Elizabeth Boyle (9 page)

She quieted her cries down to a dull roar of vile threats.

Lights came on in the neighboring houses, doors cracking open as cautious servants peered out to witness the evening’s events. Giles ignored them all.

Perhaps he should have gone after his bride, he thought with a bit of chagrin. He doubted the soft-spoken Sophia would have done anything more unpredictable than faint at her capture. And even that she would have done quietly without attracting any untoward attention.

Up ahead Keenan had retrieved the duke’s wig and was helping Monty up the stairs and into the foyer.

“Stay put, Michaels,” Giles ordered his driver. “I’ve got one last errand for you.”

The young man nodded and took his post atop the carriage.

Stooping as he entered his house, Giles found his entire staff gathered.

“I assembled the staff,” Keenan said. “At the time I had thought it was appropriate for them to greet their new mistress.” The gray-haired man leaned forward, his voice taking a concerned turn. “Though no one informed me, milord, that the bride was so unwilling.”

G
iles pushed aside the lady’s skirts and found himself facing the anxious stares of his staff.

They thought this was his bride!

Oh, Lord in heaven, how had this ever happened to him?

“There was no wedding, Keenan,” he said. “Dismiss the staff. I’ll be in my study. See that I’m not disturbed.” With every ounce of Trahern pride he possessed, he straightened his spine and made his way up the staircase to the second floor, the squirming bundle of female fury still propped over his shoulder.

He’d learned Cyril’s lesson and wouldn’t trust his captive in a ground-floor room. He paused at the first landing. Turning, he found his staff still standing in the foyer, open-mouthed and unmoving. “Keenan?”

“Yes, milord?”

“Send a doctor around to Lord Delaney’s house. I have a feeling they’ll find him in his study.”

“Yes, milord.” Having been given an order to carry out, Keenan straightened up and seemed to gain control of himself. The butler waved off the staff and tried to return the house to a semblance of order.

Giles turned to Monty, who was already halfway up the stairs. “Not so fast. I have another task for you, my friend.”

Monty frowned. “And leave you alone with her? Not while I have a breath in my body.”

His captive caught the protective tones in Monty’s voice and latched on to them like a rope. “Oh, please,” she began pleading over Giles’s shoulder. “Don’t leave me with
him
.”

Monty nodded in agreement.

“Upon my honor, I won’t lay a hand on her,” Giles promised. “Besides, are you forgetting she just dumped you into the gutter? Or the condition of your wig?”

A deep frown drew across his friend’s face. “You have a point there. But still, I should stay and help you watch over her. She is quite a handful.”

Giles shook his head. “No, I need you to see to a more urgent matter. Take my carriage to Dryden’s. Fetch his lordship personally. And be discreet.”

This yanked Monty’s attention away from the lady, as Giles thought it might. His friend had always hinted that he would be more than willing to “assist” in Giles’s “business ventures,” and now the opportunity lay within his grasp.

“If you think you can handle the situation here,” Monty said discreetly, looking around to see that the servants were gone before he said anything else.

Winking, Giles continued up the stairs. “I have everything under control.”

Sophia glanced from behind her mask at the room where she was being held captive. Tall shelves lined with books flanked the fireplace. A wide mahogany desk squatted in the middle of the room like a giant brown toad. And, of course, a tray atop a short chest in the corner displayed various bottles of libations. It was a very male domain, much like any of the other studies she’d seen in her time as the Brazen Angel.

And nothing to really help her.

Giles was at the door issuing orders to his footmen to remain stationed outside.

The ominous sound of a key clicking in the lock told her she was trapped.

She moved to the window, her fingers tracing the panes. Her mind spun with wild plans, but none seemed feasible.

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Recommend what?” Sophia turned around slowly.

“The window. It is too high to jump and a devil of a climb. As a child I broke my arm trying to escape this room. My father had sent me here to await punishment. I had other ideas.”

She looked back out at the empty street. “So am I to be punished?” Her fingers went to her sore cheek. She knew she would have a horrible bruise by the morning and no end of explaining as to how it happened.

