A Wicked Lord at the Wedding (18 page)

He ought not to complain when the insult was reversed.

By Eleanor’s husband.

He knocked hard at the door and heard shuffling, a woman’s voice from within. He had just left his wife at home. It was irrational to think she’d read his intentions and had rushed to warn Bellisant before him. What
would
he do if the impossible presented itself and he found her here? Would he even have the heart to fight them?

Yes. He decided he would.

Dear God, he wasn’t thinking straight.

Eleanor wasn’t here.

But an intimate portrait of her was.

An elderly house keeper opened the door, her expression harried as if she’d been turning away unwelcome callers all night, and didn’t care for any of them. Sebastien did not bother to introduce himself.

A macaw screeched from a perch in the corner. He thought he heard men conversing in muted voices from the back of the house. A door closed.

He saw Bellisant standing at the bottom of the staircase, his white shirt splotched, his fair hair tied back in tangled negligence at the nape.

“Lord Boscastle,” he said, his astonishment genuine. “It’s all right, Mrs. French. You may leave us alone. Please, come in, my lord, but mind where you walk.”

Sebastien nodded, following Bellisant’s slender figure up the stairs to a drawing room studio. The air bore the mingled scent of linseed oil, spirits of turpentine, and—his nostrils flared—of absinthe. He felt Bellisant’s dark eyes regard him as he looked around the room.

Sketching easels stood before the tall sash windows. There were candles burning in at least a dozen girandoles upon the walls where paintings did not hang. Jars of paint sat upon several tables of mismatched veneers. Well-worn books tottered in piles upon the unlit hearth. What a bloody mess. He reassured himself that there was no evidence of his wife.

And then he saw her.

His gaze lifted to the painting that occupied the place of honor above the mantelpiece. Shock fired his nerves. It felt like a violation and privilege at once, to view a painting of Eleanor in such an unguarded pose. She reclined on a royal-blue couch, a black velvet band upon her tousled hair, a black silk half-mask in her hand. Her smile struck him as hauntingly sad. He recognized the gown.

But who was the lady who both tempted and held herself aloof from the beholder?

He was not an artist. Even so he could not deny Bellisant’s genius of delicacy and perception. The texture intrigued the eye. The balance of dark and light brought Eleanor so alive she might have stood between the two men who flanked the fireplace.

“She refused to take her portrait,” Bellisant mused.

“I’ll take it,” Sebastien said without thinking, and his voice warned that it would not be in exchange for his wife.

“I shall have it sent to you in the morning.”

Sebastien turned. Bellisant was still studying the portrait, mesmerized by either his work or the woman who had inspired it—Sebastien did not give a damn.

“Do you love my wife?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“I would not have kept her portrait where I could see it if I didn’t.”

Anger swelled in Sebastien’s throat. “But she doesn’t love you.”

Nathan edged around a sketching easel as if he thought it would protect him. “I wouldn’t be letting this painting go if she did,” he said cautiously.

“Bloody hell. You do realize that nothing is going to stand between me and my wife?” He glanced down. “Not even an easel.”

“I do not believe it is me you have to convince.” Bellisant swallowed. “If you challenge me to a duel, I shall grant you the first shot. I’m—I’m frightened of guns.”

“For God’s sake,” he said in disgust.

“It’s true,” Bellisant said quietly. “I saw my father shot to death. I grow faint at the sight of a pistol.”

Sebastien grunted.

“Are you still angry at me?”

“Angry? Oh—what’s the point?”

Sebastien strode from the room without another word. Had he gotten what he’d come for? How poetic to think that in claiming possession of the portrait he could reclaim what he might have lost. Was it too late? Something about the smile of that Eleanor in the painting conveyed a message he should have noticed a dozen times before. How had he missed the sadness in her eyes?

Even worse, had he been the cause?

He walked through a labyrinth of small streets toward the Thames. He wasn’t sure what he would say to Eleanor, or whether he’d say anything at all.

Should he apologize and let the matter mend itself
as many issues between a man and wife were wont to do? He wasn’t sorry he’d confronted Bellisant, only that he had doubted her.

