by Hazel Hunter
“I am willing to have my mind changed,” Jennet told him.
“There is no time for this,” he said against her hair as he clamped his hands around her waist, as if he meant to push her away. “I know you must despise me for the work I do.”
“You said yourself that we must wait until those men enter the library.” She pressed herself against him. “And I do not despise you. Before he died, my father did the same,” she said, startling him. “I cannot tell you how many men he killed while fighting for England, but I wager there were many. My mother told me that he was an expert marksman with any weapon, and he even taught her how to be a crack shot. Why did you keep all this from me?”
“I never wished you to know the truth.” He drew back, his eyes filled with torment. “I wanted you to see me as the man you loved.”
“Except for this hair dye, you do look remarkably similar to him.” She pressed her lips to his jaw. “Perhaps I should examine more of you to be sure.”
Greystone uttered a muffled groan. “Jenny, please.”
“Or I could simply kiss you breathless and then ravish you, as you did to me in the gardens and the hot house,” Jennet suggested, nudging him back to the bench by the wash stand. “Well, I could not carry you off–”
He covered her mouth with his, stroking her lips apart with his tongue to give her a deep, hungry kiss as she pushed him down to sit on the cushion. Straddling his lap felt as natural as reaching down to release his straining manhood from his trousers. His hands took hold of her waist again, lifting her as he guided his cock between her thighs. When she felt him nudge her quim, she sank down slowly, taking him inside her.
“Ah.” Tucking her knees on either side of his hips, and bracing herself with her hands on his shoulders, Jennet engulfed his thick girth. She glanced down as his hands unfastened the shirt and unlaced her soft stays until he freed her aching breasts. “You have no respect for my modesty, sir.”
“My cock is so deep inside you, Jenny, I can feel you melting around me like hot honey,” Greystone said softly as he put his hands on her mounds, and slowly rubbed them. “I believe I have obliterated your modesty.”
“Good.” She smiled at him. “It has been growing tiresome.”
His touch felt so wonderful she could hardly breathe, and then he brought his mouth to her, and began kissing and licking and sucking at her. Jennet lifted herself from him, and then came down, stroking him with her softness as he ravished her nipples. One of his long, lovely hands stroked down her spine, and then cupped and squeezed the curve of her bottom, making her gasp with excitement.
“You should not be touching that, you wicked man, nor kissing my breasts,” she pretended to scold him. “It is simply not done.”
“Had we time enough, I would take you out to that bed and strip you naked,” Greystone said, his voice deep and rough now. “I would map every inch of you with my hands. And my mouth. And my cock.”
“You intrigue me now.” From some hints in novels she had read, Jennet had long suspected there could be other ways to make love. “You wish to kiss other parts of me, perhaps?”
“I have dreamed of it,” he assured her, and rubbed his thumb across her lips. “And imagined you doing the same to me. So many dark nights I have lain alone in my bed, stroking my cock with my hand, and wondering if you would dare do so with your mouth. How it would look, to behold you suckling me.”
“That is very shocking, my lord.” She pouted for a moment, and then smiled. “I think I should like to try, but only if you will do the same to me.”
“I knew it would be like this with you,” Greystone muttered, almost as if he were angry. “I could see the passion waiting to awaken in you. I could feel it every time I touched you.”
She looked into his eyes. “Then why did you leave me to go and kill people, you idiot?”
A loud crash came from the floor below, and they both went still. Jennet held her breath as she listened for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but none came.
“I fear we must be quick now,” she murmured against his ear.
“Hold onto me.” He stood, pressing her to him so that their bodies remained joined, and then lowered her onto her back on the bench.
Jennet wrapped her legs around his hips as he began to thrust into her, his shaft driving deep and hard into her clenching slickness. Greystone never looked away from her face, and when he saw her press her lips together he clamped a hand over her mouth to help her silence her cries. She writhed under him, helpless now as a rush of sensations tossed her higher and higher with each plunge of his hips. He felt her teeth against his palm and gripped her breast with his other hand, tugging at her nipple until she arched up and then shook as her terrible need became an incandescent ecstasy.
Greystone muttered something dark and desirous as he plowed through her pleasure and found his own. He thrust one last time, his cock pumping again and again as he filled her with his seed. He braced an arm over her as he held her skewered, her mouth panting and her skin flushed rosy, and kissed her with the delicate tenderness of a hopeful swain before disengaging their bodies. He sat on the floor by the bench, his head resting against her hip.
“You have undone me, Liam.” Jennet brushed the damp hair back from his face.
He caught her hand, and kissed her palm. “That night at the harvest dance, when you stood by the window to eavesdrop,” he said as he laced his fingers through hers. “Do you remember it?”
“I can hardly forget.” She wished she could go back to that night. She would have eloped with him on the spot. “Why do you think on it?”
“I saw you there before I came out of the hall. The quiet child I had met in church had grown into the most striking woman I had ever seen.” He turned to regard her, his eyes filled with emotion. “I can still see you, grown tall and shapely. Your body seemed as refined and elegant as if you had been sculpted from sunlit marble. You wore no jewelry or hair adornments, only a bronze velvet ribbon around your neck.”
