A Wild Night's Bride (9 page)

Phoebe froze. “What was that? Are we discovered?”

“I stumbled,” Ned retorted.

“Into me!” DeVere said. “Damned clumsy of you, Ned!”

“Both of you, be more careful! Blast it all!” she cursed.

“What is it?” Ned asked.

“I can’t reach my laces. Can you help me?”

“Yes,” both men answered simultaneously.

Phoebe reopened the shutter to find both men half-dressed and Ned glowering at DeVere. She looked from one to the other and finally turned her back to Ned who promptly dropped his Yeoman’s tunic to attend her.

Drawing up her cascade of curls with one hand, he used the other to access her laces. His touch was gentle and lingering and seemed to take much longer than necessary. The feel of his fingers in her hair and the sheer intimacy of the act sent a shiver of awareness down her spine. “Pray, make haste,” she snapped. “If we’re here much longer the watch’ll be down on us, and we’ll all three end up in the Round House.”

She looked to DeVere to find him watching them, a sly smile hovering over his mouth. He pulled a flask from his pocket, taking a long drink before offering the bottle to Ned who took no notice as his gaze was now affixed to Phoebe’s face. The strange way he looked at her set her nerves on edge and made her skin tingle. “What is it?” she asked.

“N-Nothing,” he replied. “You’ve removed the mask. I hadn’t seen your entire face until now.”

“Oh,” she replied, feeling self-conscious. His expression made her fingers fumble as she tucked her long hair up into a mobcap. Her laces loosened, she instructed them both to turn their backs while they all three finished dressing.

“Are we quite ready?” she finally asked.

“Indeed,” answered DeVere, pocketing the flask in his red velvet footman’s coat and donning the white wig with a grin. “Though in truth, I think it highly unlikely that I’ll be the first footman to roger a chambermaid in the king’s bed.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Phoebe was amazed how easily DeVere had fallen in with her plan. As she’d directed, the hackney dropped them on the mall on the garden side of the convoluted maze of wings and courtyards that comprised St. James Palace.

“We’ll go through the Palace Gardens,” she said.

“But there are some fifty Yeoman of the Guard at St. James,” Ned said. “How the devil do you propose to get by them?”

“There are only twenty at night,” she corrected him. “And there is a private entrance through the Chair Court that is little known and only used by the Royal Family. Since they are not currently in residence, it should be lightly guarded.”

“How can you possibly know this?” DeVere asked.

“I was a member of the Royal Household for almost four years. Although I spent the majority of my time at the Bower Lodge and the queen’s house at Kew, I have been to most of the royal residences.”

“You have?” Ned looked astonished. “How? I mean in what capacity?”

“If you
must
know, I was once a nursery maid to the royal princesses.”

“A nursery maid?” Ned seemed more puzzled than ever. “But you are an actress.”

Phoebe lifted a brow. “What do you imply, sir?”

“Only that such positions are not come by easily, and the queen takes great care in selecting her servants, especially those to the children. Only a gentlewoman...”

“I secured the position through my aunt who was wet nurse to the Prince of Wales. Is it so impossible to believe I might have been gently bred?”

Ned flushed. “That’s not what I meant—”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I don’t know! I’m just confounded to understand what would lead a young woman from the Royal Nursery to the Covent Garden stage.”

“Dismissal, perhaps?” she offered drily.

“But why?” Ned asked.

“Does it really matter, Ned?” DeVere interrupted. “So you know the lay of the land, do you?” he asked Phoebe.

“I have been to the private apartments at St. James on several occasions.”

DeVere laughed. “Damn if I don’t find that another capital stroke of luck.”

They approached stealthily from the garden side, where they concealed themselves behind a tall yew hedge formed into a miniature maze. As predicted, there was, indeed, only a single Yeoman at the gate. “Although there’s only one, I doubt he’ll be inclined to let us pass,” Ned said with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

“We only want for a diversion.” Phoebe chewed her lip.

