“He’s a smoky sort of fellow,” Malcolm went on. “Don’t see him anywhere, suddenly see him everywhere. Discourage him if you can, Annie. But do it discreetly. Fellow’s got the regent’s ear.”
“I will try,” Anne agreed, and prayed she would not see him and prayed she would.
Two days ago Jack had stood behind her and touched her hair and made her uncomfortably aware of his size and strength and masculinity. He played havoc with her emotions. She knew he’d trailed her to the Home, hoping to catch her in some criminal assignation, just as she knew his attention to her stemmed from suspicion. He was simply doing his job, and yet when he’d gathered her hair and looked into her eyes, she’d thought she’d seen something elemental there. Something akin to the fire she’d felt in Lady Cotton’s bedchamber.
What was she thinking? She had seduced him from his purpose that night; he would certainly have done the same, using her attraction to him to his benefit. He could hardly fail to note it, she thought, or how susceptible she was to him.
She wanted what he promised. She wanted to be gathered in his arms and lose herself in his passion—
“Oh, bloody hell,” Malcolm suddenly exclaimed. “Clean forgot to tell you. Came upon Julia Knapp the other day. She sends her love.”
Anne went utterly still. Julia Knapp had been Matthew’s first love—his true love. As far as Anne knew, Julia had never married, remaining faithful to the man who’d abandoned her. Not that she’d ever faulted Matthew … or Anne.
She’d sent Anne a letter upon reading the announcement of her engagement. The heart, Julia Knapp had written, could not be ruled. If Matthew loved her, Anne could not be anything short of wonderful, and Julia wished them every joy.
Her subsequent spinsterhood had been like daggers in Anne’s heart. But perhaps, if Julia had come to town now, she’d decided to reenter the marriage mart, Anne thought hopefully. If Julia had decided to pursue her own happiness, might not she do the same? A little surge of hope sped through Anne.
“Is she in town for the season?” Anne asked.
“Say, what? Julia Knapp you mean?” Malcolm said, scrunching up his face. “Couldn’t say. Didn’t ask. Can’t think why she would be. Something of an ape-leader by now, I’d say.”
“Oh, Malcolm. She’s only a few years older than me.”
“Exactly,” said Malcolm, “and you’re five years a widow.”
No wonder Sophia had such a charitable nature, Anne thought sardonically. She came by it honestly.
Malcolm upended a glass of port into his mouth, placed the glass on the floor, and set his hands on his knees. With a grunt he heaved himself upward and peered around the salon until he spied one of his cronies. “I really should make the rounds, Anne. Remember to dissuade this Seward chap from bothering Sophie. Where is the chit, anyway?” And with that, he left Anne alone on the purple ottoman.
She stayed a few minutes longer but, as always, reminders of the past had sent little worms of tension crawling along beneath her skin. She wished she could quit this place, find a refuge from Julia Knapp and from Jack Seward. But in the five years since her widowhood she’d found only one place where guilt did not follow, and Jack Seward had seen that that refuge was taken from her.
She didn’t dare go out on the roofs. He was having her watched too closely. She rose to her feet. Where had Sophia gone? Three quarters of an hour had passed since she’d wandered off on Lord Strand’s arm.
She trusted Sophia’s good sense less than that of her uncle’s spaniel—who was presently in season. She quit the salon, heading down a corridor for the more remote and private rooms.
“Mrs. Wilder?”
His voice caressed her ear like silken sandpaper. Not until she recognized her relief did she realize how much she’d feared Sophia had been with him.
She turned and found him standing close beside her. His harsh, scarred face needed no mask. Who could read anything behind such unassailable politeness?
She tried to untangle her emotions. Apprehension, relief, and gladness all swirled together, confusing what should be a clear, single note of fear. But fear, she’d lately realized, had its own savage seduction.
Jack angled his head, trying to gauge Anne’s expression. He’d been speaking with Lady Dibbs when he’d seen her disappear into this unfrequented passage. He’d told himself to ignore her, to stay and attend the rapacious Lady Dibbs.
