And for those lords who appeared sympathetic to Smeade’s plight? Dash had carefully underscored the man’s inability to turn a profit at this juncture, ensuring they understood that making a loan of any amount would be an ill-advised investment indeed.
Smeade was within his grasp. The very idea made Dash salivate. He could taste revenge. And it was sweeter than he’d imagined it would be.
He took one last, long puff of the quality cigar, then stubbed it out in a crystal ashtray. A man entered at the far end of the room and walked toward Dash. The lingering haze of smoke and low lighting obscured his identity at first and Dash relaxed back into the chair, assuming it was a footman.
“Carrington,” the man called, his face revealed as he stepped within the circle of light cast by a nearby candelabra.
“Smeade.” Dash picked up his glass of brandy and drained the last of the amber-colored liquid, letting the slow burn distract him.
He wanted to murder the man with his own hands. Right there, on the Aubusson carpet. In the Corinthians Club. With no one about to witness the crime but a few footmen.
They’d be easily bribed into silence. Dash was sure of it.
But he couldn’t. And the knowledge made his gut roil.
“Fancy a drink?” Smeade asked, sliding inelegantly into the chair opposite Dash’s.
He’d clearly been dipping rather deep, his face ruddier than normal and his speech slightly slurred.
“I’m afraid I’m done for the night, old man,” Dash answered, doing his best to remain calm. “And you? A bit late, isn’t it?”
Smeade waved off Dash’s words, sloshing brandy from his glass. “Come now, Carrington. It’s never too late for men like us.”
Dash realized with satisfaction that Smeade was likely hiding out, the club his last refuge. “Indeed.”
“I say,” the man continued, pausing to take a lusty swig from his glass. “Did you decide what to do with your father’s books?”
Dash was tempted to go to the window and signal for Nicholas to join them, Smeade’s inquiry only confirming that he was as desperate as a man could be.
“Books?” Dash asked, toying with the man.
“Well, yes,” Smeade replied, his frustration showing. “I believe it was Lady Mowbray’s friend who’d thought to take them. A Miss Barnes, wasn’t it?”
The sound of Elena’s surname on Smeade’s tongue stripped any pleasure Dash had felt earlier from the man’s presence. “Oh, yes. Well, you’re quite mistaken, Smeade. Miss Barnes did not ‘think’ to take them. She is, in fact, taking them—no thought required.”
“And is that wise, Carrington? Allowing the books to leave the family? Surely your father would have reconsidered such a decision in time. I know that you’d want to do what was best.”
Dash could take no more. He planted both hands on the low table and leaned in until his face was even with Smeade’s. “Do not presume to know me, nor my father,” he said in a low, lethal tone.
Smeade’s pallor faded to a grim, gray shade and he swallowed hard.
Dash stood. It took all his cool control to keep his tone amiable. “Come now, Smeade. I was only having a bit of fun with you. But I am afraid the books are a done deal. As am I. Good to see you, though.”
“Yes, you as well,” Smeade managed before finishing off his drink.
Dash turned on his heels and left. He made for the gambling room and located the large banner where the bet concerning himself and Elena was recorded. He ran his finger down the column of participants until he reached Smeade’s signature. Nicholas needed the likeness in order to complete the forged banknotes. Dash had originally planned to secure the signature in a less obvious way. But he could not spend one more moment under the same roof with Smeade.
He ripped the banner from the wall, hastily folded it, and tucked it inside his vest. He’d hand it over to Nicholas outside, then return to Carrington House, where Elena awaited.
Bell had delivered a note from Elena to Dash’s chamber door late that evening. She asked him to meet her in the library alcove once he’d risen and eaten his breakfast the next morning.
After spending the night tossing and turning, Dash strode purposefully down the hallway, his hair still wet from his morning bath. He’d not bothered with breakfast. Or sleep. Over the last several days, Dash had sensed a shift in Elena’s response to him. She’d put space between them when she could, avoided his affection, and kept her thoughts and emotions to herself. He’d felt the loss slowly at first, the change almost imperceptible. But somewhere in the chaos of the days leading up to this point, the emotional chasm had grown vast indeed.
