by Gaelen Foley
“Yes, that’s what has been so impossible for me in all this! Don’t you see? The way you were shutting me out—I didn’t want my love to go unrequited! What else could I do but pull away while I still had the strength? I didn’t want to consign myself to a living hell of loving someone I could never reach. I wanted my love to be returned in equal measure.”
“It is. It is,” he whispered as he cupped her face between his hands and wiped her tears away with his thumbs. He leaned closer and pressed a fervent kiss to her brow.
“You say that now,” she cautioned when he pulled back, “but what about tomorrow? You can be so hard to read, and when you shut down like you did after your sister’s visit, how can I possibly know what you’re feeling? If I don’t know what you’re feeling, especially toward me, then how can I trust myself to you the way a commitment like marriage will require me to? A wife is expected to hand over control of her life to her husband, and how can I do that, let alone give you my heart, if I don’t even really know you?”
He gazed into her eyes, visibly hanging on every word.
“Max, if I give all of myself to you in marriage, then I want all of you in return. Maybe that’s more than most women dare to expect in this world, but I don’t want to risk a dark future of your domination, with me under your thumb, and you a distant stranger. Society is full of those kinds of marriages—”
“Good God, if that’s how you think your life would be married to me, no wonder you kept saying no! My darling angel, that is not an accurate picture,” he chided softly.
“No?”
“It need not be. Daphne. Please listen.” He brought her hand to his lips as he held her gaze, kissed her fingers, and continued. “I don’t want to control or dominate you in any way. Who cares if that’s the way the rest of Society lives? We don’t have to follow their rules. My life is proof of that, if nothing else. We can find a way that best suits us.”
“You mean…an unconventional sort of marriage?”
“A love match,” he whispered with a tender gaze. “We’ll make our own country and you will be the queen.”
“Oh, Max.” Gazing into his eyes, she adored the spirit in the man. It was just the sort of thing that he would say.
“I don’t want to dominate you, sweeting. I just want your love.” He shook his head. “God, I never wanted to admit that.”
“Why?”
“No one has ever loved me,” he said very quietly, hesitantly. “That’s part of why I am not, as you say, very open. I suppose I thought the less you knew of me, the better my chances of winning you.”
“Oh, Max!” she exclaimed in tender reproach. “My dear, you are so wrong.”
He pressed closer, torment in his eyes. “Tell me what you want me to do. I’d do anything to have you in my life. Can we start over? If you’d give me another chance, I would spend every day finding ways to make you happy.”
Overwhelmed, she captured his face between her hands and kissed him wholeheartedly. He responded with a soft moan, molding his hands against her waist.
At first he was tentative, letting her set the pace, but she was suddenly on fire for him. Clutching and caressing him, she drew him closer. He wrapped his arms around her, until their bodies were firmly pressed together.
She draped one arm around his neck and ran her fingers through his hair as she returned his kisses. They were slow and deep, a waking dream. The sumptuous slide of his mouth on hers stoked her need for more. She ran her hands down his muscled back. She wanted him so badly. A touch was all it took to coax him down on top of her, a rustle of hay as she lay back; and then he eased atop her, sliding his forearm under her head to cradle it.
Her blood throbbed as she gazed up into his eyes. Make love to me.
“You intoxicate me,” he breathed, forcing himself to pause.
“Oh, Max.” Though the thin layer of hay over the wood planks of the loft floor did not provide much of a bed, still, she gloried in the dense weight of him atop her. But then she saw the troubled look that had passed across his brow. “What is it, my love?”
“Perhaps you would be better off without me.” His voice sounded so perfectly lonely. “I’ve been so selfish, but maybe you’d—”
“Do not be absurd!” She laid her finger on his lips to silence him. “You said this would be my decision.”
He stared into her eyes, realizing she was talking about their future—and right now.
“I love you,” she whispered. “And I’m ready, Max.”
Sheer passion rushed into his face.
