by Gaelen Foley
At least the graybeards had spared his pride, refraining from having him shackled in front of the populace there at Westminster Abbey.
Thankfully, they had chosen to handle his punishment as an internal matter, hidden from public view. But that was the Order way.
“Sir?” Edward prompted.
Nick shrugged off bad memories, determined to put the past behind him now that Lady Burke had given him a second chance. “The black merino wool.”
“Very good, my lord.”
While Edward went to finish getting his clothes ready for him, Nick wandered over to the box of his belongings that had been returned him. Of course, the graybeards had kept his weapons, the bastards, but what could he do?
In the bottom of the box, he found his necklace—the one they all wore—the white Maltese cross on a silver chain, the hard-won symbol of the Order of St. Michael the Archangel. He had worn it for years like a talisman to ward off the danger that lurked in every shadow during their years of fighting the rich and highborn members of the Promethean conspiracy throughout Europe.
In time, the necklace had come to feel more like wearing a tag of ownership that one would put on a dog.
Now it just looked like a symbol of Nick’s disappointment in himself. He left it in the box, turned away, and started getting dressed: short drawers. He tied the drawstring. Black socks. He hooked them onto the knee straps, then pulled his white shirt on over his head. The clean white linen felt blissful against his skin. He smoothed the open V of the neck down his chest, feeling almost like a human being again.
After pulling on his black trousers, Nick stopped cold. “What the hell?” he uttered, shocked at the change in how his clothes fit.
They hung off him. He drew the waistband of his black trousers away from his waist, astonished to find several inches of excess fabric.
Good God, he had kept up with his regimen of daily exercises as best he could in prison to avoid wasting away to nothing. But the restricted rations must have cost him a good stone of weight that he hadn’t needed to lose.
Jolly good thing he had a pair of suspenders among his belongings, he thought indignantly. Then he leaned closer toward the mirror, finally noticing the gauntness under his cheekbones, the sharp angles of his jaw, the hollows around his eyes.
No wonder Edward seemed afraid of him. He looked as lean and hungry as a wolf. And yet he remembered that Lady Burke had not seemed intimidated. But then, she was Virgil’s daughter.
“Waistcoat.”
The footman bravely held it up and stepped forward; Nick slipped his arms in the holes.
Edward next fetched his freshly ironed cravat, reaching out his arm to hand it gingerly to him from the greatest distance possible.
“I’ll do it myself. I’m not going to kill you, Edward.”
“Of course not,” the lad said abruptly with a nervous gulp followed by short laugh of relief. “Thank you, sir.”
Nick eyed him warily. “What did they tell you about me?” he asked as he stood in front of the mirror tying his cravat.
“Oh, nothing, sir.”
“Something, surely?” Waiting, he glanced at the tongue-tied footman in the mirror.
Edward plainly cast about for some polite escape from this question. “Oh, just some whispers in the servants’ quarters, sir. Nothing important.”
“Humor me, please. I won’t hold it against anyone, I promise.”
“Well, sir, one of the maids overheard Her Ladyship telling Mr. Mason that you had been trained by Master Virgil.” Edward shrugged. “Seeing the sorts of things that Master Virgil also taught Her Ladyship, we just put two and two together. That you work for the Order,” he whispered, wide-eyed.
Not that I was in prison? He was touched she had shielded his reputation. “So Virgil came here to visit?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Quite a lot. Her Ladyship and her father were very close.”
Nick stared at him in fascination, absorbing this. Why, you old fox, with your secrets. It seemed their taciturn handler was growing even more mysterious in death than he had been in life.
Just then, there came a knock on the door. “Lord Forrester?”
Edward glanced toward it. “That’ll be Mr. Mason, sir.”
“Come in,” Nick called just as he finished tucking in the tied ends of his cravat.
The butler stepped into the guest chamber and clasped his white-gloved hands behind him, nodding politely. “Lord Forrester, allow me to present Dr. Baldwell, our local physician.”
A little gray-haired man with stooped shoulders and a black leather bag stepped into the room behind him.
Nick stared at the newcomer, instantly suspicious.
“Her Ladyship has asked that Dr. Baldwell give you a brief examination to make sure you are in the best possible health,” Mason informed him.
Nick looked at him in shock. “Has she indeed?” he retorted, bristling at this new request. “Whatever for?”
Lady Burke herself appeared in the doorway, apparently anticipating his resistance. “Considering your recent living conditions, I want to make sure you’re well enough for duty.”
“I’m well enough for duty!” He scoffed. “I don’t need some quack poking and prodding at me to confirm my health. No offense, Doctor.”
“You will cooperate,” she informed him. “I cannot risk your passing along anything catching to my staff. Check him,” she ordered the physician, then shot him a no-nonsense look. “Cooperate, Nicholas. You gave me your word.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. So he had.
With that curt order, Her Ladyship left him scowling and gritting his teeth. But was it worth it to fight?
One had to choose one’s battles, after all.