And perhaps that he hadn’t clipped her amorous painter in the jaw for good measure.

The evening fog seemed to thicken by the moment.

Easy for a man to lose himself in the maze of London at this hour.

He knew he was being followed shortly after he hailed a hackney to take him to the waterfront where he docked his boat.

So did the ruthlessly cheerful driver, who warned him to “’Ang on fer dear life. We’ll lead the blighter right into the river, eh, my lord?”

“As long as we don’t end up there ourselves,” he said dryly.

The driver broke into hearty laughter. “Running away from a wronged husband? I see we’ve got company.”

Sebastien glanced around instinctively. A small carriage rattled behind with neither links nor running footmen. The fog rendered identifying it impossible.

“I know London,” the driver chatted on, oblivious to the fact that his passenger was more concerned about getting his throat cut than with conversation. “You won’t be the first gent I’ve helped escape a cuckold’s wrath. Tisn’t ’ard to elude a person in this soup.”

“True enough.”

In this fog, practically anyone could materialize or disappear. Sebastien glimpsed a gypsy girl in a doorway, calling at him to have his fortune read. His lip curled.

What had Eleanor been hoping to see in her palm?
Four. Including the one lost
. What had she lost? Their child?
Four
children.
Not four lovers, you nitwit
. The start of their cricket team. God, how thick he was. Thicker than London fog.

Almost at the river’s edge.

“Slow down,” he said.

A pair of oars creaked in the mist. The muddy water in the unseen craft’s wake bubbled up like a witch’s cauldron. By day the ribald cries of the watermen, the flapping sails of East Indian merchant ships, enlivened the wharves. Late at night, the penny wherries and cockle boats, the soap boilers and potteries, lay at rest. He thought of the mudlarks who slept in the tents below the tunnels, dreaming of a decent meal. Sooner or later every broken heart in London came to the river’s edge.

Here and there a voice from the ale houses drifted through the shadowed arches of the river. Sebastien heard a whore singing a drunken ballad to her audience of sailors. Further down the shore stood the secluded estates of the aristocracy. If he listened hard enough, he would probably overhear a husband asking his wife for another chance.

“Stop here,” he said to the driver without warning.

“’Ere? This ain’t the fanciest part of town—”

“Well, I’m not the fanciest gentleman, either.”

“It’s your funeral. I ’ope she was worth the trouble.”

Sebastien smiled darkly and paid him thrice the fare. “She’s worth more than I ever realized.”

“Good luck then, my lord.”

Eleanor had attempted several suggestive poses with which to surprise her husband. In the end, given the limited space afforded by the small vessel, she had settled for a half-recumbent position on the red-satin couch that occupied most of the cabin’s space. Unless he had already come and gone, Sebastien ought to have been here by now. She didn’t fancy waiting here alone until her coachman returned to collect her.

She was starting to wish she hadn’t sent him away at all.

She had unashamedly checked for signs of another woman’s presence. Thankfully her search proved fruitless. But if the cabin revealed no incriminating evidence, the black oaken panelwork, lavishly carved with ample-breasted mermaids being chased by lustful seamen, certainly did not match the Sebastien she knew.

Nor did the delicate tulipwood desk that was embellished with ormolu scrollwork and gilt marquetry seem compatible with his masculinity. The contents of its drawers appeared innocent enough—a pen, a few charts, an almanac of the tides, and a sketch she had once given him of a ruined Spanish castle.

She realized that in the course of secret service he might have been forced to assume various identities. It was challenging, however, to picture him at a desk more suited to Marie Antoinette than to that of an English baron. She tapped her forefinger on a gold flower and a hidden compartment slowly opened. Her heart quickened.

Nothing in it, either … except one of her old hair ribbons.

Which meant that either Sebastien really did love her or he’d been dressing up as a lady to mislead his enemies.

What a thought.

She closed the compartment and returned to the couch, startled to realize that she couldn’t see a thing through the cabin window. A bank of pearlescent fog engulfed the shallop. It seemed unlikely she’d be able to implement her ambush on the boat’s absent master, or to even make her way back onto the wharf.

