“Kit?”
“An old friend who has suddenly decided I have to marry him to retrieve my respectability.”
“And what do you think?” Wickenden asked calmly.
“That it would be a thoroughly unrespectable reason to marry anyone.”
“Do you want to marry him for a different reason?”
“Lord, no, I don’t want to marry anyone, let alone someone who’s almost my bro—” She broke off again. “Why am I even talking about this?” She frowned to concentrate her mind, though her body showed an annoying tendency to tremble. She clutched Wickenden’s coat more closely around her and glanced at him. “You must be colder than I,” she said ruefully.
“Nonsense,” he said, throwing an arm around her shoulders again and pulling her into his body as they walked. She understood it was for warmth and, perhaps, comfort, and she couldn’t deny herself, at least for a few moments. On the other hand, she was no milksop.
“You don’t need to come with me,” she said. “In fact, if you would do me a favor, you would go back to the ball and tell my aunt I’ve gone home. And make sure Serena knows –.”
“You can’t walk through the town in this condition. Let me fetch you a carriage and your aunt.”
“There’s no need,” she insisted. “I can get home without being seen.”
“How?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said hastily. “Truly, if you would just—”
“I won’t leave you until you’re safely home.”
She would have argued the point, only there were the two unconscious men on the beach who might reawaken at any moment. “Very well, but we’ll need to hurry before the tide comes in.”
The deep, ugly sick feeling seemed to have faded from her stomach, leaving only a residue of mild pain. In fact, it felt curiously pleasant to be walking in the sand with Lord Wickenden’s arm around her and the warmth from his body seeping into her side. She knew he only held her for the same reason he’d given her his coat—to keep the cold at bay. Perhaps that was the reason she felt no urge to pull away from him.
“You’re not at all what you seem, are you?” she said, thinking aloud.
“Why, what do I seem?”
“A bored dandy, appalled by his provincial surroundings,” she said frankly, then cast him a surreptitious glace to see if her unruly tongue had offended him.
It seemed not. “I might take issue with the word dandy, but on the whole that describes me fairly well.”
“Then why did you come?” she asked curiously. “I doubt London is devoid of entertainment at this time of year.”
He sighed. “A number of reasons, chief of which being it was deemed sensible for me to leave the capital for a while.”
“Why?”
“I shot a man in a duel,” he said. “If he dies, I’m told they’ll clap me up this time.”
“Why?” she asked, peering at him in the darkness.
He shrugged. “It’s not my first offense of that kind.”
“No, I mean why did you shoot him? Why did you fight this duel?”
“I forget, but I’m sure the reasons were too sordid and trivial to repeat.” He dropped his arm from her shoulders to clamber over the rocks, then reached back to take her hand and help her. Although she was more than capable of scrambling over rocks herself – even in a torn ball gown – she rather liked his care. Which sat very oddly with his reputation.
As she landed safely beside him on the sand, she stopped and frowned up at him. She knew he hadn’t really forgotten the reason for his duel, but understood he would never tell her. Despite her curiosity, it was probably best not to know.
“Why did you help me tonight?” she asked instead.
The light from the lantern cast half his handsome face into shadow. The half she could see didn’t smile. “Because I could.”
Her gaze fell to his hand still holding hers, His knuckles were bleeding.
“Thank you,” she said, with difficulty but complete sincerity.
“Think nothing of it,” he drawled, moving forward, although he still held her hand, “I can’t win my wager if you’re dead or at the mercy of smugglers.”
She waved that aside. “A kiss,” she said disparagingly. “I cannot think you are the sort of man who needs wagers to win himself kisses!”
“Is that a compliment?” he asked after a moment.
She laughed. “Yes, I suppose it is. But don’t let it go to your head. I’m sure I’ll insult you again before long.”
Unexpectedly, he flung his arm around her waist, swinging her to an abrupt halt against his body. “Don’t treat me like your brother, or all those surrogate brothers who surround you.” His eyes seemed to flash, although it might have been a trick of the moonlight.” I can’t be kept in line by coaxing and flattery and the occasional scold.”
Baffled and not a little angered by all his changes of mood, she tried to throw him off. “Oh for goodness sake, what do you want of me?” she exclaimed.
He held her still without difficulty. “I told you. Another kiss.”
For dignity’s sake, she gave up trying to push him away, although she did curl her lip. “You go to a lot of trouble for something of no value!”
“No value? To you or to me?”
“To either of us!”
He swooped, locking his mouth to hers in a kiss that was almost bruising. This was nothing like the sweet explorative embrace that had so entranced her the first night. Hard, fierce, demanding, it would have frightened her had everything in her not leapt in wild, instinctive response – a response she’d no real idea how to make. She could only cling to his lips, while arousal she’d never dreamed of battered at her.
Very gradually, his mouth gentled and loosened. “There,” he said, against her lips. “Deny that has value. It certainly has to me.
She said shakily, “You can’t save my reputation and ruin me at the same time.”
A breath of surprised laughter stirred her lips. “A wager for another day, perhaps. Come, we’ve dallied enough in the cold. Where the devil are we going?”
