by Mia Marlowe
He swallowed back his disappointment and nodded. Was there something about a fire mage that so bent a man to her will that he could deny her nothing?
Garret headed toward the unfortunate Miss Bates, deciding it was probably for the best. He needed to be careful. He needed to protect Cassandra, though it was going to be difficult to keep her from entering his dangerous dreams. But as he passed by Lady Waldgren, he decided to buttress the one thing he could protect Cassie from—that gossip’s malicious tongue. He Sent the old biddy the thought that Miss Darkin, the Season’s only Original, was not only beautiful and accomplished, but good-hearted as well.
It was an easy suggestion to Send. He believed it with all his soul.
…
“She’s been in training for the better part of a month now.” The Duke of Camden leaned against the mantel, peering down into the grate as if the answer to his questions might be found there in the flickering tongues of fire. “Do you think Miss Darkin is ready?”
“Were we?” Vesta answered, her astonishing blue eyes speaking of things better left unsaid.
She had draped herself over the fainting couch. It was all Camden could do not to fall upon her there and ravish the little vixen, but he restrained himself. If Camden let himself come under Vesta LaMotte’s spell again, he didn’t think he could extricate himself a second time.
“Vesta, please, I—”
“I know you want to pretend we never happened, but we did, and if you recall, that exceedingly pleasant interlude occurred during our first commission for your precious Order.” The courtesan pulled out her fan and waved it before her luscious breasts. Far from obscuring them, the fan’s languid movement only accentuated her charms. “Believe me, your precious Mercedes does not know or care that you have since wrapped yourself in monk-like celibacy.”
That stiffened his resolve and he looked up at his dead wife’s portrait. “She knows. If not now, she shall know hereafter. I still love her, Vesta. Most desperately. And I will not rest until somehow I can make contact with her again.”
There were so many unanswered questions about the manner in which his dear Mercedes and their child had departed this life, questions only she could answer. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t be sidetracked by Vesta’s earthly allure again until he was able to lay his heavenly loved ones to rest, once and for all.
Vesta shook her head. “I should have known our brief affair was only a detour in your journey of grief.”
“You gave me ease at a difficult time.” He took her hand. “If I caused you pain, I am truly sorry.”
She smiled up at him. “No need, my dear duke. I cannot regret what we gave each other. Or wish to take it back.” Then she pulled her hand from between his, suddenly all business. “In answer to your question, Cassandra has made excellent progress. She has a good handle on her gift now and isn’t likely to set any inadvertent fires. While she hasn’t come into her full power, she is ready for her first foray into the Order’s work.”
“Good.” There was a bit of laughter on the other side of the parlor doorway before Garret Sterling and Miss Darkin made their entrance in dazzling evening togs. Camden would have offered to provide his ward with a new wardrobe, but Miss Darkin’s nouveau-riche father had already seen her tricked out in the latest Parisian style. She was a stunner in icy-blue silk. Sterling wore his customary black, his ensemble as severe and well tailored as even Brummell could wish. Together, they looked as if they’d stepped from a fashion plate and would no doubt set tongues wagging over the smartness of their appearance. “Ah, here they are. My dear, you look positively ravishing. No wonder the ton has declared you it’s new ‘Original.’”
The duke bowed over Cassandra’s gloved hand and he searched her face for signs of distress or nervousness and found none. “Before you leave for your evening, a word with you.”
“Of course, Your Grace. Though if you want to know where we’re bound, you’ll have to drag it from Mr. Sterling,” she said with a becoming flush of color on her cheeks. “He won’t tell me a thing.”
“That’s because I asked him to keep it a secret.” Camden indicated that she should sit. “You recall when you first came into my sphere of influence I told you there would come a day when you would repay my kindness toward you.”
“Yes.” Some of her effervescence fizzing away, Cassandra sank onto the striped chintz settee.
“That day has arrived,” Camden said. “You are about to embark upon your first mission in the service of the Order of the M.U.S.E.”
“The what?”
“The M.U.S.E. It stands for the Metaphysical Union of Sensual Extraordinaires,” Garret said. “His Grace thinks we’ll be more effective in our skullduggery if we have a classical name. Raises the tone of the enterprise, don’t you know?”
“That’s enough, Sterling. The Order does serious work, and I’ll not have you making light of it.” Camden sent him a scowl that would have thoroughly cowed most men, but Sterling merely plopped into a convenient chair and propped his knee over the arm. “You see, Miss Darkin, even though we British have defeated the French on the field of battle, there are still those on the Continent who mean to do us ill.”
“More specifically, they mean to do the royal family ill,” Vesta put in. “But the enemy is subtle. They attack by means of psychically charged artifacts, things of such beauty and worth, they are as attractive to the royals as a rattle is to a baby.”
“We have it on good authority that one such malevolent object is in the possession of the host at your party this evening,” Camden said. “It’s called the Infinitum, though that is all we know about the item. What it looks like or how it operates is a mystery to us at present.”
“You want us to retrieve it this night?” Sterling asked.
