“I think you’re sulking because it wasn’t as good for you as it was for me.”
She heard laughter in his voice, and she wanted to punch him, but she refused to acknowledge his existence. The fact that he lay naked and half on top of her made that pretense a trifle difficult.
His hand strayed between her legs, caressing her gently there. Dillian couldn’t help the involuntary reaction of her hips as they rose eagerly at his touch.
“After twenty-five years of abstinence, you must be more starved for this than I am,” he murmured against her ear, just before he captured her mouth and kissed her again.
Dillian tried resisting. She didn’t think she could take it again this night. Perhaps tomorrow, after she’d recovered. Not now. Not while she felt sticky and humiliated beyond redemption. But he wouldn’t let her pull away. He coaxed his tongue between her teeth, filled her mouth with his breath until she needed him to breathe again.
His skillful fingers caressed her in places she scarcely dared touch herself. Her nipples hardened into tiny nubs beneath his lavish caresses. His mouth upon them caused multiple explosions in her blood. And his hand came back time and again to pluck and stroke sensitive tissues until she ached with the need for him inside her.
“My lord, please,” she whispered, ashamed at her begging.
“Gavin,” he ordered. “My name is Gavin. Call me by it.”
Since his finger had slipped inside her to make her quake with the desire for more, she could scarcely argue. “Gavin,” she whispered urgently.
“Very good.” He applied his finger more provocatively until she writhed and cried out and finally exploded into rolling spasms that left her totally drained and as boneless as a newborn.
“That’s what I’ll do to you when I come into you next time,” he murmured against her ear.
Next time. He would do this again and again until she had no mind of her own, until he claimed her body and soul. Dillian could see it coming, but already he had sapped her will until she could offer no protest. She merely curled against his strong chest and let him hold her. His hand stroked her buttocks, and she felt his arousal. She ought to leap from the bed and run for safety. She merely fitted herself against him and smiled at his groan.
* * * *
“Anglesey and Dismouth are thick as thieves,” Michael explained, appearing the next morning without explanation of his absence. “The earl is the older. He’s guiding His Grace through the labyrinth of Parliament. Dismouth has his tentacles in every pie in town. He wants a place in the cabinet, and he’s cultivated friends in high places. Even the Regent puts on his best behavior in the earl’s presence, for fear he will get his allowance cut otherwise.”
Dillian plucked idly at a loose thread in Blanche’s bedcover. “What has this to do with anything?” she inquired irritably. She hadn’t had much sleep. Her body felt a stranger to her. And she couldn’t bear looking at the lean man lounging against the far wall.
The marquess behaved as if they scarcely knew each other when he’d explored her more intimately than her own mother ever had. She resented his offhandedness, even though she understood the necessity for it. He left her feeling hollow inside.
Michael gave her an impatient look. “Pay attention. Dismouth has access to all the military high commands. Wellington is at his beck and call, and all the ambassadors who worked on the Treaty of Paris report to him. If there is anything in your father’s papers, anything at all that might be of interest to him, Dismouth will know it.”
Dillian glanced toward Blanche, who absentmindedly stirred at her cold cup of tea. Not finding any help in that quarter, she shrugged and asked the obvious, “If he already knows of it, why should he want them?”
“That is what we must find out,” Michael answered with satisfaction.
“Wouldn’t it be simpler if Miss Whitnell just collected the journals and turned them over to a solicitor?” The marquess didn’t stir from his corner, but his energy still permeated the room. Even Michael turned around to glare at him.
“Don’t be such a blockhead, your noble lordship,” O’Toole responded with some irritation. “If there’s something of value in those papers, it belongs to the lady. And if there’s something treasonous in those journals, all concerned are dead and buried and there is no need for tarnishing either lady’s name with it now.”
“Then, I shall just go to London, persuade Neville and the solicitor to hand over the books, and bring everything back here,” Dillian declared, tired of this whole game. She wanted it over. She saw no sense in any of it.
