A Wicked Lord at the Wedding (5 page)

Eleanor’s voice, playfully scolding, brought him back to his present dilemma, the masquerade.

“You
aren’t
paying attention,” she whispered, pursing her lips. “You haven’t heard anything I’ve been saying.”

“Of course I have,” he lied.

He stared at her mouth. He wasn’t really listening to her now. He had as much desire to chat as he did to dance.

His senses, too long deprived, begged for relief. He had barely touched her since his return, and he was as primed as a pair of dueling pistols. He’d waited for any encouragement to bed his beautiful wife.

He pretended to appear attentive. He even inclined his head to act as if his life depended on her next words. For a final taunting interval the dance brought her against him. He had missed the sensual fragrance of her skin, the warm pleasures it invited. No matter how grim his assignments had been,
thinking of Eleanor had made him smile. He’d always intended to come home to her. He probably should have let her know that.

“I
am
paying attention,” he said in dark amusement. “Don’t worry. This is child’s play compared to what I’m used to doing.”

“So you’ve said.” Her eyes studied him in cautious speculation. “Are you ever going to reveal the gruesome details?”

“No,” he said, determined to maintain his silence on the matter. If she ever learned the dark and dirty nature of his ignoble missions, she would run shrieking out of his life forever.

“Why can’t I know?” she asked.

“I think a little mystery makes a man more appealing,” he said flatly. And if that didn’t make him sound like an ass, he didn’t know what did.

Her soft mouth curled below her half-mask. She had the loveliest smile he’d ever seen, if one could overlook the whiskers and the fact that she was frustrating the hell out of him.

“A little mystery is all well and good,” she replied. “But you, my shadow lord, are the Holy Grail of mysteries.”

“You don’t have to go on a hunt for me,” he said with a grin, whirling her gracefully through the line. “I’ve no intention of being a missing husband again.”

“Husband or arrogant guardian?”

“It seems you need a bit of both.” And he meant
it. She had no idea how resolved he was to have her.

She faltered a step, her eyes glittering. “I’ve managed quite well alone.”

“You’ve managed to land yourself in an incredible mess.”

“You mean being back in your arms?”

He chuckled, drawing her into his body. “You might have eluded the best detectives in London, madam, but there’s no escaping me.”

She lifted her hand to straighten the sash that lay across his chest. “I never went anywhere, Sebastien,” she said in a soft voice that stirred guilt and longing inside him. “You could have found me whenever you wanted.”

His throat tightened. She had a siren’s touch. He wanted to know it all over his body again. She also had a tongue as sharp as a Toledo steel sword. Her words cut.

“Is Will here?” she asked, her hand slipping to her side.

He ground his teeth; his gaze raked her in unhidden demand. If she felt the steamy heat that smoldered between them, she showed no sign of letting it wilt her. Barbed tongue, beautiful body, guarded heart. He might have to revise his strategy and take her by nefarious means instead.

He glanced across the room at the harlequin standing alone in front of a high marble fireplace. He wasn’t sure whether her cousin Will had encouraged
Eleanor’s quest for excitement, or if it was the other way around. He only knew the misadventurous pair had to be reined in. “He just came in from the garden.”

Laughter and conversation welled in the sudden void of silence as the orchestra ended their set. Sebastien released her with reluctance. He noted that she resisted looking around to acknowledge her cousin. How self-composed his wife had become.

Was this what befell a woman who had learned to live alone? He realized he had changed. It was reasonable to assume she would not have remained the uncomplicated person he had married. To be honest, though, he had never considered that love in absentia could present this intriguing predicament.

How did a man earn back his wife’s trust when that wife had become a man about town?

“Any moment now,” he muttered. “If something goes wrong, you mustn’t give in to panic.”

She gave his arm a condescending pat. “Nor you, my lord. I shall bear full responsibility in the event we are caught. Blame it all on female madness. The duchess will find a way to get me safely out of the country.”

“Excuse me?”

“I have everything under control, Sebastien.”

“As long as you believe that, darling, I won’t disillusion you.” He stared down at the slender hand that claimed his arm. “Not in public, anyway. In private, it’s every man for himself. Even those who only aspire to manhood.”

