Julia glanced up guiltily. How to gracefully end her engagement had been the last thing on her mind, although of course she would have to do it. Heath’s decadent kisses had taken precedence. It occurred to her the two of them had crossed a dangerous line tonight, and she ought to feel far more repentful. “Of course I recall, but I’m . . .”
Hermia gave a deep sigh. “Having second thoughts? I’d guessed as much. You were grieving both your husband and your father when you accepted Russell’s proposal.”
“Oh,” Julia said, leaning back against the desk as the shawl began to slip. “I don’t know what you mean—let’s change the subject, shall we? Odham wasn’t here tonight, which must mean he’s been pestering you again with a proposal.”
“It means nothing of the sort,” Hermia said in annoyance. “It means—”
The sketch slid off the desk.
Hermia bent at the waist to retrieve it, her arm arrested in midair at the horrified shriek Julia gave. “No. It’s all right! Don’t touch it. You’ll strain your back.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my back.”
“Well, no point in taking chances, is there?” Julia asked, swooping down before Hermia could get a good look at the charcoal sketch.
It was all there, in shades of black, white, and gray. The details of Heath’s body in its glorious, exaggerated beauty. Or at least the details that Julia half remembered and half imagined. Blown completely out of proportion. Sinful. A sight to rob a woman of all her wits.
For a heartbeat she thought that Hermia would faint. This was her aunt, for heaven’s sake, and Julia had practically admitted to her that she was in love with Heath. Which didn’t excuse her sketching naughty pictures of him. The older woman’s face reflected a myriad of emotions, fortunately none of which she seemed able to voice. Finally she cleared her throat.
“I believe you should guard that sketch more carefully, Julia,” she said, compressing her lips. “It shall fetch a fortune at our auction.”
Heath lingered on the stone steps of Julia’s town house for several minutes after he had seen her inside. It was a wonder he did not go up in smoke in the drizzling rain that pattered down on him. He hated to end the evening. He’d been reluctant to break the spell that the past several hours had cast over them, to let anything threaten their bond of sexual attraction.
Standing at the bottom of her staircase, he had invented a thousand excuses to follow her. Was her window secured? Did her door lock properly? It had been easy for him to gain entry to her room, he scolded. Would she like him to search inside her wardrobe for intruders?
“I do not think there is any need,” she’d replied. Her clear gray eyes had sparkled with amusement at his warnings. He had felt like a parent guarding a child. But there was nothing paternal in the chained passion between them. Like a mythical beast, it roared to be unleashed.
Make her burn.
He was practically breathing fire himself, searing to charcoal everything in his sight.
Restraint was his forte. Wasn’t it? Or had he never understood the true meaning of temptation before?
He stared in resentment at the small carriage that awaited him in the empty street. He intended to go home for a fresh change of clothes and to bring back a few books for the night ahead. He would not be gone long enough for anything to happen to her.
Unfortunately, he would not be gone long enough to bank his passion for her, either. His mind returned over and over to their encounter on the couch. He tortured himself with the memory of her response to him, how warm and inviting her body had been. She had been liquid fire in his hands, hotter than any woman he had ever known. He had known her for years, and he wanted to know her better, inside and out, in every way he could imagine.
He hurried out into the street, then half turned and looked back in longing at the town house. What would he do in the event that Russell returned before he had won Julia over completely? Ruefully he reflected that he and Grayson had neglected to include that crucial detail in their plot.
Of course, Grayson would have no compunctions about doing whatever was necessary to attain his goal. And when it came down to Julia, Heath suspected that the darker side of his own soul might indeed come into play. She was his. Russell had betrayed her. Too bad, but one did not gamble with affairs of the heart. After tonight there was no doubt at all that Heath would have her.
He turned to his carriage and saw the curtain shift slightly. His gaze shot in question to the well-trained coachman sitting on the box with his face hooded against the rain. The coachman gave him a faint nod to indicate that all was well.
Heath climbed inside.
“Good evening, Boscastle,” a gruff voice greeted him. “Nice weather if one is a water fowl, isn’t it?”
Heath relaxed his guard. He had not seen Colonel Hartwell in ages. Not since Heath had been a raw intelligence scout who had patrolled incognito in the light cavalry and wracked his brains solving enemy codes. Hartwell had been a frequent guest at Wellington’s war table. Word had it he was still attached to the War Office, although in what official capacity Heath did not know.
Hartwell appeared considerably older, his hair silver, his dark hazel eyes still sharp and insightful. “You look far better than when I last saw you,” he said after a long pause.
He was referring to the battered, half-dead state in which Heath had been found when Russell and his men had staged their heroic siege on Auclair’s headquarters.
He sat down opposite Hartwell. “I feel better, thank you. Are we going anywhere tonight?”
“Just to your house. I thought we could have a chat to catch up with each other.”
A chat. Heath’s chest tightened in warning. Normal conversation could have been held at the club over cards or brandy. He rubbed his upper lip, his face reflective. “Is Russell dead?”
“No. But the bloody idiot is halfway to Brittany following a false lead.”