“And how do you mean to persuade the duke to anything?” the marquess asked with a trace of menace.
Blanche and Michael stared at him, but Dillian just glared. “I’ll hold him at gunpoint. Is that what you want to hear?”
“I want to hear the end of this so I might get back to business.”
The marquess spoke matter-of-factly, without the harshness of his words. Dillian still felt them like a blow to the belly. She sank back into the pillows on the bed and let the others carry on the discussion. She wanted just exactly what he wanted: this to be over so she could go on with her life as planned.
“If it’s actually the papers they’re after and not Lady Blanche, then it’s possible they contain evidence of someone else’s treason,” O’Toole continued, spinning his list of possibilities, “someone willing to pay a very high price to conceal it. Burning down a house full of people is the act of a desperate man. If this man believes the papers still available, he’ll stop at nothing to get his hands on them. We must be in a position to act quickly, if so.”
Dillian idly contemplated burning down Blanche’s London town house and the solicitor’s office, but she wasn’t quite so desperate as that. She plucked at another thread and waited for the irreverent O’Toole to continue.
She wondered why the marquess didn’t knock the irritating footman flying, but she’d already decided O’Toole held something over the marquess that kept him from retaliating. She wondered what it was.
“How do you plan on obtaining the papers in the first place?” the marquess asked. “Let’s deal with the problems one at a time.”
O’Toole shrugged expressively. “I took a look in the vault yesterday. The papers aren’t there.”
The room erupted in voices, all but Dillian’s. A dizzying sensation spun her head back against the pillow. She didn’t question the footman’s larcenous declaration. A man who could make coins disappear could undoubtedly open vaults without a combination.
Her father’s papers were gone. The hollow at the pit of her belly ached as she met the marquess’s eyes.
He didn’t believe a word of her story. His gaze told her he would make her pay for every minute of this confusion. She could see it in the way his glance insultingly swept from her eyes to her breasts to the place where his body had entered hers.
When Michael announced, “His lordship and Miss Whitnell must go to London,” the lounging figure in the corner erupted like a cannonball from its barrel.
“The hell I will!” he yelled at the room at large, before slamming from the chamber without a backward glance.
Michael calmly looked at Dillian. “He’s a marquess. He’s the only one who can move about in Dismouth’s society. He has to go. You’ll have to persuade him.”
Dillian thought he looked right through her and knew every sinful thing she had done. The knowledge pierced her to the quick, and she slid from the bed and out of the room without examining her motives or intentions. She just wanted out from under O’Toole’s knowing gaze.
No matter that none of this made an ounce of sense any longer. Whores lived in London. Why shouldn’t she?
God certainly had a strange sense of justice.
Chapter Twenty
“I’ll not make a bloody ass of myself flitting around ballrooms and salons and pretending I’m a damned aristocrat!” the marquess yelled loud enough to rattle the filthy chandelier of the salon, even though
he and Michael were alone in the room and stood only yards apart.
“You’ll have Matilda up here looking to see if the ghosts have got you,” Michael reminded him. “I’d suggest you lower your bellows an octave or two.”
“I’ll damned well shout as loud as I choose, and to hell with the servants.” Even as he protested, Gavin lowered his voice, replacing shouts by pacing the salon. Protecting the women from discovery had almost become second nature.
“You’ll have Miss Whitnell with you. She can tell you who’s who and what. If the duke has the papers, then it shouldn’t take long at all. Someone may have burned a house down to obtain what’s in them. You wouldn’t want anyone else hurt, would you?”
Gavin sent his brother a malevolent glare. With the skin of his scarred cheek drawn up and white, the look would have terrified a lesser man. Michael leaned against the wall, unperturbed.
“You have no proof of that. You just want to be left alone with Lady Blanche. She’s not your type, you know. You might as well bang your head against the wall. You would fare better if I stayed here and you accompanied the dauntless Miss Whitnell.”
