by Lara Archer
She stood as squarely as she could, glaring straight back into that wicked angel face with its hostile smile. She could only hope her blush wasn’t as blazing as it felt. Both her hands clenched into fists now, and wild hot pressure boiled up through her chest. And out, in words. “You have very fine teeth, Mr. Sebastian. Pity if a few of them were to be broken.”
“Bravo!” cried Mawbry. “Looks like she’s brought some fireworks of her own!”
To her surprise, the gargoyle laughed again, a sound quick and intimidating as a cracking whip. “Bravo, indeed, little nun,” he said. “But it’s Hawkesbridge.”
“What’s Hawkesbridge?”
“I am Hawkesbridge,” he drawled again, his voice cool, contemptuous. “Sebastian Talbot, Marquess of Hawkesbridge, to be precise. If you’re going to threaten me, you ought to get the name right. You could just call me ‘my lord,’ if you prefer.” He gave a small, elegant shrug. “When you make your next threat.”
Bastard. Of course a man that arrogant had to be a lord. A marquess, no less.
Lord Gargoyle, then. The Marquess of Bloody Gargoyles. The Gargoyle Prince.
She was saved from doing something utterly unladylike by the Black Giant. He swooped in, towering over her tormentor by more than a head, a feat few men on earth might manage, given Lord Gargoyle’s very considerable height. That deep voice boomed from behind the dark hair, “You will show Miss Covington respect, Marquess.”
But if the marquess was cowed in the slightest, he didn’t show it. If anything, he looked faintly amused. “Spare me the whiff of brimstone,” he commanded, extending one forefinger to push against the Giant’s chest. When the Giant failed to budge, the look of glittering amusement only increased. “Though I appreciate the reminder to observe the social niceties. So delightful, coming from you.”
The Giant went dangerously still; his shoulders, which had been rising and falling faintly with his breathing, might have turned to granite. The cold, black eyes bored viciously into the marquess’s. It seemed impossible that Lord Gargoyle would not, within moments, be clutching a mashed and bloodied nose. If not lying on the floor with his neck snapped.
But to her astonishment, the Giant gave a soft grunt, then took a slight step back as if to let the marquess pass.
To her further surprise, the marquess himself now turned and sketched her a civil bow. “Forgive me, Miss Covington, for my less than gracious welcome.” His mouth twitched, though, still clearly in amusement. “If you’ll do me the courtesy of taking a seat again, I shall attempt to answer at least some of your questions.”
She scanned his face. The fire in his gaze now seemed carefully banked, and his eyes regarded her calmly, their sky-blue centers smooth and cool as mirrors. Which was somehow more unnerving than their previous heat.
“Thank you, Lord Hawkesbridge.” She took a seat with what grace she could muster, though a trickle of chill sweat slid down the small of her back.
The gargoyle settled himself into a seat as well, leaning back and crossing one long leg over the other. “Your sister was my partner,” he began, and there was something proprietary in the way he said the words, something challenging, as though partner outranked sister in connection. “My partner for nearly seven years, in our work for England.” He paused, then added. “In espionage. The theft of state secrets.”
“I know what espionage is.” She nearly said she’d read Machiavelli and Cicero and Thucydides and understood political intrigue, but sensed the gargoyle would mock her for it. “But I still don’t see how my sister became involved in such a business.”
His sky-blue eyes flicked to the Black Giant for a moment. “How she came to work for us is not the most important question at the moment.”
“No? Not for you, maybe, but for me—”
“Have you considered that your sister might have preferred you not know everything about her life?”
That stung. And she could hardly argue otherwise, since Sarah made no deliberate contact, not so much as a letter, in all the years since she’d run from home. Rachel’s hands twisted in her lap.
“Sal,” the marquess continued with relentless calm, “posed a particular threat to a network of French spies led by a woman named Victoire de Laurent. Sal was betrayed into Victoire’s hands by a double agent, a very high-ranking English agent named Robert Ehlert. A man who was once my mentor.” The gargoyle’s handsome face hardened further, into a blank mask. “Ehlert was suborned into French service by Victoire de Laurent herself.”
