“See there?” Beau chimed in. “You have your choice of worldly, sophisticated women. So which do you prefer? Or shall we ask them both?”
“Do it, and I’ll kill you,” he replied.
Beau and Carissa glanced at each other in surprise, then both looked uncertainly at him.
Trevor gritted his teeth at their dismay. He knew they were only trying to help.
Still, it wasn’t helping.
“But you must come to our farewell party,” Carissa cajoled him in a soft tone. “What if our ship goes down? What if this is the last time you ever get to see us?”
“Carissa, honestly,” Beau muttered.
“Fine, I’ll come to the dinner to wish you bon voyage, but don’t you dare set me up with some strange woman.”
“Fair enough,” Beau replied in a tone that warned his bride not to argue. “So where the devil have you been, anyway?”
“Oh, wait!” Carissa interrupted. “Before I forget, we’re sending a package to Nick before we leave. We have some gifts for him. Maybe you’d like to include a short note?” Well aware that this was a sensitive subject with Trevor, she brushed a lock of auburn hair behind her ear and waited for his answer with a wide-eyed gaze.
He stared icily at the green-eyed viscountess. “What are you giving him gifts for?”
“Er, to make him more comfortable in prison. Won’t you write a line or two?” She offered him an open pad of paper and a pencil from the writing desk nearby. “I know it would mean a lot to him.”
“My dear girl, you do recall he shot you?” Trevor reminded her.
“Oh, that was an accident. He was aiming at him,” she said brightly, nodding at her husband. “Besides, it was only a flesh wound.”
Trevor scowled, but to humor her, he took the pad and paper and wrote in large block letters: DEAR NICK, ROT IN HELL, YOU BASTARD. HOPE YOU’RE ENJOYING PRISON. SINCERELY, YOUR HUMAN SHIELD.
He handed it back to her. She read it, tilted her head and gave him a sardonic look, then handed off his message to her husband.
Beau read it and laughed aloud. “Put it in the box,” he told her, nodding.
“I’m not sending this to him! The poor man’s in prison—”
“He’ll love it. Trust me. It’s better than icy silence, anyway.” Beau gave Trevor a knowing glance as he closed his portmanteau. “You know, Trev, it’s not like you to hold a grudge. I thought you already forgave Nick before they took him away.”
“That was before I found out the full extent of how he ruined my life.”
“Ruined your life?” Carissa exclaimed. “Isn’t that rather extreme?”
“He’s still blaming Nick for Laura’s defection,” Beau informed her with a shrewd glance at Trevor.
“Ahh,” Carissa said.
Trevor turned away, unwilling to discuss it, especially not in front of Beau’s little “lady of information.” Whatever he said, she’d likely tell the world. What sort of spy married a Society gossip, anyway?
Carissa always had her opinions, and once more, she chose to share them presently. “You boys need to make up and play nice again if you ask me.”
“I don’t think anyone did, Lady Beauchamp.” He arched a brow and leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest.
She frowned. “Come, you all have been friends since you all were children. If I can forgive Nick for grazing me in the head with that bullet, surely you can forgive him for using you as a hostage and locking you in that cellar all those months. It’s not as though he did it out of malice. He had no choice! Without you for a bargaining chip, the Order would’ve had their snipers kill him. You didn’t want him to die, did you?”
“Hmm,” said Trevor, then he glanced at Beau. “Do you tell her everything?”
“Oh, come,” she persisted, “you seem to be forgetting that when you were shot, it was Nick who saved your life.”
“And you seem to be ignoring the fact that by disappearing me, Nick cost me my fiancée! Not that it’s any of your business Lady Beauchamp,” Trevor clipped out. “but I had a very nice plan for my life all mapped out—oh, never mind. Why are you standing up for that blackguard, anyway?”
“He charmed her,” Beau explained.
“Figures.”
“Nick’s had a hard time!” Carissa insisted. “He doesn’t have a nice family or a fortune, like you two. He hasn’t been as blessed, you know.”
“Nor as wise,” Beau interjected.
“Nor as honorable,” Trevor agreed.
“Leave the poor fellow alone, Carissa,” Beau ordered softly.
Trevor leaned his head back against the wall, considering her words. “In theory, Lady Beauchamp, I could do as you say, I suppose. Forgive and forget and all that. But I think maybe he couldn’t stand for me to be happy.”
“That’s not it at all,” Beau scoffed.
“Really? Maybe he just didn’t want to be the last one left alone. So he did what he had to do to separate me from the lady I had always intended to marry. What do you say to that?”
“Well, Trev,” Beau drawled, “there’s ‘marry’ and then there’s ‘intended to marry,’ and these are two entirely different things.”
Trevor cast a baleful eye on the pair of Beauchamps ganging up on him. “Do you two want to know my news or not?” he demanded, pointedly changing the subject.
“Of course we do! What is it?” Carissa asked.
“I’m moving,” he announced.
Beau’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t tell me you accepted that position with the Foreign Office?”
“God, no.” He shuddered. “I’m never working for the government again. I bought a house in Leicestershire. Actually, a farm.”
