What bloody nonsense, you great fool. At last, he forced himself to look at the truth beneath the truth. You’re taking Rebecca away because you cannot bear the thought of her belonging to someone else.
Just then, Rebecca’s cool fingertips landed softly on his face.
Connor’s heart leaped into his throat.
For a moment Rebecca’s fingers merely rested against him, a tentative delicate pressure. His heart began to jump. What was this? With a monumental effort, he continued breathing slowly and steadily, in and out. Did she believe he was asleep?
Or did she know that he was not?
With one finger, Rebecca slowly followed the line of his jaw, a touch soft as a breath, barely a touch at all. A tiny, sensual benediction.
Connor’s breathing grew unsteady. Tension gathered in him, drawn ever more taut by the progress of her finger. What should I do?
Her finger rounded the curve of his chin, paused, hesitating. If he turned his head just a little, only a little, her fingers would fall against his lips . . .
God help him, he knew what he wanted to do.
Rebecca took her hand away.
He nearly groaned aloud. Thank God. He lay as still as possible, breathing deeply and slowly. His heart was beating so hard the blood rang in his ears.
Finally, an eternity later, the cadence of Rebecca’s breathing told him she was asleep.
It was curiosity, nothing more, he told himself. It was Rebecca being . . . Rebecca. But his body remained tense, awakened to an astounding, and not entirely welcome, realization. Connor threw an arm over his eyes, as if he could smother his roiling thoughts; he silently counted up to one hundred, and then back down again.
But still the feel of her touch, the scorching delicacy of it, lingered, as though he’d been branded by the light of a star.
Chapter Nine
The gold brocade chair with the gilded legs was so ornate it seemed less furniture than jewelry, and normally it hurt Cordelia’s eyes just to look at it. She preferred it the other way around; she favored simple yet elegant furniture upholstered in colors that set off her own vivid coloring, furniture as a setting for a jewel. But this particular chair had reportedly once supported the bum of Louis XIV himself. Cordelia had fetched it from the Dunbrooke country estate specifically for the London townhouse for this very reason. It was emblematic of her place in life, a talisman; sitting in it stabilized her sense of entitlement whenever it grew shaky.
There had once been a set of such chairs. Her late husband, a man so handsome he could stop conversation by entering a room, a man in possession of one of the oldest titles and grandest fortunes in all of England, had mistaken the other one for a chamber pot one drunken night and sprinkled it thoroughly. A servant had subsequently whisked it away. She knew not its fate.
In exchange for enduring marriage to Richard Blackburn, a man who began drinking shortly after breakfast and enjoyed giving and receiving spankings, Cordelia Blackburn, Duchess of Dunbrooke, had become the most influential woman in polite London society. The soothing aristocratic gleam of her bearing helped offset her disquieting beauty, both of which, it was universally assumed, were the result of some ancient and extinct royal bloodline, most likely French. As the Duchess of Dunbrooke, she entertained frequently and exquisitely, and presided over her functions with grace and wit tempered with demure self-deprecation, earning the protective regard of the women in her circle and ensuring that none of them feared for their husbands. In truth, Cordelia knew she could smite any of the husbands in the ton with one precisely aimed glance from beneath her dark lashes. Husband smiting presented so little challenge that Cordelia indulged in it on only the dullest of evenings.
All in all, as the wife of the Duke of Dunbrooke, Cordelia had created a life for herself that was as artful, complex, and mathematically constructed as any Bach composition.
The end of her marriage had come sooner than she had thought possible: her husband’s throat was slit by a footpad a scant two years after his own father died. Thanks to Hutchins, impediments to her happiness had a way of conveniently disappearing. A wan expression, a softly muttered, “I wish Richard were dead,” and soon, interestingly enough, her wish had come true. She thought it wisest not to question this phenomenon; after all, the end result was a more comfortable, and perhaps safer, life for her.
Cordelia was left with the extraordinary Dunbrooke fortune, for Richard had no heirs, not even any distant cousins. There was a dearth of children in this particular generation of Blackburns.