“An Englishman betrayed my sister? Why?”
“Victoire’s talent for manipulating men is . . . extraordinary. Robert Ehlert had always seemed the most loyal and patriotic of men. Rest assured he is now dead.” Somehow his very blandness suggested the gargoyle had killed the man himself.
Strange heat surged through Rachel’s limbs, and the strength to tear someone apart with her bare hands. “And this Victoire de Laurent? Where is she?”
“Unknown. But she’s at the very center of the web.” He paused. “Victoire took a great risk going after Sal. And sacrificed a very valuable double-agent to do it.” He shifted forward in his seat, planting both boot-soles on the ground. “The French have hated your sister for years, but shortly before her death, Sal somehow came into possession of something—a book of some sort, an encrypted book—which Victoire wanted very much to recover. I’m quite certain that if the French think Sal still lives and possesses that book, Victoire and her minions will crawl from the woodwork fast enough.”
Rachel took a deep breath, and nodded. “So I’m to serve as bait.”
“Essentially, yes.” The gargoyle’s voice was cold, but his eyes were searing again, fixed on her mercilessly. “In any case, the most important question right now is one only you can answer.”
She refused to let him stare her down, though looking back into those hot eyes made her spine quake. “What question would that be?”
“A simple one.” He smiled at her, a smile with no warmth in it. “Tell me, Miss Covington, can you play the part of courtesan?”
“Courtesan?” Her breath and her heartbeat stuttered.
“Yes, courtesan. A woman whose profession it is to—”
“I know what a courtesan is,” she snapped, her cheeks heating. “I am literate.”
“Oh, you’ve read about courtesans?” His smile widened, though it did not increase in warmth, only in undisguised disdain. “Well, then, no doubt your knowledge of human relations is quite complete.”
She ignored his sarcasm. The implications of his question were slowly sinking in. “But Lord Helm said Sarah broke ciphers. She wasn’t . . . ”
“She was,” the gargoyle said. “And expert at using the connections that role gave her. Salomé. That’s how she was known. Salomé Mirabeau. Fallen daughter of a French count who was slain in la Terreur. Grown up to become one of the most infamous women of the London demimonde.” A more authentic smile flickered briefly across his mouth. “The melodramatic tale amused her greatly. As did the play on her real name.”
“Her real name? No.” Rachel knew she sounded foolish, insisting on this detail at this time, but she couldn’t help herself. The world would melt and slip from her grasp if she didn’t. “Her name was Sarah, not Sal.”
“Sarah,” he repeated, in a tone of indulgence even a child would find patronizing. “But for you to succeed in this mission, Miss Covington, a courtesan is what the world must understand you to be. So tell me: can you play the role? Convincingly? Can you, my quiet, gray, drab little nun, transform yourself into a Salomé?”
Her head swam. Courtesan.
It was too much to take in at once. That Sarah had become such a thing. That she herself was being asked to convince the world she’d done the same.
What had that life been like for her sister? Echoes of pain and fear and tears she’d sensed over the years swept over Rachel now. Loneliness. Anger. Shame.
Rachel wanted to curl in a ball and pull the cloak over her he
ad.
But the gargoyle’s eyes were glaring into hers, and there was something ugly in them, something that infuriated her. It was not just the implied insult, the one he’d already thrown at her in Helm’s office, that she lacked feminine wiles. No, this was something else, this was . . . satisfaction. A cruel satisfaction. Lord Gargoyle didn’t think she could do it. Worse, he didn’t want her to do it. He wanted her to fail.
Damn him. Her sister had died. Her sister had been murdered.
She had every right to be part of this.
She’d seen that look of his before, on the faces of the few men who’d ever stooped to play her in a game of chess. Most took her on only to shame her, to defeat her, to demonstrate her proper place. Whenever she’d encountered that look, she’d always—however carefully and quietly she’d had to do it, and however mild she’d had to keep her expression afterward—handed shameful defeat to them instead.