He turned into the library and headed for the alcove, its drawn curtains coming into sight as he passed the now empty bookshelves.
He pulled back one of the curtains and found Elena. She wore a simple blue cotton dress, her hair swept up and pinned on the sides with the length of it unbound and spilling around her shoulders. “Good morning,” he said, sitting down on the opposite end of the cushion.
“Good morning,” she replied, fidgeting with the cap sleeve of her dress.
Dash was too impatient for such pleasantries. “Please, let us stop this.”
“Before your brain is rendered useless?” she asked, releasing the fabric and folding her hands in her lap. “Not unlike mine, I’ll add.”
“Your head hurts too, then?”
She chuckled, a low feminine sound of amusement that lightened the weight Dash felt. “And heart.” She reached out, taking Dash’s hand in hers.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, the tension in Dash’s head slowly melting away the longer her fingers touched him. The warmth of her small, soft hand cradling his eased his worry as if by magic.
“I’m sorry for how I’ve behaved,” Elena offered humbly, moving closer to him. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Dash brought her hand to his lips and gently kissed her knuckles. “Perhaps you think too much?”
“Never,” Elena answered quickly, emitting a second chuckle. Her eyes softened, lit with mirth.
“Tell me,” Dash murmured. “I need to know.”
“I feared that I’d let myself become distracted by you,” Elena began. All amusement fled, her expression solemn as she spoke, her clear gaze fastened on his. “I could think on nothing else from the moment I arrived at Carrington House. At least not with any real concentration. You consumed me, you see, unlike anything had before. The feelings you inspired …” She paused, closing her eyes for a moment before continuing, her fingers tightening on his. “The feelings you inspired in my heart and soul were so unexpected. And enchanting. And true.”
Dash nodded solemnly, feeling more vulnerable than he ever had before. He closed the distance between them until he could feel the soft ebb and flow of her breath on his face. He pressed a kiss against her lips before leaning back once again to meet her gaze.
Elena drew a deeper, shaky breath, the tip of her tongue slicking over her lips as if to collect and keep the lingering taste of his mouth against hers, before she continued speaking. “And then Rowena was taken and I blamed myself. If only I’d given her more of my time. If only I’d listened to my instincts when we first met Mr. Brock. So many regrets and very little in the way of what I could do to help.”
Dash nodded again, his heart aching for her.
“The Halcyon Society made me believe that I could atone for my part, at least in some small way. And in order to do so, I needed to focus entirely on the endeavor. I had to let go of my own desires. I had to let go of you.”
Dash suddenly felt as though he’d been punched in the gut. He gripped Elena’s hands in his and held on. “That’s not true,” he said fiercely. “I want nothing more than to care for you. Your concerns will become mine, don’t you see? You are stronger in my arms, as am I, in yours.”
She pulled her hands free and cupped his face tenderly. “I know. I simply wasn’t brave enough to admit it before. But I am now, Dash. And
I’ll never let you go.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but her honest, exposed gaze did not waver.
Dash kissed Elena’s lush, soft lips. “God, Elena. Say it again.”
“I’ll,” she began, and then touched her lips to his. “Never,” she continued, kissing his cheek. “Leave,” she pressed on, landing a kiss on the opposite cheek. “You,” she finished, her lips claiming his with such tenderness that Dash felt his heart respond silently, the last of the heaviness lifting higher and higher until it disappeared altogether.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder.
Dash placed a loving kiss on the top of her head. He closed his eyes and cradled Elena in his arms, basking in her love. She was his salvation.
“Elena, I vow I’ll never leave you. Though the reading of many books will surely make you go blind and your form will likely cripple from too many hours spent tucked away in the alcove, there is nowhere I will ever want to be but with you.”
“You know me so well, Dash,” she replied, snuggling in closer.
