The King of Threadneedle Street (2 page)

“Wherever you learned that wicked tone of voice—”

“Does it not persuade you?”

“Not at all. I have wedding correspondence to answer. Good day.” He let her go. She stood and smoothed her skirt, flustered she could still smell him on her skin. She had lied — he smelled marvelous to her.

Andrew scoffed and sprawled his limbs, as though he had been struck dead by a jealous deity. One with a low tolerance for mortal hubris. “Must I start all over wooing you?”

“You must not start at all, Lord Preston.”

He groaned.

“Our adolescent flirtation is over.”

Andrew appeared puzzled, then injured as he took in her expression which she hoped looked ruthless. He stiffened. “You have a lover?”

“Of course not.”

“Then you are betrothed?”

“Not precisely.”

“Then you have suitors?”

“Whom, Drew? The stable boy? A footman? I have neither the time nor stupidity for dalliance, if even I desired it.”

“What do you mean, you are
not precisely engaged?
” He ripped shafts of grass and tossed them like miniature javelins.

“Andrew, never mind it.” Another moment and she would either shout or weep. No use confiding the truth ¯ that she was desperate. He would charge into the fray, gallant and reckless, making yet more turmoil. She knew, because his past attempts to help her had only convinced his parents he had a dangerous attachment to a courtesan’s daughter. And as such, Alysia had one choice before her now, which she had no desire to discuss with Andrew.

“Oh, Lisa. Darling, what is the matter?”

She saw a flash — sunshine reflecting on taffeta. Lady Courtenay and Lady Elizabeth crested the hill, probably having heard from the guards at the gate the prodigal son had returned. Alysia darted past the tree line and took cover behind a hedge before they saw her. She heard Andrew complain at her hasty retreat and turned to see him stuff her dropped stocking in his saddlebag as he waved to his mother and sister.

She had just finished her last private conversation with him. Their last kiss had been more than two years before. After his sister’s wedding, she would never see him again.

****

The young bejeweled Dowager Baroness of Remington, cousin twice removed to Lady Courtenay, arrived with her weak-stomached Pomeranian. Andrew’s mother turned into a shameless matchmaker, embarrassing Andrew and giving Lady Remington false hope.

Dinner last evening had been horrid. Lady Remington shot veiled insults at Alysia, “
Why, I don’t believe I saw you at Almack’s last Season,”
and, “
Now, who was your mother, exactly?”
Apparently Lady Remington saw Alysia as a threat to her designs on Andrew, who valiantly rose to her defense.

“I avoid that henhouse whenever possible myself,”
he’d said with a scoff. At the mention of her mother, his jaw clenched, making the tiny muscle in the corner tick. She feared he would erupt.
“Lady Mercoeur was thought the most beautiful and accomplished woman on the continent. She was like a mother to me. I have only ever met her equal in her daughter.”
He didn’t seem to mind the stunned silence, nor Lady Remington’s squirming in discomfort under his drilling stare.

The Duke of Belmont, who tirelessly insisted on trading glances with Alysia for a reason she could not fathom, had resorted to outright staring, which Andrew noticed. He retaliated by untying her stocking garters with his feet and bunching them at her ankles, all under the dinner table while wearing a bored expression. Lady Remington’s lap dog had gotten sick on Andrew’s sleeve. Served him right.

Lady Courtenay woke Alysia early the next morning — after she had stayed up late writing seating charts for the banquet. Apparently, spools of silk ribbon had been misplaced by the milliner, and that constituted an emergency. “
And by the way, the menus need revising
.” To accommodate Lady Remington, who apparently had as weak a stomach as her ever-vomiting dog.

Lady Courtenay had dropped the problem in Alysia’s lap because she knew Jean-Pierre the chef would threaten to burn down the kitchen again, this time for the ignominy of preparing “Heedeous Eengleesh blood-poodeeng.” Alysia could shout back in French, which was how the man communicated on a good day.

Alysia passed through the gallery after breakfast, having survived
le grand combat
with the chef, in a hurry to the water closet. She simply hadn’t even found a minute to—

“Miss Villier?” called a suave tenor voice. She turned to see the Duke of Belmont waving her over to the billiard room. Gritting her teeth against the offense of being summoned, she pasted on a pleasant expression.