Michael gave his brother a knowing look. “I ought to at that. You would come flying after us within days. I’ve seen that proprietary look before. You’ve staked your claim, and you’ll cut the balls off any man daring to come between you. Don’t warn me about the Lady Blanche. You’ve grabbed a firebrand by the wrong end, and you’ll be lucky to escape with your flesh still attached. Abstinence has made mush of your brains.”
Gavin looked away. He didn’t dare confirm his brother’s opinion, but he felt the truth of it all the same. He had gone around in a state of near arousal all day, just thinking about the moments when he could pry Dillian away from the others.
Matilda had looked at him peculiarly when he’d included sponges on the list of supplies he wanted from the village. And he didn’t even care. He meant to bury himself deep inside Dillian’s welcoming heat and stay there all night. He needed that. He damned well deserved it after all this.
“Leave Miss Whitnell out of this,” he said harshly. “I’m not going to London. You’re much better at sneaking about than I am. You go. I’ll stay here with the ladies.”
“Sneaking is not what this is all about. We need information, information that only people at a high level can provide. The duke already recognizes me. He will make no connection between an eccentric marquess, Lady Blanche, and the papers he must have stolen from the vault. We have no other choice. You have to be the one who pries the papers out of him.”
“He’s probably already discovered they’re nothing but a soldier’s notes on the most potent apple punch, or a litany of the best whores in Europe. This is a wild-goose chase, Michael. I’ll not suffer society for this nonsense.”
“My father didn’t need notes on whores and punch, he had an excellent memory.” A slender female figure glided into the abandoned salon, her high-waisted blue gown floating almost as ethereally as the ghost supposedly haunting this place.
Gavin felt his guts twist with the pain of desire. He had indeed gone too long without a woman for this one to sever his senses like this.
“Then you looked at the papers? You know what’s in them?” he asked sarcastically, in a futile attempt to distance himself from her.
“They’re diaries of military strategy mostly. I glanced through them once, to see if I could find any personal information. He had maps and notes about this regiment and that. A lot of it was in a shorthand code he often used. I didn’t see anything of any interest to anyone. The war is over. Of what use can any of it be?”
Michael and Gavin exchanged looks. Gavin knew even better than his brother what those notes could mean if read by the proper authorities. A detailed accounting of military strategy might make an excellent book for war aficionados, or lead to the public condemnation of incompetent officers who drove their men into losing positions and left them. Such papers could contain tales only dead men knew.
They could also lead to the spoils of war, hidden while on the march and never claimed later. The possibilities loomed innumerable. Someone knew what those books contained.
“We won’t know until we find them,” Michael pointed out. “If they’re the reason someone intends you or Lady Blanche harm, we must find them first.”
Gavin watched Dillian’s eyes widen with a fleeting moment’s fear, then shutter again. She didn’t even know he watched.
He wanted to change that. He wanted all that brilliant intensity focused on him alone. He wanted to be the sole beneficiary of all that female loveliness. If he must sacrifice his pride and submit to the inglorious rounds of London society, he’d demand Dillian as his reward. He would become the center of her universe. Gavin liked that idea almost well enough to accept Michael’s dastardly plans.
“And you have some fool idea that the duke will take me into his confidence and shower me with those papers?” Gavin asked, his tone demanding that Dillian look at him.
She did, and he felt the impact of those long-lashed eyes all the way to his core. She regarded him with barely disguised hostility, but he knew what he could do to her with just a touch. He took a step closer, just to remind her of the chemistry.
He smiled when she crossed her arms over her breasts and looked away.
“That’s the easiest solution,” Michael agreed. “Or you could discover their location and send for me. While you keep him distracted, I can ferret them out.”
“And the only way I can do this is by going about in society?” Gavin held his gaze on Dillian while he spoke to Michael. He kept his voice low and caressing, and she rewarded him with a shiver, while avoiding his eyes.
