The Mercenary Major (12 page)

When it was no longer enough to yield her mouth to his, she clutched her wrapper to her and broke the kiss. He pressed his forehead to the door, his ragged breath warming her shoulder, and with his thumb he stroked her lips as if he could not bear to let them go.

After a while he said, “Question me all you like in the drawing rooms of London, Miss Carr, but avoid being alone with me like the well-bred girl you are. You make me as hungry as any of those wretches in the soup kitchen Aunt Letty supports.”

He pushed himself from the door and held it open for her, and she stepped into the darkness before her weakened limbs failed her.

**** 9 ****

L
etty looked up from the tea table and surveyed the crowded drawing room with satisfaction. Her Guy Fawkes dinner was a success. In spite of Walter’s dire predictions that she would disgrace herself living alone in town, she had avoided scandal and acquired a group of true friends. And they had come tonight willing to meet the Favertons and Victoria.

Lady Montford, who prided herself on familiarity with the newest
on-dits
, was listening intently to Miss Coape, who rarely conversed about anything other than her soup kitchens. Mr. Wentworth, a banker who advised cabinet members and who had long since accepted that Letty’s heart was not free, was having a spirited exchange with a group of younger men including Jack. Charlotte had apparently found a sympathetic ear in Elizabeth Phillips, whose twin girls were talking to Katie. Reg’s friend, Kit Grafton, was telling some sort of elaborate tale to Sarah Nevins and Victoria. Where Reg was so late in the evening Letty didn’t know. He had missed dinner, but a young man on the town for the first time was apt to be an unreliable guest.

When the conversation around Wentworth broke up, Jack again faced the temptation of Victoria Carr. His aunt’s house, which had seemed enormous to him at first, now seemed as cramped as a camp tent. His warning had apparently encouraged Miss Carr to keep her distance, but this minute if he reached out a hand, he could touch her as she stood with her back to him. She was wearing a gown of creamy wool and carried a shawl of deep, smoldering red, and she was laughing unaffectedly at some story Grafton was telling.

In spite of her cool manner, her delight in small pleasures was genuine. As children had passed in the street with their effigies crying, “A penny for the Guy, sir? A penny for the Guy, ma’am?” Victoria Carr had insisted on opening the windows and throwing down coins. Not, Jack could tell, because she pitied the urchins in the street, but because she seemed to sense their adventure and wanted to share it. The rest would have let the children pass. He would have been one of the children.

After he’d kissed her at the Montford ball, he had decided that even her obvious dislike of him did not make flirtation safe. If he came near her, he would touch her. If he touched her, he’d do more. But she had reminded him in his bedroom that at Letty’s he must act the gentleman. So he had spent most of the week in the streets, looking for Hengrave and watching out for Bertram. He decided he’d been virtuous long enough.

He took the two steps to her side just as she turned toward the tea table. On meeting his gaze her eyes assumed their steel aspect at once. He grinned.

“Miss Carr,” he said, taking the teacup she evidently meant to refill, “may I procure you a fresh cup of tea?”

“Thank you, Major.”

He bowed slightly, and they moved toward the tea table.

“Given up your investigation?” he asked quietly, when their circumstances allowed it. He let his gaze rest on the curve of her cheek and the sweep of those dark lashes.

“Not at all,” she replied, a flash of steel in her gray eyes. “But you needn’t set Mr. Gilling to guard your room.”

He laughed. “If you’ve noticed Gilling’s presence, I’d say I was right to tell him about your attempt on my . . . defenses.”

“I will find out the truth somehow, Major,” she told him calmly.

“Definitely steel,” he said, studying her eyes, “not smoke tonight.”

Victoria turned away with as much dignity as she could muster and sought the group of young gentlemen and ladies around Katie. She had confined her efforts to discover the truth about him to dinners and parties. Sentiment favored the major, forgave him any mercenary motives, and praised his exploits as the Bandit. In the eyes of his friends he was something of a cross between David as outlaw defying King Saul and Alexander the Great, and he had more friends than any man she had ever met.

