Far Too Tempted (30 page)

A distant rumble of thunder made her frown. Glancing up at the serene sky of deepening blue, Jessica paused, seeing one of the gardening staff, a thin old man who had seen her toiling and obviously deliberately stayed a discreet distance away, also look sharply upwards at the cloudless abyss above.

Not thunder, no. Jessica slowly rose to her feet. Like a statue, she stood and listened to the sound of hooves pounding up the drive. Whoever was arriving seemed to be in a great hurry.

Alex. The name almost erupted from her lips.

When she was certain he wouldn’t, he’d come for her.

A surge of joy almost made her knees weak, and she hated herself for that naive emotion. Instantly she chastised herself inwardly for being a romantic fool, when all the while she belied that emotion by straightening the skirt of her simple gown and self-consciously smoothing her hair. At least holding on to her dignity enough to not hurry, she picked her way to the path and began to walk around the house.

If Alex was angry at her defection from London to the country, she was simply going to coolly point out that he had brought it on himself. She rounded the corner, bracing herself for the husbandly tirade that was sure to come.

Only her visitor wasn’t Alex.

The team was lathered, the coach old and decrepit, and as it rocked to an unsteady halt just before the front doors of the house, the tall man who emerged from the interior bore very little resemblance to her fair husband but was familiar just the same. Dark as sin, and wearing an expression perhaps as forbidding as the master of Hades, she recognized Jack Rivers as the man Alex had chosen to stand as witness to their marriage ceremony.

Why on earth is he arriving at Braidwood, looking bleak as the Reaper himself?

At the edge of the drive, she felt her stomach do a curious dive.

“Mrs. Ramsey?” He spotted her and stopped dead in the act of dashing up the front steps, whipping his hand through his hair as if suddenly aware of his appearance: rumpled coat, unshaven jaw, dusty boots. Abruptly changing his route, he strode toward her.

Ordinarily she might be self-conscious to greet a guest after hours on her knees in the garden, but it suddenly seemed a very trivial matter. Alex’s friend haring up their drive at a breakneck pace was ominous. Jessica’s throat seemed to close. “Mr. Rivers? What a…a surprise.”

His dark eyes were intensely grave and disconcertingly intense. If he noticed her dirt-stained hands and old gown, it was not apparent as he came forward. He stopped just short of where she stood. “I can see from the expression on your face you realize my arrival is not the herald of good news. I’m sorry, but it’s Alex.”

“Alex?” Her voice was curiously thick. Her fingers felt numb and heavy as Jack Rivers reached out and took her hand.

All details of the lovely morning rushed away. The sun, birds, summer smells. The only thing Jessica was aware of was the tall man standing over her, clasping her fingers so very tightly. His eyes were heavy-lidded and a muscle twitched spasmodically in his left cheek as he said, “I regret to tell you that there has been trouble.”

Trouble? The numbness began to spread in cold waves throughout her body. The image of the fight in the garden flashed into her mind.

“I will not lie to you.” The words were harsh. “Alex is in grave danger of losing his life.”

Alex…so vital, so strong…
dead
?

She wildly shook her head and whispered, “No.”

Rivers caught her arms. “Don’t faint on me, my lady. Your husband still lives. We need to leave immediately for London. Perhaps your presence will make all the difference…” The sentence trailed off as if the breath had caught in his throat.

The picture of Alex, bloody and ashen, all those many miles away, made her heart tighten as if squeezed in a vise. Jessica blinked upward in horrified disbelief, Jack’s saturnine features blurring. Her voice wobbled in betrayal when she whispered, “What happened? Marcus sent no word… I don’t understand—”

He said harshly, “We can discuss this once we are on our way. Hurry and ready yourself. I will escort you back to London. Your husband needs you by his side.”

Hurry.

Your husband needs you…

Jerking free from her visitor’s supporting grip, Jessica turned and ran blindly toward the house to change her clothes. Before she was even in the doorway, she was shouting for Higgins.