“I doubt you’ll be that fortunate. No, you’ll do well to discover where the Infinitum is being stored before it can be sent on to the royal court as a gift. Do you think you can do that?”
“We’ll certainly try,” Miss Darkin said. “But why have I been chosen for this particular task?”
Camden drew a deep breath. Now he’d learn what the girl was made of. “You have a history with this particular noble family. The party you’re attending this evening is at the town house of Lord Bellefonte.”
Color drained from Cassandra’s face.
“You can’t mean that Roder—I mean, that the viscount or his son is scheming against the Crown.”
“We don’t know who is involved,” Vesta said. “Simply that the artifact is passing through the Bellefonte family’s control. While psychic powers can provide a number of answers, sometimes there is no substitute for…”
“Skullduggery?” Garret suggested with a grin.
“Clandestine efforts,” the duke amended, and then he turned back to Cassandra. “I’m well aware of what I ask of you. Can you do it, Miss Darkin?”
Through his network of spies and informants, Camden knew that Roderick Bellefonte had been Cassandra’s first lover and the reason she had begun manifesting her gift. This was trial by fire to be sure, but what else might a fire mage expect?
“We’ll find the information you need,” she promised, her chin set with determination. “Now, Mr. Sterling, we must be on our way. We’re already fashionably late for the dancing and dinner.”
“Any later and we’ll be unfashionably early for breakfast,” Garret quipped.
Cassandra didn’t laugh. Instead she left the room like a storm in cool blue silk. Sterling followed as if he were on an invisible tether. Camden had never seen him so attentive to a lady. Evidently, Vesta wasn’t the only fire mage capable of rendering a man her willing slave.
“I still wonder about the wisdom of pairing those two,” Camden said.
“I don’t,” Vesta said. “I believe them to be uniquely well suited.”
“Whenever I happen upon them, they seem to be wrangling about something.”
“If a couple never fights, one of them is superfluous.”
Vesta rose and glided over to him. Her scent was intoxicating, all warm musk and spice. Camden caught himself holding his breath. She leaned close and walked her fingers down the line of buttons on his waistcoat. “Besides, if a few sparks fly, it makes their partnership all the more volatile and satisfying. But I forget. Being a self-proclaimed Puritan, you’d rather not hear about that part of Miss Darkin’s training.”
Camden grasped Vesta by the waist and pressed her against the wall, his hard body flush with her soft one. A Puritan, was he? Not bloody likely with this woman around.
In addition to her spectacular beauty, Vesta was everything a man could want in a woman—earthy, ferociously sensual, surprisingly giving. He’d have to be dead not to rouse to her every time she entered the room. She made him want things he wouldn’t have dreamed. The urge to dominate, to subjugate her, made him ache.
She looked up at him, her lips so close to his, he could feel the warmth of her breath on his mouth. She pressed her softness against his hardness.
“Well, it seems at least part of you isn’t so puritanical,” she drawled. “I’m highly gratified to be wrong.”
…
Since an unmarried girl’s reputation wouldn’t survive a carriage ride alone with a gentleman, the Duke of Camden provided Garret and Cassandra a smart open phaeton in which to lark about London whenever it was impractical for Lady Easton to serve as their chaperone. The driver on the high seat behind them was nearly deaf so while they were in full view of the world, they still enjoyed perfect privacy for their conversations.
“So I gather someone in the Bellefonte family is the infamous ‘he whose name must not be spoken,’” Garret said.
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.” One of her long gloves sagged from her upper arm to her elbow. Cassie tugged it up into place again, studiously not meeting Garret’s gaze.
“Don’t you? That lamppost at the corner flared as we passed by. A sure sign you’re agitated,” he pointed out. “Are you certain there isn’t something you should tell me?”
“Mr. Sterling,” she said most properly. “You are already privy to too many of my secrets.”
Far too many, by her count. Almost every night, she welcomed him to her chamber where he delighted her with some new sensual game designed to help her relax and find release from the pent-up fire of her gift. But, in accordance with Vesta’s orders, their physical relationship was still very one-sided.
“It’s like taking a tonic prescribed by a physician,” the courtesan had explained. “You must use the smallest possible dose to affect a cure. More can always be added later.”
So only Cassandra was left with every knot untied and every kink smoothed out, which was starting to make her feel very selfish. Though Garret was obviously frustrated by the situation, he didn’t complain. He knew when to touch, when to tease, when to wait and when to drive her to aching fury. But that didn’t mean he had to know everything.
“It was Roderick Bellefonte, wasn’t it?” he insisted.
Her lips tightened into a prim line.
“If you’d like, I can Send this chucklehead Roderick a suggestion that the gathered partygoers would love to see him parade through the parlor in his birthday suit.”
Against her better judgment, she laughed. “No, please don’t. If we’re to find the trail of the Infinitum, we don’t need that sort of distraction.”
“So you think Bellefonte would be distracting in the altogether.”
“You’re being ridiculous about this. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous.”
Instead of denying it, Garret leaned closer to her. “What if I were?”
