by Shana Galen
Blue’s fingers scraped against the door as he fought to remain on his feet. “Hele—”
Her warm mouth closed over him, and the words ended in a strangled groan. His head fell back against the door when she took him deep.
He had to stop her.
Not that he didn’t want her to continue. He desperately wanted her to continue.
But they were in his father’s library. On Christmas Eve. There should have been candlelight and wine.
At least mistletoe.
And he had that damn coded missive in his pocket. He couldn’t allow this to continue with that secret between them.
It pained him, it physically pained him, but he grasped her shoulders and pulled her up. “We should—” he began but said no more before her lips nuzzled his neck and nibbled all the way to his ear.
“I’m wet for you,” she whispered.
All of his good intentions fled with those four words.
Four
Blue moved so quickly that Helena’s head spun. One moment her body clung to his as she whispered all manner of naughty words in his ear, and the next he’d shoved her against the bookshelf, her wrists imprisoned above her head as he savaged her mouth with his own.
Blue rarely lost control. He was more the son of a duke than he liked to admit. She’d been born of cruder stock, and she liked a rough tumble now and again. Something about dancing the waltz with him in that stuffy ballroom filled with all the trappings of Christmas and none of the genuine cheer had made her long for escape. There was no escape like that of his arms, and when he’d yanked her hard against him, in full view of every lady looking down her nose and every man squinting through his quizzing glass, Helena had wanted him madly.
She still wanted him, and she’d be damned if a gaggle of brothers and sisters would keep her from him.
“I think we may be clear on one point at least,” she managed when his lips dipped to her throat.
“What is that?” His words, spoken against her skin, rumbled through her.
“Your family has not changed its mind about me.”
“It would appear not.”
His tongue dipped into her cleavage, sliding in and out. She moaned as her sex throbbed violently with each thrust.
“My opinion of you has not changed either,” he said, tugging her bodice down a half-inch and freeing her breast. His tongue swirled around her nipple, and she arched her back, silently begging him to suck the swollen flesh.
He didn’t oblige, teasing her instead. “I see I am not the only one who is hard.”
She twisted her hands where they’d been imprisoned against the books, but he did not release her. His mouth still on her flesh, he gave her a mocking gaze.
“I have you right where I want you.”
“Then take me.”
“Here?” he asked in faux surprise. “My lady, I would not dare.”
“I’m no lady,” she said, wrapping her legs around him since he would not release her hands.
“Good.” He shoved her skirts up. “Because a lady would faint if she knew the thoughts I entertain.”
He kissed her, his hands sliding slowly over her thighs and taking the silk of her gown with them. She could feel him, hard and hot, at her entrance, and she stifled a whimper of impatience.
“Lord Ernest!” A sharp rap battered the door. “I know you are in there with that...woman.”
“No,” Helena whispered, wanting to cry out in frustration.
“Damn it all to hell,” Blue growled, releasing her arms and lowering her skirts. “What do you want?”
He attempted to right his clothing while she smoothed her dress. She’d just tucked her breast back inside the bodice when the door opened. Oh, why hadn’t they locked it?
A woman with a sharper and finer set of Blue’s features stepped into the room. She was older than Blue by a good many years, possibly old enough to have been his mother. Her gaze swept over Helena and her lip curled with disgust.
“So they sent you to fetch me, Beth.” Blue radiated disgust.
“Beth?” Helena said. She’d been expecting an Emma or Eudora.
“Lady Elizabeth,” Blue’s sister said with a sneer. “And there’s no need to introduce yourself. Your face paint and the immodest cut of your bodice tell me exactly who and what you are.”
Helena looked down at her bodice. She didn’t think it cut any lower than the current fashion, and she’d wiped most of her stage makeup off before leaving the theater. Personally, she thought Beth’s sallow cheeks might benefit from a touch of rouge.
“If you know who she is,” Blue said, the warning in his voice loud and clear, “then you know she is my wife. Careful what you say.”
Beth seemed to swallow her not insubstantial pride. “Very well. I apologize. I have only come to tell you that the duke and duchess wish to speak with you. If you would be so kind, they await you in the music room.”
“And if I am not so kind?” Blue’s tone was icy.
Beth’s mouth narrowed into a hard line. “Our father is a powerful man. If you speak with them now, you may take your leave without reprisal.”
“How generous.” Blue offered his arm, and Helena reached for it.
“The invitation is for one,” Beth said with a pointed look at Helena’s hand in the crook of Blue’s arm.
“I won’t leave my wife alone.”
“If she does not care to dance with Edmund, I am to offer her refreshment.”
Blue glanced at Helena, one eyebrow cocked in that charming manner of his. Helena could think of eight thousand things she would rather do than accompany Lady Elizabeth anywhere, but Blue’s parents had obviously been waiting years to say their piece, and she would not stand in the way.
“I would love a glass of lemon water,” Helena said, releasing Blue’s arm.
