by The Rogue
The wall came up against Jane’s back and she was grateful for its pressure molding her more closely to Ethan’s hard, hungry body. His knee pressed between her thighs, pinning her with her own skirts to the wall. She gladly rode his hard thigh astride, the pressure of it jolting through her. Soon she would sink into him, for she was dissolving in his heat. Her bosom was pressed hard to his chest—she ached, needed to rub away the ache—she writhed against him.
He made an animal sound at her motion. His hand left her neck to wrap around her breast—yes, that was what she wanted, his touch, his rough demanding caress, his fingertips plucking at her nipple through her bodice. No, she wanted him closer, touching her, she wanted her breast to be as bare as her cheek, to feel the heat of his palm, the coarse texture of his thumb, the hot, wet suction of his mouth—
What am I doing?
Cold reality rushed through Jane. Ethan Damont had his tongue in her mouth and his hand on her bodice in her aunt Lottie’s second-best parlor in the middle of the afternoon.
Jane placed both hands on his shoulders and shoved with all her strength. Mr. Damont went staggering backward, his eyes wide with surprise. He caught himself instantly and straightened, his chest heaving. She was breathing hard herself, as if she’d run a race when she’d never taken a step.
Actually, she’d taken a rather large, unwise, regrettable step . . . one she was quite sure she couldn’t take back. “I—I cannot—I do not—” Her heart wouldn’t stop racing. Her body ached. All she wanted was his touch. All she wanted was to find a dark room and submit to his every caress. She scarcely recognized herself.
“I fear I no longer know who I am,” she said quietly.
Her admission went through Ethan like a shot, overpowering his own anger and ardor. The note of loss and confusion in her voice—he had done this to her. He had wanted to break her, he realized. He’d wanted to batter down her barriers.
He’d wanted to win.
Looking at her standing there, breathless, her priceless composure in pieces about her feet, her hands visibly trembling, he felt no victory, only shame.
He passed one hand over his face. “Janet, I’m—”
“Please do not address me so.” Her demand was quiet this time, soft and defeated. Her tone made his chest ache.
He exhaled, then bowed slightly. “My deepest apologies, my lady,” he said formally, without a trace of mockery. He straightened. “I fear I have overstayed my welcome. Please excuse me.”
She nodded graciously but silently, gazing somewhere just over his right shoulder. Ethan left the parlor feeling as though he had viciously kicked Zeus.
Simms was standing in the front hall. “His lordship has been expecting you, sir.” Although the butler must have known that Ethan had been alone in the parlor with Lady Jane, the man gazed at him without comment.
As, of course, any butler should. Only Jeeves felt it necessary to criticize him. Right now, Ethan rather felt he deserved a good dressing-down. Unfortunately, there was no one to condemn him.
No one but himself, that is.
Lord Maywell lounged in his chair like a prince on a throne. Ethan had to admit that the man had a certain air about him. In fact, he reminded Ethan of his own father—watchful and exacting. The only difference was, he would never have seen that light of assessing approval from the eyes of his father.
Ethan reminded himself to be wary. If Lord Maywell was, indeed, some sort of espionage mastermind, then it wouldn’t do to underestimate the man. Just because someone was a lord didn’t mean he was necessarily useless. Just look at Etheridge.
So Ethan assumed a careless air of his own, lounging in his own chair as if he were still the detached gambler with no ties and no loyalties. It was a comfortable and familiar skin to live in.
Now that he was out of the environment of the club, he was beginning to forget that brief sensation of belonging. One afternoon did not a family bond create, after all.
“Tell me something, Damont—where do you stand on this issue of pulling British troops out of the Americas?”
Ethan twirled his unlit cheroot in his fingers. After spending time wrapped in the endless haze of smoke that surrounded Maywell, he was beginning to lose his taste for the things. He stared at the ceiling. “America . . . America . . .” He shrugged. “Isn’t that where the tobacco comes from?”
Maywell narrowed his eyes. “You have no opinion on the American war?”