Heath glanced out the window as the town house receded behind a shroud of rain. Was Julia in bed yet? Had she locked her door and wedged the chair against it as he’d insisted? Was she undressing, remembering what they had done?
“Auclair is not in France,” Hartwell continued. “He never was.”
Heath turned his head. A sense of panic rose inside him. He’d left her alone. “He’s here. Auclair is here?”
“Yes.”
“It was a trick, all along.” Julia’s feminine intuition had been chillingly accurate. Russell had been so eager to act the hero again that he’d played right into Auclair’s hand. Heath fought the urge to stop the carriage. To run back to her house. His heart was beating hard, a counterpoint to the clattering of the carriage wheels over the wet cobbles.
“What does he want?”
“We aren’t sure.” Hartwell regarded him in concern. “We do know Fouché has been in contact with Napoleon on Elba. There does not appear to be a connection. Auclair seems to be acting alone these days.”
“But Auclair—in London. I’d heard he had turned to dueling for a living.”
“He likes to kill people, apparently. We have several men looking for him.”
Heath nodded. “And are my services needed?”
“Right now you can be of service to us by staying alive. Napoleon’s staff have had plenty of time to devise a new cipher, and we may require your cryptology skills should problems arise in the future.”
“A cipher? What about Auclair?”
“You are advised to do whatever you must to protect yourself against him should you meet him before he is captured. But for God’s sake, be careful.”
The carriage stopped in front of Heath’s bachelor lodgings on St. James’s Street. “Are you coming inside?”
“No. My wife becomes agitated when I am out late at night. Your coachman can drop me off, if you don’t mind.”
He sent Hamm to fetch fresh clothing, then went straight to his darkened study to gather a few books. The nerve endings on his nape prickled in awareness
as he entered the room.
He stood for several seconds in front of the unlit fireplace and listened to the steady ticking of the enameled clock. The portrait on the wall of a hunting scene was off center by a nailbreadth. His collection of books on Egyptology were not aligned on the bookshelf as he had left them. Call it an idiosyncrasy of his nature, but Heath noticed such details and knew the room had been violated. Not by his small staff of well-trained servants, who knew what they might and might not disturb without permission.
Someone else, an intruder, had visited. He probably would not have even sensed the subtle difference if Hartwell hadn’t warned him.
He turned his head and scrutinized the moonlit outlines of his furnishings, the desk, the armchairs. Whoever had been there was gone. What had been the objective?
He removed a small brass key from the heel of his boot and opened the private compartment in his desk. His files did not appear to have been taken. Not that secret Crown business had been committed to paper—he never put in writing the names of past operatives, or contacts even now maintained in foreign countries.
Such information, along with his deciphering skills, had been locked away in his mind.
He looked up slowly as a glitter of dark gemstones on the floor caught his attention.
Julia’s sapphire bracelet. The one she had lost at the theater. He leaned down to retrieve it. The gold links lay nestled in the palm of a black gauntlet glove. The match to the one he had found in her shed, to be precise. He clasped the bracelet in his hand, fighting the wave of sick fury that coursed through him, the dark possibility that entered his mind. Did he know the identity of his intruder?
He remembered that Armand Auclair had tortured his captives wearing a hood and the same gloves his father had used to execute French aristocrats who went to the guillotine. Could Auclair have left the gloves here and in Julia’s shed as a calling card? Did the bracelet mean that she was in imminent danger? But why? Why would Auclair go to such lengths?
Hartwell was right. Russell had been lured away to leave the field clear for Auclair.
A gigantic shadow filled the doorway. Heath released his indrawn breath through his teeth. “I have your things ready, my lord,” Hamm said.
“A change in plans, Hamm.”
The rough-featured face moved into the moonlight. “You are not returning to Lady Whitby’s house?”
“Oh, I’m going all right.” Heath straightened, the bracelet clasped in his hand. “We’re both going, in fact. I have a job for you.”
Hamm’s huge shoulders lifted as if in anticipation. “A real job, my lord? A job that involves action and not standing on the back of a carriage like a trained monkey?”
Heath managed a smile, but there was no lightness inside him, only an urgent need to return to Julia’s side, to protect her from a man who had made killing an art. No one would threaten her while he had breath in his body.
“Come with me to the carriage, Hamm. I shall explain on our way. You may send for your belongings and inform the staff later of what has happened.”
Chapter 19
Julia was not in her bedchamber when he returned to the town house. Heath pushed past the sleepy footman who’d let him in, now accustomed to the odd behavior of Julia’s friend. God knew he was providing the ton with enough fodder for a major scandal. Well, let them gossip. He had more important things on his mind.
She was not in the drawing room either.
His instincts led him to the narrow kitchen at the back of the house, where a coal fire burned low in the dark. He saw Julia standing at the kitchen door, letting the cat out for the night. For a moment he was so relieved to see her, he did not say a word. He simply stared. She had brushed out her hair for bed. It shone wine-red in the subtle glow of firelight.
She turned, her hand lifting to her throat. “Dear heaven, Heath. What is it?”