At once, his lips swooped down onto hers, and he kissed her with wild abandon. Longing to give herself to him right here and now, before she lost her nerve, Daphne returned his amorous frenzy ounce for ounce. She was so caught up in consuming his kisses and reveling in the warmth of his hand on her breast that when she heard the rumbling wheels of another stagecoach arriving in the inn yard, she paid it no mind.
Until about two minutes later.
For, as it turned out, it was not a stagecoach at all that had arrived. The scramble of liveried servants below and the great commotion that followed heralded the arrival of a very important personage, indeed.
At first, the voices from below could not penetrate their little secret world of carnal rapture in the hayloft, nor interrupt the fierce debate that she gathered her Demon Marquess was having with himself, over whether he ought to grant her wishes and deflower her now, or wait for a slightly more decorous situation for them to make love for the first time. She reached down and touched him boldly in a place that certified her preference on the matter.
But at that moment, the voice of the Dowager Dragon thundered through the air. “I am here for my niece, Miss Daphne Starling! Fetch the gel at once and tell her I am here.”
Daphne gasped, lying stock-still beneath Lord Rother-stone.
“Shite,” he breathed, as they both looked toward the little doorway at the end of the loft.
“What is the meaning of this? I dropped everything to come in answer to what I was told was an emergency. We were on the road all night. Now where is my niece?”
Wilhelmina’s voice followed. “Beggin’ your pardon, Duchess Anselm, Miss Daphne went into the stable a while ago.”
“Um, if you mean the young lady with the blond hair,” one of the grooms spoke up, “she’s in the hayloft. And, er, I don’t think she wishes to be disturbed, milady.”
“In the hayloft? I say. Daphne Starling! Are you up there? Show yourself at once!”
She and Max looked at each other, wide-eyed.
“Well, then,” he remarked. He got off her and she sat up, but from their flushed cheeks, rumpled clothes, and the bits of hay in their hair, it was fairly obvious what they had been doing.
Daphne let out a forceful exhalation, trying to catch her breath. She looked to Max for his usual cool leadership in a crisis. “What do we do?”
“It’s your choice,” he answered meaningfully.
She absorbed this for a long, thoughtful moment. Then she smiled at him with grateful understanding, and kissed him on the nose.
Bracing herself, she stood, and walked over to the rectangular opening, poking her head out into the sunshine.
“Hullo, Great-Aunt Anselm! Up here!”
The Dowager Dragon lifted her head, her gray hair wound in a tight bun. Her severe face registered astonishment. “Jove’s nightgown, Daphne Starling! Come down from there before you fall and break your head.”
It was a steep drop down.
“Will someone bring the ladder?” Daphne called.
Her formidable aunt stood beside her magnificent carriage with an array of liveried footmen to attend her.
Willie was shading her eyes, staring up at Daphne in perplexity.
Daphne glanced over her shoulder back into the loft and then held out her hand to Max.
“What are you doing up there, anyway?” her great-aunt demanded while all her servants suddenly appeared to be fighting laughter. “I say! Who is that man y
ou have with you?” the dowager cried as Max came over to stand beside her in the little doorway.
The two of them exchanged a glance. Daphne smiled at him, and then looked back down at her mighty kinswoman.
“Aunt Anselm,” she announced, “this is my fiancé!” She suddenly wanted to shout it from the rooftops, laughing, despite her great-aunt’s appalled look to find her in such a state.
Max had colored slightly, but it seemed they both wore a bit of a glow.
“Well, I should certainly hope so!” her great-aunt replied, drawing herself up with a grand look that affirmed Her Grace would not countenance any other outcome now.
It was settled, then. The two of them were headed for the altar.
“Well, come down from there and do the introductions!” the old duchess commanded already betraying a show of warmth beneath her stern manner.
“Yes, ma’am!” Daphne took Max’s hand as they both left the window. As soon as they ducked out of sight, she kissed him again. He wrapped his arms around her.