“Helena, they can have nothing to say to me you cannot hear.”
“I know.” She gave him her best stage smile. “But that does not mean I wish to hear it.”
She was an actress—an opera singer. She’d been called every vile name for a woman she knew, and some she could only assume had been invented. She did not even blink at the insults any more. But that did not mean she wished to listen to them, especially when hurled by her husband’s parents.
“I will have the butler fetch our carriage and then drown my loneliness in lemon water until you return to the ballroom.”
“Very good.” He took her gloved hand and kissed it. “I will not keep you waiting long.”
Helena followed the pinch-faced Beth from the library and into the vestibule, where she asked that Lord Ernest Bloomington’s carriage be brought around.
“You needn’t accompany me into the ballroom,” Helena told Blue’s sister. “I am certain there are other ladies with whom you would rather converse.”
Beth straightened her spine and notched her shoulders back as might a soldier with a duty to perform. “I was to fetch you refreshment.” She signaled a passing footman, who balanced a silver tray on a gloved hand.
He paused and Lady Elizabeth lifted a glass of champagne from the salver. “Champagne?”
Helena shook her head. “No, thank you. I prefer lemon water.”
That was a blatant lie. Her tongue tingled and her pulse quickened at the thought of champagne on her tongue. And that was precisely why she did not drink it.
One glass would never suffice.
She had been down that dark alley before, and she would not start along it again. She could not allow a few harsh words from the Bloomington family to force her to lose control.
When the footman moved away to fetch lemon water, Beth sipped the champagne, her hazel eyes assessing Helena over the glass’s rim. “Do you know what my parents are telling Ernest at this moment?”
“I can imagine,” Helena answered with a sigh of tedium. Inside, she felt anything but calm or bored. She could imagine what the duke and duchess were now saying to their youngest son, and though she knew Blue loved
her, she also knew the rift between himself and his family bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
She had known how this night would end when she’d first opened the invitation. And she had known why Blue had accepted anyway.
He still had hope.
So he would listen to them call her whore and grasping female and every other rude term their polite language allowed them to use. Ernest would be forced to defend her and have his hopes dashed yet again.
And on Christmas Eve no less. They should have been happy, warm and cozy in their flat, not forced to listen to slurs and endure sniffs of displeasure.
“I don’t think you can imagine,” Beth said, her smile smug.
Helena stiffened. Something about that haughty smile made the skin on the back of her neck prickle. “What do you mean?”
Beth shrugged and turned to walk away, but Helena grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around.
“Take your hands off of me, woman!” Lady Elizabeth hissed.
“Then do not begin something you cannot finish. Tell me what the duke and duchess have planned.”
Beth shrugged as though it was no matter to her whether or not Helena knew. “They already have the papers drawn up. Ernest need only sign them.”
Helena felt as though she’d just downed several glasses of champagne. Her head spun wildly. “What papers?” she asked, feeling slow and stupid.
“The annulment papers.” Beth leaned close, her words like the whisper of a lover.
Helena reared back. “Annulment? Under what grounds?”
Beth waved a hand. “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. My father paid an unimaginable sum for those papers. They will not be disputed.”
Behind her eyes, Helena’s head throbbed. People passed her, and their faces looked too long or too wide. The entire vestibule suddenly seemed too tall, as though stretched by some unseen force.
“Blue would never sign an annulment,” she heard herself say.
“Won’t he?” Beth taunted.
Would he? Wouldn’t his life be much easier without her in it? He could return to the bosom of his family. And even more importantly to Blue, he could rejoin his beloved Barbican group. He’d been so happy when he’d briefly returned from retirement. She had not seen him smile as much in the months since they reconciled as he did that week.
Was his love for her enough to compensate for losing what had always been his first love—spying?
Helena whirled away. The urge to snatch a glass of champagne and down the contents in one long swallow almost overwhelmed her. She needed somewhere quiet to catch her breath. The library door was still slightly ajar, and she ran for it. She slid inside the room and pushed the door closed, bracing her back against it.
Blue made to follow Beth and Helena out of the library, but with his hand on the door handle, he paused. He was in no hurry to confront his mother and father. He could afford to make them wait.
And that meant he had just enough time to remove the missive from his pocket and toss it into the fire. Blue pulled the vellum from his coat, turned it over, noting the broken seal, and crossed to the fireplace.
He held the vellum between two fingers, dangling it over the flame.
Let it go.
All he had to do was open his fingers and release the paper. It would float into the fire and be gone in a second. He need never think of it again. He would be well and truly through with the Barbican group.
Blue wafted the vellum toward the fire.
“Bloody hell.”
He closed his fist around the missive and stepped back. He couldn’t do it. A thousand excuses flickered like the flames through his mind, but the truth was he wanted to know what was inside. Blue paced the room, raking a hand through his hair and finally planting his feet before the window.
Ice frosted the corners of the pane, but through the circle of glass he could see the darkness without. Flurries of snow swirled about, some tapping against the window as they fell.
