by Gaelen Foley
“Lady Glenwood has had too much to drink. Escort her back to her room and lock her in,” he ordered them curtly.
“You bastard! Fiend! Let go of me, you swine!” she raged at the guards. “Don’t you dare smirk at me, you little witch!” she screamed at Alice, fighting her guards as they tried to bring her under control. “Do you think you’re so pure? He made me do it—and he can make you do it, too! Then you’ll see you’re no better than me! Show her, Lucien! Do what you do best! At least you can do one thing as well as Damien!”
Lucien slammed the door in her face so hard that it shuddered on its hinges.
Alice pressed her hand to her forehead, shaken. The room was too hot, and it was altogether possible that she might cry.
Lucien, too, was silent. His back was to her, but she could feel the fury that thrummed through every taut line of his powerful body. “She’s drunk. Don’t listen to her. She spoke only from shame.” When Alice said nothing, he turned around and slid her a guarded look. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t even know why I came,” she whispered, her chin trembling with the threat of tears. She fought them for all she was worth.
“Why did you come?” he asked in a low voice.
She did not want to tell him, but the words rushed out as shocked, angry tears flooded her eyes. “Because I promised my brother on his deathbed that I would look out for Harry and for her—and this is my thanks! She is ruining my life! I love my nephew, but—” Abruptly cutting off her impassioned words, she spun around, turning her back to him as the tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped them away with shaking hands, then pivoted back to him, for this was all his fault. “What did you do to her?” she demanded in shaken ire. “She said you did something to her. What did you do?”
He lifted his chin, giving her a hard look. “She did it to herself.”
“Why did you have to go and ruin everything between her and your brother? Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You saw how she behaved. I did it to protect him.”
“Lord Damien is a grown man!”
“He’s no good with women.”
“And you are?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then where’s your wife, Lucien? Where’s the person who loves you?” she flung out.
His face fell, and for a moment, she glimpsed him exactly as he was behind his many masks—lost, scarred. Desperate for someone to reach him. He held her in a stark stare, then dropped his gaze. “Why, I don’t have one, Alice,” he said with only a remnant of his former sarcasm.
“My point exactly.” Exasperated by the twinge of guilt she felt to see how her sharp words had struck their mark, she quickly wiped her tears away and attempted to soften her tone. Lost soul that he was, perhaps he simply did not know any better. “Love changes people, Lucien. That’s what it does. If you had let them be, perhaps Lord Damien could have helped Caro change for the better. And then maybe Harry would have had a bit more security in life, a father to teach him how to become a man in time.”
His sharp, angular face suddenly flushed with angry guilt. “That’s not my problem! For one thing, Lord Damien’s head is in shambles and for another—God!” He laughed scathingly at her. “Do you really presume to lecture me on love? What do you know of the matter? I’d wager my house that you’ve never even been properly kissed! Damn it!” Without warning, he closed the distance between them in two strides, yanked her roughly into his arms, and claimed her mouth before she even had time to gasp.
The first, harsh, scorching contact of his lips obliterated her girlish visions of idyllic kisses from gentle swains. His left hand tangled roughly in her hair while the right crushed her to him. He kissed her like he would consume her, his hot, hungry tongue thrusting her lips apart. It was an act of possession, suffocating her with his fiery demand. She pushed weakly against his chest; he nudged her feet wider apart and moved his knee slightly between her legs, while his hands moved up and down her back. Stiff and bewildered, she clung to him merely to keep from swooning, engulfed in the radiating warmth of his lean, muscled body. She tried to turn away, to refuse the dangerous pleasure he wanted to make her taste, but as he ran his hands up and down her back, her response was difficult to hide, impossible to fight.
Trembling and uncertain, she ceased struggling by degrees and opened her mouth wider, slowly, hesitantly met his tongue with her own. Lucien groaned low in his throat, his forceful embrace softening at once. His kiss deepened and slowed, and she melted into his arms. He went still after a long moment and ended the kiss, but his fine mouth still lingered near hers. He rested his forehead against hers, his chest heaving against her breasts. She could feel the soft warmth of his heavy breathing against her moist lips, while his palms grazed along the length of her arms. “What about you, Alice?” he whispered raggedly. “Who loves you?”
