It was because she’d never met another man like him, one who was so much her match, physically and mentally.
Unfortunately, he was also the same man who possessed the power to put her back into prison.
“Gentlemen, your attention!”
A scruffy man at a table in the center of the room pushed to his feet and raised his tankard into the air to address the tavern. Hoots and jeers went up as the clientele attempted to shout him down. Half the crowd paid no attention at all, which meant they were used to him and his speeches.
On the other side of the room, Merritt leaned back in his chair in feigned boredom and stretched out his long legs, as if settling in for an evening’s entertainment.
“If you are as tired as me of seeing the corruption and vices of those connected to Westminster—and especially to the palaces—”
In other words, Prinny. The regent’s popularity had plummeted since the end of the wars; so had that of the royal dukes. With increasing reports in the papers of how much money was being spent on clothes, grand parties, and palaces, the entire monarchy had been tainted and weakened. Or simply gone mad.
“Of immoral princes committing all kinds of sins and crimes on the backs of our good soldiers and officers—”
That brought in the Duke of York and his mistress, along with more shouts and calls from the crowd. This time, they agreed with him.
“What does it matter to us what princes do in their glittering palaces? Why should we care if lords and ladies dine on pheasants and the finest drink from golden plates and goblets? After all, what difference does it make to our bellies what goes into theirs?” The sarcasm dripped from the man’s voice as he began to win over the crowd. “Even if nothing is going into our bellies at all these days?”
Curses went up at the Corn Laws and the treatment of smugglers.
“We are taxed to death and forced to pay outrageous sums just for a loaf of bread to feed our families. The roofs over our heads are barely capable of keeping out the wind and rain—when we can afford a roof at all—while Prinny sleeps ’twixt satin sheets on down with his mistresses!”
He was skillfully agitating the crowd but not to the point of sedition—not yet.
“We’re not lazy. We want to earn our way. But where are our feasts, our good pay for an honest day’s work? Where is a good day’s work to be had at all for hard-working men and women like us, and with His Majesty’s former soldiers bearing the brunt of the stick? Those good men fought for England and St George. They deserve better!”
A patriotic roar went up, followed by the stomping of feet and the pounding of tankards on the tabletops.
Merritt frowned.
The rabble-rouser noticed and jabbed a gnarled finger at him. “You, sir—you have a problem with giving thanks to those men who risked their lives for English freedom?”
“Is that what we risked them for?” Merritt drawled. “And here I thought it was because we enlisted, being paid for our service and knowing full well what we were getting ourselves into.”
The man’s face turned red. “Freedom isn’t free, my friend.”
“Actually, it is. That’s what the word means.”
The speaker gaped at Merritt, not knowing how to reply. Clearly, he’d never been challenged like this before. Veronica would have enjoyed the spectacle if she didn’t find herself fearing for Merritt’s safety in a room filled with very large, very patriotic, and very drunk men.
“True soldiers who’ve been in the heat of battle don’t give a damn about all that stuff and nonsense you’re spewing,” Merritt continued. “When cannon fire was booming like thunder and balls were whizzing past my head at Toulouse, I didn’t stop to think about how much freedom costs—or any of that other meaningless fribble that people love to spout off as truisms, as if saying that nonsense makes you more patriotic than everyone else. Nor did I give a damn what parties Prinny was throwing or what mistress he was tupping when I was fighting hand-to-hand at Waterloo, up to my ankles in blood and bodies.”
The tavern crowd quieted, duly chastised. Their snickers and jeers died away into uncomfortable silence.
Merritt’s eyes gleamed in a piercing mix of fire and ice. “I risked my life so Englishmen could continue to have the right to a parliament, to have an honest trial by jury, to have their property and liberties protected.” He smiled then, an expression so intense that Veronica felt the power of it slither down her spine even as she sat half a tavern away. “I fought so men like you can stand in public and openly criticize the crown without fear of being hanged for it, as long as you don’t stray into sedition.” His smile turned impossibly icier. “And you would never do anything seditious, would you, Mister…?”
The man’s jaw worked as he checked his anger. “Smathers.”
Roni’s heart stuttered. It was him.
“And no,” Smathers spat out, “I would never do anything seditious.”
“Glad to hear it. Because you should be damned grateful that freedom is free.” Merritt signaled to the stunned bar wench to bring him another tankard of ale. “Because you and the rest of this country could never repay the debt that soldiers and sailors are owed for giving you the right to stand there and make an arse of yourself by ranting about not enjoying the same pheasant dinners and satin sheets as a prince.”
The tavern fell completely silent at that. Every person who had cheered Smathers on now sat staring into their drinks, ashamed at their behavior yet still simmering with resentment at the monarchy.
“Of course,” Merritt added as he tossed a coin to the barmaid, tipping generously for the watery ale, “the Duke of York and his mistress can both rot on London Bridge as far as I’m concerned.”
Everyone in the place guffawed and called out in agreement at that. Except for Smathers, who glared murderously.
But the man took a deep breath to shove down his anger and raised his tankard back into the air. A forced smile gripped his face.