She had been in love, truly in love, just once, and that folly was, ironically, the source of her current aggravation, thanks to Anthony Edelston. But she still could not muster any significant degree of rancor toward Edelston, and—in a number of subtle ways—she had made it clear to Hutchins that despite the blackmail, she preferred Edelston alive for the time being. Although at first glance he seemed no different from any spoiled lordling of the ton, Cordelia knew that Tony was perhaps more of a rogue than any of them, but also possessed a rare, pronounced, and reluctant streak of decency. True, Edelson had rifled her jewelry box and helped himself to the locket while she slept off the effects of wine and lovemaking. But he had also kept a secret so delicious that in and of itself it could have become his sole form of currency, a secret the ton would have gnawed and sucked the marrow from for years.
Which was that Cordelia Blackburn was perhaps the most gloriously perfect fraud ever to breach London society.
The cup and saucer she was holding began to rattle in her hands. She placed them carefully on the spindly table next to her, lest she ruin yet another Louis XIV chair, and folded her hands together in her lap, burying them in the soft, expensive folds of her gown.
A tap sounded at the drawing-room door.
“Enter, please,” she said.
Hutchins paused in the doorway and, as usual, made a deep low bow to Cordelia. Her face softened at the sight of him. Her face was, in fact, probably the only face in the world that would ever soften at the sight of Hutchins. It wasn’t that he was grotesque; he was short and a trifle bent, but that described a goodly portion of the London population. It had something to do with his eyes. They were enormous and stygian dark and set deep into his skull, and something about them, something bleak and implacable and infinitely still, suggested a pair of freshly dug graves. They gave one shudders, and Hutchins appeared to know this; when required to be in the presence of The Quality for any length of time, he kept his head deferentially lowered. He seemed to move in his own personal twilight, which afforded him a sort of invisibility that his mistress found very useful.
Hutchins seemed to be at least peripherally acquainted with every cutthroat, card cheat, and all-purpose reprobate within a fifty-mile radius of London. Cordelia knew nothing and preferred to know nothing of the specifics of his past; she only knew that he had a weakness for the theater and a gift for strategy, two qualities that had beautifully complemented Cordelia’s own gifts and ambitions for many years now. For reasons known only to him, Hutchins had decided long ago that Cordelia was worth serving. For fifteen years he had treated her like an empress.
“Your Grace, I come to make my report.”
His hands were empty. The locket had not been retrieved, then. She lifted her cup again and took a long sip of tea, hoping it would steady her nerves.
“Please do take a seat, Hutchins,” Cordelia said. Normally she would not invite any of her servants to sit, but she knew Hutchins’s hip pained him on damp days, which was nearly every day in London.
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Hutchins gingerly settled himself on a plump rose-colored satin chair. “Our . . . assistants on the road to South Greeley encountered no coaches, Your Grace. Our other assistants, however, had an unusual encounter with the passenger of a hackney coach on the road north of St. Eccles.”
“Oh?” Cordelia asked. “What transpired?”
“Our assistants did as asked—stopped the coach and requested the locket from
the passengers—but apparently a lord of some kind, and I quote, ‘a bleedin’ gentry madman,’ shot one of them, not badly, but drew blood. Divested them of their weapons. Frightened off their horses. Knocked them on their arses.”
“Knocked them on their arses?” Cordelia repeated. “Another quote, I presume, Hutchins?”
“Indeed, Your Grace.”
“The story sounds rather apocryphal, Hutchins. Just one man did this to two armed men? What on earth would a lord be doing riding in a hackney coach? And was there no sign of a girl?”
“They said the man—tall fellow, dark-haired—spoke like an English nobleman and was a frightfully good shot. He made short work of them, madam. Came swinging out of the coach kicking and shooting and what have you, they tell me. I took the liberty of compensating them for the loss of their horses, Your Grace. We may need their services in the future.”
Cordelia nodded, distracted. “In short, they did not find an Irishman or a redheaded girl in the coach.”