He flashed a pretty smile. “Care to sit?” His Grace patted the space next to him on the sofa and blew a ring of smoke from his cigar.

“Thank you, no.” She held a pencil ready to take notes, hoping he would catch the hint.

“Ah, well. I have decided against the Laurent-Perrier for the wedding. It lacks distinction.”

He went on to list the distinguished guests attending his wedding and requested some imported champagne from farther around the world than a two-week voyage, all while his line of sight strayed to her bodice. She angled the papers to block his view and promised every effort to procure the obscure elixir he couldn’t do without.

She wanted to kiss Christian, Andrew’s twelve-year-old brother, when he passed by and paused in the doorway to chat. It gave her the perfect opportunity to slip away.

Alysia was cross with herself for giving in, but she held out only a few hours before tucking her hair into a serviceable chignon and confiscating the lists from a bedraggled Lady Courtenay. “Miss Villier to the rescue”— a refrain she had heard so often, the honor of the praise had tarnished. Lord Courtenay had said his wife would either sink or swim in the matter of domestic management when Alysia departed, and her ladyship was supposed to learn what to do these two weeks. The odds favored the bit about sinking, then.

Alysia corralled the mastiffs in the west wing to keep them from eating the Pomeranian, and sent the peacocks to a neighbor so the Pomeranian wouldn’t chase them. She wired for a wine steward to take over the wedding libations, and bribed the staff with exorbitant bonuses to keep them from quitting.

She heard from Lady Courtenay thrice more before lunch, and the lists grew longer. Alysia resorted to commandeering Andrew’s personal telegraph, to his chagrin. “
Empires may rise and fall in your absence, Lord Preston, but heaven help you if Lady Elizabeth’s wedding falls behind schedule
.”

Managing a household: that was what Alysia did best, and she had been doing it since age sixteen. The oddity of having the daughter of Lord Courtenay’s late mistress act as lady of the house had long ceased to bother everyone involved. Keeping herself occupied made her forget it was not her family and not her home.

She passed through the gallery for the dozenth time that day and noticed someone had forgotten to rotate the east-facing tapestries—

A strong arm grasped her waist and pulled her into an alcove. She gasped and dropped her lists. Andrew yanked the curtain closed.

“You failed to mention my mother has become a deuced convincing candidate for Bedlam!”

“It is just the wedding, my lord. Her nerves are—”

“And you should have told me the baroness was coming.” He scoffed. “I would have run the other way!”

“Come now, Lord Preston. Is that any way to speak of—”

“With one stray word of encouragement I fear she would call the banns.” His nostrils flared and he edged closer, towering over her.

“Be reasonable, my lord—”

“Lisa, stop that. And why is the Duke of Belmont always leering at you? Never tell me you are—”

“Stop interrupting me!” She beat her fist on his chest, and it startled them both. Alysia had always done that — hit his chest — to get his attention when he was being a stubborn, hot-headed troll. The reminder of how it had been between them drained the angst from their argument. His expression softened.

A dozen alarms went off in her head. She stepped outside the curtain, but he caught her arm, turned her to face him, and restrained her against his chest. Had it been any other man who held her so, she would have kicked him in the shins.

“I had forgotten how volatile your temper is, Andrew.” She peeked around the curtain to be sure no one else was near.

He pulled off her lace cap with his free hand and loosened her chignon with his fingers, his hands gentle despite his scowl. “How long have they been dreadful to you, Alysia? It was not like this when I left.”

“They aren’t dreadful. On the contrary, I have been treated with utmost generosity, considering…” She wriggled an arm free and took his hand, toying with his fingers while she tried to explain. “You do me a great honor in behaving as though my society is equal to yours, but now we must fulfill our respective duties. I don’t resist it, and neither should you.” She dropped his hand, shamed by her own words.

Without warning, his mouth came down on hers. A long, deep, pull frozen in time. Long enough for shock to shoot through her veins then circulate back through as fire. She was lost until he released her, and then she felt dizzy.

He cursed under his breath; then he grasped the nape of her neck and drew her against him, capturing her mouth in a hard, angry kiss. She shoved against his chest, but she might as well have pushed against the stone walls of the house. His lips punished, his kiss hungry and ill-behaved.