“Thank you,” he whispered in her ear. “I won’t ever make you regret this.”
“I know.” She closed her eyes in a state of amazed elation. This all might be madness, but she refused to let him escape her embrace. “From now on, I will place my trust in you.”
“And I you, my darling.” There was a bang behind them as one of the grooms propped the ladder back up where it belonged. “Your aunt,” Max murmured. “She seems like a force to be reckoned with.”
“Oh, she is,” Daphne answered with a grin. “But don’t worry, no female stands a chance against your charm, as you well know.”
“We’d better go. Uh, Daphne—” He started laughing, for with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, she could not stop hugging him.
Now that he had caught her, she never wanted to let him go.
Chapter 14
London seemed familiar.
Drake knew the names of streets and landmarks and could not remember how he knew them. Though his memory was still badly damaged, he was getting stronger.
They had arrived a few days ago after their hard journey from Bavaria, settling into the sumptuous Pulteney Hotel where James kept apartments.
On their first morning there over breakfast, James had handed Drake a copy of the Post and asked him to read the newspaper through each day, pointing out any names that seemed familiar. Drake had agreed to this willingly.
He only wished he knew his own.
When a few days passed without any real progress, James approached him in the evening with a broad smile. “My boy. I have a special present for you tonight. Come along.”
“Where are you taking me?” he asked quickly, his haunted eyes burning with alarm. He was still scarred by fear after his ordeal at the torturers’ hands.
“Don’t worry, Drake. You’ve been locked up for a long time. We think you could do with some…pleasant company,” James said in a delicate tone as he herded him out into the city’s lamp-lit darkness.
“What do you mean?”
Talon flashed a wolfish smile. “We’re going to get you a girl.”
“What for?” Drake uttered.
Talon laughed. “You’ve even forgotten what to do with a woman? Eh, don’t worry, it’ll all come back to you.” With that, he pushed him into James’s carriage.
A moment later, they were under way. Drake cast James a worried glance, but his aged protector merely gave him an encouraging nod.
Before long, they arrived at the Royal Opera House at the Haymarket. The driver brought James’s coach to a halt outside the grand theater, where elegantly dressed aficionados of the art were promenading in with small groups of friends or in pairs.
“Wait here,” James commanded as he got out of the carriage. “I will find our friend a suitable companion for the evening. Talon, mind you, keep the curtain drawn.”
James did not want passersby getting a look at Drake. Agents of the Order could be anywhere.
That was also why he had been careful to keep their captive confined either to the carriage or to his rooms in the Pulteney Hotel since their arrival.
He did not want the Council’s enemies getting to Drake before James even knew for certain who he was.
Though James had grown somewhat fond of his docile prisoner, he was running out of patience with Drake’s inability to remember his full name. Talon, of course, had never entirely swallowed Drake’s claim of memory loss. But fortunately, James had devised another means of trying to uncover their captured agent’s real identity.
What he needed, James mused as he scanned the people gathering outside the theater, was someone with a vested interest in knowing who all the powerful men in London were. A disinterested third party, with a talent for discretion.
Namely, one of London’s leading courtesans.
His stare homed in on a voluptuous demimondaine in an elaborate teased blond wig and a scarlet dress with a plunging décolleté that nearly gave the world a fine preview of her nipples. Diamonds dripping from her neck, she wore a mink stole thrown across her shoulders, and was smoking a thin cigarillo as she played with the affections of three young lordlings down from Oxford, probably for the Michaelmas break.
James strolled over to the courtesan and interrupted her sport. Like all of her breed, she knew the smell of real power and abandoned the boys to take his offered arm, never mind that he was old and frail.
“What can I do for you tonight, sir?” she asked, tapping his cheek with her folded silken fan in brazen coquetry.
“Are those real diamonds?” he asked in amusement.
She flicked the ashes off her cheroot and said, “I earned ’em.”