“They did not actually see a girl, Your Grace, and the madman denied that a girl was aboard the coach. But one of our assistants—Edgar, he’s called—swore that when the madman offered one of our assistants’ pistols to the coachman, he heard a young girl’s voice say, curiously enough: ‘I should like a pistol.’”
Cordelia went still. For some reason, from what she knew of her, this sounded like precisely the sort of thing Rebecca Tremaine would say. Suddenly she was certain this story, at least in part, was true.
“You said the coach was continuing north?” Cordelia asked.
“Yes, Your Grace. Perhaps farther on toward Scotland. It is difficult to say.”
“Hutchins, will you arrange for our assistants to track this ‘madman’? Rebecca Tremaine has not been located anywhere near the vicinity of her own home, and something about this story piques my interest.”
“Consider it done, Your Grace.”
“Thank you.”
“Your new solicitor is waiting in the parlor. Shall I send him up, or will you go down to meet him?”
Cordelia sighed. Very inconveniently, the Dunbrooke family solicitor, an ancient but gratifyingly consistent chap named Melbers who had been with the family for more than thirty years, had died in his library chair about a month ago. On the recommendation of Viscount Grayson, Cordelia had engaged a Mr. Matthew Green, and Mr. Green had requested time to familiarize himself with the accounting of the Blackburn family and the Dunbrooke Estate before he made his report to Cordelia, who had completely forgotten their appointment.
“Do send him up, won’t you, Hutchins, and ask the maid for more tea?”
“Certainly. And, Your Grace?”
Cordelia looked up.
“We will find the locket,” Hutchins said softly. Cordelia gave him a swift, bleak smile, then nodded crisply. He nodded in return and backed out the door.
A moment later the maid entered bearing a tray of tea, followed closely by Mr. Matthew Green. He looked as solicitors ought: grayish, thin, bespectacled, competent but not self-important, respectful but not obsequious.
“Take a seat, Mr. Green. I trust you found everything in order?” Cordelia said, and set about pouring tea for the two of them.
“Yes, Your Grace. I knew Melbers well, and he was the best of his trade, if I may take the liberty of saying so.”
Cordelia smiled politely. She was the Duchess of Dunbrooke, for heaven’s sake, she thought to herself. Of course she would have employed the best solicitor that could be found.
“However, I did find one small irregularity that you may be able to assist me with,” Mr. Green continued. “It is an expense that has occurred at intervals of once a year for the past five years. The name associated with the expense does not belong to any of your employees, and I thought perhaps it might represent”—and here he lowered his voice apologetically —“a gaming debt. But the payment occurs at precisely the same time each year. And it is recorded in a separate book.”
Cordelia twisted her mouth wryly. She found it difficult to believe that Richard could have been lucid enough or honorable enough to pension off a mistress, but one never knew.
“What is the name in the book, Mr. Green?” she asked.
“The name is Connor Riordan, Your Grace.”
Cordelia promptly dropped her teacup, splashing, perhaps inevitably, the Louis XIV chair.
Mr. Green leaped to his feet, flustered. “Your Grace! Shall I call your maid?”
“Oh, do forgive me, Mr. Green.” To her horror, her voice emerged as a flutelike squeak. She cleared her throat to steady it before attempting speech again. “I fear I am very tired and somewhat clumsy as a result. May we meet again another day?”
Mr. Green, who seemed a bit overwhelmed by her sudden distress, muttered an agreement and fled from the room.
Cordelia’s mind reeled with possibilities.
She waited until she could hear her butler ushering Green from the house, then bolted for the office once kept by the old duke. It was a musty room, unused since the elder duke had died, and Cordelia had planned to burn everything in it and turn it into another sitting room. She muttered a short, rare prayer of thanks that she had not yet gotten around to it.
Frantically, she pulled open the old duke’s desk drawers, rifling through musty papers, glancing at them, tossing them aside, working until perspiration made the bodice of her gown cling damply to her body, until tendrils of hair shook loose, not entirely sure what she was looking for, and then . . .
The draft of the duke’s first will. The will he made before his eldest son died at Waterloo.