“Who’s with me, then?” he called out, falling back on script and ignoring the exchange with Merritt. “Who wants to discuss with me what can be done to make England a better country?”
So that was how he recruited the rioters…agitate the room over Prinny, remind the men that they were overworked and underpaid, and then pull them aside to pay them to riot. All according to plan.
Except for tonight. Thanks to Merritt, jeers and laughs answered Smathers now. A few hands waved dismissingly as the crowd turned their backs to him and continued their conversations and flirtations that he’d interrupted.
Smathers’s face flushed scarlet. He kicked back his chair, which fell to the floor with a crash, slammed down his tankard, and stomped from the tavern. Hisses and laughter rose in his wake.
Veronica left on his heels, following out the door and into the rainy night. She half jogged after him as he hurried down the street and away from the tavern, then turned into the first intersecting street.
She halted on the rain-drenched cobblestones and watched as Smathers climbed into a waiting carriage. Not just any carriage either. Highly glossed ebony paint, uniformed coachman and two tigers, a fine matching team of black horses…an aristocrat’s gold crest decorating the black panel. What the devil was a man like Smathers doing stepping into a carriage like that?
As she started forward, her hand snaked up her sleeve for her knife—
Strong arms grabbed her around the waist and swung her off the ground in a circle, pulling her away from the street and into the dark shadows lining the storefronts. She made a desperate grab for her knife, only to have her hand knocked away.
With a cry of angry frustration, she stomped her foot down hard and caught the man in the right instep. A curse tore from him, but he didn’t let go. He pushed her into the recessed doorway of the dark shop and grabbed her by both wrists. Before she could see his face in the shadows or fight back, his pow
erful body shoved forward into hers. He pressed her flat against the door so she couldn’t punch with her fists. He pinned her arms above her head and her hips immobile beneath his.
“Stop struggling, damn it!”
Merritt. Of course. Which only made her struggle harder. She yanked her arms to free herself, but he refused to loosen his grip.
“Let me go!” Her hips were pressed so tightly between his and the door that she couldn’t find the room to lift a leg to kick him. “He’s getting away!”
“Good.”
“Good?” She strained to look past him at the carriage, but she couldn’t see around his broad shoulders.
Yet she heard the quick clip-clop of horse hooves against the pavement as the carriage sped away into the night. Frustration pounded just as loudly inside her.
“I have to stop him,” she seethed through gritted teeth. “You’re getting in my way!”
“Because all you’ll do is catch him.”
“A pretty damn good start, if you ask me.”
“Someone’s funding those rioters. A man like Smathers doesn’t have the money for it, which means he’s working for someone else. Whose carriage did he get into?”
She glared at him, unable to answer.
“The Earl of Malmesbury’s,” he answered for her. “And no, we wouldn’t have caught both him and the earl together. So I had to stop you before you gave our plans away and before you got yourself hurt.” He lowered a pointed gaze down their bodies as they were pressed together against the wall and added huskily, “Any way I could.”
His velvety drawl wrapped itself around her, spiking both her pulse and the stirring ache at her core. She thanked God that he couldn’t read her mind, or she would have embarrassed herself with the wanton thoughts roiling around inside her head at that moment. None of which was helped by the delicious sensation of his body held against hers, the tension rippling through the hard muscles of his shoulders and arms, the wicked press of his hips into hers.
“I know the Earl of Malmesbury, and believe me when I tell you the earl’s not inside that carriage.” Every breath he took brushed his rising and falling chest scandalously against hers. “It’s October, and Malmesbury is a hundred miles away at his country house, gleefully blasting to death every bird in a ten-mile radius. So who else has been giving Smathers money, who was in that carriage—” His gaze fell to her mouth, and despite the beard, he stared at her with a heated longing that spilled through her like liquid fire…until he frowned. “And why on earth are you dressed like a man?”
“You wear a gown and wig to court,” she shot back. “Why do you dress like a woman?”
He wisely ignored that, if not for the irritated twist of his lips. “You almost pulled off your disguise. Anyone else in that tavern would never have noticed.”
That he’d figured it out irritated the blazes out of her. Her disguises always worked, always kept her safely hidden—until him. “How did you know?”
“I would know you anywhere. Even as a man.”
He shoved his hand inside her breeches, and heated longing flared instantly between her legs, so strongly that she bit back a rising moan. But instead of caressing her as her traitorous body yearned for, he fished out the rolled-up cloth and tossed it away.
He lowered his head until his eyes were level with hers. Warning announced in their blue depths that he wasn’t in the mood for games. “What the hell were you thinking, coming here alone?”
As Merritt waited for her answer, his mouth lingered so close to hers that the short hairs of her fake beard tickled his chin. How he’d managed not to give himself away tonight when he’d first spotted her he’d never know. He’d almost missed her beneath the beard and large hat she’d used to cover her copper hair and with the way she’d seemed as at ease as any other man in the tavern. But her eyes gave her away—cat-like green pools that shone brightly enough to pierce even in the dimly lit tavern. Eyes that had haunted him from the moment he first saw them.
Even now, they burned like brimstone.