“Catherine said it would disguise my goose neck.” She smiled, remembering. “She always wore them in those days, before they became unfashionable.”
“You might have dressed as the other ladies had, in a pastel dress with a satin sash. Instead you wore dark green velvet, like some goddess of the garden.” Greystone shifted so he loomed over her, and cradled her face between his hands. “I looked into your eyes, as pure and new as ever the world is at spring, and I lost all sense of myself. From that night on there could be no more loneliness for me. My world became us, together. Always.”
Jennet felt confused by the intensity of his words. Was he trying to apologize again for leaving her? She would not revisit that subject, not now.
“We must live through this night so we can be as you envisioned us,” she told him.
The pleasure emptied out of his eyes. “We can never be that.”
“We were just now.” Jennet pushed herself upright. “Surely you can give up this life as an assassin. It is not who you are.”
“The quickest way to get out of the hall unseen is by the staircase tower,” Greystone told her as he rose and went to the clothespress and removed a shirt. He quickly donned it and went back to his cache of weapons. “Go down the hall to the very end, turn right, and then left through the door to the stairs.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded as she fastened her soft stays and his shirt.
“Your escape. I will lure them from the house while you escape.” He handed her a dagger and a small pistol, pressing them into her hands when she wouldn’t take them. “When you reach the bottom of the stairs, walk straight ahead. The door there leads to the outside.”
Jennet shook her head. “You must come with me. Liam.”
“I must do my work now, and you cannot be part of that,” he told her. “Stay out of sight as you make your way to the road; they may have men out patrolling the grounds.” He gave her a hard, brief kiss and then strode out.
Chapt
er 17
Ruban upended the desk where Pickering had died, sending the drawers and their contents flying. Kicking a boot through the scattered papers did not provide any consolation. Whatever the English agent had stolen from the officer’s tent back in France remained hidden somewhere inside the house, or concealed on the Raven himself.
Staring at the puddle of blood Pickering had left behind made Ruban even more furious. He should have died after being questioned, not before. If he had been the Raven, then finding whatever he had spirited back to England would be almost impossible.
Ruban knelt and began sifting through the detritus, most of which dated back a century. Beneath a pile of receipts lay a small black notebook stamped in gold with Pickering’s initials. Opening it revealed pages of spidery writing, all in English, that detailed times, dates and remote locations across England. A single word had been noted at the end of each entry: Dispatches. Ledger. Weapons. Informant.
Already familiar with such records, Ruban now knew that Arthur Pickering had been an important courier for the English war effort. He would be sent to retrieve acquisitions too sensitive or dangerous to risk transporting openly. Bonaparte had a network of the same that he used to send and receive messages across France.
“He was not the Raven.” Ruban felt relieved and dismayed, for that meant the assassin was still at large.
The last entry in the notebook corresponded with the time, date and location of Pickering’s masquerade tonight. Beneath it he had written a single, damning word.
Cipher.
Now the reason the traitor at the chateau had killed himself became only too clear. The man had somehow stolen the cipher used by the Emperor’s officers, and passed it on to the Raven. All troop movements, battle plans, and every other effort vital to the French war effort were written in code that could only be decrypted by one cipher. The Raven would have to bring it to England, where it could be distributed by Wellington to all of his officers in the field. Once they had it, they would be able to read any communique they captured, or use it to send false messages to their enemy.
To prevent that, the only solution would be to change the cipher, Ruban thought. Yet with the French forces fighting in so many locations at present that would take weeks. In the meantime, the English could cause irreparable harm; perhaps even turn the tide of the war against Bonaparte.
If Pickering had not been the Raven, then he had come here to meet the assassin and take possession of the cipher. Which meant another man at the ball had come for that purpose. He would be someone who did not live in the village, but only came to visit infrequently, perhaps for the first time in many years.
Ruban realized who that was, and swore.
Chapter 18
He had given her the weapons, Jennet thought as she made her way out to the hall, where she stood listening before she approached the stairs. He had only himself to blame if she shot him—which she would, if she found him before the French agents did.
Am I a simpleton, that I keep repeating the same mistake over and over?
She tucked the dagger in the lacings of her stays—she had no other place to put it—but kept the pistol in her hand as she took the stairs one at a time. She could hear voices now coming from the kitchens, angry voices arguing in French. One belonged to the brute who had ordered the men to put her in the library, but the other sounded strangely high-pitched and shrill, like that of a child having a tantrum.
Jennet peeked into the dining room to make sure it was empty before she approached the closed door to the kitchens.
“Why did you kill Pickering?” the childish voice demanded in French. “Your orders were to keep him alive, you piece of shit.”
Not a child, but a woman, Jennet realized. From the ease with which she cursed she must be a Frenchwoman. But if that were the case, why did her voice make all the hair on Jennet’s nape stand on end?
“He put de documents into de fire,” the brute said sullenly. “Jacques tried to stop him.”