But Anne had looked worried. He’d held to his resolve for five minutes before yielding to the impulse that had sent him after her.
“Colonel Seward,” she greeted him.
Possibly he might believe in the relief conveyed by the smoothing of her brow, but the fleeting welcome that softened her voluptuary’s mouth—certainly that must be a trick of light and imagination.
“I was just admiring Lord Liverpool’s art collection,” she said.
“May I escort you?”
She would preen now, he thought, like any handsome woman would upon suspecting a gentleman had abandoned another woman to pursue her. It was not vanity that caused him to entertain the idea. He knew his charms and understood that the greater part of them could be attributed to his being accessible and yet still taboo.
She did not preen.
She hesitated, as if unsure of what manners demanded. He could have told her. She should accept his offer. He was her superior, in gender, age, and rank, and she was no one, suffered here only by virtue of a dead man’s wedding ring. But the thought of her accepting his company to appease etiquette pricked and this, in turn, confused him.
He waited, not helping her, memorizing the severe beauty and exotic angles of her face, knowing he would judge all future women against its watermark.
“I would not want to keep you from more agreeable company and I do not mind my own,” she finally murmured.
“Is there more agreeable company?” he replied. “Perhaps as agreeable, but then as I have learned never to measure one pleasure against another, I couldn’t say.”
She smiled but it was just a social expression. “Prettily said, sir. I thank you and accept.”
He held out his arm and she rested her hand on his forearm, so lightly he could barely feel her touch. He understood his mistake. Manners might have led her to accept his company, but they were not so good she could mask her aversion to physical contact with him.
Well, what could he expect after having taken extraordinary familiarity with her person just a few days before? That welcome smile—how right he’d been to call it imagination, he thought, and calmly drew her forth.
“Have you ever been here?” he asked after a long pause.
“Yes.” She glanced at him. “A long time ago. Soon after my marriage.”
“Surely it could not have been so very long ago. You are a young woman,” he said gently.
Darkness moved beneath her smooth, surface calm.
“As years, perhaps not so great a number. But as minutes, a vast record, indeed,” she murmured, and then, starting forward at a sedate pace, she said, “Forgive me for being tiresomely philosophic.”
He studied her in surprise. Her gaze remained on him, a touch rueful, much overburdened, and suddenly he wanted to relieve her of those burdens, to prompt her tender mouth into smiles.
The concept fascinated him even as he recognized it as farcical. Bewildered, it was he who broke away from the silent exchange. He lifted his head, scowling unseeingly at an alabaster vase balanced on a marble pedestal.
“It does not please you?” Though Anne’s query was polite, her gaze continued searching the hall—looking for some excuse to escape his company, he thought soberly.
“No, it does,” he replied dully. “It’s one of a pair but one of them was broken in transit.”
“How sad!”
“Yes,” he murmured, watching her gaze fluttering about the empty corridor. “I told Thomas they were too fragile for transport.”
“You were with Lord Elgin?” she asked, her gaze finally settling on h
is face.
“Yes.” He did not elaborate by telling her he’d been in Greece arranging Napoleon’s ignominious defeat at Alexandria.
“I should like to visit Greece.” She said it unwillingly, as if manners forced her to trade conversation with him.
“You might have posed for one of their statues.”
Her laughter was sudden, rare, and delicious, a sound he wanted to hear again. “And which statue might that be, Colonel?”
Persephone. Wed to darkness, yearning for the light. “Oh, any,” he said. “You have a classic countenance.”
Her eyes widened and she looked away.
“I should not have been so bold,” he said, his halt enforcing her own. “Forgive my manners.”
He cursed his clumsiness. Her cheeks wore a heated stain and she refused to turn back to him. She wanted free of him. It had been clear from the beginning. He could ignore her aversion no longer. Gently he disengaged her gloved hand from his sleeve—far too easy a task—and bowed.
“Mrs. Wilder, forgive me. Clearly your tour was intended to be a solitary one and I have interfered. I bid you good night.”
Anne stared. She’d had to keep reminding herself to look for Sophia when all she wanted was to enjoy his company even though she could not find a way to reconcile her pleasure with her fear of him.