He strode toward her. He wasn’t about to terrify her with the truth. That could wait until morning, and she would have to be told, to realize she could not let down her guard again. For now it was enough to know she was safe, and that he could hold her again, keep her beside him.
She glanced down at the glittering stones in his hand. “Oh, you found my bracelet, you clever man. Where was it lost?”
“On the carpet.” He didn’t elaborate. He would tell her that tomorrow, too.
“Did you come all the way back just to bring it to me?”
She looked irresistible in the hazy moonlight of the garden, her smile warm and inviting, her lush red hair lightly scented. Her robe had parted so that the tops of her breasts showed blush-pink against the cream silk lacing. His mouth went dry. The feel of her, his craving for sex, still dominated his senses.
“Has the cat got your tongue, Heath?” she teased. “You’ve gone awfully quiet.”
He drew her into his arms. She didn’t resist, huddling into his warmth. He kicked the door shut and bolted it. “Don’t stand here in the dark again by yourself.”
“What is it?”
“If it were in my power, I would lock you away from the rest of the world and keep you safe forever.”
She pulled back a little to look up at him. “A dark desire, somewhat impractical, but not entirely unappealing.”
“No?” He felt his body harden.
“No.”
He leaned into her, pressing her against the heavy oak door. Julia’s arms lifted to lock around his neck. “I’m sorry, Julia,” he said.
She gave a dreamy sigh. “For what?”
He swallowed. “For not fighting for you.”
“Oh.” She lowered her gaze. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I’m glad I know.”
“I think you know a little bit too much about me now.”
“I want to know more.”
“That sounds very wicked,” she whispered. “Tell me something. Did you plan what happened tonight at your brother’s house?”
“Why would you think that?” he asked innocently, moving against her.
She laughed. “You did.”
“What if I did?”
He felt her hesitate, felt her body tremble. “I’d say I shall have to be careful of you in the future—careful to resist you, that is.”
“You’re not being very careful now.” He gazed down into her face. “I think, with a little effort, I could make you completely careless, in fact.”
She moistened her lower lip. “Confident, aren’t we?”
“In certain things, yes.”
He caught her face in his free hand. His tongue traced her plump bottom lip. She tasted of mint tea. She was wearing a cotton nightrail under a lavender lightweight woolen robe. He molded his body to her uncorseted curves. Black desire raged through his blood as she arched her back in response. He had to remind himself that they were standing at the kitchen door in the dark. He wanted to bury himself deep inside her silky dampness and take her up against the door until there was no doubt that she belonged to him. His. She should always have been his. He was still on fire from being with her earlier. He could only imagine, after the way she’d responded to him, how incredible it would be to ride her, to spend days and nights in bed together.
He ran his hand down her shoulder, her side, shaping the rise of her heart-shaped bottom. He was discovering that even for him the Boscastle blood ran true. Had he ever hoped to escape his heritage?
He meant to seduce her to the point of delicious surrender. There was one advantage to winning her after all these years. He was experienced enough to appreciate her.
Her breathing quickened. She was becoming more sensitive to him day by day. She traced her fingernail down his nape. “Does this mean that you came back tonight because I am desirable and not some horrible duty you must fulfill?”
“You are the most desirable—” He straightened, turning his back on her at the smart tapping of slippers on the flagstone floor.
“Who’s there?” Hermia whispered from behind the oak table that stood
between them. “Show yourselves, whoever you are.”
Julia released a rueful sigh. “It’s only us, Aunt Hermia. We were just, um, letting the cat out.”
“I see.” Hermia stared directly at Heath. “And are you letting Boscastle out, too? Or is he staying the night?”
Julia grinned at Heath. “Are you staying, Boscastle?”
“Yes. He’s staying,” he said, grinning back. “I’m staying, Hermia, and, with your permission, ladies, I have brought along reinforcements. One of my servants.” He shook his head as he remembered Hamm waiting diligently out in the carriage, on the lookout for unwanted visitors.
“A guest?” Hermia said, raising her brow. “Well, we have the painting club here again the day after tomorrow. You both might want to get some rest.”
“The painting club?” Heath said in chagrin.
Julia began to laugh. “Perhaps your companion can pose for us, too.”
Heath drew away from her with regret. It was clear that he had a dreary night ahead of him with Hamm for company. But at least he knew she would be safe. For now that was what mattered.
Julia had just begun eating breakfast alone when Heath entered the small morning room the next day. She looked up from the table and smiled. She had known last night that something weighed on his mind, and he confirmed her suspicion as they took coffee and toast together.
“So Auclair is in London,” she said in a subdued voice after he finished explaining what he’d discovered the previous evening. “How frightening to think he has been in England without anyone realizing it.”
He ran his forefinger across his lip. “Your intuition was right all along.”
“And Russell does not know?” she asked in concern. Despite the fact that she no longer wished to marry him, she did not want him to lose his life.
“By now he might.”
“So he will return,” she said slowly.
He regarded her in the pale morning light, and Julia felt the heat of his scrutiny to her bones. Heath was one of those men who could chase down villains, sleep in his clothes, and wake up the next morning appearing as crisp and composed as ever.
The Wedding Night of an English Rogue Page 20