Her rebellious fingers gripped the hair on the back of his neck and pulled hard, but she knew he liked that. For a few sublime moments, she kissed him back. A dance with a longtime partner. Lazy afternoons in their soaked underclothes, chatting in the cave behind the waterfall. Napping on his shoulder in the library window seat where sunshine baked through the glass.

His thumbs stroked up and down her throat and his lips gentled, but then he angled her head so he could slant his mouth over hers and stroke his tongue along the side of hers.

Pure bliss. The alarm bells in her head waned as though sinking underwater.

Andrew made a humming sound that vibrated in her mouth. He traced her upper lip with the tip of his tongue, and in turn she caught his bottom lip between her teeth and sucked on it. He groaned and tightened his arms around her, breaking away to trace his mouth down her throat.

She was too far gone to stop him when he exploited her vulnerability, did what he knew made her delirious with pleasure: he sank his lips into her neck where her jaw met her ear then kissed deeply down the side of her throat. She sighed, helpless and pliant.

He teased and tormented her, a sensory overload she succumbed to in less time than it took to sing the alphabet song. Completely seduced, she yanked his collar open and dragged her hands over his skin. She let him rake his hands down her sides, molding them together from shoulder to knee. With an instinctive stroke of her hips, she brushed against him in a plea for
more.

He bit down on her lip and shouted in surprise, shattering the thrall.

Alysia startled and darted backward. Staring numbly at him, she raised her fingers to the place on her lip he had bitten. Every nerve in her body prickled as though burned.

The unspoken truth loomed between them: separation had done nothing to weaken their attachment. That seemed a trite word for the tumultuous feeling squeezing her chest and throbbing in her pulse like an end-of-the-world storm. How could she be so stupid? Asking for torture, tasting the forbidden fruit one last time, before banishment from Eden. She smoothed her tussled hair with a trembling hand and gathered her papers, an excuse for not looking him in the eye.

Andrew fixed his collar and started to speak. They heard voices and clicking footsteps — his mother and Lady Remington. Alysia opened the curtain and whispered, “Quick, Drew. I think I should faint. Now.” She let herself drop, and he had no choice but to catch her. He found her fan and opened it.

The women approached in time to see him haul Alysia to the window seat by the tops of her arms, trying to fan her and looking distressed. Thanks to Andrew, her skin was genuinely flushed.

Alysia revived as the baroness and Lady Courtenay rushed to her aid. She blinked weakly and sat up. “Oh, dear. It seems I had a swoon.” She pretended to notice Andrew for the first time. “Lord Preston? Oh. Thank you. I suppose I am fortunate you happened by at the right moment.”

“What? No. Do you not remember, Alysia?”

She shot him a glare for not calling her
Miss Villier
. So did his mother.

“We were chatting by the window there, and you fell laughing near to fits at something I said. I suppose the heat through the window overcame you, because then you fainted.”

He ignored her covert look of incredulity.

“Either I am overwhelmingly clever, or your corset laces are too tight,” he added innocently, without releasing her from his arms, though he should have done so several moments past.

The women gasped at his outlandish remark, and Alysia punished him by digging her nails into his arm until he righted her on her feet and released her.

Lady Remington looked between Lord Preston and Alysia with unmistakable jealousy and disdain. Lady Courtenay wore her usual expression of displeasure.

“I am much obliged, your lordship.” Alysia gave him a curt nod, retrieved her lists, and left him to his mother and Lady Remington, satisfied by his martyred expression.

Perhaps now she could finally visit the blasted water closet.

Chapter Two

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Julius Caesar,
William Shakespeare

Andrew retreated to the abandoned west wing salon and didn’t bother switching on the lamps. The piano bench creaked as he sat. He watched out the window, soaking in the view of the fountain gardens bathed in moonlight. He had been away from home too long. Nothing was as it should be.

He had wires to answer, stocks to trade, and papers in Mandarin to scour. London, Milan, and Shanghai would have to wait. Hours later, and still Alysia monopolized his thoughts, leaving no room for time zones, silk imports, and steamships. He scrubbed his forehead, cursing the war between logic and nostalgia raging in his brain.