Lady Rogue (20 page)

The duke paused. “That bloodline hardly makes him a commoner.” Everton
would
be involved in this, damn his unpredictable hide.

“He is untitled. And an Irishman.”

“I see,” Furth uttered, his countenance stern. “And what is this untitled Irishman’s name?”

“Christian Riley. They call him Kit.”

“Well,” the duke said after a moment, turning for the door. “I’ll have my bags brought up. It seems I’ve something to take care of before I return to Furth.”

Kit didn’t go into the Hanging Crow tavern to speak to her father.

She started to, slipped out of Cale House after Everton rode off somewhere, hired a hack, and then walked up the last few streets through the driving rain to Long Acre. Half a block from the tavern she noticed the figure lounging in the doorway, and with a cold start ducked into the bakery at the corner.

Apparently her feeling of being followed over the past few days had been correct. Beloche, one of the Comte
de Fouché’s henchmen, leaned against the rough stonework of the tavern and surveyed the passing crowd of pedestrians. Kit took a seat near the window and ordered coffee and a hot pastry. If Beloche was about, then Fouché would be, as well. And that made no sense.

Napoleon was in Paris, gathering an army to stand against the British. Jean-Paul Mercier, one of the few French nobles who had supported Bonaparte’s first grand revolution and lived to tell the tale, would not be in London away from his esteemed master. Not without a very good reason. And compared to regaining Europe, smuggling anything seemed less than important. Yet apparently Fouché
was
in London, with her father. Kit frowned. It had been the comte spying on her before, after all. Which would imply that all was not well between Jean-Paul and Stewart Brantley.

She watched for nearly an hour, but when no one else came or went, she slipped out of the bakery and up the street the way she had come. She needed to speak to Stewart Brantley, because of what Alex apparently had been able to discover, though she had no idea precisely how much he knew. But she knew the rules. They were to meet only when there was no one else about. Kit wiped the rain from her face and hunched her shoulders into her splendid caped greatcoat. Whatever Alex knew, he hadn’t directly accused her of anything. And with Fouché between her and her father, and five days remaining, she would have to make do as best she could. If she could. If she could face Everton and smile, and pretend that she didn’t know what he had been speaking of, and that she was not desperately in love with him.

“T
he library carpet is ruined, my lord.” Wenton stepped into the earl’s office with a tray of tea and biscuits.

“Well, throw it out, then,” Alex snapped, without looking up from his rather lengthy correspondence to Everton Manor. His agent hardly needed such detailed instruction, for the man had been looking after Everton for decades. But he’d had little else to do this afternoon but wonder how he could have been such a fool as to let Kit out of his sight again.

“Yes, my lord.”

Alex shut his eyes for a moment as the butler deposited his tray on the desk and left the room. Closing his eyes didn’t banish the damned chit from his thoughts, though, and with a curse he opened them again and dashed his signature across the bottom of the missive. He had kissed women before, blast it, women with experience to match his own. He had bedded innumerable women in highly imaginative ways and places, and enjoyed having the freedom to do so. Which explained not at all why there had been no one since he had discovered that Kit Riley was a blasted female.

He told himself that it was only because he wasn’t supposed to touch her, that it was dangerous to lose himself in thoughts of her, that she was able to drive him to distraction. It was only frustration at not being able to act either in having her or in stopping her from what
ever her damned plot with her father was. “Blast,” he muttered, running his fingers through his hair.

Before Reg had invited them to Kit’s farewell salute at the Society for the evening, he’d had something else to do, though he couldn’t remember what it was. With an irritated sigh, he dug through his pile of correspondence until he found the engraved invitation to Lady Crasten’s very exclusive dinner soiree. The more daring, libidinous members of the
ton
could be counted on to attend, and to make the evening generally quite…engaging. That was where he had first bedded Barbara Sinclair, in fact, two years ago.

Alex sat back, scowling at the card. This afternoon, the thought of the whole lewd thing disgusted him. He tore the invitation in half and tossed it into the wastebasket beside the desk. The clock chimed four; Kit had been missing for better than three hours. And since he’d let it slip that he suspected her, no doubt she’d fled. She was killing him. She was driving him mad, and he couldn’t let it continue. With a curse aimed more at himself than at her, he yanked a piece of parchment out of his desk and slammed it down onto the smooth mahogany. In the same motion, he pulled the pen from its well and scrawled a salutation across the top of the page. And stopped.

For a long moment he sat with pen poised above paper, ready to make his report and confess that he knew who the smuggler was, and that immediate steps needed to be taken. Instead he took a long, shuddering breath, and set the pen back where it belonged. She was involved. He knew she was involved. But until she confessed to it, he couldn’t condemn her.

The front door opened. “Afternoon, Wenton,” came jauntily from the entryway, and Alex crumpled the letter and threw it into the wastebasket.

