She had accepted before she pursued his brother that she might have to give herself most literally to the effort to save her mother. She had told herself that it probably would be no worse than the last time with Steven, when she had known what he was but had not yet left him. It had been enlightening, that last night. There could be pleasure even without love, it turned out.
No matter how it would be, however, she would prefer not to do that. She had even come here last night to see if she could gain access another way. Like Sir Malcolm’s house, however, this one’s garden doors were barred and the lower windows locked. Short of breaking panes and mullions, she had no way in.
Now she hoped this duke would doze off before the act, and she would not need to agree to the act itself in order to get him to fall asleep.
Either way, she wanted him sleeping soundly by midnight.
He poured additional champagne into his glass. He drank more. Then he settled back into the divan.
“There are refreshments over there, if you would like some.” He gestured to a table near the windows.
She rose and ventured over, mostly to use up time while he drank. Berries, tarts, and cream in silver bowls waited. “Strawberries. They look delicious.”
“They are delectable with the cream.”
She picked one up by its stem, dipped it in the thick cream, and bit. Juice ran down her chin. Her host had thoughtfully included napkins, and she hurriedly made use of one. She resisted the temptation to eat more when she noticed he watched her every move.
She retook her seat quickly. “Thank you. That was as good as it looked. So few things are.”
“More criticism of sumptuous meals? You are an exacting woman. You should have more. I will gladly help so you do not soil your shirt.”
“That would suit your intentions neatly—feeding me berries laden with cream. Would you lick off the dribbles, or use the napkin?”
“You have an inventive mind. The licking part, which I had not considered, enthralls me now that I consider the possibilities.”
“Shall we speak of something other than food so you can recover?”
“If you insist. You can explain a simple thing to me.”
“Simple questions suit me since I am a simple woman.”
“Hardly. However—what are you afraid of? Whom? You can tell me that without revealing your name.” He gazed at her quite seriously.
The question startled her. She did not think anything about her revealed her fears. She barely admitted them to herself. “What makes you say I’m afraid? That is more humorous than perceptive.”
“Your fear of discovery with me makes it explicit. Also, it is in you. In your eyes. I think I am the least of it. If I did not assault you in the garden, you know I will not do so now.”
She knew nothing of the sort. She remained cautious of this man, duke though he may be. And she was afraid because even without any assault she could find herself as vulnerable as a woman can be.
As for the other fears . . . he was too curious. That was the problem with being a mystery. People wanted to solve it. She decided to be somewhat forthcoming so he would have a story that would make him less interested.
“There are expectations of me. Demands. They do not include parties and assignations with dukes or anyone else.”
“Your family’s expectations?”
“My parents abandoned me at a young age. My father left, then my mother put me in a school. I have found a place now. If it were discovered I was here, I would be turned out.”
He thought about that, while he drank yet more. “You are a dependent, then. I hope that in this place you have found you are not ill treated, even if your behavior is watched.”
“Not ill-treated as such, no.”
“And yet it is a lonely place, I expect.”
His words shot through her, naming as they did an essential part of her life that she tried to ignore. She pretended he had not met his mark so squarely. “Why would you expect that? It is not as if a duke would have any experience in such things.”
“There are all kinds of abandonment. Oh, I do not claim what I knew matched your tale. I lived in luxury and my parents were present. However, they were utterly indifferent. I was the heir. I filled a purpose and duty, little more.” He drank a good swallow of his champagne. “It was worse for my brother. I tried to help him with that. Tried to give him a brother at least.”
He was quite drunk. He had to be if he was telling her this.
“One day I returned unexpectedly from university,” he said. “I walked in on his lessons. His tutor—” His jaw hardened. “I am sure you know that there are people who will take advantage of any power if they can, even that over a child. Harry was eight, and this tutor was caning him. I don’t even remember why.”
“What did you do?”
“I thrashed the man, then told my father to get rid of him. I sat there when the new men were reviewed for the position, and helped choose the next one. Then I got that fellow alone and told him that if he ever touched my brother, if he ever ill treated him because he saw my parents never noticed, I would kill him.” He emptied the last of his wine. “He turned out to be a superior tutor.”
“You saved your brother from years of misery. Now you save him from women who pursue him at balls.”
He laughed at that, but it brought his attention on her again. “Did you never think to marry, to escape your current place?”
“Ah, yes, the solution for every woman, and a sure road to support. You describe indentured servitude, only there is no end to it.”
“I am the last person to disagree with a cynical view of marriage, so I will give you the point.”
“I was not speaking of all marriages, only the one you described for a woman in need.”
“Then you did consider it.”
How had this conversation arrived at that question?
He raised his eyebrows in curiosity.
She could tell him about this. She would never see him again, after all. “There was a man, soon after I left the school. I was young and trusting.” She took a sip of the champagne in order to obliterate the sudden bitter taste in her mouth. “It is an old story and a common one.”