Suddenly all the newspaper reports she’d read of dismembered bodies discovered in floating tobacco hogsheads took on a personal significance.

Her Masquer deeds seemed tame in comparison to what went on at the water’s edge. The fog amplified every creak and squeak …

A squeak—

Surely that was only the water lapping at the shore, and not a large rodent.

Where had her river rat gone? What manner of people did he meet here, anyway?

What if he’d changed his mind and returned home?

What if he was waiting for her by a warm fire, wondering where she’d gone?

Did he require solitude? He couldn’t have picked a lonelier spot in all of London.

She nestled deeper into the cushions. The unveiled desire in his eyes when he’d stared at her across the table haunted her. Why hadn’t she realized right away that his indirect questions about the duke’s fidelity had been his way of questioning
her
?

She glanced up at a muffled sound from the shore. She waited and heard nothing more. The shallop rocked lightly. The rhythm of her heart escalated wildly as a broad-shouldered silhouette appeared in the portal. A pistol gleamed in the dark. She caught her breath, her heart thumping in more than desire.

Sebastien laughed in surprised recognition.

“Madam,” he said as he laid his gun on the desk and drew off his coat, “you have taken the advantage.”

“I doubt that very much, Sebastien,” she murmured, her blood running in warm eddies through her body.

“You would not doubt it if you could feel how my heart is pounding.”

“As is mine.”

“Is it, indeed?” His gaze moved over her deceptively relaxed figure. “I wish you had warned me to expect you.”

“I would have,” she said with conviction, “had I expected you to enter with a big gun in hand. For a moment I thought I was breathing my last.”

He smiled grimly. “I have more experience than to shoot at anything that awaits me in the dark.”

“Thank goodness for that.” She refrained from asking what manner of things, or persons, he
had
shot at. One day she’d insist he tell her. Until then he would remain a delicious enigma for her to decipher.

“I believe I might have been followed to the river,” he said. “You’ll forgive me if I was prepared for an ambush.”

She shivered lightly. “Perhaps you should leave that gun where you can reach it.”

“Perhaps you should have listened when I said this was no place for you. However, now that you’re here, you might as well make yourself comfortable.”

She cast a skeptical glance around the cabin. “Speaking of comfort, I did wonder about your choice of décor. I never dreamt your taste ran to bosomy mermaids and red satin.”

“The boat used to be a floating brothel,” he said after a brief hesitation.

“A—” She stared at him in dismay. “Not one that you patronized, I hope.”

“Certainly not. I stole it in the line of duty.”

“Good gracious.”

“And you are never to come here alone again.”

“I had our coachman walk me to the dock.”

“It isn’t a safe place,” he added.

“I can imagine, considering its history.” She
caught the smile that crossed his face. “You aren’t still upset about the portrait?”

He swore softly.

“I called after you.”

“I heard.”

“And you ignored me?”

His eyes glinted. “I’m not ignoring you now.” He leaned his hip back against the desk.

“We don’t really know each other, do we?” she asked softly.

“I know enough to realize that I’ll never want anyone else except you.”

“Then why, may I ask, are you standing over there?”

He laughed richly.

She sat up. Her hair fell down, twining in the damp. She made no attempt to tame it. Her current mood played into her wilder instincts. She may as well look the part—unexpected how exciting it was to plan the seduction of one’s own husband, to catch him in his lair. She felt a little dangerous. He looked completely so, his black hair glistening with droplets of mist, his lean body moving silently in the darkness.

She watched impatiently as he opened a cupboard bolted to the wall, and made a cursory examination of its contents. How had she missed those shelves? Ah. There were no knobs.

“What else are you hiding from me?” she asked in curiosity.

He reached her side in one languid stride. His
heavily lidded eyes swept over her. “Nothing. I’m an open book. Read me.”

She gave a sigh of pleasure as he sat down beside her. “Very well.” She walked her fingers up his arm to the back of his neck. His crisp linen shirt bore the scent of damp air and starch.

“Page one,” she whispered as she pulled off his coat. “Where did you go when you left the house tonight?”

“To see your painter friend.”