“Kit!” he roared, refusing to rush out into the hallway to see her, to let her know how relieved he was that she’d returned.

After a moment she pushed the door open and stepped into his study. Her hair was wet, straying ends hanging
in straggles around her face. The rest of her was none too dry, either. “You bellowed, Everton?” she queried coolly, leaning against the doorjamb as though nothing had happened between them. Only the green eyes determinedly avoiding his told a different story.

He wanted to brush the wet locks back from her forehead and kiss her soft, sweet lips. “We’re to meet Reg and the others tonight,” he said, as cool as she was, and burning inside. “Don’t forget.”

“I haven’t,” she answered. Kit looked toward the door and back again. “I’d best go change before I catch pneumonia.”

He nodded. “And put your hair back. You look…quite feminine with it down like that.” Slowly he stood and strolled over to her side.

“Do I?” She reached up to touch her hair, then stopped herself. Her shoulders heaved as she took a breath. “Alex,” she ventured, “may I ask you a question?”

“Anything,” he murmured, leaning against the edge of the door and studying her lovely face.

Kit’s gaze touched his, saying something he wished he could read, then slid away again. “Do you have a portrait of your mother anywhere?”

Of all the questions she might have asked, he hadn’t expected that one. “I do. In the ballroom. Would you like to see it?”

She nodded. “I would.”

He gestured her toward the stairs, followed her up the two flights, and then down the hallway to the two doors on the east side of the mansion. They were both unlocked, and he lifted a lamp from the hall table and entered the room before her. There had been only one gathering in the room since his mother’s death, shortly after his marriage. The servants had kept the floor well cleaned, and the chandeliers covered to protect them from dust. On the wall opposite the door two life-sized portraits hung side by side, each covered with a heavy sheet. Silently he stepped forward and freed them from
their shrouds, then moved back and lifted the lamp to illuminate them for her.

Kit took the light from his fingers and stepped closer. “She was beautiful,” she breathed after a moment. “How old was she when this was done?”

“About your age. And Father was about mine. They were commissioned a year after their marriage, by my grandmother. As a gift.” Their voices echoed a little in the huge, empty room, and the covered chandeliers chimed faintly in response.

“You have her look,” Kit observed, tilting her head to view the tall, dark-haired woman with the laughing gray eyes who shared the empty room with her smiling husband. “What was she like?”

Alex looked away from the portrait and smiled as he gazed at the damp, blond waif before him. “Well, other than the fact that she didn’t wear breeches or curse very often, she was a great deal like you.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kit protested, glancing over her shoulder at him with a shy, intrigued smile. His favorite smile.

“No, truly. She had a startling wit. Most men were terrified of her.”

“Men aren’t terrified of me,” she said to the painting.

“Because they think you’re one of them. Being made to look like complete fools is acceptable if it comes from one of your own. If you donned petticoats, throwing devastating set-downs about like dandelions would be greatly frowned upon. You would be expected to simper and faint and say ‘lud’ quite a bit more frequently than you do.”

Grinning, she turned to face him. “I’ve never even said ‘lud,’ I don’t think.”

“My point, exactly.”

Her smile faded as they stood looking at one another, the lamplight yellow and flickering between them. In the uncertain light his parents seemed to be looking down at them and laughing. Whether it was in approval, or in amusement at the hole the two of them had managed to put themselves in, he didn’t know. The frustrated crav
ing for her burned at him still, whatever duty and conscience told him he shouldn’t be doing. She seemed to see it in his eyes, for she moved first, swallowing and looking back toward the doorway.

“I must go change,” she muttered, and glanced over her shoulder again. “Do you wish me to help you cover them again?”

He shook his head. “The servants can do it. I, ah, don’t like to leave them behind like that.” Alex smiled slightly, embarrassed at the sentiment. He believed, though, that she would understand. “Can’t shake the feeling they don’t like being left here in the dark to miss everything that’s going on.”

Kit looked up at Victoria Cale, the Countess of Everton. “I think you’re right,” she agreed softly. She turned back to him. “And I’m sorry about this morning.”

He took a breath. “Not your fault, chit.” He’d been thinking about it all day, about how he could turn what he’d said into something more innocent-sounding than what had nearly amounted to a direct accusation. “I’m still having a bit of difficulty remembering that I’m Galahad rather than Don Juan.”

The lie was flimsy as a kite in a windstorm, and from her expression she didn’t believe for a moment that it was his sense of chivalry that had stopped him. She had come back to Cale House, though, which made him believe that she hadn’t yet gotten whatever it was she had come for. He was therefore unsurprised when she grinned and nodded. “And I keep forgetting that I’m Christian and not Christine.”

Alex should have left it at that, but as she handed back the lamp and walked past him, close enough to touch, he was unable to remain silent. “It’s not a matter of forgetting, but of fooling,” he said quietly to her back. “And you shan’t fool me again, Christine. I’ll never mistake you for anything but what you are.”

