Suzanne Robinson (28 page)

Nick joined Jocelin at the cabinet. “Right. Knew you were cocked the minute I got Loveday’s note.”

Jocelin managed to spill into his glass most of the whiskey he was pouring. Nick took the decanter from him.

“No more for you, love. Me mum used to say liquor was the devil’s brew.”

Weaving back to his chair, Jocelin gave a snuffling laugh. “You sound like old Pawkins.”

As he finished, Loveday announced Winthrop and Thurston-Coombes. Jocelin waved his glass in salute.

“Ah, my other witnesses. Come in. Have a drink. We were just talking about old Pawkins. Old Nick here reminds me of him. Good old Sergeant Pawkins. Thought he was going to recover. Like me.”

Winthrop wrinkled his nose and looked down it at Jocelin. “He’s drunk.”

“Can’t blame him,” Thurston-Coombes said. “After all, he’s getting married in a while.”

Jocelin continued in his own direction. “Pawkins was married. Asked me to see to his wife in case he didn’t make it.” He deposited his chin on his chest again, ignoring Nick’s attempts to get him to sit up. “He was sleeping beside me that night in hospital at Scutari. Fevered, he was, but I never thought he’d die like that. I woke in darkness. I don’t know why. I think I must have heard him gagging, because the doctors said he probably strangled on his fluids. He’d have rather died fighting.”

Asher knelt beside him, and Jocelin gave him a bleak smile. “We’re never going to leave the Crimea behind. Are we?”

“I have,” Asher said softly. “And you can.”

“How? You were there. You saw what happened to Cheshire and the others. At least I think you were there. Weren’t you?”

“Not so close as Winthrop and Thurston-Coombes, but near enough.”

“Bloody hell,” Nick snapped. He’d resumed his refined accent now that the others had come. “You’re doing him no good wallowing in the beastly past.”

“Pawkins kept raving about a horse,” Jocelin murmured. He glanced up when he realized that everyone was staring at him. “He did. He kept raving about a horse. Cheshire and the horse, he said. Over and over. Cheshire, Cheshire’s horse, the horse.”

Winthrop had taken the other armchair as his throne and now pronounced his judgment from it. “He’s mad.”

Thurston-Coombes gave him an irritated glance. Asher waved a hand for silence and shook Jocelin’s arm.

“Jos, old boy, you were delirious too. Forget Pawkins. You’re only trying to avoid thinking about this marriage.”

“I say.” Thurston-Coombes brightened and clapped his hands together. “I’ve always wanted to do something scandalous like attend a forbidden marriage. It is forbidden, isn’t it?”

Nick laughed. “It would be if his grace found out.”

A light tapping signaled Loveday’s entrance. “The vicar has arrived, my lord. He awaits you in the drawing room.”

Winthrop rose in all his dignity and brushed invisible lint from his coat sleeves. “I shall keep the vicar company. Fox, do something about Jos at once.”

“Coombes,” Nick said. “Find Loveday and tell him we need coffee.”

Jocelin rose carefully as Coombes left. He listed to the right, then planted his feet apart and cleared his throat.

“Gentlemen, it’s time to fetch my doting bride.”

“Not yet.” Asher poked him in the shoulder, and he toppled back into the chair.

“None of your interfering,” Jocelin said. “I’m going to marry Miss Elliot, and then I’m going to teach her manners and principles and obedience. She wants all of those. And I’ve found out she’s trying to set herself up as some kind of female police constable. She’s certain her brother was murdered, along with Airey and Stapleton and Halloway. God, not only is she deceitful, but she’s mad, thinking she could investigate such a thing.”

Jocelin sighed and blew hair off his forehead.

“Yep, deceitful. That’s what she is. Well, she’ll soon see what her loathsome trap has done for her.”

Nick was pacing beside the chair, and Jocelin caught his arm. “She’s going to pay, Nick, old chap.”

Freeing his arm, Nick looked at the worried Asher. “Doesn’t look good.”

“No,” Asher said. “Not good at all. Perhaps I should go to Kent as well. I’ve a place not far from Reverie. Perhaps we should all go.”

“Got my own place,” Nick said. “I’ll stay there so I don’t have to put up with his holiness Winthrop.”

Asher gave Nick a distracted smile as he studied Jocelin. “Then it’s agreed.”

“Excellent,” Jocelin said as he beamed at his friends. “Perhaps if you fellows are about, you can keep me from killing her.”

L
iza had stopped crying a few minutes after Jocelin left. Frightened, she now measured the length of Jocelin’s bedroom with her tread. Movement seemed to keep the fear at bey.

He wasn’t the kind of man to fulfill his threats. Was he? Then a thought occurred to her. Jocelin couldn’t rescue children and turn around and become the embodiment of the men he punished. He was, however, capable of a fury that transformed him into that kill-you-with-a-smile-on-my-lips gunfighter.

She couldn’t show fear. If he sensed it, he would use it against her. She would face him down, stand up to him.

“Dear Lord, let me be brave.”

The door lock clicked as someone turned the key. Liza whirled around in a flurry of peacock skirts, squared her frame, and lifted her chin. Nick Ross strode into the room and slammed and locked the door behind him. Pointing an accusing finger at her, he snapped, “You bleeding tart, what have you done to Jos?”