“Those documents are the deeds to the house, imbecile,” the woman snapped. “He was the courier, which is why he wanted you to kill him before I arrived. He knew too much to risk being interrogated. That is how fucking clever he was. Where is Greystone?”
“We lock him and de girl in de cache room,” the man said.
“At least you did that much right.” The woman said something else in a lower voice.
“Here?” the brute asked, as if surprised.
“Here.” Dishes clattered as if dropping to the floor. “I need it. Give it to me, now.”
Realizing they might come out to try and access the hidden library, Jennet hurried back out into the hall. More voices drew near from the opposite direction, and she looked around quickly before she stepped into a coat closet and pulled the door almost shut. Through the crack she watched as the three masked agents came from the reception room and went toward the kitchens. In another moment they would come out and discover the jammed lock. Did she remain hidden, or try to run? She still didn’t know where Greystone was.
Then she saw him, walking straight for the dining room, and wondered if now she would even get a chance to kill him before the French did.
Now who is the child having a tantrum? Her sensibility drawled. You have fallen in love again with the scoundrel. Do something before he walks into that nest of vipers.
As soon as Greystone came within reach of the coat closet Jennet opened the door, seized his arm and dragged him inside with her. He clamped his hand around her throat so severely she could not breathe or move, but just as suddenly he released her, and eased the door shut. Then he pulled her into his arms, and held her for the space of a breath before drawing back.
“I told you to get out of the house,” he muttered, cradling her face between his hands. “You were supposed to escape this madness.”
“The villains are in the kitchens,” she whispered back. “I heard them quarreling. One is a woman, and she seems to have charge of the others. She used very coarse language while admonishing them for killing Mr. Pickering. I do not know what they are doing now, but it involves breaking dishes.”
“A woman.” He sounded as if she had punched him in the face again. “No, you must be mistaken. Ruban is a Frenchman.”
“It does not matter who or what this Ruban is. I will not leave you here to be murdered like Mr. Pickering.” She thought for a moment. “There are two of us, and at least four of them. We must employ a ruse to reduce their numbers. I will go back upstairs and scream, and that should draw out at least two of them. Then you can surprise the others–”
Greystone put his mouth over hers, muffling the rest of what she meant to say. He kissed her with singular absorption, not as he had in the garden or the bed chamber, but in the manner she imagined he would before the altar, when they married.
He broke off the kiss to tuck her face against his shoulder, his hand stroking her neck. “You are the most stubborn woman alive,” he said as he pressed his cheek to her hair. “I wish to keep you that way.”
“Then allow me to be your partner now,” Jennet said. “We have to do something before they find us.”
“I love you.” He pressed a kiss to her head. “I have since the second time I saw you. I wish I could say the first, but that would be unseemly as well as untrue. I tried to forget you, but I could not. I carried you with me everywhere I went.”
“You are being ridiculous.” She held onto him as a slight dizziness came over her. “We can talk about the past later. The time to act is now.”
“I must give you something for sake-keeping.” Greystone pressed his thumb under her jaw. “It is the reason they killed Pickering. Give it to the magistrate, and tell him it is to be taken to London, and delivered to the Secretary at War. It must be placed in his hands directly. You must not fail in this. Tell me that you do not hate me.”
“I love you.” Jennet felt his thumb pressing harder now, and realized what he meant to do. As her head spun wildly she tried to
push him away. “No, Liam. Please.”
“Forgive me, Jenny,” Greystone said as he pinned her against the side of the closet.
When Jennet went limp Greystone caught her and lowered her to the floor of the closet. Although he knew he had used only enough pressure to render her unconscious, he kept his hand on her neck. Feeling the throb of her pulse remain steady strengthened his resolve. He covered all but her face with coats and then turned her head away from the door before he stepped out.
The sounds drifting from the kitchens no longer sounded like voices; instead he heard a soft keening mixed with low, harsh grunts. Drawing his daggers, he approached the entry to the dining room and stood to one side to scan the room, which appeared empty. The door to the kitchens stood partly open, and through it he could see one of the brutes pinning a small, writhing form down on a work table as he hunched and jerked—and what he was doing was unmistakable.
Greystone felt sickened as he crossed the room, changing the angle of his advance so that he stayed out of the Frenchman’s sight. Only when he saw the child had Catherine Tindall’s face did he forget all of his training to rush through the door and jerk the brute away from her.
“Run,” he told Jennet’s friend as he turned on the agent, his daggers ready. “You think you can treat a lady like a whore, you animal?”
The Frenchman smirked. “Ah, but mon ami, she is my whore.”
Something grabbed Greystone’s leg from behind and pulled it out from under him, sending him sprawling. As he flipped over, Catherine planted her boot on his neck, and pointed a small pistol at his face.
“Hello, William,” she said, using one hand to tug up and fasten the man’s breeches she wore. “Rather rude of you to interrupt us, but I suppose it looked rather bad. Jean-Pierre likes it rough, you see. Then again, so do I.”