Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 02]

“A charming heroine and a dashing spy hero make
The Pretender
a riveting read … entertained me thoroughly from beginning to end.”

—Sabrina Jeffries,
USA Today
bestselling
author of
After the Abduction on The Pretender

Dalton had a problem. And it was growing larger by the moment …

Her warm firm little body was driving him mad. He’d bent his head slightly to whisper to her, and he hadn’t been able to make himself move away afterward. She smelled like warm heaven, like woman and rose petals and, rather suddenly, like passion.

The skin of her neck was so close that he could feel the heat on his lips. A fraction of an inch more and he would be able to taste her. And dear God, how he wanted to taste her.

He succumbed. Just a brief stolen taste. Just a whisper of his tongue on her fragrant skin.

She jerked slightly and he pressed her still with his palm on her firm rounded hip. Held her still with strength and the fear of discovery for this tiny ravagement. God help him, if she had objected further, he was not sure he would have listened.

Instead, she let her head fall back on his shoulder, exposing more soft neck to his exploring mouth.

A near silent sigh escaped her, a sigh of submission and longing, or so he chose to hear it.

Clara had no sense available to her but touch and scent. The darkness was comforting in its anonymity. If even they couldn’t see what they were doing, then perhaps on some level, it wasn’t truly done.

Yet the heat of his mouth on her flesh was very real …

England 1813

She stood upon a pedestal, a Hellenic goddess gone grievously bad. Her pouting lips and exaggerated pose were far too carnal for classical statuary. And although a gossamer drape properly covered her curves, the very way her rounded limbs narrowed to her tiny hands and feet only led one’s mind to imagine the voluptuous swells hidden beneath the fabric.

At her feet knelt three worshipful men, two easily identifiable as pillars of London Society, one partially hidden behind the luscious figure. All three men were captured in the act of showering the idol with gold and jewels, their hands attempting to grasp her even in the act of giving.

Below, drawn in tiny scale compared to the goddess and her admirers, crawled the plainly recognizable wives and children of the two foremost gentlemen. Their wretched, ragged state was in startling contrast to the wealth piled at the feet of the temptress above.

“Fleur and Her Followers” read the caption beneath the drawing.

Gerald Braithwaite shoved away the pile of paper and string that had come wrapped around the stack of political cartoons, in his enthusiasm knocking the engraved sign that read “Editor” to the floor. The simply clad servant girl who had delivered the package knelt quickly to return the plaque to its proper place, but Braithwaite ignored her as well.

With loving care he picked up the topmost drawing with one hand while he rubbed the other across his mouth as if to repress his response. A gleeful chuckle escaped anyway as he gazed down at the drawing that was going to sell more newspapers in one day than the
London Sun
had ever seen.

“Sir Thorogood, you do me proud, you do,” muttered the editor. What a drawing! It had lust, sin, and pathos. Three wealthy men squandering their wealth on a woman—likely some current favorite opera dancer—while they beggared their families in the process. It was superb mockery, razor-edged in its detail, all rendered in skillful lines that might more likely be found in the sketchbooks of the masters.

“The devil take them all, those pompous toffs. In fact, they’ll wish he had when this one hits the streets.” Braithwaite gave a happy sigh and tossed a thickly stuffed envelope to the servant without so much as a glance.

The editor smiled, then chuckled once more. Finally, his laughter echoed through the halls of the building that housed the press of what was fast becoming the most widely read news-sheet in all of London.

As the mousy young delivery woman passed throughthe door onto
the street, only the smallest twitch of her lips betrayed her satisfaction at the editor’s merriment.

The next afternoon, a certain gentleman opened the
London Sun
to peruse over his breakfast. He’d slept quite late in the day, but he’d managed to find time to grope one shivering chambermaid, batter one footman, and profoundly insult his butler. All in all, he’d worked up quite an appetite.

Perhaps that was why he nearly choked on the giant mouthful of ham he was chewing. Or perhaps it was the lethal quill of Sir Thorogood.

Reddened with rage, the gentleman summoned his butler with a howl. “Bring the carriage round! I’m going out.”

The butler nodded obediently, but as he turned to go his gaze fell upon the paper clenched in his master’s hand. Even the very real possibility of reprisal could not stop the grin that grew upon the butler’s face as he left the room.

Slap
? The paper landed on one very consequential lord’s supper plate.

“Here, now! I was eating that!” The fair-haired lord glared up at the two men who had disturbed his evening.

“I daresay your appetite will be gone in a moment. Look at this!” The taller of his visitors unfolded the news-sheet to reveal the latest cartoon by Sir Thorogood.

The lord was halted in the act of wiping his mouth as he realized what was exposed in the sweeping lines of the caricature.

“Bloody hell,” he whispered.

“Precisely,” said his visitor.

“What are we going to do?” whined the second man, who up until now had hung in the background, wringing his hands.

The lord grunted. “What else? Find this Thorogood and discredit him. He must have some dry bones rattling in his closet. A family scandal, a gambling problem.”

The first man seemed doubtful. “Will that be enough, do you think? I move for a more permanent solution.”

“It’s a beginning,” the lord said grimly, tossing his napkin down over the cartoon. “But you may rest assured, gentlemen, that there will be an end.”

Dalton Montmorency, Lord Etheridge and Crown spy, strode into the ballroom in his first appearance as the reclusive cartoonist Sir Thorogood and became instantly aware that he had somehow seriously angered his valet.

As he passed through the large arching doors of the Rochesters’ ballroom and down the elegant spiraling stairs, the clamor of voices halted and a sea of faces turned upward toward him like flowers turning into the sun.

Perhaps it was due to the brilliance of his evening wear. Compared to the somber black worn by the other men in the room, Dalton was dressed with theatrical excess as a fop.

A dandy.

A flaming tea leaf with delusions of manhood.

“Dress me as a flamboyant artist,” he’d told Button, the valet and onetime theatre costumer he’d borrowed from his good friend and ex-spymaster Simon Raines. “Make me look like one of those idiots who cares for nothing in the world but clothes.”

Upon reflection, Dalton realized that those were perhaps
not the wisest words to use to a valet.

Button was a costuming genius and was fast becoming the outfitter of choice of the members of the Liar’s Club operating covertly. He was also a bit on the sensitive side, to understate the matter. Quite frankly, Dalton wished Button had gone for a simpler revenge.

Poison, perhaps. Hired killers, even. Dalton would much rather be facing armed thugs in an alleyway than be standing in front of this crowd, clad in all his “artistic” glory. In the abruptly silent ballroom, close to one hundred people stood with their eyes fixed on him as he paused at the top of the spiraling entry staircase.

His coat alone should have blinded them. It hadn’t seemed so garish in the dimness of his rooms, or the darkness of his carriage. However, in the blazing glow of the fully lighted chandeliers that hung above the crowd, there was no denying that Dalton was wearing a particularly malevolent shade of chartreuse.

That coat, combined with his shimmering violet silk waistcoat and his peacock-blue pegged breeches, convinced Dalton that he resembled nothing so much as a nightmarishly enormous tropical parrot.

Button was a dead man.

For now that “Sir Thorogood” had made his long-awaited public appearance in this guise, there would be no choice but to continue the entire charade costumed like a pirate’s pet bird.