“Is that what you expect? To be beaten again? You’ve been keeping the wrong sort of company, my lady.”

She couldn’t agree more, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. For a while in Delaney’s study it appeared Emma’s potion would never take effect. By the time it finally did, the cruel man had already demanded his own form of amusement. Still, she didn’t like the smug look on Lord Trahern’s face, as if he was any better than Delaney.

“Why should I consider you different, my lord? You snatched me from the street and carted me here against my will. What is a lady to think in such circumstances?”

“And you think I am capable of the same type of obvious violence you encountered with Delaney?”

She didn’t reply at once, because deep down she knew he wasn’t. Though perhaps incapable of physical violence, this man could break a woman’s heart if she was unlucky enough to give it to him. She knew only too well the pain of a lost love and the price a woman paid for believing in a man’s promise.

Her hands smoothed out her dress and skimmed over the hidden pouch tied to her stays beneath. Inside the leather purse she’d stashed all that remained of Delaney’s gold and jewelry—to her way of thinking, a fair exchange for the vile man’s mistreatment.

Enough money, she hoped, to meet the demands of her Paris contact. Then she could return to London and see if Lord Trahern was a man of his word.

But first she must escape her betrothed again. There seemed no avoiding the man this evening.

Silence filled the space between them, though she could feel the weight of his gaze burning into her back. She pulled at the torn sleeve of her bodice and tried to hide her exposed shoulder. “I have found that men take what they want, Lord Trahern. Without asking. They believe it is their due, their right. And I assume you are no different.”

He’d had no compunction about waltzing up to her aunt’s house and demanding their marriage contract be fulfilled at a moment’s notice and at his pleasure. If that wasn’t bad enough, he hadn’t even bothered to see his bride before making this decision. Sophia realized it didn’t matter if she were as ugly as an old fishwife, so long as she was capable of being his brood mare, albeit a respectable one.

Even her obvious—although feigned—ill health hadn’t been a deterrent to his selfish plans.

“I hardly think I am in the same league as Delaney,” he argued, nodding toward the gaping hole in her bodice.

She sniffed. “‘Tis hours ‘till dawn, Lord Trahern. I’d wager before first light you’ll show your true side.” Whirling around, Sophia’s gaze searched anxiously up and down the empty street, looking for any sign of her carriage.

Surely, Oliver and Emma had been able to follow her.

“I wouldn’t be so sure, my lady. I have no intention of causing you any harm. As long as you cooperate.”

The cautious tones of his voice didn’t give her much hope. A wary man was a difficult one to deceive.

Giles crossed the room toward her, candle in hand. “Perhaps you can start by telling me who you are?”

“I hardly think that would be fair, until you tell me why you’ve captured me, Lord Trahern.” She twisted away from the window, sidestepping him and moving toward the shadows near the fireplace.

He tipped his head to her. “I think you know why I brought you here. So I would have your name, Lady—” he paused, as if waiting for her to fill in the blank.

Sophia shrugged her shoulders and tried to look bored.

His voice prodded her. “The Brazen Angel. That is what they call you, isn’t it?”

She nodded to him in concession. It was futile to spend a lot of time bluffing as to her innocence. Nudging a log in the unlit fireplace with the toe of her slipper, she spared a glance in his direction.

Lord, he was handsome. Too handsome with his dark, brushed-back hair and carved features. She hadn’t been able to examine him too closely in her aunt’s dayroom, with him being seated across the darkened room and perched on Lady Dearsley’s narrow Chippendale chair. The poor man had worn the grim look of a man being led to Traitor’s Hill. Of course the distance between them had been to her advantage. He’d never gotten close enough to get a good look at his intended. With Emma’s quick help they’d tinted her skin with makeup to a horrid shade of yellow, smudged dark circles under her eyes, and dressed her in an ancient, oversized orange gown to heighten her sickly appearance. A bit of ash from the fireplace and hand salve had done wonders in dulling and clumping her hair to a dingy color and luster.

Thank goodness her aunt was so nearsighted and rarely noticed the changes in her niece’s appearance.