He waited for her to react. Another man would have risen to the insult.

Instead, her eyes locked with his in unspoken assessment. He realized he hadn’t affected her at all. Then her lips parted, and the sheerest of sighs escaped her.

It might have been a sigh of exasperation.

But his blood still heated, his pulses raced in male resolve.

He had a chance.

He knew it.

No matter how impenetrable her shield of coolness, they had made vows to each other. The instant she weakened, which she would, he’d seize the advantage.

“Follow my lead,” he instructed her, withdrawing his arm from her charmingly assertive hold, the matter decided, at least in his mind.

“As you say, Sebastien.”

He nodded. That was more like it.

It was an evening to impress her, to demonstrate his profound experience in subterfuge. He wasn’t going to brag. She would soon understand how a professional handled covert matters. Even frivolous ones like pinching old love letters for a demanding duchess.

Confident that the course of his own true love would run smooth, he was irritated when he turned to discover a portly gentleman bedecked as King Charles the Second, in a black curly periwig and knee breeches, positioned in his path. Sebastien
could have pushed the annoying fellow aside as rudely as he’d presented himself. Regrettably the same could not be said of the deep-bosomed, low-bodiced Nell Gwyn who cheerfully brought up her sovereign’s rear.

A gentleman did not rough house a lady, although certain exceptions applied.

Eleanor slowed to chat with them. Sebastien hesitated to intervene. She knew her game. Did she need help?

It did not appear so. She gave no indication that she had anything better to do than exchange meaningless pleasantries with a couple they would never encounter again.

“Darling,” he said, in the lightest of censures, as if at any second the ballroom would not go up in smoke at her cousin’s hand.

“Darling,” she said, smiling up at him ingenuously, as if the world could erupt in flames and she would manage to escape unscathed. “Do you remember Major Dunstan and his wife?”

“I
knew
that face looked familiar.” He paused. The couple looked no more familiar to him than the footmen who had refilled their champagne flutes. Sometimes his memory lapses seemed to be a blessing. At others they posed an embarrassment. “One never forgets old friends or—”

“—those made during our travels,” Eleanor said quickly. “How unremarkable our stay in Bath would have been without the major entertaining us with his pithy jests.”

He glanced at his wife in reluctant gratitude. He resented that she understood his problem;
he
wanted to rescue her, damnit, not the other way around.

“We are relieved to see you home, and in such good form,” the major’s wife said, shouldering in front of her husband for a better view of Sebastien.

He bowed over her heavily powdered décolletage. One good sneeze and the friendly beldame would take out his eye. “And how good to see that you are”—he floundered for an apt description—“fit for a king.”

Eleanor smiled, taking a subtle step back. He restrained the impulse to grab her by the tail and keep her at his side.

“The major and his wife have written frequently to ask when you were coming home.”

“How gracious of them.”

“A gentleman cannot sire an heir while he’s away,” Major Dunstan said jovially.

“True,” he said. Sebastien slanted a meaningful look at his wife. She had lowered her gaze, but for a moment her eyes had been shadowed.

“Then what are you doing here, my lord?” the major-king asked with a sly wink at Eleanor.

Sebastien shook his head, wondering the same thing himself as Eleanor rattled off some vague response.

As far as the rest of England knew, he had served honorably in the British infantry under Wellington’s command until battle injuries had forced him to fulfill his duty in a quieter capacity. One assumed from
appearances that he had returned home to fulfill his next role as a privileged member of Society—the begetting of heirs.

Of course, appearances deceived. Not that he wasn’t eager to do his duty.

But what lay beneath the appearances of this particular marriage would have shaken Society to its hollow marrow.

Well, the fact that he now worked for the duke’s home agents probably would have only raised a quizzing glass or two.

But that he and his elegant wife had become rivals in a heated race of personal intrigue? That while Sebastien had been carrying out subversive assignments for the duke in obscure French ports, his dearly beloved had earned a place of notoriety in London’s history that neither of them could live down?

The duchess considered Eleanor to be her best spy.

