Secrets of the Heart (17 page)

Slowly, not taking his eyes from her, he stretched out his hand and wrapped it around her wrist. Rachel's eyes widened, and just as she opened her mouth to protest his further impertinence, he jerked her across the seat so that she slammed into his side. She let out a shocked breath as his arms went tight around her. He bent and seized her mouth in a long, bruising kiss.

Rachel's hands went instinctively up to his chest, but she did not push him away. She could not. She felt as if all her bones had suddenly turned into jelly. Heat shimmered through her, and a yearning like nothing she had ever felt before opened like a flower inside her. She shivered, her hands curling into themselves, lying limply against his chest. For a long moment she was able to do nothing, say nothing, merely drink in his kiss like nectar.

His lips dug into hers, and a small moan escaped him. Then, as if the sound had snapped him back into awareness, he stopped as abruptly as he had begun. He raised his head and stared down into her face, his eyes wide and intense, dark with hunger. Moving a little jerkily, his arms slid away from her, and he moved back until he came up against the side of the carriage. Their eyes were still locked on each other. Rachel could not look away. She was lucky to be able to breathe, she thought, given how scattered and strange she felt.

She raised a shaky hand to her mouth, the realization of what she had done sinking in on her. She had kissed this man! This rude, uncouth, bizarre twin of her husband. And she had felt a kind of glorious, intense pleasure she had never before experienced.

Rachel let out a choked cry and whirled away. Sticking her head out the window, she cried to the driver to stop. Behind her, she heard James say, “No! Wait—”

He reached for her, but she jerked away, flinging open the door of the hansom. The driver was pulling to a halt as she had directed him, and she stepped out before he was even quite stopped, evading Hobson's hand again.

She heard him curse and lurch toward the door, but she did not glance back at him, just clung to the bar on the carriage beside the door as she scrambled down the step and onto the ground. She stumbled slightly, but caught herself. She hurried across the street to the sidewalk, glancing around her. She saw that she was only a few blocks from her house, back once more on familiar ground, and she started up the street, not turning to look back at the hansom.

Behind her, the man watched Rachel hustle across the street and up the sidewalk, his hand grasping the side of the door, though whether to keep himself inside or propel his body out of the vehicle after her, he wasn't quite sure. Taut and teeming with hot emotions, he watched her walk away.

Leaning out the door, he growled at the driver, “Follow her 'til she gets inside, then take me back.”

He pulled back inside, closing the door, and watched Rachel's retreating figure as the cab crept slowly down the street after her. When she reached her house and marched inside, he slumped back against the seat and stared moodily into the darkness all the way back to his sister's house.

When he reached Lilith's, there were already a few gamblers hanging out in front of the gaming house next door, even though it would be another fifteen minutes before it opened for business. He quickly turned and slipped down the narrow walkway between the two buildings and let himself in through the rear door. Running up the stairs, he went straight to Lilith's room and knocked.

He opened it at the first sound of her voice and strode inside. Lilith was sitting in front of her vanity, dressed now in the evening gown she would wear tonight at her card games, and her maid was putting the finishing touches on her upswept hairdo.

“Bloody hell, Lilith!” he growled without preamble, marching over to where she sat. “What the devil did you say all that for? Now I'm in a fine mess.”

“She thought I was your mistress!” Lilith shot back. “I swore to her that it was a lie someone had told her, and I almost had her convinced that you never came here when all of a sudden you come trotting down the stairs, looking as if you lived here. What was I supposed to do?”

“Well, you didn't have to tell her I was someone else,” Michael retorted grumpily. “Why not tell her the truth? Why not just say that you are my half sister instead of that idiotic story that I am my own illegitimate brother!”

“I don't know. Why haven't you ever told her that?” Lilith stood up and faced him, planting her fists on her hips pugnaciously. “Obviously, it was something you wanted concealed. And you looked so different—it was the first thing that popped into my head. I had just been denying vigorously that you ever came here. It seemed absurd to say then, ‘Oh, yes, well, here he is now, how odd.”'

She drew a breath and went on. “Besides, it seems to me that your wife might not take it too well that you have known about me for years yet never told her that you had a sister born on the wrong side of the blanket. Women are peculiar that way. Especially when you visit this sister often and even stay with her instead of at your own home when you are in London, a fact, I might add, which has clearly been noticed if people are gossiping that I am your mistress! And how was I to explain why you were here and why you look as you do? It would have all come out about your investigations, and I cannot imagine any wife not being furious that you have kept an entire life secret from her!”

Michael grimaced. “Well, when you say it like that…”

“How else is there to say it?” Lilith pressed him. “It is what you have done.” She sighed and went over to him and took his arm. “I understand why you might not want to tell her about me. Many ladies would be horrified to know that you actually visit your illegitimate sister. Or that you went to her and helped her as soon as you found out she existed.” She smiled, taking away much of the sting from her earlier words. “You are the kindest and most generous of men, and I love you dearly for what you have done for me. But not all wives would appreciate your admitting a connection to a woman who owns a gaming establishment and is the mistress of a married gentleman.”

“I did not hide your existence from her because I was ashamed of you!” Michael exclaimed, looking horrified. “I hope you do not think—”

“I think nothing bad of you, and you know it. But I am your sister, not your wife. No wife wants her husband to be the subject of gossip. A fine lady does not wish to be connected to a woman such as me.”

“Rachel is a good woman. She would not chide me for seeing you.”

“Then why did you not tell her about me?” Lilith asked softly, her clear gaze fixed on his face. “Why did you never tell her about your investigations? You have kept many things secret from her.”

