by Gaelen Foley
Mara’s heart was pounding. She stared at her friend, discreetly hiding her wrath, but Delilah paid no heed, exuding charm.
“How very generous of you, Mrs. Staunton,” he replied.
“No, no, Delilah, please,” she pooh-poohed him. “So, would you like to come, my lord?” she asked in a decidedly wicked tone.
The handsome blackguard looked delighted by her naughty innuendo, but before he could answer, Mara spoke up through gritted teeth. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
She willed Delilah to notice her warning glare, but the merry widow could not tear her gaze off the worldly earl.
“I’d be honored,” he said smoothly.
“Excellent! I live at 16 Chesterfield, off Curzon Street.”
“Ah, nice and close to the Park,” he purred with a stare that practically caressed her friend.
If he was ogling Delilah for the express purpose of irritating her, by Jove, the childish trick was working.
How unlike the Jordan Lennox she remembered!
“Come at half past seven, and we shall dine at eight,” Delilah instructed him.
He nodded politely. “I look forward to it. Thank you for your kind invitation, madam. Ladies.” He taunted Mara with a sly, sidelong glance, then sketched a bow. “If you’ll excuse me, they’re about to introduce my item. Wish me luck.”
With that, he sauntered back into the bustling main auction room, leaving both wide-eyed women gazing at his broad shoulders and his compactly muscled derriere.
Mara turned to Delilah with a severe look when he had disappeared into the crowd. “You should not have done that.”
“Why ever not?” Delilah beamed and clapped her gloved hands in jubilation. “Oh, Mara, he’s perfect for you! What an utterly delicious specimen! Just the sort of lover you should start with—”
“Oh, God, don’t make me ill!” She pivoted and immediately began marching toward the clerk’s station to pay for the Gerrit Dou.
“What’s wrong?” Delilah exclaimed, hurrying after her.
“I despise that man!”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I do! I hate him—he hates me—we hate each other—couldn’t you tell?” she asked rather frantically.
“Right.” Delilah folded her arms across her chest. “That would explain why neither of you could stop staring.”
“Nonsense, it was you he was drooling over!”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Darling, you sound jealous, and yet you hate him? Now, here’s a mystery!”
Mara scowled at her impossible friend, but her heart was pounding as she joined the short queue to pay for her Gerrit Dou. “Well,” she announced in a businesslike tone, tugging off her gloves, “I cannot possibly come to your dinner party now.”
“Of course you can.”
“No. The sight of him would more than ruin my appetite,” she declared with a shudder.
“Not mine.” Delilah glanced admiringly in the direction the earl had gone. “He is quite the robust entrée, if you take my meaning. Good English beefsteak. Bit of tenderizing, and I’d put him on my menu any night.”
Mara rolled her eyes heavenward at Delilah’s familiar brand of irreverence. “Are you going to flirt with him like that tomorrow night in front of Cole?”
“Perhaps. What does it matter to you since you cannot abide him? Anyway, Cole and I do not pretend to have an exclusive understanding.”
“Oh, really? Is Cole aware of that? In case you haven’t noticed, the poor man is in love with you.”
Delilah shrugged in studied nonchalance. “That is his problem, not mine. So, why this aversion to Lord Falconridge? He seems entirely charming to me.”
Mara shook her head and looked away. Though she was fuming, she finally conceded: “We had a falling-out a long time ago.”
“Over what?”
“It does not signify!”
“Well, if it was long ago, maybe it’s time to let bygones be bygones?”
She shot her a glare. “No, it’s not. And I don’t wish to discuss it,” she added, before Delilah could ask again.
Her friend frowned. “Well, at least tell me what he’s been doing out of the country!”
“I don’t know; something to do with the war,” Mara mumbled, moving forward as another gentleman finished his transaction with the clerk. “Now that it’s over, it appears the bleeder’s back.”
“Is he an officer? He looked rather dangerous to me.” Delilah elbowed her. “Did he ever show you his sword?”
“Would you behave? He’s in some branch of the diplomatic service. Foreign Office or some such.”
“How intriguing! Where was his post?”
“I don’t know, and if I did, I wouldn’t even care!” she declared a little too emphatically.
Delilah scowled at her. “Very well. I’ll go and tell the boy to bring our carriages.”
“Please do.”
“Touchy!” Delilah muttered, but lifting the hem of her skirts a bit, she glided off to fetch their transportation.
Reaching the front of the line, Mara shoved Jordan Lennox out of her mind with a vexed huff; but as she reached into her reticule and wrote out a cheque to pay for the painting, her hands were still shaking from their brief encounter.
Handing over her payment, she set up a time to have the Gerrit Dou delivered to her home. She would present it to her royal friend in person when he returned from Brighton. The arrangements made, she smoothed her reticule over her wrist and went to the entrance, where Delilah waited.
She realized she had been rather vehement with her friend and approached with a chastened attitude. “I’m sorry for being short with you, darling. It’s just that seeing that, that person again was—a trifle upsetting.”
Delilah gazed at her. “He meant a lot to you?”
“Once, he did. Until I realized he’s just a fraud. Too good to be true,” she said with a sigh.