Liza stared at him, caught off guard by the change in his speech. “You’re not Society.”

“You’re right, missy, so spill it before I paddle your bum for you. I ain’t got no high-flown manners to stop me neither. What have you done to Jos?”

Throwing up her hands, Liza said, “I’ve done nothing. I’ve said it over and over. My father acted without my knowledge.”

“Oh sure, and that’s why you’re all fizzed at not having a great big Society wedding. Bleeding tarts, that’s what you quality women are, just more expensive than those in the gin shops.”

Liza felt blood and fire rush to her face. She marched up to Nick, stopped directly in front of him, and slapped his face.

“By the Almighty in heaven, I’ll not be spoken to like that. And I’ll have you know that I want no wedding at all, much less a big one.”

“Fu—what?” Nick rubbed his stinging cheek. “What?”

Liza poked him in the chest with each word. “I don’t want to marry him.” She poked him again for emphasis.

“Here now.” Nick backed out of her reach. “You stop that. You’re lying.”

“Let me out of here, and I’ll vanish without so much as an engagement ring.”

Nick studied her while he massaged his chest. “Jos says he’s got to marry you.”

“It’s my father.”

“Handy for you.”

It was Liza who shouted now. “I don’t want to marry him, damn you!”

Nick walked away from her. He stood leaning against the bedpost and contemplated the design woven into the carpet. After a long while he looked up at her.

“I can read people pretty good. You can’t survive in the rookeries without you know how to size a bloke. Until that night at the dinner party, I never thought you was a money-grubber or a title chaser, no matter your ma and pa.”

Liza eased her tense stance. “I’m not.” She came nearer and spoke quietly. “If I were, I could have forced Jocelin into marriage long ago. You see, I’ve been making inquiries about him for other reasons.”

She continued, telling Nick most of the truth about William Edward, about her disguise as Gamp, about following him and Jocelin. Nick made it difficult, for he fixed her with an unwavering gaze of such sagacity that the devil himself would have found deceit impossible. When she finished, he gave a low whistle and shook his head.

“Christ.” Nick stared at her with his brows drawn together. “Then you don’t know about old Yale?”

“What about Lord Yale?”

“Oh, nothing important, just testing you out.”

Liza gave an impatient sigh. “Why would I spy on Yale when he had nothing to do with my brother? Well? Now do you understand?”

He sat on the edge of the bed, propped his chin on his palm, and stared at her. “You never said a word.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Liza went to a chair and picked up her reticule, which she opened and closed without looking inside. “I decided that a man who went about saving children from … from evil couldn’t be the man I was looking for. And later I realized that Jocelin couldn’t murder anyone.”

“Bleeding hell, you’re in love with him.”

Liza threw her reticule to the floor. “I am not!”

“And I damned well know he’s in love with you.”

“He is not, or he couldn’t have accused me of trapping him. He would have trusted me. He hates me. He said so. And I dislike him immensely.”

“Immensely is it?”

Liza glared at Nick. He grinned at her and looked at his pocket watch.

“Almost time.”

Rushing to him, she touched his coat sleeve. “You have to let me go.”

“Not bloody likely. Jos wants you, and I’m going to see that he gets you.”

“But he doesn’t really.”

“He does, or he’d have hung your father up by his balls—excuse me language—until he gave over. No, old Jos don’t know it, but the reason he’s going through with the marriage is ’cause he damned well wants to. And I always see to it that Jos gets what he wants. He saved me life, so I like to help him get on, I do. Besides, you’re in love with him.”

“Not anymore. And I don’t marry where I’m not wanted.”

Nick took her arm and guided her to the door. “You just let him know about how you could have blackmailed him yourself if you’d been after his title.”

“I don’t care what he thinks now.”

“You better, missy. You better.”

The beast had crawled up the damask curtains in the library and lay curled up on top of a book cabinet. Red eyes gazed down on the party gathered before the vicar. A lip lifted to reveal a curved canine, then the beast lowered its head to rest on its paws and watched, patient, silent, learning a new scent.

The female. A new danger, a scent to be inhaled and remembered for the hunt. And Jocelin, who was remembering again, much too well.

The beast stirred. Nostrils quivered, and its snout raised to weave back and forth in the air. Snuffling. Sniffing. Paws flexed to reveal nails discolored with dried blood. It had caught the scent. He could hear the snuffles grow louder.

The nostrils worked, rapidly sucking in the scent and blowing out, in and out, faster and faster. As the beast rose to crouch above them, the girl uttered her vows. Peacock blue skirts rustled as Jocelin moved close, drew her in his arms, and kissed her. Now, now when they were both together. No, no, too many others. The beast whined, clawed at the cabinet, and hunkered down to wait.

Now Liza knew what a real nightmare was. It was having a dream come to life in a perverted and
distorted way that turned hope into dread and love into terror.

He hated her, and he had just obtained total power over her. She started as he bent down to kiss her. What froze her in place was how familiar and alluring his body remained in spite of their estrangement. His lips felt as warm and soft, his body as hard and yet gentle when it encountered hers. He devoted his passion to the kiss in the same way, drawing her so close, she could feel him breathe. But when he drew back, his eyes were as cold as the barrel of his Colt.