Bemused all over again by his sudden shift from passion to detached interest in his surroundings, she said. “To the Black Cove. It’s just around the next headland.”
“How does the Black Cove help us? Your house isn’t on the beach.”
“No, but there is a tunnel,” she confessed. “I think it’s the one these horrible men were looking for. There’s no other that runs into our cellar.”
He eyed her with something approaching admiration. Annoyingly, she wanted to preen. “Your sick servant isn’t a servant, is he? He’s a smuggler.”
“The soldiers patrolling the coast shot him,” she admitted.
“You really do run a disorderly house, don’t you?”
“I most certainly do not! You’ve just caught us at a bad moment. We couldn’t let Jack die. He’s an old friend and he has a wife and four children dependent on him.”
“Maybe he should have thought of them before he took to smuggling.”
“I think he did. Fishing isn’t as lucrative.” She sighed. “It isn’t fair, is it? If you kill a man, you just leave the country until it all blows over or you’ve influenced the powers that be to pardon you. But if Jack just deprives the government of a little revenue, then he’s instantly hanged.”
“There’s a little more to it than that,” Wickenden said, “Bonaparte is using smuggled goods to try and break the British economy. Besides, our smugglers take him information and escaped prisoners of war.”
“I know it happens,” Gillie confessed. “But truly, Jack would have no information to give if he tried. He only brings contraband north, and anyway, it’s never anything that competes with British goods.”
“And the men who attacked you?”
She frowned, shuddering as the memory rushed to the forefront of her mind. “I don’t know. A rival set of smugglers perhaps. Or French spies?”
“Someone who knows what you
look like,” Wickenden pointed out, “and has connected you to the tunnel. You’re going to have to take care until we sort this out. How many menservants do you have?”
“Just Danny,” she admitted, “and Charles the young footman. But it makes no sense. If they want to use my cellar and my tunnel, why antagonize me?”
He nodded. “It’s as if they want to be in and out quickly. What do you have that they might want?”
“Brandy?” she said doubtfully. “Unless they mean to rob us one night after a party.”
“Then why give you warning by attacking you? They’d surely be better off just listening to tavern tattle and then acting on that. Is this your Black Cove?”
“It is.” Taking the lantern from him, she walked around the rocks, avoiding the rippling waves threatening to run over her feet. She clambered over the rocks, helping herself with one hand and trying not to slide in her ruined dancing slippers. “I haven’t used the tunnel for years, not since Bernie and I were children. But it should be round about here…” Pushing past a bramble bush, she held the lantern high to expose a hidden cavern.
Wickenden pulled the brambles back, peering over her shoulder. “There doesn’t seem to be anything there.”
“That’s the beauty.” She scrambled inside, walking into what looked like the narrowest, darkest corner, which, in fact, hid the opening to a much wider cave and a long, winding tunnel. “Our house is old,” she remarked. “Although the front portion was built only fifty years or so ago, the back probably dates to Elizabethan times. We think the tunnel was probably an escape route for rebels and Catholics, originally, though smugglers have been making use of it for as long as anyone remembers.”
“Then it’s always been your family’s house?”
“My mother’s family. She and my father inherited it from my grandfather.”
“So you always knew about the tunnel? You must have had fun here as a child.”
She smiled at the memory. “Oh we did! Which is another reason we didn’t want to give up the house after my father died.”
“You have roots here,” he said without emphasis, yet something in his voice made her glance back over her shoulder at him, raising the lantern. He took it from her.
“Don’t you on your own land?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Mostly, I resent it.”
She blinked. “You resent your own land?”
“Call me ungrateful, overprivileged and perverse.”
“You find it a burden?” she guessed. “You don’t care for the responsibility?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never minded responsibility. It was just a different sort I had in mind. My brother was meant to have the lands and titles, not me. I thought I could choose my own path. What is that?”
The inevitable question died on her lips as she followed his pointing finger to a crumpled object on the tunnel floor. It stood out on the gravelly, sandy stone – as did the splatters of blood which she hadn’t noticed until now. Bending, she picked up the paper with a grunt at the sudden pain her stomach.
At once, he caught her arm, easing her upright. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I think I must have been bruised in the struggle.”
“Where?” he demanded.
In spite of herself and the unromantic nature of the conversation, she flushed, brushing her hand across her stomach.
In the lantern light his eyes and lips narrowed. “I wish I’d hit them harder.”
“I think you hit them hard enough,” she said, touching his hand with the cut knuckles without thought.
Immediately embarrassed, she began uncrumpling the paper she’d picked off the floor.
“Read it in the comfort of your house,” he advised. “We should hurry.”
Drawing nearer their goal made her think of something else. “Do you think you could break open a locked door?”
He eyed her with misgivings. “Your cellar door is locked, isn’t it?”
“It certainly should be. Although it wasn’t on the night of the card party, when you went in search of entertainment.”
“So that’s why you were so terrified of me being there.”
“That and the smuggler in the cellar. And the contraband.”
“And yet barely twenty-four hours later you trust me with all of that and more.”