“I didn’t give my word to agree to be inspected like a bloody farm animal,” he muttered more to himself than to them. He glared at Edward, who quickly scurried out behind the butler.
Dr. Baldwell then proceeded to ask him all the usual impertinent questions that were part of taking down a patient’s history. The old, unflappable physician was no more affected by Nick’s resentful glares than he would have been at the tantrums of a child with the chicken pox.
He measured him by various methods, height and weight; inspected his tongue; bounced the light off a little mirror into his eyes; peered into his ears with a little funnel thing; checked his head for lice; banged on his knees with a dainty hammer; checked his pulse; listened to his heart; and palpated his abdomen, checking the healing around his solar plexus where he’d taken the bullet for the thankless bloated Prince of Whales.
“Tell me about this bullet wound,” the doctor said, inspecting it.
“It hurt,” he drawled.
“Did it pierce the bowel or other internal organs?”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “The distance saved me. It hit the muscle and went flat. Hurt like hell, though.”
“I imagine so.” He paused. “You’re very lucky.”
“You wouldn’t think so if you ever saw me in a card game. I’m bloody cursed.”
The doctor snorted. “Drop your trousers.”
“But we only just met.”
The irked physician shot him a baleful glance. Then he made him piss in a cup and examined the color of his “water” by the sunlight.
“Are we quite through here?” Nick demanded, sufficiently humiliated for one day.
“Don’t button up just yet.”
Good God! Nick let out a wordless exclamation as the old country doctor finished his inspection by checking to make sure he didn’t have the French disease.
“Good news, no mercury for you.”
“And why exactly does she want to know the condition of my cock?” Nick asked cynically while the old man, through with him, went to wash his hands.
Dr. Baldwell gave hi
m another disapproving scowl. “Her Ladyship is only trying to help you.”
“Good riddance,” Nick muttered when the old man left a moment later, leaving him alone to fasten his clothes again and make himself presentable once more.
But the question he had asked aloud still gnawed at him. What exactly would his duties to this baroness entail?
The question left him bristling with renewed mistrust.
Was he going to be expected to service her on top of everything else? He was not sure how to feel about that.
Obviously, he was attracted to her, but that wasn’t really the point. He had thought his time of being used as some rich woman’s plaything was over. He’d been down that road before, and it hadn’t ended well.
The more he brooded on her unknown motives, the angrier and the more suspicious he became.
So why, then, was Lady Burke being so kind to him? Taking such good care of him? What did she really want? He growled under his breath as he put his clothes back on.
After all, when something looked too good to be true, it usually was.
Well, it was plain to see she was a woman of the world, with her young lover. She had better not be assuming Nick would take over where her missing toy boy had left off just because she said so. A man had his pride.
If she thought her arrangement with the graybeards gave her leave to use him for a bloody male whore, she was misinformed.
If he could resist her.
Torn between lust and resentment, all he knew was that he did not like her control over him one bit. Don’t be so quick to trust her just because she’s Virgil’s daughter.
She was keeping as many secrets as her father.
Spooked to wonder whether this chance at earning back his freedom would cost him the last few remnants of his pride, Nick decided that until he figured out what this woman really wanted from him, he had better stay on his guard.
Dinner was sure to be interesting.
That evening, Gin took a sip of wine as she sat at her dressing table in the candlelit alcove of her opulent bedchamber, legs crossed. Clad in a silk peignoir before dressing in her dinner gown, she reviewed Dr. Baldwell’s notes from his examination of Lord Forrester.
She was surprised at the degree of her own relief to find that his health was sound, from head to toe and at all points in between. Not that it should have mattered, beyond the practicalities of his basic readiness for the mission ahead.
But as she trailed her fingertip over the physician’s diagram, she shook her head with a pang at all the places on Nick’s body where the doctor had recorded the presence of scars. Burns, slashes, healed-over breaks, shrapnel, and, of course, a couple of bullet holes, one more recent than the rest.
She couldn’t help feeling that every one of them was her father’s fault, and since he was dead, that she was somehow responsible for all the damage done to this agent. Years ago, Virgil, in his early role of Seeker, had gone around to various aristocratic families and handpicked the lads he wanted for his unit before they were even Phillip’s age. It must have been heartbreaking, knowing the kind of danger he was recruiting these mere children into, but all of them had been eager to go.
Nick, especially, according to her father.
She let out a sigh and put the notes down on her dressing table, saddened. As her thought drifted, she remembered how she had raged so many times at her sire for stubbornly forbidding her to try to become the Order’s first female agent.
But Dr. Baldwell’s little drawing of all the scars on Nick was proof positive that her father had been right.
If the enemy could inflict this kind of pain on one of the Order’s hardiest warriors, what might they have done to a female spy associated with the organization if she were ever captured?
With such a hostage, they could have wrung deadly concessions out of the graybeards and every honor-bound male agent in the field.
Ah, well. She had long since realized that her father had only stopped her out of love. As much as she had hated it at the time, living vicariously through the tales he told about “his boys” and their perilous adventures, she had come to understand a parent’s need to protect his or her child once she had become a mother, herself.