“To my eldest son, Roarke Edward Connor Riordan Blackburn . . .”
She sank to her knees. He had been given all those bloody names, and she had only ever known the first and the last of them. At one time, no two words had ever been more beloved to Cordelia. Now, no two words were more dangerous.
Colonel William Pierce was having difficulty remembering precisely why he’d purchased a subscription to Almack’s. There were card games and dancing in progress; a competent orchestra was playing a tasteful quadrille, and fresh young women in softly glowing colors glided about the floor in the arms of men, quite a few of whom were not at all fresh. But this was the way of their world; only a fortune, not beauty or youth, was required if a gentleman wanted a well-bred young wife. Matrons resplendent in turbans and plumes and conspicuous jewels lined the walls, watching the dancers with practiced, appraising eyes; wagers and barbs were traded behind strategically wielded fans.
Pierce was feeling a bit awkward and removed; he was not in search of a wife just yet, his own having died a short two years ago, and the gaming did not tempt him. Nor did any of the feminine faces about him. Pretty ornaments, they seemed; all the eyes and smiles appeared uniformly bright, but none of them seemed illuminated by any specific quality of character. Pierce considered that perhaps he was being unfair and then promptly forgave himself if this was the case. His thoughts drifted longingly to his country estate, where the hunting had been particularly fine this year, and to his young son, Nicholas, who had stayed behind with his tutor when Major-General Munson had persuaded Pierce to have a go at the London season. Pierce was beginning to restlessly rationalize a quick bolt out the door, maybe a trot over to White’s for a relaxing drink and a peek at a newspaper, when he spotted Sir Henry Tremaine.
This was a pleasant and entirely unexpected surprise. Sir Henry also looked as though he were merely tolerating the evening, and doing a poor of job of it at that. Knowing that the only thing that could possibly entice Tremaine away from his comfortable estate was a daughter in need of a husband, Pierce searched the faces of Sir Henry’s little group.
He was astounded to see the Duchess of Dunbrooke among them. She appeared to be deep in conversation with a handsome, genteelly rounded woman in a soberly purple turban; Pierce knew her to be Sir Henry’s wife. Fascinating, this development. Cordelia Blackburn was the widow of the last Duke of Dunbrooke, Richard Blackbur
n, a bit of a rakehell who had met a shocking but not wholly unexpected end. And yet Richard had been the brother of Roarke Blackburn, and Colonel Pierce had liked young Roarke. He had been a young man of wit and integrity, a skilled, courageous, and clear-eyed soldier, if a bit rash in his decision to join the infantry. Dead at Waterloo, like so many others. Colonel Pierce regretted his loss very much.
Pierce felt his ennui sputtering into something like enthusiasm. Truth be told, he would enjoy a chat with Sir Henry. He strode from his spot and planted himself in front of the little group, smiling with pleasure.
“Why, Pierce!” Sir Henry said, looking both relieved and glowingly pleased. “What a delightful surprise. Jolly good it is to see you. You do remember Lady Tremaine? And may I present to you the Duchess of Dunbrooke and my daughter Miss Lorelei Tremaine.”
Colonel Pierce bowed deeply as the three ladies dipped polite curtsies. When they stood and lifted their faces to his, he was momentarily struck dumb by his first glimpse of Lorelei Tremaine.
A man could become a poet, a philosopher, merely by gazing at the expanse of creamy throat and bosom that rose up out of Lorelei’s gown; the string of pearls she wore seemed redundant, an obstruction of the view. Her gown was of the palest blue silk, the color of a full moon in winter, and shot through with silver threads. The colors echoed to uncanny perfection the shimmer of her hair and eyes. He sought those eyes to see whether anyone truly occupied the body of this vision, and was intrigued to note the slightest of shadows darkening the luminous blue. Something was troubling Miss Tremaine, and though it might be nothing more than tight shoes, Pierce found this perversely more interesting than the determined empty brightness of the other young women around them. Even more intriguing, perhaps, was the fact Cordelia Blackburn, the ton’s reigning beauty, was willing to appear at the side of this young swan.
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