“Another abandonment?”
There had been sympathy in his tone and she now saw it in his eyes. In their connected gaze passed a frank acknowledgment that he knew too well what had happened, and his judgment fell on the man, not her.
A bit more passed too. She knew he would have never lured her here if she had been innocent, and that he had determined in the garden she was not. He might condemn Steven for that seduction, but it left her vulnerable to other men, like this duke.
She could not deny his appeal. Talking like this near the low fire created the illusion of domesticity and friendship, no matter what else stirred the air. She had never thought he meant it when he claimed to want only conversation. He wanted much more, but he seemed to require the conversation first.
She wished little bonds did not form with each revelation. Tethers wove between them invisibly. She wanted him to remain a stranger. She needed him to fall asleep and forget about her once he woke.
He stifled a yawn. That gave her heart.
“So you are not a wife,” he said. “I had wondered, you see.”
“No, not a wife. Nor am I a dependent. That was your word, not mine.”
“What are you instead?”
She laughed because the truth marched to her tongue, caught just in time. A spinster, a secretary, a thief. “You make it sound as if there is only one answer. For you, there most likely is. I am Langford, you can say. Of all your privileges that is the greatest—knowing what you are from the day you are born to the day you die.”
“Everyone knows what he is. It is not a privilege of the peerage.”
“Women do not know from one year to the next. A girl marries and becomes a wife and mother. Her husband dies and she becomes a widow. Imagine staring into the looking glass one
day and seeing someone who is not what she was the day before, and all the expectations have changed too.”
“When you look today, what do you see?”
“Can’t you guess? A man who claims such abilities with women should be able to tell.”
He pondered that with an elaborate frown. “Widow? I think not.”
She shook her head.
“Betrothed?”
“No.”
“Thank goodness. It is the one something that might get me called out. That or daughter. Men are full of new possessiveness with the first and full of duty about the second. If a fiancé or father knew you met me, it might get dangerous for someone.”
“Just on hearing I met you? You must have a terrible reputation.”
“I will admit to it being a tad notorious.”
“I suppose that is inevitable for a man who has devoted his life to bestowing his great gifts on womankind. It is a wonder you are still alive.”
“Someday, if we enjoy each other’s company, I may explain how I survived.”
“I will only learn your secret if I agree to allow you to lure me to my fall first? That is unfair.”
“I have done very little luring, shepherdess. You did not have to come here tonight. So there is no father who might do something stupid?”
“Daughter is not in the looking glass now. Obviously it was in the past.”
“Mistress?”
“That is a good guess. I might be the mistress of a man who has a taste for lovers in pantaloons.”
“Hence your seeking out another man. I am running out of ideas. Revolutionary? Radical? Reformer?”
“None of the Rs.”
“I am grateful it was not the last. I have had enough of that for the time being.”
“Someone is trying to reform you? How interesting. It sounds as if you are more than just a tad notorious, if that campaign is afoot.”
“Not interesting at all. An annoying nuisance.”
“Is that why I am here? So you can prove you are not reformed?”
He looked astonished, but recovered quickly. “You are here to drink champagne, to be kissed with great nuance, and to try to resist my grand seduction to no avail.”
“Ah, yes, that one kiss,” she said. “Do you want it now?”
His lazy smile could have charmed a bear. “If that suits you.”
“I think it best. Then you might believe me when I say there will be no more.”
She waited for him to come over to her chair. Instead he just watched her with devilish sparks in his eyes.
“It was your idea,” he said.
Memories from the garden drifted into her mind. Exciting ones. She forced them away. This was not the night for a real seduction if it could be avoided. She stood and marched over to him, leaned down, and pressed her lips to his.
A hand on her face. He held her so the kiss continued. He pulled her down more, and pressed her nape so the kiss could go on and on.
The sweet pleasure almost defeated her. Her resolve and tonight’s risks proved small defenses to how seductive he could be. For all of the physical stimulation she experienced, what truly tempted her was the offer to escape everything she knew, and live within the sensations that he could create in her.
He pressed her nape enough to cause alarm. She glanced down. Soon, his other hand would brush against her shirt.
She pulled away from him. She looked down at eyes almost black, their color had deepened so much. The way he gazed at her weakened her even more than the long kiss had.
He knew. He could read her mind. He leaned toward her, reaching. Offering. She looked at that outstretched hand, so masculine and handsome in its own right.
She walked back to her chair.
He took it surprisingly well. Perhaps gentlemen believed they had to be gracious about such things. Then again, the way he kept yawning may have told him it would hardly be his best effort.
“What do you do when you are not fulfilling the demands of your place, or sneaking off to balls and meetings with me?”
More conversation. More curiosity. But he was fading. The hour and the champagne were working on him. “I read.”