“You also need access to the War Office once you uncover the papers and discover their contents,” Michael continued. “We need to know which man is best for our purposes.”
Gavin sensed his brother’s look of curiosity, but he ignored it. He reached and tucked a loose curl behind Dillian’s ear. Her hair always looked as if she’d just climbed from bed. He liked it like that.
“And Miss Whitnell? What shall we do with her?” Again, Gavin directed the level of his voice at her. She began running her hands up and down her arms as if to warm them.
Michael didn’t answer.
Gavin waited a moment, enjoying watching her, knowing she didn’t know which way to turn. When Michael still didn’t answer, he glanced up, to find the salon empty of all but Dillian and himself.
He cursed and glared at the unlit shadows of this tomb. His brother had the lazy habit of disappearing in the face of conflict. He glanced back down at Dillian who looked equally bewildered as she tried to figure out where the elusive O’Toole had gone.
“Don’t bother yourself. He’ll appear again when he’s ready. In the meantime, Miss Whitnell, what are your suggestions? Shall I take you to London as my mistress? I rather like the sound of that.”
Color rose in her cheeks as she looked to the dust-covered furniture and not at him. “If that’s what you prefer,” she answered flatly. “But I rather think it would look odd if the Marquess of Effingham suddenly turned up with Lady Blanche’s companion and began asking questions.”
She’d certainly hit the nail on the head in no short time, Gavin admitted, disgruntled. He couldn’t object to the idea of London too much if he knew she would adorn his bed at his beck and call. But her suggestion gave him images of a lonely bed while she gallivanted about London having the time of her life.
“Then, I’ll leave you here,” he threatened.
“That would suit me, but you don’t know a duke from an earl, Anglesey from Dismouth. You won’t know how to go about. I rather suspect O’Toole’s etiquette was learned on the back of a mail coach. If you prefer to rely on it, then so be it. I’ll not argue.”
She didn’t stalk off, although Gavin suspected she wanted to. She stood there, not looking at him, waiting for the slap in the face he would give her.
He gave her what she expected
, but he did it gently. He had no reason for unselfishness. She would pay his price. But he would try not to hurt her too badly in the process. Only as the words emerged from his mouth did he realize how thoroughly she had snared him.
“You’ll go with me. We’ll take separate residences and pretend no acquaintance, but you’ll make yourself available when and where I ask. I’ll be discreet.” The words made it sound as if he were in control, but they both knew if he wasn’t wiggling on her hook, he would have left her behind.
She turned back to him then and really looked at him. What Gavin saw in her eyes had him quivering right down to his toe bones. Before she even spoke, he grabbed Dillian’s arm and pulled her out of the salon, down the hall, toward the bedchamber. He would have her now and sort out those other issues later.
Reaching his goal, Gavin slammed the door behind them and dragged Dillian to the bed. Bending her unprotesting body backward on the high mattress, he plunged his tongue between her teeth.
She whimpered against his mouth but lifted her arms willingly to circle his shoulders. Gavin needed no further encouragement. Massaging her breasts with his hands, he rubbed his arousal against her, and felt her arch against him.
When he reached to pull her gown up, the door behind them slammed open again.
They both jumped, startled, their gazes swerving to see who stood there. The doorway was empty.
Dillian giggled nervously behind him. “Perhaps the lady is displeased with our presence.”
Cursing, Gavin looked down into her pale face and frightened eyes and tore away. The ache of his arousal eased when she hesitantly took a sitting position. She regarded him with wariness while curling her fingers into knots in the bedcovers. At least she made no effort to run from him, nor did she look at him with disgust. He should be grateful for small favors.
He walked over and slammed the door shut. Not finding a bolt, he propped a chair against it. “You’ll find sponges and the vinegar solution behind the dressing screen. Soak a sponge in the solution and insert it as deeply as you can. You’ll have to learn the proper procedure now. We’ll not have time for lessons in London.”
The Marquess Page 20