“Elena?” Dash asked, his fingers skimming circles along her back.
“Hmm,” she murmured, arching into his touch.
“This—us, that is. It will never be easy, will it?”
“I suspect not,” she replied, her voice low. “And just when we think that it’s all been figured out, it will grow even harder. I suppose that is the price we pay.”
“Gladly.” Dash leaned back and brought her hand to his heart, so that she might know his sincerity in its strong, steady beat.
God, but the man was irksome. Nicholas turned his face to the afternoon sun and sighed with irritation.
Smeade’s desperate search for help in dealing with the threat from his employer had led him all across the city—with Nicholas forced to trail behind. Irksome and not short on endurance, apparently.
Nicholas rested against the park bench, situated within viewing distance of the James and Mulroy Merchant Bank.
He’s persistent. I’ll give him that.
Somehow, the admission did not make Nicholas feel any better.
His bones ached to sleep in his own bed. His stomach growled mercilessly, demanding a real meal. And his mind. God, his mind. Nicholas raked a hand through his unruly hair and decided not to think beyond Smeade and solving the case.
According to his sources, a network of connections that ran from the squalor of Wapping Stairs all the way to Mayfair and St. James’s palace itself, word of Smeade’s financial situation had spread like wildfire. No one was extending him credit. Not Rundle, Bride, and Rundle, where he bought the fanciest of snuff boxes. Nor Grillon’s Hotel, where he dined on the most expensive food to be found in all of London.
Nicholas smiled at the thought of Smeade being turned away everywhere he went. It must be killing him to be treated thusly.
Or at least, Nicholas hoped so.
He crossed his legs and attempted to get more comfortable on the iron bench. None of Smeade’s previous visits had taken long, but he’d been inside the bank for nearly an hour now.
This worried Nicholas. If they discovered that the banknotes had been forged, what would happen then?
It hadn’t even occurred to Nicholas to consider the possibility. His work had never once been questioned in India, and some of it had been far more difficult than forged banknotes.
India.
For the millionth time since returning to England, Nicholas questioned his decision to leave India.
So many reasons to have stayed there. But if he had, he wouldn’t be sitting here now, with Lady Afton’s murderer almost in his grasp.
“No, you’d be riding in a palanquin, feasting on rich curries, fed to you by beautiful women wrapped in silken saris,” he murmured to himself, shaking his head as if doing so would remove all the warm, happy, dreams from his thoughts.
A slow drizzle began to fall. Nicholas hunched his shoulders and crossed his arms against the damp.
He’d made the right decision. He knew it in his heart, even if his mind refused to see reason.
Monse, the street urchin that he’d employed to keep an eye on Smeade, suddenly burst through the door of James and Mulroy, his scrawny legs moving faster than Nicholas would have thought possible as he crossed the street, dodged a hackney, and careered around an island of rhododendron bushes before reaching the park bench.
“All right?” Nicholas asked dryly, looking the boy up and down.
The youth bent over and braced his hands against his knees, gulping down large breaths of air. “Those coves don’t like my type in their establishment, that’s for sure.”
Of course, Nicholas already knew this. But he’d needed someone who wouldn’t immediately consider blackmail if Smeade revealed anything useful. And it hadn’t hurt that the boy was extremely slight for his age. No one noticed the poor. And the smallest of the poor? Even less noteworthy.
“They didn’t hurt you, did they?” Nicholas asked, having noted no blood on the boy earlier, but aware that bruises would not show themselves for a bit.
The boy stood erect, though he continued to breathe hard. “Those slow blokes? They’d have to catch me first.”
“And the man I asked you to keep an eye on?” He smiled, revealing blackened, chipped teeth. “That’ll cost ya, guv.”
Nicholas reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced several coins, watching the boy’s eyes dance and light with greed. “Four now,” he replied, offering four sixpence. “And four once you’ve told me the details.”
“Fair enough,” the youth agreed, shoving the coins into a pouch that hung around his neck, then tucking it protectively beneath his torn shirt. “Seems the swell is missing his money.”