He let out an urbane chuckle, but removed the thing from her fingers and cast it onto the pavement, waving away the smoke. “I wonder if I could prevail on you to spend a couple of hours with my young friend. He’s in the carriage. May I introduce you?”
She paused, eyeing him and then his waiting carriage warily. Lord, these ladies of the demimonde had the instincts of an alley cat, he thought.
“No one is going to hurt you,” James murmured. “My friend, you see, he was badly injured in the war. He has not been with a woman in a long time.”
“Ah.” A wistful frown of what James quite believed was genuine sympathy came over her painted face. A good-hearted whore, it would seem. “Did he lose a limb, poor boy? Wife can’t take it? Cruel.”
“No, no. It was a head wound, I’m afraid. He’s been—confused ever since. I think the pleasure of your company would do him a world of good.”
“Of course it would!”
“May I introduce you?”
“Well, there is the small matter of my fee.”
He slipped a small purse of gold into her hand discreetly. “Be kind to him. He’s been through a lot.”
“I understand completely, grandfather. Lead on.”
“You are cheeky, aren’t you?”
“It’s in my blood,” she said.
James opened the carriage door for her, but she peered cautiously into the dark carriage to make sure the situation was all right before stepping up into it.
“Hullo, love. May I join ye? I hear somebody needs some cheerin’ up in here—oh, my God!” she suddenly shouted, staring at Drake. “Westie!”
Drake gave her a blank stare.
“Westie, is it really you! God’s bones, I cannot believe it!” With a joyous squeal, she flung her arms around him, barely noticing his tense recoil. “Oh, darlin,’ what did that horrid Boney do to you? I didn’t even know you was in the army! But now you’re back! Oh, Westie, love, thank God you are alive.”
“Westie?” Talon drawled.
The courtesan shot him a pointed look over her shoulder. “For the Earl of Westwood, of course.”
“Ah,” James said, slowly smiling. He had been holding his breath, but now it seemed they had their answer.
Drake began shaking his head. “That can’t be right. I have never heard that
name before. I have no idea who this woman is.”
“Westie, love, it’s me, your own Ginger-cat!” She looked at James in bewilderment. “He doesn’t know who he is?”
“Afraid not,” James replied.
“I am sorry, madam,” Drake forced out, his head down, his body bristling.
“Oh, poor dear, it’s all right. You must’ve been through a terrible ordeal. But believe me, we spent many a merry night in our revelries.” She planted a kiss on his cheek that left a rouge imprint of her lips there.
Drake wiped it off with an agitated look. “Please take her away. I don’t want her, James.”
“I’ll take her,” Talon muttered, smiling.
The woman glanced over her shoulder at him with a frown.
“You know, my dear,” James said, “it might help to speed his recovery if you could provide us with any further information that you might have about him. Who his friends might be, for instance. If you could give us their names, we could deliver Lord Westwood to them so they could care for him.”
“I thought you were his friends,” she countered with another flash of cagey distrust in her eyes.
“Well, we are, of course, but there must be others. Mates of his?”
She shook her head, as though beginning to sense that something wasn’t quite right. “If you don’t want to look after him, let him come with me. He needs a woman’s care.”
“I don’t think he’s ready for that.”
“Well, I’m just a whore, old man,” she concluded, giving James a cheeky shrug. “What do you want to know, what positions he likes? He used to come to the brothel and join in the drinking and songs, among other things. That’s the wild Westie I used to know. Not this invalid,” she added with an indifferent glance, as though deliberately trying to distance herself.
Perhaps she sensed the danger she was in.
James stared at her. “Very well. In that case, you may go,” he finally dismissed her, though he suspected she was bluffing.
Good riddance, said her eyes. She handed him back the little purse of gold he had given her.
“Keep it,” James invited her.
“I don’t want it. Even a whore’s got her pride, milord.” She hopped out of the carriage and slammed the door behind her.