She stopped, and her shoulders stiffened. Slowly she turned around. “And what is that,
monsieur
?”

“Beautiful.”

He shouldn’t have said it, for he was close enough as it was, to grabbing her and making love to her on the ballroom floor, but her fleeting, self-conscious smile as she turned and left the room made the risk worth it. Alex took a deep breath and lifted the lamp again. “Lovely, isn’t she?” His parents still laughed, and he thought that perhaps they had enjoyed meeting her. “Good night,” he whispered, and blew out the light.

Augustus Devlin was already drunk by the time Kit Brantley and Alexander Cale reached the Society at the height of the evening. Reg Hanshaw was there before them also, and the quick glance the baron sent Alex was almost one of warning. That made sense, though, Kit decided, for if she were involved in a secret government assignment, she wouldn’t care to have any of her cohorts sotted, either.

“Good evening, my dears.” She nodded, sinking into the chair beside Augustus and hoping to have the opportunity to take advantage of his inebriated state. Another confrontation like the one with Alex that morning, and she would be finished in London, like it or not. There was little time left. “Where’s Francis?”

“Visiting his grandmother,” Reg replied. “He sends his apologies at missing your send-off.”

“Is she ill?” Kit asked, accepting the snifter of brandy Alex handed her. She met his gaze for a moment over the glass, and he gave a slight grin, eyes dancing, before he looked away. She couldn’t figure out why he’d lied earlier and made it possible for both of them to continue as they had, but then, fleetingly in his eyes, she had seen something that unsettled her even more than his kisses. She took a long, hard swallow of brandy to disguise the reason for the blush that touched her cheeks.

Augustus drained his own glass, far more easily and efficiently than she ever could. “She’s been on her last legs for five years now, with all the grandchildren stumbling over one another to be named her favorite. Francis goes to see her and begs a few quid whenever he’s to let. She’ll drag him about town and make him look fool
ish, then open her fist one finger at a time.”

“That sounds dreary,” Kit commented. It also sounded very like her father’s description of her uncle, the Duke of Furth.

Devlin glanced at her. “I’ve told him not to give her the satisfaction, but whatever does one do without blunt?”

“Not much,” Kit agreed. Out of the corner of her eye she couldn’t help but notice that Everton kept looking at her. She was going to have to kick him if he didn’t stop it. Male cousins simply did not gaze at one another like that, and while Devlin was drunk and might not notice, Reg was sober enough.

“Speaking of blunt,” Hanshaw put in, “dinner is on my bill tonight,
mes amis
.”

Alex finally shifted his attention to Reg. “What’s the occasion?” he queried.

“Lady Caroline’s agreed to venture out on a picnic with our intrepid hero,” Augustus offered, his fingers twiddling with his glass.

“I actually believe her purpose for agreeing was to give her more opportunity to question me about you, Kit.” Reg chuckled. “However, I’ll take any attention from her as a good sign.”

It was Kit’s turn to scowl. “I don’t know why you keep insisting she’s smitten with me,” she protested. “I’ve barely spoken five sentences to her.”

“It’s very simple,” Augustus put in, leaning back in his chair. “Reg has thrown his entire being into pleasing Caroline. She knows every nuance of his thought and character. You, however, are a mystery, to be explored, solved, and resolved.”

When Kit looked over at him rather sharply, she couldn’t decipher whether Devlin meant anything more than the obvious by his comment. She glanced at Alex, to find that he, too, was eyeing the viscount, and the cold distrust on his face stopped her for a moment. It was a possessive, angry look, the look of someone who had a secret he didn’t want to share. With anyone. A small thrill ran down her spine.

“I’m hardly a mystery.” She chuckled, and the azure gaze flicked for a bare moment in her direction before returning to the viscount. “I’ve merely been attempting to avoid stepping on Reg’s toes.”

“Ah, how gallant, dear boy,” Augustus congratulated. “Would that we all possessed such powers of restraint. You could learn a lesson from your cousin, Everton.”

“Speaking of lessons,” Reg put in, just a little too quickly, “I thought you were teaching Barbara one, Alex. Why so friendly the other evening?”

“Oh, you know me,” Everton returned absently, his gaze remaining on Devlin, “never one to burn bridges.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Is something bothering you, Augustus?” he murmured, and Kit couldn’t mistake the anger in his tone.

“Me, my boy? Nothing at all.” Devlin slowly refilled his glass, the amber liquid swirling toward the curved brim. “It’s odd, though,” he said, speaking to the brandy, “how different Reg’s courtship is from yours. He must actually woo, and not merely the female, but the entire family.”

“Augustus,” Reg murmured, looking with some anxiety in Alex’s direction.

Kit, though, was becoming more interested in the conversation. Lately the details of Alex’s brief marriage had been occupying more of her thoughts than they should. She glanced at Devlin, to find his gray eyes on her, apparently reading her curiosity.