Tepid tea and stale, tasteless scones were hardly the remedy for lost sleep and utter frustration. His gaze narrowed on the woman sitting so still in the chair across the bare room, Alex bit out, “Continuing to deny your husband’s role as
El Diablo
, both back in Spain, and here in London, is fruitless, madame.”

Only the barest light filtered through one high, dusty window, shrouding the room in shadow despite the bright early-morning sun outside. Pale and composed, looking cool and lovely in an embroidered tulle gown even after a night spent under arrest, Eloise Rivers lifted one blond brow in a careful movement. “And doing otherwise, Colonel, where would that get me?”

That was the confounded aspect of it all, Alex thought darkly as they stared at each other in deadlock. Implication in the murders of three such important men was a death sentence of itself. Nothing she could say would likely save her life. Even though hanging women was very rare, it still happened, and in her case, was no doubt inevitable. Fingering the cuff of his rumpled coat, he held her gaze. “Your cooperation will sit well with the courts, Mrs. Rivers.” Next to him at a small table, a young man sat, scribbling down every word exchanged in the interrogation. Held for now in an empty office in the rabbit’s den of government buildings, Eloise had refused to speak a word to anyone else but Alex, though Wright had been insistent at least there be a record of their conversation.

Her laugh sounded more like breaking glass than mirth, light and brittle. “My ‘cooperation’ will not affect the outcome of my predicament. Come now, let us be honest, Colonel. You accuse me of cold-blooded murder and even claim to have proof. How could they ever set me free?”

Across the length of the simple room that General Wright had decided would make an adequate makeshift prison for such a politically charged prisoner, Alex swiftly countered, “I accuse your husband of murder. You are merely an accomplice, callously used as bait. It could be a valid defense.”

“Jack did not use me. I believe you know this full well.” Her pink lips pursed and her slippers scraped the floor as she shifted position slightly. Tipping back her blond head, she idly fingered the edge of her bodice, drawing attention to the generous exposed upper swells of her breasts in a way that in any other circumstances would have seemed flirtatious. Here, trapped in a dreary bare room and discussing the murders of three men, it was simply grotesque. Nevertheless, Alex heard the young man next to him swallow audibly, the pen arrested in his hand as his gaze followed that languid movement.

She murmured, “
El Diablo
has been brilliantly confounding Wellington’s intelligence network since well before Jack was captured by the French.”

“He would not be the first man to sell out while still in our service.”

Clicking at her teeth with her tongue in a scolding sound, Eloise smiled. “So quick to condemn your old friend, aren’t you?”

Alex smiled back, a cynical twist of his lips. “Murder has a tendency to set a man apart from the rest of his race, even his old friends. If I condemn Jack, it is because I know what he has become.”

Eloise’s eyes took on an odd glitter. She glanced at the secretary, who was still staring, a slack-jawed expression on his face. When she looked back at Alex, her gaze was cold. “And what is that,
mon
Colonel?”

“A monster, Madame Rivers. Evil, remorseless, inhuman.”

“How harsh you are.” The murmur of protest fell into the airless room.

“I examined Lord Flatterly’s body after he was found the other day. I don’t think anything could be more harsh than his treatment.”

The flash of fury in the face of the woman before him was unmistakable. Not bound in any way, Eloise slowly got to her feet and took several small, graceful steps. She said softly, “Ah, but we are at war, are we not? How can the death of an enemy be considered murder? If so, you are as guilty as Jack, are you not? Did you never fire a weapon or use your sword while in Spain?”

Alex still thought it a mistake to not lock this woman away under bars and guards. He’d been told that Newgate Prison, however, was considered out of the question. The general still strove for as much secrecy as possible. He parried smoothly, “Face him across a field when he is holding a musket in his hands, kill him fairly, and then it isn’t murder. Lure him to his doom with seductive smiles and erotic promises, and that, my dear Eloise, is being a cutthroat.”

