A Wicked Lord at the Wedding (10 page)

“The St. George Street address?” he asked thought fully.

“Yes. And I’ve got a plan of the house.”

“I could find the rest of them alone.”

She opened her eyes, his self-assurance raising
her suspicions. If he hadn’t weakened her with his wonderful lovemaking, she would never have lowered her guard. “This is between me and the duchess. A female affair, if you wish.”

“The duke does not think so,” he murmured.

“I do not work for the duke,” she said in annoyance. “I have made a promise, and I will keep it.”

His voice dripped sheer male condescension. “Sweetheart, it is an amusing game you have played. I’m impressed at your ingenuity and dedication. But these matters are best handled by a man.”

“The Masquer is a man.”

“I meant a man of experience.”

“It’s clear what you meant.”

“And”—laughter lurked in his deep voice—“you are most decidedly a woman.”

“At least you and I agree on that fact.”

He shook his head, quick to reassure her. “All I meant is that you and the duchess should observe your roles as nature has defined them.”

She bit the tip of her tongue. Nature had not finished defining either lady, in Eleanor’s modest opinion. “Have I failed you as a woman?” she asked in her most dulcet voice.

“Dearest.” His gaze drifted over her.

“Then?”

“I cannot disappoint the duke,” he concluded, the situation, at least in his mind, relegated to his superior talents.

Which warned her that she had to move quickly to locate the remaining letters. Her friendship with
the Duchess of Wellington, their shared love of intrigue, had given Eleanor an enormous feeling of satisfaction. The two women had forged a bond based on their mutual loneliness. She was
not
surrendering her authority without a good fight. No matter how wickedly potent her husband proved to be. Nor how politically influential the Duke of Wellington became.

She’d made a pact with the duchess. She was an agent and she would be paid for her work.

His hand slid beneath the sheet and languidly caressed her breasts. Obviously she had also made a pact with the devil on her wedding day. “What do I have to do to win you back?” he asked silkily.

“Let me sleep on it.”

“Do you know what a country offers when it loses a war?” He kissed her forehead. “Recompensation.”

She was suddenly fully awake. “This is an affair of the heart. Not of state. Don’t muddle the issue.”

“From ancient times,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “the bond between man and wife has been understood as a sacred—an
unbreakable
—partnership.”

Ah. She knew where this was leading. She thought it high-minded of herself not to point out that they were actually man … and man.

“You’re referring to the days when peasants were enslaved?” she asked with a dismissive smile.

“I’m referring to Roman law.”

“Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day.” She smoothed
an imaginary wrinkle from her pillow. “And neither is a good marriage. Enslave me at your own risk.”

The twitch of his sensual mouth suggested he was tempted to do just that.

“Perhaps we will come to a better understanding in the morning,” he said sagely.

“Will you be here in the morning?” she could not resist asking.

He paused. “Perhaps not,” he admitted. “I have business matters that have been ignored. But whether I am here when you awaken or not, I guarantee that I shall be back before you miss me. And don’t worry about delivering those letters to the duchess.”

“I’m not worried about the letters.” She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You are another thing entirely.”

“Your husband is home. Being my wife is all you need concern yourself with.”

She wriggled away from his tempting warmth. “Good night, Rat.”

He chuckled. “Sweet dreams, Cat.”

Sebastien wished to be fair. He understood that he was demanding more of Eleanor as a wife than he as a spouse had given in return. Considering his past omissions, he thought it damned generous of her to take him back into her bed with such fervor. Still, having reclaimed his rights tonight, he had no intention of abdicating his tenuous hold again. Her masquerade as the duchess’s agent during their prolonged separation rendered his need to assert his place all the more expedient.

His wife a notorious figure, written up in newspapers across England? He would put an immediate stop to this mischief.

He stared down at her sleeping form. She had donned her nightrail and fallen into a heavy slumber. How easily one could miss the subtle wickedness that illuminated her face. Who would ever guess what an adventurous nature those classical features concealed?

He wondered what the ton’s breathless ladies
would think if they could see their midnight intruder now.

He snorted in amusement. He didn’t know what to think himself. He had bedded the man of their dreams.

With a heavy sigh, he slipped out from the sheet she’d pulled over him and left the bed. He needed to do something, walk, drink a bottle of brandy, hit his head against a post to keep from taking her again.

After three years of absence from home and abstinence, his sexual appetite had turned him into a voracious beast. He couldn’t possibly explain his period of celibacy to her. Nor the missions he’d undertaken to regain his self-worth.

A gentleman would rather be thought unfaithful, disinterested, absorbed in duty, or even dead before he would admit that he had struggled to feel like a man again.

He stepped over the crumpled garments on the floor, realizing that his wife had become rather untidy in his absence, and that he needed a fresh change of clothing if he was to wander about the house.

He returned to the bed. The rise and descent of Eleanor’s breasts beneath her muslin nightrail absorbed his attention for several moments. Had he ever fully appreciated her?

“Eleanor,” he whispered, leaning over her. “I hate to disturb you, but I’ve left all my other clothes on the boat.”

“Why didn’t you bring them with you?” Her eyes opened, glinting in guarded awareness. “Or weren’t you intending to stay?”

“I assumed I still had some clothes here.” He paused. “Unless you gave them away.”

When he’d arrived in London this last time he had sailed into the Thames on an ugly but seaworthy shallop. He hadn’t kept the boat a secret from his wife, but he had made it clear she should stay away from the wharves. He maintained the boat as a retreat in case a dark mood descended, or one of his more unsavory associates from the past wanted to contact him.