“You misunderstand my lack of composure, Colonel,” she said impulsively. “I trust you will keep my confidence, sir, when I tell you that I do not regret your company but rather the absence of another’s. Only because I fear the company she keeps. Sophia is gone an hour and I cannot find her.”
He studied her for a moment. “Perhaps I can assist you in discovering her whereabouts?”
“I would appreciate that, Colonel.”
Gravely he again offered her his arm, and now, his stride purposeful, he guided her through a dizzying array of corridors and halls, anterooms and chambers.
Though they searched rapidly, it took them another quarter hour before Anne heard Sophia’s laughter coming from behind a closed door. She steeled herself to whatever spectacle might meet her eye.
Colonel Seward smiled down at her. “It will come right. I promise,” he said softly, and she believed him. And in the midst of her anxiety she saw him clearly, understood his innate tact. He was a gentleman.
How odd to discover that Whitehall’s Hound, a man who did “terrible things,” had so much delicacy and comportment. Yet she did not doubt that he’d full well earned his sobriquet as Devil Jack.
For a moment, the sexual memory that needed only the smallest opportunity to reawaken was replaced by a feeling of kinship … of something like friendship. She’d never had a masculine friend before.
And she didn’t have one now, she reminded herself sternly. She played at charades with this dangerous man. She could not afford to forget it.
Jack pushed the door open. Four men—Lord Vedder, Lord Strand, and two youngsters Anne did not know—sat around a baize-clad table, Sophia at the head.
The unchecked wicks of sputtering tapers sent black wreaths of smoke into the heavy, warm air. Coins glinted on the wine-speckled table linen. A bracelet topped an untidy pile of coins.
Sophia saw her first. Immediately a stubborn set hardened her face, defiance flashed in her eyes. Deliberately she turned her shoulder to Anne.
Anne ignored her, trying to estimate the harm to Sophia’s reputation. It was not as bad as she’d expected. Many women gambled. True, not as young as Sophia and not in the sole company of gentlemen, but Anne would take whatever comfort she could.
“Sophia—” she started to say.
“Who will come to my aid?” Sophia declared. “Surely my kiss is worth the sum of one hand’s stakes?”
Dear God, Anne thought faintly. The girl was utterly ruined.
“I’ll play,” Jack said.
Anne’s head snapped around. He could not … He’d seemed … She was every kind of a fool. She moved forward and he caught her arm. Casually, with an easy motion that a viewer would have mistaken as her own, he turned her so that her back was to the table.
“A moment, gentlemen,” he said. “Mrs. Wilder and I have our own small wager to settle.” He plucked the hand carrying her silk fan from her side and raised it. His long fingers worked over her own stiff ones, prying the fan open between them.
“You will give them a story on which to dine for a fortnight if you seize your charge and drag her from the room,” he said quietly. His mouth was all smiles, his eyes intense.
“She doesn’t look particularly draggable,” she shot back.
“Nonetheless,” he said, “you must trust me in this as you trusted me with the reason for your traveling these halls. Please, Mrs. Wilder.”
She did trust him. The very quality that demanded she fear him made it impossible for her to do anything but trust him. Once he set himself to a task, he would not fail.
“Affect disinterest,” he said, bending his head as though studying the fan. “Absolute, yawning disinterest.”
“Impossible.”
For an instant the smile touched his gray eyes. “For Miss Sophia’s sake at least try for insouciance.” He released her hand and straightened. “You are correct, Mrs. Wilder,” he stated clearly. “The scene is definitely in Hogarth’s mode.”
He approached the table and indicated an empty chair. “Miss Sophia, gentlemen, may I?”
Vedder opened his mouth but before he could speak Strand, his gaze amused, said, “Of course, Colonel.”
“Thank you.” He took his seat, crossing one leg over the other.
“I doubt you’ve the blunt to play this table, Seward,” Vedder said, his gaze raking Seward’s attire.
For the first time, Anne found herself looking at Seward’s clothes rather than Seward. Though well cut, they bore no ornamentation, nor did they exaggerate the male figure, a hallmark of the consummate tailor’s creation. Seward dressed soberly, as would a man of limited means.