Ethan waved his cheroot at his lordship. “Too bloody right I do! I say it’s time to end that bloody mess and get the price of tobacco back down!”
Maywell chuckled at that. “I’ll bring that up at the next meeting of the House of Lords. Maybe that’ll light a fire under some of those old sticks.” He drew on his cheroot, making the tip glow in the dim room.
Ethan wondered if he was supposed to laugh at that, or if Maywell even recognized his own pun. Abruptly, he found himself wearying of the cat-and-mouse wordplay between them. He wasn’t going to play.
“I have to admit, my lord, that I don’t give a monkey’s arse about the war, or Napoleon, or the Americas. Not only do I have no opinion, but I don’t really want to hear your opinion either.” He leaned back, eyeing his host.
Maywell eyed him narrowly. “You don’t care at all? You have no patriotic passion? No fervor for the preservation of Mother England and the status quo?”
Ethan spread his hands. “What has the status quo ever done for me?”
The fact that it was the truth did nothing to ease how hollow it sounded in Ethan’s own ears. If this was no pose, if this was no act . . . then he must truly be the most worthless, parasitical lout that ever walked the earth. He was beginning to think Etheridge was right about him all along.
“Hmm. Interesting.” Maywell blew out another cloud of smoke, obscuring his face except for those glinting eyes. “Let us change the subject then, shall we? Tell me, have you ever frequented one of the bordellos located near Westminster?”
Ethan knew there were some “shops” near the palace that sold more than cravats and Chinese tea. He shook his head. “I’ve always favored Mrs. Blythe’s establishment, myself.”
Maywell grunted. “That’s not one of mine.”
“Yours, my lord? Do you mean one of your favorites?”
Maywell pursed his lips. “I mean, I don’t own that one.”
Oh-ho. Ethan’s ears pricked, although he was careful not to show it. “I had no idea you were in the business, my lord.” The man had five daughters, for God’s sake! “Have you found it profitable?”
Maywell grunted. “Financially they have yet to truly pay out, but otherwise . . .” He spread both hands, his smug expression implying some great profit other than monetary.
As in . . . what? Surely the man didn’t find it spiritually rewarding? Ethan decided to bite. “What other sort of profit is there?”
“Information.” Maywell pointed at Ethan with his lit cheroot. “The only real power in the world lies in controlling information. He who knows the most, wins.”
Ethan could not hold back a disbelieving snort. “So this is a scholarly pursuit? Do you have naked ladybirds reading aloud to their clients?”
Maywell smirked. “You’d be surprised what some of these gentlemen pay for.”
Ethan thought back to his own history of energetic sexual exploration. “I sincerely doubt I would be.” He smiled. “So if the information is not being disseminated by the ladies, then it is being collected. Am I correct?”
Maywell nodded smugly. “And who do you think is spouting all this pillow talk?”
Westminster . . . the center of the British government. The two Houses of Parliament, the Guard, the Home Office, which ran national security and the war effort—
“I say,” Ethan breathed. “That’s brilliant.” It was, in an entirely evil way. All those overworked, frazzled officials—a clever, sympathetic woman could get a great deal out of such men.
Careful! You’re not supposed to know Maywe
ll’s a traitor!
Ethan examined his nails. “So you are a blackmailer, then?”
That even surprised Maywell. His lordship started and went rather pink with indignation. “I am not a blackmailer!”
“So then why? What do you need all this information for?”
Maywell said nothing for a moment. Then he leaned forward and placed his folded hands in the precise center of his desk blotter. “Damont, you are a man of many talents. You have experience in certain aspects of the world that I do not. You are clever and clear-sighted, unclouded by soggy sentiment.”
“Thank you,” Ethan drawled. “I think.”
“I could use a man like you, Damont.”
Oh, no. Here it came, despite his efforts. In fact, it seemed almost as if his declaration of apathy had sealed Maywell’s opinion of him—in precisely the opposite way Ethan had intended.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Ethan said uneasily.