She lifted her lashes, meeting his tempestuous stare uncertainly. “A—a lot of people.”
“Who?” he demanded roughly.
“It’s none of your business—”
“I gave you my answer; now give me yours.”
There’s my nephew—Harry,” she stammered.
“He’s a child.”
“He’s someone!”
“Let me come to you tonight.”
“Are you mad? Let go of me!” She wrenched out of his arms and backed away, wiping his kiss off her mouth with the back of her hand.
When he saw her wipe his kiss away, hellfire leaped into his eyes. He looked so outraged that for a moment she did not know what he would do to her. For a moment, he bristled like an angry wolf, frightening her with the intensity in his angular face and the sheer need burning in the depths of his luminous eyes; then he stalked past her to the door and snapped his fingers rudely at the guard posted outside.
“See Miss Montague safely to her chamber.”
“Yes, my lord,” the guard said with a short bow. “Miss, if you will follow me.”
Alice looked uneasily at Lucien. He was watching her with a glitter of hostile lust in his eyes that did not worry her half so much as the sly, rather bitter half-smile that crept across his lips.
“Good-bye, my lord,” she forced out in bravado. With any luck, she would flee this place tomorrow morning without having to face him again.
He slid his hands in his pockets and leaned his shoulder against the door frame, watching her every move. “Goodnight, chérie.”
She turned away, feeling his burning gaze on her body as she followed the guard across the anteroom. When the black-coated man started down the narrow spiral stairs, she glanced back over her shoulder one last time at Lucien. He was still standing there, his tall, powerful figure cloaked in shadows, a gleam of calculation in his light-tricked eyes.
Rollo Greene of Philadelphia, known in the Grotto as Orpheus, blotted the sweat from his bald pate, his chest heaving with too much wine and excitement. He’d be lucky if his heart didn’t fail on him in the roasting, humid heat of the Grotto, he thought. He tore his stare away from the nude dancing girl nearby as Lucien Knight came back out from his secret headquarters inside the carved dragon. He had seen Lucien carry off the lovely young blue-eyed nymph a short while ago, just as Orpheus had warned her he would.
That was quick, he thought with a smirk, watching their host return to mingle among his guests, moving easily through the crowd. Rollo did not fret over his own failed attempt to coax a kiss from the girl. He could hardly compete with a man of Lucien Knight’s looks and charm when it came to women, but he liked to think that at least he was his equal in craft and cunning.
They had a wary professional understanding between them, Lucien Knight and he, though they were on opposite sides of the war. Rollo was one of the few people who knew that the indulged, worldly diplomat, Lord Lucien Knight, was also the ruthless British agent whose code name, Argus, made foreign government ministers tremble and even caused Fouché, Napoleon’s spymaster, to blanch.
Rollo and Lucien could not be called ene
mies, for they had swapped information several times in the past, but they were far from being friends. Rollo knew that Lucien held him in distaste for his mercenary ways and his lack of lordly polish, while for his part, Rollo resented the Englishman’s physical and intellectual superiority, not to mention his arrogance. Tonight, however, Rollo savored the fact that he knew something that the omniscient Lord Lucifer did not.
Something big.
And he, Rollo Greene, was right in the middle of it all, making everything ready. Perhaps he wasn’t tough and mean enough to outplay the likes of Lucien Knight, but he was preparing the way for someone who was every inch Lucien’s equal, and possibly even a bit more terrifying.
The thought of the man who was coming fell like a cold shadow over Rollo’s heart, forcing him to tear his leer away from the sweat-covered dancing girl. There was work to be done. Scanning the crowd, his gaze homed in on the highborn young rogue he had come to hire.
The Honorable Ethan Stafford was a younger son of an earl and ideal for their purposes. With a boyishly handsome face and guinea-gold curls, he was a well-bred, fashionable young rake who knew everyone in the ton. The ton, however, did not know Ethan Stafford’s secret—that he had ruined himself gambling.