Now, she didn’t stop to think.
In one movement, she shifted forward boldly and slipped one palm around the back of the gargoyle’s neck. She’d never touched a man in such a way before, and panic threatened to overwhelm her. She fought it down.
“Amabo, mei delicii,” she murmured against his ear. The words of an ancient love poem: I shall make love to you, my delight.
His neck jerked against her hand, but he seemed too surprised to do more. His eyes widened; his breath puffed against her cheek.
Forcing herself to gaze into his eyes, she brushed her fingers up towards his nape, weaving them into the thickness of his hair, while she murmured, “Domi maneas paresque nobis novem continuas fututiones.” Stay at home and prepare for our nine continuous . . . Her cheeks flamed as she thought on the translation of the crude final word.
He gasped.
Then she shocked herself as well: she pressed her lips against his, drawing him closer with the hand tangled in his hair.
His lips were soft, and warm, not the cold marble she’d imagined he was made of. They parted slightly, and his breath pushed into hers, and then it was more than touch, it was taste and smell—the tang of the liquor he’d drunk, and something else rich and dark and hot and undeniably him. An intoxicating combination that drew the whole focus of her body to the joining of their mouths, then somehow rippled out again, sending unexpected waves of sensation through the peaks of her breasts, through her belly, through her limbs.
The gargoyle made a low sound in his throat. A sound that didn’t seem quite like a protest. That didn’t seem to be under his control at all.
At that, she pulled back, breaking the kiss and dropping her hand from his neck as her heart galloped wildly in her chest. But she’d clearly achieved the effect she desired. Helm and Mawbry grinned broadly. The gargoyle stared at her in a rather stunned manner, his eyes having quite lost their coolness. Heat rose in a wave from his body.
Then anger snapped back across his features. “Point taken, Miss Covington,” he snarled. He sat back, and cocked a very aristocratic eyebrow. “Though I think few courtesans can quote Catullus in the original.”
“This one can,” she said, smiling. Ridiculous triumph swelled in her chest.
For once, Lord Gargoyle seemed to be at a loss for anything to say.
Chapter Three
Sebastian had survived three days with that maddening little governess in his house, and he began to think he was making some progress. He might, at least eventually, be able to look at Rachel Covington without his lungs tightening so sharply he couldn’t breathe.
He made himself enter the chamber assigned to her, as usual not bothering to knock. The habit irritated her, which suited him fine. Petty, but it soothed him a bit every time he nettled her, made her straighten her spine in that nun-like way, and jab out her chin to pierce him with her icy governess glare.
It neutralized the memory of that damned unsettling kiss she’d given him.
Better still, it reminded him she wasn’t Sal.
Not a bit like Sal.
Well, he really should have knocked this time.
The girl had her back to him, lifting the weight of her loosened hair from her neck as her lady’s maid—Sal’s maid, Jenny—fastened her into a gown. A gown he recognized as one of Sal’s favorites. Not Miss Covington’s usual serviceable woolen gray, but a plum silk which skimmed lustrously over her body and left her arms bare and glowing in the lamplight.
He froze.
The air went thick and cold and hard to breathe as wet sand.
Sal. He was looking at Sal.
Her hair gleamed fire-bronze as it always had, though it was a good deal longer than he was used to. He recognized the exact shape of her slender back, and the familiar white length of her fingers as they lifted her curls. The precise angle of her neck, the crook of her elbow, the lush curve of her hip that had driven many otherwise-intelligent men to fatal distraction.
His universe lurched.
Emotions he could hardly name rushed in at him, against all rational control: grief, confusion, and a mad desire to run to her, lift her from the ground and spin her about and scream and weep and laugh. And beg her forgiveness again and again.
It took every scrap of will he possessed to hold himself where he stood. To squeeze shut his eyes. To let the seconds pass until sanity returned.
Thank heaven, Miss Covington didn’t turn towards him until after he’d opened his eyes again, and had pulled himself back under control. And when she did turn and find him standing there, she blushed. Blushed clear down to her collarbone, a charming rosy shade, and raised a modest hand to hide the plunging neckline of her gown.
