so she traveled to and fro in a hired hackney. She was glad Blackstone had come. It would save her having to wait for one on this chilly evening and would deliver her home sooner.

  “Catharine.” Blackstone settled her inside the burgundy-upholstered carriage and took the seat opposite. “What is troubling you?”

  She sighed as she removed the mask and met the earl’s gaze. How could she explain? It was silly, really. Nothing was the matter, not objectively. She closed her eyes and summoned the image of the tall, black-clad Dr. Burnham, striding around her room as if it were his own. Pressing his lips against hers as if she were his own. She pulled the ruby out from beneath her bodice and let it hang freely—she hated having to hide it, and Blackstone was well acquainted with its origins. “Nothing, really, it’s merely a touch of the headache.”

  Inserting a finger under the tightly fitted wig, she began the transformation back into the regular Viscountess Cranbrook. Though she always instructed the servants not to wait up for her, she couldn’t risk an encounter while in her disguise. She studied the earl. He was dark like Dr. Burnham, but Dr. Burnham had those brilliant green eyes. Everything about Blackstone was dark, from his black hair, worn slightly longer than was fashionable, to his eyes, so brown they verged on black. And those eyes said that he did not believe her claim to illness.

  But he chose not to press her. “Then I’ll share my findings, and before you know it you’ll be home in your own bed.” He rapped the top of the carriage, and they lurched into motion.

  “Thank you, yes, that’s all I need. And I’m sorry about missing the rest of this evening.”

  “It’s of no matter. We’re not operating blindly any more. That’s what I wanted to tell you. We have a person of interest, Georg Biedermeier, a gunmaker in Birmingham. It doesn’t mean we let our guard down, though, because there may be others.”

  Blackstone had set Catharine up at Madame’s because a French mole he’d apprehended in a recent mission had used the place as a sort of unofficial headquarters. Catharine’s assignment had been to use her vantage point to learn whether Madame’s was rife with French sympathizers or whether the man Blackstone apprehended had been working alone. After a month that had turned up nothing, she’d been willing to wager the latter.

  “Georg Biedermeier.” She rolled the name around on her tongue. It was somewhat buoying to have “the enemy” distilled into the form of a specific person. “Not French. German?”

  “Yes.”

  “Various German states were allied to Napoleon for a time.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen him at Madame’s.”

  “You wouldn’t have. It seems he visits every second Saturday evening, arriving before the midnight gathering—not your night. Incidentally, you’re going to have to inform Madame that your schedule will change. Bailey reports that he leaves Birmingham very early Friday mornings.”

  “Bailey? You mean Mr. Trevor Bailey, the shipping magnate?” Catharine, being new to Blackstone’s spy ring, was constantly finding herself surprised at the people the earl had involved in his missions. When Blackstone had revealed himself to her as the master of Wellington’s London intelligence operations, she’d imagined a shadowy cabal made up of noblemen of the ton, plotting their machinations in gentlemen’s clubs. Instead, the earl’s small army drew from all strata of society.

  “We served on the Peninsula together,” was the only explanation Blackstone offered. Of course, this meant Mr. Bailey was one of the few men Blackstone
would trust absolutely. War, Catharine knew from firsthand experience, transcended class strictures and turned men into brothers.

  “I don’t remember him.”

  “You wouldn’t. He enlisted after Charles died and you left. He and I served together only briefly before my injury forced me out. He followed shortly to join me fighting the war on…other fronts.”

  She swallowed a lump in her throat, thinking of that bittersweet year she spent with Charles. Life following the drum had been hard. But in some ways, it had been so very, very much easier than anything that came before. And, for one glorious year, she had not been alone.

  Goodness, here she was, on the verge of tears again. She hardly recognized herself. And clearly neither did her late husband’s friend, for he laid his hand on her arm—an uncharacteristic gesture from the usually taciturn aristocrat. It snapped her out of her maudlin fog, though, because pity was the one thing she could not tolerate.

  “So!” she said brightly, pulling away from his touch. “Mr. Bailey, a soldier turned man-of-business turned spy, has established that Georg Biedermeier travels here once a fortnight. Why?”

  “We’re still working that out.”

  “Just because he’s here doesn’t make him a French sympathizer. Plenty of gentlemen avail themselves of Madame’s services. Even I, who am difficult to shock, am surprised by the identities of some I’ve encountered.”

  “You’re right, of course, but there’s more. The Home Office has had anonymous letters about an unnamed Birmingham gunmaker engaging in treasonous activity.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “No idea. That’s what we need to find out. The letters are unsigned. The first was ignored, assumed to be a prank. They kept coming, though.”

  “And this Georg Biedermeier is both a Birmingham gunmaker and a regular at Madame’s? It does seem rather a coincidence.”