Maywell smiled, a toothy predator’s grin. “I think you do. You came to me, don’t you recall? Why do you think that was? Do you think it was mere happenstance that you came to my house the evening of the ball?”
Ethan shrugged. “I had my reasons.”
Maywell smiled slightly. “As well I know. Luckily, all that your friends from the Liar’s Club found were the records of a mission I have little faith in anyway.”
Maywell knew. Ethan went cold. Nevertheless, he kept his expression unconcerned. Never had he needed his poker face more. “What friends? I don’t frequent the Liar’s Club.”
Maywell steepled his fingers before him. It reminded Ethan eerily of Dalton Montmorency, although one could not imagine two men more different in make and manner.
“Mr. Damont, I have no wish to put you on the spot. Let me tell you all about your friends.” He raised one finger. “One, they operate from behind the smokescreen of a gentlemen’s club. Two, they recruit from all levels of Society, for which I commend them. Three, they know about me, as I know about them.”
Ethan swallowed. Maywell definitely looked like the Chimera to him. On one hand, he’d found out what the Liars wanted to know. On the other, he was probably going to die before he got to tell them. “A pretty tale,” he said, striving to keep his tone mild. “I only wish I knew what you were talking about.”
Maywell nodded. “You may continue to pretend if it helps you to do so. I wouldn’t want you to betray your comrades—”
Something must have slipped past Ethan’s guard and crossed his expression, for Maywell’s eyes narrowed.
“Ah. They are not your comrades yet, then. Interesting. Could it be that I have found a man who does not exhibit the loyalty of a hound to his master? If you do not love your master . . . then he must keep you on a very tight leash.” Maywell gave Ethan a kind smile. “I could cut that leash for you.”
Ethan remained as still as possible. He’d underestimated Lord Maywell, he could see that now. Dalton had done so as well. Maywell’s offer made every rebellious strand of Ethan’s personality tighten with longing. He hated being dangled on a string, no matter for what cause he was hung.
“I have no master,” was all he could force from his tight throat.
Maywell regarded him with a raised brow. “No, not since you escaped your father.”
Ethan jerked slightly at that, a tiny motion that Maywell did not miss. The man’s expression went kindly and he leaned forward, placing his hands flat on the desk.
“Damont, you think us worlds apart, you and I—but I tell you that we are the same beneath the labels the world has pasted upon us. I was the third son, the spare for the spare. I grew up knowing that there was no chance for me to be the man I could be. No true title, no substantial inheritance, no lands I could husband into any real power. An empty title, a tag given to any son of a duke, that left me dangling between worlds. I could not even turn my hand to business, for to do so would bring the scorn of my kind.” He grunted. “My kind . . . a more worthless lot I’ve never encountered.”
Hearing his own feelings echoed by Maywell made Ethan feel strange, as though he’d thought he was staring a hobgoblin in the eyes, only to have it turn into his own reflection in a mirror. He blinked to break the spell of Maywell’s words.
“I’m sure your lordship’s life has been very difficult,” he said blandly. “I’m sure I cannot imagine.” Although he could. “Dangling between worlds.”
He himself had been dangling so long he couldn’t remember what it felt like to have the earth beneath his feet. He hadn’t belonged, truly belonged, since he could recall. He’d been plucked from the society of his own kind by the time he could talk. “I don’t want him to sound like a street urchin,” his father had said often enough. “He ought to sound like a lord.”
He’d been caged by tutors and dancing masters and fencing masters and fed only the manners that his father selected for him. A gentleman’s diet—a rarefied menu indeed.
Yet even the lowliest gentleman tutor had been superior to him in caste, and had never let him forget it. For the coin his father paid into their poor gentility, they would teach him what he needed to know—but the one thing they all made sure to educate him in was that no matter how hard he worked, no matter how long he studied and practiced and performed, he could never be one of them.
Maywell had continued speaking. Ethan pulled his mind back from old hollow thoughts to reorient himself on the man who held Ethan’s life in his hands.