Espionage? Sebastien had to smile.

The weapons Eleanor employed were but emotions and grand gestures. The battlefield of fidelity she defended on behalf of the duchess was not fought on some foreign soil, but here in the bedrooms of England.

How
the bloody hell had this transpired?

How during their separation had his beloved become the man who scandalized the whole of London?

Sebastien had learned of her involvement only because he worked in British intelligence.

From what he gathered, the Duchess of Wellington, a neglected wife in her own right, had taken Eleanor under her wing. The duke and duchess both held Eleanor’s father, a surgeon of uncommon skill and compassion, in the highest regard.

Presumably the duchess’s affection for Dr. Prescott had been transferred to his daughter, who had developed some uncommon skills herself.

How the two ladies had cooked up the Masquer scheme, Sebastien wasn’t sure.

He supposed the pair of them had masterminded this nonsense over tea—the sort in which one adds liberal splashes of sherry to the pot. He could picture their plot growing more outrageous with every sip until one had convinced the other that their plan bore merit.

Their purpose, as he understood it, was to find a series of twelve letters written to various women across England by a lady who claimed to have been cast aside as the duke’s mistress. Her name was Lady Viola Hutchinson, and she now resided in either Belgium or Ireland. This disgruntled authoress hadn’t been sighted in quite some time. But the threat of her letters being made public had apparently provoked the duchess to take action.

Wellington did not give a damn what anyone said of him. He had won a brilliant war. He was busy in Paris doling out portions of the world to its powers as one would a tasty Christmas pudding. He had been accused of infidelity before. He’d even been named in a lawsuit.

When Sebastien told Wellington what he had learned, the duke bellowed to let the blasted letters be published. Why did it matter what a spurned lover said? Let the accusations fly like arrows. He’d shrugged them off before. No doubt he would again.

His wife, the Duchess of Wellington, decided otherwise. She would tell the duke to his face if he’d bother to listen. These letters affronted her dignity. She had her children’s reputation to consider. Why should her boys grow up believing their brilliant papa had committed adultery? The alleged sins of their father would
not
be weighted on their young shoulders.

Thus, motivated as only a caring mother could be, not merely content to be the wife of a warrior, she had commissioned her faithful friend, Lady Boscastle, to assist her in retrieving these scandalous missives.

Sebastien, upon learning of this scheme, had hastened to intervene as quickly as he could. Quite frankly, he’d been looking for any excuse to return home. Although he and Eleanor had drifted into their estrangement, he had never stopped thinking of her as his wife. He disliked the idea of her involved in any type of intrigue, even this tea-cup sneaking about. He hadn’t realized the potential danger she risked until arriving back in London. And he had lied, baldly, when he told her that his superiors had ordered him to monitor her affairs.

But, unexpectedly, instead of stopping her, he had
become involved himself in her questionable intrigue. In the course of the past few months, he had leapt from a window into a cart to impress his wife. The police had chased him through alleys.

Instead of persuading Eleanor to give up her folly, she had convinced him to help her.

And still she had kept him at arm’s length, a temptress who would soon find herself taken.

He frowned, his thoughts returning to the masquerade. Nell Gwyn had just nudged him in the ribs.

“Is your wife afraid of him, my lord?” she asked quietly.

He blinked. One of Nell’s beauty patches was sliding down her chin. He observed its descent in concern. “Afraid of—”

“You know who,” Eleanor said with a conniving shiver, pressing Nell’s beauty spot back in place. “That rascal who is terrorizing all the bedchambers of London.”

Major Dunstan tapped his scepter against Sebastien’s sash of office. “What do you say, my Lord Mayor, if we combine our authority to put this Mayfair Masquer in the Tower?”

Eleanor’s eyes widened in alarm. “You don’t think he’s here, do you? Good heavens.” She glanced across the candlelit room. “Not one of the guests?”

She stared up helplessly at Sebastien, pressing closer to him. Even though he knew this feminine plea to his masculinity was an act, his masculinity responded. His theory had always been to take what
was offered, and offer apologies afterward. He faced a considerable amount of taking and apologizing to even out their marriage.