Beau looked at him in astonishment, but Carissa grinned. “Farmer Montgomery?”
“You bought a farm?” Beau echoed.
“Yes,” he said wryly, lifting his chin. “An old, run-down, ramshackle thing. But it’ll be quite something, one day, by the time I’m through with it.”
“Aha, a new building project,” Beau said, looking pleased for him. “To take your mind off . . . other things, I presume?”
Trevor nodded. “I’m really looking forward to it,” he admitted. “You two will have to come and see it once you’re back from France—though I doubt if I worked round the clock for the whole three months you’re gone, I’ll have put a dent in it. The house is a good three hundred years old. It needs serious repairs.”
“Trevor, this sounds perfect for you,” Beau said. “Whereabouts in Leicestershire?”
“It’s actually near Lord Lievedon’s seat. The village of Thimbleton. Er, Thistleton,” he corrected himself.
Beau stared at him oddly—the piercing assessment of a fellow spy.
“What is it?” Trevor asked, wondering how much his face might have already given away.
“Any particular reason you chose that place?” Beau asked, almost in suspicion.
Trevor shrugged, but of course, all his thoughts were of Grace. “I just liked it. Lots of fertile acreage. Good views.”
“I see.” Beau nodded, and though he seemed to sense there were things Trevor wasn’t telling him, he did not press. “Well, times have certainly changed, haven’t they? I thought Nick’s going to prison was a surprise. But your moving out to the country . . .”
“And here you are, married,” he countered.
“He’s entirely married!” Carissa threw her arms around her husband gaily and planted a kiss on his cheek.
“Yes, I see that,” Trevor drawled.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, really,” Beau remarked, at which his lady smacked him.
Beau put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, laughing.
“Keep it up, Beauchamp. See what it gets you,” she warned him in a whisper.
“T
hat sounds distinctly like a challenge,” he replied in a husky murmur.
“On that note, I think I’d better go,” Trevor said dryly. “If you’re going to force me to come to this dinner with all of you sickening newlyweds, I have to stop at home first. See you at the Rotherstones’.”
“Eight o’clock!” Carissa called after him as he turned and headed back out into the hallway to let himself out. “Don’t be late!”
“I’m never late,” he answered. On his way out, he nodded to Beau’s stiff old butler. “Vickers,” he greeted him, then he headed home.
His own bachelor lodgings were discreetly located on the third floor of a neat and unobtrusive brick building in Old Bond Street. The ground level housed a fashionable milliner’s shop, but his four-room apartment on the third floor was spacious and secure, and quite fine enough for any younger son. It was especially suitable for a man who was so frequently abroad. As a spy, he liked the presence of the shop’s customers, too. Their comings and goings helped to mask his own.
When he arrived, Trevor left his carriage in the mews, then walked up the stairs to the door of his rooms. He unlocked it and stepped inside. Closing the door behind him, he looked around, let out a sigh, and tossed his coat onto the nearest chair.
Once he began the work of tallying his belongings, he soon realized there was not as much to do as he had thought. He didn’t own all that much, for starters. His nomadic life as an agent had made him frightfully efficient and ingrained in him the habit of traveling light.
Sauntering through the rooms of his apartment, he calculated what he’d need to transport to the Grange. Not the furniture, obviously, but his clothes, his books, especially his architectural tomes, and certainly, his extensive collection of weapons. If trouble in the form of some half-forgotten enemy from his old life followed him out to the country, he meant to be prepared.
Nevertheless, after a brief assessment of his belongings, he believed he could be ready to pick up and move in less than two hours. Of course, there was the dinner party tonight. He wondered what Grace would have thought of his glamorous friends.
Glancing at the clock, he saw he had some time before he had to be at the Rotherstones’, so he went back out to the mews. He had long held a lease on a tack room in the old carriage house behind his apartment.
There he stored the large array of construction tools and equipment he’d collected during his last building project. He let himself into his storage room and spent some time refamiliarizing himself with every saw, wrench, and hammer like old friends. Just this simple task was entirely soothing to him, as much as his family might think him a quiz for it.
He smiled, though, musing to recall how his scatterbrained sisters had appreciated his innate tinkering skills back in the old days. Even as a boy, he had been able to fix nearly anything, his younger siblings’ broken toys, his mother’s broken jewelry, his father’s hunting musket, a flintlock that had become hopelessly jammed.
At the tender of twelve, he had left home to attend the Order’s school in Scotland, and over time, he had drifted away from his family. He had been through things that they could not begin to relate to, and that was probably for the best. But he felt like a stranger among them.
Nick and Beau and the others had become his true family, but lately, he felt as though he’d somehow lost them, too—Beau to his beautiful new marriage, Nick to the betrayal that had embittered Trevor so.
At last, minding the clock, he went over to the stable and hired the boys there to transfer the contents of the tack room into the back of a utilitarian wagon that the stable had for hire.
Warning them to be careful with his things, he went back up to his apartment to wash up and dress for the evening. But upon opening the door, he froze at the threshold, startled to find a visitor sitting on his couch.