“That, I knew,” Nicholas answered, eyeing the boy warily. “I do hope you’ve more. Otherwise I’ll be needing my coins back.”
The boy clutched at the pouch desperately and held up a hand. “I’m not trying to pull caps with you. There’s more. Plenty more.”
Nicholas gestured for the boy to sit down next to him and gave him what remained of an eel pie.
The boy accepted it with a tilt of his cap and dove into the pie, taking an enormous bite. “He’s none too happy, I can tell you that,” he began, bits of flaky pastry flying as he spoke. “Seems he’s wantin’ to take a trip real bad—only he needed the blunt for this trip. No blunt, no travelin’. Kept going on about how the bank had made a mistake. And the mister in charge kept telling him that it was impossible. They never make mistakes. He showed your man some notes, and then added up what was left in his account.”
Nicholas watched as the boy finished the food and wiped his face and hands with the oil-soaked paper. “And what was the amount?”
“Cleaned out, sir. Your man’s out of money. That’s when the yellin’ started. Scared a woman right out of her hat, it did. Your man screaming that they might as well have killed him for all the good they’d done. And the one in charge yellin’ back that he’d look into what had happened if the bloke would just shut his trap. But your man came right back at him, claiming they’d never figure it out—couldn’t be done.”
The urchin looked off in the distance, as if he could see Smeade’s face, hovering before him. “He’d the look of a dead man, he did. So scared and all. Said they’d find him facedown in the Thames. Food for the fish, he’d be.”
The boy shuddered from fright. “And I believed him. Ain’t never seen a man so scared for his life—and I’ve seen plenty of men scared, sir. Anyway, that’s when one of them clerks spotted me. I ran out of there as fast as I could, seeing as I’d be no use to you if they caught me. I hope that’s enough to make you happy, sir.”
Nicholas dropped the second set of coins into the boy’s hands. “More than you’ll ever know.”
“You look absolutely beautiful.”
Elena peered up from her ledger and smiled expectantly, watching Dash walk out from behind the wall of trunks assembled in the library. He
stopped in front of the large table tucked away in the corner of the room and offered her a rose.
Elena uttered an “O” of surprise when she realized it was a wild dog rose and held it to her nose. “Please, say it again.”
Dash came round behind her chair and bent down. “You look absolutely beautiful,” he whispered in her ear.
His breath teased her lobe and she giggled. “Thank you.”
“No thank-you is needed, Elena. I was simply stating a fact.” He reached down and gently pulled her from the seat until she was wrapped in his arms.
She rested her cheek on his chest. “But I never believed it before. Not when my father told me, nor when Lady Mowbray said so. But now,” she paused, looking up into his face and feeling nothing else but the single most powerful force of love. “Now I believe that I am beautiful—I know I am. Because of you.”
“Well, I think anyone who knew the truth of the matter would point out how lucky I am to have been saved from my meaningless existence by you—but I will hardly pass up the opportunity to come out the hero in all of this,” he replied, smiling down at her.
“Shall we agree to disagree?” Elena suggested, tightening her embrace.
“Absolutely.”
“Perfect,” she said, clearly pleased. “I do enjoy a good compromise—especially when I am the one who offered it,” she added saucily.
Dash lowered his head and brushed a warm kiss against her lips. “You are taking full credit, then?”
Elena pulled him back for a second kiss, boldly running her tongue along the seam of his mouth.
Dash growled low in his throat and his arms tightened, gently crushing her breasts against his chest.
Her mind hazed, the world narrowing to nothing but delicious sensation and rising heat. And then she realized just what the man was up to and pulled back. “Dash, why are you here?”
“Can’t a man enjoy a bit of time in his library with the woman he loves?” he countered, attempting to reel her back in.
She placed her palms firmly against his chest and refused his lips. “I believe you’re trying to seduce me.”
The Saint Who Stole My Heart: A Regency Rogues Novel Page 22