She supposed he had reason. Even though he had lavished time and attention on every inch of her body, he’d never actually claimed her in the way that Roderick had. In fact, she had yet to see Garret in any further state of undress than his shirtsleeves, a situation that grew more intolerable each time they were together. But Garret assured her they were doing what Vesta had ordered. Still, he ought not to feel jealous of Roderick unless…
“If you’re jealous, it can only mean you harbor tender feelings for me,” she said.
A stricken expression flitted across his face, and then he looked away. “No offense intended, my dear, but you and I both know that’s laughable.”
It was. Garret Sterling made no bones about the fact that his number-one priority in life was keeping himself from any permanent entanglements. His stint with the Duke of Camden’s Order of the M.U.S.E. was only a brief diversion. Just until he mastered a rather troublesome side effect of his psychic gift—one that he never confided to Cassie, though she knew it had something to do with his dreams.
Now that she considered it, she and Garret were far too intimate with each other for him not to share such things. She’d insist he do so before they began another one of their marathon sessions in search of a mind-altering release for her.
“Well, if you were jealous,” she said in a more conciliatory tone, “I wouldn’t think less of you for it. I confess to suffering a bite from the green-eyed monster myself.”
“You have no one of whom you should feel jealous. I’ll make sure of that.”
“How?” Was he about to pledge eternal faithfulness to her? It seemed wholly out of character.
“How do you think? I’ll do what I always do. I’ll implant the idea that you’re the most delectable creature anyone has ever seen in every mind around us. With me at your side, your popularity is assured.”
Cassandra gave herself a mental shake, not sure she’d heard him properly. “You mean, all the invitations, all the accolades I’ve received of late—”
“Are because I’ve Sent approving thoughts of you willy-nilly throughout the ton. You may show your appreciation later.” He waggled his dark brows suggestively. “Once our first mission is behind us, Vesta says our arrangement to help you deal with your gift can change as well.”
“Don’t count on it.” How dare he go behind her back like that? She’d felt guilty about taking pleasure without giving, but now the heat of irritation built inside her. She loosed a bit of power at the lamp on the corner to siphon off her pent-up fire. The flame flared so high and so hot, the glass around it shattered.
She’d thought she had been doing so well. She was making positive impressions on all the right people. She’d been hailed by all the tabloids as the Season’s only Original, setting new bars for fashion.
Her parents were delirious over her social success, sending her flowers and notes expressing their pride in her accomplishments. After losing her purity to Roddy, she had feared she’d bring them only shame. She’d never expected to bask in their unqualified approval like this.
The Duke of Camden’s patronage had helped, of course, but she reasoned that her own witty conversation, good taste, and personality had done the rest. To find that she hadn’t been responsible for her dizzying social rise, that everyone thought she was something outstanding merely because of Garret Sterling’s mind tricks…
He’d made a cake of her. The truth stung.
The phaeton flew past another ruined lamp stand and then clattered to a stop before the Bellefonte town house. The double doors were flung open and every window in the four-storied home blazed with light.
“Cassandra, you seem upset,” Garret said as he climbed down from the carriage and then offered her his hand. “Do we need to find a bit of privacy before we embark on this venture?”
She knew what he was asking. Did she need him to give her a physical release so she could more easily control her affinity for flames?
“No, we do not.” She drew a deep breath, determined to bridle her power on her own. “In fact, I rather doubt you and I will ever need privacy again.”
Chapter Eight
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
—George Gordon, Lord Byron, from “She Walks in Beauty”
Cassandra separated herself from Garret as easily as she shed her pelisse at the door to Bellefonte House, telling him they’d cover more ground if they split up. He nodded mutely and didn’t follow when she abandoned him to head for the room set aside for dancing.
But, as she moved around the long chamber without Garret Sterling at her elbow, she missed his solid presence and support as she greeted other guests. Her heart thundered. She would see Roddy again, at any moment.
She had caught glimpses of him on numerous social occasions. At the opera, he’d been seated in the Bellefonte box across the theater from her, but she hadn’t glanced his way more than once or twice during the evening. At the gallery opening, she had noticed him and Lady Sylvia admiring a canvas, but she’d moved on before their paths could cross. She didn’t have that luxury in Roddy’s family home.
Then she received her prefilled dance card and saw that Roderick was penciled in for the first waltz with her. She couldn’t do anything but curtsy correctly when he came to collect her.
For a full minute, they merely dipped in time to the music, swirling around the room with the other couples. She was grateful Roderick hadn’t overwhelmed her with conversation, but after what they’d been to each other, the silence between them began to feel oppressive.
They’d been friends before they were anything else. Somehow, she couldn’t believe he was involved in anything so dastardly as a plot against the royal family. For his sake, she had to ferret out the truth of the matter.
“I understand congratulations are in order,” she said as they continued circuiting the room.
He sent her a questioning look and then seemed to remember. “Oh, on my engagement,” he said absently. “Yes. Thank you.”
“I’m sure you’ll be very happy.” Cassie wasn’t sure of any such thing, but it seemed the correct thing to say.