She was alone, her face concealed by a lace veil draped over her bonnet. She pushed it back and rose when he stepped into the room, closing the door warily behind him.
Laura.
“What are you doing here?” he forced out.
“I had to see you.” She took a step toward him.
“Does your fiancé know where you are?”
“Of course not. I had to speak to you. Alone.”
“Well,” he said, moving past her, “I’m busy.”
“Oh, Trevor,” she said wearily, as he turned his back on her. “You really have terrible timing, you know.”
“So it’s my fault you ruined our plans?”
“I thought you were dead! What did you want me to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Mourn a little?” he suggested. He could feel his mood blackening. “Why don’t you go before this turns any more unpleasant? There’s no point in doing this to ourselves or each other. Just go.” He nodded toward the door, but she stared imploringly at him.
“I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be, Trevor. But you must know I never meant to hurt you.” She ventured closer while he stood there bristling.
“What do you want, Laura?” he asked wearily.
“I know you still care for me, or you wouldn’t be so angry. At the very least, you still desire me.”
“Who doesn’t?” he muttered, flicking a glance over her flawless body.
Holding him in a siren’s stare that had mesmerized many, she stepped closer. “Maybe it’s not too late for us.”
Startled, he lifted his wary gaze to meet hers.
“If you still want to be together,” she whispered, “we can. I’d cry off with Hector if you asked me to.”
He looked at her in astonishment, but when she reached for him, he jerked his arm away and shook his head. “Right. And when he calls me out for it, and I kill him in a duel, will you be able to live with that? Then again, you probably could. What could be more gratifying to your pride than two worthy suitors killing each other over you? At least it answers one question for me. You don’t love that poor bastard any more than you did me.”
“How do you know how I feel?” she bit back, her cobalt eyes narrowing. “You never asked. You never wanted to know,” she accused him. “You couldn’t be bothered with knowing me as a person. You only cared how it enhanced your own reputation to have me on your arm.”
“Oh, you want to have this discussion at last? Our first honest talk, darling? Very well. All you ever cared about, Laura, was your own pleasure. Our arrangement suited you well, so don’t complain to me about my absence. I know perfectly well what you got out of it.”
“And what was that?” she cried, her porcelain face flushed with outrage.
“You could do as you pleased while I was gone!” he nearly shouted. “Flirting and toying with as many fools as you fancied. And if any of them ever got too close, you had only to warn them that I’d tear them limb from limb when I got back if they touched you. You had the best of both worlds—the freedom to entertain yourself with other lovers and the protection of a future husband in case any of them ever got out of control.”
“An absent future husband, my lord. What good were you to me on the other side of the Continent when I needed you in my bed?”
He stared at her in icy amusement, a bit surprised by her frankness, but refusing to the rise to the bait. She was only trying to shock him. “Get out.”
“Ah, what’s wrong? Are only men allowed to admit to feelings of desire? You were always such a prude. The perfect gentleman!” she mocked him. “Why wouldn’t you ever take what I offered you? You were afraid of me, weren’t you? Afraid of what I made you feel.”
He folded his arms across his chest and smiled patiently at her efforts to goad him, remembering the times she had begged him to make love to her. “No. That’s not it.”
“What then?” she demanded. She never could understand his resistance, but it wasn’t virtue that had stopped him. It was mere survival instinct.
Passiona
te and gorgeous as she was, he had refused to let her drag him into marriage before he was ready, and marriage would have been the only possible result.
He did not understand himself anymore, why he had not made a firm decision one way or the other about her long ago. Probably because the wrongness of their match, so obvious to his heart, had not made any sense to his head.
Everyone wanted her. She was his for the asking. He had only to find a ring and set the date.
But he didn’t love her. He couldn’t. Honesty, clarity, finally came at last, now that the Order’s work no longer took up the whole of his attention. Beautiful as she was, she was all wrong for him. He saw that now—and maybe he should be thanking God that Nick had “ruined” this for him.
Laura glared at him as though she could read his answer on his face. She shook her head in disgust. “God, I always knew I should’ve gone for Beauchamp.”
Except that Beau saw through you from the start. He told me you’d make me miserable.
Would that I had listened.
But Trevor held back from making these hurtful comments aloud. He shook his head. “Leave, Laura. Go back to your dragoon. He’ll make you a countess. You know I can’t offer you that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get dressed for the evening. I’m expected shortly at the Rotherstones’. There’s the door.” He gestured toward it. “You can show yourself out.”
She eyed him distrustfully but sauntered toward the door, gripping her little fringed reticule with both gloved hands. “Think about my offer, Trevor. Together, we could have Society at our feet.”
“We both know you can have that without me.”
She reached for the doorknob. “You’ll change your mind. You’re angry now. I understand that. But don’t take too long. Hector grows more ardent every day. I’ll marry him if I have to, but you’re the one I want.”
“Funny, it was Beauchamp you wanted a moment ago.”
Gaelen Foley - [Inferno Club 06] Page 10