“God, don't you think I wish now that I had told her!” Michael burst out, pulling away from her and beginning to pace agitatedly. “You have no idea how much I regret not saying anything to her. It becomes a worse tangle daily. I never set out to deceive Rachel. Truly I didn't. But that is not something you reveal to someone you barely know. I was ashamed—not of you, never of you. It was my father I was ashamed of, his wantonness, his careless, selfish behavior—never acknowledging you, letting you live in poverty. He was a blackguard, and how can you admit that to the woman you want to marry? And afterward…well, we have not been close. It never seemed appropriate to bring it up. And then, when I started helping Bow Street, it was so handy to be able to come here when I was adopting a disguise. I didn't want the servants seeing me slipping in and out of the house in all manner of clothes. And I wanted to protect her…” He sighed. “I wanted to tell Rachel about what I do. About you. But after I had not done so for so long, I was afraid of what she would think. I have been a fool. I can see that now.”

“You are not a fool,” Lilith reassured him. “You are a wonderful man, and she must know that.”

“As you said, my wife would see me differently,” Michael said with a wry smile. “I don't think she would characterize me as ‘wonderful.”'

“Then she is blind,” Lilth retorted stoutly. Turning, she went back to her vanity table and sat down to finish her toilette.

Michael followed Lilith and sat down in a chair near her vanity table. “And now she thinks I am two different men. Good Gad, what a coil! I thought for sure she would recognize me when we were sitting in the hansom. She wasn't two feet from me.”

Lilith shrugged. “People see what they are told they see. If I dressed up as a man, you would believe I was a man—a small man, grant you, but still a man—because you assume that what you see is true, not a trick. I told her you were someone else, a person who could resemble you greatly, and she accepted it. She saw that you looked different from the person she is used to seeing—she isn't going to think, well, Michael could have put walnut oil in his hair to darken it and donned rough clothes and adopted an accent, or any of the other things you do to disguise yourself for an investigation. She will just think that you are someone else who looks very much like you.”

“I suppose.”

“Besides, you won't ever see her again as James Hobson. There won't be any need for you to keep up the disguise. The next time you see her, you will be dressed as you, speaking as you, your hair lightened again, and she will see all those differences between you and him. She will probably wonder why she ever thought you looked so much like him.”

Michael gave her a faint smile. “She already told me that Michael is twice the man I am.”

Lilith chuckled. “You see?”

He nodded. “Yes, but what about when she tells me, the real me, about you and this James Hobson chap and wants us all to meet?”

“I will say that James Hobson has left the country. It isn't as if you and she will be spending time with us.”

“I guess you are right.”

“Of course I am. It will work out. I promise.”

Michael sighed. What Lilith did not know, of course, and what he would not tell her, was that “James Hobson” had just kissed Michael's wife—kissed her thoroughly and pleasurably, the kind of kiss it warmed a man's blood just to think about. It was the way he had dreamed for years of kissing Rachel, the way he had kissed her that night before they were married—and frightened her into running away from him. Just thinking about the kiss made his blood run hot and fast in his veins again, just as it had when it happened. He wanted to taste her again, ached to feel her warm and pliant in his arms.

And Rachel had responded. Unlike that time years ago, she had melted against him, her mouth opening to him, her body trembling with a passion that was unmistakable.

The problem was that she had not been kissing
him.
She had been kissing James Hobson, another chap entirely. The scruffy, surly, illegitimate brother of her husband. The passion he had felt in her had not been for him at all. And no matter how much he had enjoyed the kiss, it made him burn just as much with jealousy.

But as awful and ironic as that was, it was not the worst that had happened this evening. He had found out that Rachel had been seeing Anthony Birkshaw. She had promised him when they married that she would never see the man again, never speak to him, and Michael had believed her. He had trusted in her honor, her integrity; he had believed that she was a woman who would keep her word.

When had she started seeing the man again? What did it mean? Had she played him for a fool all these years? Had she been secretly meeting with Birkshaw since the very beginning?

Jealousy tore through him, almost blinding him to all else. It had been that fierce, furious jealousy that had made him taunt her, had made him jerk her to him and kiss her. Reason might tell him that he did not know all the facts, that the very casual way in which she spoke of the man would indicate that she had nothing to hide. But then, he reminded himself, she had not realized she was telling secrets to her husband. She had thought him only a bastard brother whom Michael did not even know; there would have been little chance, in her estimation, of anything she told James Hobson finding its way back to Lord Westhampton.

He felt his sister's gaze on him, and he knew that she was doubtless wondering why he had sunk into such a brown study. He glanced up and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but he could see from the worried crease between her eyes that she was not convinced.

At that moment he was saved by a tap on the door, followed immediately by its opening. A man entered. He was well dressed in a black evening suit and snow-white shirt and carefully arranged cravat. He was a year or two older than Michael, dark of hair and eyes, with a short, well-muscled build and a face that was more craggy than handsome. He was not given to smiling a great deal, but when he did, his smile lit up his face, charming anyone around him.

“Hallo, Michael,” he said cheerfully, advancing toward them.

“Robert.” Michael stood up to shake the other man's hand.

His name was Sir Robert Blount, and he had been Michael's friend for many years. It was he who had first introduced Michael to the intrigue and adventure of countering Bonaparte's espionage during the war, and he who later offered him his first case helping the Bow Street Runners. He was also the man who had first revealed to Michael that he had a half sister, born on the wrong side of the blanket.

He crossed over to Lilith after he shook Michael's hand and bent to kiss her on the cheek. His kiss was perfectly chaste and correct, but there was in his eyes a glow that said he was far more to Lilith Neeley than the friend of her brother.