Ned looked to DeVere. “You are the master of mayhem. Any brilliant ideas?”

“If we want him to leave the gate, we must provide proper motivation,” DeVere answered.

“Such as?” Phoebe prompted.

“Let us keep to the basics, my pet. Men are primarily moved by either their stomachs or their cocks. If we cannot tempt the one, it must be the other.”

Ned glared. “What are you suggesting?”

“Our little chambermaid can take the blighter off by offering him a hand job.”

“The hell she will!” Ned barked before Phoebe could answer for herself. “Think of something else!”

“Come now, Ned. She’ll be well-compensated for her trouble. He laughed. “Hell, for a thousand, I might be tempted to do it myself.”

“Damn, but you’re dangerously close to lighting my fuse this night!”

While Ned and DeVere heatedly argued other possible means of entry, Phoebe looked to the gate where a stroke of fortune had sent the guard off to relieve himself. “Or,” she interrupted, “we might simply wait until he has need to answer the call of nature—like now.”

Happily finding the door unlocked, Phoebe and DeVere snuck inside with Ned in his Yeoman’s uniform bringing up the rear. “This way,” she beckoned in a whisper. “And take off your shoes. At the top of the gallery is the guard room.”

The centuries-old palace at St. James was a dreary place during the day but extraordinarily eerie by night. Its stone walls and floors failed to emanate any warmth, and its long passageways resounded with eerie echoes. Luckily they had not far to travel, having entered the gate nearest the staircase leading to the state apartments.

Dousing the lamp, they ventured stocking-footed up the grand staircase. One at a time, they slinked through the long gallery which had once served as the armory and upon whose walls were still mounted every conceivable kind of weapon. Phoebe suppressed a shiver at the menacing gleam of an executioner’s ax on prominent display. With her heart racing, she scurried past the guardroom where several Yeomen dozed while others played at cards and dice and held her breath until reaching the safety beyond in the adjoining chamber.

After the trio slipped through well-oiled doors, Phoebe rekindled the lamp to reveal the “old” presence chamber. “Look at that,” Ned said on a drawn breath, pointing to the carved shield above the huge fireplace, a remnant from the Tudor reign. On the foreground were the initials H and A united by a lovers’ knot, and in the background, a fleur-de-lis of France, the arms of England, and the rose of Lancaster. The relic only made Phoebe think again of the headsman’s ax.

“Come,” she whispered hoarsely. “Just beyond are the state apartments.”

Three sets of softly treading feet passed through the elaborate chamber that once served as Queen Anne’s drawing room and past the larger-than-life portrait of George III, staring with blatant disapproval at the errant intruders and into the throne room.

There in the vast presence chamber decorated entirely in crimson velvet and gold lace with a soaring, white marble chimney and massive ormolu gilt chandeliers, on a raised dais surmounted by a crimson velvet canopy of state, was the ancient seat of kings, the very throne occupied by a succession of English monarchs for six centuries.

“What are you gawking at?” DeVere asked Ned who looked like he was fighting the impulse to genuflect.

“It’s—it’s rather awe-inspiring, don’t you think? To be alone in this room before the king’s very throne?”

DeVere laughed. “It rather comfortable-looking, don’t you think?” He swaggered across the gleaming parquet.

Ned gave him a warning look. “Don’t you dare.”

“Don’t I? But I’ve always fancied the role, you know.” DeVere caressed the scarred arm. “What think you, Kitty dear? Would it not suit me better than that pompous prig who reigns? Shall I warm my arse on the velvet cushion?”

“I think you’d do best to enact your fantasy on the stage if that is your wish, my lord, for to sit even for a moment on that seat would be a treasonable offense.”

DeVere raised a mocking brow. “More treasonable, you suppose, than frolicking in his bed?”

“Please, my lord,” Phoebe said. “There is little time. The palace staff rises early. We haven’t long before we greatly increase the risk of discovery.”