“I’ll voucher Colonel Seward,” Strand drawled. “Though I won’t stay in the play to let him estrange me from my money. I fold.”
“You are too generous, Strand,” Seward said.
“I only seek to disprove Mrs. Wilder’s unhappy opinion of my maturity. What say you, madam? Is not refusing the pleasure of a wager a mark of maturity? Damme, I’ll bet it is.” The gentlemen burst into laughter but Anne would not be distracted from Seward’s actions.
“Now, Miss Sophia,” Strand said, “would you shuffle?”
The play went slowly. Each bet and raise caused Anne’s pulse to jump. Sophia, a dazzling smile pasted on her face, appeared completely unaffected. Only the hectic color flagging her cheeks evinced that she’d begun to realize the gravity of her situation.
More and more coins covered the table. With each card, more sweat beaded the younger men’s brows. They splashed wine down their throats, dividing nervous glances between Lord Vedder’s sneering visage and Colonel Seward’s cool, politely interested mien. Finally one, then the other of the pair dropped from the game.
It did not take much longer for play to end. Vedder assumed Jack’s raise in answer to an audacious bet was a bluff. He assumed wrongly.
Jack’s hand won easily. Vedder had no recourse but to accept the defeat with as much dignity as possible. And that was scant enough, Anne noted. He shoved himself back from the table.
Wordlessly Jack pushed the coins across the table to a now white-faced Sophia. The two youngsters snickered from their position near the sideboard.
With his peculiar rigid grace, Jack rose from his seat and approached Sophia. She gazed up at him.
He would kiss her now, Anne thought helplessly, and she would be ruined. Even if Jack did not claim his kiss, the others would only tell how Sophia had made the offer but had been refused. Then not only would her reputation be destroyed, but she would be ridiculed.
Poor Sophia, thought Anne. Poor, wretched, confused little beast. But beneath her sympathy another emotion rasped
her conscious thoughts, clamoring for expression.
Sophia would feel Jack’s kiss, the pressure of lips Anne all too clearly recalled. Sophia would know their warmth and texture … Sophia.
“Miss Sophia, may I have my kiss?” Jack withdrew a handkerchief from his vest pocket and with an elegant bow presented it to Sophia. His aplomb was absolute; not a flicker indicated he’d ever any other notion than this.
Sophia gazed at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. Gratitude surged through Anne and the breath she’d held released itself in a soundless rush.
Take the handkerchief, Sophia! she implored silently, and slowly, as if in a dream, Sophia secured the snowy linen and brushed a gentle kiss on its length. Smiling, Jack retrieved the scrap from Sophia’s limp hand.
“I will treasure this, Miss Sophia. Lord Strand, too, I believe, has one of these sweet mementos from another lady.”
“Aye,” Strand drawled. “A lady of incredible refinement and impeccable taste.”
“Seems a bold gesture,” one of the youngsters remarked.
“Don’t let anyone hear you say that, m’lad,” Strand said with a laugh. “Should my lady ever hear her gesture had been misconstrued, I’ve no doubt she’d react very poorly. As would her husband. A fine duelist.”
“I would not like to think anyone would misconstrue a lady’s whim,” Seward said. The gaze he turned on the lads was as harmless yet potentially dangerous as an unsheathed blade.
“Of course not!” one avowed quickly.
“Only the veriest blackguard would misread a lady’s intent,” the other added sententiously.
With a sigh, Strand hefted himself to his feet. “I believe the entertainment for the evening is at an end, sirs. Shall we find ourselves some nourishment?”
The two younger men agreed immediately, exiting the room hard on Lord Strand’s heels. Vedder followed them out, inclining his head only as he passed Anne. “Your servant.”
Sophia, color returning to her face, bit hard upon her lip and rose from the table. “Thank you, Colonel. I am in your debt.”
“Miss Sophia, you owe me no more than your good opinion,” he said, looking past her to where Anne stood motionless, her eyes brilliant and burning, like stars in a midnight sky.
All Through the Night Page 8