Her china blue eyes were wide. “Do I look like a cutthroat?” She swayed closer. The subtle scent of her perfume drifted through the stifling air, even after hours in custody. Petite, lush and overtly sensual, she gave him a siren’s smile, seemingly oblivious to the young man still watching them both, quill poised.

Picturing the portly, aging Pickford under the pressure of that enticing advance, Alex felt a small wave of pity for the man, even if he had wanted to slip from the grace of his wedding vows.

He, on the other hand, had every intention of keeping his promise to Jessica.

Her breasts were almost brushing his chest and Alex stepped back quickly, as if she were a viper. “Tell me”—his voice was curt and cold as he asked the question—”where your husband might have gone.”

Lips curled back over her white, perfect teeth, Eloise responded with vicious delight, “I don’t know, Colonel Ramsey, but I would watch my back if I were you.”

The carriage lurched over a particularly rough patch of road, sending her almost ricocheting across the confined space. Jessica tucked her skirts around her ankles and tried to swallow the thickness in her throat, bracing her hands against the seat. Her discomfort grew by the second and had nothing to do with the bumpy journey.

Across from her, legs crossed at the ankle, Jack Rivers sat silent. She had changed and flung a few items into a bag, making haste to run out the door and leaving the staff in a state of confusion. Higgins, always so correct, had been the most rattled. The alarmed butler actually followed her out to the carriage with unanswered questions on his lips.

It would have been almost comical to see such a dignified man in such distress and disarray, except for the grim circumstances.

And now that they were underway, Alex’s old friend seemed disinclined to speak.

“Please, sir.” She cleared her throat finally and tried to control the wobble in her voice. Blinking fiercely to control the tears that seemed to irritatingly gather on her lashes against her will, she said, “I know you are fatigued from your journey and appreciate very much your concern and effort on my behalf, but could you now tell me exactly what has happened to my husband?”

“He fell afoul of his arrogance, madam.” Her companion folded his arms across his broad chest and looked at her impassively.

The cold words were a surprise and the last thing she would have expected him to say. Meeting that dark, hooded gaze, Jessica felt her lips part. “I beg your pardon?”

His smile was thin, doing nothing to lighten his bleak expression. “You will, knowing him so intimately since your childhood, admit Alex has always had an odd and somewhat brash sense of his own indestructibility, does he not?”

Images, unwanted, drifted back… Alex as barely more than a youth, challenging Robert to a race on horseback, both of them without saddles, standing upright on bare feet on the back of the charging horses.

Alex, young and gallant and charming, reportedly wooing married ladies under the noses of their husbands, proof of which she’d seen herself, unfortunately, firsthand.

Alex, flinging himself at the intruder in the moonlit gardens, armed with nothing more than a slim blade in his hand…

“Perhaps,” she agreed faintly.

Jack Rivers lifted a brow, giving his lean face a sardonic cast. “I think in his quest to discover the murderer that has been plaguing London society these past few weeks, he may finally have met his fateful match.”

Murderer? Her head spun in confusion, misery locked in every pore of her body. With a great deal of effort, she managed to murmur calmly, “You are being deliberately obtuse, Mr. Rivers, I assume to spare my sensibilities. Please do not dissemble further, I beg you. Not knowing what has gone before me will not prepare me to aid Alex. I give you leave to be perfectly upfront and forthright, leaving out no details. Why on earth would my husband investigate that which is better left to the police?”

“The devil’s own question, Mrs. Ramsey. I assume that old snake, Wright, has something to do with it.”

Not having the foggiest notion whom Wright might be and a little bewildered by her companion’s inscrutable expression and evasive demeanor, Jessica tried to stick to the question she needed answered the most. “Has Alex been shot?”

“No.” Rivers barely moved as they careened over a series of potholes designed to shake the very teeth from one’s head. He was so tall that his hair nearly brushed the ceiling to the coach.