“Perhaps he’s changed since you last knew him.”
“Oh, I’m sure we both have. For the worse.” Gazing down Pall Mall as she waited for her driver to bring the coach, Mara shook her head. “I don’t know. I once imagined he and I shared something…beautiful and sweet, and so innocent…but obviously, it was all a girlish delusion. He left without a backward glance, and that was how I ended up with Pierson.”
Delilah’s eyes widened. “Pierson was your second choice even from the start?” she whispered.
Mara nodded wryly. “And once he realized that, he never forgave me for it.”
Her friend studied her with a thoughtful frown.
“What is it?” Mara asked.
“Mara, Pierson’s gone,” Delilah said. “You are free to do as you choose. Perhaps destiny has given you and Lord Falconridge another—”
“No. He had his chance,” she cut her off. “He’s not going to hurt me again, I can promise you that.”
“All the same, that’s the biggest reaction I’ve seen out of you toward any man—well, ever.”
“That’s because I despise him, as I told you.”
“You know what they say, my dear. Hatred is but the other side of the coin to love.”
She snorted. “Not in this case.”
“Very well, then. Maybe you’re just saving yourself—for George.”
Mara scowled at her.
Delilah laughed. “Here’s my carriage. Au revoir, darling.” She gave Mara a peck on the cheek, then nodded to one of Christie’s footmen posted by the door; he opened it for her onto the busy, windy avenue. “Remember, tomorrow evening, seven o’clock!” Delilah called. “Come early so we can make fun of everyone else before they arrive.”
“I told you, I’m not coming anymore.”
“Of course you are!”
“No, I’m not. Not if he’s there.”
“Very well! Since you clearly have no interest in that lovely fellow, I’ll make sure to entertain him personally.” With a pointed glance over her shoulder, Delilah paraded out the rest of th
e way to her waiting carriage, where her liveried groom handed her up.
Before her carriage pulled away, she looked out the window with a knowing smile and an arch wave farewell.
Mara was left stewing on the pavement. I know what she’s trying to do, but it’s not going to work.
Delilah could have the cad for all she cared.
A moment later, her trusty driver, Jack, brought her coach gliding to a halt before the entrance. At once, her footman got the carriage door and knocked the step down for her.
Mara climbed in, assuring herself again that she did not give a fig if Delilah seduced Jordan, or the other way round. It mattered not the tiniest iota.
All she cared about was getting home to Thomas. Her pride and joy, the center of her world.
Whatever capacity for love she possessed, it was reserved for her child and him alone. Her baby deserved all she had to give. Besides, a creature so pure and innocent, so full of love, would never betray her, never hurt her like everyone else had. Even if by some wild chance, Jordan were interested in her again, it did not signify. Her decision was already made.
She was Thomas’s mother now, and that was all that she desired to be.
Chapter 2
Sometimes things just didn’t work out the way you planned. Missions ran long, and sometimes the people you counted on lost faith, gave up on you, and moved on with their lives. When that happened, the correct, the honorable thing to do was not to put up a fuss but to bow out like a gentleman, no matter how it hurt…just to let them go with one last, lingering wish that they might find a way to be happy.
How many love letters had he crumpled up and thrown into the fire rather than send them, knowing the enemy could follow his communications straight to her?
Not for the world would he have ever put her in danger. Even if it meant losing her to someone else.
Well, it scarcely mattered anymore. Stalking back into the auction room, Jordan eluded pain with the sardonic anger that had become as much a part of his defenses as his favorite smoothbore rifle.
But a cold, private smile tilted one corner of his lips, for he was still rather smugly pleased at Mara’s appalled look when he had accepted her friend’s invitation.
How could he resist such a golden opportunity to make the lady squirm? Might as well enjoy her discomfiture, he mused, as this was likely to be the only satisfaction he’d ever have of Mara Bryce.
Ah, but, of course, she wasn’t Miss Bryce anymore, he thought acidly. She hadn’t been called that in years.
She was Lady Pierson now, a wealthy, widowed viscountess, newly out of mourning.
Yes, of course, he knew. Knew more about her than he had let on. Far more, indeed, than he even liked admitting to himself.
He had spotted his former darling in the crowd long before she had noticed him—today, of all days.
Naturally. It would have to be today—just when he was knee deep in a mission for the Order. The day’s operation had been weeks in the planning, but that was Mara for you. She had always been the most damned inconvenient female on God’s green earth.
At least by glimpsing her first, he’d had time to absorb the shock of this unexpected encounter.
Though he had feigned nonchalance, in truth, a flood of tangled emotions had rushed through him at the sight of her—a shock in itself, considering he had been numb for so long it was actually starting to scare him.
Now the vortex of feeling she had left churning in his breast compelled a moment’s starkest honesty. For twelve years, he’d been pretending he did not give a damn what that woman did with her life.
But if this were true, his meticulous brain would not have filed away so many details of her existence. Like the date she had been married. The date of her idiot husband’s death, the location of her country house in Hampshire and where she lived in London—37 Great Cumberland Street, to be exact.
