In spite of her best intentions, Evelyn laughed. Both men turned indignant looks on her.
“What,” Adrian said in a cool voice, “might I ask is so amusing?”
“Not a thing, darling.” She beamed at her husband. “A random thought crossed my mind, nothing of importance.” She took her husband’s arm. “We have been gone far too long and I should like another dance before we leave for the evening.”
He stared down at her as if he were trying to read her thoughts. “As you wish.”
“Good evening, Lord Radington.” She cast the man a grateful smile.
He, too, looked at her as if trying to read her mind. He nodded. “Lady Waterston.”
“In my day,” Adrian said under his breath as they strolled back toward the ballroom. “The man can’t be more than five years younger than I.”
“The nerve of the man.” Evelyn bit back a laugh. She’d never imagined Adrian, who was not the least bit vain, had a touch of vanity when it came to his age. He was a mere thirty-eight and was as fine a figure of a man as she’d ever met. Still, she’d never imagined him to be a jealous sort either. Odd the things one learned when one had thought there was nothing left to learn. She chatted brightly about anything amusing that came into her head, and by the time they reached the ballroom, Adrian’s mood had lightened.
She knew she should have been upset that he was even a little jealous. And any other time she would have been. But proving she was not unfaithful, should it ever come to that, would be far easier than explaining what she was involved in. That would inevitably lead to what she had done in the past. She certainly wasn’t going to do anything to encourage Adrian in thinking she was seeing another man, but for now, she wasn’t going to entirely correct his erroneous assumption.
His mistake might well be her salvation.
Celeste slipped out of bed and danced out of the way of the hand reaching to pull her back.
“Don’t go.” Max groaned. “Come back.”
“As much as I would like nothing better, I’m afraid I must be going.”
“You never stay the night.” He struggled to sit up. “It’s insulting.”
“Don’t be absurd.” She looked around for her clothes, discarded in their usual haste to touch and taste and partake of the pleasures they found in each other. “How on earth is it insulting?”
“You come to my home. You take liberties with my person—”
“Liberties?” She laughed.
“You have your way with me—”
She raised a brow. “Are you complaining?”
He ignored her. “And then you leave me.” He heaved a sigh worthy of the most poorly trained thespian. “I feel like a ... a trollop.”
“A trollop?”
“A common trollop.” He plucked at the bedcovers. “It’s not at all pleasant and I don’t like it one bit.”
“My apologies,” she said absently. Her clothes lay scattered over the floor in a haphazard trail from the door to the bed, her corset hung tipsily from the bedpost, and good Lord—was that her chemise dangling from the sconce? “Are you familiar with karma?”
“Moral causation? The idea that one gets what one deserves?”
She nodded.
His brows drew together. “Prevalent in Eastern religions, I believe. Buddhism, I think.”
“Very good, Max,” she said wryly. “I do so love a man who is well read.”
“I am nothing if not well read.” He grinned and patted the bed beside him. “I’d be happy to demonstrate exactly what else I do well.”
“You are too generous.”
His wicked grin widened. “You have no idea how generous I can be.”
“Oh, I have some idea.” She studied him for a moment. Lord, he was a handsome beast. All that blond hair, tousled now, he had the look of a small boy. If one ignored the lascivious gleam in his bright blue eyes and the evidence of his growing excitement beneath the sheet. The man was insatiable and bloody well irresistible. “Don’t you find it ironic that a man like you, who has left the beds of who knows how many women, now finds himself in precisely the same position?”
“First karma, now irony.” He narrowed his eyes in feigned suspicion. “Are you saying I’m getting precisely what I deserve?”
She smiled and pulled on her chemise.
“Well, I don’t like it.”
“Now you’re pouting and it’s not at all attractive.” In truth, though, it was rather endearing. Sir Maxwell Osgood was not the type of man to pout.
“Do help me with this.” She looked at him over her shoulder, holding the sides of her corset together behind her back.
“I would be delighted.” He stood and crossed the room. Most men tended to look better with clothes on. Max was not one of them. She never tired of looking at him naked. He took the laces and tugged them tight. “There’s something about this I like.”
“You were no doubt a ladies’ maid in a previous life.”
He bent to kiss the back of her neck and she shivered. His lips murmured against her skin. “I doubt that. Although it would have its benefits ...”
He straightened and tied the laces, then spun her around and pulled her into his arms. “Tell me again why you won’t stay.”
“I tell you every time I’m here.” She rolled her gaze toward the ceiling. “I have servants, you know, and I am trying to live a proper sort of life. Servants talk, and as the house belongs to Evelyn, I daresay it would only be a matter of time before she wondered what I did with my evenings if she learned I was not returning to my own bed.” She shook her head. “She is my dearest friend. I do so hate lying to her.”
“It’s not lying, really. You said yourself she never asks what you do in the evenings.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Celeste said slowly. “Still, she might well consider my presence with her at all a lie.”
“Celeste.” A warning sounded in his voice.
“Yes, yes I know.” She huffed. “You and Sir thought it was necessary. But she would certainly take my leaving the department to keep an eye on her, and provide protection if necessary, as deceit at the very least.”