Cut off by his wealthy father, Stafford had avoided debtor’s prison and public knowledge of his bankruptcy only by carrying out dubious deeds for shadowy underworld figures like the cutthroat moneylender who had told Rollo about the lad.
Fortunately, young Mr. Stafford was not overly drunk when Rollo shuffled over and nudged into the crowd beside him. Stafford stood with half a dozen other young bucks, watching in absorption as the masked lady with the whip disciplined her next willing slave.
“Pardon me, sir!” Rollo got Stafford’s attention, then lowered his voice. “I hear you might be interested in a bit of work.”
The young man’s sideward glance sharpened. Rollo nodded encouragingly. Warily, Stafford joined him. They walked away from the others.
“I’m told you are reliable. You made a few deliveries for a friend of mine.”
“Right,” Stafford said cautiously.
Poor little rich boy, Rollo thought. Can’t live without the niceties.
“What do you need done?” Stafford demanded in a low tone, lifting his square chin haughtily.
“A good friend of mine will be visiting from Prussia in a week or so. He will need some introductions into Society. Someone to show him around Town.”
“That’s all?” Stafford asked dubiously.
Rollo boomed a cheerful laugh. “Yes, m’ boy, that’s all!”
“How much will you pay?”
“Three hundred pounds. No questions asked. Not a ha’penny more.”
“Three hundred pounds?” Stafford echoed. “What’s the catch?”
“There is no catch,” he said cheerfully. “My friend is very rich and very determined to make a good impression on London Society. I’ll be in contact with you when the time comes and remember . . . shhh.” Rollo laid his finger over his lips like the carving of Priapus on the outer door, binding the young man to secrecy.
Stafford nodded and returned to his friends. As Rollo turned away, he saw Lucien talking with a cluster of people a few feet ahead. He tried to sneak away, but Lucien saw him, passing an amused glance over him.
“You are looking industrious this evening,” he drawled in his low, lilting voice. “Keeping your ear to the ground?”
“I only come for the women, old boy,” he said with a harmless chuckle. “Your parties are the only place I can get laid for free.”
Lucien laughed and moved on. “Happy hunting, Orpheus.”
“Same to you.” Rollo watched him saunter on, greeting more of his adoring guests.
He let out a long exhalation, feeling like a picnicker who had just been sniffed over by a wolf and miraculously left unscathed. His business done, Rollo downed his glass of wine and looked around for any female drunk enough to have him.
It was nearly dawn when Lucien’s men cleared the Grotto of the last stragglers. The black-coated guards picked up the drunken fools who had passed out here and there and carried them back to their quarters, while Lucien met in his observation room with his staff of shrewd young rogues and savvy whores. They drank coffee and lounged about on the couch and chairs as they discussed the night’s gleanings and bandied about the information that they had collected.
Lucien leaned by the red-glassed window, his arms folded over his chest, and listened to each one’s report in turn, but it was difficult to concentrate when his thoughts kept wandering back to Alice Montague in mingled desire and irritation.
How dare she wipe away his kiss? Who did she think she was? And why, for God’s sake, couldn’t he get her out of his mind? It was absurd. He, Lucien Knight, was madly attracted to a doe-eyed little virgin. The girl was a prig. No wonder she drove Caro mad with her prudery. Her patronizing words still chafed him. That’s what love is, Lucien. That’s what it does. Love, he thought with a snort of disdain, and yet, an illogical part of him was wary, even a bit afraid of Alice Montague. Her clear gaze and transparent emotions unsettled his cynical nature. She was real in a way he had not been for years.
She was dangerous, that’s what she was, he thought. A threat to his hard-won understanding of the world, in all its ruthlessness. Life had stripped him of his ideals and illusions—and yet, he would have paid any price to find someone who could make him believe again.