It was snowing on Christmas Eve, a rare occurrence in London. Helena would be so pleased.
And he wanted to please her.
He really did. But it was against his very nature, everything in him, to burn the missive.
He opened the paper and studied the code. Not a substitution code—he could see that straightaway. A substitution code would have been too easy.
Blue narrowed his eyes at the strange symbols, familiar somehow. A language? Perhaps this was not in code at all but a dead language.
He spun around, his hand still clenching the missive. His father had an entire shelf of books about languages. What were the odds? And which shelf was it?
As a youth, he’d spent hours in his father’s library, perusing books. There were few fictional tales, and after he’d read those half a dozen times each, he began on the non-fiction. Eleanor was often his companion on those long, lazy days.
He glanced toward the fire, picturing her as a girl, sitting in a leather chair there. The chair had been replaced or reupholstered with one of burgundy velvet, but he could still imagine her there.
And he would sit...his gaze darted to the couch. That had not changed. Same chintz-patterned couch, same position. Right across from the shelf with the books on language. He could remember staring up at them from his prone position.
Now he grasped the ladder and climbed up, running a hand along the spines. Latin, Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian, Khitan—Sumerian.
That was it. The letters were written in a cuneiform style. It might not have been Sumerian, as there were other languages in cuneiform, but it was a start.
He reached for the book on Sumerian and slid down the ladder. At his father’s desk, he placed the missive beside the book, opening the cover and flipping quickly until he found what he wanted.
He compared the wedge-like shapes on the vellum to those in the book and pieced out several words.
Blue smiled again. No, he was never wrong—
“What are you doing?”
He turned to see Helena.
—until now.
Five
She knew exactly what he was about. She’d seen that look of concentration on his face before. Everything about him—his stance, his disordered hair, the way he mumbled to himself—spoke of spying.
She’d feared he would leave her because his parents made annulment easy, but the truth was he would leave her for the same reason he always had: his work.
“Helena—”
She shook her head and pressed back against the door, although she was already flattened against it.
“You promised.” Her voice sounded small and wispy. She’d been known to fill a theater with that same voice.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“It looks as though you are working for the Barbican group.”
He started toward her, but she held up her hands, warding him off. He continued to advance.
“Baron slipped the vellum in my pocket. I told him no.”
She had no idea who Baron might be, and she did not care. It was all lies and more lies. She had thought they were past this—the lies and the deceptions—but she had been terribly wrong. He would leave her again. He would sign those annulment papers and return to his first love.
He’d almost reached her outstretched hands. “I only pulled the vellum out to burn it.” He gestured toward the fireplace.
Her gaze flicked to the desk, where the paper and a book lay spread.
“I know, I know. I didn’t burn it. I couldn’t.”
“You will go back.” She said the words with a finality that scared her. But better she say it now than be taken off-guard in a week or two. Why had he even come for her in Naples, promised her she mattered more than his work, if he only intended to discard her again?
“No. This”—he gestured to the desk—“was only a momentary distraction. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Somehow those words made it even worse. Tears burned the back of her eyes until her nose water
ed from the sting.
He grasped her hands in his, brought them together as though in prayer between the two of them. “Baron asked me to take a look at the code, to try and decipher it. I told him no, but he slipped the paper in my coat.”
“He is at the ball?”
Guilt flickered across Blue’s face.
She inhaled sharply. “No, that’s not correct. This happened before.”
“At the theater.” He winced.
Heat flooded into her face, singeing her skin. She shoved his hands aside and pushed away from the door. “All night you’ve had this...this—” She gestured helplessly at the desk.
“Missive,” he supplied. She cut him a deadly gaze.
“—in your pocket and you said nothing?”
He didn’t answer, instead thrusting his hands in his pockets and appearing like a boy ready to take his punishment.
“And in the carriage, Lord and Lady Smythe knew about this missive, didn’t they? Lord Smythe wanted you to go back to spying?”
His silence told her everything.
“I knew it. If that is what you want”—she swept an arm at the vellum with the strange wedge-like writing on it—“then go. Go back to your precious Barbican group and leave me alone!”
His head snapped up, and he reached for her. She tried to jerk out of his grasp, but he caught her arm and pulled her to him.
“Never. I will never leave you alone. I love you. How can you still doubt your place in my affections?”
A tear slid down her cheek. “Because you give me reason.”
He closed his eyes tightly, the pain on his features etched in deep lines of frustration. “You agreed I should go back to capture Foncé. I did not leave you then. I dare say with all your rehearsals you barely noticed my absence.”
“And you swore that was the last time.” Another tear rolled down her cheek and onto her nose. Blue gave her a handkerchief with his free hand, and she dabbed her face. The cloth smelled like him—his soap infused with pine or evergreen, black tea, and the scent of home.
He’d always smelled of home to her.
“And I will keep my word. I refused Baron and Wolf. I’ll burn this vellum right now.”