Wherein the disappointment in his eyes when he’d first beheld her should have left her triumphant in the success of her deception, it instead had pricked her pride and vanity to see his letdown expression, as brief and quickly hidden as it had been.

No such dismay marred his features tonight. Though she wouldn’t wager a shilling whether he stood across his study grinning because of his success at capturing the Brazen Angel or because he’d escaped his marriage to her.

Their wedding!
Whatever was he doing chasing after the Brazen Angel when he was to be wed this evening? He should be out combing the streets of London for his bride-to-be.

“Why did your butler think I was your bride?” she asked, once again looking out the window. When he didn’t answer right away, she glanced over her shoulder at him.

He looked everywhere but directly at her. “I was to be wed tonight.”

She made a great display of searching around the room, ending up back in front of the window. “I see no bride. What happened to her?”

His jaw set in a firm line. “I changed my mind.”

At this Sophia nearly lost her composure. He’d changed his mind? How dare he! Had he even gone to her aunt’s house and discovered her missing? “You left the poor girl waiting for you at the altar? Why, she must be heartbroken.”

“I doubt it,” he said tersely. “I doubt she minds it in the least. It’s not as if I threw her off. I just decided to postpone the date to a more convenient time.”

Something in the way his words dropped from his lips like heavy stones told Sophia he had gone to her aunt’s house. But that didn’t explain why he was spending his wedding night with her and not out searching for his errant bride.

“Enough about my marriage,” he said, his tone lightening. “I would rather talk about you and why all of London calls you the Brazen Angel. I can’t believe you’ve gained your extraordinary knowledge of the
ton
through anything but active participation, so I would call you Lady Brazen.” He held the candle up so its light fell in a dim circle around them.

“I’m flattered you think I’m a lady,” she commented.

His brows arched. “I never said that.”

The words ruffled down Sophia’s spine.
And the last thing I want from you
, she thought quite shamelessly,
is to be treated like a lady.
How incredible it would have been to spend the night tangled in his embrace as his wife . . . or his mistress. She could well imagine what it would be like to have their bodies pressed together, his dark gaze smoldering with longing.

She may have had to feign virginity as Lady Sophia, yet as the Brazen Angel this man wouldn’t care if she came to his bed tarnished by another man’s touch. Why, he’d expect it.

Sophia felt stunned that she was even considering the notion. Still, she smiled to herself at the possibilities it offered for escape.

“It won’t work.” Giles lit another taper on the desk.

“What?” she asked over her shoulder, suddenly alarmed that somehow he’d been able to see into her passionate thoughts. As the light flickered and glowed she turned away, toying with a small wood box on the mantel, trying to dismiss the lingering images of him taking her to his bed.

Giles moved about the room, lighting the various candles in the sconces, illuminating the shadows.

Sophia circled the study, searching for the best place, any spot where the light did not burn as bright.

“Trying to hide,” he commented as he lit the kindling in the fireplace. “It was fine in the carriage when you thought you might escape, but your charade is over.”

She stopped behind the chair at his desk to survey her jail cell, looking for anything to aid in her escape.

Many of the lords she had . . . well . . . visited kept rooms like this for appearances, but it was obvious Giles Trahern was a man of business. She had known for some time he was connected to the Foreign Office and was involved with unspoken work, but then Lord Trahern’s father had told her most of the details she needed. The old man had felt it his duty to inform his future daughter-in-law of the dangers Trahern men faced.

She had thought at the time that the old marquess might just be bragging about his son’s deeds, but looking at the military posture of this Trahern and his keen, assessing gaze, she knew she faced her most dangerous adversary yet.

Her fiancé she did not fear, not when she was Lady Sophia coughing into her handkerchief. Her betrothed had wanted only to dismiss her.

This man left her trembling.

For he wanted more than anything to unmask her.

She laughed out loud as the absurdity of it dawned on her.

It was as if they had been destined to spend this night together. Either as man and wife, or captor and captive.

Really, she thought, wasn’t it one and the same when you had to marry a man you didn’t know or love?