But was she really so virtuous? he scoffed inwardly. Was anyone? The girl had stung him, and he had half a mind to repay her for the insult by showing her that, deep down, she was not the paragon she seemed to fancy herself. He did not want to hurt her, but he was not above giving her a good scare to prove his point—that Miss Goody Two-Shoes was just as fallible as everyone else. Her air of purity snagged at his conscience, but it was so much easier to knock her down a peg than to try, futilely, to lift himself up to her lofty realm.
A disturbing thought flitted through his mind. What if you test her and she doesn’t fail? What if she proves you wrong?
A burst of laughter in the room drew him from his brooding; then Marc handed him the list of the various agents who had come tonight. England’s allied nations were well represented—Russia, Austria, Prussia, Portugal, and others. Lucien studied it absently, chasing Alice Montague out of his mind for the moment by a heave of effort.
In simplest terms, the so-called Order of the Dragon was a counterespionage tool that had evolved since the days of Queen Elizabeth and her sinister mastermind, Walsingham, who had been the very father of espionage in England and a personal friend of the original marquess of Carnarthen. The robes and all the mystical mumbo jumbo existed as part of the age-old correlation between espionage and the occult. The occult nonsense drew the rebels, adventurers, and malcontents of a society; these people, in turn, drew the spies. Smart agents knew to look for sympathetic allies among the outcasts and the dissatisfied, unsuspecting souls who could be used in their schemes—dupes who would lend them money or who could introduce them into the circles they wished to infiltrate.
Lucien’s protégés, affectionately known as North, South, East, West, and, of course, Talbert, playacted this very role. They were in their mid-twenties, all of them fairly well-born. The young men were planted in the crowd not only to keep watch over their respective quadrants of the Grotto, but also to play the part of the type of restless, hotheaded rogues that a wise agent looked for when arranging some plot.
The lads were imminently useful to Lucien, and since there was no formal training for the Crown’s agents, he had made it his postwar project to teach them what he knew, just as his father, the marquess, had taught him. They were young and still idealistic enough not to care when he warned them that it was an utterly thankless job. They were in it for the adventure and the thrill of living constantly on the edge. As their meeting wound down with little of value gained, the girls and boys began eyeing each other with recreation in mind now th
at their work was done.
“One more thing,” Marc Skipton, who worked the west quadrant, said.
Lucien stifled a yawn. “Yes?”
“I overheard one of the czar’s agents—what’s his name?”
“Leonidovich?”
“Yes, him. I heard him telling one of the Austrians that Claude Bardou is alive and working for the Americans.”
Lucien stared at him, feeling his blood run cold. His face went ashen, and it was altogether possible that his heart stopped beating for a moment. “Alive?” he forced out in an agonized effort to sound casual. “How can this be?”
“Leonidovich said he did not know if there was any substance to the rumor,” Marc replied with an idle shrug, “but the word is that Bardou set the fire in Paris himself. Staged his own death, then escaped to America.”
Oh, God. The news hit Lucien like a physical blow. At once, Patrick Kelley’s weathered, Irish face rushed up before his mind’s eye, haunting him like a ghost. He quickly dropped his gaze, rested his hands on his hips, and turned away to hide his stunned, horror-stricken reaction.
Damn it, he had heard that Bardou was dead—had not survived Napoleon’s fall from power. When he had learned about that fire in Paris, Lucien had toasted the monster’s demise with the finest port he owned. His only regret had been that he, himself, had not been the one to slay Bardou.
Behind him, Stewart Kyle of the eastern quadrant gave a low whistle. “Bardou is a legend. If he’s turned mercenary and is hiring out his services to the Americans . . .” The lad shuddered.
“Remember the story about that merchant family he butchered in Westphalia for a suspected conspiracy against King Jerome?” Marc added grimly. “He’s the bleedin’ spawn of the devil.”
“Enough,” Talbert ordered them crisply. “There are ladies present.”
Marc and Kyle quickly muttered apologizes to the uneasy girls, but Lucien paid them no mind. A knot had formed in the pit of his stomach, and a cold sweat had broken out over his body. He wiped his sweating palms on his thighs, pacing restlessly as he tried to think.