“Look on the left side of the wardrobe.” She rolled back into his place with a deep sigh, burying her head beneath her pillow.

“Thank you.” He grinned, restraining himself from patting the part of the lumpy bedclothes that protruded invitingly. “You may sleep there until I come back to bed.”

The pillow lifted. She released another disgruntled sigh. “Are you going out?”

“No. Only downstairs for a brandy and—I thought I might try to make friends with Teg.”

“Don’t start him barking at you again.”

He turned toward the triple armoire that stood like a small-scale fortress beside the fireplace. Decorative turrets topped the two side doors that flanked a central linen cupboard.

He had been absent for such a length of time that
he had forgotten which clothes of his remained. Asking her to help him again would only remind her how long it had been.

He opened both doors at once. As expected, Eleanor’s dresses occupied most of the wardrobe. He did not recognize half of them. Whether that was due to his faulty memory or her extravagance, he couldn’t say.

He went through her apparel thoughtfully, trying to recall whether they’d been together when she had worn a particular garment.

An aquamarine taffeta evening gown. Pretty. He’d never seen her in it. One made of rose muslin. He vaguely recalled a breakfast affair, or perhaps a boating picnic. He’d only paid attention to her, not to the event.

Then, ah,
this
he would have remembered Eleanor wearing. A gown of pearl-white watered silk with a heart-shaped bodice that he thought fetching until he noticed the small wine stain—or perhaps it was something else—that marred the deep-cut Belgian lace neckline.

He rubbed his thumb across the stain as if he could make it disappear.

An unpleasant sensation burned the back of his neck. He glanced at his wife’s reflection in the cheval glass that sat in the corner.

She was a pristine creature, the surgeon’s daughter, a lady who had always been fastidious in appearance. She had carried a spare pair of gloves when she dragged him to the theater to see Will perform. He
could not imagine her spilling wine on such an expensive-looking dress. And keeping it, too.

To what sort of function would she dress so winsomely and drink wine? Had this been an act of the Mayfair Masquer? Or that of a wife whose husband had been away too long?

“Sebastien,” she grumbled from the bed in drowsy complaint. “Must you make so much noise?”

“Sorry,” he said, closing the door with a brisk click.

Her face appeared from beneath the pillow. “That’s the right side of the wardrobe, by the way.”

“I realize what it is,” he retorted in annoyance.

“Well, I told you to look on the left.”

“I remember what you said. I was curious about your clothes. Do you mind?”

“I mind your noise.”

“It’s not as if you have a man hiding in here, is it?” he inquired half-seriously.

“Yes, I have dozens of them,” she answered. “How could you be a spy when you’re so indelicately loud?”

“I never said I was a spy.”

“You never said anything,” she muttered.

He opened the door of the central cupboard, and, yes, he knew it was neither left nor right.

But now, suddenly, he decided he wanted to go through her drawers, examine her apparel piece by piece. One could learn any number of secrets from what a person kept in a cupboard, and hadn’t at least two of these drawers been his?

Muffs, garters, ribbons, and a black velvet domino.

He closed the drawer and went on to the next. In it he discovered a white christening gown carefully layered between some tissue and dried flowers.

It caught him unaware. He touched the gown gently. Had this been meant for the child she had lost?

Suddenly his hands seemed too heavy to hold such a delicate garment. He had not been able to talk about it when she had told him. He was afraid to talk about it now. Women conversed. Men conquered. Would they have other children?

“
Sebastien
,” she pleaded.

He swallowed, then knelt to wrest open the last drawer, at last unearthing a pair of his own linen drawers and stockings. These slung over his shoulder, he stood again.

The left side of the hanging wardrobe seemed rather bare compared to the right, but the presence of three shirts, two of muslin, one of lawn, reassured him that he still held a place, albeit musty and unused, in his wife’s wardrobe if not in her heart.

But … those were
his
shirts, weren’t they?

Lapses of memory notwithstanding, he was positive he had never appeared in public in this last ruffled piece that spilled lace all over the front.

A fresh doubt provoked him as he sat down on the stool to dress. Had the Mayfair Masquer worn that shirt, or had another man?

He was seized by the impulse to reawaken Eleanor and ask.

Had anyone else shared her bed while he was gone?

Perhaps he wasn’t ready to face that, either. Another husband might not have cared.

Yes, infidelity occurred all the time in the sophisticated world of the
haut ton
. But Sebastien had never particularly aspired to the low morals of aristocracy.

In terms of his wife, his feelings tended toward an unabashed basicity.

She belonged to him.

If he had not been here to protect her before, he would do so now. The centuries-old arrangement gave him a chest-thumping sense of stability.

He went down the hall into the private drawing room to brood over a brandy and heard a disturbance in the street. He put down his glass and listened—a horse whickering, footsteps approaching, a cheerful knock at the door. This late at night?

Who was so confident of a welcome?

He rose from his armchair to investigate. It was probably Eleanor’s cousin again. Perhaps the Duchess had sent Will back with a message. Or a demand for the last letter the Masquer had recovered. He would put an end to these nocturnal escapades once and for all.

No sooner had he gone downstairs to the door than his deerhound shot out of the shadows and set up a furious barking at his feet. He might have
praised the dog had Teg’s protective instincts meant to warn his master against the visitor.

Sebastien reached down. The dog bared his teeth in a growl.

Obviously Teg perceived
him
to be the threat.

“Fine, you traitorous mongrel. See if Will scratches your belly and feeds you choice morsels of his beefsteak at breakfast.”

When he answered the door, however, it wasn’t Eleanor’s cousin and close friend who stood with his slender shoulders hunched in his usual self-effacing pose.