Not a gesture Sal would have made. Not in a thousand years.
Instantly, his universe righted itself.
He sucked in a rich gulp of air.
And grinned at her, a deliberately mocking grin. “How very charming you look, my dear,” he drawled, letting his eyes drift casually, assessingly over her form, as any other man who’d walked in on her might have done.
As his eyes swept upwards again, they met her gaze for a moment, and he was surprised to find her eyes looking vulnerable. Nervous. Not remotely like her usual calm, Quakerish self.
At that, a new relief swept through him, relief to the very core of his bones. He almost laughed. She would fool no one. No one who’d known Sal would ever take this shy, uncertain, blushing creature for one of the most brazen courtesans in Western Europe.
The game was up. It was all over. He could wash his hands of her.
His smile became utterly genuine.
But then her maid turned from smoothing out the fabric of the skirts, and fixed him with a beaming look. “Oh, Lord Hawkesbridge!” Jenny exclaimed. “Isn’t it amazing?” She stretched out her arms, gesturing at Miss Covington like a prize sculpture. “If I hadn’t pulled that awful gray frock off her and unwound that knot of hair with my own fingers, I’d swear it was Sal herself standing here!”
His lungs constricted again.
Jenny had been Sal’s lady’s maid for years.
And her confidante, the closest thing Sal had allowed herself to a female friend. Jenny had known Sal clothed, naked, asleep, awake, drunk, exhausted, injured, exultant, at her best and at her worst, in her very most private moments.
“Truly, Jen?” he managed to choke out. “You’d take her for Sal?”
“Oh, yes, sir! Of course! Every inch identical!” Jenny—plain, honest, country Jenny—never lied. She was staring at Miss Covington, shaking her head in apparent wonderment, her brown eyes glazing with tears. “Oh, forgive me, Miss,” she said, her voice breaking as she pressed both hands to her mouth. “You just . . . you look just like my mistress!” The tears spilled over Jenny’s cheeks. “It’s like having her here again! A miracle!” The maid’s face crumpled then, and with a great choking sob she ran from the room.
Sebastian watched Jenny go, largely because the alternative would have been to continue gazing at Miss Covington.
His heart pulsed, and he felt acutel
y conscious of being alone in the room with her.
And painfully aware of her bed, just a few feet away.
What the deuce? He’d never felt the least awkwardness with Sal, never been susceptible to the charms that worked so well on other men. They’d been alone thousands upon thousands of times. Slept in the same room, even, or in the same hayloft or wine cellar or in the dirt under some scraggly bush, whenever a mission demanded it. There’d never been the least temptation to transgress the terms of their friendship.
So why did his skin on the side nearest Miss Covington seem to chafe and glow as if he were standing before a fire?
At last, Miss Covington broke the lengthening silence. “Well, what do you think?” she asked quietly, a slight tremor in her voice. “Do you find me at all convincing?”
“Convincing?” He turned slowly to regard her, trying to conceal the emotions washing through him. Lord, she looked so unsure of herself. As if her gray dresses had been armor, and that armor had been stripped away.
Soft. That was the word that came to him. Underneath that prickly, fierce exterior, she was soft. He could see it now, with her hair loose and waving over her shoulders. With all that vulnerable white skin exposed.
With her eyes gleaming, almost pleading with him.
Oh, she was not Sal. Sal was . . . Sal was hard.
No, Sal was hardened. That was the word. He saw it now, crystal clear, in the contrast: Sal had carried her armor within her very skin, everywhere, always. There’d been a constant barrier about her, a forbidding challenge in the set of her jaw, a look in her eye that said her claws were bared. Her fierceness had gone down to her very core. Whereas this young girl . . .
The differences between Miss Covington and Sal fairly screamed at him.
Yet Jenny, her lady’s maid, had been fooled. Jenny, who knew Sal so intimately, said it was like having Sal here again. If Jenny could be fooled, then others could be fooled as well.