“Harry would have liked you more than he knew.” A deep yawn swallowed his last words.
“I also sing.”
“Do you now? Do you perform?”
“If I cannot go to parties, I can hardly do something so bold as perform.”
“Then to whom do you sing?”
“Myself.”
“That is sad, if you only sing for yourself. Why don’t you sing for me? I will be a most respectful and appreciative audience.”
“I suppose I could do that, if you like. I am not accustomed to an audience, however. It might be best if you do not look at me. That might put me off.”
“I will look at the fire instead.”
He fixed his gaze there. She began an old Scottish folk song heavy with the tones of that country. The duke did not look at her, but she looked at him. She sang and watched his lids falter by the third verse.
At the end of the song, he was sound asleep.
Chapter Five
She stood in front of the window, staring while her shawl and slippers fell into the abyss in front of her. A breeze caught the shawl and it floated like a specter in the moonlight, but the shoes disappeared behind the wall. Dressed now in only pantaloons and shirt, she gathered her courage.
Not so high, she told herself. Not so far.
Her mental reassurances helped to calm her, but only an idiot would ignore the danger.
Once you learn it, you never forget. That was what her father had said when he’d begun training her. She had been eight at the time.
Spring off hard from the back foot, Mandy, and look at your target, never the ground. Know where you will grab when you land.
She had thought it a game. Who would think that Charles Waverly hoped to use his own child in his crimes?
He had been a handsome, affable man. Well spoken and fluent in many regional accents, he fit in wherever he went, whether a party in Mayfair or a rustic tavern. His charm and his confidence had been his most valuable attributes for his chosen career.
Both might have come to him by birth. Her parents, she’d learned, came from good families that owned property. Perhaps if they had not met each other they would have married others and lived normal lives. Instead, together they became thieves.
It was a lark at first. One daring attempt as a game. Eventually it became a way of life. No pickpocketing for them, although both learned how. They specialized in carefully organized thefts of valuables from the best houses, and on occasion elaborate frauds in which their victims did not even realize they had been hoodwinked.
She remembered seeing her parents when she was six years old, dressed to pass for high society, leaving whatever home they’d used at the time. She’d had no idea then that they would insinuate themselves uninvited into a large party or ball. When the hosts were occupied, one of them would slip upstairs to take a few valuables.
For years, no one suspected. No one tried to stop them. They don’t even know it’s gone most times, her mother had explained when she was older. It may be months before that lady looks for that necklace or the gent for that silver and gold snuffbox. It really isn’t stealing when they have so much they don’t remember what they have and what they don’t.
Then, when she was twelve, her mother had rushed home to her one night, frantic with worry. Someone had seen her father at his trade. He had only escaped by taking one of these leaps out of a window.
They waited all night for his return. Had he found a ledge or deep sill where he’d landed? Or had he plunged to the ground and still lay there, broken and in pain?
He’d finally arrived home at dawn. He’d still had the bracelet he had stolen. We will need to take it apart. They will know it is gone now. Also, it would be best if I made myself scarce for a while. You take the girl. I’ll find you in a year or so.
&
nbsp; He’d left them the next night, with half the bracelet’s jewels in his pocket. They’d never seen him again.
Her mother had continued the only trade she knew. She did not need a man at her side to slip into those houses during parties. She could slide up the stairs as easily as Charlie.
Two years later, however, she put Amanda in Mrs. Hattlesfield’s School in Surrey. You will have a chance to live differently if you are educated, she had said. You might even marry a decent man if you can present yourself well.
Amanda suspected the real reason had been less motherly. Put simply, having a daughter in tow had proved inconvenient. Also, as she’d matured, Amanda had begun to ask questions, and to suggest they find some other way to live. A respectable way.
She lifted her gaze from the ground. She focused on the window across the hedge and wall, slightly lower than the one where she stood. A corner window, it was within arm’s reach of the quoins on the back corner of the building, and it had a deep sill and some thick decorative molding. No bars and she guessed no lock, although she could deal with the latter if she had to. Four feet maximum with no leverage. Seven with a running start. Five if you can push off with your foot.
She calculated that her odds were at best one in three that she would survive this adventure both free and whole.
She sang softly to herself while she gathered her concentration and confidence. Then she crouched low on the table she had placed to abut the window’s sill, set her right foot back, drew on all of her strength, and leapt.
* * *
Gentle hands jostled him. Gabriel fought his way out of oblivion enough to push them away and curse the intruder.
“You said at dawn, sir, and the carriage awaits.” It sounded like Miles, his valet.
Dawn. Carriage. Gabriel swam up to semi-consciousness. That only informed him that his head hurt and his neck felt so stiff he could barely move it.
“I will go make coffee, sir.”
More alertness. More pain in his head. Hell, he must have been foxed last night to feel like this. And his neck—
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