“If you had let me catch him, we could have stopped the riots,” she protested. “Isn’t that what you want from me?”
“They’d be stopped only temporarily.” He couldn’t bring himself to step back. The magnetic pull of her was beyond his understanding. “A man like Smathers is easily replaced. We have to find out who’s been paying him, and we can’t do that if he’s in prison or swinging on the gallows.”
“He can be questioned if he’s in prison. He can be bribed with a lesser sentence if he cooperates.”
She explained that as if he knew nothing about the law, rubbing at his lawyerly pride. “In my experience, a man like Smathers will die before he willingly volunteers information, because he knows the men he works for will kill him if he does.”
“And in my experience, a man will do just about anything when he’s desperate.”
Without warning, she shoved against him with all her strength, twisted him around in a circle, and pushed him back against the door. She pinned his arms at his sides and leaned in to press her hips against his, the way he’d done to her.
Electricity crackled through the damp night air around them, so palpable that it stirred the hairs at his nape. He could easily push her away—he had the physical advantage. Just set her back, move her away…except he didn’t want to. Especially when she tilted her face up toward his, when he heard the quickening of her breath and felt the tightening of her fingers around his wrists.
“What about you?” The husky challenge transformed her voice into a low purr as she stared longingly at his mouth. “What are you desperate for, Merritt?”
The truth tore from him—“You.”
She rose up and seized his mouth in a blistering kiss.
Unable to stop himself, he grabbed her around the waist and yanked her to him, hips to hips, chest to chest, as he hungrily devoured her kiss. Desire sparked a wildfire between them.
This was what he’d craved from her last night, this taste of her passion that he’d longed to have. He just hadn’t expected a beard.
With a whimper of capitulation, she opened her mouth, and he thrust his tongue between her lips and claimed the sweetness waiting within.
Her arms snaked up around his shoulders to pull him closer, and he slid his hand behind her neck to hold her head still as he changed his ministrations. No longer the seeking plunges of his tongue that delved into the warm recesses of her mouth, but now relentless and fierce thrusts to selfishly claim all the pleasure he could. She trembled against him, her fingertips digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders in silent encouragement for him to give her even more.
He groaned. Gladly.
His hands swept up her body to her chest—and froze. No breasts whose fullness he could caress, no nipples to tease. Only then did he remember that she’d bound herself for her disguise, and disappointment panged in his gut.
As if sensing his frustration, she grabbed his hand and shoved it behind her, against her arse.
“Here,” she whispered, granting this small compensation. “Touch me here.”
He rubbed his hand over her round bottom, and she inhaled sharply against his mouth. Emboldened, he captured both full lobes in his hands and squeezed them. The rough caresses he gave her turned her breathing shallow and ragged. He squeezed again, and a shudder of raw yearning sizzled through her.
His hands slid up her back to draw her even closer, until her soft lower belly pressed deliciously against his hardening cock. Her pulse raced beneath his fingertips as he brushed his hand down her throat, claiming whatever touches of bare skin he could around the men’s clothing. All the while, he continued to kiss her, to tease at her mouth and bite at her bottom lip, doing his damnedest to drive her wild. The same as she was doing to him.
Breathless, she tore her mouth away to gasp for air and fell bonelessly again
st him, her cheek resting against his shoulder.
He brushed his thumb across her bottom lip. It was still wet and swollen from the bruising kisses he’d given her in an attempt to match the ferocity of her desire. “Veronica, that was…”
“Completely out of line,” she finished hoarsely. “My apologies.” She confessed in a whisper, “I simply couldn’t help myself.” Then she pulled back and forced a smile, one that did little to hide her surprise at what they’d just done. “Barristers drive me mad, remember? All those thoughts of gowns and wigs…and thumping gavels.”
Despite her teasing, she placed her hand to his chest, right over his pounding heart. She stared up at him with slightly parted lips, waiting for him to make the next move and decide what other pleasures they might share tonight.
Sweet Lucifer, he wanted them all. And repeatedly. Yet he couldn’t stop the troubled thoughts about her past that spun through his head, that kept him from scooping her into his arms and carrying her off to the nearest bed. Or simply taking her right here against the door.
A man and woman strolled out of the darkness and through the bank of fog toward them. Merritt slipped his hand behind her neck and drew her head down against his chest so they wouldn’t see her face.
Only after they’d passed did he realize he’d hidden her not because she looked like a man but because he simply wanted to protect her. Just as he’d have protected any society miss in his daylight world.
But she wasn’t a society miss. She was a convicted criminal with knives up both sleeves and a stark reminder that the nighttime darkness inverted everything.
She lifted her head to look up at him and whispered, “What do we do now?”
With a frown, he thoughtfully ran his fingers through her beard. “We hunt down whoever was riding in the Earl of Malmesbury’s coach tonight with Smathers.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” She meant the attraction between them, that primal pull that flared and sizzled every time they were together.
But he sure as hell wasn’t going to talk about that. Instead, he took her arm and led her out of the shadows and into the street, thanking God for the chilly, foggy air that dampened his lust.
An Extraordinary Lord Page 8