“She will never find out,” he said firmly.
“Regardless, I am going to endeavor to lie less in the future.” She paused. “To Evelyn and everyone else.”
“Rubbish.” He laughed. “Everybody lies.”
“I do so hate lying.” She sighed. “Obviously I’ve changed.”
“Two years of proper behavior will do that to you.” He pulled her tighter against him.
“It hasn’t been entirely proper,” she said under her breath.
“Thank God.” He lowered his head to kiss that sensitive spot between her ear and her jaw, and she moaned softly. The man knew exactly what to do to make her melt in his arms.
She drew a deep breath and pushed away. “That’s quite enough.” She cast him a chastising look. “Do you think you could at least don a dressing gown?”
“I’m tempting you to stay, aren’t I?” He grinned wickedly but grabbed his dressing gown nonetheless. She found her skirts and stepped into them, then slipped into her shoes.
“Not at all,” she said in a lofty manner. “I am simply concerned that you will catch your death of cold.”
“I didn’t know you cared.”
“Of course I care.” She was buttoning the last button on her polonaise when his arms slipped around her from behind.
“I’m glad.” He nuzzled her neck.
“I would hate for anything to happen to you,” she said brusquely, sounding rather more affectionate than she’d intended. She much preferred not to reveal her emotions.
“I want you to stay with me.” He paused. “Do you realize, from the moment you first shared my bed, there has been no other woman in my life but you?”
“My God, Max.” She forced a light note to her voice. “What on earth has happened to you?”
“You have happened to me.” His tone was abruptly serious. “I could ma
ke an honest woman out of you.”
Her breath caught. She ignored it but was glad he couldn’t see her face. “Don’t be absurd. You’re the youngest son of a marquess. You’ve been knighted. I am not the sort of woman you should have as a wife.”
For an endless moment he didn’t say anything. Then he blew a long breath. “Perhaps.”
A few minutes later she was on her way home in the cab he had, as always, arranged to wait for her, refusing, as always, to allow him to escort her. His suggestion lingered in her thoughts. He’d never mentioned marriage before; she never imagined he would. They’d been together for more than three years now, and she had long ago accepted this was all they would have.
Still, when she’d said she wasn’t the type of woman he should marry, it would have been nice if, just this once, he had lied.
Chapter 7
“I would never presume to question either your decisions or your conclusions, sir, and I have done precisely as you instructed but ...”
Adrian narrowed his eyes. It was already late afternoon and his patience had worn thin hours ago. Worse, he had no real idea where his wife was at the moment. “But?”
“But ...” Isaiah Vincent, Adrian’s valet, chose his words with care. “It would seem to me you are jumping to unwarranted conclusions.”
“They’re not entirely unwarranted.” Adrian tried and failed to hide the defensive tone in his voice.
Vincent raised a questioning brow.
“She has not been herself.”
“Perhaps not. The weather—”
“I’m tired of the weather being used as an excuse,” Adrian snapped. “I have experienced the exact same weather she has and have felt no ill effects.”
“You did mention you have been feeling restless of late, sir.”
“That has nothing to do with the weather.” Adrian waved off the comment and paced the length of his bedroom, the largest such room in the London house. It had been his father’s before him and his father’s father before that. As the heir, Richard had occupied rooms that were nearly as big and he’d never seen any reason to move to this suite. But then Richard had never had a wife either. A wife who had pointed out that the furnishings were sorely in need of updating. She had replaced the heavy, dark, centuries-old furniture with lighter, burled wood and carved pieces. He quite liked it, although, in truth, it scarcely mattered to him as long as the bed was comfortable and his wife was in it. He and Evie had separate bedrooms, of course, connected through adjoining dressing rooms, but as often as not, she slept in his bed. Their bed. Precisely as he preferred. “Before my marriage, before my brother died, when I was free to do anything I wished, as you may recall, I did.”
“You did have an interesting life, sir,” Vincent murmured.
“A certain restlessness is to be expected in a man after two full years of eminently proper living,” Adrian said and wondered exactly whom he was trying to convince.
Vincent cleared his throat.
Adrian knew that sound. “Well?”
“Well what, sir?”
“Well, tell me whatever it is you are thinking.”
“I daresay you won’t like it.”
“I don’t expect to like it.”
“Permission to speak freely then?”
“Because you haven’t spoken freely up to now?” Adrian glared. “I know exactly what you’re doing, you know.”
“Do you, sir?”
“You think the longer this discussion goes on, the more likely I am to come to my senses. To look at all this rationally.”
“You have always been a rational man.”
“Well, it won’t work. Not this time. There is no need for me to come to my senses because I have not lost them.” His brows drew together. “The facts speak for themselves.” He ticked the points off his fingers. “Her manner has been odd of late. She went to the museum without mentioning it to me.”
Vincent gasped. “Oh no, sir, not the museum.”
“Sarcasm, Vincent, is unbecoming in a servant.”
“I beg your forgiveness, my lord.”