He would not know that she had one small son, called Thomas, after his loud, vain braggart of a father. Nor should it still make him vaguely nauseous to think of her carrying another man’s child.
Jordan would’ve liked to claim that his knowledge of all these varied Mara facts was nothing but an occupational hazard. Information, after all, was an agent’s stock in trade. But clearly he still harbored some morbid fascination with the woman.
Very well, he conceded as he wove his way through the crowded aisle toward the front of the room. So he was not indifferent to Mara Bryce.
But what he felt for her could not be called affection.
On the contrary. He bloody well despised her.
The loss of all that might have been was bearable that way. If only she could have been strong enough to wait a little longer. If only he hadn’t been so sensible, so cautious in the first place—so him.
He shrugged off the memory of how her startling offer of marriage had nonplussed him that night in the garden—the bold young agent, afraid of nothing! A beautiful seventeen-year-old with her heart shining in her big, dark eyes had unnerved him with a kiss. Indeed, she had scared the hell out of him.
Well, Virgil had never trained them in what to do in the face of that particular calamity—falling in love!
Jordan had been so taken off guard by it all, so much out of his element, it had been all he could do not to go tearing out of there like he’d had the devil at his heels.
At the very least, he was not about to trust that his crazed attraction to Mara was real until it was tested by a sensible absence. As much as she tempted him, he had not been willing to throw aside the duty of his line to serve the Order, as every Earl of Falconridge had done before him.
Above all, he had refused to let his friends down; he would not tell Mara his secrets when she could, in all innocence, let slip one wrong word in the right ear and get people killed—his brother warriors, his handler, and himself.
Difficult as it had been—even knowing what he knew now, how duty would conspire to keep them apart until she had settled for Pierson—Jordan held grimly to his conviction that he had done the right thing. And for someone like him, he told himself, that was enough.
To Hell with happiness. Honor was all that really mattered at the end of the day.
As for now, he was merely thankful that Mara and her highborn harlot friend had left Christie’s. He did not need the headache of protecting two daft Society ladies added to his already-long list of duties and details for this mission.
There was unseen danger in this room that an idle observer would never have suspected, but today’s ruse should soon lure out the hidden enemies lurking in their midst.
The operation would begin shortly.
Jordan made his way to a spot near the front of the soaring auction hall, from where he’d be able to see everyone who might bid on the Alchemist’s Scrolls.
Assuming a casual pose, he leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest, exchanging a few taut, communicative glances with his men posted at various points around the room.
He had fanned them out to monitor the exits and to keep a close eye on particular persons of interest.
Each man’s subtle nod in answer relayed the message back to him: All clear.
So far, so good. They would not have long to wait.
For the moment, the auctioneer was smoothly urging on both sides of a grand battle between parties vying for a pair of ancient Roman vases. But next up, according to the catalogue, was the extraordinary item around which the day’s operation revolved.
Even now, one of Mr. Christie’s staff members carried the ancient wooden case containing the scrolls up to the display table near the podium.
Scanning the crowded rows of chairs, Jordan watched the numbered paddles lifting. Aristocratic buyers leaned an ear to their slick art agents, who whispered advice on when to quit and when to press on to capture a worthy prize.
His survey moved on restlessly, assessing the clientele. Pomaded dandies, rich men’s pampered wives in elaborate hats. A few bookish types—archiv
ists from the British Museum as well as the Bodleian Library.
His glance skimmed past all these. Where are you? Show yourselves, you twisted bastards…
He could feel the enemy here, somewhere in the crowd—but who, exactly? Who among the rich and powerful in London had become secret adherents of the Prometheans’ dark cult?
Patience. The bidding on the Alchemist’s Scrolls would soon reveal them. But in reality, it should not be too difficult to pick them out of the crowd.
In his experience, the Prometheans had a look to them, something slightly off, something missing from the eyes—a spark of soul, perhaps, that the evil they dabbled in ate away.
Biding his time, Jordan’s scanning gaze happened back to the row where Mara had been sitting. The seat that she had occupied was still vacant, just like the place in his life she could have held if she had been someone he could have trusted with the truth.
But he hadn’t dared. As much as he had wanted her, she was too impulsive, reckless, fragile, immature. There was no way he could have placed the lives of his brother warriors in the hands of a seventeen-year-old girl who had still had a lot of growing up to do.
Staring at her empty chair, he could still see her in his mind, having watched her there for a quarter hour in a potent brew of lust and loathing.
The woman he had nearly made his wife had been dressed for today’s late-winter afternoon in a charming chocolate brown ensemble, a shade no doubt that flattered her famously sparkly dark eyes. Her rich sable hair had been pulled back in a casual knot at her nape, so dramatic against the silken luminescence of her pale, exquisite skin.
The years, he’d had to admit, had not done the lady any harm. If anything, the passage of time had only made her more interesting to his worldly tastes.
Yet he had ached a little as he watched her.
God knew she had failed him.
He had often wondered how different his own life might have been today if he had had a home and a family, some shred of normality to return to in between his bloody, brutal missions. A good, steady wife to embrace him and a few children to justify the future, give him a tangible reason for putting himself through all this.