She had nearly banished him from her mind, however, when she heard Letty’s butler Briggs announce, “The Condesa de Villasantos, Sir Arthur Lonville, Lord Faverton.”

Victoria glanced at the door. Letty was greeting Reg and two strangers, one of whom was the exotic beauty who had spoken to Jack Amberly on the day of the balloon ascension. The woman shimmered in a gown of deep-blue satin, diamonds at her throat and around the wrist of a hand that fluttered a delicate jet fan. She looked straight at the major. In response he stiffened and nodded coolly, and Victoria recalled his much warmer reaction to the
condesa
that day under the oaks at Harlington. She wondered if the Spanish woman knew some truth about the major that he did not wish revealed.

The woman’s companion, a gentleman near Victoria’s father’s age, appeared proud and above his company. Letty quickly maneuvered the man into a conversation with Mr. Wentworth, and Victoria guessed the stranger must have some role in the government. The
condesa
smiled prettily and clung to Reg, who looked positively besotted as he led her directly to Jack Amberly. Abruptly Victoria turned away lest she be caught staring.

Jack watched Reg carefully. It was clear that his young friend had succumbed rather completely to Cida’s charms, but what use Cida meant to make of such a willing tool when she had already contrived to give herself a title and snare a rich, powerful fiancé was a puzzling question. When Reg’s eagerness to serve the
condesa
some of Letty’s tea cakes left them a few minutes alone, Jack questioned his former companion of the streets.

“Cida, do you need
two
rich protectors?”

“Joaquin, you mock and insult me, no?” she said, shaking her dark curls at him. “Your Reg is not my protector. He is gambling, the young one, for much too-high stakes. I rescue him. He leads me to you.”

“Whom you do not want,” Jack reminded her.

“
Querido
, this so-rich house is your aunt’s, a lady who has no children and a great fondness for you. You have the money to be my friend again.” Felicidad’s voice sank to the sultry whisper of the practiced courtesan. Her fan fluttered in one hand, the fingers of the other hand brushed the surface of an inlaid table. “
Como Madrid
.”

“No, not like Madrid.” Jack shook his head.

“
No eres cura
. You are not a priest. You need heat, life. What heat can you get from these . . . these . . . nuns?”

“Cida, you would be surprised at the fire in some Englishwomen,” he told her, laughing.

She glared at him and uttered a Spanish phrase he had not heard since their days in the streets. She snapped the little fan shut and opened it again. Her eyes made a rapid perusal of the room. She was furious, he knew, at his refusal to take up her suggestion for an arrangement between them. He suspected that the constraints of her masquerade as a countess were wearing on her temper.

“You would not speak of their fire if you remembered Madrid.”

“Cida, I remember,” he replied. He had been sixteen and a virgin, a lack of experience unimaginable in his neighborhood and profession, but he had been holding on to the sense of himself his parents had left him. Then one afternoon he had rescued Felicidad from certain rape.

That evening she showed him to a quiet fountain in the gardens of a rich man’s house. There by a pool in the moonlight she thanked him for saving her virtue and in the same breath offered it to him. She explained that he could not always be on hand to rescue her, but that if he took her as his own, no one else would touch her.

He protested that she should save her virtue for her husband, and she declared that she wanted none, that she refused to lie under a man who could give her nothing but rags and children. He made as many arguments as he could think of, but she answered them all. She dared him to prove he did not want her and touched him where he was stiff and aching with desire for her just from their talk.

“Which girl here has such fire in her?” she asked. Her black eyes, sharp with suspicion, glanced around the room.

“It’s not fire I’m to look for, it’s gold. Any heiress will do for my aunt,” Jack answered.

“But for you,” she said, “I think the one with the red shawl, no? She is investigating you?”

“Reg told you?”

Felicidad smiled at him smugly.

Jack kept his face expressionless. Cida was no fool, and she had always been able to read him too easily.

“What will your charming heiress think if I tell her about your days as a pickpocket?”