“I assume the king’s and queen’s private apartments are on the other side of that door?” He inclined his head to a massive oaken portal.

“Aye,” she said.

“Pity,” DeVere said with a look of yearning to the throne. “Perhaps another time?”

“Damn it, DeVere! Just get on with the business!” Ned growled, his irritation increasingly evident.

At what he knows will come next?
Phoebe wondered with a pang of satisfaction if mayhap he was not so immune to her after all.

“Perhaps it’s best if you wait here?” DeVere pulled the flask from his pocket. He offered it to Ned with a smirk. “For your nerves, ol’ chap. You appear rather on edge.” Ned snatched it from his hands and had already downed a great swallow before she and DeVere disappeared together behind the door.

***

Although Phoebe had often accompanied the young princesses to their mother, the set of rooms comprising the king’s apartments were unfamiliar and awesome ground. They had only entered the antechamber, but like Ned, she felt somehow humbled and guilt-ridden to be here, as if as a mere mortal, she had no business invading the sanctity of the king’s private abode, let alone defiling the very bed where generations of kings had been conceived and had emerged from the royal wombs.

DeVere, on the other hand, evinced no such qualms. He had already loosened his cravat and was stripping off his coat.

“As I said earlier, there is no need,” Phoebe insisted. “A couple of buttons and a raised petticoat are all the business requires.”

“How delightfully unromantic you are, my dear!” He chuckled. “But while most men would be charmed to comply with your simple wishes, I have quite another game in mind. One that most definitely requires you to disrobe.”

“But what if I don’t want to?”

“Oh, but you will,” he said with a smug smile.

She glared. “You are very sure of yourself!”

He studied his buffed fingernails. “I am sure of Ned. Thus, we must put on a convincing show.”

Her brows came together in a deep scowl. “What do you mean? What has Ned to do with this?”

“Everything. And at any moment, I expect him to burst through that door like a raging bull.”

Phoebe looked from DeVere to the door, and her mouth dropped. “But why would he do that? What on earth are you up to?”

DeVere’s eyes gleamed with suppressed mirth. “Because this entire evening has been, until now, a dismal failure. I am now pressed to take extreme measures. For you and I, my pet, are about to bring my dear friend, Ned, back to the living.”

***

Though still feeling groggy from his earlier overindulgence, left to stand sentry while imagining DeVere having his wicked way with Phoebe, Ned didn’t pause to savor the contents of the flask.

Why did he want her anyway? Was she not even now conducting herself as a whore? Committing a lewd and probably treasonous act simply for money? Though he tried to dismiss her with these thoughts, he couldn’t. In his thirty-six years, only one other woman had truly inflamed him, and while he had loved Annalee desperately, she had not proven his equal in passion. He had always come to her with a certain amount of restraint, had always held something back.

Perhaps he should take a woman of pleasure? Maybe that was the logical answer for a man like him. A mistress would
expect
him to demand physical recompense for his protection. If he paid her well enough, he would have no reason for guilt over his frequent demands...as long as he took care not to impregnate her. He had already planned to lease a house for the season. He could find her someplace discreet in the country, provided she would come. Provided she was willing... His thoughts gravitated to Kitty. He had no doubt she would be willing. He had first felt her desire in the garden, and she had positively vibrated with it in the warehouse when he touched her. But if DeVere had decided to keep her...

What were they doing in there? He imagined her legs wrapped around DeVere’s flanks as he pumped into her, and his blood heated. Or lying on her belly with her pretty arse raised to DeVere in invitation.
That
thought made his stomach roil. His thoughts drifted to the graphic little book he had secreted in his pocket, and his mind filled with lurid imaginings. The illustrations in his head now had the faces of Kitty and DeVere. Bloody hell! It was too much for a man to take! Taking a final pull that emptied the contents, he slung the flask aside and turned resolutely to the door.