“Well, you did save me from the men who abducted me,” she excused herself. “You are clearly trustworthy up to a point.”
“And what point would that be?”
“The one that entertains you.”
“But you entertain me,” he said, catching her hand and threading his fingers through hers.
Her hand jumped in his as she instinctively made to snatch it back, before deciding she shouldn’t accord it so much importance. Instead, she lifted her chin and looked him in the eyes. “My point exactly. You have promised to protect my reputation.”
He smiled, his teeth showing in the lantern light, somehow accentuating his satanic appearance. “You haven’t quite got the hang of reputation in society, have you? It means bowing strictly to the rules of etiquette in public. I assure you, in company I shall be most punctilious.”
“Meaning that in private you will behave like a cad?” she flung at him.
Deliberately, he stopped and set down the lantern. She whisked up her free hand to ward him off, but he simply seized it and pushed it behind her back, drawing her close into his body before he bent his head.
Her breath came in short pants because some indignant part of her longed to throw him off, even while the butterflies leapt around her stomach in sheer anticipation. His eyes had darkened like mysterious, impossibly profound caverns.
“It seems so.” His voice wasn’t quite steady. There might even have been regret in there, although for what she couldn’t begin to guess. “You’re too damned…alluring.”
And for the second time that night, his mouth took hers, deeply, blatantly sensual. Telling herself it would be undignified to resist, she didn’t. But within moments, her fingers had curled around his hand and her lips were trembling under the onslaught of his. His tongue invaded, devastating her. He pressed her closer into his hips while his other hand released hers and slid upward from her waist to her breast.
She opened her mouth in a gasp and that was even worse – or better, for the kiss deepened at once, overwhelming her utterly.
“What are you doing?” she gasped into his mouth.
He groaned and lifted his head. “Damned if I know, but it’s—” He never finished his sentence but delved and kissed her again until she could barely breathe. And yet as soon as she struggled, he released her. “Christ, I’m sorry. How could I forget he hit you?”
“I’m not hurt,” she said shakily. “But I won’t allow this.”
A smile flickered on his lips and vanished. “We’ll see.”
And unkind man might have pointed out that she already had allowed it, several times now. At least he didn’t do that. He simply picked up the lantern and walked on, still holding her hand. Somehow, it seemed churlish to remove it.
They came at last into the large chamber below the house. The recent supply of barrels and bottles lined the walls and were stacked on shelves carved out of the wall.
“I suppose it would be easier to break down the door if you had sturdier boots on,” Gillie said anxiously. “I’m afraid if you use your shoulder, you’ll only damage it.”
“Well, let’s try knocking before we do anything so drastic,” Wickenden proposed.
Accordingly, Gillie slipped her hand free of his, and though it felt cold, she hurried up to the cellar door and rapped smartly. At the very least, she was prepared for several attempts, but to her surprise, the key turned in the opposite side almost immediately.
Smiling, Gillie parted her lips to call out in relief but before she could, a pistol muzzle eased through the slowly opening door. In a trice, Wickenden leapt in front of her, grabbed the pistol by the barrel and yanked it downward.
&nbs
p; The unmistakable sound of Danny swearing assailed her ears. An instant later, Danny himself fell inside, almost meeting Wickenden’s clenched fist, though at the last minute, the baron drew back and released him.
Danny gaped from one of them to the other. Light from the hallway spilled inside to join the lantern light, allowing him to take in their disarrayed state.
“If you’ve hurt a hair on her head, I will kill you,” Danny said grimly.
“Of course he hasn’t, Danny,” Gillie said crossly. “In fact, he rescued me from a pair of villains.”
Danny scowled at that. “Pair of villains? Same ones who came round here?”
“Who came round here?” Wickenden demanded. “What did they want?”
“Two blokes, tried to tell me they were here to see Miss Muir and when I sent them packing, they tried to break in. I showed them Flossie here.” He picked up the pistol which had dropped to the floor during his tussle with Wickenden and stroked it lovingly.
“Flossie,” Wickenden repeated.
“It’s a long story,” Gillie said hurriedly. “But he always calls it Flossie. What happened, then, Danny?”
Danny shrugged. “Ran off, didn’t they? But I saw where they were looking and it was down there at the cellar steps, which is why I’ve been sitting here with Flossie ever since. I never expected you to appear this way, Miss Gillie! Where’s your aunt? And Mr. Bernard?”
As if on cue, the front door knocker sounded, closely followed by the scrape of a key in the lock.
“I suspect that’s them,” Gillie said ruefully. “Danny, run up and tell them I’m in my room but will come to the parlor directly. I don’t want Aunt Margaret to see me in this state or she’ll expire of palpitations or something even worse. I’ll wait here until the hall is clear.”
As Danny obediently trudged back up the stairs with a last warning glower over his shoulder at Wickenden, Gillie removed the baron’s coat from her shoulders and handed it to him.
“Thank you for this as well as everything else. You’ll be more comfortable leaving by the front door once my aunt and Bernard are upstairs.”
Barons, Brides, and Spies: Regency Series Starter Collection Volume Two Page 7