Jack leaned over so that his lips nearly touched her ear. “Cida,” he whispered, “that is just what Miss Carr longs to hear about me.” He turned to Reg, who was approaching head down, eyes fixed on a plate loaded with cakes, which he held in one hand, and a cup of tea, which he held in the other. Jack took the teacup and saucer and placed them on the table as Reg offered the plate of cakes to the
condesa
. “Reg,” said Jack, “the
condesa
would like to hear about that race you won the other day.” He smiled at Cida and strolled away.

When the
condesa
joined Victoria on Letty’s chocolate silk sofa, the Spanish woman introduced the topic of Major Amberly without any prompting.

“Miss Carr,” said the woman, “your friend Lord Faverton tells me you suspect this Major Amberly is an impostor. Perhaps I can help you. I knew the man in Spain.”

“Did he call himself Jack Amberly then?” Victoria asked. If he had used the name before he had seen any of Letty’s letters, it would prove him honest.

“When he came to Madrid with the army? Yes. Before that?” She shrugged. “I do not know. He was a very famous bandit. They say he stole a fortune from the sack of Badajoz to buy the most beautiful . . . courtesan in the city.” Again the little shrug. “I do not know.”

“He could not have remained an officer if he participated in that sack,” Victoria said. “Wellington would not have allowed it.” She looked at the heart-shaped face before her and saw the shrewdness in the dark eyes.

The
condesa
waved her fan gently and shook her lovely dark curls. Her fingers played lightly over the chocolate silk of the sofa where they sat.

“You are wise not to trust such a man,” she advised Victoria. “A bandit who comes from the streets or the mountains, cruel and wild. Who is to say what is true about him? He is not like your fine English gentlemen.”

“But Major Amberly claims to be an English gentleman by birth.”

“He is his aunt’s heir, perhaps?” asked the
condesa
. The little black fan was still.

Victoria stiffened. “I have no idea,” she replied. Jack Amberly had boasted to her that Letty paid his bills. Had he implied to others that he was his aunt’s heir?

“Perhaps you may warn the aunt,” the
condesa
was saying. “He told me himself, this major, that at sixteen he was
un ratero
, a pickpocket, who would steal anything to please his mistress. One is surprised to meet him in a lady’s drawing room.”

The
condesa’s
fan was fluttering again, her black eyes scanning the room. She explained to Victoria that her fiancé was a fine gentleman, so wise in the affairs of the government and so generous. She fingered the diamonds at her throat, and a minute later she excused herself and crossed the room to her betrothed.

Looking up, Victoria met Jack Amberly’s amused gaze. Clearly, he had observed her exchange with the Spanish lady. If he had any idea of what the woman had said to blacken his character, how could he be grinning at Victoria now? Did he want her to think the worst of him?

Briggs’ voice interrupted this puzzling line of thought. “Mr. Carr,” he announced.

Victoria turned toward the door.

There was her father, looking so hopelessly out of place that Victoria nearly cried out. Her London-tutored eyes saw how wrong his gray coat was, the collar too high, the lapels oddly cut, the color faded. For a pained instant Victoria thought he’d come to end her Season. Then his seeking gaze swept the room and passed over her without recognition. He blinked like a man waking from sleep, and she saw the consciousness in his eyes of his own odd appearance in such fashionable company. Still he stepped forward, clearly embarrassed but resolute, with a half-smile on his lips.

In that moment of silence she saw that he had stopped looking for her and was staring at Letitia Faverton, who gasped and pressed her hands together tightly. Jack Amberly was at his aunt’s side to steady her, and almost as quick to reach her was Edward Carr.

**** 10 ****

L
etty caught herself for the tenth time since breakfast lost between intention and action. Just now she had entered the drawing room to do— what? She shook her head, pausing to let the thought come back to her, looking for the clue to her purpose in the familiar objects around her. She clenched her hands in frustration and found that she was holding her scissors. Now she remembered—she was going to trim dead blooms from last night’s bouquets.

She should have had Mrs. Nugee, her housekeeper, do it, but to wait idly for this morning’s callers was beyond her, nor could she sustain rational thought long enough for letters or business. Her hands trembled at their task, and she scattered petals and pollen on the table’s polished surface. Ned Carr was going to call. Six years had passed since their last meeting, six years in which to master her feelings, to shape them to a mild, disinterested regard for him.