In the mirror on her dressing table, the look in her eyes turned steely. The Order was never getting their hands on Phillip. They’d never leave these kinds of scars on her darling son.
Just then, a soft knock sounded on the door.
“Come.” She glanced into the reflection behind her as her lady’s maid stepped in.
“You sent for me, my lady?”
“Yes, I have to dress for dinner.” She rose with a languid motion. “The emerald satin tonight, I think.”
“Very good, ma’am.” The maid hurried to fetch the gown from the large, adjoining dressing room.
Soon, Gin was dressed in the luxurious green gown and seated once again before the mirror while the maid braided small sections of her hair to add interest to the topknot that would be held in place with pearl-studded combs.
In the reflection, Gin noticed the smile tugging at the maid’s mouth and realized it had been there since the woman had come in. “You seem rather merry this evening, Bowland. What’s afoot?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, ma’am,” she assured her with a quick smile as she worked.
“Come. This wouldn’t have something to do with our guest, would it?”
“Well, the girls belowstairs couldn’t help but notice His Lordship’s awfully handsome, ma’am.”
“That he is. He’s also very dangerous. Not a man to be trifled with. Let them know I won’t countenance any nonsense.”
“Yes, my lady. I will tell them.” Bowland dropped her gaze with a chastened look.
Gin knew the stern precision with which she ran her household was not much fun for her staff, but she did not intend to let the maids go throwing themselves at Lord Forrester.
She did not need her silly-headed servant girls tempting a very worldly man who had been starved of sex for the past six months.
Somehow, she could not shake her own, acute awareness of that fact. Nevertheless, the rogue agent was as much her hireling now as the maids were, and like them, he would jolly well live up to her standards while he was under her roof.
She just hoped she could hold up to them herself. She sent herself a stern, warning glance in the mirror. One false move, and he’ll take control of everything.
That’s not going to happen, she assured herself. She might have taken the manacles off him, but she still intended to keep her trained wolf on a very short leash.
Then she turned with a rustle of satin and proceeded down to dinner.
Chapter 4
Nick remained on his guard at supper that evening. Still suspicious of her motives, he refused to let the wine lull him into lowering his defenses, nor her beauty to turn his head. It was impossible, though, not to feel the impact of her allure.
She was ravishing, and God, it had been so long since he had known the pleasures of a woman’s bed. The emerald hue of her gown turned her blue eyes sea green and made them sparkle like a warm, tropic sea.
Her intricate coiffure was a work of enchantment to behold, and her skin . . . her rosy cheeks, her alabaster throat . . .
The creamy expanse of her chest bared by the low, pointed neck of her gown, tortured him with a cruel show of cleavage.
But considering that she held all the power, at least for the moment, his cool demeanor toward her was the only act of defiance he could afford, under the circumstances. It wasn’t easy. They were both wary and polite, not talking much at table.
The spread of food was lavish. After the privations of the past year, Nick fought himself not to devour everything in sight. Hell, for all he knew, the sumptuous feast before him might only be intended to fatten him up for the slaughter, he t
hought wryly.
They sat at the two distant ends of the long, formal dining table. Between them, the staff laid out a rapturous spread of dishes, symmetrically arranged—elegant blends of textures and tastes, contrasting and complementing, with new bottles of wine to sample with every course.
All the while, from its place of honor above the white fireplace, the large, gilded portrait of a weak-chinned man in uniform stared down at them in prim disapproval.
The husband.
Nick eyed the pasty-faced figure warily as he chewed. How the hell does a chap like that get a woman like her?
Lady Burke noticed him looking at it and supplied the answer to his unasked question. “The late Lord Burke.”
“Tell me about him,” he invited her, keen to gather information about his mysterious hostess. “Nabob?”
“His family has had various lucrative enterprises under way in India for decades. He was sent over there after his graduation from Oxford to familiarize himself with the holdings he’d inherit. He spent a decade there, then returned to England to settle down and find a bride.”
Nick stared at her. “Well, he was obviously successful in that quest.”
“Oh, yes,” she said with a bland smile and took a drink of wine.
This reaction intrigued Nick in the extreme; and now he couldn’t leave it alone. “I am sorry for your loss. It must have been very difficult for you.”
Not really, said her cool gaze. “Thank you,” said her lovely lips.
You despised him? Nick thought. He bored you to death?
“How did you two first meet?” he asked in a cordial tone.
“Well . . .” Lady Burke glanced at the dining-room door, making sure that none of her servants were in earshot. “It’s a funny story, actually.”
“Do tell.”
“He originally started out courting another girl in my debutante class, but I stole him.”
“Oh, really?” Nick was both astonished and amused. “You stole him from a friend?”
“Oh, no, not from a friend. An enemy,” she answered with an arch smile. “That was why I did it. Of course, I was very young. Seventeen. I had no idea my mischief would end up in marriage.”