“Does that sound like sense to you, Damont? Empty-headed lords running England’s greatest asset, her fertile lands, into ash and sand. Courtiers plying an even more empty-headed prince with women and favors, while men with sense watch this country get further and further indebted and depleted fighting Bonaparte!”
His first goal was to live. His second was to find out as much as he could for the Liars. Ethan spread his hands in a world-weary gesture. “What else are we to do? It has always been this way. It always will be.”
Maywell narrowed his eyes and leaned forward again. “It does not have to be, Damont. Do you think that if Napoleon wins, he will keep this current power structure in place? He is a self-made man. He believes that a man’s mettle is shown by what he does, not his name or title. Do you think that he’d tolerate these soft-handed, brainless layabouts as his Imperial aristocracy for one single moment?”
Ethan leaned back and crossed his own hands lazily over his middle. “An intriguing notion, to be sure. But does not Paris still hold lords and ladies galore? He has yet to do away with them.”
Maywell waved a derisive hand. “Bah. They are ornaments, left in place to please Josephine. All the men who matter, all the ones with real power, are men that Bonaparte has brought up through his ranks, men that have proven their grit on the field and in the halls of power.” Maywell sat back, mimicking Ethan’s unconcerned pose. “Men like us, Damont. Men with sense, who see the world clearly—who see how ridiculous the social order is and how it depletes us.”
Becoming interested in spite of himself, Ethan tilted his head. “Yet you, my lord, are exactly who would lose by such a revolution. I find it hard to believe you would really give all this up.” He waved his hands to indicate his surroundings.
Maywell let out a bray of actual laughter. “All this? All this crumbling house and this back-bending debt and this fight to marry off five girls before anyone discovers that even the dresses on their backs are borrowed?”
Ah, finally a truth that Ethan could understand. Maywell’s position, encumbered by responsibilities of family and rank, was everything Ethan had always abhorred. The idea of ending up this way, weighed down, owned—the very thought nigh to made him shudder with revulsion.
“And you believe that if Napoleon wins the day, this would change?”
Maywell smiled. “It will change. I have it on very good authority that my efforts will be well rewarded. I will get everything I deserve and more.” He peered closely at Ethan. “As could you.”
Ethan smiled
easily. “I already have everything I deserve.”
Maywell pursed his lips. “Do you really?” He tapped his fingertips together. “I’d like us to conduct a little experiment. Tomorrow morning, I want you to walk up to the gates of Carlton House and request a private audience with the Prince Regent.”
A surprised laugh burst from Ethan’s lips at such an outrageous impossibility. “Why walk? Why not fly?”
Maywell smiled. “I thought as much. Only trust me, Damont. Indulge me on this whim. I assure you, it will be an illuminating experience.”
Maywell stood. Ethan followed, since it seemed the interview was over. All he wanted to do was get out of that house. He’d not thought he would find the whole matter so disturbing . . . so destabilizing to his usual careless equilibrium.
Ethan was nearly out of the study when Maywell called him back. “By the way, Damont—Jane has been invited to dine with friends of ours tomorrow night. I would appreciate it if you would escort her there and back.”
Ethan blinked. Escorting respectable young women anywhere was not usually something requested of him. In fact, if he recalled correctly—never.
Then again, if he was working for Maywell now, it might be expected that he take on some of the responsibilities of an employee—like a steward or a man of business. After all, Maywell hadn’t said he was to accompany Jane to the dinner party as a guest, but more like a bodyguard.
He nodded. “Yes, my lord. It would be my pleasure.”
In fact, it would be a good opportunity to apologize to Jane. Again.
Chapter Fourteen
Lord Harold Maywell watched Ethan Damont take his leave without escorting him from the room. Reaching into his pocket, he brought out a fine cheroot. It was from his last case of them. Thank goodness he would soon be rewarded for all his hard work.
The girls were going to break him otherwise. Resentfully, Lord Maywell thought of the money wasted into nothing by his older brother’s son. All of it gone and the lands seized for taxes—lands that had been in the family for more generations than that callow boy had years. Stupid young sot.