Adrian ignored the sarcastic note in the other man’s voice and continued, “She slipped away to meet someone in Dunwell’s library. Soon thereafter, that scoundrel Radington arrived, all too delighted to see my wife, I might add. The man surreptitiously slipped a note into his pocket, obviously to hide it from me, the unsuspecting husband. A note which, no doubt, arranged an assignation. And the stationery ...” He paused for emphasis. “Was cream in color.”
Vincent stared in confusion.
“My wife’s stationery is cream in color,” he said pointedly.
“Ah, well, there you have it then.” Vincent shook his head. “Cream isn’t at all a common color for a lady’s stationery.”
“Sarcasm, Vincent.”
“My apologies, sir.”
“I am simply looking at the evidence as presented and drawing an inescapable conclusion.”
“Which might well be wrong.”
“Bloody hell, I hope so.” Adrian blew a long breath. “Surely you can understand why I have to know for certain?”
Vincent wisely held his tongue.
“Now, what were you thinking?”
“Very well, sir. If you insist.” Vincent considered him for a moment. “You said a certain restlessness was to be expected in a man after two years of proper behavior.”
Adrian nodded.
“Might the same not be expected of a woman?”
“Exactly.” Triumph rang in Adrian’s voice. “That’s my point.”
“However, in your restlessness, you have not turned to women other than your wife.”
“Never,” Adrian said indignantly.
“Then why do you expect Lady Waterston’s behavior to be less honorable than your own?”
“Women are fragile, delicate creatures who do not know their own minds and are easily swayed,” Adrian said staunchly.
Vincent snorted. “I would not let your wife hear you say such a thing, sir.”
“I’m not an idiot, Vincent.”
“Dare I say, sir, that I should like to meet the man who could sway Lady Waterston. Other than yourself, of course,” the valet added quickly.
“Admittedly even I cannot often dissuade her from something she is intent upon.”
“It has been my observation of Lady Waterston that she is as honorable and loyal as she is lovely.”
Adrian shrugged. “I have always thought so.”
“Might I suggest then, sir, that it is only your own imagination and your own restlessness that have brought you to this, no doubt, erroneous conclusion.”
“I am truly hoping I am wrong, Vincent.”
“Might I also say, sir, that should Lady Waterston ever discover the lengths you are going to, to prove or disprove your suspicions, she will be most distressed.”
Adrian shuddered. “She’d be bloody well furious.”
“And could one blame her, sir?”
“She cannot ever find out.”
Vincent continued as if Adrian hadn’t said a word. “Especially if, as I am confident, there is nothing untoward to discover?”
The man was infuriatingly impertinent and should be discharged at once. Not that that would ever happen. Adrian truly valued Vincent’s candid nature. The valet had been in Adrian’s employ for more than a dozen years and knew all of Adrian’s secrets. If there was one person in the world Adrian trusted without question, it was Isaiah Vincent.
“You are trying to dissuade me, aren’t you?”
“It’s my duty, sir.”
Adrian raised a skeptical brow.
Vincent shrugged. “It’s why you pay me as well as you do, sir.”
Adrian scoffed. “You are paid far too well.”
“And that is why I carry out your orders implicitly.” Vincent paused. “Even when I disagree with your reasoning and think you are making a dreadful mistake.”
“Then we understand one another.”
&nbs
p; “Indeed we do, sir.”
“What have you found out?”
Vincent heaved a reluctant sigh.
“Go on, out with it.”
“Very well.” Vincent’s brow furrowed in thought. “Lord Radington’s valet is discreetly involved with Lady Helmsley’s personal maid, who is the second cousin, once removed, of Lord—”
“Blast it all, Vincent.” Impatience sharpened his voice. “I do not need an accounting of the dalliances of servants or their familial connections. I am well aware that news, gossip if you will, travels quickly from house to house in this town. And the best way to find out nearly anything is to tap into that knowledgeable labyrinth of servants. Precisely why I asked you to do so. Now, what have you learned?”
Vincent studied him curiously for a moment. “I have never seen you like this, sir.”
“Love, Vincent, does dreadful things to a man. It wreaks havoc with even the most rational sensibilities. And a man in love with his wife ...”
“There are worse things, sir.”
“None that I can think of at the moment. Now, to the matter at hand.”
“Sir, I do think—”
“You cannot change my mind so you needn’t continue to put this off. Now ...” Adrian held his breath. “I want to know what you have discovered.”
“As you wish.” Vincent heaved a reluctant sigh. “Lord Radington has arranged a meeting with a lady at half past four this afternoon at the Langham Hotel.” He hesitated. “Room 327.”
“With my wife!” Anger rushed through him, mixed with something much more painful.
“That, sir, I was neither able to confirm nor deny,” Vincent added quickly.
“I shall have to kill him,” Adrian said in a cool, dispassionate manner. It was most surprising as he felt neither cool nor dispassionate. Indeed, at this very moment he wanted to rip something apart with his bare hands. Preferably Radington.
“Excellent idea, sir, but might I suggest you confirm your suspicions before resorting to murder.”
“Oh, I intend to.” He glanced at the clock. It was nearly five. “Have my carriage sent around, Vincent.” He started toward the door.
“One moment, my lord.”
Adrian turned toward the valet. “You cannot stop me so I suggest you abandon the effort.”
My Wicked Little Lies Page 8